Hidden Graves

by Jack Fredrickson

  She stared at me like she was witnessing true idiocy for the first time, which might have been the case, given her young age. She turned and walked away.

  Ten more minutes passed, and then another ten. Finally Mrs Galecki stomped up, squeezed her short bulk into the seat opposite me and fixed me with a steely glare.

  And said nothing.

  ‘I’m learning how to cook Peeps,’ I said, after the silence got too irritating.

  ‘Peeps?’ she asked, elongating the word with several more letters ‘e.’

  ‘Bunnies. Rabbits.’

  ‘You cook rabbit?’ She wrinkled her nose but what she was really trying to crumple was my optimism. She wanted me gone.

  I shook my head. ‘Not real rabbit. Bunnies. Marshmallow. Marshmallow bunnies.’

  ‘Eets not Easter.’

  ‘Peeps are for always and forever.’

  ‘How you cook such theengs?’

  ‘Until they form a puddle. It takes a while but I’m a patient man. I can wait and wait.’

  She squeezed out, grabbed a handful of Saltines from another booth and dropped them in front of me. ‘You stay,’ she said, and left.

  Twenty-five minutes passed. The delivery bell rang at the back door. Mrs Galecki returned and pulled open the door. A huge bearded man in a bulky windbreaker came in carrying a case of ketchup, set it on my table and took a long minute to look around. The windbreaker was not bulky enough to conceal the semi-automatic tucked in his belt. He motioned for me to follow him outside.

  A van was squeezed between two cars, backed tight against the service door. Its rear doors were open wide, almost touching the back of the building. No one would be seen going in the back of the van. He told me to get inside and sit on one of the dozen boxes of canned goods. He climbed in beside me, pulled the doors shut, slid down the lock and sat on another of the boxes. A driver started the engine and we pulled away.

  The van wasn’t like Leo’s. It had no windows, so I couldn’t see where we were heading. By the number of turns the driver took I would have gotten lost anyway. We zigged and zagged and seemed to turn down every cratered side street in Chicago’s old Polish, Scandinavian and Bohemian enclaves.

  We pulled to a stop after twenty minutes and the driver cut the engine. His door opened and closed. Three quick knocks sounded on the back doors and the man who’d ridden silently beside me reached to unlock them from inside.

  The man who opened the van’s door from outside was also big and bearded, and he, too, had a semi-automatic, though his was in his jacket pocket. He could have been my fellow passenger’s twin.

  I stepped down. We were in an alley behind a brown brick three-flat. The outside man, who I assumed was the driver, motioned for me to follow him up the exposed back stairs to the third floor, my fellow rider following close behind. The man in front knocked twice on the door and twice again. The door was opened by yet another bearded fellow that could have been a third brother of the other two men, and we stepped into a kitchen. The third man kept his semi-automatic in a leather holster on his belt. My driver and my fellow passenger went to the refrigerator, took out beers and sat at the small table.

  I followed the third man down a short hall. He knocked on a bedroom door at the end, then opened it and stepped aside so I could go in.

  A television, tuned to a cable news channel, was playing in the corner. The sound was set low.

  A nurse, sitting beside it, had a newspaper on her lap. Her hand rested on a revolver next to a plate of cookies on a tiny table. The third man nodded. She pulled her hand back and picked up the newspaper.

  Only then did I turn to look at the other person in the room. She was sitting on a beige vinyl recliner with her two legs extended on the footrest. Her right leg was in a brace that ran from her foot up to her mid-calf. Her face was black and blue everywhere. One eye was almost swollen shut and her lips were swollen.

  ‘Hiya, Dek,’ Jenny said.

  FIFTY-ONE

  ‘So, what’s new?’ I asked smartly, sitting on the edge of the made-up bed.

  ‘I’m being held incommunicado, a prisoner,’ she said, not quite managing a smile. ‘Mama grabbed my cell phone and I haven’t seen it since I was brought here.’

  She pointed to the man who’d led me down the hall. ‘That’s my cousin Bernie,’ she said. ‘His brother Stanley is the one who drove you here. Their other brother is Frank; he rode beside you in the back, ready to snap your neck if you began acting suspiciously. And the nurse with the gun here is Eloise, Stan’s wife’s sister.’ She looked past me, toward the door. ‘And of course, you remember Jimbo, my old cameraman from Channel Eight?’

  I turned around. Yet another bearded fellow, this one wearing a red Chicago Blues Fest T-shirt, had followed me in and was leaning on one crutch against the door jamb. I smiled; this man I remembered. He’d come with Jenny to Rivertown to report the arrest of Elvis Derbil, the town’s zoning czar, for switching out stale-dated labels on a truckload of salad dressing.

  I turned back around. ‘Who did this?’ I asked her.

  ‘Two dark shapes, in balaclavas and camo jackets, in the woods across the street from Timothy Wade’s house.’

  ‘Wade’s guards?’

  ‘I don’t know, because I don’t know why we were attacked. We were trespassing on someone else’s property, not Wade’s. I didn’t hear Jimbo going down before they came for me.’

  ‘I got knocked down, felt my leg being twisted,’ Jimbo said behind me. ‘No break, just torn ligaments. They were done with me in a second.’

  ‘Professionals? They could have killed you but didn’t?’ I asked Jenny.

  ‘It’s always risky to kill a reporter. They wanted me sidelined and scared, not dead.’

  ‘You chased information down to Laguna Beach, up to Oregon and out to Tucson before coming here. What exactly led you here, to the woods across from Wade’s estate?’

  ‘You said Wade is the fourth musketeer, and the only one who is accessible.’

  ‘I meant, what caused you to drop everything in California and come back to Chicago?’

  ‘I wanted to see my mother.’

  ‘Liar.’

  ‘Well … I thought as long as I was back visiting Mama I’d have a preliminary look around, in advance of all the information you promised to give to me.’

  ‘And that’s why you didn’t let me know you were coming.’

  ‘You were on my call list. First, I phoned for Wade at his campaign headquarters but got dusted off, of course. Then I emailed Theresa Wade at that campaign office but never heard back from her either.’

  ‘What did you write to Theresa?’

  ‘That I was looking into her brother’s association with three men who came to bad ends out west.’

  ‘That was certainly subtle.’

  ‘I was hoping to jar her enough to reply. When she didn’t, I came up with the brilliant idea of finding others who might talk to me about Timothy Wade. I contacted Jimbo and we set up cameras across from Wade’s place. I assumed Wade had day help, people coming in to cook or to clean. If we could capture their license plate numbers, I could trace them and ask about Wade. Brilliant, huh?’

  ‘Are the cameras still there?’

  ‘Retrieving them was what got us into trouble. Jimbo had already taken down the one from the north side and put it in his car. He was taking down the center camera when we got jumped, so that camera got seized. The third, at the south edge, is still in the woods, though by now its battery will have run down.’

  She pointed to a laptop computer on a dresser. ‘We’re about halfway through watching the footage from the first camera. So far, nobody came and nobody went.’

  ‘No day help at all?’

  ‘One grocery delivery left at the gate, which a guard took up to the front door, but nothing else for the two days we recorded.’

  I looked at Jimbo. ‘You were able to drive yourselves away from there?’

  He pointed at Jenny.

  ‘
This is my story to tell, not my story to be,’ she said. ‘If I’d called cops or EMTs I’d have become the story, and that would tip the competition. I got us a mile away and pulled in at a gas station. I needed a safe place to recuperate and regroup. I called Frank. Frank called Stan. They brought us here, to Eloise.’

  ‘You could have called me,’ I said. ‘Matter of fact, that could have been your opportunity to alert me you were in Chicago.’

  ‘Yeah, and you would have said I got clobbered because I didn’t listen to you, and that I should stay away from the story, that it wasn’t ready yet, that you didn’t know what was going on, and I shouldn’t risk—’

  ‘Stop!’ I said, holding up my hand. ‘I understand.’

  She smiled.

  ‘I don’t understand why you were a threat, even with cameras,’ I said. ‘Wade seemed almost too cooperative with me.’

  She tried to lean forward but dropped back in pain. ‘You talked with him?’ she asked in a whisper.

  ‘He invited me to the house. I met with him. He was affable and accommodating. He became my best, sincerest buddy in just a few moments.’

  ‘Truthful?’

  ‘Seemingly. He said he thought Shea wanted to blackmail him, though he couldn’t imagine with what. He sent me to talk with the campaign’s security chief, a man named Jeffries, who told me Marilyn Paul intercepted Shea’s demand to speak to Wade. Marilyn confronted Shea, telling him she remembered him from the old Delman Bean campaign. Jeffries said everything ended when Shea got blown up. Case closed.’

  ‘Except judging by the confusion out in Laguna Beach, it wasn’t Shea who got blown up.’

  ‘It was Dainsto Runney, late of Reeder, as you’ve already guessed. You made quite an impression on the man by the ice house.’

  ‘A darling old man,’ she said. ‘You told Jeffries about Runney?’

  ‘I told him to call out to Laguna Beach, that there might be more to the blackmail story.’

  ‘How interested was Jeffries in Marilyn Paul’s killing?’

  ‘He doesn’t see any connection but he’s learned to look the other way. His job is to focus on the candidate. Still, Beech did tell me Jeffries called out there, though I think Beech shut him down and didn’t tell him anything.’

  ‘Since Shea’s still alive, he’s likely here in Chicago,’ she said, ‘continuing on with his blackmail plot?’

  ‘Maybe Halvorson’s here, too, but Jeffries insisted whatever blackmail attempt existed, it’s now over. No accomplice has come at them for blackmail.’

  ‘Unless the Wades aren’t being forthcoming with Jeffries.’ Then she said, ‘Speaking of other things, I also took blood scrapings in Halvorson’s Tucson house.’

  ‘They’re worthless. Red Halvorson’s sister-in-law said that other than her husband there were no other blood relatives. That means you have nothing to compare your scrapings to.’

  ‘Rats,’ she said, a half smile forming on her face.

  ‘Rats, indeed,’ I agreed.

  ‘I didn’t know there were no blood relatives when I flew to Tucson, obviously. I called the landlord and arranged to meet him at Halvorson’s house. He got there fast, thinking I was a buyer. He led me inside to look over the place. I remembered that you’d taken scrapings. I wanted some of my own. I’d come prepared with plastic bags and a small pen knife and headed straight for the kitchen. As soon as I knelt to take my samples, the owner started sputtering. I showed him my press pass and used my phone to bring up a video of me, on TV. I told him I was going to put him on the San Francisco news if he wasn’t cooperative, and that would get back to Tucson and jeopardize his ability to sell his house. He got talkative and told me interesting things about Gary Halvorson. Such as he’d never once set eyes on the man. Twenty years ago, Halvorson called, saying he’d driven past the place, seen the For Rent sign and wanted to take it, inside unseen. He said he’d send three months’ security deposit and two months’ rent upfront. The landlord asked what would happen if he didn’t like the place. The prospective tenant said he’d call back, but in any case the landlord was free to keep what was the equivalent of five months’ rent.’

  ‘This was about the same time Shea arrived in Laguna Beach and Runney showed up in Reeder?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes. And so it went with rent, for twenty years, without one word from the tenant, ever.’ Her smile had turned quizzical, perhaps taunting. ‘I told the landlord I’d heard he was secretive in removing garbage.’

  ‘Effective sleuthing on my part,’ I said.

  She sighed. ‘Rats,’ she said again, watching my eyes.

  ‘Rats,’ I said, though suddenly I felt like I was looking clearly into a new, bright room. I understood.

  ‘You see, don’t you?’ she said anyway.

  ‘Halvorson never moved in,’ I said. ‘Only rats did, free to breed, because the house remained unoccupied for so many years.’

  ‘Generations and generations of them, the landlord admitted. Mice, too, but they weren’t survivors like the rats. That’s why the landlord didn’t leave the garbage bags around for anyone to poke through. He didn’t want a neighbor to tell a prospective buyer the house had been full of rats, rats he’d caught in traps that he must have set everywhere.’

  ‘And that’s why he scrubbed everything down with bleach. Rat waste.’

  ‘Enough to kill a sale, for sure,’ she said.

  Eloise got up to stand between Jenny and me. ‘Visiting hours are over.’

  ‘You do see why I came to see the Wades in Chicago?’ Jenny asked me.

  ‘All those rats point to someone who had enough money to rent a house as a ruse for over twenty years,’ I said.

  ‘Oh, you’re so smart,’ she said.

  ‘Out,’ Eloise said, clearly not as impressed with my intellect.

  I touched Jenny’s lovely cheek. ‘And also, someone with enough money to pay for new lives for Shea and Piser out west,’ I said.

  ‘And Halvorson somewhere else?’ Jenny asked.

  Or nowhere else, I thought.

  FIFTY-TWO

  Stanley walked me back down the outside staircase and held open the back doors of the van. Neither of his two brothers joined me in the back. He walked around to the driver’s seat, started us up and we pulled away. Again, we took turn after turn. He was disorienting me, making sure I’d never be able to determine where Jenny was recuperating.

  Twenty minutes later, he pulled to the curb and let me out. ‘You know where you are?’

  We were at a bus stop but there were no street signs at the corner. ‘No.’

  ‘Three miles straight north of Galecki’s. The bus will stop right across the street.’ He got back in the van and drove away.

  I checked my cell phone for messages while I waited for the bus. I’d gotten only one call. It was from Jeffries, the security chief at the Wade campaign headquarters. I called him.

  He started off politely. ‘I emailed Miss Wade asking whether I ought to look into Marilyn’s murder,’ he said, ‘to make sure nothing might rise up and bite the campaign. She emailed back saying that I should forget about that. She said you should forget about it, too.’

  ‘Was that before or after you called out to Laguna Beach?’ I said.

  He clicked me away.

  I got back to Rivertown at seven o’clock, furious that Jenny was hurt yet relieved that she wasn’t hurt worse. And tired, too tired to want to deal with the black Impala that looked like a cop car parked on the short street that led from Thompson Avenue to mine.

  I drove my fatigue right past it but the car was an insult. My anger insisted I back up. I threw the Jeep in reverse and shot backward until I was abreast of the car.

  I jumped out and walked around to the driver’s window. Sergeant Bohler powered down her window and looked out at me impassively as though she was studying a museum oddity.

  ‘Why the half-stab at surreptitiousness?’ I asked. ‘Why not pull right up in front of the turret?’

  She nodded. ‘
Makes sense. I’ll follow.’

  I got back in the Jeep, took the turn too fast and slammed on the brakes in a most infantile manner. I stormed into the turret, slammed the door and left the outside light off so she could savor my petulance in full darkness.

  Going up the wrought-iron stairs, I reconsidered, turned on the lamp on the first floor and went back outside.

  ‘You can spy on me more efficiently inside,’ I called out, holding the door open.

  ‘Anybody ever tell you you’re crazy, Elstrom?’ she asked, walking up.

  ‘Depends on the doctor,’ I said, closing the door after her.

  ‘What the hell is that?’ she asked of the lamp-lit grouping on the first floor.

  ‘Two plastic lawn chairs, an uninstalled furnace and a lamp to draw attention to it all.’

  ‘There’s no lampshade.’

  ‘I haven’t found the perfect one.’

  ‘The right doctor might help you with that as well.’

  I led her up the wrought-iron stairs and told her to take a folding chair at the temporary, plywood kitchen table.

  ‘I’ll get us some hors d’oevres and coffee,’ I said.

  I set a paper napkin in the microwave, set in my last two purple Peeps and switched it on. I’d just picked up the carafe of the morning’s blend when the light surged brighter in the microwave – always a bad sign.

  ‘Don’t you—’

  She stopped when the Peeps emitted a loud, gaseous sigh and began to ooze out beneath the bottom of the poorly fitting microwave door.

  ‘Pardon me?’ I poured coffee into two mugs, pretending not to notice the purple puddle hardening on the counter.

  Visibly struggling to look anywhere but at the counter, she said, ‘I was about to ask why you don’t warm up your coffee.’

  I picked up my plastic spatula and began to scrape the purple Peep particles from the counter, adding them to the by-now rock-hard puddle that had remained on the paper towel. ‘In this microwave?’

  ‘Too risky?’ she asked.

  ‘Scalding coffee can be lethal when airborne,’ I said. I set the paper towel of reshaped Peeps onto the plywood, grabbed the mugs and set them and myself down.