Hidden Graves

by Jack Fredrickson

  I ran the four blocks to the gray cinderblock, six-bay garage and would have stopped short, to swear, if it wasn’t pouring.

  My Jeep was parked in front, red, glistening even where it was rusted. And topless. My vinyl top, which I’d not dared lower in years for fear of disturbing the artful mosaic of silver tape that held the rips closed, lay in a crumpled heap on the ground a few feet away, its mending strands loose and curling upon it like a tangle of shiny gray snakes trying to slither away.

  I ran inside. Sergeant Bohler sat at a desk in a glass-windowed office. She smiled delightedly when I sloshed to a dripping stop in her doorway.

  She tossed two overstuffed, clear plastic bags at me, one after the other. ‘Know what those are, Elstrom?’

  I’d recognized the contents even as the bags were in flight, and understood the reason for her pettiness. ‘Memories,’ I said.

  ‘Excellent,’ she said, nodding approvingly at my sodden clothes.

  I stepped up to her desk. She pushed her chair back from the torrent of drops that fell from my hair, face and shirt. ‘Damn it, Elstrom.’

  I upended the contents of both bags onto the papers on her desk. ‘What we have here are Burger King wrappers,’ I said, speaking softly so we could both enjoy the gentle patter of me dripping onto the wrappers and other papers on her desk.

  ‘Step back, for Pete’s sake,’ she said, lurching up from her chair.

  ‘Not just ordinary Burger King wrappers,’ I opined, a tropical rain forest standing pat. ‘But Whopper-with-cheese wrappers, to be precise.’

  By now, her work papers and my wrappers lay sodden on her desk like leaves pasted lifeless to a sidewalk by a hard autumn rain.

  ‘There were eighty-four of those damned wrappers inside your Jeep, Elstrom,’ she said, pressed up against the file cabinets at the back wall.

  I remembered the cadaver-sniffing dog going berserk inside my Jeep. To its nostrils it must have seemed like a meat paradise.

  ‘They ruined the dog’s nose,’ she said. ‘He can’t differentiate between scents anymore.’

  ‘Perhaps counseling?’

  ‘I like you for Marilyn Paul in the Willahock, Elstrom. Our dog may have given up, but I won’t.’

  ‘No blood, no hair, no murderous weapons?’ I asked, feigning outraged innocence, for clearly they’d found nothing.

  She stepped forward to open a side drawer, grabbed my key and tossed it at me. ‘I’m not done. Do not leave town.’

  I went out into the rain, hefted the vinyl top into the back and took the slow way to Rivertown. I didn’t dare risk the speeds needed on the expressway. It was challenging enough to drive even slowly while wiping my eyes constantly to see through the rain falling between my face and the windshield. I got plenty of honks from other motorists. Some smiled; in shock, I supposed. Most sped up to pass, tight-faced, anxious to escape an obvious crazy driving a topless Jeep in a thunderstorm.

  I shivered, from the downpour and in relief that Bohler had found nothing. But mostly I shivered from the certainty that I now had a cop who was going to be relentless in tagging me for Marilyn Paul’s murder.

  Despite all that, I was mindful that I owed a homage. My usual Burger King outlet rests at the extreme western edge of Chicago, right at the Rivertown city line. They know me there.

  I turned into the drive-through lane, dripping and grinning in the rain, and paid the delighted teenage window attendant with a drenched bill.

  I ate as I drove through Rivertown, savoring as always the magnificent taste – even sodden – of my cheese Whopper.

  Yet that day, I savored the wrapper even more.

  TWENTY-SIX

  Leo, bright in a tropically orange shirt festooned with frolicking red parrots, yellow slacks and black-and-white wingtip shoes, looked through the rain at the Jeep parked at the curb. ‘Odd day to be driving without the top,’ he opined, like it was wisdom.

  ‘The sheriff’s department seized the Jeep in the middle of the night, looking for evidence.’

  His thick eyebrows snapped together into a thick line of furry worry. ‘Please tell me you got rid of the box.’

  ‘Yes, but they’d gotten tipped to something else. Before they came I spotted somebody who put a bloody knife under the passenger’s seat. It’s now in the Willahock.’

  ‘Can’t there still be DNA or blood residue?’

  ‘My lifestyle mostly saved the day,’ I said. ‘Their cadaver dog’s nose went haywire from sniffing cheeseburger wrappers. Their own noses must have gone just as haywire from finding no blood or anything else. They reacted petulantly. They left the Jeep out in the rain with the top off.’

  ‘Petulant, but cleansing all the more?’ His smile lit the dark gloom of the day.

  ‘I can only hope. I’d like to reattach the top in the shelter of your garage.’

  Relieved, he hurried back through the house and had his Porsche out before I pulled around to the alley. Reattaching the top took ninety minutes because it was slippery and wet and had separated, like an unraveled patchwork quilt, into a dozen smaller pieces where the strands of duct tape had fallen away.

  ‘I’ll go to the Discount Den for more silver tape,’ he said.

  ‘No need. I’m going to leave the rips open for now. They’ll help circulate the air once the sun comes out.’

  ‘I’ll get you seat covers.’ He ran inside and came out a moment later to slip two clear plastic garbage bags over the front seats. I doubted they’d matter. I was already drenched.

  Back home, in dry clothes, I was nuking a modest rainbow of three Peeps – two green, one lavender – when the phone rang. It was the Bipsie who’d hired me to track down the other Bipsies in her sorority.

  ‘Long time no hear, Mr Elshtrom,’ she said slowly, straining to enunciate each word perfectly. It was well past lunch.

  ‘We just spoke,’ I said, picking little Peep splats out of the microwave and sliding them into my mouth.

  ‘Refresh memory. Am doing the newshletter.’

  A thought teetered. ‘You’ve put my name in your newsletter?’

  ‘Lasht time, too,’ she slurred. ‘Tell everyone you’re tracking ush down. Whatsh new?’

  ‘Bipsie Paul,’ I ventured.

  She snorted. ‘Don’t bother. High and mighty, pain in the ash.’

  ‘She’s moved on anyway.’ I clicked the liquored woman away with a fast forefinger. Later, perhaps, I’d feel like a crumb, getting angry with a foolish drunk who obviously didn’t know that Marilyn Paul had been murdered.

  I pulled out the old records the sorority women had given me for updating and found Marilyn listed at the same address in Oak Park I’d gotten from the Internet. She’d learned of me through her sorority newsletter and now she was dead.

  I went to the kitchen and microwaved another Peep until it collapsed into a vaguely green slick that resembled nothing of its original chick-like state. And that reminded me that Beech in the Beach wanted medical information on David Arlin. Jenny was going to try to find out why.

  I called her. ‘You were going to use your wiles to find out what’s wrong with the corpse in Laguna Beach,’ I said.

  ‘I took a day and did drive down there, but I got sidetracked when I got back by a crooked councilman in one of our suburbs,’ she said.

  ‘Sounds like Rivertown. You learned nothing?’

  ‘I didn’t try Beech again but I did manage to get a stool at a diner next to a younger cop at lunchtime. You were right. There’s something wrong with the corpse, beyond it not being intact. My new young friend said they’re contacting every doctor in Laguna Beach, looking for Arlin’s records.’

  ‘No idea what’s wrong with the body?’

  ‘He didn’t know; only that it’s wrong.’

  ‘I’m surprised they haven’t yet sent my local cops after me for the name of Arlin’s insurance company. They won’t be happy when they learn I lied.’

  I then told her what I’d learned since we last talked.

 
; ‘I can understand all three quitting that old campaign at the same time,’ she said, ‘if it meant snatching great-paying jobs.’

  ‘The jobs didn’t work out, and they didn’t work out awfully quickly. All three stayed out west, though they didn’t stay together. Arlin went to Laguna Beach, Runney to Reeder. Both changed their names.’

  ‘Now we’re getting to an intriguing part,’ she said.

  ‘Because since the third musketeer, Halvorson, didn’t change his name. He became invisible instead and has stayed that way ever since.’

  ‘You think one of the three killed Marilyn Paul?’

  ‘Could be, because of what she knew. But there’s another wrinkle. The three young men were good friends twenty years ago, thought of as three of four musketeers.’

  ‘Now I’m sensing something really big.’

  ‘The fourth musketeer was Timothy Wade.’

  ‘The Grain Man? Your next senator from Illinois? He figures in this?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Oh, boy. This could be huge.’

  ‘Not a word about any of this yet,’ I said. ‘Likely as not, Wade’s totally uninvolved.’

  ‘Bigger than big,’ she said.

  At the time, neither of us knew what we were talking about.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  The rest of the afternoon dribbled into evening. I spent a fraction of it lacerating my hands with ductwork but mostly I peeked out the window for whoever might come at me for the murder of Marilyn Paul.

  At eight-fifteen, it paid off. And not.

  A white Ford Explorer pulled onto my street and parked in the dark, a hundred yards away. That wasn’t unusual for bargain-seeking Johns. Nor was it strange he’d turned to face heading out. Knowledgeable Rivertown revelers desired speedy exits, should a Rivertown squad car come weaving at them. It wasn’t arrest they feared – nobody ever got arrested for lewdness in Rivertown – but rather a hard-to-explain collision, while parked in the company of a hooker, with a drunken cop.

  I watched the Ford SUV for too many moments before I left the window, telling myself I was simply jumpy. Two attempts at a frame for murder will sandpaper even the calmest of nerves.

  Thirty minutes later, I was back, looking again. The Explorer was still there and I had the thought it might belong to one of Sergeant Bohler’s people, keeping me under surveillance. I padded down the wrought-iron stairs, turned off the lamp I’d set on my new furnace so it could be admired after sunset by peeping toms or worse and slipped out the door. The interior bulbs in the Jeep don’t work and I eased in without flashing any light.

  A twist of the key, a quick U-turn and I came up on him fast, ready to flash on my headlamps.

  He was faster. He shot forward, made a right turn and another onto Thompson to head west. He was no john, and he was no cop.

  Night-times, cars crawled along Rivertown’s seediest half-mile. Drunks poked along to avoid the hallucinations that jumped at them from the shadows and johns drove slowly to inspect the meat working the curbs.

  The driver I was chasing wasn’t mindful of any of that. He darted recklessly in and out of the slow parade, causing a dozen drivers to hit their horns and swerve. In no time he’d gotten six car lengths ahead. I worked the tangle as best as my nerves would allow, but no matter how craftily I drove, he was better. Soon he was at least ten car lengths ahead.

  The drunks and the johns fell away at the outskirts of town. I sped up, hoping to close some of the distance. But his Explorer was a rocket compared to the lump that was my Jeep. He gunned his SUV up to an almost suicidal ninety miles an hour.

  And then he got stuck behind a slow-moving tractor-trailer. By then there were only three cars between us. I pressed down on the accelerator, hoping to pass to get closer.

  The bubble lights of a cop lit up the opaque yellow of my plastic rear window. I had to back off and pull to the side of the road.

  The plainclothes cop came up to my side window, flashing a badge. ‘Trying to outrun me, Elstrom?’ she asked.

  ‘You just cost me, Bohler,’ I said. ‘The person who likely killed Marilyn Paul was watching my turret. You just helped him get away.’

  She smiled. ‘Your fantasies won’t change my mind. You killed Marilyn Paul.’

  My heart finally quit pounding by the time the Bohemian called at ten. ‘No dice, Vlodek,’ he said. ‘According to my contact, Theresa Wade insists on running the lives of her brother and herself like she runs the campaign, entirely through her address on his website. The best you can do is request an interview through that.’

  ‘She’s keeping as low a profile as her brother.’

  ‘Supposedly, she’s severely agoraphobic.’

  ‘Delman Bean inferred something like that. She’s afraid to leave her house?’

  ‘She hasn’t ventured out for years. Plus, she’s paralyzed from the waist down, from an accident when she was very young.’

  ‘Wheelchair-bound,’ I said, remembering my meeting with the woman calling herself Rosamund Reynolds.

  ‘You’re thinking it could have been Theresa, not Marilyn Paul, who hired you?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘Marilyn Paul got my name through a sorority newsletter. The real question is why she wanted to impersonate Theresa Wade when she hired me.’

  ‘To leave a trail to Timothy Wade?’

  ‘That seems most likely. Wade was the fourth musketeer. One of the other musketeers is dead and two are missing. He’s got to be involved, either as a perpetrator or a target.’

  ‘Because he’s the only musketeer still standing? That’s a reach, Vlodek.’

  ‘Marilyn Paul worked for the Wade campaign. She knew his schedule,’ I said.

  ‘And planted those bones to publicly embarrass Wade, the very candidate she was laboring to elect?’

  ‘Whatever the intent, it didn’t work. The press dropped the story.’

  ‘As we discussed, Theresa has convinced the press that Tim was reacting to a very real and imminent threat and that he’s safest remaining in seclusion. She’s wise, and that’s wise, until they catch the perpetrator.’

  ‘If Theresa is as sharp as you think, she suspected Marilyn Paul right away.’

  ‘You’re imagining she had Marilyn Paul murdered? For that simple prank? That’s crazy.’

  ‘Not necessarily,’ I said, ‘but I’m still stuck wondering if Marilyn Paul suspected Theresa or Timothy Wade of something.’

  I told him I was going to poke around a bit on the Internet and he hung up, sounding tired but no doubt grateful that he wouldn’t have to listen to more of my nonsensical rambling. Not me; I wasn’t tired and I wasn’t too impatient to chase more nonsense. The man who’d likely killed Marilyn Paul and wanted me framed for it had come again. I went to my computer to find Theresa and Timothy Wade.

  They came from a line of rum runners and politicians, which in Chicago was considered a doubly golden pedigree. Their great grandfather, Samuel Wade, Sr made his fortune during the Prohibition years, operating a construction company with excellent ties to Chicago’s city hall. By most accounts, the company did build a scattering of tiny municipal buildings – warming huts at ice rinks and such – but mostly it made deliveries. News reports of the day marveled that his trucks, presumably loaded with lumber, were a familiar sight in the city and in Cook County. Later, it became accepted that because Wade Sr owned a distillery in Canada it was likely his trucks delivered things more liquid than lumber.

  I creaked my tilting red vinyl chair back from the screen and allowed myself an irony. We shared Prohibition-era histories, the siblings Wade and me. My own grandfather also ran alcohol through Chicago during Prohibition, though his was lowlier – beer made in local garages. And alas, our ancestors invested their incomes differently. Whereas Wade, Sr constructed an expansive estate close to the magnificent shore of Lake Michigan, my grandfather never got further than one turret of a castle along the greasier shore of the Willahock River – then, as now, more of a drain than a desirabl
e waterway.

  Samuel Wade, Jr brought the family new sources of revenue. He entered politics. The profession had always been a moneymaker in Illinois, making multi-millionaires of thousands that dedicated their lives to the public good. Wade, Jr was no slouch at it. He multiplied the family fortune ten-fold in the years he served in the state senate.

  Jared Wade, Samuel Jr’s son, sought to use the ancestral money to buy the family respectability. He sat on several charity boards, contributed heavily to the Chicago democratic machine and married a dazzling blonde socialite from Kenilworth. They had dazzling children. Theresa was their first born, followed by Timothy, two years later. Pictures of them enjoying charitable events with their parents appeared regularly in Chicago’s newspapers.

  At the age of six, Theresa showed promise as a gymnast. At ten, she landed wrong on the edge of a trampoline. It put her in a wheelchair. The family remained upbeat, and pictures from then on showed a smiling, pretty young blonde girl resolutely participating in all sorts of events with other kids her age. Theresa Wade was no recluse at that time in her life.

  Jared Wade and his beautiful blonde socialite wife were killed in a boat explosion on Lake Michigan when Theresa was twenty-one and her younger brother, Timothy, was nineteen. A photo of the two young siblings showed them smiling bravely at their parents’ funeral, where Theresa announced their intention to live on at the family estate.

  A second showed them six months later, sitting in the family’s older Cadillac Eldorado convertible with its top down, enjoying a polo match in Oak Brook, Illinois. Life was going on.

  Theresa Wade graduated magna cum laude from Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism the next year. She’d never intended to go into any form of journalism, for reasons that did not become clear for several more years.

  Fresh from graduating, also from Northwestern, Timothy Wade almost immediately became prominent in Chicago’s political and philanthropic circles. He became an aide to the president of the Cook County Board, and then to the speaker of the Illinois House of Representatives. He attended ribbon cuttings, taxpayer forums and open government meetings of every sort, always visible but in the background, assisting, learning. He was photogenic, a comer in Illinois politics destined for the national stage. Never, though, did he bruise himself in campaigns for small office. There’d been little doubt his future was in the US Senate. And then, likely, a run for president.