The Shattered Bull (Drexel Pierce Book 1)

by Patrick Kanouse

  Drexel gripped her hand and lowered it. “You’re leaving our fair city?”

  She smiled and did not resist his still holding her fingers. “Yes. I can’t keep hiding here.”

  He let go of her hand and motioned for her to come farther in. “Whiskey, right?” She nodded. He walked into the kitchenette and pulled down two pint glasses, which he splashed a few fingers of Bulleit into. “I’m near to getting who did this.” He could either tell her to stay in the city, keep her close, and know where she was. Or he could let her disappear. Leaving Chicago did not guarantee her safety and would make it more difficult to let her know she had been cleared. But he wanted maximum safety for her and knowing where she was, as if the two were somehow interlinked. He rubbed his eyes. “I’m not sure leaving the city is the best thing. Why didn’t you go to Ton’s?”

  “I didn’t want him to risk anything for me. I have means and places in the city I can hide away for a while.”

  He pushed a glass toward her. “Did something change?”

  “No. I will make do. I just wanted to see you before I left.”

  “The search is less intense for you now, but it’s not over. Another subject is the target. Where are you thinking of going?”

  She twirled a strand of her hair in her left hand. “You have another suspect?”

  “Yes. I think we’ve found Hal’s killers. It’s just a matter of arresting them now.” Drexel cocked his head to the left a bit and looked at her. She looked tired. Small bags and dark circles under her eyes. He touched her shoulder. “They made this personal, so I’m going to get them.”

  Though Kara was already seated, she seemed to drop more into the seat. “What do you mean?”

  He drank some whiskey. “They took my brother hostage.”

  “Oh my god.”

  “Yeah. So the police are looking for him, and I’m looking for him. We’ll get him back.”

  Kara looked across the kitchenette at the wall for a few seconds. A look of sadness, Montaigne would have said melancholia, came over her face, though it was most intense in her eyes, which were moist and distant.

  He took another drink and let the silence hang. It was a shitty situation he could not do much to fix except what he had been doing. He debated how much to tell her, how much to reveal. She knew more already than she should. She was an innocent on the run to avoid arrest. He said, “Look. It’s Tunney. I can’t prove it all, but Tunney helped rig the election that got Hal elected. Chicago politics at its finest. The payment back was coverage for Tunney’s illegal fights and other operations. Hal made sure the police department operated with appropriate discretion. But Hal wanted out. He’d made a deal with the devil. So Tunney kills him to make a point, and he’s using my brother as leverage to get the case dumped.”

  Kara stood up. “But you can’t drop the case, can you? Hal was killed. Murdered. That won’t just go away.”

  “We’re close to getting my brother, which means we’re close to getting Hal’s killer. But we’re stuck now. Me and the police.”

  She walked in small circles, her arms crossed. “How are you going to get him back?”

  “Ton is trying to find out when and where the next fight is. I talk to Tunney then.”

  “I know where.”

  Drexel looked at her and nodded a few times.

  “It’s in Little Village. I can get the date.”

  “How?”

  “There’s a text number. You text it with the right code, you get the location and entry phrase. That’s how you get in if you don’t have tickets.”

  “Is Tunney there?”

  “Always. He’s always there.”

  He entered the number in his phone with the code 1661A. A few minutes later: “2854 S Western. 1/19. 11PM. For Whom the Bell Tolls.” Tomorrow night. Drexel texted Ton that he had the location.

  Drexel asked, “How’d you know it would be in Little Village?”

  “Tunney had a pattern of bouncing from a few locations. I knew the last one was out by Midway. Next one was always in Little Village.”

  “Did Hal help him buy the properties?”

  She nodded and sat down. He poured more whiskey in her glass. She said, “Will that help get your brother back?”

  “It helps. But I don’t know beyond that. We’ll have to see how it plays out.”

  She nodded, and a tear welled up at the edge of her eye. “I need to leave. I can’t take what the press will say about Hal after it all comes out. And I had a part in it.”

  “You can’t leave. Stay. This’ll be over soon. I’ll clear your name, and Hal’s reputation will have to be based on what he created, what he did. Not all of it’s pleasant, but what you need to remember is the news can spin anything. Hold onto what you know of Hal. That’s the truth. What people say about people doesn’t matter. What matters is what we know of people. The tabloids can make up whatever they want to sell more ads.”

  She looked at him, her eyes moist, the tear following the bridge of the nose. “But the truth of a person may lie in what we don’t know, what we don’t see.”

  “You can’t think about that. It doesn’t matter anymore anyhow.”

  She smiled. “Perhaps you’re right.” She rubbed her eyes.

  “So how do I reach you?”

  “I’ll get in touch with you. I don’t want you to have information about me that forces you to lie.” She laughed softly. “At least, not too much.” She set her glass on the counter, stood up, and reached her hand up to his right cheek. “I can’t tell you how much I appreciate your belief in me or how sorry I am about what’s happened to your brother.”

  As Drexel was beginning to stand, she stiffened her hold on his cheek, and he froze midway between sitting and standing. She smiled, the tears forming in her eyes leaving a brilliance and gleam to them. She leaned over and kissed him on the lips. He kissed back. She moved in closer, and he wrapped his arms around her. He had not kissed like that since the morning before he found Zora on the floor, just feet from where he and Kara stood.

  He pushed her back, his lip caught in her slight bite. “I can’t.”

  She looked at him, a pitying look.

  “I’m sorry. I can’t. I thought I could there just for a moment. But. But—”

  She put her fingers to his lips and shook her head. She stepped back to the door and opened it and gave him a small wave. Blew him a kiss and closed the door.

  Chapter 25

  Drexel fell asleep on the sofa and woke when Lily texted him she was boarding her flight in Seattle. United flight leaving Seattle at 6:20 a.m. Arriving in Chicago at 12:16 p.m. But he was not to pick her up. Drexel re-read the message. Even through the emotionally deprived mechanism of texting, he could tell she expected him to meet her at the airport, no matter her pleas. 8:20 a.m. now, so he had to do something to occupy his mind, so he showered, ate a slice of buttered toast with blueberry jam, and headed to the station.

  Victor was not there, but Kendall was. Doggett and Connor were out working a body the night shift had left for them. Darrell had the day off. Drexel pulled out the photo of him and Zora and put it on his desk. Last night was the first time he had kissed a woman since her death, and he had not felt such emotions and urgings except sporadically and then briefly since either. Ton had told him numerous times he thought Drexel had become a Catholic priest. He sat in his chair, staring at the picture, feeling both guilt and regret. He had a right to move on, did he not? But right did not equal desire or even need. He touched Zora’s face.

  “Samantha is flying in this morning,” said Kendall, leaning back in her chair.

  Drexel looked up at her.

  “I said, ‘Samantha is flying in this morning.’”

  “Just in time for the blizzard, eh?”

  “No skiing around here though. Do you want to talk to her?”

 
“When is she coming in to the station?”

  “Tomorrow morning, assuming she can get in.”

  “Good work. Yeah, I’d like to talk to her.”

  She smiled and focused on her monitor.

  Drexel looked at his. A series of reports had come in the past couple of days. One was regarding the contents of the syringe. He clicked it open and read it three times. The syringe had been filled with a combination of oils, including peanut oil. Unrefined peanut oil to be exact. Why would Jerry have used a syringe with peanut oil? The Bull was allergic to it, but everyone presumed the spirulina found in the trash had been the allergen. Drexel pulled up the autopsy report and skimmed it, looked at the photos. Nothing about a needle mark except for the epi pen. Drexel called Noelle, but she was not in. He left a message: “Hey, this is Pierce. Look we found a syringe with a suspect’s prints, but the autopsy didn’t have anything but the epi pen puncture. Can you confirm?”

  He scratched his temple and leaned back, tapping the desk. He called Daniela.

  “Hello?”

  “Hey, this is Pierce.”

  “Good morning.”

  “Morning. Look, we found a syringe. It has peanut oil in it, but there’s no needle marks on the Bull other than the epi pen. Right?”

  She paused. “Yeah. You’re right. Nothing. But you should check with the body people.”

  “I left them a message. So why would the killer use a syringe with peanut oil?” he asked.

  “That’s a good question boss.”

  When neither of them could think up a good reason, he hung up.

  Kendall said, “Maybe it was to be sure.”

  “Shit.” He stood up and walked past her, high-fiving her as he did. He went to the basement, where the evidence room was located. He signed in and found the box of evidence from the Bull’s apartment. He opened it. The syringe was sitting on top, all the signatures across the label. Presumably it was put in the box yesterday, the last recorded notation on the box. He pulled out the epi pen, wrapped in a clear bag, the seal marked with Cosma’s name and the date. Holding the bag up toward the ceiling light he looked at the epi pen. He twisted the bag, held it at various angles, and squinted. After a few minutes, he gave up, but he kept the pen out and marked on the box that he had removed the item, which he reported to the officer manning the evidence room.

  He walked the evidence to Daniela’s office, rapped on her cube wall and tossed it on her desk.

  Daniela grabbed the bag. “What’s up boss?”

  “I have to pick up my sister from the airport. Can you get that examined? I want to know what was in that pen when the Bull injected himself. Would really appreciate it.”

  She looked at him quizzically and nodded her head. “You think someone put something in here?”

  “Yes.” He started to leave but then put his arm on the cube wall and leaned back. “It answers the question of why he didn’t get to make an emergency call and why the pen didn’t work. If he was double-dosed, he didn’t rebound. Someone wanted to make sure he died. We’ll see if the theory bears out. And it was Kendall’s idea.”

  He heard, “Got you boss,” as he made for the exit and into the mild temperature all the weather people said was a prelude to the biggest blizzard in decades.

  * * *

  O’Hare was, at one time, the busiest airport in the world, a title—the always competitive Chicagoans—reluctantly gave up to Atlanta in the US and Heathrow abroad and was endeavoring to recapture. The Blue Line pulled into Terminal 2. Drexel had time, so he walked over to Terminal 1 at a leisurely pace and found that Lily’s flight was twenty minutes late, so he grabbed a Chicago dog from one of the stands, sprinkled extra celery salt on, ate it, and then got a large coffee from Starbucks. When he saw the plane had landed, he texted her that he would meet her at baggage claim, where he stood against a pillar, watching the crowd. Some people stood around, appearing lost or unconcerned where they were. Others rushed to get to the rental car and parking shuttles as they weaved in and out of the traffic. Men in black suits held placards or pieces of paper with last names written on them. Men wearing fedoras and sporting peyos walked beside women wearing colorful hijabs and Sikhs with their turbans and men in their Chicago Bears sweatshirts and John Deere or Monster drink baseball caps. Drexel had always found airports to be the weirdest intersection of cultures. Everyone with a destination where agendas seem to disappear in the effort to get from one city to another or just find a taxi. As he watched the passersby, Lily tapped him on the shoulder.

  “Hey there. I told you not to pick me up.” She stood before him, a couple of inches taller. Her dark brown hair cut just below the ears. She wore black slacks and a grey knit turtleneck that rose high up on her neck. She carried her Burberry coat over her shoulder and pulled her carry-on bag behind her. What always struck Drexel was how Lily had their mother’s eyes: a dark blue with wisps of yellow and orange.

  “Hey.” He accepted her hug. “Sorry you’re here on such bad news. And I couldn’t not meet you.”

  She waved him off. “It’s not like I don’t know my way around.”

  “Right. So let’s get you to your hotel.” He reached for her carry-on bag, but she pulled it away. “My other bag should be coming through soon.”

  Drexel nodded and they stood in awkward silence while they waited for the carousel to start up. Their fraught relationship just beneath the surface.

  As the carousel started, Lily looked at her watch. “I know I’m two hours behind here, but I’m starving. When the suitcase comes, let’s get my car and get something to eat. You can catch me up along the way.”

  “Sure.” He struggled to remind himself Lily was not being callous, mixing Ryan’s kidnapping and food together. She was being Lily—the Lily he had always known. Drexel himself sounded like that to others as he looked at dead bodies and shoved all emotion—all that he could—down a dark shaft of the brain. But she had been just as callous when Zora had died. Lily and Wayne had been in Chicago then, another conference. Another unpleasant dinner. Then Zora’s death. Drexel reminded himself it was a coping mechanism for Lily just as it was for him.

  Lily pointed to the Louis Vuitton suitcase, which Drexel lifted and set down on its rollers, following Lily out the sliding glass doors to wait for the rental car shuttle.

  Later, as he was driving the rental—a gray Infiniti QX80 whose price Drexel had avoided looking at—on the Kennedy, he looked over at Lily as her nose reddened and she wiped tears away with a tissue. “I’m sorry,” she said.

  He reached over and rubbed her shoulder. “Not necessary.”

  She crumbled up the tissue, pulled out another, blew her nose as gently as she could, and crumbled that one and put it into her purse. “Let’s go to Uno’s. The original.”

  “It’s just up the road from your hotel. We can stop there first.”

  “It’s too cold. Let’s just go straight there. I’m starving. I haven’t been to Chicago in the dead of winter in forever. And Seattle doesn’t have deep dish.”

  He parked in a garage a block up from Pizzeria Uno’s on Wabash. He let Lily order, sausage deep dish, as he drank his water.

  “So what’s the situation?” She sat in the booth and rubbed her shoulders.

  “It actually pretty warm here. It’s supposed to get really cold tomorrow.” He spun the straw in the glass, spinning the slice of lemon. “Right now. We’re waiting.”

  “What do you mean waiting? Who is looking for him?”

  “A lot of cops. We know who has him, which helps, but finding him is still difficult. But Ryan will be okay. This guy needs him.”

  “How long did he give?”

  “He didn’t. This was a rush thing. He wasn’t—”

  “How did he even find Ryan? How did he know?”

  He leaned back in his chair. He had not given this much thought, though he did
not consider it much of a mystery. “Well. Hmm. I’m not sure about the news coverage in Seattle, but have you heard about Hal Nye, may have been called the Bull? An alderman?”

  Lily shook her head.

  “So a few days ago, he’s found dead. It’s my case. I can’t go into details, but there was some debate if he was killed or just had an allergic reaction. Thing is, this Bull guy is mixed up with some bad guys.”

  “Great. The mob has Ryan?” She started to tear up. “They’ll never let him go.”

  He reached his hand across the table and waited until Lily raised her eyes. “Someone was following me. Happened a couple of times.” He pointed to the bruise on his face. “One guy. He must have seen me have lunch with Ryan. He’s on his own. He’s desperate.”

  “You had lunch with him?”

  “With Ryan, yes.”

  “You went to Naperville?” She crumbled up the tissue and put it into her purse.

  “No. He came into the city.”

  “Why?”

  “Pick up parts or something.”

  “No, why did you have lunch?”

  “He was in town, so we had lunch.”

  Lily saw through the fib. Years of experience growing up with her older and younger brother had developed her own detective-like ability.

  The waiter put the deep dish on the table, and Drexel served up a slice for each of them.

  “Why?” asked Lily.

  “Fine. He was getting you a gift. Wanted to know what to get.”

  “So he consulted you?”

  “Yeah, he asked me.”

  They ate in silence for a bit. Drexel served Lily a second slice, but most of the pie remained.

  “So what next?” she asked.

  “Get you to your hotel.”

  “And then?”

  “I’ve a lead I’m going to check up on.”

  Lily swiped the check when it came and gave it and a card to the waiter before Drexel could even protest. “Just let the police do it.”