The Shooter

by Peter O'Mahoney

  “How does that make you feel? The fact that this man could hire an expensive, and well-connected, lawyer to walk him out the doors?”

  “I’m furious. I’m furious because the system has failed us. It’s failed you, it’s failed me, and most of all, it’s failed my daughter. This man, this disgusting man, walked free, all because he had the money to hire the best lawyer. All because he could afford the most ruthless lawyer in town.” Her teeth ground together. “I tell you, without that lawyer, my daughter would’ve seen justice delivered, but that lawyer brainwashed the judge. Used his jargon and skewed facts to have the evidence thrown out. What he’s done is worse than being a criminal. Mr. Fittler knows the truth, he knows what really happened, and yet he still helped that man walk out of those doors! He’s made it impossible to tell the innocent from the criminals. This needs to be stopped!”

  The woman’s anger broke, and she began to weep softly. The camera swept around to Jonathon DiMarco, his hair slicked back.

  “Mr. Larry Fittler, the defense lawyer, has a reputation in this city for being good at his job. He’s allowed that right. But should the ability of a lawyer determine whether a person walks free? Should how much a client can pay result in a better outcome? Of course not!” DiMarco held a piece of paper with a line graph on it up to the camera. “The result of this is twofold. Firstly, this means that there are violent, terrifying men who rape your daughters walking the streets. These lawyers have put your family in danger by allowing these criminals to leave court without punishment. The real criminals should be locked up for the time they deserve. Rapists. Murderers. Felons. Why are we letting those who do not understand right from wrong have a say on their own punishment? Is this justice? Do we, the citizens of Chicago, want to sit idly by while our streets become overwhelmed, overrun, with violent murderers, rapists, and burglars, while the innocent sit in prison cells for crimes they didn’t commit, too scared to go to trial and have their innocence proclaimed?! Now is the time for us to make a stand. People of Chicago, stand with me! Stand for justice!”

  The camera moved away from DiMarco, framing the courthouse, and slowly zooming out before the clip ended.

  “That was intense.” I commented as the video finished. “There was a lot of anger in that take.”

  “Are these all…?” Casey scrolled down the page. “These are all videos about the failures of defense lawyers. And there are so many. All of them, slandering the names of lawyers in our city.”

  “And I bet if we take the time to look, we’ll find the names of some of our victims too. DiMarco is an intelligent person, but he’s also an angry, angry man.”

  Casey pressed on different clips, listening to the beginning of them, getting the feel and then shutting them down and moving on to the next. Many were filmed outside the courthouses, some in people’s living rooms, others on street corners. The furious tone was consistent throughout each clip, and in one clip, DiMarco was seen throwing a vase across his living room.

  “There’s so much rage hidden behind a frightening amount of control.” I came to stand behind Casey, watching each of the videos. “There must be at least fifty videos on this site.”

  Casey clicked on the last clip on the first page and a young man, no older than twenty-five, appeared on the screen and began talking. The man shivered in the cold, with a scarf wrapped tight around his neck, sitting outside at a café. He brought a steaming coffee to his lips just before he started talking.

  Casey reached out and pointed at the screen, eyebrows raised, waiting for me to catch it.

  “Is that…?” I squinted at the screen. “Is he sitting outside of…?”

  “Professor Coffee café? Directly across the road from Anthony Waltz’s penthouse? Yeah, he is.” Casey took a moment to absorb the information and her eyes narrowed, determined. “And would you look at the date? Is anyone here shocked to see it’s the night that Anthony Waltz died? Only hours before Anthony Waltz ‘shuffled off his mortal coil.’”

  “We need to go back further with the security footage at Waltz’s apartment. We only looked an hour before the murder time frame. We need to go back and look again. I think we’re just about to prove that Jonathon ‘I Kill Fluffy Bunnies’ DiMarco was loitering around the scene in question. Along with—who is this guy?”

  “Shut up and listen and we’ll find out,” Casey nudged me.

  “My name is Matthew Wilkerson.” The man in the clip began talking. “I’m a police officer in Buffalo Grove. My fiancé was sexually assaulted in the middle of the night, and Anthony Waltz let her attacker walk free. Anthony Waltz doesn’t give a crap about justice, about what’s right and wrong. He knew the DNA evidence used in court hadn’t been collected properly. He knew that if he allowed it to be used at the time meant they could call the trial into question later. He wanted—” Casey hit the pause button. “Jenny Carpenter’s fiancé?”

  “We just might have a new suspect,” I said. “He’s a cop. He looks angry. And he’s got the ability to cover-up something like this.”

  “Jonathon DiMarco was there as well. This is quite damning. Maybe they’re a team? Should we send this through to the police?”

  “It’s not evidence. This means nothing.” I grunted. “We need something solid. We need something that we can pressure them with. Right now, they’ll laugh in our faces if we go after them. If DiMarco gets wind of us finding this, then he’ll close-up shop. He won’t talk. We need more evidence.”

  “We’ve got the security footage from our new friend Robbie, right? Let’s get it loaded up and go back further. At least 6 hours before the earliest possible time of death. I want the street camera view. I want to know who was loitering across the street and for how long.” Casey pulled it up, checking the different files available on the drive. “The footage just starts at midnight. It must be on a 24-hour loop. But I bet the previous 24 hours is saved as a file on their system for at least a month. We need to get in contact with the security firm that manages the building and find out how to get that file.”

  “You have a nice connection with our wanna-be investigator, Robbie.” I picked up the phone and handed it across the desk to her. “I’m sure he’d love to hear from you.”

  “Deal,” she said, and grabbed the phone from me. “We’re close, Jack. We just need more evidence.”

  Chapter 12

  Casey called Robbie, our security guy, and he told us he could get the footage, but it would take a couple of days. She sweet-talked him, told him how important he was to helping our investigation, and let him know how much she appreciated the help. He stuttered, and I could almost hear him melt on the other end of the line. Talking to women clearly wasn’t his strong suit.

  Robbie told us that he couldn’t access the footage from his desktop, but it was backed up on the main server. He would do what he could to access it. He called Casey back twenty-five minutes later and sounded disappointed when he said his boss wouldn’t give us anything. The boss of the security firm didn’t like the attention that an investigation could possibly bring to his business. Having a connection to a murdered lawyer was not good for its reputation, apparently.

  But our Robbie was turning out to be a bit of a star. He was good with computers, and ran a couple of websites that held sensitive information, so he was familiar with accessing large servers. He told us that he could get access to the main server from the head office, but we’d have to wait five days until he was due there for a meeting. He explained that he could download the footage from the main server and then bring it back to the security office. We agreed to wait for Robbie.

  If we could prove that DiMarco or Matthew Wilkerson entered the building the night Anthony Waltz died, then we had enough to pressure them with. It wasn’t the silver bullet, but it was a lead, at least.

  At just after midday, we went to Waltz’s funeral at a small venue. Daley was right—there weren’t many people in attendance. Casey and I sat in my truck at the far edge of the parking lot, watching people com
e and go. I counted fifteen people in attendance. After the funeral had started, I wandered into the entrance, took a picture of the memorial book with the names in attendance, and then returned to the truck. Casey worked her magic and searched the names on the internet. Most were fellow lawyers, one was a previous girlfriend, and another was his second cousin. Apart from Daley, none seemed suspicious.

  We returned to the office and spent the afternoon searching through the internet for a lead. I made a few calls to different PI contacts, but none had worked for Daley in the past. None had heard of a problem with Jeffery Stone’s or Clarke Hudson’s deaths either. Daley was turning into a dead-end.

  We found some information on Jeffery Stone. He’d come out as gay in the weeks before his death. That wasn’t surprising to the people that knew him. He made an announcement via social media and all the messages were supportive, except for one of his ex-wives, who accused him of using her. He posted to social media on the day before his death, happily drinking a pink cocktail at a well-known gay bar in Wrigleyville. He’d beaten two sexual assault allegations, both against males, including one against a minor. Because the allegation came from a minor, the file was suppressed, meaning I couldn’t access any information about the accusations, and no one seemed to know anything about it.

  All the information we uncovered on Clarke Hudson pointed to the fact that he was an all-round prick. He partied hard with young girls while his pregnant wife was at home, and had numerous sexual assault allegations against him, but nothing ever stuck. It was a running issue for the deceased lawyers, but there was no connection between any of the allegations.

  Casey had come across an allegation of sexual assault against Anthony Waltz from a prostitute, but the woman changed her testimony after a month, and soon purchased a new home. It was clear that she’d been bought off with Waltz’s money.

  Not only were these guys defending scum, they were defending each other too.

  After a long day of combing through different websites, Casey called it a day. I didn’t want to go home yet. There was still too much to do. As the clock ticked past 10pm, I continued to gather material, searching through the different databases for all the information on the case that I could find. After compiling complete files on the deceased men, I turned my attention to the main suspects. My eyes were heavy as I stared at the screen, but I was determined not to waste a second.

  Our main catalogue, the My Tracer database, has more information than the internet. From there, we can access a person’s social security details, their driver’s license, their addresses, their phone numbers, and email contacts. It was useful sometimes, especially when trying to locate a person, but a lot of it was background information that served little purpose.

  There was a lot of information on Jonathon DiMarco, all the way from his childhood address through to his current shopping purchases. When people buy items from a store and use a store card, that information is collated by the store and sold to the highest bidder. Usually, that information goes to advertising companies in an attempt to target items to the individual, but sometimes, it goes out to other groups. It was information, but not really that useful for our current investigation. Knowing the soap brand that DiMarco purchased wouldn’t prove anything in this case.

  Wilkerson had less information on the database. There were the basics, but nothing too deep.

  Social media accounts were next. They often pieced the puzzle together. I had data about the suspects, I had information, but I had nothing that showed their personality. That’s where social media accounts became important.

  Wilkerson’s profiles were public, meaning anyone could access them. I searched through his photos, posts, comments, and updates. Before his fiancé was raped, the pictures and profiles were the standard set—lovely photos of the couple smiling at holiday destinations, pictures of him getting ready for work, and celebrating Valentine’s Day at a restaurant.

  I could almost pinpoint the day of the rape by his Facebook profile alone. The tone of the posts changed. Gone were the nice photos, gone were the lovely updates, replaced with aggressive and angry statements about the failings of the legal system.

  Even though he was a cop, he made numerous posts that named David Chesterfield, the man that was charged with the rape of his fiancé, and he’d posted numerous comments attacking Anthony Waltz. He called Waltz a degenerate loser, scum, and trash. He wrote that Waltz belonged in prison with his clients. He stated that people like Waltz were the reason that the legal system was failing.

  I was surprised that his accounts weren’t monitored or reported to his superiors at the Buffalo Grove police station. It was certainly biased information. If he was ever called to testify in a trial, this type of information could be used against his testimony and demonstrate clear bias against the legal system and defense lawyers.

  But I doubted whether that would ever happen. Wilkerson didn’t appear to have a lot of career prospects within the police force. His file showed that he’d barely finished high school, he struggled through the police assessments, and he’d been employed in the same role for the last five years. I couldn’t find one arrest warrant with his name on it. It appeared to be as far as he would go in his police career.

  His spelling on social media was also abysmal. There were some statements where I couldn’t even understand what he was trying to say. I took screenshots of Wilkerson’s posts about Waltz, and kept scrolling through the internet, looking for anything that might strengthen our case.

  After another fifty minutes of scrolling through his social media posts, I felt my eyes starting to droop. It was late, almost midnight, and it was time for me to turn in.

  I closed up, and locked the office.

  As usual, once on the street, I checked for any movement, but when I saw none, I turned up my coat collar to the damp air, and proceeded to walk towards my truck, parked a block away in a parking lot.

  I’d only walked five steps into the multi-level parking lot when I heard something behind me.

  I went to turn around, but it was too late. Something hit me at the base of the neck. Hard. I flew forward, crashing into the concrete sidewalk.

  I rolled to my left, and sprung to my feet. My world was spinning. My head was thumping. My vision was blurred. My fists were clenched.

  I heard another noise and turned again. I saw the shadow jump over a nearby fence. I started to run after the shadow, but I was unsteady. I stopped and regained by bearings, leaning my hand against a nearby car.

  I looked up and down the dimly lit parking lot. There was nobody else. Not a soul. Not a movement.

  I doubted whether it was just a thug looking to punch someone. The nearest bar was two blocks away, and nobody would’ve just stumbled into this lot. It could’ve been that I’d arrived at the exact moment someone was looking to steal a car, but I also doubted that. I looked around the lot—there were five cars left in the fifty-odd space lot. None of the cars looked like they’d be targets for car thieves. Car thieves preferred particular types of cars, the easiest targets with the least security. They knew which ones to try and which cars to avoid. None of the cars left in the lot looked like easy targets.

  Rubbing the back of my neck, I moved towards my truck, and saw a folded piece of paper tucked under my windshield wiper.

  I checked over my shoulder again. There was no one else in the lot.

  I reached across and picked up the piece of paper. It was a note.

  “Keep digging into this case, and you’ll start digging your own grave.”

  Chapter 13

  The Angry Friar was my local dive bar. It was where I felt most comfortable. The bathrooms were vandalized, the music was from the eighties, and the food tasted like it was bad for my health. It was the type of place where fights often broke out, where games of pool became swearing matches, and where Bears games were celebrated or commiserated. The door was always shut to prevent any hint of daylight coming through, the blinds were always drawn closed, and a
t least one light was always broken. In short, it was the type of place where a person could disappear for a few hours and forget about the world.

  Down the bottom of a short flight of stairs from an overpass, the dive bar was hidden from the travelers, the drifters, and the suits. If you didn’t know The Angry Friar was there, you’d never notice it. Just how I liked it.

  “How’s life, Jack?” I felt a hand rest on my shoulder.

  It was Detective Dwayne Williams. Even though he was a cop, Williams easily fit into the rough surroundings of the bar. An African American man, he was tall, broad, and tattooed. He had a scar on his cheek where a bullet once kissed him, and he had knuckles that looked like they enforced the law more than he abided by it.

  “I’m good,” I turned around to face my friend. “You?”

  “Whoa.” Williams jolted back. “Is that a black eye?”

  “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about.”

  When I hit the pavement the previous night, my cheekbone took the brunt of the force, leaving my face swollen and blackening the area just under my eye. I went home, cleaned it up, and used enough ice to numb the pain. Half a bottle of Jack Daniels helped as well.

  I woke the next morning with a pounding headache. It was the sort of headache that a person feels in their soul. Nothing seemed to ease it. Aspirin, paracetamol, ibuprofen. Nothing worked. I laid on the couch with an icepack on the back of my neck for most of the morning before deciding I wasn’t going to waste a day of the investigation. I spoke to Casey, explained what happened, and told her to be safe. She insisted that I could have a concussion and that I needed to see a doctor, but I argued that a day away from the office would fix any problems. I was used to black eyes, they didn’t worry me, but the pounding headache at the base of my skull hurt the most.