Dante's Wood

by Lynne Raimondo

  I told her about the necklace. And about Nate’s affair with Shannon. And about the forensic analysis. She wasn’t exactly thrilled.

  “Well, that’s just peachy,” she said when I’d finished. “What the hell am I supposed to do now?”

  “I thought maybe you could make a motion or something to get Charlie released.”

  Her exasperation was plain. “You don’t understand. Nate’s been paying for Charlie’s defense. Technically that makes him my client too. What you just told me creates a conflict of interest. I’ll have to disclose it to Nate immediately.”

  “You’ll have to tell him the police are on to him? Hallie don’t, not yet!”

  “There’s something else you’re not telling me. What is it? What are they planning?”

  “I’m not sure, but O’Leary mentioned the possibility of another warrant.”

  “You realize I’ll have to warn Nate about that too?”

  “You wouldn’t!” I said, winking over at O’Leary.

  “I’m afraid I don’t have a choice.” She exhaled loudly. “Didn’t I tell you to leave criminal law to the professionals? What you’ve done simply complicates the situation even more.”

  “I thought I was helping Charlie.”

  “Oh, Mark,” she said, “I like you, but you are so . . . impossible.”

  “I guess I do keep messing things up,” I agreed shamefacedly. “Will you have to tell Nate tonight?”

  “As soon as I get off with you.”

  “Nice work,” O’Leary said when I’d ended the call.

  O’Leary and I passed the next several hours staked out on Belden nursing tall cups of coffee with the windows rolled up. It was a steamy night and the car soon became stifling, choking with the aroma of the sandwich leftovers on the back seat. There was a small rotating fan on the dashboard and O’Leary switched it on. I rolled up my shirtsleeves and tried to keep from fidgeting while we made small talk.

  “You any relation to the lady with the cow?”

  “You know, I’ve spent half my life trying to come up with a good comeback to that question,” O’Leary said. “But no, my relatives were still eating grass on the far side of the pond when the city went up. Must have been some party.”

  “South Sider?”

  “Born and bred. How about you? You don’t sound like you’re from around here.”

  “Queens. I spent my formative years lolling around Shea Stadium.”

  “I wouldn’t go bragging about that, if I were you.”

  “I guess I shouldn’t need to be reminded,” I said, rubbing my stitches.

  The time passed slowly, one hour grinding into the next. I learned that O’Leary had gone to college at Holy Cross and been in the seminary a while before concluding his true vocation lay on the other side of the wire grill. We shared anecdotes about the terrors of a Catholic education and growing up at the tail end of the baby boom. O’Leary was a few years older than I and a Midwesterner, but our experiences were remarkably similar. We were both only children. O’Leary’s father had been on the front lines when police were stoned by rioters at the ’68 Democratic Convention. Half a year later, just after being promoted to detective, he was gunned down in a suspected Outfit hit at a warehouse on the Northwest Side. O’Leary’s mother had remarried but died shortly afterward, the victim of a botched cesarean. After that, O’Leary had been raised by his stepfather, another cop. O’Leary had been married to the same woman for twenty-five years, but seemed touchy about the subject so I let it drop.

  A little after 12:30 O’Leary’s radio did its Rice Krispies number and Monaghan came on.

  “Party just popped his garage door. Exiting now in a silver Mercedes, license plate KAP-1088. He’s coming your way.”

  “Here we go,” O’ Leary said, keying the ignition.

  I buckled my seatbelt and waited, feeling an adrenaline rush as we pulled out of the space and began to pick up speed. O’Leary continued to exchange cop pidgin with his colleagues in the other car, which allowed me to follow our progress.

  “Going code nine with the vehicle at Belden and Halsted. Left turn signal.”

  “You want us to take the lead?”

  “No. Just bring up the rear, code four.”

  “Copy. We’ll swing around and follow.”

  Traffic seemed light, and we cruised along at a leisurely pace.

  “Can you see the driver?” I asked anxiously.

  “From this far back? Not a chance.”

  The Mercedes proceeded two blocks to the intersection of Halsted and Fullerton, where it made a right. We took the same turn, heading east. The city blocks whooshed by in the dark while I chewed my knuckles. O’Leary, in contrast, was deathly calm at the wheel beside me. I wondered what Nate had planned when he got to Lake Shore Drive. If it were me, I would have gone south past the city limits to Lake Calumet, a wetland aside I-94 where only the most intrepid sportsman still fished. It was the kind of graveyard that beckoned those with something to hide, the same swamp where Leopold and Loeb had dumped the body of little Bobby Franks. Or else I would have gone north to Waukegan Harbor, a body of water containing enough PCBs to cool greater Los Angeles and correspondingly inhospitable to search divers.

  As it turned out, the driver of the car had something less elaborate in mind.

  Still going east, we passed Clark and down a small incline that told me we were coming up on Lincoln Park.

  “Party has moved into the left-turn lane at Stockton, slowing for a red light.” O’Leary told his colleagues.

  “He’s not getting onto the Drive, then?” I asked.

  “Doesn’t look like it. Turning left now,” O’Leary informed them.

  “Copy. What’d you think he’s got in mind?”

  “Dunno. Hold on . . . party’s slowing, looking for a space to park. I don’t think he’s made us, but I don’t want to take any chances. We’ll go on ahead and come around again. You do the pick up.”

  “Copy.”

  “And don’t let him throw anything in the water. I don’t want to spend the rest of the night up to my chin in duck shit.”

  “Might I ask exactly where we are?” I said when they were finished.

  “North Pond. You know it?”

  I remembered the lagoon at the north end of Lincoln Park, a migration point for Canadian geese and all-year home to various species of local waterfowl. It was shallow but brackish, fringed with cattails and tall weeds, and often covered by a low-lying mist. It would have made a decent dumping ground if you didn’t know you were being tailed by the police.

  The minutes dragged like a truant on his way to detention. We stayed on Stockton until it ended at the top of the park and took a left and then another, making a semi-circle around the park’s west end. By the time we were getting near to where we’d started, I was gouging jack-o’-lanterns into the sides of my seat.

  “You’re murdering me,” I said, when I couldn’t stand the suspense any longer. “What’s going on?”

  “You think I got eyes like a hawk? Give us a few minutes to get closer.”

  “We’re coming up on them now,” he told me fifteen seconds later. “When I stop you stay put, but you can roll down the window and listen.”

  O’Leary pulled up to the curb and jolted us to a halt. He squeaked the emergency brake into place and heaved himself out of with the motor still running. I hastily searched my armrest for the window button and pushed the small lever as far as it would go. A quick inrush of humid air followed. I thrust my chin out and scanned from side to side. There was a street lamp several yards off, bathing the area in harsh light. By holding my head at a certain angle I could just make out the three people silhouetted against sky: Monaghan and Jimenez and a taller figure between them. I strained for more but it was like trying to glimpse a shadow puppet through a sheet of moving water. I gave up and listened to what my ears had to tell me. There were no sounds of struggle, only someone whimpering softly. Like a coward.

  O’Leary had f
inally reached the grass verge. The soft earth swallowed his footfalls as he approached the group waiting for him. I heard him chuckle softly and say, “Well, well, well. Not quite what we were expecting, but I’ll take it.” Then to the other cops: “You find any of the items we were after?”

  “In here,” Monaghan replied.

  O’Leary took a bag of some sort and rustled its contents.

  “Nice-looking. OK. Put the bracelets on and read her her rights.”

  Her? I didn’t understand until Monaghan spoke again.

  “Judith Dickerson, you have the right to remain silent . . .”

  Twenty

  O’Leary kept busy the rest of the weekend. When he finally returned my calls on Monday there was a lot to tell me.

  “She’s not talking—the family lawyers have her sewed up tighter than a Muslim bride—but we’ve got enough to file charges. It’s what you thought. Sparrow was blackmailing her.”

  “Why are you sure it was Judith and not Nate?”

  “Circumstantial evidence, but it all adds up. Remember how she was supposed to be away at the family vacation home in Michigan when Sparrow was killed?”

  I remembered. “New Buffalo, wasn’t it?”

  “Yeah. Except that an EZ-Pass camera on the Skyway caught her driving back into the city at 6:15 that morning.”

  “Car?”

  “A bronze Lexus sedan.”

  I whistled.

  “And that’s not all. She claimed her cell phone was missing, but we pulled the paper records from her carrier. She placed two calls to Sparrow the night before the murder, one right after she’d purchased a handgun from a dealer outside Bridgewater.”

  “Interesting.”

  “But that’s not all. We had your friend Regina Best try to pick her out of a lineup. Best couldn’t make the ID but she’s now positive the person cruising the alley that morning was a woman. We also checked out the family bank accounts. Before she left for Michigan, Judith had a fifty-thousand-dollar cashier’s check drawn on her trust fund at the Northern.”

  “Fifty, huh? I’m surprised that’s all that Shannon asked for.”

  “Probably just the first installment. The way I see it, once Sparrow figured out she wasn’t going to get anywhere with the husband, she decided to hit up the wife. Judith went along with the blackmail at first, but then changed her mind, probably not trusting Sparrow to follow through on her promise to get an abortion. That’s when she decided to kill her.”

  “Have you found the murder weapon?”

  “Uh-uh. But we’re getting ready to dredge the Lake near the New Buffalo cottage. According to the surveillance cameras, Judith ran straight back there after the murder, and I have a hunch we’ll find it underwater with the gun. We’ve also impounded her car. If she was there and had contact with Sparrow, the forensic analysis should turn it up.”

  “How long will it take to find out?”

  “A couple of days. I’ll phone you as soon as the results are in.”

  “Where’s Judith now?”

  “Out. She posted bail on an evidence-tampering charge this morning. Which reminds me. It’s time for you to give this case a rest. I’m too busy to watch your back any longer and if you’re right about being deliberately attacked, somebody out there doesn’t like you. Practice your swordsmanship, pilot a speedboat—do whatever it is you people do for a challenge. Just stay away from law enforcement. Capisce?”

  For once, I intended to follow his advice.

  Not long afterward, I was being sternly dressed down by Hallie for feeding her the story about the phony police search.

  “You didn’t think to enlist my help? How am I supposed to trust you again? And don’t give me that doe-eyed look. You deliberately lied to me.”

  We were in her office, one of the coffin-sized spaces allocated to Wentworth, Feinstein’s associates and furnished with little more than a modular desk and two hard chairs. Hallie sat in the one across from me, presumably glowering. She hadn’t even offered me a refreshment when I came in, brusquely pushing me toward the guest seat with a shove to my back. Except for the fact I was pretty sure I would be spared corporal punishment, I felt like I was back in my high-school principal’s office again.

  “Does it make a difference that it was in a good cause?”

  “Oh, so you’re falling back on situational ethics.”

  “Professional ones, too. Didn’t you tell me that disclosing what I knew about Nate and Shannon put you in a conflict of interest? Short of advising one of the senior Dickersons to give themselves up, what could you have done anyway?”

  “I don’t know. But I would have appreciated the opportunity to decide for myself. Instead, you hoodwinked me.”

  “All I did was inform you that the police were thinking of conducting a second search of the Dickerson house.” Which was technically true, even if it was about as convincing as telling Monsignor O’Donnell it was only a Turkish cigarette.

  “And hadn’t even taken one step toward obtaining a search warrant,” Hallie said, not in the least mollified. “Assuming, which I find highly unlikely, Di Marco would have allowed them to.”

  “Would you have, if you’d been in his shoes?”

  She was quiet just long enough to concede the point. But not the match. “Tell me this—what would you have done if I hadn’t taken the bait? Gone on another breaking-and-entering spree?”

  I reached up to rub my stitches, which were starting to itch. “No, I think my days as a cat burglar are over.”

  “What on earth prompted you to pull that stunt, anyway?”

  “Something your cousin said.” Against my better judgment I told her the story.

  Hallie wasn’t pleased that I knew Jesus and even less happy that we’d been discussing her. “I wish Jesus would keep his big trap shut. Sometimes I’m embarrassed to admit we come from the same gene pool. You know about his ‘business,’ don’t you?”

  “He’s, uh, offered to put me in touch with some of his lady friends.” I decided against telling her she was one of them. “I hope I’m not that desperate—yet.”

  “Spare me the false modesty. If you weren’t such a magnet for trouble, I might even consider dating you. So you think the two incidents are connected?”

  “Unless Cubs fans really are that insane.”

  “It was probably a mistake. Someone who had too much to drink.”

  “In a blind cul-de-sac? I don’t think so. And I was carrying my street cane—the big tall one. Even if you were drunk, you couldn’t miss it. Whoever it was knew I couldn’t see them and was trying to kill me.”

  “Or less dramatically, warn you off the case. So who do you think it was?”

  “I’m not sure, but I’ve been thinking a lot about that night. That car, the way it seemed to come out of nowhere. It must have been a hybrid. They’re so quiet when they’re coasting you can barely hear them.”

  “What does Judith drive?”

  “I checked with O’Leary. A Lexus with a standard transmission. Besides, I don’t see her as the killer.”

  “Why not?” Hallie asked. “It sure looks like Shannon was blackmailing her. Isn’t that a good enough reason for Judith to want her—and possibly you—out of the way?”

  “Think about it. Let’s say it’s true Shannon approached Judith with a demand for money. Why didn’t she just report Shannon to the authorities for abusing Charlie? It’s not like she had something to hide.”

  “Maybe Shannon threatened to go through with the pregnancy if she didn’t get paid and Judith didn’t want another mentally disabled child in the family.”

  I shook my head. “I don’t think Judith would have cared about that. It doesn’t seem to have affected her love for Charlie.”

  “But from what we know of her she certainly would have minded Shannon becoming her daughter-in-law. Remember, Judith didn’t know Shannon had impregnated herself with Charlie’s sperm artificially. Shannon easily could have manipulated Judith into thinking that Charli
e slept with her out of love. It’s what Judith was so afraid of to begin with.”

  “True,” I replied. “But then why the sudden decision to kill her? To someone as wealthy as Judith, the money would have been meaningless. And why purchase a gun if she didn’t intend to use it?”

  “So you’re still putting your money on Nate.”

  “I’m saying that between the two of them, Nate had the better motive. After he spurned her marriage offer, Shannon would have done anything to destroy him. He knew it, and he knew he’d never be free of her. Even if the child wasn’t his, she could have caused a major scandal. Nate admitted to me Shannon wasn’t his first. A few more extramarital flings coming to light and who knows? He might even have been forced from his job.” I kept the irony of my saying so out of the discussion. “And unlike Judith, Nate wouldn’t have been able to stomach another retarded offspring.”

  “So you’re saying by killing Shannon, he solved two problems. All right, I buy that. But then why was Judith trying to get rid of that necklace?”

  “She must have been protecting someone.”

  “Who? Nate?”

  “Charlie, more likely.”

  “What are you saying? That Charlie did it?”

  “No, of course not. Only that Judith may have thought so.”

  “All right, but I’ll thank you to keep that theory to yourself. It’s not going to help me tomorrow when I move to get Charlie out of jail.”

  All at once, I felt uneasy. “I thought that would happen automatically.”

  “Shows how little you know. Right now, the case against Judith is almost entirely circumstantial. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if Di Marco decided to stick with what he’s got.”

  “Are you saying . . . ?”

  “That Charlie’s not out of the woods yet? I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad tidings, but that’s right.”

  At eleven the next day we were back in Judge La Font’s courtroom, waiting for a break in the case she was trying. Ordinarily it would have produced a yawn: an elite squad of Chicago police accused of shaking down drug dealers for a share of the profits, except that the cops had mistaken a seventeen-year-old honor student at Walter Payton for one of their targets. After hearing testimony from the boy’s mother, who had been handcuffed to a radiator while the cops worked him over with a tire iron, the judge sent the jury out and called an hour’s recess. Hallie said this was to give her time to light up in the judges-only smoking area on the roof. It was one of the few perks that came with the job.