Serial Intent

by Steve Bradshaw

  “Did you know Marcantonio’s name got on the Dario List?” she asked.

  “I did.” Jennings stared out the window like a blind man facing a wall.

  “Your son chose to represent a monster you knew had been scheduled for termination. Your son’s involvement jeopardized our mission. It got our sniper killed. The meeting site and security measures presented too many variables, and then Barry Woods showed up. ”

  “That is what caused the problem, not my son or Chase Tower. A decision to address Mr. Woods’s bylaw infraction the same night of the execution of a major drug lord was the error.”

  “We had no choice. Mr. Woods was talking to Aaron Wolfe. You know very well that Wolfe is a special problem. I’m sorry Jenn. Your son became an unacceptable variable.”

  “The only reason Eldon took the assignment was because I forced him. Our firm was navigating very choppy financial waters. We were facing bankruptcy. William Marcantonio offered me a way out, a lucrative deal that righted our ship. I had to take it.

  “As an officer on the board of the Dario Group, I thought I would get some consideration after all these years. My hope was the Marcantonio execution could be delayed to the summer. I would have handled it myself, but my health prevents me from doing many things. I sent Eldon.”

  “We’ve always had an understanding. Once a name is voted onto the Dario List, they are off limits. That means they are no longer a viable source of revenue. Your decision to engage Marcantonio was a conflict of interest. You know better, Jenn.”

  He sipped his scotch. He knew she was right. “My son is busy, you know.”

  “Busy with what?”

  “He’s frightened, convinced he and his private investigators are exposed.”

  “Please tell me more.”

  “Sometimes Eldon’s not as smart as I had hoped. To this day he has never considered the possibility his office is bugged.” Jennings held out his glass for more. She poured. “Eldon met with his PIs late Friday.”

  “I thought the three private investigators quit that night at Chase Tower.”

  He sipped with a shaking hand. “They concluded that a vigilante group is out there.”

  Finally! You’re getting to the reason I’m here, she thought.

  “Friday they constructed a plan to find it.”

  “Why?”

  “They believe the vigilante group intends to terminate each of them because of their association with the Marcantonio crime family—they connected the sniper dots. They see what connects the targets.”

  “Serial killers who have beaten the criminal justice system,” she said.

  “They believe competitors of the Marcantonio crime family will hunt them down over the territorial reorganization period. They want knowledge and then they will take my son and the PIs for a walk on the ice. They also believe the Marcantonio family will hunt them because the new guys probably had something to do with the execution of their patriarch.”

  “A paranoid group to say the least,” she said.

  “Their only chance to survive is to locate and expose the vigilante group.”

  She puffed her cigar and squinted in a cloud of smoke. “Their paranoia has painted them into a corner,” she said.

  “They spent a good deal of time planning. Their methods to locate the vigilante group include accessing our Detroit-based sniper source and searching for Dario.”

  She sat up. The ash broke from her cigar, hit the floor, and exploded. “They know about Dario?”

  “They don’t know Dario. They know about a unique individual, his memorable appearances on the South Side and at the parking garage. They have POD video. Unlike the CPD, these guys are employing the most advanced technology available to enhance Dario’s image. They have his face—which won’t help much.”

  Looking across the city she pushed out her cigar in her empty glass. “This is the price we pay when we step away from the bylaws. Now we have Fitz, Cranston, Michaels, your son, and God knows who else involved in hunting the Dario Group.”

  Jennings knew with the first sip of scotch—still, he enjoyed delivering the bad news even when his stomach began to cramp. “The $100,000 you put in Paul Timberman’s account for the Detroit sniper is creating unintended consequences, my dear. Not only are the people in Detroit unhappy with the Dario Group, the Chicago police discovered the sizeable deposit and believe someone paid Mr. Timberman to shoot Detective Wolfe.”

  “Timberman went rouge on us. We had to salvage what we could”

  Jennings turned to her for the first time. Images began to blur more than usual, but he did not let on. “Who shot Detective Aaron Wolfe and Commander Louie Landers? It seems to me you've lost your way.”

  She smiled—they had been talking almost an hour. Jennings finished his second glass of tainted scotch. He was supposed to think the abdominal pain was dinner related—a bad piece of meat. And most days he felt nauseous—this would be no different. She thought the blurred vision, labored breathing, salivation, and perspiration would go unnoticed until the end. Her only regret was the possibility she had missed something important before Jennings’s heart stopped.

  “You’ve had an amazing life, Jennings. You accomplished so much. You have much to be proud of.” She wetted a napkin and picked up the lone cigar ash off the tile. Struggling to keep his eyes open, Jennings found her below his wheelchair doing her clean up. With her gloved hand she reached up and took the empty glass from his gnarled fist.

  He smiled. “What is it—Clitocybe rivulosa?”

  “Yes, Jenn. The best.”

  “You are so thoughtful to use the muscarine toxin, a most gentle route. You knew my heart could not handle—”

  She closed his eyes and kissed his head. Jacques would be proud . . .

  Twenty-Seven

  The money never arrived in Detroit, and they were not interested in excuses—they had a reputation to keep. The four deployed were uneducated specialists, trained in the streets. In their world, rank was not bars or stars; it was age and scars. The oldest wounded knew best how to kill and disappear, but no one had ever met a man like Dario before.

  * * *

  The security of the Dario Group (and their bastion) depended on the security of the second floor of Northwestern Memorial Hospital. There, Sally Day lay in a bed down the hall from Commander Louie Landers surrounded by CPD guards—someone wanted both of them dead and Wolfe had no more time to spare.

  On the elevator ride down from the ICU, his phone rang. There had been a death at the Willis Tower building. Normally Wolfe would release an old man found dead in a wheelchair with no trauma, but this one caught his interest. The name Jennings Babcock rang a bell—an owner of property on West 27th Street. It was the place where Pender got a sniper’s bullet between the eyes and Dario made his debut. The Babcocks got on Wolfe’s list. In route, he left instructions no one moves the body until he gets a look.

  Crowley got the POD video from Sergeant Irwin as promised. He took a sick-day to get out of the office and away from the phone. Six hours on each side of the parking garage incident meant a lot of tape to watch. He was convinced the video held the keys to solving the string of homicides in his city. He also believed the man called Dario was at the center of the carnage. Crowley had to find the connection between the Sorensens, Marcantonio crime family, and members of the CCLR. And if he got lucky, he would uncover the explanation for targeting Wolfe and shooting Landers.

  “Mr. Babcock, we meet again,” Wolfe said.

  “This is not a good time for me, Detective. My father died. I need to make arrangements. Can we meet at a later date?”

  “I’m sorry. Did you think this was about something other than your father’s homicide?” Wolfe studied the lawyer and immediately saw the shock in his eyes. It was as if Eldon Babcock just realized there was a possibility his father had not died from natural causes.

  Eldon pointed to a chair by the window. “Please, have a seat. I honestly had not considered foul play. My father
was eighty-four years old. He had heart disease, bladder cancer, crippling arthritis, and had survived two strokes. One left him in a wheelchair.”

  “How active in the business was your father, Mr. Babcock?”

  “Minimal. He was on the founders’ board. They met once a quarter. Other than that, he would come up here to roll around and snoop like most old people do.”

  “He made you work with William Marcantonio, didn’t he?” Wolfe pushed.

  “I don’t know if I would say that,” Eldon snapped.

  “You’re smarter than this, Mr. Babcock. Don’t play games. You’re in serious trouble. You have people coming for you.”

  Babcock’s nervous eyes crawled up Wolfe’s chest and stopped on his cold face. He saw a hardened homicide detective who had seen hundreds of gruesome deaths. Babcock saw the anger and the intensity burning inside the man who spent a lifetime hunting devious demons.

  “I don’t know what you think you know, Mr. Wolfe.”

  “You think you can find the Dario Group on your own?” he asked with locked eyes.

  “The Dario Group?” Babcock looked away.

  “Do you really believe you can avoid the Marcantonio family zealots, the fanatics, the young Turks who blame you for the patriarch’s execution?”

  “But I had nothing to do—”

  “You didn’t? You were the last close adviser on board, Mr. Babcock. You were the one who set up the meeting where Mr. Marcantonio’s head exploded like a watermelon dropped from a ten-story building.

  “Or maybe you are hunted by the crime families that believe you were the close confidant to the drug lord. These miserable excuses for people have waited a lifetime for this day to come. It’s their turn, Mr. Babcock. They desperately want to fill the void created when Marcantonio’s empty body dropped to the floor that night. They want to take over the businesses they’ve always coveted.”

  “Stop it!” Babcock exploded. “Okay. I’m worried about all of that. But I’m working with my team of private investigators to get to the bottom of the Marcantonio shooting. I know we must solve the case or—”

  “—or you will die. Now, doesn’t that feel better? It’s called truth, Babcock. If you level with me, you may have a chance to survive this runaway train. If you lie, I can promise you and your PI friends, you will each die a very painful death.”

  “Do you believe my father was killed?”

  “Yes.”

  “How do you know?”

  “The medical examiner said time of death was between nine and ten last night. Your father was with someone when he died, yet they did nothing about it. It was someone who smokes expensive cigars and drinks expensive scotch,” Wolfe said. “It was a woman.”

  “How could you possibly know all of that?”

  “Your father’s wheel chair was not centered on the window. It was positioned for a chair to be next to it, the chair returned to the conference table, the only chair wiped clean of fingerprints.” Wolfe looked around Babcock’s office for anything that could help him solve his latest puzzle.

  “I smelled scotch on your father. I smelled cigar smoke on your father’s blanket. There was no cigar or flask or glass of scotch.”

  “He could have had a cigar earlier. You’re guessing, Detective Wolfe.”

  “Trace cigar ash on the floor, Babcock. The cigar smoker missed it when they tidied up. The CSI boys may be able to tell me the brand—I’m betting it’s unique.”

  “You still don’t know if he died of natural causes or if someone killed him. Even you need to wait for the medical examiner to complete the inquest,” Babcock spouted.

  Wolfe stopped scouring the office and zeroed in on Babcock. “Few people die with their eyes closed—unless they are asleep in bed. Someone closed his eyes.”

  Babcock leaned back. The reality of the simple observation sunk in. “If that’s true, I don’t know who would want to kill my father,” he said.

  Wolfe leaned closer. “What woman would close his eyes, Mr. Babcock?”

  No man, he thought. “Only one person,” Babcock gasped. “Margaret Sorensen.”

  “Now we’re getting somewhere,” Wolfe said. “Your father and the Sorensens, how well did they know each other?”

  “They go back forty years. They were very close. Dr. Sorensen was strange. Margaret Sorensen and my father were close, maybe closer than they should have been. I think they had an affair. It was love. My mother never said anything about it, but she knew. Pretty sure Jacques Sorensen knew too.”

  “Are you looking for Dario?” Wolfe threw a curve and looked for a reaction.

  Babcock moved from memory lane to Wolfe’s question. “Dario, I don’t know the name. But we are looking for someone. We think there’s a guy out there hunting the snipers hired by a vigilante group.”

  “Vigilante group?” Wolfe repeated without emotion.

  “The victims of the snipers are similar,” Babcock said.

  “So, you and your PI friends surmised a group of law abiding citizens came together to right these wrongs?”

  “Yes. We believe a well-meaning vigilante group has been formed to rid the world of the demented serial killers who beat the legal system. They are doing what they believe our justice system was designed to do but does not do. They are focused on truth. They don’t give a flip about legal process or the rights of a killer.”

  “What makes you so sure about all of this?”

  “Because I helped one of those monsters beat the system. I’m a damn good lawyer. I can tie up the legal process and achieve my goals regardless of guilt or innocence.” Babcock dropped his head. “Not a day goes by I don’t regret putting Pender on the streets.”

  “So, this vigilante group is operating in Chicago,” Wolfe said. “They contract with snipers to kill these monsters. And now some crazy guy is running around out there hunting their snipers. Is this your theory?”

  “Yes. It is theory. We have video of a man at two locations that also involved snipers. One was a vacant lot on the South Side where Pender was killed by a sniper. The other is the parking garage on Washington where a sniper was killed.”

  “Tell me more about the man you believe is hunting snipers.”

  “We have him on POD video. We have experts in enhancement technology working on it now. We have a face and biometrics. This guy is strong. If we find him, we will have a path to the vigilante group. He may be the Dario guy you asked about.”

  “How good are the facial enhancements?” Wolfe asked. On his last word a bullet pierced the window on the 97th floor and hit the ceiling sprinkler head above Babcock. It began to spray. Wolfe dove over the table and pulled Babcock to the floor before a second bullet shattered the window and pushed Babcock’s chair to the wall. Wolfe began to drag Babcock to the window.

  “God no!” Babcock screamed. “Let me go. What are you doing?”

  With a single thrust Wolfe whipped Babcock toward the windows like a ragged doll. The attorney in the three-piece suit slid across the polished floor like a hockey puck on fresh ice. He collided with the three-foot wall beneath the shattered windows and started to get up.

  Wolfe yelled, “Don’t stand. Put your face on the floor and lower your butt or get hit.” The next bullet shattered more glass and buried in the wall. Wolfe elbow-crawled across the expansive office to the corner of the northeast windows. He peered over the three-foot ledge and saw the last flash of light above the observatory deck on the John Hancock Center. The sniper dropped out of view.

  I’m impressed, a daytime shoot. Got your gear up there and used a silencer. Nice technique, but you’re still a rookie. This is the second target you missed. Someone’s not going to be happy with you.

  “Are you gonna call the cops?” Babcock yelled across the room, his head still glued to the floor. “We gotta catch that sniper. You’re wasting time.”

  With second thoughts, Wolfe looked over at the attorney he should have left for a bullet. People like Babcock were the root cause of Wolfe’s lat
est unfolding mess. “The sniper’s gone.”

  “A missed opportunity,” Babcock squawked.

  “Not really. You will see him again. The good news is we know who wants you guys dead. The bad news is we still don’t know where to find the vigilante group.”

  I must admit, I’m a bit surprised Dario had not yet neutralized the sniper. Maybe he had a full schedule today. Wolfe got to his feet and walked across the office kicking broken glass and holstering his gun. He pulled Babcock to his feet. “Let’s go.”

  “I guess I should thank you,” Babcock said.

  “Don’t thank me. When we get downtown, call your PI buddies. You boys need protection. If they think they can go it alone, you tell them Wolfe knows everything and they won’t last twenty-four hours.”

  * * *

  The next snow entered the city in the early morning hours of the first Wednesday following the Dario Group meeting on Birch. Robert Mason and Charlie Dunn sat on their bench in Lincoln Park looking out over the frozen lake. This time it was Robert’s idea to meet.

  “You read the newspaper this morning,” Dunn asked.

  “Nope. Didn’t see it,” Mason said. “I’m not interested in all the bad news anymore.”

  “Considering what we have gotten ourselves into, you should keep an eye on what’s happening around here, Robert. There was a shooting, the Willis Tower downtown.”

  “Probably some office skirmish that got out of control. They got their own little world going on up there in the clouds, Charlie. Most are insurance companies or law firms—all crooks making all the money.”

  “No. There you go again. None of that is correct,” Dunn said as he struggled to find a match for his dead cigar. “I start reading the newspaper, and you stop. A sniper on the John Hancock Building was taking pot shots at people in the Willis Tower. It all took place on the ninety-seventh floor. The John Hancock was the only building in the city tall enough to get a bead on people at the top of Willis Tower—a law firm.”