Lucky Bones

by Michael Wiley

Kelson said, ‘Where’d Almonte get the explosives? You think he traded the alley drunks a bottle of Smirnoff for them? Everything about this blast makes it look like he targeted a place and time – maybe specific people – and went after them. Unless we find out he thought ISIS wrote library books or the reference librarian ran off with his best friend, we need to know the story.’

  Cindi said, ‘You know how many times I’ve heard parents and wives and husbands bawling when the doctors gave them the news and asking, “Why, why, why?”’

  Rodman downed his coffee, sat back in his chair, and crossed his big arms over his big chest. He said to Kelson, ‘You’re right, though. We need the story.’

  ‘You all think what you want,’ Cindi said. ‘You haven’t seen what I have. Sometimes when we try to explain the reasons to the parents and wives and husbands, it just makes the hurt worse.’ She carried her plate into the kitchen, then disappeared into the bedroom to sleep.

  ‘She’s wiped out,’ Rodman said.

  ‘But she’s right,’ Kelson said. ‘We all disagree and we’re all right.’

  EIGHTEEN

  At ten thirty, Kelson drove to his office, listening to the radio. As he pulled into a spot in the parking garage, the news came on. The police and FBI had named Victor Almonte as the certain perpetrator and called the blast a suicide bombing. A man who served with Victor in Jalalabad said everyone in the platoon loved him, though he seemed to blame himself after his best friend died while trying to disarm the IED. Another reporter said that one of the library victims had moved to a rehab facility, three remained hospitalized, and the fifth had gone home. The reporter identified the hospitalized. Vickie O’Brien, eighteen years old, a high school senior planning to go to Roosevelt University the following fall, was in critical but stable condition. Randy Belford, fifty-five and unemployed, had gone home and then returned with an infection. James ‘Neto’ LeCoeur, a twenty-three-year-old computer technician, was in very critical condition, with life-threatening injuries. ‘Bring out your dead,’ Kelson said to the reporter. When the news ended and Kelson turned off the engine, the air in the car smelled of exhaust fumes. ‘No need to kill myself,’ he said, and got out.

  He went up to his office, nodded at the picture of Sue Ellen, and turned on his laptop. He needed to put in some hours for Genevieve Bower. The laptop screen lit up, and Kelson said, ‘Bruised, battered – and screwy too.’ He added without meaning to, ‘With truly amazing breasts.’ He shook his head at himself. ‘One of these days …’

  He picked up his research where he’d left off – looking for Jeremy Oliver’s Oak Park friend Zoe Simmons and his cousin Rick. Oliver might have given one of them Genevieve Bower’s red thumb drive. Or they might be able to tell Kelson where else to look.

  ‘What’s on it?’ he asked the laptop. ‘Dirty pictures?’ He imagined what Genevieve Bower would like to do, what she might want to try. ‘Stop it,’ he told himself, and he typed Zoe Simmons’s name into Google, adding other search terms – ‘high school’, since Genevieve Bower said Oliver had known her since then, and then ‘80s dance music’.

  He discovered that a lot of high school girls named Zoe colored their hair fuchsia, and more than a few did gymnastics. He also discovered that a woman named Zoe posted Pinterest pictures of an old Richard Simmons dance workout.

  So he searched ‘Zoe Simmons’ alongside ‘Jimmy Choo’. ‘Ha,’ he said when a link to a Reddit post appeared. The post – put up eight days earlier – showed a skinny, black-haired woman in pink tennis shoes with what looked like patches of carpet on the sides of them. The post said ‘Me and My Jimmys’ and added ‘You the Best Jolly’. ‘Score,’ Kelson said – then realized he still didn’t know how to find her. ‘Or not.’

  He searched ‘Rick Oliver’ and ‘Richard Oliver’ with the terms ‘Jeremy’ and ‘JollyOllie’ and ‘80s DJ’. Nothing. He searched with ‘Jimmy Choo’. Nothing. He searched with ‘dead cousin’ and ‘missing cousin’. Nothing.

  He called Genevieve Bower.

  She answered on the first ring. ‘Did you find it?’

  ‘What did Oliver tell you about his cousin?’ Kelson said.

  ‘Just he plays lacrosse – and he’s gay.’

  ‘You couldn’t’ve told me that before?’

  ‘I didn’t think—’

  He hung up before she could finish answering.

  Then he searched ‘Rick Oliver’ with ‘lacrosse’ and ‘Chicago’. A link gave him a registration roster for New Wave Lacrosse, which organized a local lacrosse league. Rick Oliver had signed up for a winter indoor tournament. He listed no phone but gave a northside address. ‘Score,’ Kelson said again. ‘Or goal. Or whatever.’

  He turned off the computer, put it in its drawer, and headed for the door. Then he turned back and got his KelTec. He tucked the pistol in his belt and said, ‘Because I’m not a complete fool.’

  Rick Oliver lived with his boyfriend on the bottom floor of a greystone three-flat on Roscoe Street, east of Halsted. Kelson parked behind a green dumpster in an alley a couple doors away, climbed the front steps, and rang the bell. When no one answered, he rang again. When no one answered again, he went back down the steps.

  Then the door opened behind him. A thin, barefoot man in blue jeans stared down at him. He looked annoyed. ‘Yes?’

  ‘Rick Oliver?’ Kelson asked.

  The man yelled into the house, ‘Richard.’

  Another man – tall and wide – came to the door. He wore a red jersey and matching shorts. Except for pads and helmet, he looked ready to play.

  ‘Yes?’ he said – same attitude as the first man.

  Kelson said, ‘You not only play lacrosse, you are lacrosse.’

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘Are you Jeremy Oliver’s cousin?’

  ‘Are you another cop?’

  ‘I used to be. Then I got shot in the head, and I became more of a liability than an asset – apparently. Now I—’

  ‘What do you want?’ he said.

  ‘Genevieve Bower’s thumb drive.’

  ‘Whose what?’

  ‘Your cousin dated her.’

  ‘Jeremy? Never heard of her. Why are you here?’

  ‘That’s a complicated question,’ Kelson said. ‘What did the police tell you about Jeremy?’

  ‘He’s missing. They found his van.’

  ‘He isn’t missing,’ Kelson said. ‘He’s dead. Or he’s dead and he’s missing.’

  That worried the man some. ‘What are you talking about? They said—’

  ‘I saw him – his body. I called the police. Then I left, and they came, but your cousin was gone – hell if I know where. He got shot right here’ – he touched his forehead above his left eye – ‘which is where I got shot too, but with different results.’

  The boyfriend said, ‘You’re freaking me out.’

  ‘Call nine-one-one,’ Rick Oliver said to him.

  ‘Why?’ Kelson said. ‘What did I say?’

  ‘I don’t know who you are, but the detective who talked to me said nothing about Jeremy being killed.’

  ‘Was the detective’s name Dan Peters?’ Kelson said.

  Rick Oliver squinted at him. ‘Yeah.’

  ‘He means well,’ Kelson said.

  The boyfriend had his phone out. ‘Should I?’ he asked Oliver’s cousin.

  ‘If you do, ask for Peters,’ Kelson said. ‘Tell him Sam Kelson came by.’

  ‘He’ll vouch for you?’ Rick Oliver said.

  ‘He’ll tell you to chase me away with a stick. But you don’t need to. I’ll go. But answer two questions first. If Jeremy stole someone’s thumb drive, where would he hide it?’

  ‘I don’t know why he’d steal a thumb drive, but until his van burned he lived his life out of it and his apartment. Or maybe he’d give it to me to hold on to. I don’t know where else.’

  ‘And where can I find Zoe Simmons?’

  Rick Oliver looked down at him with contempt. ‘Do you really think I’d te
ll you how to hassle my friends?’

  NINETEEN

  So Kelson left and drove a half mile from the greystone to the bungalow on North Hermitage where Jeremy Oliver had lived. After finding him dead in the dormered attic, Kelson had talked to Bruce McCall, who’d rented Oliver the apartment and detached garage and who’d also said Oliver ran his whole life from the van. The van was a bust, but Kelson hadn’t searched the garage, and he’d given the attic only a quick look before skipping out.

  Now, he walked around to the back of the house and went to the garage. He tried the handle on the big garage door. Locked. He went to the little side door and looked through the window into the dark. Like last time, he saw two bikes along the far wall and gardening tools in a corner. He tried the knob. Locked. So he smacked his elbow against the windowpane closest to the knob. It shattered on to the garage floor. ‘Bad, bad idea,’ Kelson said. He reached through the broken pane and unlocked the door. ‘Why do I think this is acceptable?’ He stepped inside. ‘Or smart?’

  The air in the garage was cool and smelled of dirt and motor oil. Kelson left off the light and walked around the open space, peering into the gaps between the two-by-fours on the unfinished walls. He pulled the bikes into the middle of the room, inspected them, and looked at the wall where they’d stood. He took a garden shovel from the corner, laid it on the floor, and did the same with a broom, a rake, and another shovel. He rooted through a basket of spades, clippers, and loppers. Something – the dustlessness, the way the tools rested against each other – made him think another person had come into the garage and searched it. ‘But with a key,’ he told the broom, as he put it back in the corner.

  ‘Screw it,’ he said, and he went back to the door and hit a switch that turned on a single bulb hanging from the middle of the garage ceiling. He gazed at the two-by-four ceiling beams. If a thumb drive lay on one of them, he couldn’t see it. Maybe Jeremy Oliver kept a stepladder in his kitchen pantry. Or maybe Kelson would find the thumb drive in the dormered apartment and wouldn’t need a ladder.

  He left the garage, crossed the yard, and went up the stairs to the attic door. He tried the knob. Locked too. He tapped the window, loud enough for anyone inside to hear. No one heard. He smacked another pane with his elbow, reached inside, and let himself in. ‘Here we go again,’ he said.

  The kitchen looked and smelled as it did on the day when Kelson found Oliver’s body. ‘Which means nothing,’ he said, and opened the pantry.

  The pantry had shelves of mac and cheese, Chex Mix, tomato sauce, and instant oatmeal. There were also a lot of cans of green beans. No ladder. Kelson pulled a vacuum out from under the shelves, opened the dirt canister, and stirred the inside with a finger. Dust. ‘Figures,’ he said. He went to the sink and tried the drawers and cabinets. They held the stuff that kitchen drawers and cabinets hold.

  He searched the bedroom closet and removed the dresser drawers in case Oliver had taped the thumb drive to the back of one of them. In the bathroom, he checked the medicine cabinet and stood on the toilet to peer into the exhaust fan.

  He said, ‘Why bother?’ and went into the living room. He checked under the couch cushions – sure now, without good reason, that someone else had gone through the house just as he was going through it. He moved the furniture from the walls, peered under it, and pushed it back where it belonged. Peters had told him about a bullet hole near the shelves. Kelson found it and stuck the tip of his pinkie into it. ‘Like a hole in the head,’ he said.

  He went back through the hall to the kitchen. ‘Due diligence,’ he said.

  He went outside and downstairs into the yard. As he started along the side of the house, a paunchy man in his sixties came out the back door of the house downstairs. He smiled like the kind of man who smiles easily and often. ‘Hey there,’ he said, ‘you a friend of Jeremy?’

  ‘Hardly,’ Kelson said. ‘Are you Bruce McCall?’

  The man smiled. ‘Hardly. I heard you upstairs and thought Jeremy came home.’

  ‘Unlikely,’ Kelson said. ‘Does Bruce McCall live here?’

  ‘I’m his tenant,’ the man said. ‘Mr McCall owns a bunch of properties in the neighborhood. You mind if I ask what you were doing up there?’

  ‘Looking for a thumb drive,’ Kelson said. ‘And a stepladder. Do you have one? – I mean a stepladder.’

  The smile stayed on the man’s face, but he got a look in his eyes that Kelson saw often when talking to strangers. ‘Why were you …’

  Kelson smiled back. ‘Do you watch Jeremy’s place when he’s gone? You see anyone up there lately?’

  ‘No one that doesn’t belong,’ the man said. ‘Except you.’

  ‘Good to have neighbors,’ Kelson said. ‘I live in a high-rise, and you’d think everyone would watch out for each other, but—’

  The smiling man’s smile started to fall. ‘Is there anything I can help you with?’

  ‘Unless you have a stepladder or want to hold my feet while I do chin-ups on the garage beams, you can tell me where Bruce McCall has his office.’

  ‘No office,’ the man said. ‘This is like his hobby. He works out of his house. His wife’s dad runs some kind of big-money company. What do you want up in the garage beams?’

  ‘A thumb drive. Never know where someone might hide it.’

  ‘I see,’ the man said, and, like so many others, he seemed to dismiss Kelson as harmless and confused. ‘Well, I can’t help you there.’

  ‘Nope, you’ve reached your limit.’ Kelson turned to leave.

  The man sounded as firm as he probably ever could. ‘Don’t come back unless you’re with Jeremy, OK? Or Bruce McCall. Or someone who belongs here.’

  ‘I see no reason I’d want to,’ Kelson said. He got halfway to the front of the house before turning back again.

  The smiling man was climbing the stairs to check on Oliver’s apartment. He stopped when he saw Kelson.

  ‘One more thing,’ Kelson said. ‘Do you know the name of the company owned by Bruce McCall’s father-in-law?’

  For some reason, that triggered another little smile. ‘Don’t remember the name. It’s one of those places you know about if you’ve got the money to know about it. If you aren’t loaded, don’t knock.’

  Kelson said, ‘Could it be G&G Private Equity?’

  The man’s smile widened. ‘That’s it. G&G. Marry a woman like that or win the lottery – either one’ll do for me.’

  TWENTY

  Kelson sat in his car in front of the bungalow and dialed Genevieve Bower’s number.

  It rang four times and bounced to voicemail.

  ‘What the hell?’ Kelson said to the recorder. ‘What’s with JollyOllie and G&G? You don’t – you don’t drag me into something like this without telling me. People like Chip Voudreaux and Sylvia Crane don’t care about you and your shoes and your screwball boyfriend and your – Jesus Christ, just call me.’ He hung up, stared at his phone, then called her again and managed to stay calm. ‘All right,’ he told the recorder. ‘Part two. I get it now. You told G&G about Marty. That’s how they got in touch with him and how he gave them Neto and how Neto got blown up in the library. And Marty mentioned me to you. That’s how you called me and I got busted at Big Pie Pizza and all the rest. So that fits. But how does Jeremy Oliver come into it? I guess what I’m asking is, what’s on the thumb drive?’

  He hung up again, then looked through his call history until he found Bruce McCall’s number. He dialed it.

  McCall answered, and Kelson said, ‘I talked with you before about Jeremy Oliver and the garage he rented from you.’

  ‘How could I forget?’ McCall said.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me your wife’s the daughter of the owner of G&G Private Equity?’

  McCall sounded impatient. ‘What does Sylvia have to do with it?’

  Kelson barked a laugh. ‘Wait, your wife is Sylvia Crane?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘God help you, you like them mean.’

 
‘Excuse me?’

  ‘Me too. The meaner, the better. Sexy, right? My ex-wife—’

  ‘I’m going to hang up now,’ McCall said.

  But the synapses in Kelson’s broken brain were firing free. ‘Does her dad look like a weird old blue-eyed ostrich – with a beak of a nose?’

  McCall hung up.

  Kelson breathed in deep, breathed out long, and dialed again.

  ‘How does the family know Genevieve Bower?’ he said when McCall picked up.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Dammit, you don’t see a woman like her and forget her. You just don’t.’

  McCall hung up again.

  ‘Dammit,’ Kelson said.

  He called Rodman, catching him in his car, and told him about the connection between Jeremy Oliver and the investment firm.

  ‘Yeah,’ Rodman said, ‘makes sense.’

  ‘It does?’

  ‘Sure. Marty keeps screwed-up company. He’s a great friend, but hanging with him’s like climbing into a bag of spiders. His heart’s in the right place, though.’

  ‘Next time, remind me not to hang with him.’

  ‘Your heart’s in the right place too,’ Rodman said. ‘What’re you up to now?’

  ‘Trying to pull spiders out of my hair. Soon as I can, I’ll talk to Genevieve Bower – make her tell me what’s on the thumb drive and what this is all about. Meantime, I’ll track down Oliver’s friend Zoe Simmons.’

  ‘Careful,’ Rodman said. ‘If G&G’s involved in what happened to Oliver, they’re showing their teeth.’

  ‘What are you up to?’ Kelson asked.

  ‘Heading to U of C,’ he said. ‘Janet called. She thinks Neto’s going down for the count.’

  ‘It all crashes,’ Kelson said.

  ‘Some days are like that.’

  ‘Some lives,’ Kelson said.

  Next, Kelson dialed directory assistance and got the phone number to Rick Oliver’s greystone on Roscoe. He called and the boyfriend said Rick had gone out. So Kelson talked to the boyfriend for a while. He told him about Genevieve Bower hiring him, about finding Jeremy Oliver dead in the attic apartment, about Genevieve Bower showing up in his office with a black eye and bruises – and about how locating Zoe Simmons might help stop the pain. He told him about Neto taking the G&G job and getting blown up and probably dying at the hospital – and about how locating Zoe Simmons might ease that pain too, since she was connected to JollyOllie and therefore Genevieve Bower, and so on. He told him about Sue Ellen and the kittens spending too much time alone since he was busy with these tangled cases – and about how locating Zoe Simmons might also allow him to spend more time with them.