Ahead, the alley came to a T and his only real chance to catch Perry the Perv, as the youthful perp was known to the neighborhood, was anticipate which way the kid would go and beat him there.
“Left,” Mark said between gasping breaths. A command, though Perry couldn’t hear him. Almost a prayer.
Perry’s nickname, incidentally, came from everyone knowing that he collected jars of his bodily fluids in his rathole apartment and applied their contents in various unspeakable ways to, in, and on various mentally challenged teenage boys, who he also collected.
Right now Perry was lathered in sweat, and the last thing the detective wished to do was lay hands on this noxious sex offender, and shooting the creep would prevent that. But how could you explain it to a shooting board? Bringing down a guy armed only with a thong.
Mark picked up speed and cut a diagonal line toward the left corner — if Perry went right, then he was in the wind, good and g.d. gone. But the young detective was betting on left, because Perry hadn’t done anything right in his whole pathetic life...
True to his nature, Perry veered left, where Mark was coming up fast. The detective launched himself, his shoulder driving into the Perv’s ribs. He’d been the team kicker back in high school, but he knew how to tackle, all right. As much as he despised having to touch this lowlife, Mark hugged him tight and together they flew.
“Motherfuh...”
That was as far as Perry got before his nearly bare body skidded into the pavement, Mark on top of him, and the air whooshed from Perry’s body like a balloon a fat kid sat on.
All that bare flesh had made a body’s worth of skinned knee of Perry, and the pebble-and-trash-strewn alley put up more fight than he did. Mark could imagine how painful that was — his knee burned where he had skinned it on the concrete and torn his pants. At least he had another pair at home. Of course, the jacket was filthy now and a mustard stain decorated a sleeve.
He cuffed Perry’s hands behind him, then stood, brushing alley crud off as best he could. Perry lay on the ground, blood leaking from cuts and scrapes, wheezing like a fish on the deck of a boat, whimpering, trembling.
“What were you chasin’ me for anyway?” Perry finally managed pitifully, as Mark hauled the scraped, bleeding, living carcass to its feet. “I wasn’t doin’—”
“You have,” Mark interrupted, “the right to remain silent,” and continued to Mirandize the Perv, who continued to insist he’d done nothing wrong.
Mark said, “Nothing wrong? You were in your bedroom getting ready to rub God only knows what onto Cleotis Redington.”
This in reference to a mentally challenged teenager Perry had violated on more than one occasion.
“That was strictly consexual.”
“Consensual, dipstick.”
“Consenting, consexual, whatever.”
“Perry,” Mark said with a sigh, “I already told you, you have the right to remain silent. Do us both a favor and do so.”
Perry shut up and this gave the prisoner a chance to take stock of his situation. “Hey, man,” he said. “I hurt. I’m really hurting.”
“Then you shouldn’t have run.”
And Perry started to cry, the way a little kid does who had skinned his knee. In this case, all over...
A heavyset guy in a cheap suit lumbered up next to Mark and stopped, hands on his knees as he sucked air. Detective Robert Pence.
“Good... good... good,” Pence panted. “You... you... caught... him.”
Six-three, near three hundred pounds, a few months from retirement, Pence had been assigned to keep an eye on the rookie detective. But to Mark, it sometimes felt the other way around.
Out of shape or not, pretty much over the hill maybe, Pence remained a good, smart cop.
“We got him all right, Bob.”
“The helpless twerps of Cleveland can rest tonight,” Pence said. “But it’s your bust, Marky Mark, not mine.”
“Your snitch’s tip led us here.”
“Yeah, caught the Perv in the act, and isn’t that one for the memory books? But kiddo, last thing I need in what’s left of my career is another bust. What are they gonna do, add another five bucks to my pension? Use this, sonny boy — take it to Captain Kelley. Get on his fuckin’ radar.”
Mark winced.
“I know you don’t like that kind of language, kiddo, but this’ll get his attention. And then we — you — will have his attention on that other little matter.”
“Think so?”
“I know so.”
“He shrugged it off last time.”
“That’s because you insisted I take the lead. To him, I’m yesterday’s news, and he’s not wrong. This will be your show. I’ll be long gone, kiddo. Do it. Convince him.”
An hour later, as the older detective booked Perry the Perv downstairs, Mark rapped on Captain Kelley’s pebbled-glass door.
“Come,” Kelley said.
Mark went in. He had not bothered to clean up, let alone change out of the filthy, torn suit. He stood there for a long moment while Kelley studied the screen of the laptop on his desk and continued typing.
Captain John Kelley — rail-thin, titanium-hard African-American with close-cropped salt-and-pepper hair, a pencil moustache, and a hawk nose where half-glasses currently perched — had a reputation for being consistently hard and occasionally fair.
After an eternity that was perhaps thirty seconds, the captain looked up. “Well, don’t you look like shit? Tell me the other guy looks worse.”
“Yes, sir, he does,” Mark said. “Bob’s booking him now.”
“Good. Very good.” He waved dismissively. “Go take a shower. You have spare clothes here?”
“I do.”
Kelley returned to his laptop, then glanced up with a frown. “Is there some reason you’re still here, Detective?”
“I knew taking this lowlife down was a priority for you, Captain, and I thought you’d like to know we got him cold.”
“I gathered that. Congratulations. Go take your shower.”
Mark risked a smile. “I thought I might have bought a little... goodwill.”
“You did, huh?”
“Maybe... five minutes worth?”
“Try three. As long you aren’t hoping to sell me that crackpot theory again.”
And now Mark took an even greater risk. He sat in the chair opposite his captain. “It’s not a theory, sir. There’s nothing crackpot about it.”
Kelley removed the glasses and pinched his nose. This meant the captain was getting a headache, and Mark knew his time here would be less than five minutes.
“You believe,” Kelley said with zero enthusiasm, “that a serial killer is operating in Cleveland.”
“I do, Captain.”
“You do understand, that despite what the movies and television might have you believe, there is not an epidemic of serial killing in this nation. That it is in fact rare. And that on the rare occasion it does turn up, it is not our business — it’s FBI turf. You do know all that?”
Mark nodded. “I would be happy if we could convince the FBI to take over.”
“To take over what? There is no investigation.”
“Sir, the killings in Strongsville follow the MO.”
“MO,” Kelley said, and closed his eyes. Whenever Mark used a term that was commonly heard on TV, the captain closed his eyes like that. Finally he opened them. “The FBI doesn’t feel there’s a serial killer at large here, which means there is no modus operandi. No ‘MO’ for a killer that doesn’t exist.”
“Sir — the Strongsville murders—”
“Are not our jurisdiction, FBI aside. The father in that slain family was an investment banker. You don’t think he destroyed enough families that somebody couldn’t have gotten a little payback?”