“I know right. But there’s a biggie here.” Ton’s tone went from sarcastic to serious. “He’s got a connection to the Delaware and Dewitt property.”
“Zora’s photos?”
Ton nodded once. “Ryan filled me in on the latest. The property that had been there was owned by the Darlingtons since the thirties. They long ago outsourced the day-to-day management, but they pulled in the rent and ensured it was run well. Old man Darlington kicks the bucket. The widow gets a new lover. The property is now taken back under her direct control. All sorts of shenanigans ensue. Not least of which is that people are forced out, the rent goes up, and a whole new building goes up. It cost nearly three hundred million to build. Most people think it should’ve cost half that.”
“So this guy pulls in a huge sum. I’m assuming he had to dish out some of it to grease the wheels. Get people going along with it.”
Ton nodded gravely. “He did indeed. Union guys. Politicians. Contractors. Thugs to mess the place up. Cops to ignore the thugs. Maybe even cops to be the thugs.” He tapped the steering wheel. “And he has to keep his gal happy.”
“And the Ferrari waxed.”
“She is a Ferrari.”
The couple walked inside.
“They left the fucking dog. Assholes.” Ton opened and closed the door and was yards ahead before Drexel could say anything. He watched his friend walk up to the dog, bend down, and start petting it. A few minutes later, Kevin flew out of the house and raced down the stairs. While Drexel could not hear the argument that followed, he was certain Ton gave Kevin an earful. Besides, the puke was inches shorter and pounds lighter than Ton.
Kevin walked back up the steps with the dog in hand. Ton walked down the sidewalk and made his way back to the car. He started the engine and drove away. “So that asshole was responsible for getting that building torn down and bribing all the other assholes up and down the chain. And I don’t think he loves Mrs. Darlington.”
Drexel smiled. “What makes you think that?” He laughed.
Later, he turned this scenario over and over in his head, trying to make sense of how Kevin Blair, the building on Dewitt and Delaware, Zora’s photo, and Zora were connected. Was there one? Was he just looking for answers anywhere? What he was convinced of, with no evidence to substantiate it, was that Kevin was not Simon.
Chapter 30
The next morning at the station, Drexel sat in the conference room staring at the board he and Daniela had been building since the first photographs arrived at his desk. He rubbed his chin and held a large Dunkin’ Donuts coffee cup in his other hand. All the leads, all the evidence had led to dead ends. Benoit was dead. Marshall was missing. Kevin was a con man. Despite Ton’s efforts, the religious, Gnostic, and Cathar connections seemed more random than meaningful. He walked up to the board and moved Benoit’s photograph to the far right, away from the rest of the evidence. As he looked at the photo, he wondered what Leary was going to do. Drexel had, technically, violated Chicago PD rules, but only at the behest of his captain’s commanding officer. Besides, they were in the end minor infractions. But that would not deter Sobieski, who would be happy to suspend Drexel or even cashier him out. At the very least, he would want the detective bumped from Homicide.
Victor knocked on the door. “I see you’ve already got a coffee.”
Drexel looked at the table where he left his cup. “Yeah, but it’s nearly gone.”
Victor handed Drexel a fresh cup and closed the door. He sat down. “So tell me why you didn’t haul off on that prick we have for a commander yesterday. What the hell does he have on Ryan?”
Drexel sighed.
“You promised.”
“I did.” And he could not help hearing his sister’s tone in “You promised.” He sat down and pulled the lid off the coffee. His boss had added cream to it. Probably sugar as well. “You remember Ryan?”
“Yeah, your brother. He got caught up in that case last year.”
“Right.” A suspect had kidnapped Ryan and sedated him with heroin in a foolish effort to thwart the police. Victor had helped lead the search. “Well, Ryan has an addiction problem. Had it prior to last year. Heroin. He’s clean now, but it was bad a number of years ago. I was still fresh off patrol. Carl had made the leap to captain in the North Division. Anyway, Ryan was in it deep those years. Would disappear for weeks at a time. Pop up and ask our mom for money. Strung out exactly like you would expect. Ask me. Ask Zora. You know the deal, the way addicts work. So Ryan gets jammed up when some unis raid a house in Sauganash. Ryan’s there with some gang heavies in the north side distribution chain. My brother’s there getting high. The heavies arrived separately. But all are busted for intent to distribute. Ryan heads down state for his time.” He drinks some of the coffee. Victor did put sugar in it. “Well, one of Carl’s detectives lands a case in Wildwood. A couple is found in the front room. Hands and feet bound. The wife is naked. Raped. Bludgeoned with a baseball bat. The man is killed with a single shot to the head. Detectives think it’s a drug deal gone south. Makes sense. The dead man came into possession of a lot of black tar. Figured the wife is raped and tortured to get him to confess where the black tar is. He doesn’t cough it up. Both are killed. The black tar is never found. But a series of fingerprints are found. They connect back to the heavies in the Sauganash. Carl claims that Ryan’s prints are there. And he says there is other evidence. But he kept it back because he knew Ryan was my brother.”
“So anytime you step out of line or threaten to, he uses this as leverage.”
“Yep. I can’t tell if Carl wants me fired or wants leverage. But I do know those guys whose fingerprints were found are serving life. Even if there are no fingerprints, he could go to the DA and seek charges. We’ve seen it before. Could claim Ryan was an associate with those guys.”
“He’s an asshole. Why not let the chips fall where they may?”
Drexel rubbed the back of his neck. “‘Cause I don’t think Ryan was involved, or if he was there, he was stoned out of his mind. He’s clean. But I’m not sure he could handle the fallout. The distribution thing was bullshit. This is bullshit. But I can’t prove it otherwise. The files are locked and sealed away from me.” He looked down at the desk and then back up at Victor. “And I’ve tried to see them.”
“You talked to Ryan about this?”
Drexel shook his head.
“Should you?”
He smiled with closed lips. “I don’t want to send him back over. He gets into heroin again, it’ll be over for him.”
Victor looked at him as a parent would, evaluating whether he agreed with the decision. “Okay. You haven’t seen this evidence?”
“I have not. I’ve asked. Demanded. But Carl won’t cough it up. I’m certain he’s bluffing, but I can’t take the risk.”
“I’ll see what I can do. But quietly.” Victor patted the table. “Leary said he’ll be submitting his report today or tomorrow. He winked at me.”
Drexel nodded. Victor walked out. Drexel saw Daniela hovering outside the door before she entered. “What the hell happened yesterday?”
He waved it off. “We need to keep checking those sites you found.”
“Let’s start with the couple of places near DePaul.”
“Perfecto.”
* * *
They checked out an abandoned YMCA in Logan Square, west of the DePaul campus. The cracks in the sidewalk leading to the entrance were overgrown with grass and weeds. The entry doors were metal frames without the glass that, because of the cross bar, one still had to open to get inside. They found a colony of homeless living in the empty pool and from that point only cursorily examined the rest of the building.
And so it went in four other locations north of the Loop, only separated by a lunch break at Donna’s Deli. A group of students used an abandoned gym for partying. Drexel and Daniela found only the af
termath, but several empty kegs, a forgotten bong, and numerous condoms. An elementary school served as a den for a number of meth and heroin addicts, many lying on small mats with barely a blanket as covering for the nights, which still grew chill. As Drexel wandered among that school’s hallways, behind those who fled if they were aware and assaulted by the stench of human waste, he imagined Ryan years ago holing up in such a place, shooting heroin whose power fed a desire so strong that people would live in such a place to get that high. Drexel let the local precinct know, but they already knew and once a week swept through and removed the husks of humanity occupying the hallways and rooms.
They pulled up to yet another school: Ulysses S. Grant Elementary. This one built before the Great Depression and three stories of brick and broken out windows. Daniela held her hand to the door handle. “Who would’ve thought there were so many broken people in this city?”
He had to remember that she was not a cop. She had seen plenty of broken bodies in her work as a CSI, but she had not seen the daily run-ins with the living, which might have been even more disheartening than the dead. Long ago, Drexel had decided everyone was broken, some more than others. The homeless and the addicts they were finding today were broken by society or simple human screwups plunged them into the abyss. Some clawed their way out of it. Many did not. The murderers were broken more—by a snap decision at a moment of anger or by a calculated brutality. Either way, the result was the same.
He opened his door without comment and stepped out. As they walked to the front entrance, a four-door older model silver Honda Accord pulled up behind the Taurus. Drexel walked back down the steps and held his badge up. The door opened and a priest—his clerical collar visible through the black jacket that was zipped halfway up his chest—stepped out. The jacket did nothing to hide his paunch. His gray, full beard was lengthy and dotted with black. What was left of his hair on his head crested above the ears and along the back in a thin strip of gray and black. On his face was a pair of large, plastic black glasses, which Drexel could tell from several feet away were smudged. “Hello,” he said. He walked up and extended his hand. “I’m Father John.”
Drexel shook his hand. “Father. I’m Detective Drexel Pierce and this is Daniela Longfurd. We’re with Chicago PD. What’re you doing here?”
“Making my rounds.” When John noticed Drexel’s perplexed look, he waved to follow him and walked to the back of the car.
Drexel kept a close eye on him as John opened the trunk to reveal crates of sandwiches, apples, oranges, and water.
“This is one of the sites I know many people come to find a bit of warmth and cover. So I bring them some food and water and tell them about the shelters, and if they’ll listen, I tell them the Good News.”
“I see. That’s very kind. We’re just heading in. If we find people inside, we’re presuming this isn’t the place we’re looking for.”
“Well, there’ll definitely be a number of folks in there.”
“Which church are you associated with?”
“I’m the priest at St. Nicholas in Avondale. Been there a dozen years now.”
“How many times a week do you make your rounds?”
“Twice.” He lifted an empty crate out and set it on the ground. He started taking sandwiches, apples, and water bottles and placing them into it. “I go to about eight locations.”
“Are there people always there?”
John winked at Drexel. “Wouldn’t do much good to go where no one is at, would it?”
As the priest closed the trunk, Drexel picked up the crate. John looked at him, nodded, and led the way into the abandoned school. Daniela trailed behind. Once inside, they followed a hallway to one of the first classrooms. Two men and a woman walked up to Father John. They recognized him and accepted his gifts.
John took his time distributing the food. Several of the people seemed to know him well, and he conversed with them, laughed with them. Before he left each room, he offered to pray, and no one declined or challenged it, so all would bow their heads. Drexel bowed his head the minimum he could get away with to be respectful if not a participant. He watched John, his eyes closed with long practice of prayer, while many of the others fumbled with their hands and clenched their eyes—opening them every so often and looking quickly around.
Back outside, Drexel and John leaned against the Honda. Flecks of dandruff dotted John’s jacket. Drexel asked, “Are there any locations you know—gyms, schools, Ys—that don’t have homeless or addicts in them?”
He tapped his index finger on his chin. “I’m not sure. I don’t tend to remember those. And it’s mostly schools. Such a shame.”
“Can you tell us the ones you do visit?” asked Daniela.
“Yes. I can do that.”
Daniela typed the locations into her phone as he said them. “Thanks. This should help us by letting us focus on other ones that probably don’t have people.”
“Sure. Sure. I must be moving on now. Do you want to pray?”
Drexel shook his head. “No. But thanks anyway.” He gave the priest a twenty-dollar bill and wished him luck.
As they got back into the Taurus, the Honda backed up and pulled away. Drexel’s phone rang. He knew it was Doggett from the ring tone: the Dark Helmet theme from Spaceballs. “Hey, this is Drexel.”
“Hey. Doggett. You need to get back to the station. Like ASAP.”
“What’s up?”
“Another envelope.”
Chapter 31
Another manila envelope, address facing up, sat on his desk. Daniela, wearing bright green nitrile gloves, touched the top-right corner. Drexel touched it where she did.
“Feel that?” she asked.
He nodded. “Like it’s dried. Got wet somewhere along the way.” He looked at the address written in the now familiar block letters with the “ago” of Chicago in cursive. No return address. Three stamps featuring three different versions of Batman. No postmark.
He watched her flip the envelope over, unclasp the metal tines, and lifted the flap. She pulled the items out. Two photos and a letter.
“Shit.” Daniela dropped one of the photos into a plastic bag and handed it to Drexel. She picked up the next one.
“Shit.”
“What?” asked Victor, who stood with four other detectives a few feet away.
Drexel held it up toward them. “It’s Marshall.”
The photograph showed a bruised Marshall, small scrapes on his face, with his eyes open, scared, recognizing the fate before him. Unlike the others, however, Marshall laid on the floor, a small rope visible near his ankles. Marshall’s hands were behind him, as if he were handcuffed. The photo was also less stylized, less composed—he was not sure the exact word he was looking for. And he wondered why the exact word mattered at all in the context.
The second photograph displayed the now familiar chalk patterns. Marshall’s dismembered body was displayed in a triangle, which was inside a circle. Three items sat at the vertices of the triangle. At the head, Drexel recognized a drawing of Leonardo da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man. He could not recognize the other items from the picture alone. The back indicated an address in Lake View East.
He set the photo down and took the letter from Daniela. Typed and addressed to Drexel just like the last one.
In the name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.
I, Simon, said to the Lord, “He who stood, stands, and will stand.”
Enclosed find my message to the world. My time, my ascension nears.
Caedite eos. Novit enim Dominus qui sunt eius.
Simon
He laid the letter on the desk. Something felt different, but he could not pin it down. “Let’s get to the scene.”
* * *
The site turned out to be yet another abandoned home six blocks west of Lake Shore Drive. The home w
as a three-story brick building, once owned by Lou Metcalf before it was seized by Great Lakes First National Bank for mortgage default. The house had only been abandoned for a month. A nice house like it in Lake View East would sell quickly once it hit the market—though its newest circumstance might make it a more difficult sale.
Patrol officers had entered the house intent on preserving evidence, which meant they did not smash the door in and they did not move or touch anything other than the floor or door handles—but with nitrile gloves on—as they swept the house. They had debated whether Simon would be present or not. The general feeling had been he would not, but they decided to play it safe nonetheless.
Forensic techs were dusting doorknobs, handrails, light switches, and faucets. Power and water had long been shut off, but they were looking everywhere for anything in case Simon had touched it.
Marshall’s body, facing up, was in the front living room. Simon had ripped up the carpet, exposing bare hardwood floor beneath. The house was devoid of any furniture, and removing the carpet had been a simple process. The quarter-round that had been attached to the baseboard was tossed to the far corner, nails poking out. The room looked out onto a small front yard and the street. The curtain rods were missing, so Drexel had the CSIs dusting for fingerprints at the corners of the windows. They found small holes consistent with staple punches.
As she waited for Noelle to arrive and declare Marshall officially dead, Daniela bagged the jar of nothing that sat near Marshall’s right foot. She then used a small spoon to shovel a cone of dark dirt—the kind Drexel’s father always called good vegetable gardening dirt—near Marshall’s left foot into a sterile evidence container. She used her gloved finger to push the last she could get onto the spoon. She then used trace evidence tape to lift the remaining dirt from the floor.
The Vitruvian Man was printed and then cut to the square, leaving out Leonardo’s handwritten notes. Drexel looked at Marshall’s face, ignoring the space between the neck and torso. What the hell did all this have to do with Cathars and Gnosticism? Did it mean anything? Did they make too much of the quotations and symbols? No, he knew it meant something to the killer, but the logic, the meaning was impenetrable.
Kill Them All (Drexel Pierce Book 2) Page 25
