The Black Cage

by Jack Fredrickson

‘As I said, Cornelius, when Glet took it, he destroyed its chain of evidence. There could be no telling where the slide had been.’

  Feldott stared ahead through the windshield. It was a lot to consider. But then he asked, ‘So, who killed the girls, Mr Rigg?’

  ‘I don’t know if we’ll ever know. The last of the birthmarks on the yellow card has been accounted for. Maybe that means the spree has been over since last December. But, if our killer does start up again, there’ll be no way of telling if it’s the same perpetrator. As you found, there’ve been no DNA traces on any of the girls.’

  ‘So, you’re pretty sure Sheriff Lehman got wise to what Deputy Glet was learning about their plans for Fernandez?’ Feldott said.

  ‘That would explain Lehman, or someone acting on his behalf, murdering Glet. And now, Cornelius, it’s time to tell me what you found in Glet’s bungalow.’

  ‘Index cards,’ Feldott said. ‘A packet of one hundred yellow index cards. I counted them, with gloves on, of course, when I got back to the office. Three were missing.’

  ‘Absent the two sent to Carlotta Henderson and one to the Day family? Isn’t that too obvious?’

  ‘They were wedged behind his desk. At first, I worried they’d disappear if Sheriff Lehman found them. He wouldn’t want that stain on his department. The fingerprints of all sheriff’s employees are in our databases. I had one of our technicians run the comparison.’

  ‘They were Glet’s prints?’

  ‘Of course, and it seemed so obvious – too obvious. You kept saying the GSR on Deputy Glet was manipulated. So, too, could have been his fingerprints. Someone could have pressed the deputy’s fingertips on to the card packet.’

  ‘Any thoughts as to who killed him?’ Rigg asked.

  ‘As you suggest, it could have been any of a number of thugs who wanted to curry favor with Sheriff Lehman, someone who the sheriff is hounding for a murder or something. Quid pro quo: kill Deputy Glet, get a free pass to get out of town with no warrant for anything to follow.’ Feldott sighed. ‘If any of this gets released improperly, it will destroy people’s faith in us at Cook County law enforcement.’

  ‘I get what you’re doing, Cornelius. You and the CIB are trying to restore the M.E.’s and then the sheriff’s department, but you’re going to have to go after Lehman to do that.’

  ‘Allow me time to investigate everything, Mr Rigg. Ideally, we’ll find leads to the girls’ killer.’

  ‘And pursue Wilcox for the boys.’

  ‘I expect my new team to solidify the case against him. Just give me time.’

  Till led him to a small conference room. ‘What’s too urgent to discuss on the phone?’ he asked as they sat at the small table.

  ‘I told you Glet took Johnny Henderson’s foreign DNA sample from the M.E. lab,’ Rigg said. ‘You told me that might make sense, that you’d check it out and get back to me. You haven’t gotten back to me. And now I’ve just spoken with Cornelius Feldott.’

  ‘The kid who’s taken over the medical examiner’s office and soon the world.’

  ‘He’s got GSR that purports to show Glet was a suicide, and other evidence that shows Glet might have been involved in the girls’ murders.’

  ‘Too convenient?’ Till said.

  ‘He agrees everything could have been manipulated. But he and I have got questions about what Glet was doing with the missing DNA. And that, I think, is what you were going to get back to me on.’

  ‘Glet asked if we ever used an independent lab for DNA testing, which we have, on occasion. I told him about Richmond Laboratories. They mostly do paternity and ancestral stuff, but they’re top-notch with everything.’

  ‘He didn’t say what he was up to?’

  ‘No. As I’ve told you, we work our side of the street, he worked his. But he took his own swab from Wilcox, and, after a time, he became more persistent with him. He badgered him relentlessly, saying his DNA was found on the boys, trying to get him to confess.’

  ‘But not the girls?’

  ‘He tried, but as I said, Wilcox laughed; he could see Glet was bluffing. Hell, we could all see Glet was bluffing about the girls. After I told you that Glet’s little theft might make sense, I called Richmond. They know me; they were candid. Glet came in twice. First, he brought in two samples to be compared to each other, a swab and a medical examiner’s vial, neither labeled. The results matched. He paid five thousand dollars for that and told them to keep both the swab and the vial.’ He paused. ‘I had to wonder about a cheapskate like Glet shelling out five grand of his own money for that.’

  ‘Lehman and his deputies have access to unlogged evidence money,’ Rigg said.

  Till smiled faintly. ‘Ah, yes. Cook County.’

  ‘That second time?’

  ‘He brought in a soda can and a paper coffee cup.’

  ‘To be compared with each other?’ Rigg said.

  ‘No. He wanted them kept safe until he returned with whatever he wanted them compared against, but he said it might be a while. He wanted them kept safe until he could return.’

  ‘What was he waiting for?’ Rigg asked.

  ‘A new DNA sample to appear, obviously.’

  ‘From a girl,’ Rigg said. ‘A girl yet to be discovered, a girl who would point to her killer or killers.’

  ‘Killers whose DNA was on that can and that cup? Most likely we’ll never know, Rigg. I don’t have the authority to order them tested, and, even if I did, it would prove nothing.’

  Outside, Rigg stood in the cold, indulging a thought, a long shot that had begun to form in his mind. And then he called Feldott, because there seemed nothing else to do.

  ‘I have to believe Glet left traces,’ Rigg said.

  ‘What traces?’

  ‘Traces – notes, memos, something – of those fireworks,’ Rigg said.

  THIRTY-NINE

  The chirp of his cell phone echoed loudly off the cement walls of the parking garage.

  ‘Mr Donovan will see you downtown,’ the publisher’s secretary said. ‘Can you be here in one hour?’

  ‘I’m already downtown. Shall we lunch in his office?’ Rigg asked, but she hung up instead of answering.

  Likely it was confirmation of what Aria had said and Greg Theodore had heard from his LaSalle Street contacts. The Examiner was turning Titanic and Milo Rigg would be one of the first to be slid off the deck. He killed time with a coffee at Starbucks, thinking about soda cans and other paper coffee cups, and got to Donovan’s office at 12:45.

  Donovan wasted no time. ‘Our printing plant also does the Curious Chicagoan,’ he said.

  ‘And Christian membership directories and two porn magazines,’ Rigg said, though the observation didn’t appear to lighten the man’s mood. His face stayed drawn, his eyes squinty, and Rigg had the insane thought that perhaps the desperate Donovan had been up all night rootling beneath his sofa cushions for lost pocket change.

  ‘One of our more loyal production guys thought to grab this,’ Donovan said. ‘The Curious Chicagoan’s business people think differently than ours, that online will reduce print sales. So they’ve not posted this to their website yet.’ He handed a sheet of copy entitled ‘Primer’s Take’ to Rigg.

  The Curious Chicagoan’s Primer, the sleaziest of their sleazy reporters, had breaking news:

  BACK IN THE SADDLE AGAIN?

  Used-to-be respected Examiner journalist Moral-Milo Rigg is back doing what got him in trouble following the murders of the Stemec Henderson boys. Remember how Rigg, the oh-so-pure voice of impatient conscience, castigated Cook County Sheriff Slow-Go-Joe Lehman and Chief Medical Examiner No-Luck-Chuck McGarry for their turtle-like investigation that led to Nowheresville? That Moral-Milo? Loyal Readers of Primer’s Take will remember pictures that showed Milo to be a Not-So-Moral Milo, nocturnally visiting Mother Victim Carlotta Henderson, former exotic dancer and belle of New Orleans’ rentable ladies, so recently widowed after her husband keeled over on his youngest son’s corpse at the county’s De
ad House. Following our scoop, Not-So-Moral Milo disappeared from view, banned to the hinterlands of the Examiner’s ever-shrinking empire to write no-byline, less-than-mesmerizing paragraphs of bowling alley openings and Cub Scout parades.

  As we’ve known for a couple of weeks now, Moral-Pretender Milo is back, rightly concerned about the latest horrors in Chicagoland’s kill history, the murders of Beatrice and Priscilla Graves, Jennifer Ann Day and Tana Damm. Berating, as in days of old, Slow-Go and No-Luck for their dismal progress, and hinting that they’ve been perpetrators in nefarious goings-on in our Windy City, including the questioning and disappearance of a mysterious Graves suspect, Richie Fernandez. Now Lehman’s deputy, Jerome Glet, has turned up dead of self-inflicted lead poisoning, followed to Croaksville by the aforementioned No-Luck, the late Charles McGarry, whose luck finally ran out in a grave in the back yard of his country estate.

  And Not-So-Moral Milo? He’s not had much to say about Glet, maybe because he’s been too busy midnight-visiting the lovely Carlotta Henderson, as the photos below show. Doubt not, the pics are not oldies from the Stemec Henderson days. Check out the new set of old wheels the Moral Man is driving to those rendezvous. Current state license plate proves this is up-to-date evidence of up-to-date lust.

  Damned shame on Milo and Carlotta for dirtying the current investigations!

  ‘Look at that!’ Donovan screamed as he pointed to one of the photos. ‘The hand in the air?’

  ‘It’s more like just one finger.’

  ‘You’re ruining me!’

  ‘I’ve understood,’ Rigg said, a little surprised that Aria hadn’t tipped Donovan to the pictures they both knew were coming.

  His phone buzzed in his pocket. He let it go.

  ‘Understood what, damn it?’ Donovan said.

  ‘I understand why Carlotta Henderson was tipped.’

  ‘What the hell are you talking about?’

  ‘I was set up,’ Rigg said. ‘She got key evidence. I went to her place to retrieve it and ultimately gave it to Lehman.’

  ‘Aria told me about the cards.’

  ‘They were sent to Carlotta Henderson to get me there to be photographed for just such a moment as this.’

  His phone buzzed again. Something was urgent.

  ‘Leave!’ Donovan screamed. ‘Leave here before people know you’ve been here. Do not go to the Pink. Go to whatever the hell rock you live under and stay there. I will continue to pay you to stay the hell out of sight, to keep your damned mouth shut, to not go to another paper, at least for now. Do not talk to anyone, do not profess your innocence or your beliefs or your stupidity. Get out!’

  ‘You’re going to pay me not to jostle any potential investors?’ Rigg said, still sitting.

  ‘Out!’

  ‘I got set up to be silenced, Luther. That should concern you. As the publisher of a newspaper, rendering one of your reporters inoperative should concern the hell out of you.’

  ‘Out!’

  ‘It should concern the hell out of everybody,’ Rigg said. He stood up and walked out.

  His cell phone buzzed again as he passed Donovan’s secretary. ‘No lunch,’ he said.

  He took out his phone in the elevator but didn’t recognize the number that had buzzed him so insistently, three times in the last ten minutes. Outside, he called the number but got no answer, and the voicemail at the other end had not been activated. It wasn’t unusual; he’d often been tipped anonymously by people calling from burner phones.

  He’d just pulled on to the expressway when his phone buzzed once more. It was the same number.

  The voice was muffled. The caller was talking through Kleenex or thin cloth, just like in old movies. ‘McGarry’s estate, seven tonight; wait an hour so I can be sure you’re not followed.’ The line clicked dead.

  He called the Pink. Aria picked up. ‘What the hell, Milo?’

  ‘The day has not been without developments,’ he said.

  ‘Are you canned or just suspended or what? Donovan was frothing on the phone so much I couldn’t understand him, other than to make out “the Curious Chicagoan”.’

  ‘The photos we’ve been waiting for are about to be published,’ he said. ‘I’m suspended for now, but I’ll be fired if the Examiner somehow survives.’

  ‘The killer is cleaning up,’ she said.

  ‘Exactly,’ he said. ‘The first card sent to Carlotta was meant to show, bona fides, that he was the real deal. The second sent to her was to draw me back for another photo, to show I made routine visits. Clever.’

  ‘And the ransom note sent to the Day family?’

  ‘That was the card sent at the beginning, the most horrible card of all. It was meant to show authenticity, I guess, validating that the two that would then be sent to Carlotta were genuine. I’ll bet Jennifer Ann was already dead when her family got the card.’

  ‘What makes you so important to the killers?’ she asked.

  ‘Killers, plural? Why do you think there are two?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I guess I was thinking two were needed to heave each of the Graves girls up and over the guard rail, down into the ravine? This is so unnerving.’

  ‘I’m important to the killers because I stuck with Stemec Henderson longer than anyone else. Silence me, maybe silence or at least slow the girls’ investigation, not that anyone’s been doing much anyway.’

  ‘Cornelius Feldott won’t be silenced.’

  ‘He’s hiring two investigators. And at last he’s looking at Glet as something other than a suicide.’

  ‘What changed his mind?’

  ‘He found evidence in Glet’s bungalow that could have been planted, making him wonder what else was staged.’

  ‘My God.’

  ‘You’re the one who wrote Corky is methodical. He’s being methodical,’ he said.

  ‘Let’s have dinner,’ she said.

  ‘I have an appointment.’ No good would be served if he told her about the phone call he’d just received. She’d want to come along and there was no knowing if an armed crazy had made it.

  ‘I meant we could have dinner and …’

  ‘Dinner and …?’ he asked, but he knew. Absolutely, he knew.

  ‘You seemed to enjoy that “and”,’ she said, her voice low. ‘It could take your mind off things.’

  ‘I do like that “and”,’ he said.

  ‘So how about it?’

  ‘I need to check something out.’

  ‘I’ll come along.’

  ‘Maybe I’ll call you later,’ he said.

  She laughed. ‘And maybe I’ll be waiting by the phone.’

  McGarry’s place was in darkness. Servants were no longer around to turn on lights since the master of the house had been found planted beneath the snow.

  There were no automobiles on the highway or the side road. That wasn’t necessarily a surprise, but Olsen’s cops and Feldott’s private security were sure to come along. Rigg wondered if his caller would get spooked and run.

  He angle-parked on the shoulder of the side road and cut his engine. The moon was almost full, bright enough for him to see across the snow to where Charles McGarry, trucking company inheritor, political aspirant, murder victim and fool, had been shoveled into the ground he’d spent many of his father’s millions to acquire. He’d been played for that ground, by a bastard sheriff that needed its quiet seclusion to sweat and perhaps purposefully kill a suspect.

  He wondered, too, if he was being played by Lehman or the girls’ killer to come out into the night – though, for what, he could not imagine. It was too much of a muddle. He’d wait the hour the caller requested and then leave.

  He leaned back, let his mind drift on to the half-formed idea he’d blurted out at Feldott. Traces, he’d called them – traces of what Glet ought to have left behind, somewhere.

  He ran the notion through his mind, again and again. It was all he had, all he could think to do.

  He looked at his watch. Forty minutes
had passed. No cars had passed by – no cops, no private security. It was enough. He’d been played again, to come, to sit in his car, to wait. But maybe not for nothing.

  He smelled the Chinese food before he got up to his apartment.

  She’d heard his footsteps and come to the top of the staircase. ‘Dinner and “and”?’ she asked.

  ‘You must be cold. How long have you been waiting out here?’

  She laughed. ‘I just got here. I took a chance you’d be home.’

  ‘I’m very hungry,’ he said, pushing away the plan he’d begun imagining back at McGarry’s estate.

  She smiled.

  Afterward, they ate as they’d eaten before, on the floor, leaned up against the seat cushions of the tiny love seat, and he told her about his afternoon and evening.

  ‘I could try to change Donovan’s mind …’ she said, but she sounded doubtful.

  ‘So I can go back to what I did with Benten? I write, you take the byline? No. I’m done at the Examiner.’

  ‘It might not matter, if Donovan doesn’t get his money. You’re sure you have no ideas about your mysterious caller?’

  ‘I can only think he got spooked. I sat in the car, I thought, and, forty minutes later, I drove away.’

  ‘What did you think about?’

  ‘What Glet left behind.’

  She reached to squeeze his wrist. ‘You found something at last?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said. She couldn’t be a part of a plan he didn’t yet understand. She had a career to lose. A career with another paper, no doubt, but still a career. And there could be danger.

  Her grip tightened on his wrist. ‘What did you find?’

  He put his hand over hers. ‘Only musings of traces.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘Me, neither,’ he said.

  He looked at his wall of file boxes, the rows of files that had done him no good. And then he looked at her.

  ‘You’ve done me good,’ he said.

  ‘Then let me do it again,’ she said.

  FORTY

  They came for him before dawn, beating on his door, yelling for him to open up.