I stood there for a moment, thinking. Why not just let me take the delivery of the pearl thongs? Why not let me put them away? She trusted me with the rest of the merchandise, even the more pricey pieces. And then there was the fact that she kept the thongs locked up.
I hustled to the back door and peered through the window. Steve was sitting in his van, using his steering wheel as a writing desk, making some kind of notation. Then he started the van and pulled down the alley. I opened the door and watched his taillights trail away in the dark night. He kept heading down the alleyway, clearly one of those Chicagoans who knew how to avoid the traffic on the main streets. Just like I did.
My scooter was sitting right there. I watched that van, still making its way down the long alley that ran perpendicular to Racine Avenue.
I thought of what Mayburn had told me when he’d gotten me on this case. Pay attention to everything. Pay attention to anything that seems off. Even a little bit. I just need you to collect the pieces.
And then I thought of another thing Mayburn had said to me-Don’t plan. Improvise.
I rushed to my coat and put it on with my helmet. Then I grabbed my scooter keys and phone from my purse and tucked them in a pocket. It sounded as though Josie would be with Faith and her friends for at least another fifteen to twenty minutes, maybe longer.
I opened the back door and wedged a small piece of Styrofoam into the base of it, then I jumped on my scooter and followed the van.
38
I saw the van’s lights-at least I hoped it was the van-nearly two blocks ahead of me, still in the alley. I pulled back on the gas, trying to catch up.
I decided I would tail the van for just a little while, to see where it went. It would be a piece I could collect for Mayburn.
A barely there spring rain dotted the visor of my helmet with mist. Be careful, I told myself. Scooters were the fastest way to get around the city, but they didn’t take well to bad weather.
I gained on the van, coming within a block of it, then only half a block, so I could almost make out the license plate. Z2…There were four more characters, but I couldn’t read them. As gently as possible, I pulled back harder on the gas.
But just then the van reached Armitage Avenue and turned right. By the time I caught up, three cars were between us. I curved around one of them at a stop sign and kept an eye on the van. It went left at Racine, where Armitage dead-ended, then took a quick right where Armitage started again. I followed him on the bridge over the Chicago River, the grates of the metal making my scooter feel wobbly, the slick rain not helping.
Once over the bridge, the car in front of me turned, and I could see the van under the streetlights. I tried again to see the plate number, but the misting rain obscured my view.
When the van turned onto Cortland Avenue and I followed, the third car continued onward, removing the barrier between me and Steve, whoever he was. I pulled over to the side of the road, putting a little distance between us, then resumed following him. The van made its way through Wicker Park, taking a few turns and finally heading into another alley.
I slowed, waited, then turned down the alley myself. Damn. It was gone.
I zipped down the alley, my eyes scanning either side. Nothing. The houses here were a mix of brick three-flat apartments and older bungalows, all with garages behind them.
I was about to turn around and head back to the store, when I saw it. About a block down the alley, behind a tan-painted bungalow, the van was parked next to a garage. I sped toward it. As I reached it, the van’s interior lights suddenly went on, and Steve got out of the driver’s seat. He looked at the scooter as it passed, and it seemed he stared right through the visor of my helmet.
I looked away, and pulled back hard on the gas, causing my back tire to fishtail a little.
Half a block later, I stopped and glanced behind me. No sign of Steve. I parked in an empty spot by a garage. A sign on the garage screamed No Parking!!!!, replete with small print practically threatening a gangland-style shooting. I parked there anyway, squinting at my watch. I’d been gone eight minutes. I could only spare a few more before I had to hightail it back to the store.
I got off the Vespa and peered around the garage.
The alley here was darker than those in Lincoln Park. Only one streetlight blinked anemically. The rain began to fall harder, making a soft but ominous rattle on my helmet. I tucked my hair under the collar of my coat, but left the helmet on. Walking around, I must have looked like a Martian. The helmet killed my peripheral vision, but it protected me from the rain and from being identified.
I tiptoed in my high heels toward the van. Between the shoes and my black suit, I wasn’t able to move fast. Which gave me enough time to wonder what on earth I was doing. Why was I tailing a van and creeping around an alley for a part-time job? Was this really what I was supposed to be doing with my life? Not to mention the fact that a friend of mine had died-had been murdered-and I found her. I could sense layers upon layers of sorrow and fatigue, bewilderment and shock, deep inside me. Why wasn’t I tuning into those and just falling apart? Why wasn’t I telling Mayburn I couldn’t possibly work at a lingerie store and sneak around at night, looking for who knew what?
But I kept tiptoeing, and as I did, I came upon the answer. I didn’t want to tap in to those emotions that lay heavy inside me. I didn’t want to sink into them and let them overwhelm me. And so, going on with everyday life, despite its absurdity, felt good. It felt exciting, even, and I liked that excitement a hell of a lot more than those intimidating emotions.
When I got to Steve’s van, I saw that the garage he had parked next to was lit up now, while the house in front of it was dark. It seemed clear he’d gone in the garage, which was big enough to hold two cars. I wondered why he wouldn’t use it to park the van. But then maybe multiple tenants lived in the house, sharing the garage?
Whatever was in the garage, though, couldn’t be seen from the alley. All the windows were covered with newspaper. I tiptoed around the entire structure. Two small windows on either side of the stand-alone garage. All four blocked out. I stood still, listening, but there were no sounds from within. Maybe he lived there? A garage apartment?
I glanced at my watch. I’d been gone ten minutes. I had to get back. I looked around for the address, then memorized it for Mayburn.
As a last ditch-effort, I tried to study the newsprint in one of the windows. Maybe the date on the papers would tell Mayburn something. We’d know, at least, how long ago Steve had hung them there. It seemed a miniscule bit of information, but I came back again to Mayburn’s persistent metaphor about investigations being made up of puzzle pieces.
I couldn’t quite see the date on the newspaper, so I took out my cell phone and flipped it open so the light came on. I held it up to the newspaper-the Chicago Tribune, dated about one year ago.
Then I noticed something. I slipped my phone back in my pocket and bent down. There was a small space, maybe half a centimeter wide, at the bottom of the window that the newspaper didn’t cover.
I peered through the space, making out a wooden bench of some sort. There were materials strewn across it. Was this where the pearl thongs were made? Suddenly, I worried about the cleanliness of the one I’d worn.
Wham! I felt a smack on the side of my helmet. It caught me off guard, pitching me forward.
The helmet cracked hard against the side of the garage, my head rattling around inside, and I fell to my knees.
39
D etective Vaughn walked the hallway at the Belmont police station. Everyone hated when he did this-paced the halls-but he wasn’t a sitter. He couldn’t just sit and ponder like some detectives; he needed to be moving. Plus, the area around the station wasn’t the most scenic, to say the least, certainly not at night. The problem was that all he had to ponder on this case, at least right now was supposition and gut feelings.
Like the one he had about Izzy McNeil. He hadn’t liked her when he first met her-after her fi
ancé took off. He couldn’t say why, because he got the feeling that just about everyone liked Izzy McNeil. Which might have been why he didn’t like her. It irritated him to no end when beautiful women had everything handed to them, and from what he could tell that’s exactly what had happened with her. That Forester Pickett had given her all her work and now she’d somehow landed a network news job. People like that frustrated someone like him, to whom nothing had been easy-not his mom’s death when he was twelve, or his dad’s three months later; not the series of foster homes he got shuffled around to; not the five years it took him to graduate high school; not the five years it took him to get into the CPD police academy; not the nights he’d worked as a bouncer at a bar on Division while going to the academy; not the decade that it had taken him to rise to the rank of detective.
But then again, now that he was here, Vaughn was a good detective because he knew that gut instincts, while often right, weren’t everything, and he knew that just because he didn’t like someone like Izzy McNeil didn’t mean she was a perpetrator. There was just something off about this Jane Augustine case, and his questions kept circling back to McNeil, the time the two had spent before Jane’s death, the way she’d slipped right into her “friend’s” anchor chair not even twenty-four hours after her death. Then there was the fact that just six months ago, her fiancé took off with thirty million dollars’ worth of her boss’s property, and she’d claimed not to be involved then, as well. It was too coincidental. And he didn’t believe in coincidences.
“Hey, Vaughn!”
He stopped pacing and looked up the hall to see Erin Cutter, the forensics person on the Augustine case. He’d specifically asked for her because she was the best. She never acted on gut instinct or supposition, and the way things were going for Chicago detectives these days-with accusations flying around about forced confessions and arrests without probable cause-he needed Cutter’s hard-core factual approach to balance his own.
Back in the day, Vaughn used to be able to roll with his gut instincts in this job. Maybe pull in a witness, maybe scare the shit of him, maybe ice him for a while by letting him sit for a day or four in a windowless room. But now, ever since a few detectives had taken it too far, they’d fucked it up for the rest of them. And so Vaughn needed people like Cutter to make sure that he had the backup he required to roll with those gut instincts. Or to get him rolling in another direction.
Cutter came bustling down the hall at him. She was Northern Irish, with white skin and black hair, and she did the bustling thing really well. The skirt of the suit she wore, an olive-green one he’d seen at least fifty times, swished against her legs as she came toward him.
“You got the lab report?” he asked her.
She grinned. “You’ll have it this afternoon.”
“Christ, you’re the best.”
DNA lab reports on the average murder case took at least a week, often much longer, but when you had a high-profile case like Augustine’s, and a ballbuster like Cutter, you might be able to get it in a day or two.
She stopped when she reached him. “I hope you’ve got something to show for making me rush it.”
He gave her a wicked grin. “You’ve definitely got something to show.”
She punched him in the shoulder. They laughed. Both of them were married, and neither fooled around on the side, but this was the way they worked.
“This case is fucked up,” he said. “I can feel it. You did DNA sequencing for the bedroom fluids, right?”
“Right,” Cutter said. “Full results aren’t back yet, but when the ET took the samples, they were wet. Augustine had sex the day she was killed.”
“The day her husband was supposedly out of town,” Vaughn mused.
“You know what Nietzsche said about cheating?”
“God, I love a woman who quotes Nietzsche.”
She smacked him again, but he wasn’t kidding. He and his wife had gone stale years ago. He’d never been unfaithful, but he’d thought about it. A lot. And if he were to stray, it would be with someone like Cutter, someone both sexy and smart as hell.
“Let’s see, how does that quote go?” Cutter screwed up her face and looked at the ceiling as if reading the quotation there. “I remember now.” She looked back at him. “The quality of a marriage is proven by its ability to tolerate an occasional exception.”
“You think that’s true?” Cutter had just had her third kid six months ago. From what he could tell she was one of the lucky ones who enjoyed marriage and kids.
“I wouldn’t know. And I hope I never have to test the theory.”
Cutter turned and swished down the hallway, while Vaughn headed toward his desk, his thoughts soon returning to another woman. Izzy McNeil.
40
E very cell in my body went on high alert. Get up, get up! a voice yelled in my head.
But my terrified body wasn’t reacting as fast as it normally would. Everything seemed tilted, slanted. I couldn’t tell if it was the angle of the helmet or the blow to the head. My knees screamed. I felt blood trickling from them.
I sensed someone behind me, and as I looked down, trying to focus on the ground, telling myself to stand, I caught a glimpse of shoes behind me. Men’s athletic shoes. I tried to notice what kind they were. I heard Mayburn telling me to take note of any details. I got to my feet, but then I felt a massive shove from behind. My hands flew out, catching myself on the garage. I sensed other blows coming. I cowered, covering my head.
“Stop!” I yelled. “I called the cops! They’re already on their way.” I had no idea why I was saying this, but it was the only thing I could think of.
It must have worked because suddenly the only sound was the faint trickle of rain on my helmet. I stood and spun around, the lack of peripheral vision in the helmet making me feel as if I was stoned.
Hit him back, the voice said. Kick him.
But no one was there.
My hands shook so much I could hardly drive the scooter. I felt the air drying the blood on my knees. Finally, I was almost back to the Fig Leaf. As fast as I could manage with my quivering hands, I headed down the alley behind the store. Luckily, the rain had stopped.
Parking the scooter and pulling off my helmet, I tried very hard not to whimper. My brain felt discombobulated. Fear rang inside me like a loud gong, steady and loud.
My hands shook as I looked at my watch. I’d been gone almost twenty minutes.
I had wanted to call Mayburn but it was hard to talk on the cell phone and drive the scooter at the same time. I had wanted to call the cops, but now that I was a person of interest, it seemed fishy somehow for me to have found a dead body and then been smacked around in an alley all in the span of twenty-four hours.
When Zac said he told the cops I’d been with Jane, I’d felt irrationally guilty. I had done nothing wrong when it came to Jane. I had done nothing wrong tonight. And yet I knew as a lawyer that little jagged pieces didn’t just make up the puzzle of an investigation, they could make someone innocent look very, very suspicious.
Somehow, I would finish work, I decided, and then I would call Mayburn. And he would help me decide what to do.
As I put down the kickstand and took off my helmet, it struck me as odd that I hadn’t even thought to call Sam. A short time ago, he was the only one I called with any kind of crisis-large or small. And yet now, even after the comfort he had provided last night, he wasn’t my first gut response. He wasn’t even the second. I looked down at my knees. They were only minimally scraped. A few streaks of blood ran from them. I licked my fingers and tried to rub it off.
I glanced at the door to the Fig Leaf. The Styrofoam was still in there. Thank you, God. I pushed open the door, stepping gingerly inside.
“Where the hell did you go?” Josie stood in the center of the room, hand on her hip, angry eyes peering from behind her silver glasses.
“Um…I was going to run to Starbucks.” I glanced down at the helmet in my hands. “But I came back to see
if you wanted anything.”
Her eyes narrowed further, then dragged down my body, stopping at my knees.
“And I fell,” I added. “Accidentally.”
She stalked toward me. “There is no leaving the store while you’re working.”
“Right. Won’t happen again.”
“Ever.”
“Of course.”
“And we don’t prop open this back door. That’s a security risk. Do you understand?”
“Absolutely. I’m sorry.”
She was close to me now, and I could detect the smell of talcum powder and something beneath it, an exotic scent. For the first time, I noticed that her light green eyes were flecked with spots of brown.
“You’re on thin ice,” she said.
I wasn’t sure precisely what she meant but I nodded.
“So you’d better be careful.”
41
L ater that night my cell phone rang. Mayburn, the display read.
“It’s cleaned out,” he said.
“What is?”
“The garage. I just went over there.”
“Are you kidding me?” I padded over the wood floor of my living room in pajamas and socks.
“There’s some basic stuff there, like a bench, newspapers, but nothing personal. I tracked down the owner of the place. He rents out the bungalow to a family and rented the garage on a month-by-month basis to some guy from the neighborhood.”
“Is the guy named Steve?”
“He says the name he gave him was Tobias Minter. He never ran a credit check because it was just the garage and it was month to month.”
“Did you look up Tobias Minter?”
“Yep, and the only one I could find with that name died in 1670.” He sighed. “How’s your head?”
“Killing me.”
“Did you take some Advil?”
“Is ten too many?”
“You’re kidding, right?”
Red Blooded Murder Page 19