The Hunting Ground (Deuce Mora Mystery Series Book 2)

by Jean Heller

  “Okay, here’s what we’re gonna do . . .”

  I refused to allow Rizzo to upload the photos from my phone. He’d have to take that up with our lawyers. But I gave him Mark’s contact information. He reiterated his promise to do all he could to contain the story for me. I had no idea if that would be enough.

  I left his office and headed for O’Hare. The morning rush was over, but given the normal flow of traffic on Interstate 90—or lack of flow, even at mid-day—I had to start out before noon to negotiate the eighteen-mile trip if I had a prayer of getting back into the city before the evening rush started around 3 p.m.

  I was about half way to the airport when my burner phone rang.

  I dug it out of my bag.

  “Hey, it’s Gina.” My air traffic controller friend.

  “Whadaya know,” I said. “I’m headed in your direction at this very moment.”

  “On the interstate?”

  “No doofus, in my own private jet helicopter. Of course on the interstate, though I’m thinking I could have walked there faster.”

  “So everything’s normal?”

  “Exactly. What’s up?”

  “I think I’ve got a line on your incoming,” she said, choosing her words carefully in case a third party was listening in.

  “Really? Already?”

  “Very unusual for a private flight, and it’s only by chance that I saw it. The flight plan calls for a 5:10 a.m. arrival on Wednesday, the eleventh.”

  “I wonder why they’re coming in so early,” I said.

  “Several possibilities.”

  “Such as?”

  “Fewer incoming flights to stack up. Right about dawn, which would make it easier for the crew than trying to negotiate an unfamiliar field at night. Fewer people around to notice them and get curious. All of the above. None of the above. Take your choice.”

  When I reached O’Hare I drove perimeter roads, looking for a vantage point where I could see the remote parking areas for private planes. My choices proved as limited in number as they were in adequate sight lines. I stopped at one access point and asked security if there was a gate designated for limos coming or going with VIP passengers. It was the sort of question that makes Homeland Security people nervous. Even producing my ID and press credentials didn’t assuage suspicion.

  What I finally learned was not helpful. There was no single point of entry or departure for VIP transportation.

  I headed back to the city after a totally wasted afternoon.

  Mark had better luck. While the plate on the white van was reported stolen from a truck in Oak Park—no help there—the Wisconsin plate on the Bentley had the luxury automobile registered to Paul Nagi, who lived on North Lake Drive in Whitefish Bay, Wisconsin, north of Milwaukee.

  I did some research on him. Nagi was an Arab-American and a somewhat distant cousin in the House of Saud. Not, to all appearances, an A-lister. He was a venture capitalist, and a good one, I guess, since he owned a $3 million home on a bluff overlooking Lake Michigan with a stairway that led to the beach. The 6,000-square-foot home had six bedrooms and six full baths sprawled across nearly two acres of lake frontage.

  And it had an enormous indoor/outdoor heated swimming pool encased in glass that could be opened fully in the summer and closed up tight in the winter. The glass wall that attached the pool area to the house had a guillotine door that sealed off an indoor hot tub. To get out of the pool in the winter, you pressed a button and the door slid up to let you swim under and into the hot tub.

  It struck me as a very expensive alternative to a thick terry bathrobe.

  With all this luxury of his own, what did Paul Nagi need with Al Rashid?

  I ran Nagi’s police record and found an answer: two incidents of indecent exposure in the nineties, both times fondling himself in front of young boys near their school. He got probation on the first charge and a hefty fine on the second. No jail time on either count.

  I guessed he had since taken his hobby inside where he would have privacy.

  If I was correct, that made the big house on the Near North Side into ground zero for the hideous sexual abuse of children.

  So what did that make the industrial site?

  49

  Pete Rizzo called the following morning.

  “I met your good friend from the NSA an hour ago,” he said. “Him and me aren’t gonna to be fishin’ buddies.”

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “Him and his FBI pack rounded up the brass here to read them the riot act about me talkin’ to the media.”

  “How’d they find out?”

  “How do they find out anything?” Rizzo asked. “I saw the photos you shot outside the machine shop. We been dealin’ with Mark and his tire. They’re probably followin’ both of you, and maybe they got somebody inside the department here.”

  “But why are they angry with you?” I asked. “You didn’t give anything to me. All the information passed from me, or Mark, to you.”

  “I made sure to mention that, but it didn’t make any difference.”

  “You were in on the meeting?”

  “Yeah. Since I was the prey on this hunt, I got invited to my own hiding.”

  “Nice analogy,” I told him. “You could be another Hemingway.”

  “Not funny, Deuce. The NSA is playin’ the national security card with us the same way they did with you, an excuse to keep everybody away from the case. It’s not just you. It’s the medical examiner, the mayor’s office, child welfare, everybody. Nobody’s ‘sposed to be talkin’ to anybody else. The NSA and FBI want total control. It pisses me off, and I told the feds that. I also told Mason Cross to his smug face that if he ever laid a finger on you again I would personally beat the shit out of him and toss his body out a high window onto the street at rush hour.”

  I smiled. Pete Rizzo was a good guy. But I didn’t want him getting in trouble over me.

  “Did you say that in front of the brass? That couldn’t have gone over well.”

  “I saw a couple of ‘em smiling. They’re not fond of bein’ closed out, either.”

  “And of course Cross was quaking in his boots.”

  “Hard to tell. He’s my new definition of inscrutable. He didn’t flinch. He didn’t deny. He didn’t drop to his knees and beg for mercy, either, which is what I was hoping for.”

  “So the police department’s out of the picture and won’t get involved.”

  “Not as in institution or as individuals. I gotta back off.”

  “Is somebody at least going to try to get a warrant for that machine shop?” I asked. “If your lab techs agree that’s a body in the bag, and given your possession of the slug and the cartridge, there’s got to be enough probable cause.”

  “We are going to do that, yes,” Rizzo said. “The feds seem okay with us doin’ the heavy lifting. Then they step in and take control of the scene and the evidence. They already snatched up Mark’s tire and the casing you found. I suspect they’ll be coming after you for the photos, too.”

  “They can’t have them. They’re my property, soon to be the Journal’s.”

  “If you challenge them, they’ll probably tell you to sue ‘em. That’s the nicest thing they’d suggest. You’ve still got the photos on your phone, right?”

  “That’s not the point,” I said.

  “The point is, you should turn ‘em over to your lawyers and kill them off the phone. It’ll be harder for the feds to get at them.”

  “How could the Chicago police cave like that, Pete?”

  “We deferred to the feds. That’s the way these things fall out. What the feds want always bigfoots local jurisdiction. They say they’re handling it. End of story.”

  “I’m not sure I believe them.”

  There was a moment’s silence, then Rizzo said, “Skepticism is your job, Deuce, and you’re very good at what you do. But as much as I share your misgivings, you’re gonna have to move forward without us. And please be careful.”r />
  Okay, I thought, since the cops wouldn’t help, I’d to go back to the medical examiner. It took him several moments to pick up, but he did eventually.

  “The good news,” he said, “is we’re holding at twenty-five bodies for the time being. The bad news is we’ve found two suspicious patches near the main dig that we need to explore tomorrow. I hope you don’t have more bad news.”

  I told Donato about the mansion and the machine shop and their owners. I told him about the near-miss Mark and I experienced at the shop on Sunday, and I told him about the garbage bag that appeared to hold the body of a child.

  “Damn it,” he said in a near-whisper, no less intense for its low volume. “Are you and Mark okay?”

  “Fine. I’m more concerned about the contents of the bag. I showed the photos to the police, but I haven’t heard from the feds. I still have the photos on my phone. I’d like to send copies to you to see what you think.”

  “I’d like to have them,” he replied. “I doubt that the bad guys would dare try another burial near where we’re still working, though.”

  “Me either, but you might tell your folks to keep an eye out for freshly turned soil. If the body isn’t in Ryan Woods, I have no clue where it might be.”

  To describe me as furious would have been a gigantic understatement. On one level I understood where the feds were coming from. If national security was a real concern and not a red herring, then keeping the lid on the situation so the bad guys didn’t find out they’d been exposed was justifiable. At least from the federal point of view. On the other hand, so many people were now in the information loop, fully or partially, the premium should be on acting quickly to shut down the trafficking operation before anybody else died and the bad guys escaped.

  Why wasn’t the FBI planning on taking down the operation when the princes landed in Washington? Because it was a diplomatic visit? That rationale was so thin you could blow smoke through it. It wasn’t a reason; it was an excuse. They insisted on waiting until the Saudis got to Chicago. I couldn’t figure out why.

  I explained all this to Eric Ryland and asked if he would authorize suspending my column for a week to let me focus on the Saudi story. He refused, and none too graciously. Obviously, the bloom had already worn off the Pulitzer. Ryland had returned to his irascible, cranky self.

  “You’re paid to write a column, not play amateur detective,” he said. “I don’t care that last year’s escapade turned out well. We should have given this trafficking story over to the cop-shop reporters weeks ago.”

  “Thanks for the support,” I said. “We’ve got twenty-five dead children, maybe twenty-six now, and you’re more worried about a week’s worth of columns on how Chicago government dilemmas still haven’t been resolved. I’m trying hard not to slip into insubordination here, Eric, but your priorities seem skewed to me.”

  “My priorities outrank your priorities, Deuce, and you’d do well not to forget that. Now get out of here and write me a column. And don’t you dare kiss it off.”

  It was late afternoon before I finished the column, which I didn’t kiss off. I called Aiden Coughlin to see if there was any word on the whereabouts of Joey Russell. He’d been missing for more than three weeks.

  “I check twice a day,” Coughlin said, “just to keep everyone on their toes. Police and caseworkers. Nothing yet.”

  What was I going to tell Charles if Joey wound up a victim of the traffickers?

  “Can we meet somewhere for a few minutes, Deuce?” Coughlin asked. “I haven’t gotten an update from you in a while.”

  “Coffee?”

  “Yeah, but not the Dunkin’ next door. I need to get away from the building.”

  “There’s a Starbuck’s about a block south of you on West Washington,” I said. I winced as I recalled the last time I’d seen Winona Jackson alive was in a Starbuck’s.

  We arrived at almost the same time. We got coffee and took the most remote table in the store. I thought Coughlin looked haggard. Worry lines creased his face, and his normally florid color had paled. I felt concerned but not surprised. The Ryan Woods abomination had turned his world to dung; and short of helping me learn about the dead children who had been identified, he was as powerless as the cops to take any remedial action.

  I told Coughlin essentially the same story I had related to Pete Rizzo, including my suspicions that the mansion on the Near East Side and the machine shop down south were integral parts of the trafficking ring. For some reason, I decided not to tell him what I knew about the Saudis who would be flying in from Washington. If there really was a national security issue, the fewer people who knew the better.

  When I finished, he sat and stared at me for a long minute, a look of sadness and resignation on his face.

  “If you’ll pardon my French,” he said, “this is a fucking disaster.”

  “I can’t quarrel with that, Aidan,” I said. “But it might be over soon.”

  He shook his head. “It’s already over,” he said.

  I had no idea what he meant.

  50

  I knocked on the door of the railroad style house in Bridgeport where Joey Russell had been in foster care. The same lady I talked to the first time answered the door again. She recognized me.

  “You find Joey?” she asked immediately.

  “No,” I said. “I stopped by hoping you might have heard from him. Or better yet, that he might have come home.”

  Sadness masked her face. “I no hear nothin’,” she said. “I am much worried.”

  “So am I. Maybe you could help me with something. How old is Joey?”

  “He is six las’ month,” she said.

  “Do you know how tall he is? How much he weighs?”

  This time she smiled.

  “We always measure our kids on their birthdays, so they can see how they grow. Joey’s measures are on the door by the kitchen. On his birthday, he was, how you say . . . ?” She lifted her hand to indicate height.

  “Feet?” I suggested. “Inches?”

  “Inches, yes. He is forty-five inches.”

  “How much does he weigh?”

  Her expression pinched in thought.

  “He is skinny,” she said. “He eats good, but mucho energy. He runs and runs and uses up all his food.” She smiled. “He makes me tired, but he is a good boy.”

  “What’s his weight?”

  “Oh, I thin’ las’ time I weighed him, he was thirty-eight pounds. I tole him he should eat more, get bigger.”

  “How long ago was that?” I asked.

  “On his birthday, too. Weigh and measure.”

  That gave me some useful information to pass on to Tony Donato. I thanked the woman and promised to let her know as soon as Joey was found. Then I called Donato from the car. He was out at Ryan Woods, but he had left word with his secretary to give me his cell phone number if I called.

  When he answered the phone, he sounded distracted.

  “Tony?” I said. “What’s going on?”

  “Oh, hey, Deuce. Sorry. I didn’t check caller ID. We found more bones. I don’t know if they’re additional bodies or parts of remains we’ve already got. Can you believe it?”

  “Unfortunately, I can,” I said. “Had they been in the ground long?”

  “Yeah. Can’t say how long, but it’s been a while.”

  At least they weren’t Joey’s bones.

  “Did you have a chance to look at those photos I took on Sunday?”

  “Yeah, I did. It definitely looks like a small body. My lab guys managed to pull a pretty decent enhancement of the bag. You have anything new?”

  “I don’t know if it will be helpful, but remember I told you about the missing boy, Joey Russell?”

  “Yeah, the younger brother of your burglar friend.”

  “I just talked to the foster mother again. Joey turned six last month. At the time, he was forty-five inches tall and weighed thirty-eight pounds, probably a little underweight, but the foster mother de
scribed him as very active. Could her description help you tell if the body in the bag might be him? I’m hoping you’ll tell me it couldn’t be.”

  “I guess I could get our guys to run some sims.”

  “What are those?”

  “Simulations. We have mannequins we configure to specific physical attributes, such as height and weight. We make one forty-five inches tall and thirty-eight pounds, put it in a plastic bag in the same position as the image in your photo and compare. We won’t be able to say with certainty that it is your missing child, but we might be able to rule him out.”

  “I know it’s selfish of me,” I said, “to ask you to spend staff time on something that won’t move the investigation any. But this thing is really wearing on me.”

  “Know the feeling,” he said. “Nothing surprises me, but the enormity of this case has started me thinking about early retirement. I’ll get back to you.”

  While I waited to hear back from the medical examiner, I worked on yet another column about the growing disarray in the Chicago Public Schools. Horrific budget cuts, slashed staffing, growing animus between the teachers’ union and City Hall. It was a subject I’d written about before, but the problems couldn’t be overstated. Yet as important as the subject matter was, writing the column taxed my brain. My concentration faded in and out.

  I had formulated a structure for the piece when Donato called me back.

  “It’s hard to make a final determination,” he said, “but it appears the body in the bag is smaller than the boy you described. That said, your kid’s been missing a while. Malnutrition, dehydration, abuse all could have impacted his weight. But not his height. The body in the bag is about two inches shorter than your kid. Best guess, it’s not him.”

  I had never met Joey Russell, but the sense of relief I felt at this news, however inconclusive, overwhelmed me. The emotional response was for Charles.

  “I owe you, Tony,” I said.