by L T Vargus
Through the glass of the foyer, Loshak caught sight of Jan looking over her shoulder at him. When their eyes met, she smiled and gave a little wave, then turned back around in her seat. Suddenly, all the cheap fried mushrooms and high-dollar scotch felt like they’d coagulated in his stomach.
“It’s Jan’s birthday,” he said, then stopped. He wanted to explain to Spinks how this had always been a thing when they were married, making a big deal out of the celebration since everyone else just lumped her in with the Christmas festivities, how he was really trying to make this work, and how there was no way it would if he was just one more person pushing her to the side on her birthday, but what came out instead was, “I’ll make some calls tomorrow and see what I can do, but I can’t work tonight.”
“Yeah, no, don’t even think about it tonight,” Spinks said, overcompensating on the reassuring tone. “If you’d just told me, I would’ve said that from the get-go. Loved ones have to take precedence. One hundred percent agree. Tomorrow’s plenty of time. You two crazy kids go have your fun. And tell Jan I said happy birthday.”
“Alright. I’ll call you tomorrow and let you know what we’re doing.”
Loshak didn’t have any tools on hand to smash the burner phone, but after he hung up, he took the phone apart, pulled the card out, and snapped it in half. He leaned out the door and chucked one half into the trash can on the sidewalk, then stuck the other half in his pocket for disposal later. Spinks would probably say it wasn’t enough, but that would have to do for now.
Jan was sipping a coffee when he got back. Steam curled up from the cup, disappearing into the red glass light fixture overhead. She set it on the table and wrapped her fingers around it as if to warm them.
Loshak slid into his own side of the booth, staring at her hands. For most people, heat was associated with comfort and security.
“You’re analyzing my body language.” Jan was one of the few people who could always tell he was doing it, even when he was being discreet. And she hated it.
“No, just thinking you look cold.”
He grabbed his coat off the seat and got up, slipping it around her shoulders. She let him.
When he sat back down, she guessed, “You have to go.”
Loshak put his hands around hers, molding them to the cup, hoping it would help hold some of the heat in.
“Not tonight.”
Chapter 4
On the flight to Chicago, Loshak ended up with the last seat in the very back, beside the engine. Usually the endless drone was enough to put him to sleep, even at ten in the morning, but Spinks had managed to book himself on the same last-minute connection. The woman who’d been next to Loshak when he first boarded was all too happy to trade Spinks for an aisle seat a few rows up. The reporter was now flipping through the file on the shooting case and giving a play-by-play commentary as he went.
“An Uzi,” Spinks muttered. “That’s mighty ’80s of our guy. Somebody’s been watching too much Scarface. Or Terminator.” The reporter paused a second and thought about it. “The Basketball Diaries? Or was that the ’90s?”
Loshak looked up from the file on Whitley that Spinks had brought with him.
“An Uzi’s smaller,” he said. “Easier to conceal than a rifle.”
“You think he went for the pragmatic choice over the cinematic?”
“Maybe. We don’t have a lot of information to go on yet.”
Spinks grinned and rolled his eyes. “And the great special agent doesn’t want to jump to any conclusions without the evidence to back it up. I get it.”
Loshak stared down at the file the reporter was holding open. The truth was Loshak didn’t have much of a feel for the shooter yet. The case was so fresh that they still only had scraps of information. The file the Chicago field office had sent over was hardly more than bloody crime scene photos and names of the seventeen confirmed dead and thirty-one wounded, a few grainy screenshots of the shooting from an outdated mall security camera, and a preliminary report that stated the caliber of the slugs used in the food court matched the caliber of the ones on the interstate. Odds were good they’d been fired from the same gun, but that hadn’t been confirmed yet.
Looking at the stills from the security footage, though, he had to admit the images were strikingly movie-like. A ski-masked figure standing and firing into the mob. The hazy footage was too indistinct to help identify the guy, but it still grabbed something in Loshak’s gut. Most cases he worked didn’t come complete with in-progress snapshots of the murders.
He turned back to the Whitley file Spinks and their investigator had put together. Their initial investigation into a string of murders in Kansas City had revealed that one of the victims — Neil Griffin — was himself a serial killer. A member of at least a dozen community groups and charities, Griffin also dabbled in murder and human trafficking, burying the bodies in the crawlspace of his house. A forensic audit of Griffin’s financial records had turned up a series of mysterious donations coming from a shell corporation, five in total, and each in denominations of ten thousand dollars. Tracing those donations had led them to George Whitley.
They had considerably more information on Whitley than they did on the shooter. Forty-four, unmarried, executive for a major banking firm. Loshak’s brows went up as he read. Apparently, Chicago was the third most competitive financial center in the country — and seventh in the whole world. They even had their own stock exchange. That seemed to be Whitley’s main reason for moving to the city.
After graduating from Cornell, Whitley had made the rounds working stints at half a dozen other major financial players in the Chicago area. Interesting choice considering Whitley had made a fortune during the financial crisis of 2008, essentially betting against the banks and winning.
In his free time, Whitley was a major art collector. Their investigator had turned up receipt after receipt from prestigious auction houses like Sotheby’s, Christie’s, and Bonham’s. The only artist names Loshak recognized were Picasso and Peter Bruegel the Elder, but the other artists must have been a big deal to draw the amount of money Whitley had laid down on their works.
Whitley was also part of an Ultimate Frisbee league which the investigator had noted as “strangely serious.” Loshak could’ve told their investigator that it came with the territory. From what he’d observed lately, Ivy League grads going into the financial sector were pretty much required to be way too into the game.
No family or close acquaintances besides work and Ultimate Frisbee. Whitley had never married, and as far as the investigator could find, there was no evidence of a serious relationship in the last five years. Both parents had already passed. He had a brother living in Chicago, but the investigator indicated that they weren’t close.
“Hmm.”
Spinks looked up from the preliminary ballistics report. “What?”
“I was just looking at the info on Whitley’s penthouse,” Loshak said. “Fourteen thousand square feet, and nobody but himself to use it. Not even a goldfish.”
“Hell of a bachelor pad, huh?” Spinks flipped the shooting file shut and used it to point at Loshak. “You’ve got to admit that’s a little suspicious. What was one guy doing with all that space?”
Loshak shook his head.
“Not that suspicious. Sometimes in a major metropolitan area like that, space becomes a status symbol.”
“It also doesn’t hurt if you need privacy to hide your sex trafficking victims.”
Given Spinks’ theatrical tone, Loshak decided to ignore that comment for the time being.
“What is suspicious, though, is the fact that he didn’t have a housekeeper or a maid.” Loshak thumbed through a few pages of financials and notes from their investigator. “It doesn’t fit with the status symbol hypothesis. Whitley grew up in an upper-class household. He would’ve been used to house staff doing stuff for him. Even if it was an undocumented worker or under the table, our investigator would’ve seen them coming and going.”
That still sounded far-fetched to Loshak. But he did want to get a look inside that penthouse. See if they could find anything concrete to tie this George Whitley to Kansas City.
“While we’re there, we should get in touch with the brother,” he said. “See what shakes loose.”
Chapter 5
With the snow, their flight was stuck circling O’Hare until conditions improved enough to land, about thirty minutes in all. By the time their plane taxied up to the terminal it wasn’t snowing anymore, but out the window Loshak could see a blanket of the white stuff covering the ground. Plowing tractors buzzed around, clearing the runways, and several of the baggage trains had humps of snow on top that their drivers hadn’t bothered to knock off.
“Brace yourself,” Loshak told Spinks as they stepped into the aisle with everyone else and shuffled toward the cheery flight attendant.
The reporter looked back over his shoulder at Loshak.
“For what?”
“There’s cold, and then there’s Chicago cold. Most places, precipitation means a rise in temperatures, but not here. With the wind chill, it could snow six feet while the mercury keeps dropping.”
A heavyset guy in front of Spinks chuckled.
“You boys worried about that little sprinkle of sugar out there? That’s nothing. We’re supposed to really get hit here in a day or two.”
“I’ve got to admit, I’m kind of looking forward to it,” Spinks said, matching the guy’s jovial tone. “We don’t see much snow down in Miami.”
“Well, you stick around, you’re gonna see some.”
“You from around here?” Spinks asked, though Loshak had already guessed the answer. His accent was a dead giveaway.
“Born and bred in Wrigleyville, right next door to the Cubs,” the big guy said.
The temperature dropped significantly as they stepped off the plane and into the jetway.
“Hoo,” Spinks winced. He wrapped his coat tighter around himself. “Would it be rude of me to barrel down this thing, shoving people out of my way? Because this is too damn cold for a glorified hallway.”
The big guy pulled even with Spinks. “Oh, this ain’t cold, buddy. Around here, this is balmy spring weather. Just wait ‘til you get outside.”
As they made their way toward the terminal, Loshak settled into silence and let the two of them talk about the weather. If there was one thing Chicagoans loved, it was bragging to non-natives about how terrible their weather was. And from the sparkle in his eyes, Spinks seemed to be wringing all the mileage he could out of that topic.
When Loshak was a kid, people used to say that his grandma had never met a stranger, because within a few seconds of meeting someone, they were talking like old friends. He could remember going to the grocery store or park with her and getting stuck for what seemed like forever while she carried on an hour-long conversation with someone she’d never seen before.
In that way, Spinks reminded him of her. There was something about the reporter that made strangers open up to him. Loshak had been casually studying it since they started working together, but he’d yet to pin down exactly what tactics Spinks used to endear himself to people so quickly. A lot of the time, the reporter matched their tone and energy, sometimes mirroring their posture or gestures. But there were other times when he did the exact opposite, and it seemed to work just as well. It was more than just body language and tone; there was something intuitive there that Loshak couldn’t put his finger on. If he could ever quantify it, he was going to teach a class on it at Quantico.
They parted ways with the big guy outside the gate, the Chicago native telling them “You boys stay warm,” before he headed off in the opposite direction.
The snow on the rental lot had already become ankle-deep slush by the time they got outside. It squished over the sides of Loshak’s loafers and soaked his socks with every step. He hated Chicago at the best of times, but it was a hundred times worse in the winter.
“Mary, mother of God,” Spinks said as they trudged across the lot toward their sedan. He was high-kneeing it, trying unsuccessfully to keep his feet dry, and had pulled the collar of his coat up over his bald head to protect it from the stinging wind. “What is this even?”
“Balmy, according to your friend.”
Loshak hit the button on the fob, unlocking the rental with a half-hearted honk.
While he threw his bag in the back, Spinks jumped into the front seat and slammed the door, stamping his feet on the floorboards. When Loshak got in, the reporter let out a long, wordless yell, bouncing a little in his seat.
Loshak stared at him.
“I get loud when I get cold,” Spinks shouted. “Turn the heater on before we freeze to death.”
Once the rental was warmed up, Spinks turned the heat on full blast and leaned into the stream of hot air coming out of the vents.
“Who would want to live in a place like this? The air out there hurt. Actually hurt.”
Loshak pulled out into the airport traffic. “I take it that means you won’t be vacationing here in the Windy City anytime soon?”
“Never coming back during winter, that’s for damn sure.”
They made it halfway around the airport loop before getting stuck in traffic. Spinks pulled out his phone and started answering messages he’d missed during the flight. Loshak’s socks squished in his shoes. The floor heat wasn’t doing anything to warm them up. The traffic crept forward maybe a foot.
Done with his messages, Spinks dropped his phone in the cup holder.
“We’re going to be late for the task force meeting.” He pushed himself up a little and craned his neck to look over the taxi ahead of them like he could spot the source of the congestion. He sighed with disgust. “At this rate, we’ll be late for tomorrow’s meeting.”
“I think we can make it,” Loshak said, “but I want to walk the scene at the mall first. That’s going to make us late either way.”
While the traffic was at a standstill, he dug his phone out of his coat and powered it back on. No missed calls or texts. A mass-send from the Academy about the range being closed for renovations over the next week. Nothing from Jan.
“Illinois is a phone-down state, partner,” Spinks said. “It’d be pretty embarrassing for a special agent to get pulled over, don’t you think?”
Loshak handed the reporter his phone. “Could you find Nancy Millhouse? She should be in my recent calls. She’s heading the task force on this, so we need to let her know we’ll be late.”
“I should be able to handle it,” Spinks said, waggling his eyebrows. “I did go to journalism school, after all.”
Loshak heard the muted digital tone of the phone ring twice before Millhouse answered.
“Hello, Detective Millhouse?” Spinks paused. “Deputy Chief of Detectives, I’m sorry. Chief, this is Special Agent Victor Loshak’s personal assistant, Percy.” He grinned and nodded as if the person on the other end of the line could see him. “Yep, we just landed a minute ago. Rough weather up here.”
While Spinks talked to Millhouse, Loshak put on his blinker and edged toward the I-190 merge. The taxi beside him immediately pulled forward to make sure the zipper would be all sorts of fucked. Loshak let out a long exhale and leaned his arm on the window.
Spinks covered the mouthpiece of the phone and whispered, “In Atlanta, they have alternating stoplights to make sure people take turns.”
“Not a bad idea,” Loshak mumbled, but his mind was on the fact that Atlanta kept coming up in relation to this case. He’d thought of the Georgia shooters when he’d first seen the Chicago shooting on the news with Jan, and now Spinks was bringing up the traffic down there. Loshak squirmed in his seat. Hopefully that would be where the coincidences ended.
In the seat beside him, Spinks had gone back to playing personal assistant. He seemed to really be having fun with this little
farce, infusing his smooth baritone voice with an almost patronizing level of friendliness.
“Right, of course.” The reporter nodded along with every other word. “I’m just calling to let you know that the agent is going to swing by the scene at the mall before he heads over to the task force meeting. It’s sort of a thing he does to get a better feel for the killer.” More nodding. “Yes, ma’am, I’ll tell him. No, thank you, Chief Millhouse.”
He disconnected and handed Loshak’s phone back.
“Percy?” Loshak asked.
Spinks grinned. “I like to think he’s working as your assistant to put himself through grad school. A professional kid, but with a fun side. Has a dog. Likes gourmet hot dogs, but knows a good steak when he chows down on one, too. If business casual had a name, it would be Percy.”
“So, what did she want Percy to tell me?”
“To text her when you’re on the way to the precinct,” Spinks said. “If you’re late enough, she’s going to have you present your profile at tomorrow’s meeting instead, that way nobody has to wait around.”
“Huh.”
“Huh what?”
Loshak shook his head. “I haven’t worked with Millhouse before, but that doesn’t really fit with the image I was forming of her.”
“What were you thinking she’d be like?”
In the only call he’d had with Millhouse, she’d been pleasant enough, thanking him for any help he could give, but in a vaguely distracted way, as if she’d wanted to be polite but was too busy to pay much attention to whatever he was talking about. Which made sense considering the number of simultaneous investigations Chicago’s Bureau of Detectives was running at any given time.
“I don’t know,” Loshak said. “This just seems a little more hard-nosed than the impression I got earlier. But maybe I just caught her at a weird time.”
“Do you think she’s going for the obstruction angle?” Spinks twisted in his seat to get a better look at Loshak. “Like, maybe she knows that this is all a cover-up for the George Whitley murder, so she’s trying to keep you from giving your profile? That way it never gets solved?”
