Copyright © 2005, by Charles L. Collins

"It’s hard to see life through glasses smudged with yesterday’s dirt.”

-M.K.C.

Prologue

Rachelle Brennan held the palm-sized star in both hands and remembered the day. The raised letters and shiny surface were smooth to her touch. She brought the leather clipped case to her face and breathed deeply; once her sensitive nose cancelled the hand worn cowhide, she smelled three different colognes and inexpensive wool. Shelly, as her uncle called her, had upwardly arched eyebrows and oval blue eyes that made her youthful face appear stuck in infinite doubt. The moment-past was as vivid in her memory as the cup of tea that steamed in front of her and the inherited Chicago Police sergeant’s star in her hands. It happened in one of the many small restaurants that she and her uncle would visit for no particular reason. It was difficult to remember if she ever told him how much she enjoyed the spontaneous meals – she never really said it in exact terms - when she would talk freely and openly to the only man she knew as father. The conversation came to life.

“So, you want in law enforcement, huh Shelly? You know, most of us are not the brightest bulbs on the marquee.” In her memory, Mick Molnar sipped his coffee, through his rust brown moustache.

“I know Mickey, but it looks like so much fun, and my professors say I have what it takes to go into pathology. So why not start in the forensics lab while I’m taking more classes? Mom can’t afford to send me full time anyway… and I can work with you.”

“You’ll be working with the DOA’s, the crime scenes and about million pieces of nothin’ that we call evidence. You won’t be working with me. You’ll tell me what your findings are and that’s the last we’ll see of each other until someone else turns up dead. And get that fun shit out of your head right now. I mean, it’s a great job, an interesting job, but fun it ain’t.” Rachel only half listened to her uncle. She remembered nearly always only half listening since she was a little girl. There was a time when everything Mick said was treated as gospel until she realized he was making up much of what he told her. For a time, she would not believe him if he told her Springfield was the capital of Illinois, she had to see for herself. Somewhere along the road to adulthood she struck a balance and learned to listen to him again.

“You ever think about how dangerous your job is, Mickey?”

“Can’t. Or you can’t do it.”

“Never?”

“Listen, sweetie, you and your mom are all the family I have.”

“And Sig! Don’t forget him.”

“Little shitbag crapped in the garage again this morning.”

“He wouldn’t if you’d drag your lazy butt up and walked him on time.”

“Yeah. But you’re right. He’s family, too. You guys matter to me more than anything. I know something happening to me would break your hearts and I don’t want that. I’m careful, I have good people around me and I keep my eyes opened. That’s all I can do.” Mick paused to stress what followed. “But I have to tell you, Shell, if it comes down to my life or the life of some kid whose only crime was being a kid, or being in the wrong place… I don’t know. I don’t know what I’d do. I guess none of us do. You just have to wait until it happens, then see what you’re made of.”

The memory faded and Rachelle Brennan sniffed and smiled. It was as though her uncle had put the conversation in her head to remind her that a day like that Friday morning, August 13th - a day a peace officer would perform his final duty – could happen anytime. She remembered what Stemp and Freddy, her uncle’s partners, said about the actions taken by Sergeant Molnar. He had only a split second. There was nothing anyone could do except be with the kids as they faced certain death. And if by some miracle the SUV did not clear the edge of the Turnpike bridge and tumble more than two hundred feet to the rock floor of the quarry, he was going to be there to help the two children inside. It could have been just an attempt to save one of the kids, to pull the seventeen year old from the driver seat, which is exactly what he did. But something told him to take her place in the seat and take the ride with her younger sister and brother, the thirteen year old and the little boy who might otherwise not see his sixth birthday.

No one knew for certain what Mick Molnar was thinking. But Rachel had a pretty good idea. She had seen her uncle make decisions based on facts not in evidence, as he liked to put it. There was something he trusted that made him do some of the things he did in a long and often contentious career. He called them angel’s notes and he told her once, when he had been drinking, that the notes came to him in a flash, without warning. He said they told him who was the bad guy and who was the victim. He relied on this inner voice to get him through some tough cases and he learned to trust it. Rachelle doubted he ever told anyone else about this display of faith, cornball and mild psychosis.

As for the morning of August 13th, she was pretty sure the actions were the product of his experience and talent as a policeman. He had no way of knowing that the SUV was secured, at least for a time, by the cable winched to Greg Flowers’ Jeep; that without that, it was the end for him and the children. Yet he knew there was a chance, a slim chance to save them. And he took that chance, saving the children, if not himself.

“You just have to wait until it happens, then see what you’re made of.” The thought came back to her. She knew what her uncle, the decorated detective-sergeant was made of, and it made her very proud.

Part One - Dead Heir
The Visit

Thursday, August 12th
1:10pm

Peter Janich’s only living relative was driving her last drive, on her last afternoon. The rental car was dusty and smelled of a thousand other drivers and their bad habits, but it was all she could get on short notice. Midway Airport was more convenient to her brother’s home in Hyatt, Indiana and she was anxious to see her nieces and nephew. She was still unclear what happened to her brother and knew the confrontation with his widow was not going to be pleasant. Monika Janich Shea and her brother’s wife never warmed to one another. She had not spoken to her sister-in-law, even though she tried to help with arrangements. Monika harbored a secret wish that she could do what she had to do while spending as little time as possible with Lani.

The drive to the Crawford Homes estates was still familiar. Monika had an uncanny, almost mystical sense of direction. Newer houses were springing up like weeds along the interstate and wide state routes. She was reminded of her own suburban town of Twinsburg, Ohio, where developments and streets seemed to grow overnight. Crawford Circle was quiet for a sunny summer afternoon. There were few children out playing and even fewer adults. The nondescript Chevy Lumina crept around the corner and into the hook shaped driveway of 850 Crawford Circle.

“Where did you park?” Lani was stretching sideways, her arm arched over her head and her feet far apart. There was no other acknowledgement of her sister in law’s entry.

“In the drive. Where are the kids, where’s Sue?” God I hate this woman.

“She’s out, the children are at the neighbors, while I get a workout in.” Lani bent at the waist and picked up the remote control. She turned up the TV. Three yoga performers on the screen counted and cajoled each move, louder and more demanding, from their viewer. “No one called you? The police have not released Peter’s body. I have nothing to tell you about arrangements.” Lani slowly, rhythmically sank to the floor, grabbing the arch of her foot with both hands, matching – move for move - the figures on the screen.

“You knew when I was coming in.” Anything to inconvenience me, “it doesn’t matter.” Why bother?” I’m getting some water, that okay?” Monika dropped her bag on the breakfast counter and went to the refrigerator.

“You know where everything is. Help yourself.” Lani laid her face on her knee and contorted in a nearly impossible fashion. The fridge door was filled with notices from the small community. Lani circled classes in the Learning for Life section of the Education committee’s newsletter. One was for Advanced Yoga, another, Writing for Performance and Success, and one on Homeopathic Remedies.

“I see you’re keeping busy…that’s good.” Monika smiled at the artwork from her young niece and nephew. With a heavy breath she saw that the only new additions were from Kyle; Britny’s last entry to the family gallery – discounting praise from teachers and report cards with straight A’s - was at least three years old. Kyle’s newest was a snapshot into the future of the family attending his sixth birthday party. Monika raised the drink to her lips and stopped, frozen in the child’s rendering of her brother, his father, as an angel floating above the proceedings.

“That’s amazing, isn’t it?” The plastic tumbler, true to its name, shook free from the visitor’s hand and fell to the floor with a thud and a splash.

“Jesus! Lani you scared the hell out of me! I thought you were over there pulling your body apart.” Monika tried to look away from her sister-in-law, but there was something in her eyes, something frightening.

“He did that last night. While we talked about life without his father and how, in many ways, dear, it will be better.” Lani held Monika’s gaze for twenty seconds.

Goddamnit! You killed him, you bitch! “What do you mean better? His father was brutally murdered! How can a child find that an improvement?” Monika pulled away, picked up the drinking glass and walked to the sink. “I don’t know what’s going on here. Lani, but you’re starting to scare me.”

“Am I? Because your precious brother is dead, leaving just you in that pathetic little family, the one I married into without knowing how spineless and cowardly you all are?” Lani sat at the kitchen table and pulled the yellow pad close to her.

“Did you hate him so much, so much that…” Monika stopped short of accusing her sister-in-law of the horrible crime. It was the smile on Lani’s face, as she wiped stray strands of red hair from her forehead. The smile stopped Monika from making the statement that would complete the insurmountable wall between her and what was left of her brother’s family. Monika moved to the kitchen table and sat on the seat-edge of the chair opposite Lani.

“You think I killed my husband, don’t you, my dear, sweet Monika?” Lani glanced up quickly from her writing without moving her head, without missing a stroke. “At the very least you think I had him harmed. Yes, you do think such things. That I would somehow arrange to have him pulled from our bed and his life callously ripped from his neck like some farm chicken, you think that, no?” Lani used her accent to lighten the deadly nature of her questions.

“What are you writing?” Monika tried to make out the upside down words from across the white stained oak tabletop.

“Your drink, I spilled it. Rude of me to be so sneaky. Here, let me make you some tea.” Lani slid the pad under her arm and went to the refrigerator. “It’s a special cold green tea, perfect for such a beautiful summer day.” She brought a fresh tumbler to her guest with a smile. “Forgive me for being so, out of sorts. It has been very upsetting, these last few days.” Monika took the drink with a twitch of a smile. She tipped the glass to her lips. “I hope you can forgive me.” Lani continued.

“This is very good. Unusual flavor.” Monika sniffed at the rim of the plastic tumbler. “What is it?”

“Oh, just some Earl Green, a little blueberry juice and club soda. You like it? I splash a touch of key lime juice in it as well, gives is a nice tangy flavor.” Lani stood back from her sister-in –law and surveyed her body. “You’ve taken good care of yourself, Monika. I can’t tell you how happy I am to see you and I are about the same size now.”

“You are the one, Lani, dropping all that weight, it must have been, what, over twenty pounds?”

Lani laughed from deep within her chest. “Try tripling that, but it is nice of you to say. The workouts help, too.” Lani walked to the sink. She looked at the Chevy parked in her driveway, then scanned the other yards to see if anyone else was around. The adjacent yards were empty, except for a few children busy with trampolines, swimming pools or other activities. “That’s a rental? You flew in, then?”

“Yes…you know I flew in, I sent you the itinerary…” Monika closed her eyes in an extended blink. What’s wrong with me?

“I don’t like to fly, makes me dizzy, and a little, ahh, lethargic.” She turned to Monika and leaned back on the edge of the sink. “Seems to have the same effect on you, my dear, sweet Monika.” Lani opened a drawer near the dishwasher. “And your hair! Again, I can’t tell you how happy I am that you let it grow out. And I see you found that henna rinse I suggested.” You make things so easy, my sweet girl.

“I don’t know what’s wrong.” Monika squeezed her eyes and tried to open them wide, along with her mouth, in an attempt to shake the effects.

“Oh, it’s perfectly normal, sweetheart. I believe the kids call it roofies. Isn’t that a cute name? Children can be so clever.” Lani moved to the kitchen table and placed a hand on Monika’s shoulder. “I wouldn’t try to get up, dear, you could harm yourself.”

“What have you done to me, why…” Monika’s head fell to the side, too heavy to hold upright. Drool formed in the corner of her mouth.

“Why?” Lani laughed “The better to kill me, my dear.” Lani held the yellow pad up to Monika’s drifting stare. She could barely make out the words: Sorry…all my fault…forgive me… “Actually, since I married a coward like your swine of a brother, I have lost much of my nerve as well.” Lani pulled Monika’s head back by the hair and looked into her rolling eyes. “So I could not possibly take my own life.” She placed a dry kiss on the reeling woman’s forehead. “I guess your miserable life will have to do.”

The meat thermometer came out of nowhere. At one end, the disk of the read-out was wedged in Lani’s palm and held tightly with whitened knuckles. At the other, the nine-inch probe protruded from her flattened fist and rammed up into the base of Monika’s skull, instantly paralyzing her. Her body went rigid, a shutter, then another, eight seconds later she was dead.

“Humm.” Lani pulled her hand away, removing the sharp thing from the back of Monika’s neck, and let her sister-in-law’s head drop back, limp, mouth open and eyes locked in unfocused fear. “Not much blood, just as they say.”

She started working quickly. The body had to be in her husband’s bedroom before completing the task. It was not easy, but she got the lifeless bundle up the stairs and onto the bed. Lani dressed Monika in one of her exercise warm-ups and selected one of Peter’s expensive shotguns – the perfect one for the task - from the cabinet. She went to the kitchen for the tool, the simple organic machine, the thermal device prepared just for this moment. Elegant. So elegant, much like the way your brother tried to hide the fortune from his family. She tested it some days before, there was still uncertainty, but there was no other way. The process was planned with care and craft.

Three minutes and forty seconds later, the house was locked. Monika’s bag, and any other sign that she was there, were safely stashed in the rental, and Lani slowed the Lumina at the stop sign that terminated – or began – Crawford Circle. She waited. The shotgun blast was like a muffled thud, as though someone had dropped a weight several rooms over. But this sound was several houses away. Lani Janich closed her eyes behind large sunglasses. The events of the last twenty minutes, and the small box beside her, all crowded into scattered emotions until one cancelled the other like one sound diffusing another. She was not happy, nor sad, she was numb as she pulled the rental onto the street and headed west toward Chicago.

There was one thing left, and it could go either way. For this uncertainty, two tears escaped the horn rims of the expensive eyewear and filled the creases around her mouth.

The Wildcat

Growing up in Cleveland, Peter Janich was something of a bad ass. It was neither his intention nor goal, it just happened.

Cleveland, Ohio in the 50’s and 60’s also imagined itself – collectively – as a bad ass; dirty and big, carbon tinged from Bessemer blasts, coke and steel and internal combustion from pre-catalytic converted car engines. The Janich home, like all homes near the city center, required daily dusting to keep the black-sparkle layers in check. There was no winning the battle, and nearly every window carried an overhead crest of thin soot that was only washed away by relentless snows and wind in the five-and-a-half month long winter. Cleveland was also a low grumble of disenchanted men and machines, punching clocks and breathing death – like coal miners and smokers, most knew the atmosphere was unhealthy, but saw little choice – of buses that were old before their first hundred miles and trolleys sparking and cursing along ill stretched cables that seamed the gray sky over most streets. In Cleveland, few thought of the sky’s the limit; those tattered cable car lines, metaphor for an aerial electrified fence, were the limit and you had best keep your goals at street level.

Peter Janich saw this mood, this reality of Cleveland in the faces of the men and the bent-burdened shoulders of the women, old before their time. He would not let his dreams be corralled by the colorless neighborhoods and bad baseball in summer. Peter focused on the glory of the brightly colored fall: Browns football and closer to his heart, Wildcat football.

The St. Clair Avenue neighborhood where Peter Janich grew up was bordered by a boulevard of large old homes and cultural gardens to the east, industries of all kinds to the west and the railroad and pollution laden lakeshore to north. It was sometimes called Little Slovenia because it was in the parish of St Vitas, the largest Slovenian church in the country.

Peter loved the close-knit atmosphere and friendly feeling he got from most of the families in his neighborhood. E. 78th Court was four blocks long, stretching from St. Clair to the backs of Hough Avenue warehouses. It was beyond those dirty brick walls that one of the city’s most desperately poor neighborhoods exploded in riots during the violence of the civil rights years.

Somehow Peter’s small street of neat little houses and duplexes was spared the large-scale destruction of the times. But the roving gangs of young men and boys, Black and White, all with their sub-sets and platoons, still brought a certain adventure to growing up.

The Janich family, like most in this yet oxidized industrial-belt city, remained oblivious to the often cruel joke of twentieth century trade jobs. His father worked at the White Motors for over 30 years, in a plant that nudged his neighborhood from the east. The elder Janich welded hoods onto two-foot hinges that were then bolted to powerful trucks. Six days a week, ten hours a day he would weld one straight line after another. The repetitive practice paid well enough, but was not without consequences. Peter would watch his father at the dinner table, his eyes nearly crossed and following an imaginary hot line from his wife’s face at the end of the table to the centerpiece and down to his plate. The motion was involuntary and would only happen when his parents were not engaged in conversation, joking or listening to their children. With each lull in the conversation, his father’s gazed focused on space, muscle and mental memory carefully guiding the arc of molten metal down one more finished piece; one more truck hood, and then waited for the next. And the next, until 35 years were burned away, one hood hinge at a time.

Peter was the youngest of four and the only boy. His sisters’ attitudes toward him ran from sheer contempt from the next in line to smothering mothering from his oldest sister. The closest friend he had among them was Monika, a sweet girl who went through her days trying to find ways to help people. Like her father’s white-line fever eye, it too was involuntary.

Monika was the one person who knew the younger Peter well. She knew he was scared and insecure, in spite of his talent and determination. When he fell – and he was always teetering - she was there to catch him.

There was only one thing Peter Janich wanted from the time he was a small boy: to attend St. Ignatius High School, and if he were really lucky, play football on the famed championship team.

He went to public elementary and junior high school, but attended PSR classes, public school religion training offered by the diocese. Knowing that his father could scarcely afford the several hundreds of dollars it would cost to send him to the Jesuit school, he worked hard to maintain all A’s. Money was always an issue in the Janich home, so working for the children was a natural as eating. Peter could be found afternoons at the Slovenian bookstore near his home when he was barely nine years old, or joining the other tiny workers on bikes or simply running, canvas bags slung over shoulders, making deliveries to the many housebound in the area. Every coin was so precious he named them all and vowed allegiance and guardianship. When it came time for the entrance exam and interview for the few coveted openings in the incoming freshman class, Peter had accumulated enough for his first two years! Scholarships covered the rest. It took an entire evening to explain to the family of adopted currency that it was time to go into the world, and thanking them for helping make a dream come true - the first of many - for the focused and talented young man.

At Ignatius, there are no red shirts. Freshmen were allowed to practice with the varsity and only the phenomenon was considered for the team. The men who molded the Citizen Athlete were serious about their commitment to the students and the community. Many colleges modeled their coaching styles and discipline after the Jesuit approach. You were not a Wildcat player unless you maintained at least a 3.0 average in some of the toughest high school curriculum in the country. You were not a Wildcat player if you had any discernable social problems and if you didn’t follow long-standing guidelines of community service. You were not a Wildcat player unless you showed respect for your instructors, your fellow students, your community and yourself. Peter knew all of the requirements and in his mind, he was already a Wildcat!

By the time he was in ninth grade he was just a few inches shy of six feet tall. He had hardened his body with makeshift weights made from jugs of water and sacks of rocks. Peter felt there was no problem that hard work and determination could not overcome. This challenge – making the team - should not have been a problem.

The first day of tryouts for the junior varsity football team was in late July. Peter was about to turn 13. He towered over some of the other boys on the field in their pads and helmets, but there were some kids his age who were actually bigger. The coach, a Jesuit priest and assistant for the varsity team, had the boys line up to begin the series of drills. It was difficult to move in the bulky equipment. It was more difficult for Peter to ignore the men in short pants with clipboards and stop watches. For the first time, he was under a microscope and he did not like it.

The trials were simple and Peter could make the team easily. His sister Monika was in the stands for every session. She was the only one from the Janich family who came to see her brother begin such an important process. When the physically grueling exercises were over, while the other boys nearly collapsed in place, he ran over to his sister. Peter kept his white helmet on and she could see, through the facemask, the look of sheer terror on her brother’s face. It was a look that she had seen before. She asked her brother if he was okay. He could not speak and he could barely breathe. Monika Janich quietly talked her brother through his panic, not wanting this minor flaw in an otherwise rock hard constitution to harm the once in a lifetime opportunity.

That was the first time paralyzing fear seemed to rise from nowhere and stop the young man from succeeding. There was no cure, he would later learn, and the only remedy was his sister’s voice, telling him that he was talented and worthy of his dreams, that he could do something important; that one day he would have the House on the Hill. Monika stroked his arm and reinforced the promise again for her baby brother. Peter calmed himself after two and a half minutes. The junior varsity coach walked over to the teenagers and congratulated young Peter. He was the only freshman to make the team! Neither knew it at the time, but he was the only freshman to play varsity in a twenty-five year span. And to the day he died, held that distinction with only three others.

Janich went on to become a star receiver, a Wildcats star receiver! Monika Janich never missed a game.

Ignatius was an all-boys school, but the Citizen Athletes had little trouble attracting girls. Peter was especially fond of a young lady who would come to his games and seemed to always be at his bus stop after school. By his sophomore year he had grown to his full six-foot height and between workouts for the football team and his own regiment, Peter was a very impressive presence. The girl was not shy at all and liked the fact that Peter was so serious and focused. They had struck up a friendship which grew into something more.

Peter thought of himself as a good catholic, but he was also a growing young man. His girlfriend had her own views on life and believed in the budding ‘Women’s Liberation’ movement. She was as free with her ideas as she was with sex and Peter happily accepted both. Between being the football star and among the top students in his class, he still did not escape the social upheaval the world was experiencing. He attended lectures on the inequities of American society; he read Eldridge Clever, Jack Kerouac and Marshall McLuhan, and listened to the blues of Robert Johnson and the jazz of Coltrane and Miles, all at the urging of his wildly exciting girlfriend. It wasn’t long before Peter began to doubt nearly everything he once thought was true. He started letting his hair grow to the outer limits of the rules. He started doing everything on the edge and he liked it.

They had sex three to five times a day except during football season when he would limit their contact. It was during her hiatus from him that she began experimenting with drugs. She knew Peter would not approve and tried to hide the needle marks and erratic behavior.

Then, there was the big game.

High school football was a religion for many all over the region, but few places held the passion like the northern tier of Ohio. The game was created, according to folklore, in this otherwise ignored section of the lower Great Lakes. There were communities that took the game so seriously that every newborn baby boy was greeted with an infant sized football courtesy of the local boosters. The Professional Football Hall of Fame was less than an hour’s drive from Peter’s home, and in his youth the Cleveland Browns were perennial winners.

That year, his last before heading to college, Peter and the rest of the Wildcats were one game away from winning their third state championship in five years. Preparation for this game was a religious experience. St. Ignatius hosted downstate rivals Canton McKinley, nicknamed The Bulldogs, at Lakewood Stadium. It was the single most important game in Peter Janich’s young life. He had already secured the scholarships he needed, but his performance in this game would take the team and their star receiver to new heights. The atmosphere surrounding the event was like nothing Peter had ever witnessed. Some of the players were actually signing autographs for underclassmen and Alumni. He received a pass on midterm exams from all but one of his classes. Even the exam he did take, in advanced economics, consisted of only one question: “Name an essential requirement in maintaining an expanding economy?” There were several ways he could have answered; discussions about lower taxes and a less restrictive regulatory environment, the distribution of goods and services for profit, or supply and demand controlling the market price. But he knew the instructor, and he knew the question was even more basic. His answer was a two-word essay:

Beat McKinley!

Peter received a 4.5 in that class. Not just because of the brilliance of his response to the question, but because he actually did know economics better than anyone in the school, including the instructor.

There were plenty of reasons to feel good about life. So much so he thought he could break his rule and see his girl one time before suiting up for the Saturday afternoon showdown. They decided to meet at the home of a friend. There was to be no sex and certainly no drinking or anything else that was out of bounds while he was in training. She had other ideas. Peter’s girlfriend never believed in the old sports edict about sex and performance on the field. Big game or not, this morning was going to be a morning he would never forget.

The young woman and some of her more adventurous friends secretly developed a fondness for LSD. Circular logic was seeping into their everyday conversation, but Peter found it oddly endearing; the companion enhanced sexual intensity was addicting for both of them. It was her plan to share that fantasy with her football-star boyfriend even though she knew he would never approve.

Peter arrived at the Ohio City home about 7 in the morning. There had been an all night party at the small house and the remnants were everywhere. Ohio City was the neighborhood of Cleveland’s near west side in which the St. Ignatius campus, including school, church and priests’ residence was the centerpiece. Many of the houses were more than one hundred years old. Some had begun the process of gentrification or updating to accommodate the growing demand for interesting housing, others were still in a state of disrepair commensurate with their years. The house where Peter was to spend the morning was more fitting the latter description.

Music was still playing this early hour, though the volume was low. Most of the bodies scattered around the front rooms, young men and women - some not so young - were nude or near nude and in various states of consciousness. Peter’s instinct was to turn and head back out the way he came, until he spotted her. She was sitting at the kitchen table with jeans, a long winding scarf on her head and around her neck and no top. She had amazing breasts, Peter thought, and he didn’t even mind the fact that she was displaying them in front of so many strangers. He walked into the kitchen. The house was warm and smelled of cinnamon, marijuana and several other things he had no hope of identifying. She rose from her chair, slithering up the air like an incredibly sensuous cobra. She held out her arms to him. They embraced and she kissed him like he had never been kissed. Her tongue was halfway down his throat and he thought he felt something else, a piece of food perhaps or a small piece of paper. He wasn’t sure, but the kiss lasted so long he had no choice but to swallow whatever she had deposited.

She pulled him along the kitchen to a small room off the back porch. It was still cool though the October days had remained warm that year. She removed his Wildcats varsity jacket, with all the letters and pins of merit. She slipped out of her jeans and put on the jacket. Peter noticed pretty quickly that she was not wearing underwear. The sight of her perfect body dressed only in his trophy apparel did something to the young athlete and he could not resist. His jeans came off and she cupped him beneath his nearly immediate erection. With delicate fingers she explored every millimeter, moving closer and silently mouthing her intentions. A long, smooth thigh found its way into his hand and they were as close as possible. But her fingers were not finished, using him to explore her own wet pleasure, she reached orgasm – he knew the signs – before he entered her.

After that, it was no longer just sex.

He could barely hear the rhythmic claps of Marvin Gaye’s Can I get a Witness playing in the room beyond the kitchen; claps that slapped with their endless percussive motion. Then The Tornadoes Telstar, circling sounds choreographing something they were doing that Peter could not begin to comprehend. Some other songs came and went with them, songs he did not recognize, and sensations equally alien, pulling him farther and father into the soft smothering of ecstasy. He was rocking in her arms, deep inside her. Then she was looking down at him, eyes closed and tongue licking lips.

Then it all went away. Everything, sight, sound, mind, time, all dissolved in slow fade and blended in a salmon-colored plane.

In front of his eyes, as nearly as he could comprehend, a flat world arrived (though its arrival was as infinite as the real world’s departure) consisting only of two colors, both pulsing and flowing with a single velvet line measuring the center. There was no baseline for understanding when or where this view might have existence. Time as a concept was unnecessary, place was simply here. So he supposed - when awareness returned enough to regard, even require a when – this was now. Thoughts had meaning enough, and the writings of Dr. Richard Allan, (she called him Baba), bullshit as he recalled thinking when his girl showed them to him, coaxed him to be here now. But that did not assuage his growing fear. What Peter Janich was seeing, what he was feeling, in that nondescript moment, was like nothing he had ever experienced; not even in dreams.

Words would not escape his throat, though he tried. He could feel his body and experienced what he could only describe as pure pleasure. Waiting in the void for what seemed like eternity, Peter knew it was only a matter of time – and time was something he swore he cold hold in his hand – before some sign of form, but he only saw the light of the two colors and the hint of some crushed reality dividing the two. Then they began to change, to give way to a near white horizon, a bright moment when form began to rise in his view. First in small mounds, barely perceptible and fluid in shape, then another and another, coming out of what he could tell was becoming green.

The sound followed. The song was not The Beatles or The Beach Boys, though he was certain he had heard them before in this place. The shapes began to move and convulse. Another form drew his attention, coming in electric sparks from the color above. The color was blue and the form was spinning; spinning and growing. The noise framed the speeding object like fast-moving clouds of agitation, providing a discordant overture for rising bumps on the horizon. Taking shape quickly – time was now apparent and growing in influence – the bumps became shapes, lined in the whitest light he had ever seen and moving! As void of activity as his dream-view was when all this began, now everything moved; the menacingly shapes moving toward him, and the spinning object, more elegant than ominous, coming in from above. The earthbound figures became sublunary animals; bulldogs running and growling toward him. There were other animals, crazed cats - wildcats trying to attack the dogs as they ran. A voice cut through the noise, a voice he knew. It was his sister, Monika, he was sure of it even though he could barely make out what she was saying. Then (the only way he would describe it later, and embarrassingly so, was being poured into the energy that was Peter), he became aware of his body. It was heavy at first, and wet, but that was an improvement over the hitherto physical nonexistence.

At this point panic found no place to take hold. But the curiosity of this new reality, one which Peter instantly recognized and in which he as right at home, gave way to muscle memory. There was no time to think, to contemplate the meaning of life. It occurred to him that such a luxury was never affordable in his over-driven personality. The only ground, the complete circuit that protected him from insanity was somehow attached to that voice. It was his sister’s face.

The din, both audible and mental, surrounded her, putting her face - her clear, bright eyes, the kind that remained sad even when the rest of the ensemble formed a smile - in the center of a fishbowl. Everything else was symbolic and blurred, only Monika was clear and centered. As though blown by a swirling wind, the other faces around her came into focus. But they were mostly mouths, gaping open mouths that took up most, if not all of the heads. The noise became louder and his attention was drawn again to the changing forms. The impression of his sister and the recognition of the screaming football fans were implanted in less than a blink of an eye. It was the forms, the humans that commanded his attention. They were running, slowly but purposefully, toward him. The spinning object was huge and nearly at his head. He could feel his arms, they weighed a ton each, but somehow he summoned the strength to move them. Another blink and Monika’s instructions came clear. No fear, no fear. He obeyed and reached up, his arms much lighter now, placing his hands in front of the spinner. The scene was now between his thumbs and index fingers of both hands, which were nearly touching and lined up the object between them. The noise nearly consumed him, but he knew that he was about to literally become the consumed, under a pile of humanity where he had been many times before, but never like this! The forms, the opposing players in pursuit of the pass play, were fully realized and they were coming for him. One especially ferocious player, snarling teeth and white eyes supported inside the white and orange helmet by a sea of sweat-sparked black, was nearly on top of him, mowing down blockers and moving faster that Peter thought possible.

But the spinner was closer.

In an instant, the speed of things went to full motion and the spinner - the football passed to him from thirty-five yards away - landed softly into his hands, the point wedging snugly in the webbing between his conjoined thumbs and index fingers. He pulled the prize to him the way he remembered pulling his girl to him at a shared moment of climax. Then the forms collided all around, and he was in a loud darkness. He could smell all manner of sweat and stink, fiberglass, mud and grass. He was beneath the pile, hugging the ball, but it was the sound he remembered most, the deafening collision of plastic, swearing and grunting bodies.

And then there was the cheering, forced up from an instant of collective breath-holding and exalted with megaton elation.

Peter Janich caught the winning touchdown on that Saturday afternoon in October. The Wildcats of St Ignatius won the title and dispatched the Bulldogs of Canton back down I-77.

Peter never told anyone what actually happened that day, no one but Howard Murad and only after he was well into his fifties. His girlfriend at the time knew of the experiment, and she disappeared shortly after graduation day. Peter went on to college at the University of Notre Dame and played in greater games for greater glory. He never knew what happened that girl who surreptitiously slipped him a massive dose of LSD the morning before the Ohio Division One High School Championship game. She certainly was instrumental in giving Peter Janich a day he would never forget. He had only one regret, one thing that he took to his death that August morning – two days before his sister, Monika, met a similar fate - 36 years later: that he totally missed the biggest game of his high school football career.

The Shiva

“I don’t want to hear it, Stemp.” Chicago Detective Freddy Blakely was in a foul mood. It was a perpetual state since the early hours of this Friday, when his partner lost his life in heroic fashion. “The sarge did what he thought was right, and fuck if it wasn’t the most righteous thing any man could do.”

”It should have been me, Freddy” Detective Jerzy Stempowski was uncharacteristically jumpy. His dark blue eyes were ringed in red and he was in need of a shave. “I’m lighter by a good sixty pounds, that could have bought us another few seconds and that’s all that was needed, another few seconds.” He looked everywhere in the squad room except in the face of his partner.

Freddy slammed the pen the desktop. He too was in need of a shave. The whites of his eyes were the color of weak tea, and his bald, brown head was specked with tiny gray shoots. “Let me ask you something, did you have any idea that Mick was going to jump in that truck? Did you think there was any chance that it was anything but curtains for those kids? Did you fucking think for one minute that anything, ANYTHING could have been done to save those kids?” Stemp took three dragged out breaths; his face slummed into a near sob. But he did not release a tear, just intense sadness.

“No.” Stemp responded softly. “They were dead as sure as we’re sitting here wasting time.”

“But something told Mick that there was a chance. And damn if he didn’t die playing and beating the odds. The prize is three kids that just…” Freddy threw his arm out and back and looked at his watch. “Ten hours ago were dead and buried. They were going to ride that Lexus to the bottom of that pit and that’s all she wrote. Instead, there’s a little boy who’s gonna celebrate his sixth birthday this weekend and a couple of teenaged girls who can still drive their folk nuts, like teenage girls are supposed to do.” Freddy craned his neck with a twitch, realizing what he was saying. The girls had no folks, in the traditional sense. Their father was dead, that was certain, and their mother was a suspect in a number of crimes, not the least of which was the murder of her sister-in-law.

Stemp straightened and took a breath that seemed to go down to his toes. “We’ve seen survivors’ remorse, Freddy. We think it’s silly, sometimes a pretense to cover up involvement. Either way it’s irrational…an attempt to change the possibilities of the event; to blame yourself for simply being the lucky one.” Their eyes locked. “What I’m saying is that I was just as close to that SUV as Mick was, and I could have just as easily jumped into that vehicle before it toppled over that bridge.”

Freddy released his gaze and stared at the small stack of forms on his workspace. He was suddenly feeling exhausted. “But you didn’t, and a fine peace officer did.” Freddy looked up with a sly smile. “You’re just trying tikkun olam.”

Jerzy Stempowski’s head snapped back slightly, surprised by his partner’s reference to the ancient Kabbalah and the notion that one person can, must take steps to improve the world. It was a recent favorite topic of the terminally curious Stemp.

“You just think I’m not listening.” Freddy managed a weak grin. The two men puffed small laughs, partly in honor of their fallen friend, partly to share the joke of Freddy turning the tables on his Jeopardy-smart partner.

“It was Miklos Molnar who was trying to heal the world, Fredrico. And in his own small way, he left it a little less wounded.”

As though prompted, both men looked up at the darkened office of Captain Stacy Crenshaw; perhaps it was the mention of the wounded, perhaps it was a reflex from a conversation that veered from the duties of the moment, knowing the suspended boss could - were she not relieved of duty and getting treated for the injuries she sustained in the battle - sense the slacking.

It did not matter. There was no boss at the moment. The captain was under suspension, and her whip, the next in line in the detective division, Sergeant Molnar, was dead. The two first grade ranked detectives were on their own until the command structure was reinstated. There were three uniformed command grade officers at the Southside division, one in the gang control division, one in SWAT and one in traffic control. And there was the UC/Narcotics-Vice commander, a small man with laser beam eyes and several high honors in martial arts, who ran the Motley Crew of undercover cops as though they were Ranger Recon tunnel rats. None of them was qualified to run the A-4 detective division, so in the first day of Crenshaw’s suspension, the division ran itself.

The rest of the men and women in the pool of investigators were relatively quiet. There was the undercurrent of mumbled conversations, the shuffling of papers and the click of computer keyboards. Occasionally the men of Sergeant Molnar’s team would catch the eye of one of the other investigators and nod in understanding; they were all feeling the loss, even those who hated the big cop.

“What are we going to do about that sonabitch Kradich?” Freddy picked up the witness report from the man who claimed he saw Crash Kradich with the DOA, Gene Minues the afternoon he died. Freddy pegged the witness as security for the drug dealers that operated in the 75th block of South Calumet. The pit bull terrier wearing an eye patch was a dead give away, in Detective Blakely’s estimation.

“We lean on him until he breaks, that’s what we do to him. I don’t care if he does have the queen of the legal profession backing him up. We’re going to get him Freddy.” Stemp pejorative reference was directed at the flamboyant attorney who represented radio personality Bill “Crash Kradich, and his sister Lani Janich.

“Gibbons will have him on a short leash, and with the wit and his abused dog sprouting wings, it won’t be easy to make a case.”

“We have the print in his truck, that should be enough to get a search warrant.” Stemp said.

Freddy smiled, it was the first bit of good news he had heard all day, really good news. “That’s right! Didn’t have time to follow up on that.” He looked at his watch again. 11:08. “Listen. I’m going home to get cleaned up. Loretta and the girls are worried enough with the news and all. Phone call just doesn’t cut it when a cop gets killed.”

“Especially when it’s your partner.” There was silence in the squad room for ten seconds. It was as though every person in the room heard Stemp’s comment and reacted accordingly. “I’ll get the paper and head down to see how Stacy and Greg are doing.”

“Meet you at the Crash pad.” Freddy stood and lifted his size fifty regular suit jacket over his round shoulders. He noticed Stemp’s deadpan expression. “What?”

“Crash pad, that’s good.” Stemp looked over his glasses. Freddy did not intend the weak pun.

“Fuck you, Stempowski. I’ll see you around.” There was not much bluster in the expletive. Still, somehow, Stemp welcomed it.

The Ghost

KCI Studios, Chicago 12:38pm

“You got the Wolf! Bayan Wolf Larsen sitting in for Crash Kradich! We’re howling with you tonight for the big show, and I want to know what you know! The lines are open. What about the crime on the South Side? We know what happened this week with a KCI family member…are the cops doing all they can? Is the oft’ touted CAPS program making a difference? We want to know…let’s go to line seven, Andy, you’re running with the wolf pack.”

“Hey, Bayan, love the show, Listen, I think the cops are all crooked and the only thing worse than trying to survive on the South Side is listening to your tired crap on the radio.” Creepy Andy smiled at Dani Drabek, who was only mildly amused.

“Hey, Andy, harsh, dude. Go easy on the Alpha male, or you’ll get your throat ripped out, pal.”

“And that’s another thing, that wolf shit died with Robert Weston Smith, the original Wolfman.” Andy held the phone away from his face and nearly sprayed a guffaw through his nose.

“C’mon, Dani, do I have to put up with this abuse?” Larsen glared at the woman behind the glass. She sat with her legs crosses and a bare foot kicking absently beneath the belled bottoms of her black pants. Her body language was clear to anyone who cared to notice: slumped at the shoulders, heel of her hand wedged into her jaw and supported by an elbow on her knee. Bored to near unconscious.

“Listen, Bayan, have you ever actually listened to Crash’s show?” Dani leaned on the talkback switch, barely moving from the position only a petite woman could find comfortable. “You think this is abuse, you won’t last through the A-block.” Dani lifted the button, cutting off communications with the air studio, and dropped her bottom lip in exasperation. “Where did Harris get this dud? He’s fucking hopeless!”

“I don’t know, I think it’ll be fun for a couple of days.” Andy replaced the receiver he had used to simulate a caller. “We can open the flood gates and see how he handles the dinks.”

“Oh, that’s good, Creepy. And how do we explain this to Crash and Harris when the show goes through the roof on the suck-o-meter while the numbers are in the toilet.” Dani threw her pen to the consol and leaned back in the chair. She turned up the monitor to hear Larsen rehearsing his rap.

“The Bush’s daughters, now there’s a pair,” he mumbled. “How’d you like to have a little bush sandwich with those two, all it takes is a nice, spleef and a little raspberry Absolut, if you get my drift…” Larsen raised his lips to the mic and began again with full voice. “all it takes is a fat spleef o’ Vancouver mover…” The fat man with the thick headphones and an embarrassingly thin polo shirt scratched out something on a card in front of him, scribbled in something else and started all over again. “The Bush twins, now there’s an aptly named pair…”

“I can’t take anymore of this.” Dani stood quickly, swirling the air with her unique scent of bergamot and bubblegum. “This is the seventh washout today. You try to work with him if you want, but pull up a clean Best Of just in case. I’m going to talk to Harris and see if we can’t do better than the cast away from The Ghost in there.” She waved a hand of dismissal toward the air studio and headed for the door.

“The what?” Andy’s face twisted in confusion.

“Wolf Larsen. The Sea Wolf, get it?” Dani matched the half lidded, mouth-gapped expression of her co-worker. “Never mind. I’ll be back.”

Harris Richard’s office was on one of the corners of the KCI complex. The three-station studios were just a third of the space that occupied an entire floor of the elegant glass and stainless steel building on the short-block edged by North Franklin, Wacker and Washington streets. Sales, marketing and administrative staff consumed the rest of the media center.

Dani walked through the honeycombs of half walled modules, picking up pieces of conversation along the way. There was a flurry of phone action; sales people trying their best to stop the hemorrhage of clients running – not walking – from the tainted advertising outlet. The fact that the KCI program director, Jerome Bennett a.k.a. Jeremiah Brankovitch, had apparently gone mad and killed at least one person, if not more, was an objection even the most experienced account rep could not easily counter.

“I don’t expect you to understand fully, and I am sorry for what has to happen to the children, but there is no other way.” Dani stopped on her heels and nearly lost her balance. Her breath caught in her chest and would not release.

“Jerome!” The name spewed from her cheeks in an airy blast when she was finally able to exhale. It was Bennett’s voice, deep and confident, coming from behind the half opened door. Dani moved slowly; if one were watching, keeping her in focus would send everyone else racing around her into a foggy blur. She held out a hand and opened the door to the general manager’s office. Smoke drifted from the blue leather judge’s chair, its back to the door. The sound, the voice, was coming from the floor speakers in each corner of the room and the center speaker on the wall, eye level and to her left.

“The man known as Peter Janich was the lowest creature on earth, he delighted in the pain and suffering of others.” Harris Richa