“Idiot,” he muttered as he tapped his ID against the electronic pad that opened the bulletproof door. “Stupid—”
His self-recriminations were cut off when one of the guys from Homicide came sprinting through the door, nearly bowling Will over in the process. That was pretty normal for this time of night—the wee hours of the morning were prime time for police work—and the fact that he hadn’t even seen it coming through the glass door was yet more proof of what a distracted moron he’d become, mooning over his ex like a lovesick high schooler.
The only thing he could say in his defense was that she’d looked exactly like he remembered—a tall, lovely woman with a knowing smile, warm brown eyes, and a steel backbone. Even lying in a hospital bed listening to him describe the terrifying drug she might have been exposed to, she hadn’t looked scared or beaten. Exactly the opposite. She’d been radiant with the same alluring mix of energy, intelligence, and competence that had drawn him in from the very beginning. Still drew him in like a moth to flame . . . which was exactly the problem, because he’d burned that bridge right down to the ground. There was no going back for a man who’d already wasted his second and third chances. Not with a girl as smart as Lauryn. He knew that perfectly well, and yet he’d still rushed straight in like an idiot the moment he had an excuse to talk to her.
Moron.
The only good thing he could say about this mess was that at least Lauryn had given him a lead. That was more than he could say about the rest of his witnesses, so Will gave his regrets the boot and got back to business, jogging up the stairs to his desk in the vice department to type up his report.
Personal issues aside, it had been a good interview. Before her, he’d had five dead druggies, three murdered witnesses, a dead cop, some unidentifiable green glop . . . and nothing to show for any of it. This Lenny stuff, though, this was useful. The old vet might not be talking sense yet, but at least he was alive. Even better, the green stuff seemed to be the only drug in his system. If he snapped out of it, he might be able to tell Will who’d sold it to him, which would be a huge breakthrough. Until then, Lauryn was the closest thing he had to a reliable witness, and her comments on the sulfur angle were invaluable. There was also her report of a second witness, the man with the sword . . .
That might not be as valuable.
He knew Lauryn wasn’t a liar, but even though her blood work had come back clean, the second half of story was just too weird to convince Will she hadn’t hallucinated her savior. But a good detective records everything, no matter how ridiculous, and so he dutifully added the swordsman to his report, typing it up exactly as Lauryn had told it to him, along with his own observations about her seemingly clear state of mind.
When he’d recorded absolutely everything he could think of, including the not-admissible-in-court glimpse he’d stolen of Lauryn’s lab report over her shoulder, Will saved the document to the department’s case file and grabbed his phone to call the lab.
“This is Tannenbaum from Vice,” he said the moment the line picked up. “I need a list of street drugs that contain or could be mixed with sulfur.”
“Sulfur?” the man asked, clearly puzzled.
“That’s right,” Will said firmly. “It’s for the new drug case.”
That should have been all he needed to say. With eight casualties and a dead cop in less than twenty-four hours, Will’s case was at the top of the department’s list. But instead of jumping to get Will the information he’d asked for like he should have, the man on the phone just sighed.
“Sorry, Detective, no can do. We’re backed up till Monday, and the chief made it clear that no one gets to reorder the schedule until we’re back on track.”
Will ground his teeth. “I’m not asking you to test anything. I just need someone to make me a list.”
“Which takes time,” the tech replied. “And time’s exactly what we don’t have.”
“Are you guys smoking the evidence down there?” Will yelled. “I didn’t just pull a twenty-four-hour shift ’cause I felt like it. People are dying! I can’t wait till Monday. I need this now.”
“Sorry, man,” the tech said, not sounding sorry at all. “I’d help you if I could, but my hands are tied. Chief Korigan was very clear: no more messing with the schedule. You’ll just have to wait. Other departments have priority cases, too.”
Not like this one. But ticked off as Will was, badgering the tech was pointless. If he wanted to actually push anything through, then he was going to have to take this to the man who actually had the power to make things happen.
He hung up without even wasting the breath to say goodbye, ignoring the worried looks from his fellow plainclothes detectives as he stormed out of the vice office and down the hall to the elevator that would take him straight up to the chief’s floor.
Even as he slammed his thumb down on the button, Will knew this was a bad idea. Technically, this was a problem he should have taken to his superior, but the idiot paper pusher Chief Korigan had put in charge of the vice department didn’t work nights—God knows vice doesn’t happen at night—and Will wasn’t about to let this sit until morning. Besides, this confrontation had been a long time coming.
In the ten years he’d worked for the department, Will had outlasted seven police chiefs, all of whom had either been drummed out on corruption charges or sleazed their way further up the political chain. It was all business as usual for Chicago, but even in the cesspool that was Illinois politics, Victor Korigan was in a class by himself.
A former military contractor, Korigan was different from the usual brand of incompetent hack or crooked city government crony who traditionally passed through the revolving door of Police Chief. Both he and the mayor—who’d practically handed Korigan the job on a silver platter—had expertly dodged all questions about his past, but Will (being Will) had done some digging, and hadn’t liked what he’d found.
In the very few comments he’d made about his past work experience, the mayor had called Korigan a “hardworking immigrant and veteran of the Bosnian War who understood what it took to keep a city safe.” But while that made a good sound-bite and was technically true, Will’s research had uncovered that Korigan’s military career during the conflict had been firmly on the Serbian side, often as an officer commanding suspiciously undocumented “civilian detainment” units.
There was no direct evidence linking him to ethnic cleansing or any of the other war crimes that had shadowed that horrible conflict, but the connection was still too close for Will’s liking, and the picture only got worse when you added in the unpleasantness Korigan’s private military company had been involved with since. The man seemed to be playing war-zone-tragedy bingo with jobs in South Sudan, Somalia, Yemen, and Afghanistan. Now he was heading up the police here, and while Chicago was the most dangerous major city in the US, Will didn’t think bringing in a man with hands as bloody as Korigan’s was going to make things any better.
But, of course, no one else had seen it that way. According to the mayor, Korigan had been brought in to bring “private sector efficiency” to the eternally overbudget Chicago PD, and for all his other sketchiness, Korigan had done just that—mostly by slashing the budgets on every part of police work that actually mattered. This crap with the lab was a perfect example. Rather than hiring more techs or expanding the lab to deal with the overflow in casework, he’d just ordered everyone to wait their turn. Screw priority, screw the victims, screw actually solving cases. No, even knowing that there was often a tiny window after a crime was committed to solve the case, cops were expected to take a number, like the forensics lab was a deli counter. But it had put them back in the black, which meant the mayor was now holding Korigan up as the genius who’d saved the Chicago PD from themselves. Meanwhile, the people of Chicago were paying the price in backlogged cases and cops too hamstrung by budget cuts to actually do their damn jobs.
It was directly because of Korigan’s cut-and-burn policy that this new drug cartel had
been able to grow as fast and big as it had. Will had been warning the department about it for weeks now, but no one had listened. Now, things were going even crazier than he’d predicted, and it was only fitting that the chief bear the brunt of the mess he’d created when he’d decided to put money before people.
He just hoped he didn’t get canned for saying so.
Will quashed the nagging doubt with a sneer. He’d always prioritized the case over his job, and he’d yet to be fired, because he got the job done. Even for a golden boy like Korigan, it was hard to sack a detective with a case-resolution rate as solid as Will’s, and that knowledge gave him strength. By the time the elevator reached the top floor, he was almost looking forward to the fight, and he got off with a spring in his step, half jogging down the carpeted hall.
Unlike the rest of the bustling station, the top floor of police headquarters was dark and empty. This was where the bureaucrats nested, the army of lawyers and experts and overpaid managers who got to do their police work in tidy nine-to-five chunks. The only people up here at this time of night were Will and the janitors, but he knew from months’ worth of department emails that Chief Korigan was a night owl. Sure enough, there was light shining through the expensive frosted-glass door when Will reached it.
At least he hadn’t walked all this way for nothing. With only a cursory knock, Will grabbed the door and shoved it open, exploding into the office only to stop in his tracks when he saw Police Chief Korigan sitting at his desk in a tux and white tie like he was on his way to the opera. It was so unexpected, Will was actually struck speechless, but if Chief Korigan was surprised or angry to see a detective storming into his private office at one in the morning, he didn’t let it show. He simply folded his hands on his brand-new custom glass desk, smiling through the frame of his perfectly groomed goatee as he said, “May I help you?”
The genteel question snapped Will out of his shock, and he met his boss’s smile with a feral one of his own. “You sure can,” he said. “I need you to put the new drug case back on priority right now.”
“Is that so,” Korigan said slowly. “Why?”
“Because we’ve got addicts going nutso and killing people all over downtown,” Will snapped. “Sounds like a priority to me.”
Korigan shook his head, leaning back in his leather chair to study Will’s face. “You’re Detective Tannenbaum from Vice, correct?” When Will nodded, the police chief glanced at his computer monitor. “I presume you’re talking about the new overdose cases?”
“They’re not overdoses,” Will growled. “I keep telling you, this isn’t a standard drug case. Whatever’s causing this, it’s something new, and it’s killed nine people, including one of our officers.”
“I am well aware of the situation,” Korigan said. “But while I agree it is very tragic, that’s no reason to disrupt the order and efficiency of this office. We have procedures in place already that—”
“Screw your procedures!” Will shouted. “We’re talking about what could be the beginning of an epidemic here!”
“First off—watch yourself. I respect your passion, but I have no problem docking your pay until you remember your place in this department. Am I clear?”
“Yes.”
The chief arched an eyebrow. “Excuse me?”
“Yes . . . sir.”
Korigan smiled. “Good. Now, on to the second matter. I can’t help but think you’re overreacting. There are 2.7 million people in Chicago. Seven cases is hardly an epidemic.”
Will opened his mouth again, but the chief cut him off. “You want to do your job. So do I. But this is a public office, not a crusade. I was brought in precisely to keep hotheads like yourself inside the lines. We have rules, we have a budget, and we have a duty to the taxpayers of Chicago to respect both.”
“With all due respect, sir,” Will said through clenched teeth. “How are the taxpayers of Chicago going to react when they find out there’s a drug on the streets turning people into monsters and their police chief is too concerned with keeping accounts in the black to do anything about it?”
By the time he finished, the polite smile had fallen off Korigan’s face, leaving something much colder that Will didn’t like at all. “We are doing something about it,” he said flatly. “Whatever you might think, I have, in fact, read all of your admirably detailed reports, and despite your dramatic conclusions, I stand by my decision. This case will be processed like any other: in accordance with the documented procedure.”
Will’s hands clenched into fists. “But—”
“The resources will be allocated when they’re available,” Korigan went on like he hadn’t spoken. “That’s how procedure works. That how I work. That’s what it means to have a system.” His eyes narrowed. “I’ve let you skate by for a long time now, Tannenbaum. You’ve got a fantastic record, and I’ve let you handle things your way so far out of respect for that, but I can’t look the other way forever. You’ve put almost two hundred hours of overtime into this new cartel investigation alone, and for what? You’re no closer to cracking the case now than you were last month.”
“Because I didn’t have the resources,” Will snapped. “If you’d given me more people—”
“You’d have worked them to death, too,” Korigan snapped back. “Police work is work just like everything else. You can throw man hours at it all you like, but sometimes you just have to accept your limits.”
“By which you mean your budget.”
“Partially,” Korigan said with a pitying look. “But has it ever occurred to you that my policies are about more than just the budget? Think about it. We’re cops. We see the worst of this city every damn day. When we start panicking, people notice. The press notices, and that’s a problem for everyone.”
“Who cares about the press? We—”
“You should care about the press,” Korigan said. “You think seven junkies going nuts is bad? Try dealing with a terrified population whipped into a media-induced panic once the papers announce that Chicago’s in the grips of a new, unknown, violent drug epidemic. I don’t care how many people are OD’ing, it’ll be nothing compared to violence we’ll have when people start thinking every bum they see on the street is one bad hit away from going berserk. That’s an emergency, Tannenbaum. That’s what’s going to get people killed—panic, chaos—and that, not the budget, is why your case is officially on the back burner from now on.”
He finished with a low glare that dared the detective to try him, but for once, Will was speechless. That was a much better explanation than he’d expected when he’d stormed up here. Clearly, he’d underestimated the new chief, but that didn’t mean he was done just yet.
“I get that this is the sort of case that would freak people out,” he said calmly, changing tactics. “But I don’t think you understand how bad things are getting. This isn’t your normal vice case of drugs and sleaze. People are getting literally torn to pieces for reasons we can’t explain, and worse, the first two victims were both criminal informants. Our only informants on this new cartel, I might point out.”
“And the other five had nothing to do with us,” the chief reminded him. “Two points don’t make a trend.”
“That’s not how the rest of my guys will see it,” Will said, leaning over the desk. “If word gets out we can’t protect our informants, no one will tell us anything ever again.”
“They’re not telling us anything now,” Korigan said. “We don’t have so much as a parking ticket on this new cartel. We certainly don’t have anything linking them to this new drug.”
“We don’t need a link,” Will argued. “They’re the only pushers left in town. Who else could be selling it?”
That bit of undeniable logic finally seemed to get through, and the chief looked down with a sigh. “You’re sure it’s a new drug?”
Will nodded. “As sure as I can be. I just got back from interviewing a witness, and—”
“Witness?” Korigan’s head jerked up to
look at his computer screen. “I thought all the witnesses were dead?”
“Not this one,” Will said proudly. “Both the witness and the perp from the last case tonight pulled through. Better still, the victim is a doctor at Mercy who knows the perp and can testify that he had no previous history of drug use.”
The police chief looked deeply skeptical. “If the perp wasn’t a junkie, what was he doing taking a drug?”
“I don’t know,” Will said. “Like I keep saying, nothing about this case is normal. I don’t know how he got hold of that green slime or why he used it tonight, but you don’t have to be psychic to know there’s something bad coming. I’ll bet you anything you want that the mess we saw tonight is just a warm-up. That’s why you have to make this a priority, before anyone else gets killed.”
That was as good a case as he was ever going to make, but the chief just shook his head again. “I know you want a big case,” he said tiredly, “but let’s be reasonable. Say you’re right, and the new cartel that’s taken over the Chicago drug market is actually pushing some kind of new drug that makes people go nuts. Why would they do that? What kind of business kills off their customers?”
“What kind of business sells pharma-grade street drugs at ditch-weed prices?” Will countered. “These guys haven’t made sense since they came here. Why should they start now?” He put his hands down on the glass desk, leaning forward until he was inches from Korigan’s face. “You want to keep this out of the papers? You want to look good for the mayor who got you this cushy gig? Back off and let us do our damn job. Give this case priority. Give me what I need and I swear I’ll put a stop to this before it gets anyone else killed.”
He was breathing down the chief’s neck by the time he finished, but the man in front of him hadn’t even flinched. He just sat there, staring right back up at Will with the hard eyes of a man who’d seen it all. It was a sharp reminder that despite his fancy office and expensive tux, Victor Korigan was a veteran of some of the world’s worst hellholes, and he was not intimidated now.
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