When we got to the embankment, I didn’t see Palurdo, but she emerged from the box of a waiting room on the platform in response to my text.
Palurdo followed me in silence as I led the way to Lydia’s hideout. When we got there, I lay flat, shining my work flash around the hole, but couldn’t see anything other than the detritus Palurdo had described.
I gave her the dogs’ leashes to hold while I climbed down. Lydia might have lived there only a few days, but there was an unpleasant fetid smell. Holding my breath, I used my work gloves to lift the old blanket. I’d feared I might see Lydia’s emaciated body underneath, but no one was there. The only life I saw was some beetles, working industriously on what was left of the food I’d brought. I crouched and shone my flash around the hole.
You couldn’t stand in there. My legs were cramping again from squatting, but before I backed out, some impulse made me look up at the rocks overhead. I almost missed the piece of polished wood, so covered in dirt had it become.
I sat down hard. Had it been here yesterday, when I came on Lydia? Lydia had been holding her hands behind her back, as if protecting something. Could have been the gavel. She could have stuffed it up into the ceiling of her cubbyhole for safekeeping.
Lydia couldn’t have killed Leo—she was barely strong enough to lift a bottle of water. But—if Coop had killed Leo? Lydia might have hidden the gavel to protect Coop. But that didn’t make sense—it would have meant Coop already knew where she was before he saw me yesterday. It was possible, I suppose, if he was really a cunning psychopath, instead of the angry, impulsive man he seemed to be on the surface. If he’d filched the gavel, lured Leo to the park, and bashed in his head, this was not just a calculated move, but the calculations of a terrifyingly insane person. If, if, if. And where was Lydia now?
I didn’t touch the wood handle, didn’t even try to blow away the dirt, just knelt to photograph it. I was betting it belonged to Curtis Murchison, betting it would have Leo Prinz’s blood and skin fragments on it.
“Are you—is there a problem?” Palurdo called down to me.
“Sorry. Just trying to figure out what to do next.” I backed out of the hole and hoisted myself onto the rim. I stripped off the windbreaker and pants; sweat had soaked my T-shirt and bra clear through. I took out my water bottle and drank deeply, then poured some of it over my head.
“You don’t think she’s dead, do you?” Palurdo asked, so nervous that she loosened her grip on the leashes.
The dogs knocked me over in their enthusiasm, then tore off into the underbrush. Palurdo apologized anxiously for not holding on. She offered to help me corral the dogs, but I told her they would come back when their enthusiasm had worn off.
“You go on home. I’ve had a long day; I’m going to sit and let them come to me.”
Palurdo hurried to the train platform, looking anxiously around her, as if fearing her stalkers might lie in wait for her here.
A couple of express trains thundered past. I couldn’t sit like a stump with the dogs so near danger. I got to my feet and started thrashing through the undergrowth.
Mitch and Peppy must have heard me: in a moment, they bounded up, eyes bright with the pleasure of getting covered in burrs and the stench of something rotten.
“It wasn’t Lydia Zamir, was it?” I grabbed their leashes. “Please tell me she isn’t dead. Please tell me if she is, you didn’t disrespect her body by rolling in it.”
We explored the underbrush for half an hour, but the only other humans I saw were some evening birders and the same man who’d been talking to spectral forces yesterday. I found a decaying rabbit and a malodorous raccoon—either could have perfumed the dogs.
I also tripped over some sticks with red flags on them. Surveyors had been at work in here. Maybe Giff Taggett and his pals had decided to jump the gun and start work on their expanded beach project. So often that was how construction got going in Chicago—the destruction of an airstrip near McCormick Place, the reconstruction of Soldier Field, both done in the dead of night, before any public planning process had taken place.
I thought of Larry Nieland and his expensively dressed friend at the SLICK meeting. If money was to be made along the lakefront, it wouldn’t be by the community members who’d shown up for the SLICK meeting. More likely, it would be one of the companies on whose board Nieland sat.
The sun was setting when I took the dogs across Lake Shore Drive. The three of us swam for half an hour. The two-master I’d seen yesterday had disappeared, but other, smaller craft dotted the water. By the time we left the lake, the sun was below the horizon, bathing the western sky red-gold. My favorite time of year, these long light evenings with dusk folding us in a soft embrace.
Mr. Contreras bustled out when we got home. While he helped pull burrs from the dogs I told him what we’d been doing, including finding the gavel. I asked if he’d be willing to call the cops to tell them where it was hidden.
“I don’t want to answer questions from Sergeant Pizzello about why I was exploring that part of the park. If she gets an anonymous tip from a man, she may guess I’m behind it, but she won’t be able to prove a connection to me. I’ll give you one of my burner phones so that they can’t trace the call to you.”
He was delighted to become part of the investigation. He called Pizzello’s cell, reported the gavel. “Think you cops are looking for the weapon that killed young Prinz, ain’t’ cha? You didn’t look very hard or far, did you?” He gave them directions to the hole and hung up.
He felt justifiably pleased with himself, so much so he wanted to grill a steak for us to share for dinner. I’d promised to meet Peter, but it was one of his attractions that he enjoyed spending time with my neighbor. We sat in the back garden, having a jolly time—enhanced on my part by Donna Lutas glowering at us from her kitchen door. Once a South Side street fighter, always a street fighter.
24
Something Is Happening, but You Don’t Know What It Is, Do You, Ms. Jones?
Pizzello called just after six the next morning. “Warshawski? Did I wake you?”
“Sergeant, you phoned the lazy detective—any hour of the day or night you’d be waking me up.”
“Tell me about the gavel,” Pizzello said.
I sat up to read from the dictionary app on my phone. “‘The gavel is a small mallet with which someone in charge of a meeting or auction—’”
Pizzello said, “I’m not in the mood. I’m sure you know I mean the gavel dumped in some rocks near the expressway.”
That was a cheap trick, giving false information in the hopes of startling me into revealing the truth. I almost fell for it.
“I can’t tell you anything about that gavel. When did you find it? Does it belong to SLICK?”
Peter rolled over and put an arm around me, pulled me back down next to him.
“We haven’t had time for a forensic analysis yet. But someone left a message on my cell phone last night, telling me where to look for it.”
“And you think that ‘someone’ was me?” I said. “Just a minute while I look at my call log. I might have been sleep-talking—it’s how we lazy detectives get through our workload.”
“That stung, did it? No, it wasn’t you, but I figure you have friends who’d do it for you. Someone had been camping in the hole by the expressway where we found the gavel. Was that Lydia Zamir?”
“Sergeant, I’m guessing you called at the dawn’s early light in the hopes of knocking me off-balance, but I can’t help you with gophers digging holes by—what, the Ryan? The Ike?”
She skipped a beat, then said, “I read my patrol unit’s notes wrong. Wasn’t the Ryan, but the Metra tracks down near where the Zamir woman used to camp out.”
“Still can’t help you,” I said.
“What about the man Coop?”
“What about him, indeed?” I said. “I asked you for a last name and an address. Do you have those? If Coop lured Prinz into that wilderness to beat his brains in, he needs to
be under lock and key ASAP.”
“For a lazy woman, you work too hard,” Peter said. He was nibbling on my left ear. “Stop the drudgery and get back under the sheets with me.”
I rolled over into his arms. “A hardworking detective would already be out with her bloodhounds following a trail of creosote, not lolling around with an archaeologist.”
We could hear Pizzello’s squawk from my phone but I didn’t bother to turn it off—she shouldn’t have tried sucker-punching me.
We finally got up an hour later. Mr. Contreras had kept the dogs with him last night, but when I walked Peter down to his car, they were ready to run.
Peter scratched Mitch’s ears. “Could you follow a creosote trail?” he said to the dog.
“He and Peppy have saved my life more than once. I don’t know if they smell my fear across the miles, but I wouldn’t trade them for fifty Sherlock Holmes bloodhounds.”
“That’s good.” Peter was suddenly serious. “I’m leaving for Turkey in three days. I don’t like you chasing after someone who bludgeons people’s heads into pulp, even if you do have Mitch and Peppy on your side.”
I didn’t like the idea, either, which meant I needed to find out who it was as fast as possible. I drove the dogs up to Evanston to check on Bernie. She was getting ready to leave for her day’s coaching job, but Arlette was coming with her.
“Maman! This is not take-your-mother-to-work day,” Bernie protested.
“I think it’s a great idea,” I said.
“Me, too,” Angela agreed. “I wish my mother could come up here to see me coach.”
It didn’t take much coaxing to persuade Bernie we were right. She was still nervy; she wanted the comfort of her mother’s presence, just didn’t want to admit it. I drove them to the West Side park where Bernie was working, ran the dogs around, let them jump into the lagoon, and got to my office by nine.
I called the hospital where Simon Lensky worked, but they still hadn’t heard from him. Neither had Mona or Curtis.
“But we only meet when we have SLICK issues to discuss,” Mona said. “Sometimes weeks go by when we don’t talk to each other. If his son had a bad turn, he’s probably staying at the care facility.”
She gave me the name, but when I called, they also hadn’t seen Simon. He’d been mugged after the SLICK meeting. Leo had been killed. The two events had to be connected through the document the two had argued over, but I couldn’t figure out how to find a link.
Over my first cortado of the day, I went back to Larry Nieland’s web page, the one where he listed the boards he sat on. The surveyors’ sticks I’d found in the Burnham Wildlife Corridor had left me curious about whether a private company was already giving money to the Park District.
I was hoping one of Nieland’s companies might be connected to the elegantly dressed man who’d sat next to him in the SLICK meeting, but four of the six were closely held, which meant they didn’t have to list their board or their officers for any public documents. One of the U.S. companies was a hedge fund, which meant Nieland definitely could afford a better wardrobe. One was a Fortune 100 company that did everything from building nuclear reactors to trading in dried seaweed.
The South American companies included one called Minas y Puentes—Mines and Bridges—which might be anything. Another seemed to deal mostly with exporting raw materials, although I might have deciphered the Spanish wrong.
When I’d first looked at Nieland’s profile, I’d dug up his cell phone number. On an impulse, I called him.
“I don’t talk on or off the record with reporters unless the interview has been set up by my public relations manager.”
“Very wise, Mr. Nieland. I’m not a reporter, but an investigator, curious about your involvement in the Park District plans to redesign the Forty-seventh Street lakefront.”
He paused a beat too long before saying, “I’m not involved in that.”
“Then it was an exceptionally generous pro bono act to come to the community meeting last week and pinch-hit for Superintendent Taggett.”
“Oh, that. Giff Taggett and I are old sailing competitors and therefore old friends. He’s trying to put together a public-private partnership and I agreed to run some numbers for him.” Nieland had recovered his geniality.
“And the man with you?” I asked politely.
“Another old friend. What did you say your name was?”
When I repeated it, he cared enough about the call to make sure he had the spelling correct. A man in his position definitely needed to be careful about the person he spoke to, but I didn’t think there was any doubt that he had some kind of stake in the proposed development.
I didn’t even try to call Taggett. The park super was appointed by the mayor, which meant money that came to him wouldn’t be disguised as a campaign contribution, it would be a straight-out bribe. So if Taggett was getting rich from his public-private partnership, I’d have to find his bank accounts, his offshore holdings, all those things that are really hard to track down.
I resolutely turned to my paying clients’ needs. These fortunately were fairly easy to sort out. A few background checks on potential new hires, double-billing from a subsidiary that was easy to spot. I was just finishing my reports when Norm Bolton called from Global to see if I was ready to sign his contract. Something about him or the contract made me uneasy enough that I didn’t tell him I wouldn’t sign, just said I’d sent it to my lawyer for review, that I’d get back to him as soon as Freeman had gone through it.
“You’d do well to act quickly, Warshawski,” Bolton said. “Ryerson’s ready to move, and we can find another investigator to work with him.”
“That might be your best bet then,” I said.
“We’ll give you another twenty-four hours to think it over,” Bolton said after a pause.
When he’d hung up, I added his name and his series offer to my Zamir file. Maybe Murray was raring to go, maybe not, but there was no reason for this project except to keep an eye on what I was doing.
While I had the file open, I read through all my entries. One thing I hadn’t followed up on was Zamir’s rage at the law firm that had taken over defending her lover’s murderer. Zamir had tried to attack the Devlin attorneys in court, but Elisa Palurdo said the firm had taken out an order of protection against her. She’d been picketing the firm, which shouldn’t be illegal, unless she was threatening to harm them.
I burrowed into Cook County legal records until I found the order, which was dated about six months after Arthur Morton had taken his life. It barred Lydia Zamir from being within fifty feet of any of Devlin & Wickham’s partners. It also barred her from calling or approaching a woman named Jane Cardozo.
Cardozo was listed in the administrative tab of Devlin’s website; she wasn’t a lawyer but headed their transcription department. All the lawyers in the firm’s far-flung empire dictated their thoughts and briefs to a twenty-four-hour central hub in Chicago, where people with nimble fingers and acute hearing turned them into documents. Like all the big firms, Devlin had clients from around the world; they boasted that they could take dictation in fifteen languages, including Arabic, Mandarin, and Thai.
I could understand why Lydia might have gone after the Devlin lawyers, but not what she might have against the transcription team. Maybe in her fragmented state she held the person who produced the briefs as culpable as the partners.
The bigger question was who got the firm interested in Arthur Morton’s fate and who paid the fees. Even if they were acting pro bono, what that meant is that Morton wouldn’t be charged for his lawyers’ time. However, he’d still have to pay the other expenses—travel, photocopying, taking depositions, the fees charged by expert witnesses, and all the other add-ons. In a big case those add-ons can run to the high six figures. If he’d also been responsible for the lawyers’ fees, those probably hit the million mark by the end of the first day in court.
Arthur Morton had been the semiemployed son of a bankrupt farme
r. Who in his orbit had that kind of cash?
I went back to the trial record to see what witnesses had been called to speak for Morton. His pastor, his high school football coach, two of his buddies who’d joined the marines out of high school. All four men said essentially the same thing: Morton had been an ordinary boy until his father’s suicide. He’d become morose, withdrawn, barely managed to graduate from high school. His buddies tried to talk him into joining the marines with them, but he didn’t want to leave his mother on her own, or at least he’d been coached into saying as much at the trial—his lawyers trying to make him look like a loving son, not a maniacal murderer.
As the newspaper had reported, Morton’s counsel took the position that Morton had come under the influence of extremist websites and that he wasn’t responsible for his actions. The trial report listed the websites. Some came from the survivalist movement, but others promoted maximum lethal force against all nonwhite, non-Christian people. Morton had also bookmarked an Aryan matchmaker’s site: keep the race pure by marrying women with guaranteed northern European pedigrees.
The home page for TakeBackOurLand.com showed a trio with caricatured Semitic features, wearing yarmulkes and grinning wolfishly as they stood in front of a grain silo, each with a foot on top of a blond woman in a torn and bloody dress. A giant shell casing, engraved with not on our watch, hymie, was heading for their evil faces. The inside pages had tips on how to protect yourself from the Jews, Mexicans, and Muslims who wanted to take over America’s farms.
Farms in western Kansas used to belong to Americans. No longer. They’ve been taken over by the globalist agricultural companies who are sucking the lifeblood out of Americans. We all know where our wheat and soybeans are going, but you have to bore deep into the manure to find out what’s happening to the profits.
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