Missing: A Mason Gray Case

by William Markham

  Third option: I send the text, then show up to observe from a distance. When the drop-off didn’t show, they would leave, and I could still follow them back to their hideout. I liked that idea. Even if it didn’t pan out, at least now I knew for sure that the McCarthy case, the attempts on my life, and the human trafficking ring were inextricably linked.

  Now, what to do with Jonesy?

  I stood and paced back and forth. Jonesy just sat there. Odds were, he wouldn’t remember this conversation, but I didn’t want to risk him running back to his employers and telling them I was onto them.

  I looked around the bar. There were some tools scattered around: pry bars, nail guns, things that someone might steal, but in his current state, nobody would think Jonesy was capable of hauling them away. Sure, he was trespassing, but if that’s all the cops found, they wouldn’t even arrest him. I had to find a different angle.

  I walked behind him and rifled through his jacket pockets, hoping he was carrying some contraband. All I found was his cell phone. I cut him loose and stood him up. He had $100 in cash in his wallet, so I took that and put the wallet back. No sense in letting him profit from attempted kidnapping. I took the car keys from the front pocket of his jeans, too.

  I could give him my gun. That would definitely get him locked up, but I wasn’t willing to part with it.

  Then there was the knife I had just used to sever the zip ties. It’s one of those big foldable lockback ones. That could work. It would need to look like he’d used it though. I briefly considered cutting myself to make it look bloodied, then I remembered I didn’t need to: blood was still leaking from Jonesy’s nose.

  I found a rag and mopped some blood from his face, then smeared it along the blade. I wiped my prints off the handle and shoved it into his hand. He looked at it, then looked at me.

  “It’s yours,” I told him. “You keep it.”

  He looked at it again with renewed, if detached, interest. I plopped him back on the chair, then dialed 911.

  ***

  Menards is a common big-box hardware store in the Midwest. The one in Chicago is in a part of town with no convenient access by the Blue Line, the train that serves Logan Square. To get there via public transportation, I’d have to make a couple of transfers, which would simply take too long.

  I considered taking Jonesy’s car, if I could find it, but decided against it: auto theft wasn’t really my style, and I didn’t need the cops finding me with a stolen vehicle. So it was taxi time again. After this week, I was starting to reconsider my decision to not own a car. I might have to do something about that.

  The store would be closed by now, and the parking lot was probably pretty empty. It should be easy to spot the van I was looking for. Of course, cruising around the lot in a taxi would be pretty conspicuous as well.

  I had my driver do a loop around the store on the frontage road while I scanned the parking lot. Other cars were scattered around, probably taking advantage of free parking while having a late dinner at a restaurant nearby. Sure enough, I spotted a gray van parked underneath a small tree. No other cars fit the description, so I assumed this was the van I was looking for.

  We pulled into the Taco Bell parking lot across the street and sat there, waiting. It’s amazing how much cab drivers will do without asking questions when they’re on the clock. As long as it doesn’t require anything outright illegal, they generally leave me alone and let me do whatever needs doing. Occasionally, I’ll get a talker who wants to know everything I’m doing and why, but it’s mostly out of curiosity and boredom. Tonight’s guy was busy playing with some gadget and left me alone.

  I wasn’t sure how long I’d have to wait. I figured these traffickers had to get a no-show every now and then, but traffic in the city can be a beast, so it was risky to wait them out in the cab. If they took too long, I’d have to come up with another plan. I only had so much cash to play with.

  My worries turned out to be unfounded. After only fifteen minutes, the van lurched into reverse and backed out of the parking spot. I tapped the driver’s shoulder to get his attention and told him to get ready.

  As the van made its way to the lot exit, I told the cabbie I wanted to follow it, but not too close. All we had to do was keep it in sight. I just wanted to see where it was going, not to catch them.

  We waited until the van had pulled onto Clybourn Avenue and headed southeast, passing us in the process, then we pulled out of the Taco Bell lot and headed in the same direction. After several blocks, the van turned right onto Ashland, heading due south.

  It was almost midnight and traffic was light. Chicago’s streets are never completely empty—the city has too many people on too many different schedules for that to happen—but there are times when traffic isn’t a concern. Between the hours of two and five in the morning are the quietest, but even now, we made good time as we crossed the river and neared the Expressway.

  The van turned again, and I knew it was going for the on-ramp. I wasn’t sure what to make of that. I had hoped these guys were local, but if they got on the Kennedy instead of staying on the surface streets, that might mean they were going somewhere far away. I glanced into the front of the cab and saw a card reader. If this went on for too much longer, at least I could pay with credit.

  The city zipped by outside the windows as we picked up speed. The van was pretty far ahead of us now, staying just a little over the speed limit. I told the driver to keep this distance, and we sped toward downtown.

  Before long, the van signaled and merged onto an exit: Randolph Street. Well, that was interesting. We did likewise, but by the time we got to the bottom of the ramp, we caught a red light. I rolled the window down and stuck my head out, trying to spot the van. I saw nothing to the left, so I slid over to the other side of the cab and did the same thing. Several blocks down, it swung a wide right to head back north, then disappeared.

  I wondered if I’d been made, but didn’t have time to dwell on it.

  “Take a right! Now!” I shouted at the cabbie, a little too forcefully.

  He did, but it was too late. By the time we got to the street where the van had turned, it had disappeared. We cruised down the road slowly while I peered down each cross street and alley, but it was no use. We’d lost them.

  I wasn’t upset; in fact, I felt pretty pleased. While it would have been nice to know exactly where they’d gone, I had enough information already. The street we’d turned onto was the same as in the warehouse address Brenda had given me earlier. I was on the right track.

  I sat back and told the driver to take me to the nearest Red Line stop.

  20

  I was back at the Deluxe Diner in my usual spot. It was incredibly late, and I wanted nothing more than to go across the street, slide between the threadbare sheets of my own bed, and sleep until Thursday, but I had too many thoughts running through my brain.

  I pulled out my notebook and started scribbling, trying to connect the dots. What I knew for sure was that a group of human traffickers was kidnapping homeless people for some unknown purpose. The group called themselves Red Dread, according to the schmuck who had been running errands, and they had supernatural strength and speed. One of them had tried to kill me, so I could vouch for that. The whole fangs-and-neck-biting thing screamed vampire, but if there were actually vampires running around the city, why was I just now finding this out? Why wasn’t it all over the papers and on TMZ and crap?

  Oh, right. That would be crazy. There was no evidence other than what I’d seen to support such a claim. There were no bodies at the morgue drained of blood. No video had been captured—at least, none that had been released. There was more hard evidence out there to support the existence of Bigfoot. And yet...

  Back to what I knew. Ellie McCarthy, fiancée to Alderman Juarez, was missing. She might have been taken by this Red Dread group, but I wasn’t sure. There was a real estate company in West Town involved in some sketchy dealings. They owned a warehouse where someone could, pot
entially, house people they’d kidnapped before handing them off to a buyer. I’d followed Jonesy’s delivery van to the same neighborhood just a short while ago.

  What I had was pretty thin, but then again, it was a hell of a lot more than what I’d had the last time I sat in this booth.

  I needed a plan.

  I wanted to get a look at the warehouse. I could poke around there tomorrow.

  I also couldn’t ignore this whole vampire thing. The pieces fit together. It made sense that something intelligent would be able to hide in plain sight if it looked just like everyone else. But I still struggled to accept it. I had to change the way I was thinking about it, let go of my assumptions about what was impossible.

  I could accept that there were plenty of undiscovered things out there. I could accept that drugs and viruses could have some pretty crazy effects on the human body. But I‘d emptied a clip full of bullets into a guy with incredible strength who had apparently gotten up and walked away like I’d peppered him with a paintball gun. Yep, that was what I was having trouble accepting.

  Okay, Gray. It happened, I told myself. Deal with it. But what does it mean? It means that there are people out there who can take a lot of punishment before they go down. I can accept that. Maybe they aren’t vampires in the traditional, supernatural sense. Professor McManus said there were stories of vampire-like beings thousands of years before anyone came up with the word. Maybe it’s a genetic mutation. Yeah, I can roll with that. Maybe that same mutation causes them to have an allergic reaction to silver. Sure, sounds reasonable.

  I finished my cup of coffee and crossed the street to my apartment, where I poured myself a nice big glass of gin, drained it, and crawled into bed.

  ***

  I dragged myself out of bed at about 10 o’clock the next morning. It was time to start checking things off my to-do list.

  My first stop was a little antique store a couple of blocks from the apartment. It was really more of a junk shop, but I figured I could find some old silver for relatively cheap. I was right. They had a stash of old silver coins, mostly dimes and quarters, so worn that they were little more than silver discs. After a bit of haggling, I bought them for just over scrap price.

  Next, I hit the storage locker again and dug up my dad’s old reloading stuff. Being a collector, he’d refused to waste spent brass and had amassed a wide variety of calibers. I’m not sure why I’d kept it all, but it sure was going to come in handy now. It took me a few minutes to put my hands on what I needed, but I emerged from my hoard with a press, scales, the right die, and a mold for .45-caliber bullets.

  The next step was to get all this stuff to the office; I didn’t have room to set up shop in my apartment. I flagged down a cab, loaded everything into the trunk, and made for Old Town.

  Frank was in the office when I got there. I thanked him again for agreeing to help out with Brenda.

  “It’s a no-brainer,” he said. He cast a sidelong glance at my boxes, but said nothing about them.

  I took the supplies into the kitchen area and set them up, clamping the press to the table and laying the die and mold out beside them. I needed a heat source. The stove wasn’t going to cut it.

  “Hey, Frank! We still got that torch around somewhere?” I called down the hallway.

  “Think so. Lemme see if I can find it.” A few minutes later, he came into the kitchen carrying a little propane cylinder with a torch attachment.

  “Perfect,” I said.

  I spent the next hour melting down the coins I’d bought, pulling the lead bullets out of my ammo, and replacing them with silver ones. Frank hung around watching.

  Finally he said, “Think you’ll need those?”

  I snorted. “Hope not.”

  It’s amazing how much we communicated in those six little words. I knew Frank was asking if I was losing it, if I seriously thought I was going after vampires. My response just as clearly told him that I wasn’t sure of much, but that it was better to be prepared for anything. When you’ve known somebody as long as Frank and I have known each other, you don’t need lots of words to say what you mean.

  “Okay, then,” he said, and ambled back to his office. From down the hallway, I heard him say, “Hope you catch some rabbits.”

  Before I left, I called Mac to see if he’d found anything on Brenda’s computer.

  “What do you mean?” he asked. “I found everything—I’ve got the whole damn system imaged—but I have no idea what any of it means. I know computers, Gray, not real estate.”

  I rolled my eyes. “All right. You don’t have to get snippy. I’ll go through it with Brenda later.”

  I paused at the closet on my way out the door. I looked longingly at my overcoat and fedora, hanging where I’d left them the other day. I was tempted to put them back on, but it wasn’t time yet. I still needed to fly under the radar, at least for another day.

  21

  I made it back to West Town by midafternoon. It was good timing: the lunch rush was over, and the 5 o’clock rush hour hadn’t started. I’d planned on snooping around the warehouse, preferably inside, but that might take some doing, depending on the situation.

  The first task was to walk the perimeter of the building. It was pretty big, taking up at least half a block. The ground level windows and doors were all boarded up, but the north side of the building was surrounded by chain-link fence covered in green vinyl sheeting with a locked double gate—probably the loading dock, the only working entrance.

  I couldn’t tell if the building was in use or if it truly was vacant. After that first lap, I knew I couldn’t get in any of the doors I’d seen, but if there was one on the loading dock, I might be able to pick its lock. Unlike the cops, I don’t need a warrant. Of course, if I was caught, it’d be a breaking and entering charge—trespassing at minimum.

  Much like a stakeout, the trick to not getting caught when going somewhere you aren’t supposed to go is to look like you’re supposed to be wherever you are. It’s not about going unseen, it’s about going unnoticed. A delivery guy or utility worker is invisible to most people, and they have reason to be just about anywhere. I’ve been known to wear a uniform when the need arises, but I didn’t have the luxury today. Today, it was all about attitude: no casting furtive glances over my shoulder or jumping at unexpected sounds.

  Of course, if I was behind an opaque fence, that made the job that much easier. But I didn’t want to go in blind; I needed to see what was behind that fence first. If illicit activity was happening here, it stood to reason there’d be guards.

  I turned my attention to the buildings across the street, hoping to find one with a walk-up balcony that would give me an overhead view. Unfortunately, nothing would work.

  It was time to get into character.

  I walked up to the gate and rattled the chain-link fence.

  “Hello,” I called, “Anybody in there?”

  After a beat, someone called back, “What do you want?” Somebody was home.

  “Hey guy, I’m here to pick up a package,” I shouted in my best Chicago accent.

  After another beat, the voice answered. “We don’t know nothing about a package!”

  We, huh. So there was more than one guy back there.

  “Is this 352 Sangamon? I couldn’t find the number anywhere, so I’m running a little late.”

  “Nah, This is 252,” came the answer. “You got the wrong place.”

  “Aw damn it. Okay, thanks, guy.” Then I took off, headed north.

  A block down the street, I cut east, then doubled back to the warehouse. I had to find a different way in. Since all the ground-floor entrances were blocked, I turned my gaze upward. The building was three floors high, so there might be an upper window that wasn’t boarded up.

  Halfway down the building, I saw what I was looking for: a fire escape leading to a door on the third floor. If I could reach the escape ladder, getting in would be a piece of cake.

  The bottom rung of the ladder was
too high to reach from the ground, so I cast around, looking for something to climb on. The cars parked on the street were too far away. There weren’t any conveniently placed trees, nor were there any dumpsters like they show in the movies.

  The dumpster idea got me thinking, though. I crossed the street and went down a side alley. Sure enough, there were lines of those heavy-duty plastic trash cans the city distributes for trash collection. Those suckers are tough; one of them should easily hold my 220 pounds.

  I wheeled one back to the side of the warehouse and placed it just underneath the fire escape. I scrambled on top, balanced carefully, and grabbed the bottom rung of the ladder. Getting to the next rung was a bit of a struggle, since I couldn’t get purchase with my feet yet, but I managed. Then I climbed as quietly as possible, pausing to look in a window on the second floor. It was blacked out, so I couldn’t see anything.

  At the top, I peered through a window into what looked to be a small storage room; it was empty. Then I turned my attention to the door. It was made of thick metal, with a heavy handle and lock—which was good. Sometimes these emergency doors didn’t even have handles and could only be opened from the inside. I took out my lock picks and set to work.

  Picking locks takes a lot of practice. The basic concept is pretty simple though: most keyed locks use a set of pins that must line up correctly to allow the barrel of the lock to turn. Without a key, small tools can be used to set each individual pin in place. The part that takes skill is getting each of those pins into the correct position. It requires a feel for tiny movements and tension and friction. I’m not great at it, and I can’t pick every lock, but I had this one open in under two minutes. I tried to ease the door open as quietly as possible. I had no idea what was waiting on the other side, and I didn’t want to alert anyone to my presence. The door must have been shut for years, though, because it was stuck. I had to put some muscle into it before it came loose with a horrific screech. So much for stealth—

  I opted for speed instead.