Mason nodded. “I can’t fucking tell with my sister sometimes. Is she really handling seeing Nancy that well or is it an act?”
We stepped into the elevator and I hit 2 as I contemplated my answer. “I’d say, in general, Lorna doesn’t act. She’s honest to a fault.” I hesitated. “It seems, though, when it comes to things about her childhood, she’s more reserved.”
“It sucked. There’s no reason to relive any of that.”
Our personal conversation ended the moment we stepped into the cement hallway and Mason scanned his eye to enter the command center.
Patrick’s gaze met ours as the steel door opened and closed behind us.
“Do we have any more answers on the kidnappers?” I asked.
“I’m not sure.”
“What does that mean?” Mason prompted as we both approached Patrick.
“Garrett and I have been in meetings earlier tonight. We learned something interesting.”
While Mason reached for his chair and spun it around, I simply sat in mine and leaned back, wondering what possibly could be interesting on the streets of Chicago.
“Word is getting around,” Patrick began as he brought up footage from various street cameras around the city. “...that Sparrow has had enough of the petty fighting. The constant warfare is making the city look like it’s out of control, and that perception is bad for Chicago businesses as well as for Sparrow. He’s even getting shit through his mother from the aldermen. They want to know if taming the streets needs to be taken to another level. A few of the aldermen have been pushing the mayor for a stronger response in the form of law enforcement, local as well as National Guard.”
I crossed my arms over my chest. “It is their job.”
“No,” Mason said. “It’s our job.”
“Opening the door to law enforcement beyond Sparrow’s reach,” Patrick said, “will infringe on lucrative aspects of Sparrow. It will also end up backfiring. The gangs will lose merchandise, customers, and ultimately income. That will decrease our income. The incident last weekend, where eight people were shot at that club in North Lawndale was broadcast on all the major news outlets around the country and beyond. It’s like violence doesn’t happen in other cities too.”
While I listened, I had a hard time keeping my mind off of Lorna. Hell, she’d just seen her mother for the first time in almost two decades. What was she thinking?
“Do you have any proof of the shipments?” Mason asked.
My thoughts returned to now as I looked up at the screen overhead. “What did you say? What shipments?”
Patrick stood. “Garrett and I both received reports of gun shipments mysteriously finding their way to some of the smaller factions in the city.” He nodded toward the screen and a picture of various guns. “As you can see, we’re talking high-quality assault rifles as well as rapid-fire pistols. These are the half a dozen that Garrett confiscated this afternoon. We’ve got them downstairs and he has capos running serial numbers on the ones that have them. He also has ballistics running, to see if any of these were used in recent crimes.”
“Smaller factions? Subsets?” Mason asked. “Someone is supplying the little guys.” There were literally hundreds of smaller factions and exponentially more subsets of the fifty-five primary gangs who operated within our jurisdiction.
“How many of the top leaders have been contacted?” I asked.
“They all have to report,” Patrick answered. “If they don’t, they’re in danger of losing their real estate.”
Mason stood and walked to the coffee machine, inserted a pod, and hit the button. It didn’t matter that it was near ten o’clock at night; we had a long night ahead. After running his hand through his hair, he turned toward us. “Why the small factions?”
“Because they don’t report,” I answered.
“To us or anyone,” Mason added.
“And because,” Patrick began, “they’re disgruntled in the first place. That state of mind combined with high-quality firepower is the perfect mixture to elicit street fighting.”
That was true. A subset may be three guys. Three guys who for whatever reason decided that they were done being a piece of a bigger unit. They wanted more. They wanted to make their own rules and run their own show. Or they want retaliation.
“So someone is purposely supplying these groups to make Chicago look bad,” I said.
“Who is supplying the firepower?” Mason asked.
“We don’t know,” Patrick answered. “We also don’t know how these factions are being identified. It’s not like they have help-wanted ads on the internet.” He looked to Mason. “I could use your help to see if you can find anything on the dark web.”
Mason shook his head. “I’ll do it, but I guarantee if there is anything out there, it’s buried. The feds are getting too good at monitoring the dark web.”
“Another reason to stop this shit,” Patrick said. “The last thing we need is the feds infiltrating Chicago’s gang wars.”
“If it’s not on the internet, it has to come from someone on the street.”
“That fucking narrows it down,” Mason said, returning to his chair with his coffee. “Chicago has four thousand miles of streets and nearly two thousand miles of alleyways.”
“I was informed,” Patrick began, sitting back at the keyboard, “about the location where the guns downstairs were acquired.” He typed and brought together street cam and satellite images. “Remember the funeral home shootout last summer near Englewood?”
Mason and I nodded before I spoke, “Wait, this supply chain has been established in our city for months?”
Patrick nodded. “This is grainy as shit, but take a look at this image from behind Dino’s Liquor on South Parnell Avenue.”
He enlarged the image.
“Black Ford truck. Are you fucking kidding me?” I asked as I began hitting keys, retrieving the images from Montana.
“We already know that make and model isn’t unique,” Mason said.
“No,” Patrick responded, “but look. There’s no front plate.”
“Illinois requires front plates,” I said, pulling up the other images.
“If we look only at neighboring states,” Patrick said, “Indiana doesn’t.”
Leaving his warm mug on the desk, Mason stared up at that picture. “Laurel lived in Indiana.”
“When she was working on the compound,” I said. “Here, look at the two trucks side by side.”
“Can we get an image of the rear license plate?” Mason asked.
“What about the liquor store? I think we should make a visit to ask some questions.”
“We’ve got capos on that. I’m waiting on a report.” Patrick changed the image on the screen overhead. “I can locate this truck at the same liquor store multiple times over the last few months. I would be surprised if this is an outlet for only one subset. More likely, this is a supply location for many. And look at this image.” He enlarged it even more.
“I see a man with a hat,” I said. “He could be the same man from the truck in Montana.”
“I was thinking the same thing,” Patrick said. “Now look here.”
“He’s not alone,” Mason said, looking up. “I fucking hate how grainy this is.”
“Does the liquor store have security?” I asked. “If it’s online, I can find it.”
As my fingers flew across the keys, it was the most energized I’d felt since we went to Washington DC. There was a chance this was another dead end, but at least it felt like it had a possibility.
Lost in our work, time passed without notice.
“Fuck,” I said, “I’m not finding online security for Dino’s. From the street cams I see other cameras. They’re either dummies or it’s an in-house system.” I turned to Patrick. “Have the capos reported back from there yet?”
“No. They’re waiting until closer to closing. Fewer witnesses.”
Liquor stores in Illinois were required by law to close by two in the morning.
“If they have any,” Patrick replied, looking at his watch.
His movement prompted me to do the same. “Shit.” The clock told me it was nearly one in the morning. I stood, stretching my neck and shoulders as I contemplated all the work I could be doing. “I need to head upstairs for a bit.”
“I was just noticing the time,” Patrick said. “I’m sure Maddie and Ruby are asleep.”
I didn’t want to sound like the man who answered to his wife, but if we were all honest with one another, we all fit in that category. “I’d told Lorna I wouldn’t be long and promised that I’d be back to our apartment by midnight.”
“You should go,” Mason said. “We can text if there’s anything.” He looked up from his phone. “I was wondering where Sparrow was.”
Though I’d begun to walk away, I stopped. “Is everything all right with Araneae?”
Slowly, Mason nodded, his gesture turning into more of a shrug.
“What is it?” Patrick asked.
“Araneae is having memories. Laurel is with them.”
My pulse raced within my veins, the beat sounding within my ears. “If Araneae is, then Lorna...” I didn’t finish the sentence as I scanned the sensor and left the command center.
Lorna
“You look real pretty, Lorna. You look like your momma.”
The words circled in my head. From the moment I pulled back the sheet and stared at Nancy Pierce, taking in her gaunt body and graying red hair, I heard the sentences. The voice was gruff and unfamiliar, yet the sentences were there, making their way out of the shadows, taunting me.
Staring at Nancy Pierce in death wasn’t much different than seeing her alive. I believed I had—seen her in life. Not only nearly twenty years ago, but also recently.
It seemed real.
I recalled the rain falling in large drops and a storm brewing in the distance.
The hard-packed dirt quickly covered with the simmering flood-like waters, turning the earth’s surface from hard to slippery muck. She was there, leaning against a large rock. I didn’t recognize her, but she said I knew who she was.
She knew me.
She’d told someone all she knew about me.
For a moment—only one, only a second, smaller than that, only a millisecond—I thought I was seeing myself, a reflection distorted by time, a glimpse into the future of what would be. Before I could stop myself, I’d said the question, the one that to the rational mind was irrational, yet I asked, “Are you me?”
Standing over her deceased body, witnessing the havoc her life choices caused, didn’t give me satisfaction. I never wished for her to die. I never wished for harm to come to her. Truly as a young girl, I wanted the opposite.
It wasn’t longing for a Carol Brady from the Brady Bunch to welcome us home every day. No, it was much simpler. Young Lorna wanted to be in Nancy’s good graces, for her to look at me as our grandmother had looked at me, with love in her green stare.
The insatiable need I now recalled physically hurt. I berated myself for ever setting my worth on the actions of someone who never deserved that level of significance. And yet I had. I’d stood for hours, waiting and hoping she’d return home with food for our empty stomachs or clothes she’d promised would come for school.
The yearning to be important to the woman who was supposed to love me through everything was so intense that there was nothing I wouldn’t do to earn it.
Even lie.
Was it wrong to do a bad thing for a good reason?
That was a difficult question for a thirty-five-year-old. It was impossible for a ten-year-old.
* * *
A few hours ago~
* * *
My trembling stilled as I stepped from Reid’s embrace and pulled back the sheet revealing her face. The pervasive stench seemed to lessen, or my concentration was elsewhere. Her thin flesh was stitched together in a wide V beneath her collarbone. The sewn incision then went lower, beneath the second sheet.
I should be satisfied with a quick look and the test results.
I wasn’t.
My curiosity pulled me closer to the woman I was supposed to mourn.
Nancy Pierce wasn’t the woman from my childhood. She was barely her own skeleton. My fingertips roamed over her cheeks, feeling the bones beneath. Without embalming, her flesh was cold and tough, without elasticity. I didn’t know if that was caused by death or if she’d been that way before her heart finally stopped pumping.
I pulled back the second sheet, the one covering her body, not all the way, but to her waist and the end of the incision.
“Lorna.” It was Mason’s warning to stop there.
I couldn’t uncover anything that hadn’t been seen by hundreds if not thousands. Did customers see the prostitute they purchased or simply use her or him? This was among the questions I truly didn’t seek to answer.
My head tilted as my gaze scanned from the sheet upward.
I’d never gone on to college.
Was this what it was like to see a dead body in a science lab?
Could I insert a scalpel and identify what was within her heart if it still remained or ever had existed?
Was there ever a place within it for Missy, Mason, or me?
I ran my fingers over her ribs, feeling the peaks and valleys. Mine were healing and hers were on display. Her stomach area sank as if she didn’t have enough of anything to fill the void. Maybe she didn’t. Had her insides been removed during the autopsy?
My line of vision moved upward. I couldn’t recall if her breasts had always been so small and nonexistent or if this too was a byproduct of her withering away. I touched a small white circle and then another. “What are these?”
“Scars,” Laurel replied.
Scars?
“There are a lot more on her ass,” Mason said.
My stomach twisted as I turned to my sister-in-law. “Cigarette burns?”
“Mostly, we can only assume. A few are larger. They might be from cigars.”
My neck straightened as I refused to feel bad for her. She made life choices. They were hers and the rest of us were left to deal. She didn’t feel bad about leaving us. I wouldn’t feel bad about the consequences she faced. I focused again on her body as a whole. My memories of my mother resembled my own reflection more than the woman lying in front of me.
Her hands lay at her sides, palms toward her body. I lifted one as the arm sagged.
“Rigor mortis disappears over time. The refrigeration helps,” Laurel said.
“Hmm.” I studied her fingernails. When we were young, she always wore fingernail polish.
Why would I recall that?
The tips of her fingers were scarred. Her nails were unpolished, brittle, with ragged ends. It was as if she’d clawed at something, maybe beginning long before her death.
“You found her with me?” I knew the answer, but there were others I couldn’t fit in the equation.
“Yes,” Reid said, his deep voice strong and supportive as he stepped forward, coming to a stop at my side.
I didn’t need to look up to see his love and adoration; it surrounded us such as a warm blanket in this cold room. His presence radiated more than heat at my side. It was support. In stepping forward he—without words—told me he was with me, no matter what.
“Was she kept where Araneae and I were kept?”
“Forensics says yes.” Reid silenced for a moment before continuing. I would later believe it was because he and Mason were wordlessly discussing my need to know more. Thankfully, my husband prevailed. “There were two cells—like jail cells—in the bunker. Your DNA was found in one. Hers was found in the other.”
“Was there blood in hers too?”
“Nothing recent. It was mostly hairs and dead skin cells.”
I sucked in a breath before exhaling. “I wonder how long she was there.”
“They’r
e working on that.”
“Why?” I asked everyone. “Why would the people who took us take her? It doesn’t make sense. We haven’t seen her for years.”
Mason came up to my other side. “Have you seen enough?”
My hand went out to our mother’s sparse hair. In my memory it was bright and red. I pinched a few white, gray, and faded red strands between my fingers. Each one was coarse beneath my touch.
“Her hair used to be like yours,” Mason said with his most compassionate tone yet.
Taking a deep breath, I turned to Laurel. “Have you learned anything from the autopsy?”
She cleared her throat. “A few things.” She gestured toward the door. “May we talk somewhere else?”
I turned back to what remained of our mother as I searched for words or even emotions.
Shouldn’t they be pouring out of me?
Why was I at a crossroads when faced with her demise?
Reid kissed the top of my head. “Do you want to be alone to say goodbye?”
“That’s kind of morbid, isn’t it? I mean, this is her body. It’s not her.”
“I never got the chance to say goodbye to so many people I cared about.”
“Did they care about you?” I asked.
When I looked up, his Adam’s apple bobbed. “I believe they did.”
“Then you were blessed.” I turned away from the body. “Thank you for showing me.” My gaze met Mace’s. “I’ve seen enough.” After Mason pushed the body back into the refrigeration unit and secured the latch, I asked, “What are you going to do with her?”
“I’ve always been partial to barrels of acid down at the docks.”
My lips opened as I tried to assess if that was my brother’s warped dark humor or if he was being truthful. Before I could respond, he shook his head. “Cremation.” He reached out to me. “Don’t fight that, Lorna. How do we explain the presence of a woman who has been virtually dead for nearly twenty years? Cremation will rid us of any explanation.”
Reaching for Reid’s arm, I complied without speaking—compliance by acquiescing.
As we stepped into the hallway, Reid reached for my shoulders. “I hate to leave you.”
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