HYDE
Chapter 5




Maureen dropped McKenna off at the station house, then left to drive Kerri to Bellevue Hospital for treatment before finding her a place to stay for a while.
     Behind the desk, Lieutenant Leavey was writing in the blotter, but he stopped as soon as he saw McKenna. "How can I help you, Brian?" he asked, causing McKenna to wonder if that was the first time a desk lieutenant had ever asked a detective that question.
     "I'd like to take a look at the stuff they brought in from Thirty-first Street."
     "Sure. It's in the property room."
     "Has it been inventoried yet?"
     "Not yet. You want me to have someone do it now?"
     Second time history's being made, McKenna thought. When did a desk officer ever care what a detective wanted? "Naw, it's not important. Just show me where it is."
     "Sure." Leavey gave McKenna a key and brought him to the property room behind the desk. "Just give a holler if you need anything else."
     Benny's cart was in the middle of the room. McKenna didn't relish going through all the dead man's possessions, but found it easy once he got started. Benny had been meticulously neat and organized in his packing.
     Under the mattress, Benny's and Kerri's clothes were packed in cardboard boxes along with a radio, a Coleman lantern, two sleeping bags, and a blanket. McKenna went through the clothes first and found nothing of interest, but a small suitcase at the bottom of the cart contained some things that told McKenna quite a bit about Benny.
     There was his birth certificate registering his arrival in Fulton County, Georgia on September 9, 1947. He came into the world as Benjamin Harrison Foster at seven pounds, one ounce and was Clara Foster's third child. The space for the father's name was blank.
     Then there was a report card from the fifth grade indicating Benny had never been a rising star, although he had earned a B in penmanship. Absent nineteen times and late thirteen, the rest of his grades were D's and F's. Rounding out his performance were U's in conduct and effort.
     Benny's DD-214 form documented that his conduct and effort hadn't improved. He had served for nine months before the Army ended his military career with a bad conduct discharge on December 24th, 1969.
     Wrapped with a rubber band was a stack of business cards from seven different lawyers, all Legal Aid, with dates written on the back ranging from 1974 to 1996. McKenna surmised that Benny had been arrested at least seven times and his attorneys had each given him a business card after writing the date of Benny's next court appearance on it.
     A small photo album at the bottom of the suitcase held McKenna's attention for a few minutes, although it only contained four old black-and-white snapshots. One was of Benny in his army uniform, two were of teenage girls, and the last was a group photo showing a middle-aged black woman posing with seven kids in front of a ramshackle home. He guessed Benny was the precocious-looking boy in front, sitting on the ground with legs crossed and his mother's arms on his shoulders. Benny looked like he wanted to be someplace else.
     McKenna closed the album and tried to put his mind in order as he re-packed the cart. What Benny had left told the story of a sad and wasted life. He had grown up poor and stayed that way, succeeding in nothing.
     Something his mother had always said to him as a child popped into McKenna's mind. Time and again she had told him that if he didn't do well in school, he would grow up to be a bum. Benny's life was proof she had been right. But there was more to it than that, he realized. Benny's childhood and his were a world apart, causing McKenna to wonder how his own life would have turned out if he had started out in life black, poor, and fatherless in the rural South of the fifties.
     He couldn't find an answer, and gave up trying. What disturbed him more was that Benny's cup hadn't been in the cart, buttressing Maureen's suspicion that Benny had neither frozen to death nor died of natural causes. Although it made no sense to McKenna, he could stretch to imagine that a meticulous planner had poisoned Benny and taken the cup with him. But why would anyone go to the trouble of poisoning him? McKenna wondered again. Finding the motive -- if there was a motive, if Benny had really been murdered -- would be the key, but there were other things to be done before he could even think about that.
     McKenna locked the door and returned the key to Leavey, then decided to see how much weight he carried with the lieutenant. "Are the guy's money and checks in the safe?" he asked.
     "Sure."
     "That and everything in the cart is all community property shared by Benny Foster and a Kerri Brannigan, so don't bother to inventory it. I'd like you to turn it over to Maureen when she asks for it."
     McKenna expected Leavey to voice some objections. According to procedure, it should all go through the Office of the Public Administrator. McKenna knew Kerri was not equipped to deal with the bureaucracy that process would entail.
     But there were no objections coming from Leavey. "Whatever you say, Brian. Anything else?"
     Lots of weight, McKenna thought. What else? "When Maureen asks for the stuff, could you have someone help her deliver it to Brannigan?"
     "No problem."
     Mercurio was the only one left in the squad office when McKenna got there. "The lieutenant's been asking for you," he said casually, but it gave McKenna a jolt.
     First mistake, he thought. It's never good when a squad commander has to look for one of his detectives. I should have given Ward a call.
     He was right. Ward was seated at his desk looking unhappy. "Get lost out there?" the lieutenant asked as soon as McKenna entered.
     "Sorry, I should have called," McKenna offered.
     "Yeah, you should have. The captain, the chief, and the press have all been calling me and I'm left up here looking stupid and holding my johnson. What's happening?"
     "We think it might have been a murder."
     Ward had no reaction except, "We? Maureen, too?"
     "She came up with the idea, but I agree with her."
     Still no reaction from Ward, which left McKenna feeling uneasy while watching the boss think over the implications. Finally Ward said, "Let me get this straight. I send you out to give the captain some support, and you wind up telling me I've got a homicide?"
     What am I supposed to say to that? McKenna wondered. Apologize to him because somebody killed one of his citizens? Okay. "Sorry."
     That wasn't it. "Know what my homicide clearance rate was last year?" Ward asked.
     McKenna did know. "One hundred percent."
     "That's right. One hundred percent, meaning that for every murder committed in this precinct last year, those guys outside brought me the guy who did it. Made me look better than any other squad commander in the city and I like how that feels. You see where I'm leading?"
     This isn't the time to be humble or subtle, McKenna thought. "Sure, it's simple. If it's a homicide, I bring you the killer."
     It was all Ward wanted to hear. "Good. Pull up a chair and tell me about it."

*     *     *

In the end, Ward agreed, although McKenna got the feeling the lieutenant was agreeing more with Maureen than with him. McKenna pointed out that they were going out on a limb calling it a homicide before the autopsy, but that didn't bother Ward. Once he was on board, he wasn't the kind of guy to hedge his bets; he was prepared to sink or swim with his decision. He listened while McKenna outlined his plan of action and had nothing to add. In the end, it was resolved that Ward would call the chief and try to get the heat off the precinct captain for a while. He assigned McKenna the task of handling the press as best he could.
     As soon as he left Ward's office, McKenna called Fox Five News and left a message for Heidi Lane to call him. Then he made himself a cup of coffee and hadn't sat down before the phone rang. Mercurio picked it up and announced, "Heidi Lane for you on line two."
     McKenna sat down at a vacant desk and took a moment to think out strategy. He decided on the sweet approach. "McKenna here. Sorry I took so long getting back to you, Heidi."
     "You sure did. How's my story?"
     "Might not be a story. I still think there's a good chance Benny Foster didn't freeze to death."
     "Still going with that," Heidi asked skeptically. "What was it, a heart attack?"
     "There's a chance he was poisoned, but like I told you before, we won't know until the autopsy. You'll have to wait for a statement."
     "How long?"
     "Tomorrow, I'd say."
     McKenna had expected Heidi to object at once, but she didn't. She was silent while she thought over this turn of events. "You know, while I've been waiting for you, just like you asked, all the other stations are running the story at noon that he froze to death," she said at last.
     "Then it looks like you're the smart one."
     "And I'm gonna use the opportunity to scoop them all."
     "Good thinking," McKenna offered. "You'll look pretty good tomorrow if I'm right."
     "You've got that wrong," she countered. "Things that happen tomorrow aren't called news, they're called forecasts. That's not my department. I'm a newswoman, so I'll need a statement today that it's possible the guy they're all saying froze to death was really murdered."
     Oh-oh, McKenna thought. If I do that, I could wind up looking like the prime-time news-at-five dope if the ME tells us I'm wrong. Got to get out of this. "Bad idea, Heidi. If he wasn't murdered, we'd both look pretty silly," he tried.
     "Not we . Just you , but that would still be news."
     It sure would be, McKenna realized, picturing the lead: You remember yesterday when that dope McKenna told us all the guy was murdered? Well, Viewers, turns out that poor homeless man just froze to death after all. See what you've got running our police department? McKenna had the feeling that would be a better story as far as Heidi was concerned. "I think tomorrow would be better."
     "That's not our deal. I thought you were the kind of guy who made a deal and kept it."
     Our deal? McKenna thought. What exactly did I tell her I'd do?
     But Heidi wasn't going to give him time to think about it. "You do keep your deals, don't you?" she asked.
     "Well, yeah. Of course I do."
     "Good. I'll take that exclusive statement today then, if you don't mind."
     "No, I don't mind," McKenna said. But maybe first you'll have to catch me, he thought. I plan to be real busy real soon and we just might miss each other. "When will you get here?"
     "I'm right outside. We're set up and waiting for you."
     Damn!

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