The Black Cage

by Jack Fredrickson

‘Two fourteen,’ the counter clerk said.

  Rigg went up and knocked.

  ‘Yeah?’ a voice slurred through the door.

  ‘Ten bucks for two minutes of conversation.’

  The door opened ten dollars’ worth, which was more than a crack, less than a welcome. One red eye, part of a second and a face full of whiskers appeared behind the crack, in a mist of muscatel.

  ‘You saw Richie Fernandez get cuffed?’ Rigg asked.

  Wally beckoned the money with a rub with his thumb and forefinger. Rigg folded the bill lengthwise and pushed it through the opening.

  ‘I was down the hall and saw it, sure.’

  ‘Was this one of the cops?’ Rigg held his phone to the gap so Wally could see Lehman’s picture.

  ‘Another ten,’ Wally said.

  ‘Five, after you look at a second picture.’

  ‘Up front.’

  Rigg passed through the five.

  ‘Yeah, that’s him,’ Wally said.

  Rigg then summoned up the digital McGarry.

  ‘The other, yeah.’

  ‘Your full name?’

  ‘Just Wally.’

  And so it would be Just Wally, but it was enough.

  He called Aria’s cell phone and asked her to meet him at the Pink. She said she was already there, working. He got there at 11:30.

  ‘You said you’ve got more than Lehman’s statement about the girl,’ she called from inside her office.

  ‘Write first, to release at noon,’ he said, and headed for his desk.

  He’d worked it in his mind driving back, so it only took a few minutes. He forwarded it to Aria and followed it into her office.

  HARBOR GIRL IDENTIFIED. SECRET SUSPECT?

  Milo Rigg, Chicago Examiner

  According to a statement by the Cook County Sheriff’s Department, the girl whose body washed up in a barrel in Montrose Harbor has been identified as Jennifer Ann Day, 16, of northwest suburban Des Plaines. She disappeared December 30, after leaving her home to go to the public library. Her parents received a ransom note the next day demanding that they not inform the police and await further instructions that never came. Miss Day was a junior at Maine Township High School West. Funeral arrangements are pending. Cook County Sheriff Joseph Lehman is working alongside the Chicago and Des Plaines police departments in the investigation.

  Perhaps related to the murder of Miss Day is the troubling disappearance of a person of interest in the Graves sisters’ killings, Richie Fernandez, of Chicago. According to witnesses at the Kellington Arms, Sheriff Lehman, accompanied by Cook County Medical Examiner Charles McGarry, arrested him at the hotel a week before the Graves girls’ bodies were discovered on German Church Road in suburban Cook County. Information about the arrest, including whether and where Fernandez is being held, has not been forthcoming. Both Sheriff Lehman and Medical Examiner McGarry have denied any knowledge of the arrest of Mr Fernandez.

  ‘Feldott wants some things held back,’ Rigg said. ‘Everything else was off the record.’

  ‘The yellow card the Day family received and that faint scar on their Jennifer Ann’s ankle?’ she said.

  ‘Most especially, Feldott won’t let me use those yet.’

  ‘Good, because you haven’t yet given Lehman your card,’ she said. ‘Turning it over might speed things up when one more victim is discovered.’

  ‘The one with the tight cluster of three freckles,’ he said.

  ‘And now you want to report Fernandez. Your two sources to the bust: they’re both winos?’

  ‘Maybe just the fellow down the hall from Fernandez’s room. I didn’t smell grape on the night clerk.’

  ‘And where is Lanz, these days?’

  ‘Perhaps still dining and sleeping free at the county’s expense, or quietly released. I can’t get any confirmation about him, either.’

  She pursed her lips, glancing again at Rigg’s piece on her screen. ‘I don’t know. It seems extreme, you making such a show of Fernandez. Lehman would have to know there’d be hell to pay if he brought forth a suspect he’s been holding illegally. Unless …’

  ‘Unless Fernandez is no longer capable of being brought forth,’ Rigg finished for her. ‘Or, maybe Fernandez is fine and healthy, and they think nobody will care, so long as Fernandez is the guy.’

  ‘“They”?’

  ‘McGarry’s in on it, Aria.’

  ‘That’s problematic,’ she said.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘He’s rich,’ she said, ‘and Donovan likes rich people.’

  He looked past her, drawn to the woodland picture Benten had taped to the wall. It looked to be the safest place on earth.

  ‘Milo?’

  He turned back to her.

  ‘This is going to hit the fan. You’re accusing important people of suppressing information.’

  ‘Like I’m suppressing information by not reporting the card?’

  ‘We’re agreed that it’s time, right now?’ she said.

  He nodded.

  She managed a small smile, reaching for her phone. ‘Bombs away, babies.’

  She’d insisted that Lehman come to them, and so they sat in Aria’s office.

  ‘Where the hell did you get this?’ Lehman asked, reading the pale yellow card through the Ziploc plastic bag. Rigg had replaced both of Carlotta’s Ziplocs with ones he’d run out to buy, to make sure no stray fingerprint of hers would be discovered. Aria agreed to keep her out of it.

  ‘Left inside my car,’ Rigg said. ‘I heard the Day family received a ransom demand on an identical card.’

  Lehman set the bag on Aria’s desk. ‘This was how you knew to ask the Graves daughter about the crossed toes?’

  ‘And to ask you and McGarry about freckles and ankle scars. Jennifer Ann Day has a scar on her ankle.’

  ‘This card lists a fourth thing, a purplish birth mark. You didn’t ask about that.’

  ‘I didn’t,’ Rigg said.

  Lehman stared at him for a few seconds. ‘What’s it link to?’

  ‘Anthony Henderson had such a mark behind his right ear,’ Rigg said.

  ‘Damn it,’ Lehman said.

  ‘The Stemec Henderson killer knows about that purplish birthmark, like he knows about the crossed toes on Beatrice Graves—’

  ‘And the ankle scar on Jennifer Ann Day,’ Lehman interrupted. ‘Same damn killer?’

  ‘Have you pressed Richie Fernandez about the Stemec Henderson boys?’ Rigg asked.

  ‘Who the hell is this Richie Fernandez you keep mentioning?’ Lehman asked, but his face showed no curiosity. He was lying.

  ‘Somebody you arrested. Remember how the name upset McGarry?’

  ‘Where exactly did you hear about this Fernandez?’

  ‘Tipped.’

  ‘We’ve been leaning on dozens of people,’ Lehman said. ‘Your Mr Fernandez could have been one of the hundreds we braced.’

  ‘This one you actually took away, you and McGarry. I’d like your comment on him.’

  Lehman grabbed the Ziplocs off Aria’s desk and stood up. ‘In exchange for not charging you with withholding evidence in a murder investigation, I’ll count on you not to report this?’

  Aria looked at Rigg, then at Lehman, and nodded.

  ‘Mum’s the word on the card for now,’ Rigg said.

  ‘See that you don’t,’ Lehman said to Aria, and headed for the door. Rigg followed him.

  ‘I need a comment on Fernandez,’ Rigg said.

  ‘I’ll ask my people,’ Lehman said, starting down the stairs.

  ‘He’s lying,’ Rigg said, returning to Aria’s doorway.

  ‘If Fernandez had been unproductive, he’d have been released and Lehman would have said that,’ she said. ‘If Fernandez had been viable, he’d have been announced.’

  ‘Luckily, McGarry is a part of it,’ Rigg said.

  ‘He’s not strong like Lehman,’ she said.

  ‘He can crumble. The question is how to squeeze him,’ Rigg said. ‘Bu
t first, let’s see what the mysteriously reclusive Deputy Glet has to say about all this.’

  ‘All what?’ she asked.

  ‘Everything he’s keeping secret.’ He went to his desk and called Glet. Again, the deputy answered right away. He was no longer dodging Rigg’s calls.

  Rigg told him about the yellow index card he’d just given Lehman. ‘Four distinguishing features, two relating to the girls that have been found, a third matches Anthony Henderson. It’s the same kind of index card the Day family received with a ransom request. Same killer, then and now.’

  Glet said nothing.

  ‘Why so silent, Jerome?’ Rigg asked.

  ‘You’re wrong.’

  ‘Things you learned at ATF?’

  ‘Later,’ the deputy said, and clicked him away.

  A hand touched the back of his shoulder. ‘How about dinner and then a look at your file boxes?’ Aria asked.

  ‘I’ve got plans,’ he said. He had no plans. He hadn’t had plans since Judith was killed. But a plan to have plans with the gorgeous Aria Gamble seemed a most dishonorable thing to do.

  He grabbed his laptop and hurried out the door.

  He drove west in the dwindling dusk, passing out of the suburbs and into the farmland, as much away from Aria Gamble as toward hope of discovering something new. Three pickups and two cars were parked at the bar at the barren intersection, their owners inside, braced for another evening’s merriment of beer, grilled cheese and decorated deer heads. He drove on, trying to focus on what he might have set loose by taunting Lehman about Richie Fernandez, and not imagine anything about Aria Gamble at all.

  He cut his headlamps at the last turn and shut off his engine along the side road that bordered McGarry’s estate.

  The mansion was dim. Only a few low-wattage lights were on. Like when he’d come with Aria, all of the outbuildings were dark.

  Five minutes later, headlamps sped through the intersection behind him and slowed to turn on to the drive leading up to the house. Rigg powered down his side window.

  The electronic gate opened, the headlights shot up the drive and the car slammed to a stop next to the house. The headlamps switched off. The car’s interior light came on as the driver’s door was opened.

  No new lights came on inside the mansion. Rigg stuck his head out his side window, straining to hear. Footsteps crunched on the snow, growing louder. The driver was crossing the ground at the back of the mansion.

  A gentle sound of something being pulled softly across the snow came then. Rigg squinted across the great expanse of the rear grounds but could see nothing. He looked back at the mansion. The interior of the car remained lit. The driver had been in too much of a hurry to close the car door.

  The gentle pulling sound continued for another few minutes and then it stopped. Again, footsteps crunched the snow, only this time they grew fainter. The driver was going back toward the driveway.

  The car door slammed; the car’s interior light went off. A moment later, a new light was switched on inside the mansion.

  Rigg started his car, turned it around and drove back to the intersection.

  He’d taunted Lehman, and he’d taunted well.

  ‘What are you up to, Charles McGarry?’ he asked the night.

  EIGHTEEN

  Aria Gamble stood grinning by the front desk when Rigg walked into the Pink the next morning. ‘I do so love risky behavior.’

  Eleanor handed him the small sheaf of pink message slips. ‘Deputy Glet has been the most persistent. He said your phone is switched off.’

  ‘Ah, yes, my phone,’ Rigg said, fanning through the slips. He’d turned it off at six fifteen, when it rang and he’d recognized Greg Theodore’s number on the display. He wasn’t surprised; the Trib’s media man was just the first of many who were likely to ask if he’d gone nuts by accusing Lehman and McGarry of making an illegal arrest.

  The sheaf of slips in his hand proved him right. Besides the half-dozen from Glet and one from Corky Feldott, the dozen other messages were from reporters.

  ‘So, there’s a ruckus?’ Rigg asked the two women, feigning confusion.

  ‘Luther Donovan called me first thing this morning,’ Aria said, still smiling. ‘I said that, since the Bastion is so short-staffed, you were able to slip the piece on to our site without my knowledge.’

  ‘The hell you did,’ Rigg said.

  ‘Actually, I told Donovan that your reporting will get him readers, and readers will get him advertisers. Greed always shuts him up.’

  ‘Good, because I was going to tell Theodore that my witnesses were society friends of yours, living at the Kellington Arms,’ Rigg said.

  She laughed. ‘We’re on the same page, then,’ she said, heading for her office.

  Eleanor watched her go, then turned back to Rigg, clearly puzzled by the strangely easy banter she’d just witnessed. He wondered briefly if he should wonder about it, too, but pushed the thought out of his mind and went to his desk to call Glet.

  ‘I talked to Lehman,’ Glet said. ‘I told him I heard about a match between the card the Day family received and the one you gave him listing body marks. He listened, said nothing. I told him you’d been pestering me about some guy named Fernandez. He said you’d been bugging him, too, but he doesn’t know what the hell you’re talking about. You best be careful around him, Milo. Your Fernandez story crumbles if he wasn’t with the Graves girls.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter who Fernandez was with. The Fernandez story is about Lehman snatching a supposed witness and making him disappear.’

  ‘Unless he released him right away, like I’ve been saying,’ Glet said.

  ‘Then why doesn’t Lehman say that?’

  ‘You’re thinking Lehman needs a patsy, someone to soften up, to blame.’

  ‘Or something went real wrong during the interrogation,’ Rigg said.

  ‘Or both,’ Glet said. ‘Damn it.’

  ‘You need to work this Fernandez angle, Jerome.’

  ‘Not now,’ Glet said.

  ‘How about that little yellow card I gave Lehman?’ Rigg said. ‘It links the boys to the girls.’

  ‘That’s too fragile,’ Glet said.

  ‘What the hell does that mean?’ Rigg asked, but Glet had already hung up.

  ‘Greg Theodore,’ Eleanor called out behind him.

  Rigg pressed the flashing button. ‘Hello, Greg.’

  ‘I gotta double-check, Milo: your two witnesses are residents of the flophouse where Fernandez was living?’

  ‘They were clear-eyed.’

  ‘At the time of the bust, or when you spoke to them?’ Theodore was smart. He knew memories could be pliable when tempted by a ten-dollar bill, especially when pickled by alcohol.

  ‘Clear-eyed,’ Rigg repeated.

  ‘I’m going to be dredging background. What’s past is past, except when it isn’t.’

  ‘My ejection from the Bastion?’ Rigg asked, knowing better.

  ‘Carlotta Henderson and the photos.’

  ‘Lehman made that bust, Greg. I’m sure of it.’

  ‘Then God help us all,’ Theodore said, and clicked off.

  Rigg called the Dead House and asked for Feldott.

  ‘Are you crazy?’ the young man asked in a voice higher than normal. ‘You really think my boss and Sheriff Lehman stashed this Fernandez guy? Fernandez must have simply left town.’

  ‘Why is nobody saying that?’

  ‘We’re all saying it, Mr Rigg. All except you. Mr McGarry called us into his office. He assured us this Fernandez business is your invention, that, if the guy was arrested, it was by others.’

  ‘What was his demeanor?’

  ‘Sweaty, but can you blame him? Stemec Henderson was a nightmare for him. Now, there’s a new nightmare: dead girls. Only, this time, you’re also accusing him of a crime, this Richie Fernandez thing, with no proof.’

  ‘Not a crime, not yet. Just a mysterious arrest, seen by two witnesses.’

  Rigg looked t
hrough Aria’s glass wall. She was on the phone, vehemently gesturing with her right hand. Likely the call was about him.

  ‘Two winos? You’re killing our credibility … Ah, heck,’ Feldott said, and clicked off.

  Aria, too, had hung up and, for a moment, just stared at her phone. Then she looked out, saw Rigg looking at her and motioned for him to come in. ‘That was Donovan,’ she said. ‘He got a call from someone at the Sun-Times. One of their reporters went to the flop.’

  ‘And couldn’t find either of my witnesses?’

  ‘You need to be right about Richie Fernandez,’ she said.

  The guy at the front desk was different, but there’d been different guys at the counter each time he’d come.

  ‘Wally upstairs?’ Rigg asked.

  ‘You got a badge?’

  ‘Reporter.’

  ‘Somebody beat you here.’

  ‘I know: Sun-Times,’ Rigg said. ‘Is Wally upstairs?’

  ‘Gone.’

  ‘Gone where?’

  ‘Not my business to ask, not his business to tell,’ the clerk said.

  ‘He got to take his stuff?’ Rigg said, asking really if Wally had been grabbed.

  ‘Sure,’ the desk man said.

  ‘How about visitors? Did anyone come to see him, right before he moved?’

  The clerk turned his back to Rigg and pretended to busy himself with the slotted mailbox on the wall. The slots were empty. Residents of the Kell didn’t get mail.

  ‘Like a cop?’ Rigg asked.

  The desk clerk made no move to turn around.

  ‘Mind if I go upstairs?’ Rigg said.

  ‘Residents only,’ the clerk said to the slotted box.

  Rigg headed for the stairs.

  Just Wally’s room was clean. Nothing was in it except a stripped mattress and a chest of drawers with all of the drawers pulled partially out and empty. Wally had fared better than Fernandez. He’d had the opportunity to take his stuff.

  Rigg went back down to the counter. ‘Last time I was here, I was talking to the night guy, can’t remember his name.’

  ‘Night guys change.’

  ‘Like day guys?’

  He shrugged. ‘We take turns. Free room for a day.’

  Rigg drove to the diner. Lucille was visible inside. Likely Gus was behind the grill window. And neither of them mattered. They’d tipped the sheriff’s office about purportedly seeing Richie Fernandez with the two girls, nothing more. And Lehman and McGarry had dutifully come around to the diner, but as far as Lucille and Gus could testify, nothing more. They’d not witnessed Lehman and McGarry combing nearby flops, nor had they seen the bust.