Jack Daniels Six Pack

by J. A. Konrath

“It’s not me,” I said. “It’s my look. Men are suckers for big, sensuous lips.”

  It came out sensubus libs.

  Reynolds raised an eyebrow—well, the right half of his unibrow.

  “Actually, I think you’re one of the bravest women I’ve ever met.”

  “Thanks. And thanks for watching my back.”

  We exchanged a meaningless mutual admiration society glance.

  “Where to now?” he asked. “Back to your District?”

  “The Daley Center. My car.”

  Reynolds told the cabbie, and I called Superinten dent O’Loughlin, and ran through the list of wedding possibilities.

  “Four teams,” I told her. “We’ll need to check food and drinks, search for traps, interview staff for anything out of the ordinary, and if needed, confiscate everything.”

  “That will piss some people off,” she said.

  “Not as much as their entire guest list keeling over. We’ll make the two- six the base of operations. The conference room. I’ll be there in half an hour.”

  “Meet you there.”

  “Good. I want my guns back.” I hung up and nudged Reynolds. “Round up your team and as many cops as you can find.” He got on the radio, and I called the Crime Lab. Officer Hajek wasn’t in, but a cop I knew named Dan Rogers was.

  “I need four CSUs, fully loaded, at the two- six, thirty minutes.”

  “I’ve only got four guys here.”

  “You’ve also got a phone. Get more. The superintendent is authorizing the overtime.”

  “She is?”

  “She will. Haul ass.”

  The cab dropped me off, and I drove back to my District. The exterminators had been replaced by a HazMat team, cleaning up the poison in the Rec ords room. Maybe it was oversensitivity on my part, but I could swear the entire building smelled like acrid chemicals, and I tried not to breathe much when I took the elevator to the second floor. The staircase and the bathroom I’d used to wash off the TEPP were being decontaminated, so I had to use the bathroom at the other end of the hallway.

  I spent ten full minutes washing off blood and dirt. My mouth was puffy. My hair was a bird’s nest. I’d sweated through my jacket, and ripped the shoulder. In short, I looked like I died yesterday but no one had bothered to inform me. Reynolds was the brave one, hitting on me when I was like this. Maybe he didn’t like bravery so much as he liked scary.

  I didn’t feel much better than I looked. I found Advil in my purse, popped three, then combed the knots out of my hair and used half a tube of thirty- dollar lipstick to try to cover up the lip injury. I inadvertently called attention to it instead, like painting a football red. I went a little heavy on the mascara to compete with it, some rouge to highlight my cheeks, and the next thing I knew, I looked like a hooker. A hooker with bad hair who just got her ass kicked.

  Fine. No makeup. I scrubbed it all off.

  Then I put just a touch back on.

  After making myself appear somewhat human, I went to the water fountain and drank like a camel—not the easiest thing to do with a fat lip, but the cold water felt nice. I had a brief spell of double vision, worked through it, and then showed up i. Conference Room A to talk with forty- plus cops, Feds, and others, including the folks from the CDC, USAMRIID, an. WHO.

  My speech wasn’t particularly inspiring, witty, or even pithy. But I made up for all of that by being brief.

  “I recently spoke with the Chemist. There are four high- profile wedding receptions taking place in Chicago today, and if we’re to take him at his word, he’s poisoned the refreshments at one of them. We need to shut all four of them down until we can figure out which one is the deadly one. I need four teams. Each will have a Crime Scene Unit with full gear, an SRT to check for booby traps and IEDs, and as many officers as we can spare to interview the staff. If possible, let’s get in touch with the wedding parties, ask them if anything unusual has happened in the last few days or weeks.”

  Rogers raised his hand. “How can we test for toxins or poisons in the field? We need to take samples to the lab, run them through the GCMS. There will be hundreds of samples.”

  “Our guy is touchy about leaving fingerprints. Look for things that have been wiped down, or for glove marks. People at the distillery, distributors, busboys, bartenders, servers, managers—they all leave their latents on bottles of booze. Any bottle that’s clean should be given top priority.”

  I spied Rick sneaking into the room and sitting near the back.

  “Special Agent Rick Reilly from the Hazardous Materials Response Team of the FBI has worked closely with the Behavioral Science Team to create a profile of th. Chemist. This profile states that since he’s been paid, he will no longer have any interest in harming our city. Is that right, Special Agent?”

  Rick stood. “That’s right. The Chemist is probably on his way out of the country right now. We’ve got teams at bus stations and airports—”

  “Looking for a soaking wet man carry ing a yellow bag,” I interrupted. “The FBI profile is flat- out wrong, and I don’t want anyone wasting their time with it. The Chemist is still in town. He’s going to try to be at the reception. Maybe as a guest or an employee. Maybe he’ll just watch from across the street. But he’ll want to see it. I’ll need people double- checking the guest lists, new hires, anyone hanging around who shouldn’t be there, plus SRT members to run recon on the locations, to see if anyone is playing I Spy.”

  “The profile—” Rick said.

  I finished for him. “Sucks. Rogers, Reynolds, divide up your people. Baker, put the teams together. Everyone extra, go where you think you can do some good. I want everyone on headsets. Alpha Team has the Cubs catcher—Baker, you’re in charge. Taylor, you’re leading Bravo Team, and you’ve got the Kent wedding. Charlie Team is Corndog Watkins—Collins, that’s you. I’m heading up Delta and the Bains reception. Keep in touch, keep communicating, and if we find the Chemist, I don’t want to hear any bullshit about letting the guy go.”

  Davy Ellis, looking like he’d just stepped off the Ralph Lauren runway, raised his hand.

  “The mayor said—”

  “The mayor said not to apprehend him during the money drop. The drop is over. Isn’t that right, Superintendent O’Loughlin?”

  All eyes locked on the super. Her voice radiated a lot more authority than mine did.

  “If we find him, we grab him.”

  I adjourned the meeting, and began to work with Baker putting teams together. Rick came up, his pretty- boy looks spoiled by a scowl. He took my elbow and edged me aside.

  “Not very professional, Jack.”

  “About as professional as telling the super to take my gun.”

  “You were going to do something stupid.”

  At least he didn’t deny it. But that didn’t make it any less of a betrayal.

  “I do a lot of stupid things,” I told him, and let my eyes add extra weight to my words. Rick caught the implication and walked off. There would be no more footsie with Special Agen. Hottie. Good-looking men were nice, but loyalty was a helluva lot nicer.

  After my team was or ga nized enough to roll, I tracked down the super, who was in a heated discussion with the PR guy.

  “I need my weapons,” I said to her.

  O’Loughlin reached into her enormous jacket pockets, pockets so large they belonged on a clown or a mime.

  “If you apprehend or kill the suspect,” Davy said, “it could get out that the city knew about his plot, and that we paid him off. Think about the outrage, the lawsuits, the damage to Chicago’s reputation.”

  “All I’m thinking about,” I said evenly, “is getting him so more people don’t die.”

  “It would be impossible to recover from—”

  “I forgot to mention,” I interrupted. “The last time I spoke with the Chemist, he asked me why we hadn’t gone public about the money. I told him to take it up with Davy Ellis o. Ellis, Dickler, and Scaramouche, that you were the one suppressing his st
ory. He didn’t seem happy.”

  Ellis turned a lovely shade of pale beneath his perfect tan. Peripherally, I saw the super’s lips twitch, as close as I’d seen her get to smirking. I turned away, tucked my guns into both holsters, and then headed for Chateau Élan on North and Clybourn to ruin Captain Bains’s joyous occasion.

  Chapter 32

  FROM THE OUTSIDE, Chateau Élan looked like it was designed by an ancient Roman architect with a column fetish. The facade boasted ten of them, thick and white and supporting a vaulted roof. Six columns graced each side of the building, and two held up the marquee on the front lawn, which proclaimed congratulations to Mr. and Mrs. Bains and Mr. and Mrs. Rothschild.

  The valet seemed anxious to park my car, until he found out I was a cop and not going to tip. I parked in the valet area just the same—I’d done enough walking for the day. I was followed into the lot by a parade of cop cars, including the Mobile Command bus. When Bains showed up, he was going to have a stroke.

  The lobby had a few marble statues, a fountain, and a lot of flowers and plants. I talked to a Hispanic cook, who led me to a comb- over manager named Bob Debussey. Bob appeared ready to cry when I laid out the story for him.

  “Oh dear. This is horrible. Oh dear oh dear.”

  “Where do you keep the liquor?”

  “Oh dear. There’s a wine cellar, and the cooler. Both locked. Oh dear.”

  “Who has keys?”

  “I do, and my assistant manager, Jaime. Oh dear.”

  Between oh dears I gleaned that there were no new hires recently, there haven’t been any strange people hanging around, and they’d gotten their latest liquor delivery this morning.

  “I was missing a case of champagne, and a bottle of Oban. The groom’s father specifically wanted that scotch. The driver had the champagne, but had to go back for the scotch. Marty would have never messed up like that.”

  “Who’s Marty?”

  “The previous driver. Wonderful man. Died a few weeks ago. Heart attack, right after dropping off our order. Oh dear.”

  I directed the mob of police entering the lobby to ask questions, take names, secure the perimeter, and search for IEDs. Bob led me, Rogers, and a perky CSU girl named Patti Hunt over to the wine cellar. Hunt was lugging a large blac. ALS box, and Rogers had a kit similar to Hajek’s. Bob fussed with the keys, shaking so badly I felt the wind. When he got the door open, he pointed out the stack of boxes in the near corner, sitting in front of a large wine rack that took up the back wall.

  “This is presumptive, guys,” I told the team, “not evidentiary. Get me some clues, and the court case can be built later.”

  Hunt found an electrical outlet for the alternate light source, Rogers dug out an aerosol can of ninhydrin, and I snapped on some latex gloves and eased a bottle of Perestroika vodka from the top carton.

  “The driver today,” I asked Bob. “Was he wearing gloves?”

  “Oh dear. No, I don’t believe so. He brought the boxes in on a dolly. I don’t remember gloves.”

  “Is this the bottle of scotch he forgot?” I pointed to the Oban sitting on a wire rack.

  “Yes. He brought that to me about an hour ago. Said he was sure he packed it the first time.”

  Rogers spritzed the Oban and the vodka, and Hunt switched on the ALS and pointed the silver wand at the bottles, bathing them in green light. Nothing fluoresced.

  “It’s at five fifty- five nanometers,” Hunt said.

  “Nini is a picky lady,” Rogers said. “Try six hundred.”

  Hunt dialed up the spectrum, and the light went from green to orange. It also brought out a dozen yellow prints on the Oban bottle, and three on the vodka.

  Rogers looked at them through a loupe.

  “Gloves on the vodka, at least seven different prints on the scotch.”

  I took another bottle out of the top box, and a bottle out of the box beneath it. Then I went to the shelves and pulled a few random bottles. We did another spray and glow.

  “All gloves on the new bottles, prints all over the old ones,” Rogers concluded.

  “The distributor doesn’t wear gloves,” I said, “and he packs the liquor himself. These should have prints on them, unless they’ve been wiped down or switched.”

  “But they don’t look like they’ve been opened.” Hunt pointed at the cap on the Perestroika. “The safety seal is still on.”

  She was right. And the jet injector, powerful as it was, couldn’t shoot through glass. I placed three identical bottles of vodka on the floor and looked at the fill levels. All of them were uneven by a wee bit. But was that the Chemist’s doing, or were all liquor bottles slightly off?

  I unscrewed the cap off of one.

  “Lieutenant,” Hunt said, “if you’re thinking of taking a shot, that’s a poor way to test for toxins.”

  Rogers raised his hand. “I’ll volunteer to try it.”

  I squinted at the cap. There didn’t seem to be any signs of tampering. I took a tentative sniff. Smelled like vodka.

  “Rogers, pass me that loupe.”

  I held it to my eye and saw a tiny crystal winking up at me on the rim. I ran my pinky—my only finger currently lacking a decent fingernail—around the inside of the cap, and felt a bit of roughness.

  “Unless the Perestroika master distillers use ground glass as a secret ingredient, I think we’ve found our toxic liquor. What else came with this shipment?” I asked Bob.

  “Oh dear oh dear. A few cases of beer, and some pop. It’s all in the cooler.”

  I ordered Rogers and Hunt to go with him, and I opened two more bottles, whiskey and rum. Each had overshot their recommended daily allowance of glass. I called the super.

  “It looks like Bains is the target. It’s the liquor. I’m going to shut everything down here.”

  “I’ll talk to your captain. We can let the reception go on anyway, bait a trap for the Chemist.”

  “I was thinking about that, but it’s too dangerous. There might be other things tampered with, and I don’t think Bains wants to use his son’s wedding for a sting operation.”

  “Agreed, Lieutenant. I’m glad I put you in charge of this case.”

  I was going to remind her that I wasn’t her first pick, or even her tenth pick, but instead I said, “Thanks, but it isn’t over yet.”

  I hung up and called the other team leaders to have them look for broken glass under bottle caps. Then it was huddle- time in the lobby for my team.

  “We’ve found what we believe to be contaminated liquor bottles. Talk to me, Reynolds.”

  “Perimeter is clear. No IEDs, no sightseers for a block in all directions.”

  “Rogers?”

  “Beer is bad. I looked at the bottle caps under high magnification, there are marks. Some two- liter bottles of soda have also been compromised.”

  “What else have we got?” I asked.

  A cop named Mathers said, “Nothing out of the ordinary in the kitchen. They had a few deliveries earlier today, nothing strange about them.”

  Another named Parker added, “No strangers prowling around. Staff is spooked, but that’s to be expected. Everyone here knows everyone else, no newbies in the group. We did catch two Latinos trying to sneak out the back door, but that’s because they thought we were Immigration.”

  “Okay, we’re still going to shut the place down. Mathers, I want you to—”

  “You can’t close us!” This from the worrisome Bob, of course. “We’ve got two events today! These people have counted on us to make this the most important day of their lives!”

  “Sorry, Bob. Can’t risk it.”

  “But you said the kitchen was fine! It’s only the liquor shipment that came today!”

  “We can’t take the chance.”

  Bob began to cry, then fled the lobby with his hands over his face, but not before running headfirst into a plaster reproduction of Michelangelo’s David. It was more sad than funny. After thirty seconds of uncomfortable silence, I picked u
p where I left off.

  “Mathers, get five guys to bag and tag the liquor bottles. We’re going to have to clean out the pantry, and the staff needs to be tested fo. BT as a precautionary —”

  Bob came galloping back into the lobby, with a large pan full of linguini. Noodles hung from his mouth.

  He yelled, “It’s fine!” or something similar. Hard to tell with all the food stuffed in his cheeks.

  There were no heroic attempts on behalf of my people to tackle Bob and wrench the linguini from his starch hole. No one screamed, “Spit it out, you idiot!” We all just watched, silently, as Bob chewed, swallowed, and didn’t die. When he finished, he held out both arms in a silent ta- da! No one applauded.

  “I’m trying the soup next,” Bob said, and trotted off.

  Captain Bains chose that opportune moment to call, spitting vitriol and threats before I said word one. When he paused to take a breath I cut in, explaining how everything went down.

  “And what’s Bob doing right now?” Bains asked when I finished.

  “He’s standing three feet away from me, eating a bowl of wedding ball soup.”

  Bob nodded vigorously and gave me a thumbs- up.

  “How does he look?”

  “Crazed.”

  “Sick? Poisoned?”

  “Not so far.”

  “Tell him if he tries everything on the menu and lives, we’ll go on as planned. And also tell him to run to Costco and pick up a truckload of liquor. My side of the family likes to drink.”

  “I’ll let you tell him that. How was the ceremony?”

  “The flowers look like shit. One of the big arrangements fell over during the vows, and the ring bearer is still screaming in fright. I’m going to hang the florist by his green thumbs and have everyone in my District take turns beating him with hoses.”

  “I’m glad it went well.”

  “I’m on my way there. Let me speak to Bob.”

  I passed the phone over to the manager, and informed my team that we’d just confiscate the liquor and beverages for now. Then I conferred wit. Reynolds.

  “Have you checked in with the SRTs at the other weddings?”

  “They all seem to be clear.”