“Ro, thank you so much for helping out with this. I’m really sorry to bail on you, but it helps knowing I am leaving this project in very capable hands.”
“You’re welcome,” Rory said. She looked more surprised than anything else. I think she found it hard to believe that anyone might not be enjoying themselves at Babies R Us.
I drove back downtown, feeling like I’d just discarded a Halloween costume, and parked in Rory’s spot behind Great Dane. My father and Nate were both behind the register, both buried in comics. I grinned. “Hi, Dad,” I kissed his cheek. “I see you two are keeping a vigilant eye out for customers.”
“Vigilant,” Dad muttered agreeably, turning a page. “That’s why we have this bell.” He pointed to an antique silver hotel bell on the desk. Right in front of him. I rolled my eyes.
“Nate, you ready to go?”
“Yep.” Nate tore his eyes away from an issue of the Amazing Spiderman and hopped off his stool, grabbing his backpack.
“Bye, Daddy.” No reaction from my father. I paused. “By the way, Dad, the baby’s a hermaphrodite.”
“Uh-huh.”
“He-she also has two heads. We’re going to name him-her Cerberus and sell him to the circus.”
“Uh-huh. You two have fun.”
Sigh. My family.
On the way to his house, Nate used my phone to call Delilah Harker for a progress report. As part of the “Nate hanging out at Great Dane” plan, she’d agreed to check in on Tom Christianti on Wednesdays and Saturdays– more to make sure he was still breathing than anything else. Nate flipped the phone closed and shoved it back in my purse for me. “No change,” he muttered. “But Delilah said hi, and you should call her about coffee next week. Decaf for you.” Then he fell silent. As if to echo Nate’s mood, the first raindrop smacked thickly into my windshield. It had been sunny only a few hours earlier, but now more and more drops splashed down, a torrent of sudden water. A cloudburst, my father called it.
I glanced over at my passenger to see if he’d comment on the sudden rain. The kid looked shrunken, exhausted, and miserable, leaning into the car door like it might be the only thing holding him up. I guess he had changed out of his Halloween costume, too. He’d lost a little weight since we’d met, and I wondered how much he was eating. There’s no one looking out for him, I realized.
I hadn’t pushed him to talk about Tom or his situation since I got back. I’d gotten the impression that he wanted some time to mourn for Jason –not for the man himself, who’d by all accounts been kind of a dick, but for the possible outcome that he might have represented. Nate needed to say goodbye to the version of his story that ended with living with his father.
But enough time had passed; maybe he was ready for a little push. “Nate...how are you doing with all this?”
Shrug. “Better now, I guess. At least I know that the foster care thing is inevitable. It was much more complicated when there was still this...hope.”
“Do you still think about Jason?” I ventured over the sound of the pattering rain. I wasn’t going to admit that I still did. There was nothing that I could have done differently to make sure Jason Anderson could be there for Nate. I knew that in my head, but I kept running through scenarios anyway.
“Yeah, all the time.” Nate fidgeted with his seat belt, staring out his window. “I mean, I know he couldn’t have been the world’s greatest dad or anything, but he might have been a pretty cool guy. We might have had some stuff in common. I could have...I don’t know.”
He grew quiet, and I bit my lip, torn. I had new information from Starla, after all. If I told Nate about Jason being in Chicago, he’d find out that his dad had been a useless jerk. But if I didn’t tell him, Nate might spend his life longing for a great father who had never really existed.
I made a decision.
“Listen, Nate...I got this visit today.” I told him about Starla’s trip to my office, and what she’d said about Jason being in Chicago.
“He was here?” Nate said disbelievingly. “Like, in town? And he didn’t try to find me?”
I got a little choked up at the heartbreak in his voice, and I couldn’t respond right away. But Nate answered his own question. “Of course he didn’t. I’m still in the same house, it’s not like he would have had to try very hard. Fuck!” He leaned forward and pounded one fist against the dashboard.
“Nate!” I exclaimed. I’d never heard him swear. We were in the middle of a crowded city street, but I pulled the Jeep into a loading zone, turned on the hazards, and looked over at the kid. He was breathing heavily, anger and frustration radiating off his skinny frame.
“I don’t understand any of this!” he yelled, his voice breaking with emotion. “Who was this guy? Why didn’t he want me?”
“Oh, Nate.” I unbuckled my seat belt and leaned over, doing my best to get my arms around him. Nate buried his face in my neck, hugging me back. I felt hot tears run down into my neckline, but I held still, feeling my own eyes burning.
“Why did he have to die before he could tell me?” he sobbed. “Why did they have to kill him now?”
“I don’t know, baby,” I said softly, feeling completely inept. Was this what motherhood was like? Watching a child in terrible pain, unable to help? This was what Rory and Toby and everyone were so excited about? Because it seemed pretty shitty to me.
I let Nate cry for a few minutes, knowing it was about more that just Jason visiting Chicago. The poor kid had been holding too much together for too long. After a while his crying subsided, and I stretched an arm behind the seat for my car box of tissues. As I did, I happened to look over Nate’s head, out the back window. Another car had pulled over shortly a few feet behind us, framing raindrops in its headlights. Sunset was nearly an hour away, but the sudden rainclouds had darkened the sky just above us. I squinted at the other car. A sedan.
“Thanks,” Nate mumbled, taking a tissue out of the box. “I’m really sorry about that.”
I shook my head, trying to focus on the boy in front of me. “You don’t have to be sorry, Nate. Everyone’s entitled to fall apart now and then.”
Goddammit, that wasn’t just a sedan. That was a beige Toyota Camry.
Awkward, I reached down below my legs for the special lockbox in the car where I keep my gun when I’m driving. Legal or not, people can get very nervous about seeing a driver with a shoulder holster, and you don’t want a gun bouncing around if you get into an accident. Unfortunately, being pregnant made it pretty difficult to get into the box.
“What are you doing?” Nate asked curiously, watching me squirm. Oh, good, I’d distracted him.
I finally managed to pull the gun out. I checked the clip and made sure the safety was on. “Being paranoid,” I replied casually. “Stay right here, okay?”
“Okay...”
I grabbed a sweatshirt out of the backseat, covered the gun with it, and stepped out into the rain.
25. Congratulations Are In Order
I was drenched instantly, the ugly blue dress sticking to me like scuba gear. I ignored it, holding the shirt-wrapped gun against my chest. There were maybe twenty feet between me and the Camry. I was tempted to beeline straight for the driver’s door, but if this person actually wished me harm, he or she could just floor it. Instead, I circled the Jeep to the curb first, nodding to some pedestrians hurrying along the sidewalk who looked at me like I was nuts.Then I approached the car warily.
He waited until I was three feet away, already starting to peer into the windows, trying to see through the rain. Then he twisted the steering wheel toward me and pressed the gas. I leapt clumsily up on the sidewalk, but he jerked the wheel back on to the road, the Camry’s wheels kicking up water that splashed against my knees. Not trying to actually kill me, not with people on the sidewalk to witness. I cursed fervently, stepping back into the street to watch the Camry race away. Then I slogged back to the Jeep.
“Lena?” Nate said uncertainly. He’d grabbed a stadium blanket fro
m my backseat –I keep a lot of crap back there– and now he handed it to me.
“Thanks, I said, mopping off my face.
“Was someone following us?” he asked. Sharp kid.
I nodded and held up a hand to stave off Nate’s questions. “Just let me think a second, okay?”
I was certain that the driver of the Camry was the same guy who’d attacked me in Los Angeles. Since I’d gotten back more than two months earlier I’d taken nothing but office work: background checks, anti-fraud investigations, due diligence for a couple of small law firms. Ruby had been handling all my surveillance work during the pregnancy, and even the group of Matt Cleary supporters who cropped up to harass me every March had backed off. No, this had to be Jason Anderson’s killer. I simply hadn’t pissed anyone else off.
The rain tapered off, as suddenly as it began. “Oh, sure, now it stops,” I said absent-mindedly. Jason’s killer had wanted to scare me. He could have just pulled away the second I’d gotten out of the Jeep, but he waited to pull the stunt with making me think he was going to run me down. I shivered. Why? And why today?
Because Starla had come to my office, of course. She had shown up, and maybe an hour later I’d spotted the car. Which meant—
“Oh, shit,” I whispered. I didn’t know if he’d been following me or Starla, but now he’d seen us together, after he’d warned me in LA not to keep investigating Jason Anderson. He would most likely make the logical conclusion: that I’d taken Starla’s case.
And although I hadn’t said yes to Starla...he wasn’t entirely wrong. I didn’t know how good this guy was, but he had to be pretty good—he’d found out about the pregnancy, and he’d followed me to In-N-Out, which meant he’d known I was staying with Cristina, and where she lived. If he was that good and he tried hard enough, he could find my recent phone calls to LA, my emails about the case file. Fuck.
And then an icy spear of an idea shot through my mind: he knew about Nate. If he’d followed me from Babies R Us, he’d seen the comic book store, where my family was, and he’d seen me drive away with Nate. He’d seen Rory and Toby, too, if he’d followed me to Babies R Us. This guy knew about my whole life, and he knew that I hadn’t dropped the case like he’d said. I began to shiver in my seat, although I told myself it was just the rain and the car’s air conditioner.
“Lena, what’s happening?” Nate demanded, unable to be quiet any longer.
I looked at him. “What’s happening is that I am losing my mind,” I declared brightly. “For a second I thought I saw a guy I put in jail years ago, can you believe that?” I shook my head, pasting on a bemused smile. I started the car. “You’ll go along with my story when I blame the baby hormones, right?”
As soon as I dropped off Nate, I called Starla and told her I’d take the case.
I know, I was breaking my promise to Toby. But I was too exposed. The only way to make sure that the people I loved were safe from this guy was to do the thing he thought I was doing anyway: hunt him down. I had to get to him before he got to me.
On the phone, I explained my rates and my usual process to Starla, but I got the definite impression that she wasn’t really listening. It seemed like she was too busy doing a happy dance. She agreed to my rates and asked me how soon I would get started.
“Right away,” I told her, “But I have a condition.”
There was an uncertain pause. “Like...cancer or something?”
I rolled my eyes. “No, I mean I have one condition for working for you. I want your permission to tell Nate anything I find out about Jason, at my discretion,” I said firmly. “Even if it’s something embarrassing to Jason’s memory.”
“Absolutely,” Starla promised. “He has every right to know, too.”
I watched my rearview mirror the whole way home, but I didn’t see any headlights that looked suspicious. Somehow that didn’t make me feel better, partly because he already knew where I lived, and partly because if it were me, and my target had made me, I’d go back to the rental place and get a new vehicle so she wouldn’t see me coming again.
That night, I didn’t tell Toby about being followed. I knew exactly what he’d say: that seeing a beige Camry, one of the most popular rental cars in the country, twice in one day was just a weird coincidence. And the car that had nearly run me down had just been some typical Chicago jerk. He’d say I was just looking for an excuse to jump back in the case, and he would use his lawyer powers against me until he had me half-believing the whole thing was in my head.
But I knew I was right. I might have been a shitty mother and a lying wife, but I’d never been wrong when it came to trusting my gut on cop stuff. Jason Anderson’s killer had been in that car, and he was gunning for me.
I just needed more evidence, I decided. As soon as I had something concrete, I would show it to Toby, and he would help me figure out how to stop this guy before he hurt me or anyone I cared about.
Nate included.
The next morning I went into the office early and pounced on the file that Starla had left with me. Jason Anderson’s original trail had dried up once I’d found his screenplay treatment. Since there were no real specifics in the screenplay, the whole thing had seemed like a dead end—except that now I had something new: the trip to Chicago. I pulled out the credit card bill right away and started looking through the charges.
It was immediately obvious that Jason hadn’t used the card for all of his expenses. There weren’t nearly enough meals to cover a four-day trip, for one thing, and none of the purchases were for less than twenty dollars. So he’d had some cash with him, but he’d used the card for big-ticket items: flight, rental car, gas, and one very expensive restaurant: $150 for a meal at L’Etoile. Rory and Mark had gone there for their fifth anniversary, and that number sounded about right for a meal for two. But who had Jason been wining and dining? I wouldn’t rule out the possibility that he had been cheating on Starla—the guy wasn’t exactly known for his enthusiasm for monogamy.
I set that aside for the moment and went back to the credit card bill. Something was missing, I realized. There was no hotel on the bill. I tapped a pencil on the desk next to me. Jason had had somewhere to stay. And it wasn’t with his son. Interesting.
Jason had also paid for gas twice in four days, which seemed like a lot. I went online and searched for the addresses of the two gas stations, comparing them to the date and time on the bill. The second time he’d topped off the tank, it was at a station near the airport, right before he returned the rental car. But the first station was way southwest of Chicago proper, almost to Joliet. Why would he be in Joliet?
I frowned, trying to piece together the timeline. Jason had arrived in Chicago late on a Monday, and Tuesday afternoon he stopped at a gas station an hour southwest of Chicago. He could have gone farther south and bought gas on the way back to the city, but then why fly into Chicago at all? No, the amount he’d paid for gas wasn’t enough for a full tank; he’d just been topping off. Which is something you do before you go back to your starting point. I looked at the map again. Nate’s suburb, Vernon Hills, was to the north, so it wasn’t like Jason had even gone to look at his son. There was a small airport, but if he’d taken a puddle-jumper somewhere, the ticket would probably have shown up on his credit card bill with the other expensive items.
So where had he gone?
Then I got it, and felt like an idiot. Unless it was a private residence –which seemed unlikely, given Jason’s disinterest in all things Chicago –there’s really only one place in that area where someone would be likely to visit: Stateville Correctional Facility.
Every Chicago cop knows about Stateville, because it’s supposedly one of the toughest prisons in the US. It’s a Level 1 facility, the highest possible security classification in the country, and the prison’s reputation and history have turned it into kind of the boogeyman for Chicago criminals, as in “if you don’t roll over on your partner, we’re sending you straight to Stateville.” The really, really ba
d guys go there, and most of them never come out.
But that didn’t really explain why Jason Anderson would want to visit. He was writing a screenplay about a real-life hired killer, so I could see him wanting to interview a prisoner. But why come halfway across the country? There was a pretty big prison an hour and a half north of Los Angeles. Hitmen weren’t my specialty or anything, but surely they had some hired killers there. Was there something special about one of the Stateville prisoners?
My memory clicked, and I dug through my desk mess until I located the old copy of Sunset Dies. I paged through until I found the section I wanted: where “Caleb” talks about his father dying in prison. Maybe it was true? But if Jason’s father had died in prison, that still didn’t explain why he’d visit. Could Jason’s father, Nate’s grandfather, still be alive and in Stateville?
I leaned back in my desk chair, trying to think. It was early, and I couldn’t have caffeine, and it was even getting hard to spin the chair in circles without throwing up these days, so I just rested a hand on my belly, and absently tapped out a rhythm on my desk with my free hand. There had to be something significant about one of the Stateville prisoners.
Going back to the computer, I messed around some search engines for awhile, and learned more random facts: that Stateville was at one point the home of Leopold and Loeb and Richard Speck, and that John Wayne Gacy had been executed there. But if there was a website listing famous current prisoners, I wasn’t finding it.
I thought for a few more minutes and then reached over and picked up the office phone to call Sarabeth Warrens. Public service ran in Sarabeth’s family: I knew she had a sister who was a 911 dispatcher, and when we were working together she had often mentioned a little brother who worked in Corrections. Her phone rang six times, and I was getting ready to leave a message when she answered, a little breathless. “Vice, this is Warrens.”
The Big Keep: A Lena Dane Mystery (Lena Dane Mysteries) Page 16