Lakeview Vendetta: A Gripping Vigilante Justice Thriller

by KJ Kalis

  Emily started to pace, a combination of adrenaline and anger fueling her. Every turn on this case was nothing but a brick wall. Her mind was reaching for options. She could take the notebook to Anthony, but there was no telling if he would agree to see her or if he would agree to help her figure out the notebook. He was funny that way. Once in a while, he was happy to help. But Emily wasn’t sure she could count on him to help her decipher the information in the notebook. She needed Lou.

  Emily stared down at her phone, wondering if she should call him again when it rang. She recognized the number immediately. “Hello?” she said, walking into the other room. The conversation would be awkward enough, without Mike watching her every move.

  “Emily?”

  Emily recognized the gravelly voice of her former partner, Lou Gonzales. “Yeah. Thanks for calling me back.”

  “You said you needed a favor? What’s going on?” Lou had stints in both organized crime and Vice before he worked in the Cold Case Division. If anyone would know what was in the notebook, it would be him.

  Emily could hear the tension in his voice. She wasn’t surprised. She imagined he probably heard the tension in hers, too. It had been a long time. A whole range of emotions covered her — happiness at hearing Lou’s voice and betrayal at knowing he turned his back on her even though he knew she was innocent. Hardness formed in her chest. “I’m working a case and have some data I can’t decipher. Can you take a look at it?”

  When Detective Aldo had paired up Lou and Emily when she started with the cold case division, Emily quickly discovered it wasn’t without purpose. Lou was exceptional at dealing with evidence. His mind was able to sort through what was important and what wasn’t faster than any other officer she had ever met.

  “What’s the case?”

  Emily paused for a minute, not sure about her next step. Was there any chance it was a trap? “I don’t really want to discuss it on the phone.” Emily had no way of knowing if the Chicago Police Department was taping the call or not. The last thing she wanted was to end up in a pair of handcuffs again. “How about if we meet for coffee?”

  “All right. Where?”

  Emily couldn’t help but notice the strain in Lou’s voice. He didn’t sound like the warm, caring man she’d known years ago. Was he just reacting to her, or had another decade of casework dragged him into a pit of negativity? At that moment, Emily realized that her arrest and dismissal from the Chicago Police Department might’ve been a blessing in disguise. If Lou was indeed jaded, she didn’t need that kind of emotional baggage in her life. “How about the coffee shop at Sixth and Vine?” she suggested, knowing it was close enough to the precinct for Lou to be able to get there easily but was still neutral ground.

  “That’ll work. An hour?”

  Emily nodded, then replied, “Sure. See you then.”

  With the traffic in Chicago, Emily knew she needed to give herself plenty of time to get to the coffee shop. She wanted to be there when Lou walked in. She knew it was a defensive posture, but she couldn’t help it. The memories of the night she was arrested danced around her, taunting her, reminding her that there were people in the department who were more than happy to throw her under the bus because she had found something she was good at. All she could hope at this point was that her past relationship with Lou would outweigh any motivation he might have to look like a big shot to their former colleagues.

  Emily heard rattling from her office. Mike was standing in the corner, his back to her. “What are you doing?” she asked.

  He glanced over his shoulder, “I’m scanning the pages from the red book into a file. You know, just in case…”

  Though Emily would have liked to be able to tell Mike the step of protecting their information wasn’t necessary, she wasn’t sure she could do so, at least not convincingly. If, somehow, Lou forced Emily to hand over the red notebook to him, at least they would still have the information to lean on. The same nagging feeling she’d had the night before when Marlowe told her about the book surfaced again. The columns of information combined with what Anthony had told her could be the difference between being able to get justice for Marlowe and not. “Any news from the hospital?”

  “I checked right before I came in here to scan the notebook. Marlowe is going to surgery. They said something about a D and C, but I don’t know what that is.”

  “And you didn’t think to tell me?”

  “You were on the phone with your buddy. What did you want me to do?”

  Based on Mike’s reaction, Emily knew she was being snappish. There was no reason for it, except for the fact she still didn’t have a good grip on the case. Linear cases were much easier to deal with. “Sorry. What did they say again?”

  “There’s not a ton of information in the medical records right now. Just some test results and that they scheduled a surgical bay for Marlowe. What’s a D and C anyway?”

  Emily thought back to the time she had spent with Angelica. “It sounds like there’s something they need to remove from her uterus. I think it’s a procedure to do that. I think it’s technically called dilation and curettage, if I remember right.” How she remembered that information, Emily wasn’t sure, then it came to her. The last time Emily was in Europe, Angelica had gotten a phone call and ran out of the apartment where she was staying, leaving Emily high and dry. When she got back, there were spots of blood on her jeans. “One of the local girls got pregnant and just lost her baby. I got her stabilized, but they sent her to the local hospital for a D and C.”

  Emily checked the time on her cell phone. Only five minutes left before she needed to leave to meet Lou. A flock of butterflies landed in her gut. Why she was nervous, she didn’t know. Was it because they had been close? Or because Lou’s betrayal — him being the one who snapped the handcuffs on her wrists — cut so deep.

  “I gotta go in five minutes. You going to be finished with that scan before then?”

  “Yep. I’m on the last page right now.”

  Emily walked out of the office, leaving Mike and the whir of the printer behind her. She ran upstairs, taking the creaky steps two at a time. In her bedroom, she checked the front of her sweatshirt to make sure there was no blood on it from when she helped Marlowe earlier that morning. There wasn’t. She pulled the ponytail holder out of her hair, the long dark strands tangling over her shoulder. Giving it a quick brush, she put it back in a ponytail, low on the back of her head, and added some lip balm. She caught a look at herself in the mirror. In some respects, she didn’t look much different than Marlowe, dark circles under her eyes, her skin a little pale, whether that was from lack of sunshine because of the fall weather or the stress of the case, she didn’t know.

  By the time she got downstairs, Mike was back at his computer, studying the file he had put together. Without saying anything, he lifted the notebook and offered it to her. Emily grabbed it, stuffing it in the back pocket of her jeans. She still had on the pistol from earlier that morning. There was no reason to take it off. Not that Lou would try anything but was never a bad idea in her mind to be safe.

  “Good luck,” Mike said.

  Emily didn’t answer. Walking out the back door, she got in the truck and started it up, pulling down the driveway and heading out of her neighborhood.

  By the time Emily got to the coffee shop, it was nearly ten-thirty. She parked the truck in the back and used the tiny rear entrance. It was one of Chicago’s more upscale local neighborhood places to stop for a coffee and a pastry, the interior showing off rugged brick walls and highly polished white tables. It looked different than Emily remembered. Emily glanced around, not seeing Lou. That was good. She looked at the waitress who mouthed, “Sit anywhere you want.” Emily slid into a booth in the corner of the coffee shop. From where she sat, she could see everybody that came in and left. Though the butterflies in her stomach were still fluttering around, knowing she had a good vantage point was at least something.

  Two minutes later, Lou walked in, his
head turning until he spotted Emily, at which point he gave her a head nod and walked towards her. Lou didn’t look much different from the last time Emily had seen him, the same dark features and thick hair on his head. He walked with a slight limp she didn’t remember from before. Probably hurt on the job, she thought. As he approached the table, Emily didn’t know what to do. Should she get up and hug him, shake his hand? She stayed put. As he slid into the booth, Emily said, “Thanks for coming.”

  Lou scratched the back of his head, “It’s been too long.”

  Emily almost winced at the words he chose. The reason it had been too long was that Lou had been complicit in arresting her. It had been too long because Lou never reached out to her after the case had been resolved. Lingering hurt drove itself up and out of Emily’s gut into her heart. She swallowed hard, chasing the feelings back down. This was business. That was all.

  “Before we get started, are you wearing a wire?”

  Lou raised his eyebrows, “That’s an interesting way to say hello.”

  Emily wanted to feel bad, but she didn’t. “Are you?” He hadn’t answered the question.

  Lou shook his head no. “Want me to open my shirt?”

  Emily’s heart beat a little faster, “Yes.” For a moment, she felt bad asking him to do it, but it was her life on the line, not his. She was sure there were still some people in the department who would love to see her strung up. Whatever vendetta they had with her wouldn’t have been extinguished by knowing she was innocent. The people that wanted her to go down in the first place wouldn’t have given up their fight, even if time had passed.

  Lou unbuttoned his shirt, exposing his chest where Emily knew surveillance devices were usually taped. She glanced at the lapels of his coat. There were no buttons or lapel pins that seem to be out of place. And he wasn’t wearing a necklace. “Turn your head to the right and then to the left, please.” Emily knew earwigs were one of the most convenient ways for an officer to communicate with the surveillance team outside. As suspicious as she was, there was nothing there.

  “Satisfied?” Lou’s face hardened.

  Emily nodded, “Sorry about that. I just…”

  “No need to explain. I’d probably do the same if I were in your position.” He waved the waitress over as soon as he got the buttons on his shirt fastened again. “Coffee?”

  “Sure.”

  As the waitress walked away, Lou furrowed his eyebrows, “So, what kind of case are you working on?”

  The fact that Lou cut right to the chase was a relief to Emily. Lou didn’t apologize for not being in touch or for what happened. The words would have been nice, but they wouldn’t have helped the situation. Emily was on the outside and Lou was on the inside. That was a fact.

  Emily paused for a moment as the waitress bought their coffee over, the tendrils of steam curling above the lip of the cup. She reached for the cream and sugar and stirred her coffee. “I’m trying to help a client of mine resolve a business issue — a business partnership gone bad. My sources tell me the suspect in the case has a large amount of gambling debt, more than I could find evidence of online.”

  “And now you have new evidence you can’t quite interpret?”

  “Yep. I was wondering if you could take a look at it?”

  “Is there anything else you want to tell me about the case?”

  “No.” A rush of feelings hit Emily. There was nothing more she wanted to do than to spill all the details to Lou, to talk about cases like the way they used to. But the door to that chapter of her life was closed. No matter how much she might want to resurrect it, there was a part of her that was concerned about whether Lou could be trusted. She hoped he could. A pit formed in her stomach. The next step in her case might depend on it.

  Lou responded without reacting, “Can I see the evidence?”

  Emily pulled the red notebook out of her back pocket and passed it over to Lou. He pushed his coffee off to the side and stared at the cover. “Nice quality. Looks custom,” he said running his fingers over the red leather. He flipped open the book and started scanning the pages. “I haven’t seen anything like this in a long time,” he said.

  The fact that Lou at least recognized the format sent the butterflies in Emily’s chest back into overdrive. Could this be the breakthrough she needed? Emily stayed silent, waiting for him to glance through the information.

  “Where did you get this?” he asked.

  Emily shook her head, “That’s not important. What I’m interested in is if you can help me decipher the notations inside.”

  Lou sighed, “Without more information, I can only guess.”

  “I’ll take a guess.” At that moment, with the little information Emily had even an educated guess would be better than nothing.

  “I used to see these when Vice officers would take down high-stakes gamblers. The bookies used them as a way to help their gamblers keep track of how much they owed.

  “Why not do it online? Wouldn’t that be better?” Emily thought she might know the answer to the question, but she wanted to test the waters.

  “The people that use these kinds of custom ledgers have a lot of money and prefer to stay off the radar. What we’ve seen over the last three to five years is that there is a resurgence in off-line crime.” He looked straight at Emily, “That’s what we call it.”

  “You’re saying criminals are going back to the old way of doing things?”

  Lou nodded, “They’ve gotten wise to the fact that surveillance is everywhere. There’s not really much privacy for anyone. They’ve done what they can to mitigate the risk by going back to pencil and paper. They’re careful about putting names on things.”

  That matched with what Mike had told her. “That’s the reason for all the initials, no names...”

  Lou nodded and thumbed through a couple of more pages. “My guess? Whoever this belongs to is up to their eyeballs in gambling debt.”

  “That’s where I’m stuck.” The words came out of Emily’s mouth before she had a chance to dampen them. Whatever privacy she thought she had around the case had just been exposed, a bright light shining into the darkness. She knew she was out of her depth. But then again, he probably had already figured that out by her phone call. She took a deep breath in and let it out, hoping to calm her nerves.

  Lou squinted at her, “You okay?”

  Emily nodded, “It’s been a long couple of days.”

  To his credit, Lou didn’t ask any other questions about Emily’s personal life. “So, what do you need from me?”

  “Is there any other information you can get me about this book, like who might be holding the debt?”

  “I’m not sure,” Lou said, cocking his head to the side. “I can do a little asking around if you want.” He glanced at her, “Can I take the book with me?”

  “No. I’m gonna hold on to it.” Emily suddenly felt defensive. Sure, it would make Lou’s job easier if he had the book in front of him, but it would also tie Emily to any pending cases the Chicago Police Department might have in Vice or organized crime. That was the last thing she needed. Staying off the Chicago Police Department’s radar over the last ten years was one of her biggest missions. She’d been successful so far. There was no reason to change it now.

  Lou held up his hands and looked down at the table. “I understand that. I don’t blame you.” He took a sip of his coffee. “I’ll do some asking around and see what I can find out. No guarantees I’ll be able to get you the information you’re looking for, though.” As Lou started to slide out of the booth, he looked back at her, “If I find out anything, I’ll give you a call on the number you left me this morning. It was good to see you.”

  At that moment, Emily wanted to grab hold of his arm and tell him to sit down, to tell him how hard the last decade had been without her work, how hard it had been losing all the relationships she had built in the department. But she didn’t. Emily swallowed and nodded, not saying anything. She pushed the thoughts back down in
her chest. Some things were better left unsaid.

  Emily waited a couple of minutes before leaving the coffee shop. After checking her phone, she left a ten-dollar bill on the table, enough to cover their two coffees and a tip for the waitress.

  Emily slid out of the booth, tucking the red notebook in her back pocket again, angling for the back door of the coffee shop. Would Lou come through and get her information that could help? Emily didn’t know. What she didn’t know was that she had managed to reach out to someone for her past and it didn’t kill her. That was a start, at least.

  28

  On the way home from the coffee shop, Emily decided to swing by the hospital to see how Marlowe was doing -- not that she wanted to — but Emily’s gut told her there was more to the story. After stopping at the front desk, Emily took the elevators up to the seventh floor. A sign outside the floor was marked surgical recovery.

  More questions than answers swirled through Emily’s mind as she found Marlowe’s room. She slid the door open to find Marlowe flat on her back, hooked up to an IV. She was still pale, but her color was at least a little bit better.

  Marlowe opened her eyes as Emily walked in. “Emily,” she whispered, trying to push herself up using her elbows. She quickly leaned back into the pillow behind her head. Her strength was drained.

  “Thought I should check on you.”

  “Thanks. I didn’t expect this. That’s nice.” Marlowe tried to offer a weak smile.

  “Are you feeling better?” Everything in Emily wanted to jump up on the bed and strangle Marlowe given what a pain she’d been over the last few days but seeing her in a weakened condition held Emily back. Emily tried, as best she could, to be pleasant.