“Honey, for five hundred dollars, you can have it all.”
So she told him. Told him her whole life story up to this point. Which, when all was said and done, wasn’t particularly riveting.
Her real name was Priscilla. She had grown up in a trailer park in Macomb, Illinois, a little over four hours west of Chicago. She’d never met her father; he left her mother the second he realized he had knocked her up. Good guy.
As a single mom and waitress, Nikki’s mother didn’t have much time for her. So Nikki found ways to keep herself busy with illegal substances, legal substances she was too young to legally use, and boys. Most of all boys.
After high school, which she somehow managed to graduate, she moved to Chicago and began stripping at Larry’s Leisure Lounge, a gentleman’s club in the South Loop. While stripping, she found herself having a lot of casual sex for free. Well, not exactly free. She had to put up with the assholes who thought it was their God-given right to harass a stripper as well as those on the opposite end of the spectrum who professed their undying love after a single hand job.
When she found out there was a way to make a couple of grand a night without having to deal with either type, she signed right on the dotted line.
“Now can I ask you a question?” He nodded. “You crazy rich or something?”
“No.”
“Then why waste all this money? I mean, you’re not a bad-looking guy. Kind of old, but some girls like that.” Czarcik laughed. “You could go out with a lot of girls for free. And a lot of them would even sleep with you. That is, if you’re not impotent or anything.”
“Hand me a smoke, please.” She tossed him the pack of cigarettes from her side of the bed. “I don’t know. Somehow . . . paying for it . . . it just makes it feel more genuine.”
Nikki seemed to think about it. She bummed a smoke for herself and looked at him. “You know, you’re full of shit. But that’ll be our little secret.”
Czarcik smiled. He was beginning to like her. “What about you, how much longer you gonna do this for?”
She shrugged. “I’d think about getting out now if I wasn’t making so much damn money. I mean, I make more in one month than my mom made in her best year. It’s just hard to give that up.”
“And you really don’t mind everything you have to do?”
“I know you don’t want to talk about sex, but if I’m being honest, sometimes I even like it.” He nodded. He could understand. “I mean, you do get your freaks. The kind who want to watch you pee. Who want to tie you up and—”
It hit him hard and clean.
The Rush.
If his brain had been an animation in a pharmaceutical commercial, it would have been represented by hundreds of disparate pieces coming together to form a single image.
What surprised him most this time was how simple the connection had been.
The DA said his hands were tied.
It wasn’t a metaphor, not an expression or idiom. There was nothing to interpret. No vague images to place within a subjective rubric.
It was literal.
Hands were tied.
Mrs. Fernandez’s hands were tied. A chicken was tied around her neck.
Tied. With rope.
The picture in his mind was as clear as day. Mrs. Fernandez’s hands were tied one way; the chicken was tied another. The knots were different. Why? And why did it matter? And why did it bother Czarcik so much?
The answer came quickly. The killer had bound her hands and feet—most likely first—and then, for some reason known only to him, had chosen a different way to secure the chicken. Was the act symbolic? Deliberately misleading? Only one woman could help him answer these questions, and she was far from the Lonely Hearts Motel.
Nikki could tell something was wrong. “Is everything OK?”
Like a man possessed, her client hopped off the bed. Began to pace, almost manic.
Nikki’s job had long ceased to be surprising. The endless parade of men, even the ones who thought they were the kinkiest SOBs around, were all so routine. But this was something new. Nikki had a few clients who had freaked out on her. Husbands overcome with guilt. Religious nuts overcome with shame. This was different. It was as if he had been struck by . . . what was the word? She remembered it from catechism. Divine something or other.
And then, before she knew it, the madman was gone. For a split second, she was hit with a paralyzing fear that he had absconded with her money. But there it was. Sitting undisturbed on the table. The corners of the bills plainly visible.
Nikki thought hard. She couldn’t remember the last time she had earned so much for so little.
SEVEN
To law enforcement agents across the country, the Integrated Database Aggregator was better known by its acronym, IDA. The consensus was unanimous—she was one smart bitch.
Technically, IDA was a massive, cloud-housed database programmed with a top secret algorithm. Police departments were supposed to input every bit of information about a case, no matter how small, and it was then stored securely in a well-guarded server farm. Authorized users could access IDA to identify patterns that would have been impossible to find for even the most diligent and collaborative of departments.
If a rapist in Spokane who forced his victims to first clean themselves with a particular brand of bath soap suddenly moved to Fort Lauderdale and continued his fetishized crimes, IDA made the connection.
When the budding serial killer who dubbed himself Bon Vie scrawled the same Latin phrase on the kitchen wall of two of his victims, in their own blood, over three thousand miles apart, it was IDA who knew almost as soon as the words had dried.
At the academy, new recruits were taught that in investigative work, no detail was too small to overlook. In reality, as the rooks soon learned, even the most important details were often missed or ignored. But not by IDA. She never tired, never erred, and never allowed anything to cloud her judgment.
She was cold and analytical. For Czarcik, it was love at first sight.
Eldon Parseghian—he preferred not to use a title, considering it somewhat déclassé when he rubbed shoulders with the movers and shakers—called Czarcik from his car. “Where are you?”
“I’m heading to the office. I want to run something through IDA.”
“This about the murders on Magnolia?”
“Yes.”
“A break?”
“Don’t know yet.”
Parseghian knew better than to push. “I’ve been thinking about the case all day. Mind making a quick pit stop first?” he asked Czarcik.
“Where?”
“I’d like you to pay a visit to Salvatore Cicci.”
“Ah, shit.”
Salvatore Guido Cicci had an office on the 104th floor of the Willis Tower. Willis Group Holdings, an insurance firm, had negotiated for both the naming rights to the building and for the privilege of having it referred to, by every single person in the country, by its original name, Sears Tower.
Except for Sal Cicci, who believed in fresh starts.
Cicci was the only son of one of Chicago’s last remaining Mafia families. Like every mobster, Cicci swore that one day he was going to go straight. The only difference was he meant it. He was already out of narcotics and human trafficking. When asked why he got out of these two extremely profitable revenue streams, he would smile and say—to those he thought would get the joke—“I believe this drug business is going to destroy us in the years to come.” The truth was, Cicci had three young daughters whom he loved more than anything. When their friends asked them what their daddy did for a living, he didn’t want them to have to answer the same way he had, back in grade school.
His desire for legitimacy did not mean he was going soft. When those he cared about were wronged, he could be ruthless. Two summers before, the daughter of his trusted secretary had been raped as a graduate student at the University of Chicago. The police had dragged their feet finding the perpetrator. Cicci found him first
, a gang-affiliated kid who had a shit job at a waste-treatment plant. In a tragic accident, the kid had somehow fallen into one of the facility’s massive steel vats. When the medical examiner saw the body, he said it looked as if the victim had been boiled alive.
Parseghian knew that Cicci’s family once owned a chain of laundromats. Cash business. Perfect to clean dirty money. Literally laundering.
The Fernandezes owned a laundromat. Maybe one still controlled by Cicci. Parseghian remembered the gangbanger. Maybe Cicci got wind of what the Fernandezes were doing to their own brood and got mad?
But mad enough to do this? The theory was weak, he admitted to Czarcik, but it couldn’t hurt to check.
As Czarcik rocketed past the 67th floor of the Willis Tower, his ears popped. By the time he stepped off the elevator onto the 104th floor, he felt like he had just left a Rush concert.
He was met by two large men, identically dressed in dark suits over black T-shirts, who ushered him through the frosted glass doors of Cicci Industries. If Cicci was attempting to change the perception of himself and his enterprise, he was off to a poor start.
Sal Cicci was sitting behind his desk, an imposing slab of marble covered with the tools of any ordinary executive. A few personal touches. Framed photos of his wife and daughters. A small branch—an olive branch—enclosed in Lucite, which probably had some significance to his Sicilian heritage.
He stood to greet Czarcik. “Detective, a pleasure to see you.” He motioned to a leather chair across the desk from him. “As I explained to Eldon, I don’t know anything about your situation. Didn’t even catch it on the news. But of course I’m happy to help if I can.” He dismissed his two employees with a casual flick of the wrist.
In the comfort of his office, Cicci was a lot better looking than in the newspaper photos Czarcik had seen, usually taken in front of a courthouse—candid shots snapped at the worst possible time. He smiled naturally and had an easy manner. Czarcik wasn’t unfamiliar with mobsters. It was apparent why Cicci should be the face of the family.
Czarcik took a seat and filled Cicci in on the murders, making sure to linger on all the grisly details. The mobster shook his head, looking visibly disgusted at the appropriate times. He listened intently, and when Czarcik was finished, he opened his hands and asked, “Why should I know of this terrible crime?”
Subtlety wasn’t Czarcik’s strong suit. “It’s not exactly a secret that the Cicci family had an interest in laundromats.”
Cicci smiled and motioned for Czarcik to come closer. The detective leaned in as Cicci took a spreadsheet from a manila folder and laid it on the desktop. “You see this? These are the options on REIT loans all across the city, coming due in less than six months. You know what that means?” Czarcik shook his head. “Well, neither do I. But I have some very smart people on my payroll telling me that these little pieces of paper are going to be worth millions. So tell me, why would I be messing around with a bunch of losers at some shitty laundromat?”
Czarcik leaned back in his chair. Despite himself, he liked Cicci. With all his artifice, there was also something genuine about him. The detective drummed his fingers on the armrest. “Old habits die hard, I guess?”
Cicci leaned back in his own chair and lightly touched his index finger to the outside of his nostril. He did it so quickly the gesture appeared unintentional. “They do, don’t they, Detective?”
Czarcik still liked him. He got to his feet and buttoned his sport jacket. “Thank you for your time, Mr. Cicci. Good luck with”—he glanced around the room—“with whatever it is you do here.”
When he was nearly to the door, Cicci called out to him. “Detective . . . I’ll keep my ears open.”
Czarcik nodded and walked out of the office.
It was late when Czarcik arrived back at BJE headquarters. He was already annoyed at Parseghian’s detour, so he headed straight to his desk, entered his password, and logged into IDA.
As a detective with the BJE, Czarcik was given a lot of leeway, but accessing IDA was one of the few activities he couldn’t do from his home office. A special mainframe supposedly created by some of the best minds in the enterprise-security industry ensured that a person could only access the database from within the physical confines of the building.
A welcome screen nearly entirely black, a remnant of DOS, came up. Those brilliant coders weren’t much for design. Czarcik entered his password.
ACCESS DENIED.
He frowned. Shook his head. He entered his password again. Slower, more deliberately this time.
Same result, as if the two words in all caps were mocking him. “Jesus fucking Christ,” he muttered to himself.
Czarcik got up from his chair and walked across the office, heading over to the desk of Corrine Fumagalli, the BJE’s computer expert and, luckily, one of the few people at HQ he could tolerate. This was curious, since literally everything about Corrine should have annoyed him.
She was at her desk typing away, hardly surprising, as she usually worked odd hours. You were as likely to see her wandering around the office kitchen at three in the morning, brewing some kind of exotic tea, as you were to find her walking into the building at nine.
Her hair was pulled back in messy pigtails, and she would occasionally play with one of those fidget spinners marketed to hyperactive children. “Are you going to one of those parties where people dress up as characters from video games?”
Corrine stopped typing and spun around in her chair. “I’d accuse you of insulting me—and lodge a complaint with HR—but you might be stupid enough that that was an actual question.”
He smiled. No one else at the BJE would dare speak to him like this. “Human Resources? If they spent fifteen minutes just standing by your desk, they’d have you in sensitivity training for weeks.”
She considered it, bobbing her head back and forth. “Eh, you’re probably right. So . . . what the fuck do you want?”
“I can’t get into IDA.”
“No means no, Paul. Didn’t anyone ever teach you that?”
He shook his head. “Corrine, one day you’re going to make some young man very unhappy.”
“Already have.” And then with a twinkle in her eye, she added, “And plenty of young women too.”
“So, what’s with my password?”
Corrine turned back around. “We changed them all last week. Security protocol. Didn’t you get the memo?”
“Maybe. But if I did, it went right with all the other memos.”
From her pursed lips, he could tell Corrine knew all too well where that was. She sighed, busy typing once again, and said, “Your new password is your last name and then the last four numbers of your social in reverse order.”
He gave her a grunt of thanks and began to walk off.
“Paul!”
He stopped and looked back. Her eyes were red. Any hint of playfulness was now gone. “I heard about your case. About the kids.”
He nodded.
She looked down and shook her head. “I can’t handle kids, and I can’t handle animals. If you’re asking me, those motherfuckers got what was coming to them.”
“I wasn’t asking you.”
“I know.” And then Corrine went back to work.
After only one more failed attempt, Czarcik managed to log in to IDA.
Chicago PD was surprisingly on the ball. The Fernandez case was already in the system. Every piece of evidence, every observation, every relevant thread of inquiry had been fed into the computer.
Czarcik scrolled through the data until he came to the crime scene photo of the chicken tied around Mrs. Fernandez’s neck. He zoomed in on the photo and then used an editing tool to isolate the knot. After that, he checked off the requisite boxes and chose the appropriate pull-down menus to make his search as broad as possible. Enter. IDA whirred to life. Her state-of-the-art processor sent billions of electronic pulses flying across an interconnected network of routers, servers, and switches, which could also fi
nd you a good deal on khakis or locate the hottest Ethiopian restaurant in East LA. Only now, their purpose was cyberjustice.
The first few hits were for nautical websites displaying various types of boating knots. The knot in question was a constrictor hitch, hardly uncommon, but not something that a layman would quickly tie off. Such work took a bit of time, even for an experienced seaman.
Czarcik didn’t believe that the killer’s vocation was of importance, so he wasted little time exploring the maritime connection. Instead, he had IDA pull crimes within the last month in which the victim was restrained with a similar knot. If Czarcik wanted to, he could extend the time line even further back, but he had a strong suspicion that if the killer had in fact claimed other victims, it was recently. Nothing about this felt like a garden-variety psycho, the kind of monster who might claim a single victim and then lie in wait for years, maybe even decades, before again sating his bloodlust. No, this was purposeful and deliberate.
IDA returned three hits.
The first was completely irrelevant. A gangland murder in El Paso, just over the border from Ciudad Juárez, statistically the most violent city in Mexico. Aside from the fact that the victim was Latino, like the Fernandezes, there was no obvious connection.
The second was equally useless. In the college town of Gainesville, Florida, where the serial killer Danny Rolling once terrorized coeds as the Gainesville Ripper, a former football star had broken into the home of a girl he met at a party, tied her up using a constrictor hitch, and proceeded to rob her blind. He was arrested, found guilty of aggravated robbery, and sentenced to ten years in prison, where he remained.
The third and final hit also seemed like a long shot. A high-profile Texas judge had been found tied to a chair in his home, flayed alive. This judge had plenty of enemies—as the supporting documentation detailed—but how did this case relate to a murder on the North Side of Chicago?
Czarcik scanned the articles about the murder. The judge had ruled on multiple abuse cases. Interestingly, he had also been a perpetrator in one. This didn’t surprise Czarcik. It was Texas, after all. Corporal punishment was still legal in schools. If someone didn’t have any compunction about a stranger beating their child, chances were they didn’t believe in sparing the rod themselves. Still, he had a family judge who ruled in abuse cases; a family who had lost their foster kids as a result of abuse. There was a connection, however tenuous. At least it warranted a phone call.
Rain Will Come Page 5
