The Black Cage

by Jack Fredrickson

  ‘He’s unavailable.’

  ‘Care to give me a statement?’ Rigg asked, pointing to two deputies carrying shovels back to their cars.

  ‘How did you find out about this?’

  ‘A tip,’ Rigg said, because Till hadn’t ratted him out.

  ‘Your tipster wasted your time.’

  ‘About Richie Fernandez?’

  ‘You can write that we arrived here this morning with a duly executed warrant authorizing us to search these grounds, based upon credible information that a person might be buried on this property. We knocked, but received no answer. We tried calling Mr McGarry’s various homes and his office, but could not locate him. In accordance with our authorization, we proceeded to conduct our search of his grounds. We have concluded our search. We are leaving, and so are you.’

  ‘You found nothing?’

  ‘Oh, we found something, Rigg, and now we’ve found you, right here where you don’t belong.’

  ‘What did you find?’

  Olsen gave him only a smile, and turned and walked back up the driveway. Vehicle doors began slamming shut. An officer came down, removed the yellow tape and opened the gate.

  Rigg waited in his car as the van, the ambulance and the cops backed down the driveway and drove away. The last squad car backed down, but stopped outside the gate. An officer got out. He was different than the first officer Rigg had talked to – younger, maybe twenty-five, which was right for a rural sheriff’s department.

  Rigg got out of his car and approached the gate. ‘How do you guys manage to open locked gates?’ he asked in what he hoped was a conversational voice.

  The officer smiled. ‘We always request security codes to keep on file. This owner complied.’

  ‘What was all the activity up there?’

  ‘Sheriff got a credible call that there was a body buried in a shallow grave. But it was just a dog.’

  ‘A dog?’

  ‘Sheriff was furious.’ He pointed to the keypad on the wood post. ‘You’ll have to leave, sir,’ he said. ‘I’ve got to reset the code.’

  Rigg got in his car and drove away, but only to the next side road. When the young officer’s car disappeared down the highway, he parked, put on the running shoes he’d thought to leave in the car, and walked back to the gate. The gate was made of tubular metal, set low, meant only to stop a car. He climbed over, walked up the driveway and on to the vast back grounds.

  Their search area had not been widespread. Hundreds of footprints circled only the mound where McGarry had swept up snow. That mound was a tiny mudhill now, from being excavated and refilled.

  The garage was the closest of the outbuildings. The side door was unlocked. Several red-tipped prong holders were screwed into a two-by-four along the wall. One held a pointed shovel. He brought it to the mound and began digging.

  The dirt, already loosened by the sheriff’s team, was now muck, the heavy sludge of wet cement. Still, it took him only a couple of minutes to hit bone and just another to lift away enough to reveal a leg. It was about two feet long, and covered with fur. A dog, like the deputy had said.

  He leaned on the shovel, staring down. No matter how beloved that pet might have been, its grave did not warrant McGarry coming out on two successive nights to sweep snow on to that dirt, nor to come out cradling a shotgun when Rigg approached the mound in daylight.

  He dug around the entire animal. It was a collie. He shoveled around it until he was able to lever the stiff corpse up and on to the side of the shallow grave.

  The dirt beneath the dog’s grave was harder, but didn’t seem as solidly frozen as it should have been that many weeks into winter. He poked at it carefully, digging up fist-sized chunks of dirt, bit by bit. He began sweating, despite the cold, but he kept shoveling, one small, careful bladeful at a time. And then an ear appeared and a patch of matted hair above it.

  He shoveled back just enough dirt to cover it, dropped the shovel and went down to his car. He was trembling, whether from sweat or from fury, he did not know. He started the car, turned the heater on full blast and drove to the bar at the intersection down the highway.

  He needed a drink, but he needed Pancho Rozakis more. He called him from the car. ‘Meet me at the bar down the road from McGarry’s estate. Bring every camera and drone you’ve got.’

  He went inside. Only two people were at the bar – the dark-bearded bartender and a white-bearded fellow wearing denim overalls and a yellow-and-green DeKalb Corn cap. Rigg ordered a Scotch and took it to the farthest table, the same table where he’d sat with Aria.

  Pancho Rozakis stepped in forty-two minutes later. He had a scruffy, untrimmed beard, like the denizens on either side of the bar, but there the similarities ended. Instead of thick denim and flannel to ward off the cold, Pancho wore his usual outfit of cargo shorts bulging with small gear, a tufted orange down jacket and a bright red Nebraska Cornhuskers ball cap.

  ‘Greetings and salutations, stalwarts,’ he said to the bartender and the customer, grinning as he headed to Rigg’s table. ‘Tell me again,’ he said as he sat down.

  Rigg told him what he’d told him from his car.

  ‘Zowie,’ the photographer said.

  Rigg phoned the Winthrop County sheriff’s department tip line and told the personable voice that answered that her sheriff hadn’t dug deep enough at McGarry’s estate and ought to get back there before the very human corpse the sheriff had missed got up and left. He clicked off and smiled at Pancho.

  ‘I haven’t had lunch,’ the photographer said.

  ‘My treat,’ Rigg said. He got up, went to the bar, ordered the house specialty and, in less time than bagged food should need to become bacteria-free, he brought the puffed cellophane back to the table. He dropped it on the laminate like something snagged from a polluted river.

  Pancho, who was known to eat anything, looked at the bag bloated with steam with alarm. ‘What’s inside?’

  ‘It’s been nuked and will squirm no longer.’

  ‘Zowie,’ Pancho said.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  Yellow cop tape was again strung across the gateposts and the driveway up to the house was again lined with official vehicles. But, this time, no cops were returning digging implements to their cars. And no one was guarding the gate. Rigg and Rozakis walked up the driveway.

  Sheriff Olsen spotted them when they got up to McGarry’s Escalade. He charged across the broad back lawn, red faced. ‘I could arrest you for tampering with our crime scene,’ he said to Rigg.

  ‘That crime scene I discovered because you couldn’t?’

  The sheriff glared at Pancho, who’d begun snapping pictures of him.

  Rigg gestured toward the house. ‘Have you begun to wonder why nobody’s around?’

  ‘They’re out,’ the sheriff said.

  ‘Tell yourself that this evening, or tomorrow, or the next day, when no one has called to complain about you digging up the yard.’

  ‘I told you: I called McGarry’s office, talked to some assistant, left a message that we have a warrant. They say they don’t know where he is.’

  Pancho started to walk past the drive, toward the cluster of men in back.

  ‘Hold it!’ Olsen yelled at him. ‘No pictures.’

  ‘He’s got drones,’ Rigg said. ‘He can get what we need from up above.’

  ‘Ah, hell.’ Olsen motioned for them to walk with him toward the mound, but stopped a dozen yards short of the dig. ‘Wait here,’ he said.

  Several people surrounded the site. Two of them, crime-scene technicians, were kneeling in the hole, hammering gently with wide chisels and then using hand trowels to clear away the dirt surrounding the body. Four sheriff’s deputies stood watching, farther back.

  ‘What should we do with the dog, sir?’ one of the deputies called out.

  ‘Put it in Rigg’s car,’ the sheriff said. ‘Front seat, where it will thaw when he turns on his heater.’

  ‘Huh?’ the deputy managed, clearly startled.
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  ‘Just put the damned thing aside!’ the sheriff yelled.

  The sky had darkened and a light snow began to fall. ‘You said you don’t know this guy we’re digging for?’ Olsen asked.

  ‘I won’t be able to identify him,’ Rigg said.

  ‘Who will, then?’

  ‘A husband and wife that own a diner on Chicago’s old Skid Row, and a cabbie.’

  ‘They witnessed the bust?’

  ‘No. Only two residents at a flop a few blocks away did, but they’re on vacation.’

  ‘What’s that mean?’

  ‘It’s Cook County. Those two have disappeared.’

  ‘Besides Lehman, who I expect to be uncooperative, McGarry should also be able to identify him,’ Olsen said, looking straight at Rigg. ‘This is his property, after all.’

  Pancho Rozakis shook his head. ‘Paris, France,’ he said.

  Olsen looked at the photographer, who was standing serene in cargo shorts, without a trace of the shivers. ‘What?’

  ‘Paris, France,’ Pancho said. ‘I followed him from here to O’Hare, slipped up behind him at the counter when he bought a ticket for that night’s flight. I didn’t buy a ticket for myself because Rigg here was too cheap to pay for international surveillance and, besides, I didn’t pack a beret.’ Pancho pulled his phone out of one of the many pockets in his shorts, brought up the picture of McGarry at the ticket counter and held it up for Olsen to see.

  The sheriff turned to Rigg. ‘What set McGarry running?’

  ‘Me. I’d come here to show interest in his mound. He showed interest in me by waving a shotgun.’

  Pancho held out a cell-phone photo of McGarry with the shotgun.

  Olsen turned to look at the men circling the dig. ‘He’d figured what’s in the hole could stay hidden for all time, even if someone came digging.’

  ‘Because they’d stop at the dog, like you did,’ Rigg said.

  ‘We’re ready, Sheriff,’ one of the forensics men called out, straightening up from the hole.

  ‘Stay here,’ Olsen said, and walked to the hole. He stared into it for a long minute and then turned around and waved for Rigg to come up. Even from a dozen yards away, Rigg could see the shock on the sheriff’s face.

  Pancho came too. ‘No damn pictures,’ Olsen said to him.

  Pancho nodded and took another one, of Olsen looking at Rigg now with a slightly bemused expression.

  Rigg looked down at the frozen face, contorted in fear, speckling fast with flakes of falling snow. He didn’t know Richie Fernandez.

  But this face he knew.

  He stared at it, trying to understand how he could have gotten so much so wrong.

  The sheriff took Rigg’s elbow and guided him away so the body could be removed. ‘Who’s been fooled now, Rigg?’

  Rigg turned to the closest forensics man. ‘Cause of death of the dog?’

  ‘Gunshot to the head.’

  ‘How long do you think the dog’s been dead?’

  ‘Long enough to freeze solid.’

  ‘Much longer than the man?’

  ‘The man’s more recent.’

  ‘Cause of death gunshot, too?’

  The forensics man shook his head. ‘Blunt force trauma to the head.’

  ‘Like from the blade of a shovel?’ Rigg asked.

  ‘Sure, but we need to examine to be certain.’

  ‘Talk to me, Rigg,’ Sheriff Olsen said.

  It seemed so horribly clear. ‘The first or second night I came out, McGarry must have spotted me watching him scooping snow on to this mound. He called Lehman to say I’d come snooping. They’d buried Fernandez deep, covered him with dirt and topped him with the dog to explain the grave if someone got too nosy. But their precautions didn’t calm McGarry, roosting nervous out here by himself. He kept watch. And, when I came back during daylight, he waved his shotgun, but he knew that wouldn’t be enough to keep people away. He panicked. When I left, he did, too. He took off for O’Hare. He must have called Lehman from there to tell him he was fleeing. Lehman couldn’t let him go off wandering, even overseas. McGarry knew too much. So Lehman must have promised him he’d take care of everything, and picked him up at O’Hare.’

  ‘Telling him they’d simply move Fernandez, replant the dog in the same place, and all would be well?’ Olsen asked.

  ‘Sure,’ Rigg said, ‘except, after they dug Fernandez up, Lehman whacked McGarry and put him in Fernandez’s former place, under the dog.’

  ‘No sense wasting a good hole,’ Rozakis said.

  Olsen shook his head. ‘You know, when I first got tipped that the Fernandez fellow might be buried out here, I re-read your old posts in the Examiner, trying to figure how you could think McGarry would get involved with Lehman in the bust in the first place.’

  ‘McGarry must have had dreams of a greater political future, and Lehman must have played on that.’ Rigg waved his arm toward the vast expanse of the estate. ‘What better place to soften up a suspect without the bother of booking him right away? No lawyers, no neighbors, nobody to interfere.’

  ‘Lehman would have had to book him eventually,’ Olsen said.

  ‘He must have beat on him too much.’ Rigg paused, remembering what Feldott had told him. ‘Or maybe that was Lehman’s plan all along. To kill Fernandez for his DNA.’

  ‘You’re not making sense,’ Olsen said, but then his radio crackled. He listened and said, ‘Let him through.’ Turning to Rigg, he said, ‘Can you sit on this until noon tomorrow? I’ll hold a press conference then, but I’d like to search for Fernandez as much as I can before then.’

  ‘You think you’ll find him here, Sheriff?’ Rigg asked.

  Olsen looked startled. ‘Why not?’

  Rigg gave a shrug. McGarry’s little mound had just taught him how wrong he could be. ‘I get notified before other press if you find anything else here?’

  ‘Fair enough.’

  Corky Feldott hurried up to them. His grim smile disappeared when he looked down into the hole. When he looked up, he was wild-eyed.

  Sheriff Olsen nodded down at the corpse. ‘Stupid bastard,’ he said.

  THIRTY-SIX

  He woke in the dark because, like so many nights, a hand beckoned. But it was not like the cage. This time, there was only one hand. And it was real.

  ‘Sleeping on the floor excites my thinking,’ she murmured.

  ‘We’re not on the floor. There’s a mattress. It’s a proper bed.’

  ‘It’s been a most improper bed for us.’ She laughed low.

  ‘You can’t sleep?’

  ‘I keep wondering what Glet knew,’ she said.

  ‘Something big, he called it,’ Rigg said.

  She snuggled closer. ‘You really have no idea?’

  ‘Not yet,’ he said.

  ‘But you know who might know?’

  He lifted up on one elbow. ‘Someone who was willing to interview Bobby Stemec’s classmates. Someone who was willing to call Sheriff Olsen to request a dig.’

  ‘Till.’

  ‘He was amenable. He’d made an odd comment when I said that Glet might have taken Johnny Henderson’s foreign DNA samples, and that Bobby Stemec’s came back negative to Wilcox.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘He said that might make sense. He wouldn’t elaborate.’

  She snuggled closer, found his knee with a hand. ‘Let’s stop thinking.’

  ‘I’m fully awake.’

  She moved her hand beneath the covers. ‘I’m like Glet,’ she said.

  ‘How?’

  ‘I’m working something bigger, too.’

  He went to her office doorway as soon as she got in. ‘I meet with Feldott in an hour,’ he said.

  She’d gone home to change into gray tweed, and he had the thought that there was no color, no texture in which she looked anything less than stunning. The ever-present pearls helped, too. If ever there was a woman whose beauty and erect, confident bearing justified pearls, it was Aria Gamble.

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nbsp; She set down her purse and a tall Starbucks coffee. ‘What’s shakin’?’

  ‘I called him first thing, asking for his take on what he saw at McGarry’s estate yesterday.’

  ‘Surely not first thing?’ she said, lowering her voice. ‘I know what you were doing first thing.’

  He supposed he might have blushed. ‘OK – second thing. I called second thing, after the first thing.’

  She sat down, smiling, wicked and victorious.

  ‘He’s holding a news conference at four this afternoon, but he agreed to tip me beforehand. He’s formally launching his own investigation into the murders of the Stemec Henderson boys, the Graves girls, Jennifer Ann Day and Tana Damm. And he’s going to pursue the disappearance of a potentially key witness.’

  ‘That’s—’

  ‘That’s exactly what you were trying to goad him into with your piece in the paper,’ he said. ‘Congratulations are in order.’

  She took a sip of the Starbucks. ‘You’re saying the lowly editor of the lowly supplement of the third-largest paper in Chicago has the muscle to move the CIB?’

  ‘Maybe it’s the pearls,’ he said.

  ‘It’s the obvious, as you well know,’ she said. ‘The CIB dropped Feldott into the M.E.’s office for seasoning. With Lehman’s future cloudy, his most senior deputy and McGarry both dead, it’s time to move Cornelius into the limelight. The question is, when will people start thinking Lehman killed McGarry?’ she asked.

  ‘And Fernandez, of course?’ he said.

  She bowed her head in acquiescence. ‘And Fernandez, of course, but Sheriff Olsen has to find him first.’

  ‘He’s going to have trouble,’ Rigg said.

  ‘Why? All he needs is recently broken ground.’

  ‘It’s just a hunch. Olsen’s press conference is at noon. He’ll announce McGarry’s death, but won’t say a word about Fernandez.’

  ‘All he needs is recently broken ground,’ she said again, ‘and perhaps Cornelius. He’ll push things into a higher gear.’

  ‘The sky might be the limit if Feldott pulls all the killings together,’ he said. ‘Sheriff, then governor, then senator, maybe.’