“Nice to see you, too. Here’s your thong.” I handed him the box.
“How’s your head?”
“Fine. I took a couple of Advil. And I’ve got bigger things to worry about other than a headache.” I told Mayburn about seeing Jackson Prince, about his stalking off the set a few days ago. I showed him the paper and the names I’d found in Jane’s desk, which all appeared to be doctors. “The list is probably nothing. I think I’m grasping at straws. But tell me-what would you do if you’d found that list and you were working on a case like this?”
He squinted at the names. “Lots of ways you can go. I’d get all the addresses and phone numbers of everyone here and start by calling them. See if they’ll talk to you. That Carina Fariello is probably a doctor, too, from the sound of it. I’d check her out.” He paused. “Look, I wanted to talk to you about this person of interest thing. I was talking to Lucy and we’re…well, we’re kind of worried about you.”
“You are?” For some reason, this struck me as unbelievably sweet.
“Well, I’m not worried,” he said. “If I was I wouldn’t have you work for me. You’re a cool customer.”
“I was.”
“Why do you say that in the past tense?”
“You sure you’re not worried about me?”
He nodded. “Maybe a little. But not because of my case or anything. We just want to know if you’re all right.”
“‘We,’ as in you and Lucy, right?”
“Yeah.”
Suddenly I liked the fact that Mayburn had known me only recently. Sure, he’d met me while I was a lawyer, but in general Mayburn didn’t seem to think of me as Izzy McNeil, star attorney, or Izzy McNeil, fiancée, or Izzy McNeil…anything. He just saw the Izzy I was now-tougher in some ways than she’d thought, but also struggling after the murder of a friend and the fact that she was now a “person of interest.”
So, I just came out with it. “I’m afraid that if I think about it too much, I’ll fall apart.”
“Yeah.” He nodded, like he expected that answer. “What do you usually do when you fall apart?”
“Talk to my friends. My family. Sam.” There was Sam, showing up last again, even though he’d been sending texts all day-Are you okay, Red Hot? I love you.
“Have you done that yet?” Mayburn said. “Seen your friends and family?”
“Yesterday after the memorial. And Sam the night before.”
He peered into my eyes. “Seems like you could use some more of that. Got any other friends you can talk to?”
I almost said, I’ve got you, right?
But we weren’t quite there yet. And then I thought of someone who was there. “I’ve got to go,” I said, “but tell me. How should I check into Carina Fariello?”
“Let me copy that list. I’ll run her name for you, and I’ll check out the docs, too. I’ve got some time after I drop off this thong at the lab.” He grinned. “The guys there are going to love this.” He put the box under his arm, took out his phone and typed in the names from the list.
I gestured to the box. “Don’t you want to check it out?”
He opened it, looked inside the tissue. “Holy mother of God.”
“I know.”
He looked back up at me. “Get one of these for Lucy, and give me an hour on the docs,” Mayburn said.
“Got it.”
He turned and left.
I looked up at the clear, sun-soaked sky. I raised my face, trying to feel a breeze that might blow off the lake. But back here, on the west side, the breeze was barely a tickle.
I thought about Mayburn’s questions about seeing my friends.
Then I lifted my phone and called Grady.
44
“S he finally calls,” Grady said, answering.
“How are you?”
“Trying not to be wounded. You know, every other woman I date calls me too much. You never call.”
“I have a decent excuse.” I told him about Jane.
“Shit, Izzy. You were the one that found her?”
The blood…that scarf…Jane’s lifeless eyes. “Yeah.”
“What can I do?”
“Talk to me about something else for a second? Something I’m researching?”
“Shoot.”
“I’ve got these names.” I told him about finding the list among Jane’s research. I read the names. “Know any of these docs?”
“I took a dep of that Ritson guy once. And I’ve seen Dr. Hay’s name. He’s a Chicago doc. So is Hamilton-Wood. She’s supposed to be good.”
I felt a little piece of disappointment cut into me. “So they might just be the names of expert witnesses? Like maybe on a class action case?”
“Well, probably not just one case. If they’re all rheumatologists, that’s too many for one case. I mean, when you’re hunting for experts, you might blow through a few of them, looking for someone who will give you the right testimony.”
“But in a class action case, with so many plaintiffs, wouldn’t you need this many docs to testify?”
“Right. That’s the point of class actions. They pool all the plaintiffs, so you can pool all the resources, all the experts. By the way, what class action case are we talking about?”
“Ladera.”
“Jackson Prince’s case?” Everyone in Chicago knew Prince. He won the biggest verdicts, and he scored more PR than any attorney in the city. “On a case like that, where Prince is the liaison-counsel, he would end up with a panel of experts, maybe one or two rheumatologists, maybe a cardiologist to testify how the drug caused heart attacks or whatever, a rehab doc to testify about the plight of the injured plaintiffs, maybe some neurologists if the drug affects the brain. That kind of thing.”
“So maybe the list is the group of doctors Prince was considering as expert witnesses?”
“Where did you say you found the list?”
“I found it in Jane’s stuff.”
“I don’t know why a newscaster would have a list of Prince’s proposed experts. That stuff is protected by the work-product privilege.”
The sun shifted around the building and felt hot, as if spring was really here. And yet I couldn’t get in touch with that spring feeling, that infusion of renewal. I wondered for a bleak moment if I would ever feel that again. “Ever heard of Carina Fariello?”
“Nope. Another doc?”
“I’m not sure.” My cell phone buzzed. I looked at it. Mayburn on the other line. “Grady, can I call you back in a second?”
He laughed. “I think we both know you’re not going to call.”
“No, I am. I just have to-”
“You don’t have to call me. You don’t have to do anything. It’s okay, Iz. Really. Let me know if you need me.”
“I’ve got something,” Mayburn said.
“Already?”
“My place isn’t far from Trial TV, and hey, I’m good. So, you got a pen to write this down?”
“Hold on.” I hurried inside the Trial TV building. C.J. stood inside the newsroom, a pen behind her ear, and seemed about to speak.
One second, I mouthed as I hurried past her.
I skirted the Trial TV sets where the afternoon anchors were in full swing and went to my desk. I found a pen and cradled the phone with my ear. “Ready.”
“Carina is actually Margaret Fariello. I think Carina is her middle name. Address…” He read off a location. “That’s north of Lawrence.”
“Is she a doctor?”
“No, an accountant. She works as an overnight bookkeeper at O’Hare for one of the airlines.”
“Weird that Jane would have her name on the list with the doctors.”
“Maybe not. You know who she used to work for?”
“One of the docs?”
“Prince & Associates.”
“Jackson Prince’s firm.”
“Yeah. Here’s her home phone number.” He rattled off some digits.
“This is great. Thanks.” But my words were qui
ckly followed by a sense of deflation. Really, what had I learned? That Jane was doing research on Jackson Prince? I already had that information. That Jane had questioned some doctors about the Ladera case? That maybe she’d called some people at Prince’s law firm? Didn’t add up to anything. Certainly nothing I’d learned would give Prince a reason to kill Jane.
Plus, there was the scarf. The way Jane had been strangled with it. That seemed to suggest that whoever had done that to her had known about Jane’s predilection for erotic asphyxiation.
Was it possible that Jane and Prince had had an affair? He was easily twenty years older than her, and he didn’t seem like Jane’s type. But then wasn’t that Jane’s main point? Her affairs brought her into another world, another life, one that she would otherwise have little access to.
But then again, maybe Prince and Jane hadn’t had an affair. Maybe Jane had been killed with the scarf because it was her signature, her way of highlighting a big story. She’d been wearing it on the day she questioned Prince on Trial TV. And if the story about Prince had been big, and he’d known about it, then maybe strangling her with it was his way of truly shutting her up.
“Iz, I’ve to run,” Mayburn said on the phone. “I told Lucy I’d pick up dinner for the kids.”
“Dinner for the kids? You did not just say that.”
“Shut it. I’ll talk to you later.” C.J. came up to my desk. In her jeans and blazer, she took a wide stance and gave me a sour face. “I’ve been looking for you. You need to take a call in my office.”
“Sorry. I had to talk to someone outside.”
“Whatever. The police have been calling the station.”
“On a case we’re covering?”
“On Jane’s case. They’re looking for you.” She jerked a thumb. “Let’s go.”
C.J. had taken over Tommy Daley’s office. It was a real office with a door that closed, but the only things in it now were a desk and a bunch of boxes C.J. had brought from her old station. Most were open and overflowing with what looked like office stuff-old scripts, reference books and manuals, broadcast plaques and awards, notebooks, coffee mugs.
C.J. nodded tersely at the phone. I stared at it a moment, with its three rows of lights, many solid and bright, others dark, one lone light blinking at the top.
I lifted the receiver with trepidation. My arm seemed to tingle with the movement. I gulped hard at something bitter that rose in my throat. “Hello?”
“Isabel McNeil.” It was a statement, not a question. And I knew that voice. Detective Vaughn.
I glanced up at C.J., who stood in the doorway, her arms still crossed. I put my hand over the receiver. “Can I get a minute on my own?”
She pursed her lips, nodded reluctantly, then left.
I gripped the phone. “Can I help you?”
“You’ve been named a person of interest,” he said in a somber voice.
“I know that.” I raised my other hand to my mouth. For a second, I felt as if I might throw up. My fingers were icy cold as they touched my lips. Sometimes my hands went cold like that when I hadn’t eaten (and I hadn’t since early this morning), but somehow I knew it was more than that. It was fear.
“And I hear you’ve got yourself a lawyer,” Vaughn said, “and that she’ll bring you in if we don’t announce this to the public.”
“Yes.”
“Good, because we need to see you at the station. We need an alibi for Monday night before you found Jane. And for late Friday night after you two were out.”
I knew I should welcome the opportunity to speak to them, to clear this up, because I wasn’t guilty of anything. But still my stomach curled into a tight fist.
“Tomorrow work for you?” Vaughn said, like we were meeting up for coffee.
“In the afternoon.” After Trial TV. I named a time.
And then, despite the fact that I knew it was stupid to piss off the cops, even if this cop in particular was a complete jerk, no, a complete asshole, I hung up.
45
L incoln Park is a massive garden in the middle of the city, a great place to stroll, to lose yourself. Or maybe to find yourself.
When I’d gotten home after my talk with Vaughn, I hadn’t known what to do. I called Theo a few times, silently begging him to be home already, so he could tell the cops I was with him on Friday night, not Jane. But over and over and over I only got his voice mail. And it was starting to mess with my mind. Was he really in Mexico? Was he really who he said he was? I became anxious, suspicious and generally freaked out by the way everything seemed to be spiraling, and in a direction I hadn’t charted for myself.
And so I worked myself into something resembling a panic attack. I stood in my kitchen, hand on the counter as if to hold myself there, my breath coming in ragged gulps. I’d heard about people having anxiety attacks. Q, for example, had always claimed to have them when he stepped on the scale at the gym. But was this what he was talking about? Did he feel as if he might choke, might faint? Breathe, I ordered myself. It seemed so simple-breathe. But I couldn’t get my lungs to cooperate.
I called Maggie. “I’m going to the Belmont station tomorrow.”
“Remember, you don’t have to talk to them,” she said. “I told them you would talk if they kept quiet about the ‘person of interest’ thing, but we can always pull the plug.”
“But then they’ll tell everyone I’m a person of interest.”
“Maybe.”
“Probably, right? I mean, if I don’t talk to them.”
A pause. “Yeah, probably.”
I thought about Jane’s affairs and the “scarfing.” I’d promised Jane I wouldn’t mention the scarfing, but I was going to have to talk about her affairs, at least her night with the writer, in order to show Vaughn I wasn’t with her late that night. I told Maggie about Theo then.
“Mmm, he sounds hot.”
“You have no idea.” Then I told her about Jane’s writer, and after reminding her of our own attorney-client privilege, about Jane’s affairs. “I need to tell the cops all this, right?”
“On the one hand, if it could help find who did this to her, yes. But on the other hand, it doesn’t mean they’ll stop looking at you…”
“But it will explain that she wasn’t with me Friday night. She was with the writer.”
“The problem is you don’t even know that writer’s name.”
“Mick.”
“Mick what? Is that short for Michael?”
I started panting again. “I don’t know! But if I can just explain who Jane was with that night and who I was with…”
She exhaled loud. “Iz, just because you tell the cops X and Y doesn’t mean they get to Z.”
Pant, pant, pant. “I…have…to do something.”
“Okay, okay. We’re going to the station tomorrow, and we’re going to figure this out,” she said. “I’ll pick you up and take you there.”
My breathing slowed. A bit of fresh air seeped its way into my lungs. “Thank you. Thank you.”
“No problem.” She was quiet for a minute. “When was the last time you worked out?”
My mind knotted. “Can’t remember.”
“Put on your running shoes and take a walk along the lake. That’s an order from your attorney and your best friend. It’s gorgeous out.”
Maggie knew I wasn’t a runner, like her. She knew I didn’t like to work out at all. Sweating in public reminded me too much of my flop sweat spells. But Mags also knew I always felt better when I did some kind of exercise.
And so I went to Lincoln Park, and now, I walked fast with my iPod loud, playing a song by the Kooks-“She Moves in Her Own Way.” I loved that song. It was Sam who used to blare it while he waited for me to get ready for an evening out. But it seemed too upbeat. I stopped, pulled out the iPod and scrolled backwards, looking for something different. The Killers came up. I almost clicked on it, but then I registered the word-Killers-and it chilled me, made me think of Jane’s battered body.
> I started walking again, scrolling through my iPod, and landed on a hard-edged song from Liz Phair. I clicked on it and headed for the North Avenue bridge that would take me to Lake Michigan.
When I reached it, I trotted up the stairs and ran across the bridge, and right then I felt something release inside my body, breath finally flooding into my lungs.
I wanted to harness the feeling, to let it consume me, and so I went to the middle of the bridge, suspended a hundred feet over Lake Shore Drive, and I hung over it, playing my music loud, watching the cars zip by in the south lanes, sucking in breath after breath after breath, letting the heat of the sun sink into me. I don’t know how long I stood there, and I was only aware of time passing when the cars began to slow. Rush hour. I looked up at the stately apartments that hugged the curve on Lake Shore Drive, as if clinging to their views. I raised my face farther and looked at the skyline. I loved that skyline. Always had. Even when I was a kid, it reminded me that the city had been there for so much longer than me. And now it reminded me that people in this city had survived worse than what I was experiencing.
But, unfortunately, Jane hadn’t survived at all. Jane, who loved this city, too.
My eyes filled with the tears I hadn’t let myself cry at the memorial. I thought about the fact that Jane would never again see this skyline; never again sit on a rooftop deck of a Chicago restaurant and drink wine, gazing at the lights glittering around her; never again roast in the sun on the bleachers at Wrigley, slurping a yeasty beer; never again jostle through crowds at Taste of Chicago or Jazz Fest or Old Town Art Fair; never again see the symphony play at Millennium Park on a crisp summer evening; never watch the tulips magically appear in the mid-lane boxes of LaSalle Street; never again witness the massive Christmas tree at Daley Plaza next to a two-story menorah.
I wasn’t even sure Jane had loved all those things. They were things I loved about Chicago. Jane probably had her own list. But that list was gone with her.
So, on behalf of Jane, who couldn’t do it, I raised my hand, and just for one second, I waved goodbye to the city.
Red Blooded Murder Page 21
