The woman Drexel saw from the entry sat on the short side of the sectional facing out to the city. She was dressed in grey slacks, a white button up blouse with a large collar, and a black coat. A small purse and tablet rested on the glass coffee table in front of her. She dabbed a tissue to her eyes. As he approached, she stood up, pulling down the bottom of her coat. Her eyes and nose were red. He motioned for her to sit back down.
“I know this is very traumatic. Stacy, right?”
Stacy nodded and used a finger to slide a few strands of her black hair away from her eyes and behind her ear.
“This is difficult, but I need you to walk me through what you know. Okay? Good. Thanks.” He pulled out a notepad from the messenger bag. From his front coat pocket, he pulled out a silver pen, twisting to expose the writing tip. “Just a couple of particulars. What’s your name?”
Stacy dabbed her eyes with the crumpled tissue she held tight in her hand. “Stacy Harmon.”
The sound of the pen across the paper was audible in the cavernous room. “And you work for Mr. Nye?”
“Yes.”
“In what capacity?”
“I’m his assistant is the best way to describe it.”
“So you help him with his calendar. Arrange appointments. That kind of stuff?”
“Yes. He is—” She breathed in and let it out in a staccato manner. “He was very busy. Lots of meetings for his business and his council work. I helped him keep on schedule. Knew what speeches he needed. Knew where he needed to be.”
Drexel nodded. “So tell me what happened this evening.”
“Um. Well, I usually come by in the evenings to drop off the next day’s calendar and alert him to any changes. He’d also update me on anything I needed. So I was coming over to do just that.”
“Time?”
“About eight thirty.”
“You said ‘usually.’ Do you mean more often than not or were there particular days?”
“Almost every day. Usually not Saturday. If he was having a dinner someplace, I would go there instead.”
“Always around eight thirty?”
“Always. It was a routine.”
“Okay. So you got here around eight thirty?”
She nodded. “And I knocked on the door. I always do that. But I went ahead and punched in my passcode. I came in and started walking to the office, but he wasn’t there, so I went into the exercise room, which is where I saw him.”
“Did you normally find him in his office?”
“Most of the time. Not always. But most of the time.”
“What did you do when you saw him?” asked Drexel.
“I called nine-one-one.”
“Right away?”
Stacy nodded.
“Did you touch Mr. Nye?”
She lifted her head up and looked out and twisted her bottom lip. “Um.”
“It’d be perfectly natural to have done so. To see if he was okay.”
“I think. I think I did touch him.”
“It’s okay. We just need to know what you touched. Did you announce yourself when you came in? Call out for Mr. Nye?”
“Yes. I did. A couple of times I think.”
“Good. Good. Do you know where Mr. Nye’s girlfriend is?”
“Kara? No. I don’t.”
“Is she usually here when you come by?”
“Depends. If it’s Thursday, Friday, or Saturday. No. She’s out drinking.”
“I see. And she wasn’t here when you got here, right?”
“Right.”
“Okay. I’m going to need a couple of things from you. I need access to Mr. Nye’s calendar and a list of all the people who have access to this condo that you know of. Don’t worry about the building’s staff. We’ll take care of that. Okay?”
Stacy nodded. She reached down and grabbed the tablet from the coffee table and handed it to Drexel. “Here. This has his calendar. It’s his tablet.”
Drexel took it and sat it beside him. “Anything out of the ordinary happen recently? Something you wondered about perhaps?”
Stacy rubbed her shoulder and gave it some thought. “No. I can’t think of anything. I saw the epi pen. Isn’t that what happened?”
“Just covering bases. One last question. Are you familiar with the phrase,” Drexel flipped to the previous page of notes, “‘Once said, no unsaying’?”
Stacy shook her head.
“The Bull’s desk. Was the writing on the desk always there?”
“Writing?”
“Looks burnt into the desk. Like someone carved some writing and then burned it to blacken it.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Drexel studied her and then nodded once. “Where were you coming from on your way here?”
“I had dinner with a couple of friends.”
“Where?”
“Garing’s Grill on Milwaukee.” She squinted at Drexel. “My friends were Barbara Connolly and Mark Schafer.”
Drexel nodded. “Okay. Thanks. I may have more questions later, but that’s all for now. One of the officers will escort you downstairs. You’ve been very helpful, but if you think of anything else, please contact me.” Drexel flipped to the front of the notebook and pulled out a business card from the front slot. He held it between the index and second fingers. Stacy took it. He said, “Again, you’ve been very helpful, and I’m sorry for your loss.” Drexel waved over one of the unis, who knew to escort out Stacy.
After she left, Victor walked over and sat on the couch. “So?”
“Not much really. We’ll have to look at his calendar. Let’s grab the computer from the office as well.”
“I’ll tell one of the techs.”
“I’m assuming we have camera footage from the elevator hallway at least.”
“Working on it. Should have it in an hour or so.”
“And who lives in the other condo on this floor?”
“No one now. It’s been vacant for six months since Freeze got traded to Miami.”
Drexel nodded. “Not sure how the phrase on the desk and an allergic reaction fit together yet. Coincidence perhaps.”
“Look, however this rolls out. You’re the primary. It’s your case. Your scene. I’ve got your back.”
* * *
Dr. Noelle Lindsey had been with the Medical Examiner’s office for thirty years, the last ten of which she had served as the chief medical examiner. How old she actually was, Drexel had never spent much time thinking about. Regardless, she seemed younger than her tenure of service indicated. Her skin was a dark ebony, and her dark brown hair with strong hints of red was curled in tight spirals, the longest curls reaching to just the top of her neck.
Noelle walked into the gallery and saw Drexel and Victor sitting on the couch. “Lazy asses.”
“Hey, we’re waiting on you.” The captain let his broad, engulfing smile spread across his face.
They followed Noelle to the exercise room. She knelt down by the Bull. After several minutes, she said, “Has the outward signs of anaphylactic shock. Epi pen is used. New style pen.” Noelle pointed at the pen. “The new ones have an automatic covering when the needle is sprung and removed from the skin. Keeps people from nicking themselves. The characteristic bruise on the thigh suggests he used it.” Noelle waved Drexel over. “We’ve got pictures, right?”
Drexel nodded.
“Good. Help me roll him on his back.”
They rolled the Bull onto his back. The left side of the face matched the right side in its swelling.
“So what happened?”
Noelle let her hands hang and then looked at Drexel. “Just looking at this, he probably had a reaction. Maybe he noticed it too late. He used the epi, but he was already in too much distress to get medical atte
ntion. It was definitely a bad reaction. Could be rebound as well.” She noticed Drexel’s perplexed look. “Happens about a quarter of the time. Sometimes anaphylactic shock is a single event. The epi takes care of the issue. Other times, though, it’s a multiple event. The epi takes care of the initial onslaught, but it can come back. It’s meant to give you time to get to the ER. If it was anaphylactic shock, it could’ve been a rebound or the epi just couldn’t do the trick.”
“How fast did this happen?”
“Who knows. Depends on what the reaction was too. If it was something he ate, the first symptoms could have taken hours to manifest. Generally, though, it takes about a half hour for severe cases to really kick in. Could have been as short as a few minutes.”
“So between a few minutes and hours.” Drexel rubbed his chin. “Okay. I’ll find out what allergies he had. Be on the lookout though for anything that’s weird.”
“I always am.” Noelle smiled. She gently unrolled the Bull’s green and blue swim trunks down and slid them free from the body.
This was always the most discomfiting aspect of the crime scene to Drexel. He had encountered many shocking responses by people, seen enormous grief, but the process of determining body temperature seemed to him the real moment when a human body became just a material substance, flesh, muscle, tendon.
A nearby CSI held out a paper bag that Noelle laid the swim trunks in. The CSI folded the top of the bag closed and applied tape along its edge before signing across the seal. While the CSI was doing that, Noelle pulled a thermometer out of her kit box and inserted it into the Bull’s rectum. She said, “Temp is four-point-six degrees below normal. Temp of the room is seventy-four. Assuming he wasn’t running a cold—who knows with all this crazy January weather. No rigor yet but some lividity along the left side of the body. Preliminary estimate is he died four to six hours ago.”
“It’s 10:54 now. So between five and seven or so.” Drexel wrote this down on the notebook sheet he reserved for the body’s examination. “Got lucky there.”
Noelle smiled. “Glad I could help. We’ll get him out of here.” The CSI who took the swim trunks came over and assisted the medical examiner.
Drexel looked at the epi pen still on the floor. It must not have helped too much, laying on the floor beside the Bull’s corpse. If it had mitigated the shock, the Bull would have moved toward a phone to call for help. Even the building’s staff could have assisted. Perhaps after he used the epi pen he had a sense of relief, that the attack would pass. A few minutes later, he must have realized something was going horribly wrong. Perhaps he felt the first tightness in his throat or a numbing on the lips. Something alerted him to an allergic reaction continuing. The used epi pen beside him. Instead of a respite, he collapsed and died.
But how did the phrase scorched into the desk relate? Did it relate? Could the Bull have done it himself for some reason? Drexel turned back to Victor. “Who was the responding officer?”
“Kaito.”
“That’s our good fortune. Man knows how to control a scene. Where’s he at?”
Victor thumbed back toward the living room.
Drexel walked down the hallway and saw him entering incident report information on a tablet. “Kaito. Good evening.”
“Detective.” Kaito lowered the tablet. He held his patrol officer’s cap between his arm and body. “Good evening to you.”
“Glad you were here. When you arrived, was the office light on?”
Kaito looked past Drexel and down the hallway. “Yes. It was. Not bright, but on.”
Drexel nodded. “Thanks.” He walked through the rest of the condo. The small bedroom near the kitchen and living room with their marble and solid wood floors and high-end appliances. Portraits of the Bull and his girlfriend—at least Drexel assumed so. The dining room, family room, and additional bedroom between the office and exercise room were tidy. The master bedroom and the his and her closets and bathrooms were ostentatious in their wealth. All were, again, tidy. Drexel made a note to ask about a cleaning service. He walked the entire condo again, identifying locations for fingerprinting and evidence to gather. CSIs took the desk for further examination. The hard drive and the Bull’s tablet were bagged and marked for evidence. Other CSIs inventoried and photographed the kitchen and pantry to record any possible allergens later found in the Bull’s medical files. The epi pen and glass were taken, as well. Masking tape outlined where the Bull had been found. Drexel asked Victor to give him clearance to keep the condo as a crime scene until the etching on the desk and the Bull’s manner of death were finally determined.
“Yeah. That’s fine. Like I said, it’s your scene. Release it when you’re ready.” Victor stuffed his cell phone into his front pants pocket.
Drexel raised an eyebrow. “The mayor?”
“Yeah. She already wants answers. I told her that’s not how these matters work.” Victor rubbed his head.
Around two a.m., the CSIs were wrapping up, the unis were still canvassing the residents of the building getting their statements, and Drexel had determined he could glean no more immediate information from the condo when his iPhone buzzed. “Pierce.”
“The girlfriend just showed up in the lobby, and she’s lit.”
“Hold her there. I’m on my way down.”
Drexel grabbed Victor’s elbow and led them to the elevators. Kara Brandt, the Bull’s girlfriend of a year and a half, had arrived.
* * *
Kara, a burgundy haired woman younger than the Bull, was very drunk. Drexel lamented the calling officer’s understatement. Dressed for a Chicago summer in a short skirt and a shimmering luxury, gray-toned light blouse, Kara was talking loudly to the officer.
“If you don’t let me up there, I’ll kick your ass.” She waved a finger and stumbled. She was taller than the officer. Drexel guessed her to be a few inches short of six feet, just a bit shorter than himself.
Placing his hand on top of her right arm, he pressed gently downward. “Hello. You are Kara....?”
She nodded but kept her finger pointed at the officer, resisting the pressure on her arm. Her jade eyes were vivid, though the whites were bloodshot. He tried to lead her to a set of benches in the lobby near the residential entrance counter, but she twisted her arm free. The other officer held his arms out wide. “Let me upstairs.” Victor came to her left arm and gripped it while Drexel re-acquired a grasp on her right.
He felt her fighting his grip. “And you know the Bull?”
“Know him?” She laughed and with it a tornado of alcohol and fruit fragrances escaped. This svelte woman was the cliché late middle-age, rich man’s girlfriend. Young, beautiful, and foolish or greedy enough to ignore the declining state of his body, albeit with the Bull it was a slower decline than others. “Oh yes, I’m quite familiar with the Bull.” She laughed and smiled, and Drexel could see the charm of that smile. The Bull must have felt awfully lucky the day he met her.
“Kara, please, sit down.” He and Victor guided her toward a seat in the lobby.
“But I want to go to sleep.”
“Of course you do, but we need to talk first.” Victor sat down, still holding onto her arm.
“What’s wrong? Why are you all here?”
“May I ask what you’ve been doing this evening?” asked Drexel.
“Out for a girl’s night.”
“I see.” Drexel studied her face.
“What’s it to you?”
“Just a question. I’m afraid I’ve some bad news—”
“It’s not illegal to be drunk.”
“No. No, it’s not. I’m afraid Mr. Nye is dead.”
She straightened up. “What?”
“We’re not sure what’s—”
“I don’t understand.”
“Mr. Nye is—”
“I want to see him.” She started to stand up.
Drexel eased her down and then let his grip on her arm loosen. “I’m sorry.”
She started to tear up. “No, no no no no.” She shook her head with each no and her eyes widened. “No.”
“I’m sorry.”
“That can’t be. It can’t. I just talked to him. What do you mean? What happened?” Tears streamed down her face.
“We don’t know much, frankly. We’re just starting our investigation, but you can’t spend the night in the penthouse. I’m very sorry.” He gestured for the officer to come over. “This is a shock. You’ve had a bit to drink, so we need to wait until you’ve sobered up a bit. Later today.”
“But....”
“We can’t talk about this until you’ve had time to rest. The hotel here has already found a room for you.”
Dazed, Kara offered no protest, though she was upset. She stood, wobbled, and let the officer take her by the elbow out of the lobby.
Victor put his hand on Drexel’s shoulder. “Hopefully when she’s sobered up, we can get some useful information out of her. You know what they say?”
“Don’t let girls become involved with very rich, older men.” Drexel let a thin smile come across his face.
“Well that’s one way of putting it.”
* * *
Drexel called after the officer who escorted Kara to the hotel part of the Trump building to let him know when she woke up and seemed sober enough to talk. An officer was to remain outside her door until then, and she could call any family or friends she needed. Victor instructed Drexel to get some sleep in the meantime, but already up and unlikely to get any sleep, he headed to the station to set up the case files and determine the next course of action. If he needed, he would catch a couple of hours of sleep there.
As he got into the Chicago PD-owned Taurus—one of eight the detectives in Central Division shared—he looked up at the Trump building, which was built on the site of the old Chicago Sun-Times building—a squat six-story rectangular box—the Trump building offered a different perspective on the city. Some people considered it a monstrosity. Others a landmark. Drexel thought anything replacing the Sun-Times building, the paper Zora had worked for as a photographer, was an improvement. They had known each other only briefly before the building was demolished, but it, like Zora, had left an impression. While Trump Tower rose confidently above the city, the scars of the Sun-Times building remained, buried perhaps, but beneath and always.
The Shattered Bull (Drexel Pierce Book 1) Page 2