It was no surprise Lehman was fishing. Glet despised the sheriff and had kept him as far away as he could from what he was chasing.
‘He told me only that he was chasing fireworks.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘It means something more than Kevin Wilcox, Bobby Stemec, the Henderson brothers and the girls. He said he was chasing something that would upend Cook County, something that would set the whole county ablaze.’
‘Don’t speculate in your paper,’ Lehman said.
‘You’ll want to talk to the neighbor,’ Rigg said, nodding at the lace curtain fluttering next door. ‘She saw somebody, dressed in a long coat and maybe a hoodie, knock on Glet’s door last night, about nine o’clock.’
‘Man or woman?’
‘She wants to imagine it was a rented woman. Carlotta Henderson saw a figure that might fit the same description watching her house the night she received that last yellow card.’
‘That’s where you’ve been getting them? Carlotta Henderson?’
Rigg nodded. ‘He’s using her to get to me.’
‘What is it: a him or a her? You just implied it could have been a woman that visited Glet and the Henderson woman.’
‘You should call Carlotta, get it straight from her.’
‘You should have called me when she received the first card. She cost you everything last time.’
‘I’m expecting new pictures, maybe taken by the killer.’
‘We’re not the enemy, Rigg.’
‘You’ll have Carlotta Henderson’s house watched?’
‘I’ll have a word with her locals.’
‘And McGarry?’
‘What about McGarry?’
‘Richie Fernandez.’
Lehman scowled and went up the steps to go back in the bungalow.
Rigg went out to his car and called Till.
SHERIFF’S DEPUTY FOUND DEAD
Milo Rigg, Chicago Examiner
Cook County Sheriff’s Deputy Jerome Glet was found dead this morning in his home on Chicago’s northwest side. Cause of death is presumed to be gunshot, but the official finding is pending the results of an autopsy scheduled to be conducted later today. Sheriff Joseph Lehman issued a statement saying, ‘Jerome Glet served our department with honor and professionalism for twenty-eight years. Words can’t describe our sense of loss, and we will investigate his untimely death with all of our resources.’
Glet drew attention most recently in his re-examination of the Stemec Henderson murders that occurred fifteen months ago. On two separate occasions, he announced that he was close to bringing that investigation to a conclusion following the arrest of Kevin Wilcox by the Federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives on charges of gun trafficking. Though circumspect, Glet also implied he was making excellent progress on other things that, he said, ‘would set the county ablaze.’
‘This last sentence reads like a scandal sheet,’ Aria said. ‘You have no proof that he was closing in on anything substantive at all. Feldott told you there was no match between Wilcox and Bobby Stemec’s foreign DNA, and you have no clue about that bigger thing he was working.’
‘I can’t see Glet killing himself.’
‘His mysterious visitor killed him?’
‘We got lucky with the neighbor seeing someone. Lehman wants that withheld until he can check that out.’
‘We’re running out of time, Milo.’
‘Now that I’ve sent McGarry off to points yonder, none of Donovan’s other investors are lining up to cover the slack?’
‘You’d best remember we don’t know if McGarry had money in the Examiner.’
‘We can guess accurately by Donovan’s behavior.’
‘Do not breathe a word about any of that,’ she said.
‘Greg Theodore at the Trib is about to, or at least some of it. He called, left a message that he’s doing a piece about our imminent demise.’
‘How can we find out what Glet was working on?’ she asked.
‘As you just said, there might not be time,’ he said.
THIRTY-ONE
Peter Tanson’s mother opened the door only a crack.
‘Did anybody come by?’ Rigg asked.
‘On TV, they said that dead deputy was the one working on the boys’ murders.’
‘He was in charge, but his people never came by?’
‘You said you’d keep us out of it.’
‘I need to know if sheriff’s deputies are questioning Peter’s classmates.’ Rigg doubted it, like he doubted Glet had made the phone call he’d requested. Glet acted too cocksure he already had Wilcox in the bag for the boys’ murders, and was too hell-bent on chasing his mysterious fireworks to bother with Rigg’s request.
Mrs Tanson turned to yell out her son’s name and then closed the door. A moment later, the kid opened the door wide.
‘Ma said you want to know if cops have been asking about Happy Times.’ He shook his head. ‘Not that I heard.’
‘I won’t mention your name, but tell me who else knew that Bobby traded work to ride there?’
The kid gave him three names and approximate addresses.
The first kid, a boy of about seventeen, an age Bobby Stemec never got to be, was in the driveway alongside his house, filling the rear tire of a rusted minivan with a small electric compressor.
‘Sure, Peter got us rides sometimes,’ the kid said. ‘If we worked a couple of hours, we got thirty minutes on a horse. I went with Bobby twice.’
‘How about the Henderson boys?’
‘Those other dead kids? I just knew Bobby.’
‘You knew Kevin Wilcox?’
‘The guy in the news for selling guns and maybe killing Bobby and the others? Maybe he was in the office. I don’t remember him.’
‘But you’re positive Bobby Stemec went riding there sometimes?’
‘Like I said, I went with him twice.’
‘Any cops ever ask you about that?’
‘Nope.’
The second boy on Tanson’s list was just pulling into his driveway when Rigg arrived. He got out of his car dressed in sweats and carrying a basketball. Like the first kid, he’d gone riding with Bobby Stemec in exchange for work, didn’t know either of the Hendersons and didn’t remember Kevin Wilcox. And, no, no cops had come around asking about any of that.
Nobody was home at the third kid’s place. It was no matter. Rigg had enough. He called Lehman before starting his car.
‘I got nothing to tell you about Glet,’ the sheriff said.
‘I got something to tell you, Sheriff. I tipped him that Bobby Stemec and some of his friends traded work for rides at Wilcox’s stable.’
‘You gave this to Glet?’
‘Yes, and I asked him why he never bothered to talk to classmates the first time around. He said you dropped the ball on that.’
‘That son of a bitch.’
‘He never mentioned my tip?’
‘Not a word.’
‘I don’t think he ever followed up on Richie Fernandez either,’ Rigg said.
Lehman didn’t bite. ‘I’ll see about those kids,’ he said, and hung up.
Rigg called Till for the second time that day.
‘Thanks again for calling me about Glet,’ the ATF man said. ‘He was coarse and stunk of cigars, but there was no mistaking his dedication. I called Lehman to get his take.’
‘And?’
‘He said it was suicide.’
‘Do you believe Glet could do himself?’
‘I told Lehman Glet had no potential for suicide.’
‘Glet ever say anything about DNA?’
‘Glet could bluster, but he hammered Wilcox with that DNA, time and again. He seemed real strong on the link.’
‘That’s troublesome. Feldott says one of the two samples is missing, and the other came back negative to Wilcox.’
‘Glet acted otherwise around here, like the match was solid.’
‘What about the girls?’
‘He tried coming at Wilcox with DNA about them, too. Told him preliminary DNA was good there as well. Wilcox laughed like he didn’t laugh about the boys. He knew Glet was bluffing about the girls.’ Till paused, then asked, ‘What haven’t you said?’
‘That sample that’s missing? Glet was spotted too near the M.E.’s storage lab.’
‘It … might make sense,’ Till said slowly.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Nothing I want to share yet.’
‘Glet kept saying he was on to something bigger than the boys and the girls. Did he ever mention what that was?’
‘No, but I got the feeling Glet was using us as a dodge. He wasn’t here much, just enough to convince that hack Lehman that he was working alongside us every minute. He wasn’t. He was gone from here most of the time.’
‘Where?’
‘I don’t know. We work our side of the street, he worked his.’
‘Except you know something you’re not saying about DNA,’ Rigg said.
‘I need to check it out. If it’s worthwhile, I’ll get back to you.’
‘I tipped Glet about a link between Bobby Stemec’s classmates and the Happy Times Stables. Glet didn’t work it and Lehman says he knows nothing about it. If my tip doesn’t get worked, without DNA the whole boys’ case against Wilcox might go back in the dumper.’
‘Not my jurisdiction.’
‘Glet had a visitor last night,’ Rigg said. ‘He didn’t have friends, I don’t think, and I doubt he entertained women.’
‘Glet’s death is not an ATF matter either.’
‘It’s Lehman’s, and that’s troubling.’
‘You’re thinking someone from county did him?’
‘I think someone was worried Glet was getting too close to those fireworks he was so secretive about.’
‘I keep telling you: these aren’t ATF matters,’ Till said, but there was a new hesitation in his voice. He knew where Rigg was headed.
‘You can’t investigate the murder of someone working on a federal task force involving the illicit sale of guns?’ Rigg asked.
‘He was ancillary, sitting in on our interrogations of Wilcox, not relevant to our …’ The phone went silent for a beat, and then Till said, ‘What do you want, exactly?’
Rigg told him.
‘Don’t post anything to your site until tomorrow,’ Till said after a moment. ‘It’ll be Sunday and I won’t be in the office.’
ATF TO INVESTIGATE DEPUTY’S DEATH
Milo Rigg, Chicago Examiner
Special Agent Till of the Chicago branch of the Federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives announced today that his office will conduct an investigation into the death of Cook County Sheriff’s Deputy Jerome Glet. Glet was found dead of a gunshot wound yesterday at his Chicago home.
‘While Jerome was most actively involved in the investigation of the murders of Bobby Stemec and John and Anthony Henderson that occurred over a year ago, he was providing valuable counsel to our own investigation into the illicit sale of guns in the Chicago area,’ Till said. ‘We need to rule out any potential that his death might be related to our investigation.’
It has been rumored that Glet’s investigation into the Stemec Henderson murders produced links to other crimes that were, in Deputy Glet’s words, ‘explosive’. Till promised a wide-ranging investigation into any and all matters that Glet may have been working on as part of his service with ATF, to include interviews with those of Bobby Stemec’s classmates who might have gone horseback riding at the stables managed by Kevin Wilcox, currently in ATF’s custody on gun trafficking charges.
Cook County Sheriff Joseph Lehman was unavailable for comment, but Acting Cook County Medical Examiner Cornelius Feldott released a statement thanking ATF for their ‘willingness to get involved in examining the troubling life and death of their and our cherished colleague, Jerome Glet.’
Meanwhile, Medical Examiner Charles McGarry remains on leave due to an unspecified medical condition, and was unavailable for comment about Glet’s death, as well as the disappearance of Richie Fernandez, a purported suspect in the Graves case.
It was 8:30, Saturday night. Aria had waited in her office for his copy.
‘Lots to love here, Milo,’ she said, with almost a straight face. ‘Especially your insistence on bringing up McGarry and Richie Fernandez in everything you write. Feldott’s buying into a “troubled life”?’
‘He’s seeing what’s too obvious: suicide.’
‘And you’re seeing murder?’
‘Glet was chasing fireworks. I think he got too close.’
‘That man who came to Glet’s house?’
‘Or woman, as you suggested,’ he said. ‘His visitor could have been the same person who dropped off the two cards at Carlotta Henderson’s home, and another one for the purported ransom request to the Day family.’
‘Someone who knows too much about body marks on both Anthony Henderson and the girls?’ she said.
‘Whoever it is, it wasn’t Kevin Wilcox. He was in ATF custody when the cards were delivered to Carlotta.’
‘But not to the Day family. Their card came right after the daughter disappeared. So …’ she went on slowly, ‘Wilcox had an accomplice?’
‘I’m guessing Wilcox is good for the boys, but not the girls,’ Rigg said.
‘So, a different killer for the girls?’ she said. ‘And it’s that person who killed Glet?’
‘That’s where I’m stopped. What’s the motive? Glet showed no real interest in the girls. He was closing in on his fireworks.’
‘So, it couldn’t have been the boys’ killer who killed Glet, and it wasn’t the girls’ killer. It was whomever Glet was closing in on for his fireworks – fireworks which we know nothing about?’
‘And don’t forget—’
She groaned. ‘Don’t say digging. Don’t say Richie Fernandez.’
‘Fernandez was not explosive to Glet, either. He was interested, but not enough. He was chasing something else.’
‘But yet … Tell me, Milo: did you make Fernandez interesting to Till?’
Rigg smiled.
She smiled. And then she sent Rigg’s piece to the Bastion.
THIRTY-TWO
He called Corky first thing, when he got to the Pink, Monday morning. ‘Have you examined Glet?’
‘Soon.’
‘I thought you’d be in a rush,’ Rigg said.
‘We’re being careful. And I’m in no hurry to release results that characterize Deputy Glet as unstable.’
‘I already reported your belief that he was troubled, even if I disagree.’
‘So I saw, yesterday,’ Feldott said. ‘This is off the record?’
‘Isn’t most everything, these days?’
‘I can’t understand why he stole Johnny Henderson’s foreign DNA.’
‘It makes no sense,’ Rigg said. ‘Like suicide makes no sense.’
‘He got very upset when I called to confront—’
Rigg cut him off. ‘You said he hung up on you, I know. Forget the mystery of why he took Johnny Henderson’s foreign DNA, for now. Forget that Bobby Stemec’s foreign DNA doesn’t match to Wilcox. Glet was working other angles to Wilcox, witnesses that could place the boys in the stables. And don’t ignore the grand prize – those fireworks Glet was so secretive about.’
‘What the hell are those fireworks?’
It was the first time Rigg had heard Corky Feldott swear.
‘I’ll find them,’ Rigg said, like he believed he could.
He killed the rest of the morning and half the afternoon working the fillers that he’d owed Aria for days. He wrote up the telephone interview he’d conducted about a new car wash, the repair of the long-leaking swimming pool, and the pothole repair program.
He was about to call the organizer of a Fourth of July pet parade when, most mercifully, Till called. ‘Sheriff Lehman phoned me this morning about your piece yesterday.’
‘Enr
aged that I reported you’re doing what he should have done fifteen months ago?’
‘No,’ Till said. ‘He was very controlled, very polite, almost timid about us looking to find kids that could place Kevin Wilcox close to those boys.’
‘And you are?’
‘And we did, at least to Stemec, from the three kids you told us about. And, as you damned well know, one actually worked at the stables. His mother was furious. All three kids were very respectful, and very certain. The one who worked there said Bobby Stemec occasionally showed up with other kids to work in return for free horseback rides. The other two kids said they each worked at Happy Times Stables twice for free rides. I just messengered the sworn statements to Lehman.’
‘I’m amazed he wasn’t furious.’
‘Maybe he doesn’t want to get called out for screwing up, this time around,’ Till said.
‘Or he doesn’t want to invite attention that might lead to other scrutiny.’
‘Richie Fernandez?’ Till said. ‘I haven’t forgotten.’
WITNESSES TIE ATF GUN SUSPECT TO STEMEC HENDERSON
Milo Rigg, Chicago Examiner
Investigators for the Federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives announced today that they have secured eyewitness testimony tying slain Bobby Stemec, 14, to the Happy Times Stables, where Kevin Wilcox was manager. One witness stated that Bobby Stemec and his friends occasionally worked at the stables in exchange for riding horses. Wilcox is now in federal custody, charged with illegally selling hundreds of firearms. Stemec and two other boys were found murdered less than two miles from the stables. The case remains unsolved.
‘No Fernandez? No McGarry?’ Aria said. ‘Well, this won’t excite Donovan. He’s convinced your mentions of McGarry show you want to keep thumbing your nose at him.’
‘What did you tell him?’
‘That I’d quit if he reined you in, and that would be a shame because I just booked advertising for a local supermarket and a used car lot, demonstrating my potential to rescue the Examiner from its financial woes all by myself.’
He looked at her, surprised.
She laughed. ‘No chance,’ she said, fingering her pearls. ‘Our ad revenue barely covers our rent here.’
The Black Cage Page 18
