Silent Night

by L T Vargus

  “There’s the tinfoil hat.”

  “No, listen.” Spinks stepped closer and lowered his voice to a level just above a whisper. “You and I actually know something’s going on. Maybe not with the shooter, but we know it’s happening with this sex trafficking case. So, we should be at least as skeptical of every cop and agent and politician we meet as that psycho lady is.”

  Loshak scratched his hand through his hair. “I just don’t see Millhouse going for something like that. Now that we’ve gotten to know her a little, she’s too much of a rule-follower.”

  “So you did suspect her,” Spinks said, jabbing a finger at him like that proved something.

  “The possibility was there,” Loshak admitted. “You’re not wrong about having some healthy skepticism. I just don’t want to drop over the edge of paranoia.”

  No farther than he’d already gone anyway.

  Chapter 11

  George Whitley’s home was in the ninety-eight story Trump International Hotel, more widely known as Trump Tower Chicago.

  Their footsteps echoed as they crossed the immense lobby. And crossed it. And crossed it. Like some kind of a cartoon, it just kept going on. Loshak caught Spinks’ eye, and they both almost started giggling. Overhead, the glass exterior stretched to touch the thirty-foot ceilings. Loshak felt like he was in a huge, fancy fishbowl.

  They showed their credentials to the attendant, then took one of the penthouse elevators up to the ninety-sixth floor. Unlike a few of the bigger skyscrapers Loshak had visited, the lift in this one didn’t suddenly lurch as it changed gears to fly upward. No, this elevator slowly picked up speed until the floor numbers were rolling smoothly past on their way to the nineties.

  When Loshak mentioned this to Spinks, the reporter said, “He bought the penthouse, but he was paying for the smooth ride.”

  “Yeah, but can you imagine the day the elevator’s being serviced?” Loshak said, sticking his hands in his pockets and leaning back against the rail.

  “You don’t get to be this rich by being content with the stuff that inconveniences the plebes,” Spinks said. “I’ve hung with a few guys like this for stories. In my experience, they’re usually creative enough to find a workaround that doesn’t involve walking up ninety-six flights of stairs.”

  “Sherpa?”

  Spinks pointed up. “Helicopter pad.”

  The elevator stopped on the 96th floor, and they stepped out. There was another, smaller lobby outside the penthouse, this one carpeted and quiet. A white man with blonde dreadlocks was waiting there for them on an overstuffed leather chair, scrolling through something on his phone. When he saw them, he stashed the device and stood up.

  Loshak hesitated for a split-second, taking in the dreadlocks and tie-dye. Maybe they’d gotten the wrong floor? But the man was in his mid-thirties to early forties, the right age to be George Whitley’s brother.

  “Mr. Whitley?” Loshak asked, just to be sure.

  The reek of patchouli oil wafted over as the man crossed the floor to shake their hands.

  “Call me Henry,” he said.

  If George Whitley had been the quintessential white-collar business type, his brother Henry had clearly gone the opposite direction. Dreadlocks, crocheted hemp beanie, tie-dye shirt… The man was wearing Birkenstocks for God’s sake. He looked like a commercial version of a free spirit, like at some point he’d take out a hookah and a voiceover would say, Whatever your spirit animal, make sure your smoke is good or, Organic all-natural shampoo for people who think outside the box.

  “Come on inside, guys,” Henry said, unlocking the door.

  He led them into a palatial living room decorated in cold, modern single-businessman style. Black leather, thick lines, high contrast.

  “Have a seat, make yourselves comfortable.” Henry gestured toward an enormous sectional facing a TV big enough to show drive-in movies on.

  One of the reclining sections was open, and a pair of remotes lay in the seat next to it, like George had just gotten up to grab some chips or a beer from the kitchen and would be right back.

  Loshak took the opposite end of the couch, and Spinks perched on the arm beside him.

  Henry glanced at the unoccupied reclining spot and sat on an accent chair instead.

  “Thanks for meeting with us on such short notice,” Loshak said.

  Henry’s face gave a little spasm, but he smiled.

  “I had to come by and pick up some clothes for him,” he said. “Funeral stuff. Call me a scared little bitch — George would — but I didn’t feel like coming in alone. So, I kind of multi-tasked it. Brought you guys along.”

  “Nothing wrong with that,” Spinks said. “Was your brother kind of a dick or was that just his way, making fun of you?”

  “Oh, George was great, but you know. Big brother’s got to egg the little brother on, or else he’ll act like a wuss all his life. That kind of thing.”

  Spinks grinned. “How often did listening to that line get you into trouble?”

  At that, Henry let out a chuckle.

  “Ask the pins holding my ankle together or the officer who gave me my first speeding ticket.” Henry glanced from Spinks to Loshak. “I don’t regret any of it, though, and I don’t blame him. It was me. I just really wanted to impress him when I was a kid. He was so fearless. But also, like, nice. If some nutsack tried bullying me George would kick their ass. He was always standing up for the little guy, the poor kid, the ugly girl.”

  His eyes got a faraway look in them.

  “Back then, I just assumed he was what every big brother was like. Badass. Heroic. Cool.”

  “Looking back now, though?” Loshak prompted

  Henry’s eyes refocused, and he seemed to snap out of it a little.

  “Well, now I think he was kind of empathizing with them, the outcasts,” Henry said. “Like he could really feel it when somebody got picked on for not fitting in because deep down, he felt like he didn’t fit in. He just fit in so well on the surface that nobody noticed. I said something once about him being part of the cool crowd, and I’ll never forget the look on his face. He told me, ‘They’ll turn on me next, just you wait.’ Like he was expecting it. Waiting for it, even. But they never did.”

  It was a golden opportunity to ask about George Whitley’s sex life, but Loshak wanted to tread carefully. Henry was obviously still a little worshipful of his older brother, and this was the Midwest. Hippie free spirit clothes or not, the Puritanical hang-ups and ideals of masculinity ran pretty deep in the middle of the country.

  But before he could figure out a delicate way to broach the subject, Spinks blurted out, “What do you think he was trying to hide? Maybe he was a little too into the other guys in the locker room?”

  For a second Henry’s face spasmed again. Loshak thought he was going to get mad, but then the free spirit shrugged.

  “I really never figured that out,” Henry said. “If he was gay, I never saw any indication of it. He never had boyfriends… or girlfriends for that matter. Like once or twice he brought home a girl from college for Thanksgiving or something, but you could just tell they weren’t a couple. You know what it’s like when somebody’s putting on a show. It was like that. I got the feeling he was doing it to make our parents think he was normal. After they died, he didn’t bother with that anymore. I’m not even sure George had any friends, to be honest. I never heard him talk about anyone, and no one ever came over to watch the game with us or anything. I think he just really liked being alone. Whether that was because he just wasn’t interested in anybody else or because he didn’t want to chance somebody seeing something in him he didn’t want them to, I don’t know.”

  Loshak glanced at Spinks. The reporter’s face said he was already buying George Whitley as their connection to Kansas City. It could potentially fit with what they knew about Neil Griffin’s human trafficking operation. It could also be nothing.

  “Your brother sounds like a complex guy,” Loshak said. “Compassionate,
though. Do you know if he was into donating to causes or doing charity work, things like that?”

  Henry snorted. “You’d think so, right? All this damn money and a heart as big as a basketball, and yet, no. Nothing. The way George was as a kid, I thought surely this guy’s going to grow up to save the world. Cure cancer or end world hunger or defend the wrongfully accused, but no. My brother was smart enough that he could’ve done anything, but he went the financial route instead. You know how he made his money, right?”

  Loshak nodded. He’d read it in the file.

  “Shorting various mortgage funds.”

  Henry leaned forward, hands on his knees.

  “It wasn’t just luck, either,” he said. “George saw the financial crisis coming. He could’ve helped people who were going to get the worst of it, but he put himself in a place to get rich instead. Six million people lost their homes when the housing market collapsed, and my brother made eight figures off it. Can you imagine being that guy? Getting filthy stinking rich off other people’s misery?”

  Henry sat back and shook his head.

  “I couldn’t sleep at night, if it was me. But Georgie got along just fine. Moved in here shortly after. Just kept humming along at that soulless job, vacuuming up the cash-ola. I guess he must’ve liked it.”

  “What do you do?” Spinks asked.

  “Me? Nothing right now,” Henry said, nodding. “Currently unemployed.”

  Loshak thought he would elaborate on that idea, but instead Henry just kept nodding. After a while, it tapered off and his dreadlocked head went still.

  “Do you think maybe the job was a little addictive for your brother?” Loshak asked. “Maybe he got a taste of what it was like to win and wanted more?”

  “I don’t know,” Henry said. “It’s possible. But it seemed like he was getting wound tighter and tighter from the time he left for college.”

  He snapped his fingers.

  “You know what, I was wrong. Georgie did do a walkathon with me once when we were kids. So, that’s one charitable work. It was so a dog shelter could buy new kennels or something. Never again after that. He became less and less of a giver as he got older. Not to speak ill of the dead or my brother, but I think if he’d kept going like he was, in a few more years, he probably would’ve become the American Ebenezer Scrooge.”

  His eyes got that faraway look again, and an expression almost like regret crossed his face. Then he turned to Loshak.

  “Anyway, what does this have to do with the shooting?” he asked.

  Loshak didn’t flinch, but he felt his heart speed up a beat. It had taken Henry a while to get around to it, but he had.

  “We’re trying to find any connections between the victims,” Loshak said. “Do you know why George was in the mall on the twenty-sixth?”

  Henry rolled his eyes.

  “Because the doofus loved Sbarro’s. A couple times a week he had to drive out to the suburbs for a face-to-face with one of the partners or whatever they’re called way up in the banking ranks, and he’d stop by the mall for pizza on the way home.”

  His shoulders jumped a little as he laughed, but pretty soon the laughter was strangled out by tears.

  “Rich as fuck and that idiot gets shot because he likes chain pizza. I mean, what the hell kind of world is this?”

  Chapter 12

  As soon as they got in the car and the heater was pumping out warmth, Spinks asked, “What do you think?”

  Loshak started to open his mouth, but the reporter cut him off.

  “Hang on.” Spinks dug his phone out, popped off the case, and pulled out the battery. Then he held out his hand. “Give me yours.”

  Not that long ago, Loshak would’ve made fun of Spinks’ extreme conspiracy countermeasures. Even now that he had proof that people over his head were listening in, there were still times when Loshak wondered if he and Spinks were just crazy. But he handed over the phone anyway.

  Spinks dismantled it, too, and lay the pieces on the dashboard.

  “What do you think? Think this George Whitley is our George Whitley?”

  “Could be.” Loshak shrugged. “His lack of charitable donations could go either way. He could’ve been donating to what he thought was a legit children’s charity with no real contact with Neil Griffin and just not telling his brother, or he could’ve known it wasn’t legit and donated to it as payment for… Well, as payment Griffin’s other services, I guess.”

  “My money’s on the latter,” Spinks said. He thumped the dash lightly. “I wish we could’ve asked to look around.”

  “Us showing up to interview a family member of a mass shooting victim was suspicious enough,” Loshak said. “If we’d asked to search the penthouse, it would’ve been a major red flag that we weren’t really there about the shooting. The kind of red flag that gets back to people who keep tabs on you.”

  “I bet our guy could get in and get a look around.” Spinks dug into his pocket and came out with a burner phone. “I’m going to give him a call.”

  “What do you think he’ll find? Another crawlspace full of kids?”

  Spinks twisted in the seat and gave Loshak a disappointed look.

  “I thought we both agreed it was possible this was our guy,” the reporter said. “We definitely have reason to believe he could’ve been involved. What if he wasn’t even going out to the suburbs to meet with his superiors, what if he was picking up ‘packages?’”

  “Now you’re speculating and treating that like it’s evidence.” Loshak squeezed the back of his neck. A tension headache was starting to form at the base of his skull. “Nothing we learned today got us any closer to figuring out whether his death was related to the human trafficking at all.”

  Spinks sighed. “But if we get our guy on this, maybe he can turn up something in the penthouse that answers that question definitively. We’ll know whether or not this is a dead end. And if it’s not, maybe it’ll lead us to something else. Seriously, what do we have to lose?”

  Loshak just stared at him.

  “OK, fine,” Spinks said, putting up his hands. “Everything, if your Assistant Special Agent in Charge can be believed. But we also have everything to gain. This could be what breaks the case.”

  The pressure at the back of Loshak’s skull ratcheted up another notch. He reached into his coat pocket and fished out the packet of aspirin he’d taken to keeping there.

  “Fine,” he said. “But tell the guy not to get caught.”

  “He won’t,” Spinks promised like a kid who was angling for a puppy by swearing up and down it would never shit in his dad’s shoes. “If you’d met him, you’d know this guy could slip on and off stage at a Broadway show without anyone noticing him.”

  Loshak just nodded and popped the aspirin in his mouth. Rather than swallow and wait for them to kick in, he chewed them up. Awful gritty bitterness coated his tongue immediately, screwing up his face in disgust, but over the last couple months the routine had become more relaxing than it was revolting. He knew it was just the placebo effect, but already the tension in his neck and head felt as if it were starting to fade.

  Spinks made the call as they pulled away from Trump Tower Chicago, giving the private investigator directions to Whitley’s penthouse and asking him to see what he could find. Loshak heard the guy’s responses in little non-word vocalizations, sort of like the teacher from the old Charlie Brown cartoons. Whatever Spinks heard, it made him happy. By the time he disconnected, he was grinning.

  “I’m hungry, are you hungry?” he asked, piecing Loshak’s phone back together and setting it in the cup holder.

  Loshak tongued a bit of nasty aspirin grit out from between his molars.

  “I could eat.”

  “Man, I wish we could go to Hot Doug’s,” Spinks said. “I was really hoping to try them out sometime. It’d be like a three-hour wait, though. They’re too famous for their own good now.”

  “If they’ve got people waiting three hours for hot dogs, I’d
say they’re probably doing fine.” Loshak flipped on his blinker, then squeezed into a lane of traffic, slowly edging out the jerk who had been trying not to let him over. “Anyway, this is like the fifth hot dog place you’ve mentioned since I met you. Are you keeping tabs on all the gourmet hot dog restaurants around the country?”

  “Call it a hobby,” Spinks said, thumbing through his phone now that it was back on. “I want to know how the other half lives.”

  “The half that eats hot dogs?”

  Spinks held up one finger. “The half that eats fancy hot dogs.”

  The reporter looked as if he were about to go into a spiel about food, but Loshak’s phone went off. He picked it up and saw Millhouse’s name on the screen.

  “Want Percy to get it?” Spinks asked.

  Loshak shook his head.

  “I’ll take the chance.” He slid the icon to the Answer position, then lifted it to his ear. “Chief Millhouse?”

  “Agent Loshak, we’ve got something,” she said.

  Loshak’s ears perked up and he even sat up straighter in the seat.

  “Go ahead,” he told her.

  “It’s not much, but the witnesses from the interstate shooting are all coming back with a similar description on our shooter’s car,” Millhouse said. “Dark sedan, older, probably dark blue.”

  Loshak felt his shoulders sink a little. It was basically what they already knew from the traffic cameras, albeit now with the possibility that the car was blue. The traffic cams had all been black and white.

  “Did anybody see a plate?” Loshak asked. “A make or model? Anything?”

  “No one yet,” Millhouse said. “I know it’s not much, but several of our witnesses were sure it was dark blue with four doors.”

  Loshak squeezed the wheel and twisted the leather steering wheel cover.

  “At least it’s something,” he said, trying to sound like he believed it. A baby step forward was still a step forward. He knew that. “It’s better than nothing.”

  Just barely.