by Wally Duff
Yes!
“A hair,” she said. “A long one.”
“Long like in Fertig long?” I asked.
“Could be,” she said.
“Can you do anything with it?”
“Lab guys are working on the DNA but aren’t too optimistic about what they’re going to find,” he said. “Cold bath water might have ruined it.”
“Dang it. Now what?”
“A strand of hair the lab could compare it to would help,” she said.
“You mean like one of Fertig’s?” I asked.
They didn’t say anything.
I thought of Linda and her complaints about the chain of evidence. “But if I swipe one, it can’t be used in court.”
They looked straight ahead.
“But if it matches, you can go to your captain and see if he’ll let you go on the clock and work the case.”
Still no response.
“All righty, then, I’ll see what I can do.”
94
It was Tuesday afternoon. The Irregulars stood in one of the exercise rooms at XSport Fitness getting ready for a strictly strength class. Amy Huffman taught this one, and Cas took the class with us. While we waited for it to begin, I told them about Demarco’s death.
“I saw that on Dexter,” Molly said. “It was way bloody.”
“Six or seven liters of fresh blood will do that,” Cas said.
“Does Janet think he committed suicide?” Molly asked.
“No, she doesn’t, but there isn’t enough solid proof to go after Fertig,” I said.
“Fertig?” Linda said. “Are we back on that again? I keep telling you guys there is not one shred of evidence implicating Fertig.”
“Guys, we do have a clue, and it might be the break we need,” I said. “This morning, Janet told me they found a hair in Demarco’s bathtub. Do you guys have any ideas about how we can obtain one of Fertig’s hairs for comparison?”
“Find out where he gets his hair cut,” Molly suggested.
“That’s not a bad idea,” I said. “He’s kind of famous here in Chicago. Hair stylists are gossips. Maybe we can find one who knows which salon he goes to.”
“How about the doctor’s locker room at the hospital?” Cas asked. “Maybe Fertig has a brush or comb in his locker.”
“Great idea, but how would I do it?” I asked.
“Call Shanda or Alexis,” Cas said. “They’re in and out of those buildings daily. They might have an idea.”
“Tina, don’t forget the chain of custody,” Linda reminded us.
“Me?” I asked. “I’m all over it.”
Some of the time.
95
“It feels good to be back,” I said.
On late Wednesday afternoon, Alexis and I hit tennis balls on one of the outdoor courts at Hamlin Park. Carter had come home before the sun set. He took care of Kerry while Alexis and I hit balls back and forth.
“This’ll probably be the last time we can do this outside,” I said.
We wore hooded sweatshirts over our warm-ups, but once we began sweating, the cool temperature was bearable.
“Ready to play a couple of points?” Alexis asked.
I hit a backhand from the baseline. “There’s something I need to talk about first.”
I told her about the need to steal some of Fertig’s hair.
“How do I do it?” I asked.
“How do ‘we’ do it, you mean.”
“You want to help me do it?”
“Absolutely, and this is something I can do other than trying to find names on a list.”
“The list business wasn’t exciting enough for you?”
“I’m not exactly a research kind of woman. I want to be in on the action.”
We played two points and then met at the net.
“We can go into the doctor’s locker room after hours and find Fertig’s locker,” she said. “But we’ll need a hospital photo ID.”
“I’ll call Janet,” I said. “Her husband, Frankie, has friends who might be able to do something like this, and I have to get on it right away.”
“To try and save the lives of more doctors?”
“You got that right.”
96
Thursday, the weather was iffy but not cold enough that I couldn’t take Kerry to Fellger Park, which is four blocks west of our house. Once winter settled in, it would be way too miserable to take a toddler outside. Her mom wouldn’t exactly embrace the crappy weather either.
I helped Kerry on the slides. I heard them before I saw them. The noise became deafening as three guys on motorcycles roared down West Belmont. Janet had come through for my request for help sneaking into the doctor’s locker room at MidAmerica Hospital.
One man was in the front riding a fancy motorcycle. The other two were behind him. They had different but matching rides. The trio turned onto North Damen and parked in front of the park entrance.
Kerry covered her ears until they shut down the bike engines. One man walked toward us. The other two remained back-to-back by their rides. They wore matching leather jackets that were red with black shoulders and white stripes and lettering that said “Ducati.” With their jackets unbuttoned, I could see that they each carried a handgun in a shoulder holster.
The other man stopped in front of us. His face was square, his olive skin bearing small scars from adolescent acne. A narrow soul patch ran from the edge of his lower lip to the deep cleft in his chin.
Like the two younger men at the foot of the stairs, he was blocky but not fat. It looked like they all worked out together, and from the size of this man’s biceps, it looked like he could more than hold his own lifting heavy weights.
He held out his hand. “Tina, I’m Frankie Corritore.”
We shook hands. “I’m happy to finally meet you.”
“And I you,” he said. His voice had a subtle nasal quality with a hint of the Italian Taylor Street area of Chicago.
“I want to thank you for taking care of my gun registration.”
“It was my pleasure. My business acquaintance did it.”
“Then please thank him for me.”
“I most certainly will.”
I had to ask. “And what is your business?”
He flipped his hand back and forth and smiled. “A little of this, a little of that.”
From the dead look in his dark brown eyes, asking a follow-up question about his business might not be the smartest thing I could do.
97
Frankie took off his helmet. His dark brown hair was cut short and swept back.
“Nice motorcycle,” I said.
“An Aprilia,” he said. “The boys are on Ducatis.”
“The rest of your outfit is cool too.”
“Arai Profile. The jacket is a Ducati Morard. I special-ordered the black and silver leather with the narrow pink stripes.”
“The pants look different.”
“Good eye. Teknic. The boots are Vortice.”
He had to look like something from outer space to a toddler, but Kerry wasn’t about to be intimidated. She stood defiantly by my side until Frankie came close enough to touch her, and then she grabbed my hand and hid behind me.
He took off his gloves and knelt down. “What up, princess?”
She peeked around my legs at him.
“Can you say ‘hi’ to Frankie, Kerry?” I asked.
“Hi, Fwankie,” she said softly.
“I got something for you,” he said.
Reaching into his leather jacket, he produced a bag of donuts. “Word on the street is that you like Dinkel’s donuts. Is that the way you roll?”
She looked up at me with her big blue eyes. “Momma, Fwankie has donuts!”
“He sure does, Kerry. Would you like one?”
“Uh-huh, Momma.”
Frankie opened the sack. She picked a chocolate glazed.
“What’s the magic word, Kerry?” I asked.
“Thank you, Fwankie.”
<
br /> He stood up and turned to me. “I hear you need some help getting into the doctor’s locker room at MidAmerica Hospital.”
“I do. Because of the recent doctor deaths, their security has been tightened up.”
“My business friends tell me you need a picture ID key card to get into the locker room.” He took out his cell phone and pointed it at me. “Look like you’re a doctor.”
I arched one eyebrow and tried to appear smart and arrogant. He snapped the picture and put the phone away.
“I gotta guy who’ll have the card ready pronto, but I need a phony name in case they check it out.”
“How about Ann Edwards?”
“You know her?”
“It’s me. Ann is my middle name. Edwards is my maiden name.”
“Done.”
“I need one for Alexis too.”
He gave me a card. All that was written on it was a cell phone number. “Have her call me. I need to get her picture and tell her to pick out a name.”
“They know her around the hospital. She should probably use her own name.”
“Better, I’ll have my guy blur her picture, so even her mother wouldn’t recognize her. With a fake name they’ll never make her.”
“Maybe you should do that with mine because I’ve been a patient there,” I said.
“Done.”
“Anything else?”
“What about the security cameras in the hospital?”
“Good question. I’ll call my friend Linda. She took care of the security cameras before.”
“Then by tomorrow you’ll be good to go.”
Frankie and his boys left. I texted Linda that I had another security camera computer job for her. She needed to shut them down before Alexis and I broke into the doctor’s locker room at MidAmerica Hospital.
Part 4
98
It was after regular Friday surgery hours at MidAmerica Hospital. Carter was going to be late. I called him and told him Alexis and I were going out for a drink. Alicia watched Kerry.
I parked a block away and waited for Alexis to text me. If she found out the OR was empty, that hopefully indicated the doctor’s dressing room was unoccupied. If she found out there was an emergency case, we would wait and try it later that night.
It took thirty-five minutes before my phone dinged:
Alexis: no cases.
Me: texting computer girl.
I did. Ten minutes later, Linda texted back that her job was done.
Me to Linda: thx – fingers crossed.
That was in reference to the photo IDs Frankie delivered to me last night before Carter came home from work. He dropped off one for Alexis right after that.
The blurry pictures were ours, but the names were fake. We had no way of knowing if the security system recorded who activated the locks, and we didn’t want to take the chance that if they did, our real names would be recorded.
I parked in the underground garage, exited my van, and walked as fast as I could to doctor’s locker room entrance. Alexis was already there, still dressed for work. She wore a blue suit with a faint pink pinstripe, a short matching skirt, and five-inch dark blue heels. She had a large black tote slung over her shoulder. It was already dark outside, but her sunglasses were still perched on top of her head.
I wore a black Ralph Lauren power suit with three-inch black pumps. I carried a black purse which was large enough for my Glock.
“We’re good to go,” Alexis said. “I talked to one of the nurses who was going home. The only person in the OR right now is the OR evening supervisor. She goes home at nine.”
“No doctors are in the locker room?”
“I can’t be totally sure of that, but I doubt it.”
“Then let’s do this.”
We stood in front of the door to the doctor’s locker room. There were no conventional door locks, only a blinking key card pad on the wall to the right of the door that opened the lock if you had a hospital-issued ID card.
I took out Frankie’s card from my purse and ran it in front of the key card pad. The blinking red light turned green, followed by a click. I reached out to open the door, but Alexis stopped me by putting her hand on top of mine.
“What if someone’s in there?” she asked.
“Then we go to Plan B.”
“Okay, cool. What’s Plan B?”
“I don’t have one. Let’s hope we don’t need it.”
99
I pulled open the door. We stepped into a men’s locker room that might have been found in a posh country club instead of a hospital. It had to be at least four thousand square feet, a thousand of which was the common area in front of us.
There were several black leather chairs with ottomans arranged in groups of two. Beside each chair was a marble-topped side table and lamp. A once-folded Chicago Tribune, Wall Street Journal, and Bloomberg News sat side by side on each table top.
A sixty-inch HD TV hung on the wall to the right. It was tuned to FOX. A second HD TV was on the left wall. It was tuned to ESPN. The walnut lockers stood in rows behind the sitting area.
The locker doors were at least a foot wider than my shoulders, and the tops of the units were at least six inches taller than the crown of my head. A doctor’s name was discreetly displayed at eye level on a brass plaque on the front of the door. There was a brown leather stool in front of each locker.
I began hunting for Fertig’s name.
“Ah, Teenz,” Alexis whispered.
I moved to the next locker.
“Remember your Plan B?” she asked.
“Yeah, why?”
“I think we’re gonna need it.”
100
Turning around, I found a tall, slender man standing behind us. He wore a dark gray suit, a heavily starched white shirt with French cuffs, and a patterned blue tie, and his shoes were perfectly polished.
“Might I inquire as to what you two are doing in here?” he asked. He had an upper-class British accent.
“Indeed, you might,” I said. “But I might ask you the same thing. Who are you?”
“William Hunter,” he said. “I am the supervisor of the male doctor’s locker room.”
“Nice to meet you, Mr. Hunter. I’m glad to know I’m in the right location.”
“And your name is?”
“Ann Edwards. I am Mrs. Warren’s executive secretary.”
We shook hands.
I nodded toward Alexis.
Damn!
I didn’t know her fake name. “This is my assistant. We have been assigned the task of cleaning out Dr. Warren’s locker.”
Alexis looked at me and realized I didn’t know the name she had on her ID. She held out her hand to Hunter. “Teresa Tetley.”
They shook. Teresa was one of the moms who worked out with us at XSport.
I had no idea if Warren’s locker had been emptied, but my bet was that Diane had no more interest in Peter’s belongings than she did in having sex with him.
“I am glad someone finally arrived,” he said. “We have a shortage of locker space, and we need Dr. Warren’s as soon as you can empty it out. I was fearful that Mrs. Warren had forgotten about his personal effects.”
“Believe me, she has not forgotten. She’s been so understandably devastated by his death that she has been in mourning and has not left her home.”
He raised his bushy eyebrows. “Are you certain we are speaking about the same woman?”
Whoops.
“Right, right, the same woman. Exactly. I understand your confusion.”
His confusion matched mine. I’ve never been a good liar, but this was getting ridiculous. I glanced at Alexis who mouthed, “Peter’s mother,” behind his back.
Perfect.
“I work for Mrs. William Warren, Dr. Warren’s mother. She is understandably crushed by the loss of her son, and she would like his person effects.”