by Sean Little
Mindy tapped Duff on the shoulder. “Give me a leg up, big boy.”
“Big boy?” Duff crouched and made a stirrup with his fingers. Mindy stepped into it and with a moderate amount of straining on Duff’s part, he hoisted her to the top of the fence. She reached over and plucked the hook out of the loop. The fence swung open with a slow, eerie creak. Mindy fell forward, landing lightly, and stopped the gate before it could rattle back against the rest of the fence. She eased it to a position where it would not make any more noise.
The backyard was nondescript. The lawn was mowed neatly. There was a small area of grass, maybe as much a single car parking space. There were no other ornaments or gardening enhancements, just a square of green. A small, circular patio table with an umbrella over it stood on a stone deck, two lawn chairs on either side of the table. That was it. Beyond the yard was the large two-car garage with a metal door leading to the garage from the backyard and another hook-and-loop-fastened gate on the edge leading to the alleyway. They walked across the yard, tried the door to the garage, and found it locked. They stole through the gate and into the alley.
The alley was very quiet. With the garages on either side blocking any noise from the streets, only a faint hum of city sound made it through. Lafferty’s garage had a large door on the front with four glass panels head-high across it. All of the panels were dusty and dirty from age and wear. One of them was cracked with the lower right corner broken out, probably from an errant rebound or a carelessly (or not so carelessly) hucked rock. Dark curtains hung behind the windows blocking the interior from the curiosity of any passersby.
“Give me your cell phone.” Mindy held out a hand.
Duff slipped his out of his pocket. “Why don’t you use yours?”
“I left it in my apartment with just about anything else that could be used to electronically tag me. You should know that.” Mindy hit the camera app and slipped her hand through the broken pane. There was a flash of light as she triggered the camera shutter with her thumb. She pulled the camera back and flipped to the gallery app. “This look familiar?”
The phone screen displayed a black Mercedes van with tinted windows. The front bumper was damaged, the plastic grill cracked and missing panels. One of the turn signals was busted. Abe craned his neck in. “I only saw it in the rearview. Can you flip the image?”
Mindy handed the phone back to Duff. “Is this enough to get a warrant?”
Duff shrugged. “Maybe? Maybe not. Who knows? I’ll text this to Betts and see what he thinks.”
Abe looked at Lafferty’s house looming large over the garage. “I bet we could find something good if we could get into the house.”
“So, let’s go look.” Duff walked back into Lafferty’s backyard. He slipped a small leather case out of his back pocket as he walked.
“You going to offer him a manicure?” Mindy followed Duff toward the house. Abe trailed after her reluctantly.
Duff unzipped the case. It opened like a book to reveal a set of lock picks. “Just a hobby.”
“Breaking and entering is illegal.” Abe could feel his gut tightening. He didn’t like it when Duff insisted on skirting the rules, no matter how helpful it might be.
“We’re not going to break anything. I’m going to pop the lock on the back door. If anyone asks, we’ll all say it was unlocked when we got here.” Duff knelt next to the door and selected a pick and torsion key from the set.
“Uh, not to interfere with your work, but maybe you don’t do that.” Mindy pointed at a sticker in the window of the back door. It was a white circle with official-looking text which read MacPherson Protects This House next to an image of a green octagonal sign with a skeleton key lock in it.
“What, you’re going to let a little thing like an electronic alarm system stop you? Coward.” Duff jammed the torsion wrench into the door and started working the tumblers with the pick.
“Seriously, that’s a bad idea.” Mindy grabbed Duff’s wrist.
Duff shrugged her grip off and continued to probe the tumblers. “MacPherson Security Systems doesn’t exist. It’s a novelty sticker meant to scare off potential burglars. It’s like those fake electronic security boxes you can buy to throw burglars off, only lower-tech.” Duff worked through the last tumbler and cranked the torsion wrench to the right. The door’s bolt turned in the lock.
“Are you certain?” Abe knew Duff was usually right about such things. ‘Usually’ being the operative term, of course.
“I’m positive.” Duff took a deep breath. “Besides, if I’m wrong, an alarm will go off any second. He opened the door inward and held his breath. Silence reigned. Duff blew out a long breath. Then, he held a finger to his lips and crept inside of Lafferty’s house.
Mindy slipped into the house after Duff. Abe did not want to go in. He wanted to turn this whole matter over to Betts and Gates and let the weight of the Chicago P.D. carry any investigations forward, but he also knew he needed more than a picture of a damaged van. He cursed his own existence and slipped into the house behind Mindy. Under his breath, he muttered his typically passive protest. “Hey, look. We’re committing a felony.”
Lafferty’s house was narrow and looked like it was well-worn from use. It was not dirty or falling into disrepair, but it was clear someone, or perhaps two or three people, had spent many years in the house. The house itself was probably eighty years old. It had last received a decent update sometime in the late 1980s judging from the floor, cabinetry, and wall colors. The house still looked nice, but it was time for an update to the decor and color scheme.
Duff moved like a ninja. For someone as big as he was, he moved relatively quietly. The sneakers he wore let him pad across the tile floor of the kitchen almost silently. The floor creaked slightly to protest his weight as the floor of an eighty-year-old house would, but other than that he was able to sneak through the house with hardly a sound.
Mindy, who had gone through military Basic Training as well as C.I.A. training, followed with the grace of a cat. The Sambas she wore disguised all sound, and she was light enough to barely trigger any groans from the floor.
Abe moved with the skills of a man who had never played hide-and-seek in his life. He stepped as quietly as he could, but there was neither grace nor coordination in any of his movements. Duff always said Abe walked like Peyton Manning scrambled. Abe, not being a fan of football, had no idea if it was an insult or compliment. He figured it was an insult. Abe knew it was better if he stayed still. He hissed to Mindy, “I’ll look through the kitchen.”
Duff went to the staircase. He signaled for Mindy to stay in the living room but remain alert. She put a hand on her gun and nodded, but she did not draw it from the holster.
Duff climbed the stairs carefully. He was hyper-aware of the Walther wedged comfortably under his arm. He wondered if he had to use it, could he? He did not believe he could. All the hours of practice at the range, it was all pointless. He was a good shot, but only good. He was no marksman. The Walther was a comfortable gun to shoot. From twenty yards, he was theoretically deadly with it. He could dot up a paper target, but he was not a killer. Neither was Abe. They both knew it. If he got up the stairs and Lafferty was waiting for him, his play would be to throw himself bodily down the stairs while screaming like a madman for Mindy to shoot. She was ex-military. Let her do it.
The stairs were carpeted. That helped mask Duff’s footfalls, but each step was strained over a near-century of use. Every board protested Duff’s weight. He could feel the old wood flexing under his feet. He knew it was highly improbable he’d accidentally break one, but he still worried.
The upstairs was a long hallway with a bathroom and a bedroom on the left side, and a pair of smaller bedrooms and a closet on the right. Duff moved down the hall. All the doors to all the rooms were wide open. Only the closet door in the middle of the hall was closed. That made him feel more confident. He would not have to worry about swinging open a creaky old door and alerting whoever might
be in the room. Holding his breath, Duff checked the bathroom, the first bedroom, the smaller bedroom, and finally the master bedroom. The first bedroom was a study with a roll top desk with a laptop computer in the middle of the workspace. The second bedroom was a guest room with two twin beds pushed against the walls leaving a narrow path between them. The master bedroom had a queen-sized bed with a simple quilt and two pillows on it. It was unmade and empty. Duff exhaled slowly. He relaxed. He went back to the top of the stairs. “Lafferty’s not here.”
Mindy glanced out the front window. “Abe, come here and be the lookout.”
“I can do that. My nervousness and fear of getting caught makes me a natural lookout. I’m suspicious of everything.” Abe tip-toed into the living room despite the all-clear from Duff.
Mindy pointed to the front window. “We know he’s not driving his van. If he comes back he’ll probably get dumped in front of the house.”
“Check.” Abe was glad to be useful.
Mindy crept up the stairs to the study. Duff was using the flashlight app on his phone to illuminate Lafferty’s desk. He was opening the laptop computer. “How old was Lafferty, you figure? Late sixties, early seventies?”
Mindy shrugged. “You tell me.”
“Well, he was in Vietnam.”
“Then late sixties, early seventies sounds right.”
“I figure he’s not too computer savvy, then.” The laptop screen blazed to life. As Duff has guessed, there was no password protection. Duff clicked into a few files. The pictures album was empty save for a few choice pornographic images. “It appears our esteemed Mr. Lafferty has a jones for buxom, chunky African American gals. I can’t fault him there.”
“Gross. Next folder.” Mindy’s nose wrinkled.
Duff checked the Documents folder. There was a plethora of official-looking .pdfs and Excel documents. There were hundreds of .doc files, too many to go through in one night. Duff pulled a flash drive from his pocket. With a click and a drag, he dumped all the files into the drive. The transfer would take several moments.
“You’re stealing government documents.”
Duff shrugged. “Lafferty isn’t an official government employee. He shouldn’t even have most of these.”
“Good point. Check his browser history.”
Duff opened Chrome. One click of Control-H later and he was staring at some familiar names: his own and Abe’s. “Uh-oh.” He called over his shoulder. “Abe, Lafferty knows our addresses.”
Abe called back up the stairs. “I assumed he would. He had our names from the fundraiser and we are listed in the Yellow Pages.”
“Who still uses the Yellow Pages?”
“We’re old. Shut up.” Duff scrolled through the rest of Lafferty’s browser history. “He watches as much porn as I do. I need to teach this dude about the incognito option on his browser.”
“Another time, maybe.” Mindy drifted into the bathroom. She started poking through the medicine cabinet. She shut the door so she could turn on the light without the bathroom light blazing into the hallway alerting anyone outside someone was active inside.
The file transfer ended, and Duff pocketed the drive. He closed out all the open windows and closed the computer. He started poking through the desk drawers. They were cluttered and full of papers, pens, and various odds and ends. The central drawer, the over the kneehole for the desk user’s legs, had a few important-looking papers in it. Duff unfolded them and found a Last Will and Testament. It was signed and notarized. It turned over all of Uriah Lafferty’s worldly possessions to his nephew, Marcus Stevens.
The bathroom door opened. Mindy had turned the light off before opening it, so she was a shadow in the dark. She rattled a few plastic bottles. “I know what Prednisone is. I know what Viagra is. What’s Zytiga? This man’s medicine cabinet is full of pills.”
Duff’s encyclopedic brain began to whirr. It brought up everything he knew about Zytiga. Suddenly, the will in Duff’s hands made a lot more sense. “It treats metastatic prostate cancer.” He waved around the documents from the desk. “I don’t think Mr. Lafferty is long for this world.”
“He’s around seventy. He’s got, what, ten years at best?”
“I don’t think he’s even got that. Prostate cancer rates of Vietnam veterans are astronomical. A lot of boys who fought over there are dropping like flies around seventy because of Agent Orange-related cancer. I think Uriah is a short-timer.”
Abe’s voice drifted up the stairs. “Which means he would have very little concern about a lengthy prison stay.”
“I think he’s our triggerman on the Davies murder,” said Duff.
“Agreed.”
“But, can we find a gun?” Mindy walked into the master bedroom. “Duff, bring your flashlight.”
Duff followed Mindy into Lafferty’s bedroom. Making sure to keep the light source close to the drawers so as not to flood the room with light, Mindy and Duff searched Lafferty’s bureau. They found clothes. There was a small end table next to the bed. In one of the drawers, they found an empty case for a handgun.
“That means wherever he is now, he’s armed.”
“I know where he is,” said Duff. “He’s waiting for me and Abe at our place. Guaranteed.”
Mindy knelt to look at the bottom drawers. In the very bottom drawer, she pulled out a thick photo album. “Hey, give me some light here.”
Duff kept the light beam tight. Mindy started flipping through the pictures. The first few pages were images from Lafferty’s childhood, he and Kimberly as children. There were a couple images of him in a Boy Scout uniform and one with him and a pretty young lady at what might have been prom. Then, there were eight or ten pages of military photos. Lafferty had served in the Army. There were pictures of him with many young men who had been in Vietnam with him. Under many names Lafferty had written years, births and deaths. Almost all the births were listed as between 1946 and 1951. Some of the deaths had dates like 1973 or 1974, the boys who didn’t make it back from Vietnam. Some of the deaths were more recent, 2015 or 2016. Under the recent deaths, Lafferty had written the causes of death. In a careful print, there were phrases like Cancer, Pancreas or Cancer, Prostate. Of the guys in the photos who died later, almost all of them succumbed to cancer.
After Vietnam, there were lots of pages of pictures of Kimberly, Robert, and Uriah at various events. In the early pictures, the ones where Uriah had just gotten back from Vietnam, he was sporting bandages on his face. In later ones, the big scar was painfully obvious on his jaw. In none of the photos was Uriah ever with a woman. No wedding shots. His life looked lonely. He seemed to live for his sister and her family. He was always in the background of the family shots, orbiting and watching, but never fully a part of the moments.
Duff flipped through the pictures. He got to the day of Marcus’s birth, or at least the birth of the first baby called Marcus. There were a half-dozen shots of the baby in the birthing suite, close-ups of the face as the baby was swaddled in a blanket. After that, there were pictures of the baby at home, only a few days old. Then suddenly the pictures changed. They were still close-ups of the baby, but the baby was definitely different.
“You see what I see?” Duff pointed at two pictures.
“Skin tone is different.” Mindy leaned in to inspect the photos closer. “One has a dimpled chin, the other doesn’t. How the hell does that happen?”
Duff reached up and touched the slight cleft in Mindy’s own chin. “Because one is your brother and the other isn’t.” Duff slipped the photos out of the album hoping Lafferty would never notice. He put them in his back pocket, and they left.
-16-
THE TRIO LEFT Lafferty’s with two pictures. It was proof of a sort. It was not a smoking gun, but it was enough to show Betts and Gates that at some point there was beyond a doubt a baby switch for some reason or another. Duff’s hunches had been correct to some degree. Maybe he was right about the baby dying. Maybe the original Marcus had a defect and a young s
enator’s wife was concerned about the effect it would have on the public. Duff could not be sure, but raising a retarded child, as it would have still been called in 1983, would have cost them some votes. It could have played as a sign of weakness. Maybe now there were more voters willing to express sympathy for them or celebrate the diversity and inclusion of a child with some sort of difficulties, but not back then. Abe and Duff still had precious little to go off of in terms of concrete evidence. The pictures were a start, but they were not enough.
“Where are we heading?” Mindy was driving.
“Back to our place, I guess.” Abe hoped he sounded confident. He wasn’t. There was a good chance Lafferty, Tasker, or both men were lying in wait for them. A better-than-good chance, actually. Abe was certain one or both of them were in the apartment office at that very minute. They probably searched through his desk, tried to unlock his computer, and rooted through all the papers on top of the desk, particularly the ones from Mindy’s place.
Duff was anxiously looking at his phone. “Betts hasn’t texted me back, despite me sending a photo of the two pictures.”
“It’s three in the morning. People sleep.” Abe wanted to get a text from Betts as badly as Duff did, but he understood the need to separate life from work, especially when it came to sleep. Duff did not. Duff lived at work for more reasons than merely financial. When a case drove him to obsession, it was the only thing he could focus on until pieces started making sense. When he was in that mode, he expected everyone else to be like that with him. It was the source of many spats between Abe and Katherine over the years, especially when Tilda was very young.
Abe’s phone buzzed in his pocket. He looked at the number but didn’t recognize it. Who would call him at this late hour? Abe answered it.
“Abe, we’re safe. I’m calling you from someone else’s cell phone, so it won’t be traced back to us. Are you okay?” Katherine’s voice was worried. Abe was touched.