He was an eyewitness to the crime. He had proof, video. Now what?
His first instinct, of course—hand it over to the police. But they’d be wondering what he was doing, videotaping drug buys. What would he say? He was making a documentary? Nobody would believe that. It would take the cops two seconds to realize that Latham was blackmailing suburban drug addicts. He could go to prison.
And say the cops didn’t figure out his scheme or didn’t care. Latham would still be a witness. He’d have to testify in court. He wouldn’t be safe. His mother wouldn’t be safe. Snitches get stitches, sure, but these guys with their automatic weapons weren’t messing around. Forget stitches. They’d put a bullet through his brain.
He could send the video anonymously to the police, but with the camera angle, any halfway decent cop would figure it came from his building.
The good news—the only thing that has sustained him the last two days—is that he could always do it later. He could wait. Maybe the cops would solve it without him. This case was a big deal, right? They’d put a lot of resources into it. Yeah, he told himself, this video might not be necessary.
And there you go: within twenty-four hours, the Chicago PD identified the vehicle used in the shooting. It was in the newspaper reports, which Latham was following closely. So if they knew the car, most of what he could show them was stuff they already knew, right?
Right. He pinballed back and forth like that. They’ll figure it out; they don’t need the video. Still, the video would help—maybe they could use facial recognition on it. But it’s not Latham’s problem. He’s no cop, no avenging superhero.
And then, last night, finally—the word came that they caught the shooter.
Latham gets out of his bed, puts on a T-shirt and jeans, and wakes up his laptop. He has the photo from the newspapers, the mug shots of two young men, Prince Valentine and Damien “Junior” Peppers, enlarged before him. Two young black men.
It’s possible, he told himself. Just because the two guys in the front were white doesn’t mean the guys obscured in the back couldn’t have been Nation gangbangers. Who says black and white people can’t ride in a car together?
And what if it’s otherwise? What if the cops really did get this wrong? It’s not like Latham can bring Peppers and Valentine back to life. What good will an exoneration do them now?
The Chicago PD thinks they solved the case. Why should he tell them otherwise?
Yeah, keep telling yourself that, he thinks as he heads down the hall into the kitchen. All the rationalizing can’t remove the uneasiness in his stomach, constant since that day. And he knows why. It has nothing to do with Prince Valentine or Junior Peppers.
It has everything to do with that innocent little girl. Doesn’t she deserve justice?
He pours cereal into a bowl, stares at it. He knows he has to eat. But he can’t imagine doing so.
He hears a knock on a door. Not his door; another apartment down the hall. You can hear just about anything in this building, with its paper-thin walls. Sit in the living room after ten o’clock and you can hear the next-door neighbors going at it in their bedroom, the grunts and moans, the bedpost banging against the wall.
He hears a word that sends a shiver down his spine. “Police.”
The cops have been all over this neighborhood since the shooting. Latham’s managed to avoid them. His mother was at work when the shooting happened and has since told the officers that. Latham has never been home when they’ve stopped by. The day of the shooting, he ditched out through the alley, driving to work, even though he wasn’t scheduled to be there for several hours. He told his mother that he’d already left by the time the shooting happened. She doesn’t keep tabs on his ever-changing work schedule.
His heart begins to pound. He thinks of that little girl. Thinks of that pain in his stomach that just won’t go away.
He opens the door, peeks into the hallway. A patrol officer, a white guy, big and wide, standing by a door, making a note on a clipboard.
“Excuse me, Officer,” he calls out, realizing he’s just passed the point of no return.
Chapter 33
“HOLY SHIT,” the officer mumbles, sitting at the kitchen table, having watched the video twice on Latham’s laptop.
“You can’t see the shooter in the back seat.” Latham states the obvious. “And I’m not sure the guys in the front seat—I’m not sure you could identify them.”
“Maybe…” The officer, squinting at the laptop screen, shakes his head. “And how’d you say you got this?”
“I—like I said, I got this camcorder.” He holds up a camcorder—not his new one, in fact, but his old one. “I was trying it out.”
It’s a lie, of course, but the cop—young-looking, especially now, seemingly overwhelmed by the video he’s just watched—isn’t paying attention to the niceties of Latham’s story. “I…have to call the lead detective,” he says.
The cop sounds nervous, too. He must be new. Living where he does, Latham is no stranger to the police. He’s never gotten into any real trouble—props to his mother, whom he fears more than any cop—but he’s been questioned by cops and received plenty of cool stares from them over the years. The young ones make him more nervous than the old ones. More intense, less sure of themselves.
The cop walks down the hall and into Latham’s bedroom, pulls a cell out of his pocket, talks quietly, nothing Latham can make out.
Latham takes a breath. He’s scared, no doubt, but more than anything relieved. And convinced he did the right thing.
Still, he lied about why he shot that video. He considered going with his original lie, that he was making a documentary. But he didn’t want the Chicago PD getting its hands on his new camcorder or his laptop. They’d confiscate them as evidence. And who’s to say they wouldn’t figure out his blackmail scheme, landing him in trouble, too?
So he made a spur-of-the-moment adjustment and said he was trying out his “new” camcorder when he just happened upon a shoot-out. He realizes, in hindsight, how convenient—how ridiculous—it sounds.
A few minutes later, the officer returns, looking at a clipboard flipped over a few pages, holding the cell phone against his chest. “Your mother told us you were at work when it happened.”
A slight edge to his voice, more suspicion. The initial shock has worn off. Maybe something the detective said to him on the phone.
“That’s what I told my mom,” Latham rushes to say. “She didn’t know about this video. I didn’t want to get her involved. I was, y’know, scared—”
“Can we talk to your mom?”
“I mean, you can call her at work if you want. She doesn’t get back till six, six thirty tonight.”
The officer returns the phone to his ear and retreats into Latham’s bedroom.
Latham drums his fingers on the kitchen table. Did he just get his mother in trouble? “My mom didn’t lie or anything,” he says to the cop when he returns to the kitchen.
“No, I got that, I got that.” The cop, the name BOSTWICK tagged to his shirt, pulls out a notepad. “Okay, so who else has this video?”
“Nobody,” he says.
“Who else knows about it? Anybody else we can talk to?”
“Nobody else knows about it,” he says.
Bostwick gives him a stare, cocks his head.
“Nobody,” Latham insists.
The cop nods. “Okay. You have it on your camcorder and that disk drive stuck into your laptop.”
“Yeah.”
“Nowhere else? You sure?”
“I’m totally sure.” One lie on top of another on top of another.
“All right. I’m gonna need to take those with me.”
It’s what Latham figured. It was the whole reason he told the cop he used the old camcorder, not his new, hidden one. He figured he might never see it again, at least not for a long time.
“Can you…can my name be kept out of this?” he asks.
The officer sighs. “We’re gonna try. The
detective, he told me, those videos speak for themselves. It doesn’t really matter who took them. But really, it’s up to you, Latham. You sure you haven’t told anybody about this?”
“I’m sure, yeah,” he says.
“Okay. So I’m gonna need you to come downtown with me.” Bostwick raises his hand. “Don’t worry, they just want to interview you. You can drive your own car if you don’t want to be seen in the patrol car. So go ahead and clean up, get your things together. I can wait.”
Latham sighs. He picks up his bowl of cereal and takes it to the sink. So far, so good, he supposes. What the cop said makes sense. The video shows what it shows. It doesn’t matter who took it. He grabs a plastic bag from under the sink and drops in the camcorder and the mini disk.
He looks around. Where’s the officer?
“Latham!” Bostwick calls out. Shit. He’s in Latham’s bedroom. “You got a lot of cameras and equipment in here.”
Shit!
“Yeah, it’s mostly old stuff,” he says quickly, scurrying toward the bedroom. He’s ready with a whole explanation when he walks into the bedroom.
He’s not ready for Officer Bostwick, holding a handgun, extended by a suppressor.
“Sorry,” says Bostwick, his hand shaking as he pulls the trigger.
Chapter 34
THE FIRST time I ever met her was in court.
I had to testify in a drug case. I was a second-year, still green enough to find the whole thing exciting. Especially when the prosecutor prepping me told me that the public defender on the case was one of the best in the building.
I took my seat, got sworn in. When the lawyer at the defense table stood up, I forgot everything about the case. I could barely speak. I felt like someone had turned on a heat lamp inside my chest cavity. I suddenly wished I’d checked myself in the mirror before I came in, finger-combed my hair or something.
Her navy-blue suit, athletic figure, dishwater-blond hair pulled back with a few strands refusing to comply, falling to her cheeks. Normally, a woman who looked like that, my first instinct would be picturing her naked, writhing in bed under me. But this wasn’t carnal lust. The warmth in her eyes, her easy smile, a confidence that was quiet and nonthreatening. I knew it instantly. She was kind. She cared. And if I fought her, she’d fillet me like a fish on the witness stand.
Didn’t catch her last name, but her first name was Valerie.
“Hey, sunshine.” Sosh snaps his fingers at me. “You drifting off on us?”
“Paperwork may not be fun,” Rodriguez joins in, “but it’s an important part of what we do here, Detective Harney.”
I snap out of my trance. It’s probably just sleep deprivation. Or too greasy of a lunch, to help with the hangover. Or meeting with my union rep over the officer-involved shooting.
“No word back on the recanvass?” I ask.
“Haven’t heard,” Carla says.
“Still don’t get why we’re recanvassing,” Sosh contributes. “You need to look up the word solved in the dictionary.”
“They’re called unanswered questions,” I tell him.
He makes a face. “I got unanswered questions about my second marriage,” he says. “You don’t see me calling up my ex to chat.”
“I know. It’s a real mystery why she wouldn’t have stuck with a prize like you.”
“Detective Harney?”
I turn at the sound of the woman’s voice. This must be the FBI agent who called an hour ago, Special Agent Clara Foster. I force my bag of bones out of my chair and shake her hand.
“Good to meet you,” she says. She has a low voice and a no-nonsense approach. Some of these FBI agents are okay, but most of them take themselves way too seriously and look down on us Chicago cops. Agent Foster doesn’t give off an impression either way, which probably means she’s good at her job.
I introduce her to the other detectives. I offer her a chair, but she prefers to stand.
“We got the DNA sample and prints of your Jane Doe,” she says. “Along with the photos. No hits on the prints or the DNA. Best we got from DNA is that she’s from eastern Europe.”
From a visual standpoint, it’s surprisingly hard to determine things like nationality with dead people, even if they’re recently dead. It’s like the things that made them human drain away almost instantly upon death. The young white woman dead on the porch was from eastern Europe? That could work, yeah.
“What’s it to the Bureau?” asks Sosh. Lanny Soscia views FBI agents much as my father used to view the boys my sister, Patti, brought home—he doesn’t like them and trusts them even less.
“I’m on a joint task force with the county,” says Foster. “Human trafficking.”
“Human trafficking,” I say. “You think that’s what we have here?”
“Good chance,” she says. “Nobody’s claimed her?”
“Nope. She could be a runaway. She’s probably old enough to be emancipated.”
“Could be,” but her tone tells me she likes her idea better. “Pretty girl. Agreed?”
“Yeah, I’d say so.”
“Undernourished? Drugs in her system? Track marks on her arms?”
“All of the above,” I say.
Agent Foster smirks, not in a good way. “Sounds like a ‘lost girl.’”
“A lost girl.”
“Someone smuggled over here. No record of her. Forced into prostitution. Hooked on drugs.”
“Then what was she doing with the K-Street Hustlers? They’re into that?”
She takes that question almost as a joke, though none of us is laughing. “Human trafficking is everywhere. A neighborhood street gang wouldn’t be smuggling girls into the country, if that’s what you mean. But they could be protecting the trade. Maybe even getting a little taste of the action. Some of these traffickers bring the girls in and run them, pimp them out. But others sell them as soon as they arrive.”
Agent Foster slides a glossy photograph out of a manila folder. It’s a close-up of the dead girl’s leg, her ankle. A tattoo of a black flower just above her anklebone. I remember seeing it the day of the shooting.
“She was branded,” says Foster.
“Do you recognize the brand?” asks Carla.
Foster shakes her head. “Never seen it before.”
“It looks like a lily,” says Rodriguez. “A black lily.”
“Martha Stewart over here,” Sosh mumbles. He throws Mat an elbow. “I gotta toughen you up. Take you to a Hawks game.”
“All we know about our Jane Doe,” I say to Foster, “is that she went by the name Evie. Honestly, we haven’t focused on her. We figured this was a gang shooting. She was collateral damage.”
Foster puts the photo back in the envelope. “You’re probably right. But we try to learn their identities. Then we can work backward, figure out where they came from, try to put together how they got smuggled here. Try to locate the source.”
“We’ll try to get her identity,” I say. “And let you know.”
“Thanks.” Foster nods. Her eyes are heavy. I have the sense she isn’t expecting much from us, that a lot of the lost girls stay lost.
Chapter 35
FRIDAY NIGHT, we put the band back together. My brothers, Brendan and Aiden, come into town. Patti and I meet them at home. By “home,” I mean the house on the South Side where we grew up, a house that is now empty in light of our mother’s death years ago and the recent incarceration of the patriarch of our family, dear old Pop.
The thing about my wrecking ball to the department—the scandal I unearthed a little over a year ago: one of the casualties was my father, the chief of detectives. He was ultimately convicted on around two dozen federal corruption charges and sentenced to life in prison. It ripped our family apart and almost destroyed Patti.
After Pop’s arrest, we didn’t know what to do with the house. Luckily, the mortgage was paid off, so we just paid the real estate taxes and hired somebody to mow the lawn. Patti dropped by in the winter to run the f
aucets so they wouldn’t explode.
None of us talked to Pop. We went through his lawyer. Pop agreed to sell the house and use the proceeds to pay off his lawyers. Patti found a real estate agent. We’re going to get our personal stuff out this weekend so we can put the house on the market.
We hired packers to throw everything into boxes. The price was exorbitant, but we split it four ways, so it was manageable. And well worth it. None of us wants to admit it, but it’s painful being here. The less time here, the better.
We’re grilling brats, about the only thing we’re good for, on the Weber in the backyard. The heat, the buzz of mosquitoes, the smell of charcoal and grilled meat—it’s like I’m sixteen again.
Aiden, the second oldest, a workout freak who coaches high school wrestling and runs a gym in St. Louis, nearly decapitates me with a football I didn’t see coming. That’d be something. I’ve survived a gunshot wound to the brain and took a bullet to the vest-protected ribs yesterday, and I die from a pigskin chucked at my noggin.
Brendan, the oldest, already having crossed the Rubicon of forty, presides over the grill. He got Pop’s looks more than anyone. The licks of gray at the temples and a midsection that seems to expand every time I see him only enhance that effect. He has a wife and two kids outside Dallas, where he works as a financial planner. He’s the grown-up among us, but he seems to like being here, where he can just be the brother again, drinking and belching and cussing like the rest of the Harney clan.
“So you’re, like, the hero,” says Aiden, dressed, as always, as if he’s about to pump iron, wearing a shirt two sizes too small. He gets into a crouch and wiggles his fingers at me. “C’mere. Let’s see how tough you are.”
“I would if I wasn’t wounded in the line of duty,” I say, raising up my shirt to show the bandages on my ribs. “I’d drop you like third-period French.”
“But I’m only going to use my thumb.” Aiden, doing his best Sean Connery in that movie with Meg Ryan.
“I got another idea what you can do with that thumb.”
The Red Book Page 9
