The Hunting Ground (Deuce Mora Mystery Series Book 2)

by Jean Heller

  “Tricky move,” Colter said as we sat in the front seat of his car about twenty feet from where I’d just killed a man. “Where’d you learn it?”

  The enormity of what I had done was beginning to settle over me like an acid mist. I was shaking. Colter told one of the paramedics who responded to the 911 calls was checking to see if there was something aboard her bus that could settle my nerves. I didn’t want anything. If I was going to live with my act, I was going to have to own it with all the shakes and the nightmares certain to follow.

  “I took a couple of self-defense courses in college to fill the phys-ed requirements,” I said. “I don’t remember most of it.”

  “Well, you remembered an important part when you needed it.”

  The paramedic showed up at the car window. She offered me only a blanket.

  I said I didn’t need it, but she thought I might be in shock and insisted on wrapping it around my shoulders.

  Before I allowed that, I asked her to check my lower back where I’d been stuck with the knife. She opened the car door, commented on the blood on my shirt, and lifted the fabric. While she was examining me, Colter picked up the evidence bag containing the knife and squinted at it.

  “There’s blood on the tip,” he said. “You suppose the DNA will match yours?”

  I said, “Yeah,” and the paramedic added, “The wound isn’t deep, but definitely enough to draw blood.” She put an antiseptic dressing on it and patted my shoulder.

  She said, “You’ll be fine. Probably not even a scar to show your grandkids. You want to go to the hospital, get checked out? Might not be a bad idea to do a course of antibiotics.”

  I said I’d check with my own doctor later and thanked her.

  Eric Ryland called back. He said Bruckner would meet Colter and me at the precinct. Colter told me where we’d be going, and I relayed it.

  The medical examiner’s office was still poking around the tarp-covered body on the sidewalk, and the forensics people showed up to do their thing. Colter gave the bagged knife to the ME’s guys with instructions about testing the blood. One of them did a cheek swab on me for comparison. Then we left.

  I didn’t like leaving my car behind, so another officer took my keys and said he would bring it to the station.

  When we arrived, Bruckner was waiting. The cops gave us some private space to talk, lawyer to client.

  The lawyer wasn’t thrilled that I had spoken with Colter at all, but he understood that some of it, at least, couldn’t be avoided.

  “I’m sorry you got cut,” he said, “but that will be solid evidence of self-defense. Did you recognize the man?”

  I shook my head.

  I said, “Do you really think I’m going to need a defense? I don’t have much of a rep for killing complete strangers on the street.”

  He smiled. “In Chicago these days, you never know. I doubt there will be charges, though I wish one of those people on the street had witnessed the incident.”

  “I don’t know that they didn’t,” I said. “I didn’t see anyone looking at us until I started yelling, but that doesn’t mean there wasn’t a witness. The police were questioning people when we left.”

  It was well into the evening by the time the cops kicked me loose. I told the detective in charge of the case I wanted to speak to Colter before I left. When he showed up, he brought the NSA with him.

  “You have a real knack for getting yourself in trouble,” Mason Cross said.

  “I’m thinking of going back to school to become a librarian.”

  “I’ll write you a letter of recommendation,” Cross said. “Anything to get you the hell out of my life.”

  “Yeah, well, I love you, too.”

  “Ladies,” Colter said, “enough.” He turned to me. “What did you want to see me for?”

  I held my hands out, palms up, as if to say it should be obvious. “Tomorrow, in case you don’t have a calendar, is Tuesday. The Saudis get in very early the next day. What do you plan to do?”

  Cross answered. “Our plans are none of your business.”

  “Did you find the guy from Wisconsin, Nagi?” I asked.

  Cross hesitated, but Colter said, “Yes. He was hiding out with some friends at a cabin on the water in Door County. He has photos with time and date stamps to prove he was up there from Thursday afternoon until last night. He said he wanted to be able to prove to the Saudis he was nowhere near the machine shop when we took it down. In fact, he was holding some nice stringers of brown trout in one series of photos shot Friday afternoon. Nice coincidence.”

  I shook my head. “If I were the Saudis, I’d see right through that. You should prosecute him for letting you walk into an ambush.”

  “I’d like to,” Cross said. “But I don’t think he knew about it.”

  “Somebody set it up,” I said.

  “We’ll find out who eventually.”

  “Which,” I said, “brings me back to my original question. How are you going to put an end to this?”

  Colter put his hands on my shoulders. “Deuce, go home. Have a couple of drinks. You’ve had a rough day. Get some sleep. I’ll be in touch, I promise.”

  59

  Mark and Murphy came to stay with me that night. Mark echoed the paramedic’s advice that I start a course of antibiotics.

  “You have no idea the last time that knife was cleaned or where it’s been.”

  I told him I’d already called my doctor, who called in a scrip for me. But I hadn’t been to the drugstore to pick it up.

  “It’s not doing you any good there,” he said. “Let’s go get it now.”

  Since I wasn’t supposed to take the meds on an empty stomach, we stopped at Bacchanalia for comfort food on the way home. I sipped at one glass of wine during dinner, and Mark made me drink another when we got home. After my ordeal the last time I drank, I wasn’t enthusiastic about pressing my luck.

  Mark’s justification: “After what you went through today, you’re going to have to go to bed half-blitzed to get any sleep at all.”

  I agreed, but first I had to find out how Charles and Joey were doing. The nursing station at Stroger Hospital refused to give me any information on Joey, citing federal privacy laws. I finally demanded they call Dr. Raji. Fortunately, he called me back and confirmed that Joey was showing slow but steady improvement. And yes, Charles had been able to stay with him.

  I relaxed enough to get to sleep.

  I awoke in the morning still feeling tired, but Mark was feeling frisky.

  “You know,” he said, “it’s sort of a tradition with us that whenever you get injured on the job, I make love to you and make everything better.”

  I turned on my side and slid my hand over his abdomen, feeling muscle twitches all the way down.

  “Did you know morning erections aren’t synonymous with desire?” I asked. “It’s a trick your brain plays as you come out of REM sleep. Sex isn’t a part of it.”

  “Sometimes it is,” he said.

  “What makes you think so?”

  “I read it in Cosmo at my dentist’s office.”

  “You read Cosmopolitan? Whatever would your firefighting buddies think?”

  “Actually, they always ask me what I’ve learned lately.”

  “And what have you learned?”

  He showed me.

  I made a mental note to subscribe to the magazine.

  When I sat down at my desk, I glanced over at Eric Ryland’s office and saw him in deep conversation with the Jonathan Bruckner. I assumed the lawyer was bringing the editor up to date on the events of the day before. They hadn’t asked me to join them, so I turned my attention to looking for stories in the Washington Post about the Saudi’s visit to the White House scheduled for later in the day.

  There was nothing. Perhaps a story would appear when the meeting ended.

  The message form at the top of my computer screen chirped. Eric wanted me in his office. I saw that Bruckner was still there.

&nbs
p; Both looked solemn when I walked in.

  “Close the door and sit down, Deuce,” Ryland said. “How’re you feeling?”

  “I’m still trying to come to terms with the fact that I killed another human being,” I said. “And please don’t tell me how it was him or me. I took a life. I don’t think I’ll ever get over that. I don’t think I ever want to get over it.”

  Bruckner was nodding. “This might make you feel a little better,” he said. “I spoke with John Chiu, the state’s attorney, and he doesn’t plan to bring any charges against you. Everyone expects the blood spot on the tip of the knife to match your DNA, given the fresh gouge in your back.”

  “Okay,” I said and turned to Ryland. I was still standing. “I didn’t see a story in the paper this morning. Which is fine with me, but surprising.”

  “I’m going to let Jonathan explain everything to you,” my editor told me. “You should sit down. Please.”

  Bruckner scrubbed his face with his hands. Whatever he had to tell me apparently would be difficult.

  “There aren’t going to be any more stories, Deuce,” he said. “Not today. Not tomorrow. Not next week. There is no police report on the assault on you in your backyard. None on your act of self-defense yesterday. There will be no stories about the Saudi delegation coming to the city. None about their involvement in child trafficking or in the deaths of the Ryan Woods kids.”

  I stared at the lawyer for maybe half a minute, trying to make some sense of what he’d said.

  “There’d better be a damned good reason,” I replied eventually.

  “There is. If you write the story—for the Journal or any other publication where you could freelance it—you’ll be subject to federal prosecution for treason.”

  I didn’t so much as sit down at that point as I collapsed into a chair and winced when my wounded back hit the lumbar support.

  “If somebody’s threatening me, Jonathan, I deserve a better explanation.”

  “And I’ll give you one, Deuce. But not today.”

  I turned to Eric. “I can’t believe you’re on board with this.”

  “I’m not, and Jonathan knows that. But we aren’t being given a choice.”

  “Are you two saying the federal government is trampling the first amendment by shutting down a newspaper’s coverage of one of the biggest stories of the year in this city?”

  Bruckner pinched the bridge of his nose.

  “I’m telling you the federal government is taking the measures required to put an end to this child trafficking ring, which is arguably one of the worst in the world, and to protect national security.”

  “So the answer to my question is, ‘yes.’”

  “Yes.”

  60

  I went back to my desk and sat for several minutes trying to regulate my breathing. The situation simply didn’t compute. Ryland and I had our differences over the years, but I’d never known him to walk away from a story because of outside pressure. And it was a big part of Bruckner’s job to find ways to get stories into the paper without incurring legal or political liability, not to be obstructionist.

  I wasn’t sure what I was going to do about this, but one thing I wouldn’t do was give up without a damned good fight.

  So I called Gina Brodsky, the supervising air traffic controller at O’Hare. I used my burner phone and called Gina on her personal cell phone.

  “Just thinking about you,” she said after we passed pleasantries. “That plane you were asking about is still on schedule to arrive very early tomorrow morning.”

  “Same time?”

  “Yep, 5:10 a.m. I’ll actually be on duty then.”

  That perked me up a little. If I was in the hangar area before dawn the next day, maybe I could get Gina to call me and alert me to the landing and taxi progress.

  She said, “I should be able to find a few seconds to do that. It would be harder if they came in later when we’re a lot busier. Understand if I’m cryptic it’s because I’m pressed for time and probably breaking a dozen FAA regulations.”

  “I wouldn’t ask, but this is really important,” I said and hoped I wasn’t lying.

  “You’ll tell me all about it when it’s over?” she asked.

  “I’ll try,” was all I could promise.

  I had no column to worry about, and I hadn’t slept well in days. So I left the office and stopped by the gym. I waved off an offer by my trainer to spot weights for me. All I wanted to do was run stress out of my system. The treadmill said I’d made 4.32 miles when my energy reserve hit empty.

  I showered and went home, hoping the exercise wouldn’t keep me from sleeping. To the contrary, I was out about twenty seconds after my head hit the pillow. I don’t know how well I slept, but I dreamed a lot, none of it pleasant.

  When I woke up I could tell by the light in my window that it must be around five in the afternoon. I’d slept for nearly six hours. I rolled onto my back and closed my eyes to think about my plans for the evening. When I opened my eyes, it was nearly eight-thirty.

  On any other day I would have felt guilty about wasting so much time. Today, I knew I needed the rest, especially since I would be up the entire night.

  Having learned from experience, I figured someone should know where I was going to be. After the morning’s conversation, I couldn’t tell my editor. He would have forbidden my presence at the airport and probably fired me if I defied him. So I called Mark.

  “I’m going with you,” he insisted.

  “Thank you, but that’s not necessary,” I said. “I’m not going to interfere in anything that goes down. I might not even be able to see it. A lot depends on having the right vantage point. That hangar area covers a lot of territory.”

  “Wouldn’t you have a better chance of seeing whatever happens if somebody else is driving? Not to mention that my gun might come in handy if for nothing but to scare any bad guys out to hurt you.”

  “You can’t be up all night,” I said. “You have to work tomorrow.”

  “I can catch a few hours’ sleep before I pick you up.”

  I agreed reluctantly, thinking Mark actually enjoyed the undercover work.

  I fixed a big salad for dinner and then could eat only half of it because my stomach was filled up with butterflies. As much as I hated to admit it, after the assaults in my living room, in my backyard, then on the Near North Side, I was actually relieved that Mark would be with me this time.

  I packed us a kit with a full box of power bars, bottles of water, apples, and bananas. An over-reaction, I was certain, but we needed to be prepared if the plane was late. I also grabbed my camera bag and shoved my binoculars in one pocket.

  Mark picked me up at 3:30. There was plenty of traffic between my house and O’Hare, but were at the airport by 4:30, a full forty minutes before the Saudi plane was due. I checked in with Gina, who reported the flight was on time and would be directed to a parking spot near the American Airlines’ terminals.

  Mark and I had a great view of that area. As soon as we spotted the plane taxiing toward its assigned spot, we could get out of the truck, using some shrubs for cover, and watch events unfold, whatever they were. If there was any violence, we would be well out of the line of fire. I hoped.

  The temperature was cool enough—somewhere near 60—that we both wore jackets. Nonetheless, I felt perspiration on my face and trickling down my spine.

  I gave the camera to Mark, an expert photographer. He locked in my longest lens, a 300mm telephoto. I prepped my binoculars.

  Then we waited.

  The landing time came and went. I felt my heart rate rise. My mouth went dry, but I didn’t want to risk going back to the car for water and take my eyes off the parking area.

  My throwaway cell phone beeped.

  “Hello?” I said.

  “On the ground, headed your way.” It was Gina. She hung up.

  I scanned through my glasses but couldn’t see anything.

  “It’s headed this way,” I wh
ispered to Mark. “You see anything.”

  “Not yet.”

  Five minutes passed. Ten. I could feel my heartbeat in my head and my feet. The waiting was excruciating. My anxiety was palpable, I guess, because Mark rested a reassuring hand on my arm. He was checking something on his iPhone.

  “The active runways this morning,” he said, “are twenty-two-right and twenty-two-left because the wind is out of the southwest. If this plane was assigned twenty-two-left, they landed down at the extreme south end of the airport. We’re at the extreme north end. It’s a long taxi. Relax. Be patient.”

  I nodded. I tried. It didn’t work.

  Mark tried again.

  “The pilots probably aren’t familiar with the airport, so they might have asked for a progressive taxi. That could slow them down.”

  Just to have something to talk about, I asked, “What’s a progressive taxi?”

  “The crew asks ground control to guide them through the entire route from their landing site to their gate or parking area. Every twist and turn. It’s a pain in the butt for controllers, but if a crew requests it, they have no choice.”

  I nodded, just as I caught some new motion off to my right.

  “This could be it,” I said.

  A twin-engine commercial jet, cream-over-white with a royal blue tail, moved slowly along a taxiway directly toward us. I heard Mark clicking away with my camera. I focused my binoculars on the plane. The lettering above the passenger cabin windows read, “SAUDI ARABIAN,” followed by something in what appeared to be Arabic.

  I pulled my digital voice recorder out of my jacket pocket. I would dictate what I saw from here. I noted the time the plane landed and its arrival in the parking area. I described the plane as best I could and asked Mark if he could identify the make and model.

  “Airbus, I think,” he said. “One of the big ones. Plenty of leg room.”

  I saw several ground crew members preparing a rolling stairway for the passengers, while another used light wands to direct the pilots to their exact parking position. When the ground crew member crossed the wands above his head, the plane stopped and the engines spooled down. The stairway was put at the door, and the door opened. Three people went up and disappeared inside. Nothing happened for the next few minutes.