Cold Love: A Cillian Canter Mystery (Cillian Cantor Book 1)

by Conell, Zach

  “What about it?” Rose asked, somewhat impatiently.

  “It didn’t say anything specific about how she died, right, or how she was found?”

  “It just mentioned that she passed away, but that was all.”

  Cillian nodded. “That’s what I remember as well.”

  “Why?”

  “Because Dr. Leamington just described Tiller as a ‘pill-popping paranoiac’ who died on her kitchen floor ‘by her own choice,’ or something very similar,” he recalled as precisely as he could.

  “Wait a minute, you don’t mean to say…” Rose stared at him openmouthed as the penny dropped.

  “I do,” he acknowledged with a nod. “I mean, I don’t understand everything yet, but we should be able to find out if we act fast.”

  “So what do you want to do?”

  “Pay a visit to our mutual friend and make a record of everything we got,” Cillian muttered, as a mischievous smile played on his lips.

  Chapter Twenty

  As Cillian had hoped, the Fedora Freak was nice enough to follow him and Rose as they rode the “L” train across town on their way to meet Mulvaney, two hours earlier and at a different location than they had originally agreed. They had called Mulvaney from the cafeteria and asked him to meet them as soon as possible, mentioning that they had evidence that the dean of the social science faculty had been involved in the murder of Lucy Tiller. Mulvaney had sounded irritated and told them that he was incredibly busy, trying to prepare legislation for altering Gullfay’s crime policy and disbanding the zero-tolerance unit in the likely event that the mayor would step down at the end of the morning. In the end he had agreed to hear them out though, but he had proposed to meet at 10 a.m. at his home office where he was to avoid the chaos at city hall.

  After Cillian and Rose got off the “L” train, they didn’t bother to get rid of their shadow until they were standing in the busy lobby of the large, upscale apartment building in which Mulvaney lived. While Rose waited with a few other people for the elevator, Cillian told her that he wanted to take the stairs up to Mulvaney’s floor. The Fedora Freak, who had been keeping an eye on them from the other side of the lobby, waited for the door to the central stairwell to close behind Cillian and then made his way through the lobby in the direction of Rose, while reaching for the inner pocket of his overcoat. He had almost reached her when the elevator arrived.

  As Rose got in she noticed that the back wall of the elevator was covered by a mirror, which enabled her to see the Fedora Freak right behind her, who seemed to be slowly taking out his gun while trying not to draw attention to himself. But just then Cillian stepped in the elevator and prodded his .40 pistol in the Fedora Freak’s lower back, so stealthily that none of the other passengers appeared to notice.

  “Good morning,” Cillian casually remarked as the elevator doors closed.

  “Who the hell is that?” Mulvaney exclaimed when he opened the door and saw the man with the yellow-gray hair standing on the other side with Cillian and Rose behind him.

  “Our evidence of Dr. Leamington’s involvement,” Cillian explained with a self-satisfied grin to the slender middle-aged alderman with short, dark hair and a pointy jaw who was dressed in a blue suit.

  “Jesus Christ! Get in here before anyone sees you,” Mulvaney replied nervously and led them into a spacious, modernly decorated living room with exclusively white furniture in it. Cillian ordered the Fedora Freak to plant himself on a stool opposite a couch on which he and Rose subsequently sat down. Mulvaney was standing next to the couch on Rose’s left side, looking from the Fedora Freak to Cillian and Rose in confusion.

  “I can’t believe this is happening,” he mumbled. Then he turned to Cillian with a desperate look on his face. “Can you at least lower your gun? I mean, he’s unarmed; he’s not going to do anything.”

  “Fine,” Cillian said, pointing the gun to the floor.

  “Let me get some water,” Mulvaney muttered. “I need to drink something to calm myself down.”

  Cillian nodded and Mulvaney left the room. A few seconds later he came back carrying a tray with a pitcher of water and a few glasses on it.

  “Here,” he said, offering Rose the tray, but his hands were shaking so much that the pitcher fell over, spilling most of its contents into Rose and Cillian’s laps before crashing to pieces on the floor together with the glasses. As Mulvaney kneeled down to pick up the glass, Cillian noticed that he had a round scar on each of his palms, but before he could say anything, he felt the cold steel of a gun barrel being pressed against the back of his head. At that same instant, Mulvaney snatched Rose’s purse from her lap and jumped backward.

  “Drop your weapon, Cillian, and kick it to the man in front of you,” said a female voice from behind him.

  He recognized that accent. Genevieve Leamington, you crooked witch, he thought. Realizing the hopelessness of the situation he was in, Cillian did as he was told. He still had his pistol in his ankle holster, but it was far too dangerous to use it now. The Fedora Freak picked up the gun and pointed it between Cillian and Rose.

  “Brian, please take it—you know I can’t stand these things,” the dean said anxiously.

  “Fine, but at least take this purse,” the alderman replied.

  Cillian felt how Dr. Leamington drew back the gun, just as Mulvaney walked over to take it from her.

  “So it was you,” Cillian addressed the alderman as the latter moved back to his previous position next to the couch, now holding a pistol in his hand. “You were all over this, weren’t you? First as Mr. X, trying to get Erdmann to investigate Gullfay’s horrendous crime policy; then as the Stigmata Man, escalating the situation in the South Side; and finally as yourself leaking dirt on Gullfay to Lucy Tiller before orchestrating her death and that of Erdmann when you realized they were getting too close to uncovering your operation in the South Side.”

  Cillian wanted to get Mulvaney to talk for two reasons. Not only did Cillian want to stall for time until he had an opportunity to use the pistol in his ankle holster, but when he had hid in the stairwell downstairs waiting for the Fedora Freak to approach Rose, he had turned on the microphone on his smartphone to make sure he would record every word coming out of the shadow from the moment he surprised him in the elevator. So everything the alderman said now would be recorded.

  “What can I say? I’m a director who likes to act as well, so I gave myself all the best parts, including that of the anonymous caller in both cases…” Mulvaney added smugly.

  “What the hell is wrong with you,” Rose grunted. “You crazy psycho!” She made a move as if she was ready to hurl herself at Mulvaney but backed down when the alderman pointed his gun at her head.

  “Calm down, tiger,” he remarked in a patronizing manner. “I actually tried to save them, you know, by asking them to let it go. As I did with you two. I mean, I gave you so many chances to let things play out, but you just wouldn’t have it. Even Genevieve warned you, Cillian, to walk away from this, but to no avail. You two are as stubborn as them. Only Duncan had sense enough to know when to stop. So yes, when push came to shove and Erdmann and Tiller had to be dealt with, I chipped in. Call me old-fashioned, but I believe in handling important details myself. Similarly I would never have let Gullfay loose in the mayor’s office if I wasn’t sure that he would be taking my cues. But now he’s played his part of course,” he concluded, gloating.

  “So what now? What happens after he steps down?” Cillian asked, glaring at Mulvaney. “You and your buddies in the city council order in the big guns and sweep the South Side clean? Supposedly to pacify the ‘uncontrollable slums’ in preparation of the CCFF, like they did in Rio de Janeiro before the Olympics?”

  “Oh no, no, no, Cillian. I’m not Gullfay, or who I led you to believe Gullfay was.” He chuckled. “Yes, I stuck close to the truth when I told you two about his supposed scheme—after all, the best way to tell a lie is to wrap it in truth—but I didn’t want to reveal anything just yet. N
o, I prefer to make the CCFF checkpoints rather permanent, to contain the violence and the drug problems, while letting the South Side residents free to live in the jungle they create for themselves in their part of the city. It’s much more humane that way, you see.”

  “Sure, how civil of you to lock people up in the South Side while encouraging them to destroy their own and each other’s lives with the glacier and weapons you will undoubtedly continue dealing them,” Cillian countered sarcastically.

  “Well, you don’t exactly make a fortune as alderman, you know, and my lady’s got expensive taste,” Mulvaney said, nodding his head in the direction of Dr. Leamington, who had come out from behind the couch as the alderman was talking and sat down in an armchair behind the Fedora Freak, putting Rose’s purse on the broad armrest.

  “I think I’m about to throw up in my mouth,” Rose remarked cynically as she shot Genevieve Leamington a furious glance.

  “You don’t plan on becoming mayor yourself?” Cillian asked, trying to get everything out in the open.

  “Oh no, I much prefer my current role. The spotlight is for natural actors, like Genevieve. I think she would be perfect as Gullfay’s successor. I mean, now that the entire town hates Gullfay’s guts, people will be looking to elect his exact opposite, and she is precisely that, being a highly educated, progressive woman.”

  “How can you be okay with this?” Rose asked as she looked aghast at Dr. Leamington. “I mean, didn’t you at some point love my father?”

  “Well, I must admit that he had me fooled for a while,” she replied coldly, averting her eyes. “He was kind and intelligent but too weak spirited. He couldn’t get over your mom, and he refused to accept the fact that people are responsible for their own misery. You can say what you want about the South Side, but you can’t deny that most of the people living there are not capable of overcoming their baser instincts. Brian here helped me to see that.”

  “How can you say that?” Cillian cried out in disbelief. “Your own son was one of those people and still would be if I hadn’t dragged him to you.”

  “Liar!” she screamed. “My son was an angel before those lowlifes poisoned his pure mind. So I don’t care if all those miscreants in the South Side shoot each other or snort themselves to death on whatever we will be supplying them with. They deserve it for what they did to my boy.”

  “Take it easy, dear,” Mulvaney said with disturbing serenity. “I think it’s time we end our little chat. Dear Rosalie—” He turned toward Rose with a creepy smile. “—are you curious to know how your stepdaddy died?” Mulvaney put his gun into the back of his waistband and reached into the inner pocket of his jacket, taking out two oral syringes filled with a colorless liquid.

  Rose looked at Cillian in horror. He bit his lip, barely able to restrain himself, but he knew he had to keep his composure and hope for an opportunity to upset the balance of power in the room. It reassured him that none of the three seemed to even consider the possibility that he was still armed. Mulvaney was too busy bragging about his murderous schemes, Dr. Leamington seemed too anxious to pay attention to anything, while the Fedora Freak kept glancing at the alderman with a look of perverse impatience as if he was hankering for something twisted yet to come.

  “Potassium chloride”—the alderman answered his own question—“it’s perfectly harmless in small doses. In fact, it can be beneficial and is used as a medicine for treating people with dangerously low levels of potassium in their blood. A highly concentrated dose, however, can lead to heart failure. But that would never show up on a coroner’s report, even one that hasn’t been bribed, for the excessive potassium eventually equalizes with the sodium in the victim’s body, even after death has already set in, thereby removing all traces of the initial potassium overdose.” There was a morbid twinkle in Mulvaney’s eyes as he explained all of this.

  Cillian noticed that Rose’s hands were shaking uncontrollably, while her face was paler than he had ever seen it.

  “All right, my doctors, let’s get this over with,” he said, addressing his two accomplices. As they walked over to him, the Fedora Freak practically threw his gun at Dr. Leamington while eagerly taking the oral syringes from Mulvaney, as the wicked hunger in his eyes became even more evident. The dean had meanwhile awkwardly taken the gun in her trembling hands before unsteadily pointing it at Cillian and Rose, while the alderman had pulled out his own gun again and aimed it at Cillian.

  “Move the daughter over there,” he said to Dr. Leamington, pointing to the armchair she had just been sitting in. “We will deal with this sleuth first.”

  “You heard him,” the dean mumbled to Rose.

  “Your purse, get ready,” Cillian whispered so softly that no one but Rose could possibly hear it.

  “What was that? A silent declaration of love from Romeo?” Mulvaney joked cynically.

  Rose hesitantly got up and began walking over to the chair. After a few steps she looked back at Cillian with a nod that told him she had spotted her purse—with her revolver in it—that was still on the armrest where Dr. Leamington had put it.

  “All right, Mr. Cantor, open wide,” the alderman said in an ominous voice, pointing his gun straight at Cillian’s head as the Fedora Freak held one of the syringes in front of his face.

  Cillian clamped his mouth shut and gradually raised his left leg, while slowly lowering his left hand down toward his ankle holster.

  “I really wouldn’t resist if I were you,” Mulvaney insisted as he roughly pushed Cillian’s head back with his left hand while pressing the gun against the PI’s forehead with his right. “Otherwise Genevieve will happily blow your friend’s brains out.”

  The threat left Cillian unaffected, as the frantic look on the dean’s face ensured him that she was more likely to break down crying than to commit a violent act. He threw his head forward with his mouth shut tight in defiance, while concentrating on the fact that he had just reached the hem of his pants with his left index finger and was now reaching for the gun underneath.

  The Fedora Freak bent forward to Cillian, grabbing him forcefully by the jaw with his left hand as he pressed the syringe against his lips. The face of the apparent “doctor” with the yellow-gray hair was now so close to his own that Cillian could smell his foul breath.

  “Open up!” Mulvaney screamed.

  At that moment Cillian heard a loud shriek coming from behind the Fedora Freak, followed by a powerful thumping sound. While the two men in front of him prevented him from seeing Rose, he was sure she had just done something awful to Dr. Leamington, and he wasted no time to exploit the opportunity provided by the momentary distraction of his tormentors. With a rapid movement of his right hand, he grabbed Mulvaney’s gun and pushed the barrel away from his skull, after which he forcefully swung himself forward to headbutt the Fedora Freak straight in the face.

  As the latter fell to the ground in agony, Cillian used all the strength in his right arm to keep Mulvaney from aiming the gun back at his head. As Mulvaney stepped up his effort, the gun went off, missing Cillian’s left temple by an inch. The PI abruptly released his hold, causing the alderman, who was still exerting enormous force to push his arms to his left but suddenly had nothing holding him back, to fall over to his left side with his arms swinging wildly past Cillian, who instantaneously drew the 9 mm subcompact pistol from his ankle holster and aimed it at Mulvaney. When the alderman hit the floor, the gun he was holding got knocked out of his hands and slid a few feet away from him over the smooth white floor of his sterile apartment.

  Cillian shot a glance at the Fedora Freak, who by now had crawled back to his feet and seemed ready to jump straight at him. All of a sudden Cillian heard a loud crack as Rose pistol-whipped the back of the perverted “doctor’s” head with the gun in her left hand, knocking him unconscious and the fedora clean off his yellow-gray hair, while holding the revolver in her right hand pointed at a whimpering Genevieve Leamington, whom Cillian noticed only now, sitting on her knees in front
of the armchair with her face buried in her hands as blood ran past her fingers and dripped in bright red splashes on the immaculate floor. It seemed that Rose had broken the dean’s nose, at the very least. Cillian looked back and, seeing that Mulvaney had started crawling toward his pistol and was just about to reach it, he leaped forward, landing with his left leg next to the alderman’s chest before swinging his right leg at Mulvaney’s face and knocking him out cold.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Over two weeks later, Cillian could still hardly believe that it was over. Chicago had been in turmoil ever since Mayor Gullfay had resigned, only to be exposed that very same day as little more than a puppet of alderman Mulvaney thanks to Cillian’s recording. Rose had shared the audio file with some of her hacker friends from inside Mulvaney’s apartment even before they had called the police, just as a precaution. Her friends had ensured the file got plenty of public exposure and was sent to every local news outlet and a number of national ones.

  Ever since, Mulvaney’s corrupt master plan had gradually come to light, and his entire network of contacts had been uncovered, comprising people in the city council, the judiciary, the police department, the private sector, and the media, including the superintendent of police and the replacement of Lucy Tiller at the Chicago Transparent.

  The city council had ordered the disbandment of both the zero-tolerance unit and the CCFF police task force, which also meant that all CCFF checkpoints had been removed, reconnecting the South Side with the rest of Chicago. And with the city administration in complete disarray due to this massive corruption scandal, the City of Chicago Fair of the Future had been indefinitely postponed.

  In addition to this, the replacement of the incriminated superintendent of police had ordered investigations into the deaths of Reinhart Erdmann and Lucy Tiller, as a consequence of which Rose had needed to postpone the wake and funeral of her stepfather for another week. The examination of Erdmann’s body by a different coroner had not led to any new discoveries though, but the police did recover footage of a CCTV camera outside of Erdmann’s university office that showed the professor going into his office on Thursday morning and Mulvaney and the Fedora Freak entering it a little later. The latter two left the office within about twenty minutes, which happened to be just after the police had received the anonymous call informing them of Erdmann’s death. And as the liquid in the syringes found in the alderman’s apartment had been identified as potassium chloride, the police suspected that Mulvaney and his henchman had used the same substance to murder Erdmann in his office, after which the alderman had immediately called the police on his cell phone. In Lucy Tiller’s case all the police had to go on was a few witness accounts from neighbors who had spotted Mulvaney and the Fedora Freak near Tiller’s house around the time of her death.