The Smiley Face Killer Read online

  The Smiley Face Killer

  Leroy Clark

  Copyright © 2016 Leroy Clark

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN: 153713373X

  ISBN 13: 9781537133737

  Author

  Leroy Clark earned a BA from the University of Maine, an MFA from the University of Oklahoma, and a Ph.D. from Kent State. He spent most of his career as a University Theatre Professor at several universities from Anchorage, Alaska, to Wichita, Kansas, to Miami, Florida. He has written over 30 plays and had 25 productions of about a dozen of the plays in professional, community, and university theatres. He has also directed over 110 shows. After retiring, he has continued to write and direct plays. He is the author of self-help books Writing for the Stage and Practical Playwriting, the play Shakespeare’s Journey, and the romance novel The Maine Painter, all available at Amazon.com. He currently lives in a beautifully restored, three-story, 100-year-old house in Wichita, KS with his partner and their mostly black cat Moca. Awards include a Shubert Playwriting Fellowship, the Great Alaska Playrush, the Jack Morrison Fellowship funded by the Kennedy Center, the Tennessee Williams/New Orleans Literary Award, the Salt and Pepper Mime Company National Award, and the Kansas Arts Commission’s Playwriting Fellowship.

  Contents

  Chapter 1 Drive-by Shooting

  Chapter 2 Murder on Stage

  Chapter 3 Question Everyone

  Chapter 4 Life At Home

  Chapter 5 Sodomy

  Chapter 6 The Parents – Hellfire and Damnation

  Chapter 7 Did You Have Sex with Steven?

  Chapter 8 On the Home Front: Prostate Cancer and God Hates Fags

  Chapter 9 Complaints about the Theatre Program

  Chapter 10 Steven’s Roommates

  Chapter 11 A Profile of the Killer

  Chapter 12 Slate Sees a Shrink

  Chapter 13 Visit to a Gay Nightclub

  Chapter 14 Protests and Violence at the Funeral

  Chapter 15 Searching for Robin Lightfoot

  Chapter 16 Interview Suspect Joe Moss

  Chapter 17 Fear on the Home Front

  Chapter 18 Threats and Lightfoot

  Chapter 19 Tiffany, Remy and Jerry’s Wife

  Chapter 20 Was it Lightfoot in Kechi?

  Chapter 21 Meeting with Tara Ferguson

  Chapter 22 Angels in America

  Chapter 23 Slate Admits He’s Gay

  Chapter 24 A Visit to the Reservation

  Chapter 25 Woody Lightfoot and Jerry’s Wife

  Chapter 26 Slate Helps George

  Chapter 27 A Family Outing

  Chapter 28 The Smiley Face Killer Strikes Again

  Chapter 29 The Growing Questions and Desperation

  Chapter 30 Don’t Get Shit-faced

  Chapter 31 Jason James and a Break-through

  Chapter 32 A New Suit

  Chapter 33 Another Funeral

  Chapter 34 They Think They Know Who the Killer Is

  Chapter 35 The Aftermath

  CHAPTER 1

  DRIVE-BY SHOOTING

  It was Monday in the merry month of May, and it was as hot as hell in Wichita, Kansas. Even in the air-conditioned office, Detective Richard Slater—called Slate by his friends —was sweating. His partner Jerry Blake, sitting at the desk next to him, was drenched as well, mopping his brow with a handkerchief. It was a record 101 degrees.

  Meanwhile, not too far away three members of a gang drove their beat up, two-tone green Trans Am to a white cracker box house with blue trim on Grove Street and fired fourteen shots at the house from three guns. A neighbor dialed 911. Slate and Jerry were immediately assigned to the case.

  They jumped into their unmarked rattletrap that once had been a gray Chevy. Jerry drove at his usual break neck speed for the twenty odd blocks to the house with Slate hanging on for dear life.

  As Slate watched the trees, lawns, houses and cars flash by in a jumble, he held his breath. But when a car pulled out of a side street ahead and Jerry didn’t hit the brake at all, but went around it, barely avoiding a head on collision with an oncoming car, he yelled, “Watch out! Holy shit! One of these days you’re gonna kill us both.”

  Jerry grinned, his middle-aged eyes crinkling with delight. “I thought you wanted to live hard and die young!”

  “No, I wanna live long and die old.”

  Jerry punctuated his replies by stepping on the gas, slamming on the brakes, and squealing around corners. “Didn’t we agree that I was the driver?”

  “That was before I found out you were crazy.” Slate yelled, his face tight in a grimace. He was hanging on for dear life and grinding his teeth.

  “But you agreed? Right? Isn’t that right?

  “Yessss!” Slate screamed.

  “Jerry growled. “Then stop bitching.”

  “I’m not bitching. I’m just reacting like any normal guy. I like living the way I am,” Slate retorted. “Besides, all this stress isn’t good for my triglycerides.”

  “What the hell are triglycerides?”

  “It’s some kind of plaque that clogs up your arteries.”

  “I thought that was cholesterol.”

  “It’s both. Cholesterol is caused by fats. Triglycerides are caused by all the starches and sugar. My triglycerides were over 300 last time I had ‘em checked.”

  “It’s all bullshit.” Jerry went around a corner, just missing another on-coming car that was in the middle of the street. He had to swerve to the right and then quickly to the left to miss a parked car.”

  Slate screamed involuntarily a string of obscenities.

  “You wanna get out and walk?” Jerry threatened, slamming on the brakes.

  “Jesus, no!”

  “All right then. Shut up.”

  It was typical banter for the two of them. Slate loved giving Jerry a hard time, and Jerry had no trouble giving it right back. It was their way of dealing with the human misery they encountered on the job. When they arrived at the house, a patrolman filled them in on the situation while several neighbors stood nearby on the sidewalk sobbing. “Drive by shooting, victim Grace Mundy, called in by Mrs. Johnson.” The patrolman pointed to the woman in the flowered dress. “That’s her.” Inside the front door they found an elderly woman lying dead in her living room, shot in the left side of her head, a pool of blood slowly spreading out from the wound in her gray hair. Back outside, Jerry called in the report while Slate started asking questions.

  “I saw the whole thing,” said the woman in a flowered housedress. “They was three of ‘um in one of them Trans Am’s. Sort of emerald green. My grandson’s got one just like it, ‘cept it’s dark blue.”

  A man with white hair stepped forward. “I was setting on my porch right over there. I got the first three letters of the license plate. HVL.”

  “That’s good, Harvey,” said Mrs. Johnson. “Damn hoodlums. They weren’t nothing but kids—teendagers, you know.” The woman’s eyes filled with tears again. “And to do that to poor Grace.”

  “Grace was a sweetheart,” the man named Harvey said. “Sweetest woman you could ever know.”

  “Kids black?”

  “Yes, sir, I’m sorry to say,” the woman answered.

  “It’s them gangs,” Harvey stated emphatically. “They’s all in them gangs.”

  “You get that, Jer?” Slate asked.

  “Got it.” Jerry said, adding the description of the car, its occupants, and the HVL to the call.

  Slate jotted down the names and addresses of the witnesses and took notes of their statements. As he went through the routine, he became aware that all these people knew each other. They knew the histories of their neighbors, went to church with them, ate with them. Slate thought of his own neighbors, r
eminded that he didn’t really know any of them. Twenty minutes after the crime team arrived, a patrolman radioed in that they had sighted the emerald green Trans Am at a QuikTrip on nearby Hydraulic Street.

  The teenage shooters—fourteen, fifteen, and seventeen—eating junk food and drinking pop, laughing and joking in front of the shop when three patrol cars pulled into the parking lot, blocking their escape. Jerry and Slate were running to their car even as the call was coming in on their radio.

  The three teenagers were in hand cuffs, bending forward and leaning on the Trans Am by the time Jerry screeched to a stop, narrowly missing one of the patrol cars.

  “Why don’t you learn how to drive?” growled the larger one of the uniformed cops.

  Jerry immediately moved into the guy’s face. “I learned to drive while you were in diapers.” Slate, shook his head.

  “Let’s not get into a pissing contest.” He hurried to the group around the Trans Am.

  “Whose car is this?” Slate demanded as he sized up the scene.

  “None of your fucking bizniz,” one of the youths muttered under his breath. Slate watched the others grin, taking their cues from him. He was obviously the leader.

  “Oh, is that so?” Slate growled. “What’s your name?”

  “Denzel Washington.” He grinned, glancing at his buddies, who took that as their cue.

  “Yeah, he’s Denzel. You don’t wanna mess with ’im. He’ll sue your ass.”

  Slate turned to one of the uniformed officers and pointed to his baton, “May I use your attitude adjuster?”

  The patrolman laughed and handed him his night stick, “Be my guest.” “

  Now I’m gonna start with these,” Slate said, moving to the rear of the car and tapping the baton lightly on the red glass. “We’ll have to bust you for driving with no tail lights.”

  “No, come on, man, Jesus,” the same kid whined.

  “Then the windshield.” Slate moved toward the front of the car and tapped the glass. “I guess a rock must’ve flew up and just shattered the hell out of it, don’t you think?”

  “No, don’t.”

  “Why the hell not? Not your car, is it? Maybe I should start with the headlights. Officers, would you all turn your back just for a minute?”

  “Shit,” the boy muttered.

  “Did you hear that? I think he said this car’s a piece of shit,”

  “All right, man, don’t do it, okay? It’s my car,” the kid spluttered.

  “Give me his keys.” Slate said to the patrolman as he handed back the baton. The officer dug into the boy’s right pants pocket, pulled out the keys and tossed them. Slate caught them, found the right one, and opened the trunk.

  “Look what we have here,” he said in mock amazement. “These cap pistols belong to you?”

  The seventeen-year-old who owned the car had cracked easily after that. He was just the driver. He hadn’t done any shooting. That was just his first lie. Back at the station, Slate and Jerry interrogated each one of them over and over, playing the good cop, bad cop routine and reversing it until they turned one kid against the other and learned the truth. It was just part of a day’s work for Slate and his partner, but this had been a very easy case. That was unusual.

  Tuesday. The next morning. Another bright sunny day with high wispy clouds hovering and no breeze stirring the hot, humid air. Slate still had not done his income tax return. At the moment he was printing out the report on his latest case. When the printer stopped humming, he gathered the papers, signed his name at the bottom of the last page and breathed a deep sigh.

  Jerry looked up from his computer. “You all done? Damn, you type faster with two fingers than anyone I know.”

  “I’ve had lots of practice.” Slate remembered his afternoons as editor of his high school yearbook typing most of the copy for the entire book. Although he’d never taken a typing class, he learned to be speedy with his two-digit method. Slate rubbed his tired eyes, then put his hands behind his head and stretched his back. He caught his vague reflection in the window. He looked like Sam Elliott, the Sam Elliott he remembered from movies twenty years earlier. As he looked around, he noticed that most everyone else at the desks behind him were gone. “Where is everybody?

  “Lunch.” Jerry punched the save button, closed the file, and exited from the program. “Come on, let’s go.” He hit the off button on the old computer and stood up, his six-foot frame rising slowly. Jerry was somewhere in his fifties. He had been part of the seventies bell-bottoms and free love culture, survived Desert Storm, and had been on the force for over twenty-five years. He had a trim but graying beard and shoulder length hair, which he pulled tightly back into a ponytail. Having seen him at home with his hair loose, Slate thought he looked like Charles Manson.

  Slate nodded and shut down his computer. He slipped on his jacket and ran his fingers through his mane of slightly graying dirty blond hair.

  They had been working all morning to complete the final reports on the drive by shooting. After the kids were booked and interrogated, Slate and Jerry had a long discussion about values. What had meant the most to the kid with the Trans Am had been his car. He didn’t care about human life. He didn’t care about the old woman who was dead. He cared about his car. He cared about his hair. He cared about what his buddies thought of him. Slate was glad his own kids had turned out so well. His oldest daughter had finished college and found a job in a travel agency. The other was a senior in the gifted program at Wichita North High School with mostly all A’s and only a couple B’s.

  Slate was damn proud of both of them.

  Jerry drove their unmarked car to Rock Road, speeding his custom ten miles an hour over the limit. When a dude pulled out of a side street in front of him, Jerry yelled. “Fucking asshole. I oughta call in your license number and turn you day into shit.” He didn’t. A few minutes later trapped behind an elderly man, Jerry blew the horn. “Probably playing with his dick.” Jerry kept up a constant one-sided dialogue with every driver on the road. “Look at that dish. I wouldn’t mind tasting that.” He laughed. “Oh, look at that one.” He began barking like a dog.

  Slate shook his head and closed his eyes. In his present mood he didn’t like Jerry’s mouth. It reminded him of his father. “Would you just fucking drive and cut the commentary?”

  “You know what you can do. Jesus, you sound just like my wife. I get enough nagging at home. I don’t need it from you too.” Slate knew that Jerry was having troubles at home. His first wife had died of cancer five years earlier. His much younger current wife had big tits and their relationship was obviously based primarily on sex.

  Now she wanted him to quit the force. She had been diagnosed as having a borderline personality disorder and had tried to commit suicide. As Jerry had explained to him, borderline personality disorder was genetic and caused his wife to have periods of paranoia. Since she had been on medication, her condition had improved, but Slate knew Jerry wasn’t happy. They arrived at the All-American Diner. It touted good food for a decent price and lived up to it ads. The place was packed, but they found a table in the back. The busboy quickly cleaned away the remains and swiped the table with a wet rag. By the time they sat down Tiffany Lincoln and Remy Mitchell, two other cops from the University Area, had walked in and invited themselves to sit at the table.

  Slate liked both of them. Tiffany was a black woman in her late twenties or early thirties, sharp as a razor blade with a vocabulary that could cut a man to pieces like chopped celery in two minutes. Remy—his full name was Jeremy—was quieter with an intellectual bent and was a rabid reader. He went on reading binges, devouring everything he could find on a particular subject before moving on to something else. His latest interest was homing pigeons.

  After the usual banter about the right wingers picketing the abortion doctor on Kellogg, they gave their orders to the indifferent waitress. Everyone ordered and went for low fat sandwiches except Jerry. He ordered a double cheeseburger, fries, and onion
rings. “You are what you eat, you know,” Tiffany told him.

  Undaunted by the environment, Jerry returned the volley with, “Then just call me pussy.” After a moment of surprise, Slate and Remy burst into laughter. Tiffany was not amused.

  Seeking to smooth over the situation, Slate asked Jeremy what he was reading. Before he could answer, Tiffany exploded, “Do not ask. Do not get him started. I swear, if I hear one more fucking word about pigeons, I will rip off my panty liner and stick it in his mouth.”

  “That’s enough to kill my appetite.” Remy grinned.

  “I warned you.”

  “I haven’t said anything.”

  “Yet.”

  “Do you really want to hear about pigeons, Slate?” Remy asked, his grin growing wider.

  Tiffany stood up. “I have to pee.” She stomped off to the ladies room.

  “Have you ever seen a baby pigeon? Remy asked. Slate shook his head.

  “No, you haven’t. Nobody knows how many pigeons there are in this town. Thousands. A couple hundred thousand. And you never see a baby pigeon. Why?

  Slate hunched his shoulders. He knew he was going to find out.

  “Baby pigeons never leave their well hidden nests until they are fully grown. That only takes about four or five weeks. By the time they start flying around and hitting the streets, pecking on somebody’s leftover French fries, they’re as big as their parents. You can’t tell a five-week-old pigeon from one that’s five years old.”

  Slate, his interest stirred, elbowed jerry in the ribs. “Don’t you think that’s fascinating, Jerry?”

  “Wow! Sure is! Isn’t that something?” Jerry’s attitude was exaggerated to tease Remy a bit, but he was interested.

  “They build nests in protected places. Up under bridges, in the nooks and crannies on the roofs of some of the downtown buildings, anywhere out of the rain and away from people. They live together in these tight places. They tend to stick to their own neighborhoods.”

  “I wish the kids in this town would do that,” Slate added.

  Remy continued. “They mate for life, and they only lay two eggs at a time. Both the mother and the father take turns sitting on the nest. And they both feed the babies by sticking their beaks in the babies’ mouths and regurgitating.”