by Ian K. Smith
A trim, well-composed woman with steel-gray hair cut into a severe bob sat on a chintz slipcovered double-wingback chair. She wore a lavender dress with prominent white stitching and a hem that prudently fell beneath her knees. Her shoes were patent leather with little black bows. A silver tea service sat on a round table next to her. She took off her reading glasses and lowered the magazine as I entered. She was reading the New Yorker. Of course.
“I’m Cecily Morgan,” she said, not getting up and not extending her hand. “How can I help you?”
“Ashe Cayne,” I said. “Mind if I have a seat?”
She nodded toward the other side of the table. The chair was identical to the one that she sat in. Her expression was flat and disinterested. I wasn’t sure if it was her attitude or the side effects of too much Botox. Either way, no one would make the mistake of calling her friendly.
“Very comfortable,” I said, taking in the room.
She mustered half a smile and nodded slightly. “How can I help you, Mr. Cayne,” she said.
“I was hoping to speak to your daughter about Tinsley Gerrigan,” I said. “Just some routine questions. I’m working on behalf of the Gerrigan family.”
“And why do you feel the need to speak to Hunter?” she asked, keeping her thumb in the partially closed magazine as if our conversation would be only a brief distraction.
“Because I’m a private investigator, and this morning Mrs. Gerrigan hired me to help find her daughter. Hunter may have been one of the last people to see her.”
“Hunter has not the slightest idea where she might be,” Mrs. Morgan said. “So, I don’t know how she might help you. And it’s hard to believe that she would know more than Tinsley’s own mother. Violet runs a very organized household.”
“I’m sure she does,” I said. “But that doesn’t change the fact that Hunter most likely was one of the last to speak with Tinsley before she disappeared.”
“Hunter already talked to Violet,” Mrs. Morgan said. Her irritation wasn’t well disguised. “She told her everything that she knew, which wasn’t much.”
“I understand that,” I said. “But sometimes a different person can ask the same question in a way that brings out a different answer. I’ve been talking to witnesses for ten years. People often don’t know what they actually know.”
Mrs. Morgan studied me as she weighed my words, then placed the magazine on the table. She picked up a porcelain bell off the tray and rang it three times. The old black woman appeared at the door before the bell was back on the tray. She was wiping her hands on her apron.
“Ask Hunter to join us, Gertie,” Mrs. Morgan said. “Tell her it’s important she come right away.”
Gertie looked at me, then back at Mrs. Morgan, then disappeared without saying anything. Our silence went unabridged until footsteps arrived on the hardwood floor just outside the room. Hunter Morgan smiled as she entered the parlor. She wore a pair of tight running pants, black with Princeton in orange lettering running down the side of her right leg. Her shoulders were broad and her legs strong. Her hair was short and lacked styling. She was both beautiful and handsome at the same time. Gender nonconforming was the term the kids were using. She had a pair of rose gold Beats headphones in her hand.
“What’s up, Mom?” she said.
Mrs. Morgan motioned for her to sit, and Hunter obliged, leaning back comfortably on the sofa to the left of her mother. Brief introductions were made.
I said, “So, you’re a Tiger?”
Hunter looked at me quizzically.
“Didn’t you go to Princeton?” I asked.
“Oh, that,” she said, looking at the lettering running down her leg. “My ex ran cross country there. I went to Georgetown.”
“So, you’re a Hoya,” I said. “Great school. Never been, but a guy I grew up with went there. Studied computer science. He loved it. You played sports there?”
“Track and field,” Hunter said.
“What was your event?”
“Javelin.”
All the muscles now made sense.
“You and Tinsley went to Georgetown together?” I asked.
Hunter laughed. “Tins at Georgetown? That would be hilarious. She’d slit her wrists before going to a school like that.”
“Let me guess,” I said. “The professors have too much personality.”
“I like you,” Hunter said, before shooting a quick glance at her mother, who remained stone faced. “Tins went to Oberlin.”
I was surprised. Oberlin was a small private liberal arts school. I’d expected the Gerrigan clan to have a dynasty set up at one of the East Coast Ivies, not a tiny school hidden in northeast Ohio. Maybe this was the free spiritedness that Mrs. Gerrigan had alluded to in our conversation.
“So, Tinsley was supposed to come over and see you the night she disappeared,” I said.
Hunter nodded. “She called and said she was coming over. We hadn’t seen each other in a couple of days, because she was finishing up a painting. She was gonna spend the night, but she never showed up.”
“Did you call her to find out what happened?”
“No, I was watching Colbert; then I fell asleep waiting for her.”
“Did she call the next day to tell you what happened?”
“No.”
“Didn’t you find it strange that you were waiting for her, she never shows up, and then doesn’t even call to tell you what happened?”
Hunter shook her head. “Sometimes Tinsley shows up, and sometimes she doesn’t. That’s just the way she is. She’s not big on predictability. She finds it boring. She does her own thing a lot.”
“Other times when she hasn’t shown up, did she call the next day to explain what happened?”
“Sometimes.”
“But this wasn’t one of those times?”
Hunter shook her head again, then looked toward the door. I turned to find a tall man in his late twenties. He was very square at the shoulders and angled at the jaw, not unlike Hunter. He wore a dark tailored suit and light-blue dress shirt without a tie.
“I’m heading out, Mom.” He glanced at me. “Everything okay?”
“Everything is fine, darling,” she said. “This is a private investigator looking for Tinsley.”
“She’s still missing?” he said. “Figured someone would’ve heard from her by now.”
“Not yet,” Mrs. Morgan said. “But hopefully it’s all a misunderstanding.”
The man nodded, then said, “I’m sure it’ll work out. Gotta run to a meeting before I go back home. See you tomorrow night for dinner.”
He turned and walked out of the room with a canvas duffel bag slung over his shoulder.
I turned my attention back to Hunter. “So, what’s stopped her from showing up in the past?” I asked.
“You name it,” Hunter said. “Sometimes she just changes her mind or finds something different she wants to do.”
“Such as?”
Hunter looked at her mother, whose stoic expression hadn’t changed since I had gotten there.
“Lots of things,” Hunter said. “Stop by a bar in Bucktown. Hook up with some of her friends from college who live up in Lincoln Park. Go watch a game somewhere. Tins loves sports.”
There was something about the way she answered that felt evasive. I pressed her.
“Nothing else you can think of?” I said.
Hunter shrugged.
“Hunter Morgan,” her mother said sternly.
Hunter looked plaintively at her mother, who prodded her with a nod.
“Well, sometimes Tinsley would say she’s coming over, but then she’d decide to hang out with Chopper instead of coming here.”
“And who is Chopper?” I asked.
“Tinsley’s boyfriend,” Hunter said, raising her eyebrows with a smirk.
“You don’t approve.”
“Chopper isn’t exactly someone who Tinsley could bring home,” Hunter said, looking down at her hands.
; “Why is that?”
“Because Chopper comes from the West Side.”
Which I knew right away was code for “He’s black.”
3
THE DREAM WAS BACK. I stood in the shallow end of the empty pool, staring at the shimmering reflection of my face in the cold water. My neck was curved forward beyond horizontal, and I could feel the burn of the hot sun on my skin. I tried lifting my head, but the pressure was too strong. I couldn’t see Marco’s fingers, but I could feel their strength, and my mind drifted to thoughts of what they must’ve looked like. They were long and forceful, their grip on my head firm and controlling, like an athlete palming a basketball before going up for a dunk. Every time I struggled to move my head to the side to avoid the water hitting my face, those fingers tightened and brought me back, bending my neck even farther, my nose now wet from the small waves dancing along the water’s surface. Was Marco going to kill me? He was my favorite counselor at camp. I admired him so much. Didn’t he know that?
The chlorine. Its caustic scent traveled up my flared nostrils and permeated my brain, the intensity causing my stomach to tighten and the back of my throat to convulse. I could hear voices and yelling. There were many of them, but I couldn’t make out their words—only Marco’s. “You better fuckin’ listen to me from now on! I’m gonna teach you a lesson.” He kept screaming the words, each time his voice getting louder and angrier, my heart racing faster.
My legs, thin but strong for a boy my age, were growing tired under his weight on my back. I had lost track of how long he’d had me in the water as my focus abruptly shifted from my reflection in its surface to thoughts of drowning and the fact that no one who was watching was brave enough to jump in and help me.
Then it happened. He pushed me under. He caught me off guard, so I wasn’t able to close my lips fast enough. As the water rushed into my mouth, its coldness shocked my teeth. Water surged up into my nose, and I reflexively thrashed my head from side to side, desperate to clear my airways. My muscles tightened and my entire body felt reinvigorated. I was to learn only as I got older about the fight-or-flight response the body immediately goes through when faced with an acute stressor. Sudden biochemical changes occur at the cellular level that prepare you to either fight or run away from danger. You don’t think; rather, your body just jumps into action.
I tried to wiggle him off my back, but he was too heavy. I tried lifting my head out of the water, but the grip of his hand was too strong to break. I tore at his arm pressed against my chest in a wrestler’s hold, but my wet hands were no match for his muscular, hairy forearms. I was a strong swimmer even as a twelve-year-old, stronger than kids much older; in the water I found comfort and joy, not fear.
But now above me, the voices and screams were gone. Under the water, I was in total silence. I saw my mother’s face in front of me and heard her cheering me on to fight. I searched for my father but couldn’t find him. It was her voice that spoke to me, calmly and confidently. “You are strong. You are a terrific swimmer. Do what you’ve been taught how to do.”
I reached up and raked my fingers across Marco’s hand gripping the back of my head. At the same time, I rolled my right shoulder up to shift his weight and throw off his balance. His legs were wrapped around my waist, but this left him vulnerable to any torque I could generate from what strength remained in my legs and the quickness of the movement in my shoulders. The maneuver worked. He reacted to regain his dominance, but he released the pressure of his lock on my chest and head just long enough for me to bring my head above the water.
I lurched up in my bed, staring into the darkness. My breathing was heavy. Tears fell down the side of my face. I felt relieved and lost at the same time. The rush of oxygen filled my lungs as I took in deep inhalations. My attacker was no longer there. Finally, I was safe.
“WHAT THE HELL DO you want?”
The reliably gruff commander Rory Burke pulled up a chair, cleaned off the seat with the back of his cap, and sat down. He was a big, middle-aged man, his muscles a little more rounded than they’d been during his bodybuilding heyday some twenty years ago, but they were still big enough to fill out his eternally crisp white shirt. He never suited up in a protective vest like other, reasonable police officers and wore a jacket only when the temperatures plunged well south of freezing. Even then, he didn’t wear gloves. He was the son of immigrants, tough as they came and a man of his word. Burke had been my direct supervisor when I was on the force. Since then, he had worked his way up through the ranks and was now running the South Area Detective Division. He was also a man who saw little use for pleasantries.
“I ordered you the usual,” I said, tossing back a few salt-and-vinegar chips and chasing them down with some ice-cold root beer. We were sitting in the back of a Potbelly Sandwich Shop on Roosevelt Road in the South Loop, just around the corner from my office. I could see Burke’s unmarked car idling on the street next to a fire hydrant. Gibbons, his driver, sat behind the wheel with his sunglasses on, watching a steady stream of young coeds from nearby Columbia College walk across the street.
Burke, who once was my commander when I was a lowly patrolman, might’ve ascended into the department brass, but the title and big office hadn’t changed a thing about him. He was a throwback, still the same cop who had ridden thousands of patrols in Englewood, a tough place to earn stripes when you were a big white officer with an Irish name stamped on your shield. He never cut corners and was as fair a man as you could find in a city built on backroom deals brokered in dark rooms and dimly lit bars. Burke was the one who had convinced me to settle my lawsuit against the city for constructively terminating me after I refused to go along with a cover-up. He told me that I was a good cop, but good cops weren’t always an asset to the department, and if I stayed, I would always have a target on my back.
Ten years later not a day went by that I didn’t think about the case that had ended my career. A call had come in about a suspicious teen in an alley off Eighty-Seventh and South Eggleston, acting erratically. Patrol car pulled up. Officers jumped out, screamed at him to stop running, then proceeded to empty five bullets in his back. They had tried to say that Marquan Payton had come at them aggressively and wouldn’t heed their warnings to stand down. But none of the forensics made sense. The kid was unarmed, and the officer who murdered him had a history of using excessive force when it came to young black men.
But it had also been an election year, the mayoral race was getting tighter each week, and the city was already a powder keg, given the increase in police brutality complaints over the previous year. Another suspicious police shooting would be like putting a torch to a heap of dry kindling. It also would be a disaster for Mayor Bailey’s reelection bid, the first time in a decade he had faced a real challenge from a well-liked alderman from Logan Square. The Fifth Floor sent the commander of the detective division the directive to bury the case.
I tried my hardest to fall in line, but when I refused to sign off on the incident report, my superiors came up with all kinds of phantom reasons to strip me of my authority to continue the investigation. So, I just leaked the details to a reporter friend of mine who covered the city hall beat at the Tribune. He wasted no time in exposing the attempted cover-up. The press leak circled back to me, and I was faced with either a demotion and years of watching my back or turning in my shield. I chose to do the latter and keep my integrity. My lawyer worked out an extremely generous package on my way out. Burke was the one who’d fought behind the scenes to make sure I was treated fairly.
Burke was a straight shooter who’d always taken his job seriously, but he was also a realist. Information was a commodity, and the ways you needed to acquire it in certain situations weren’t exactly taught at the academy. From time to time we traded favors. This time I needed one.
“What do you know about the missing Gerrigan girl?” I said.
“You might be in over your head on this one, AC,” Burke said, shifting his body with great effort. He w
as having trouble getting his large frame comfortable in the chair. The old wooden legs squealed like a dog whose tail had just been stepped on.
Our sandwiches arrived. I had a turkey with provolone, mayo, oil, and Italian seasoning. Burke had a double roast beef with the works. Most of it, except for his fingers, seemed to disappear in one bite.
“I’m in over my head is your official analysis?” I said. “It wouldn’t exactly be the first time you said that to me.”
Burke groaned a yes. He was already working on what little was left of the sandwich. He took a long pull on his cream soda, then said, “Lots of red flags on this one. The family dynamics are complicated, and the girl is a little out there.”
“Is that your way of saying ‘progressive’?” I said.
“In Catholic school we called it ‘out there,’” Burke said. “I’ll stick with that. Anyway, I think you want to stay as far away as possible from this one.”
“Your vote of confidence overwhelms me,” I said before launching into a healthy bite of my own sandwich. The bread was soft and warm, and a little of the oil mixed with mayo leaked from the corners of my mouth. Good sandwiches were meant to be served hot. Burke always got his cold and rare. “The way meat’s supposed to be eaten,” he liked to remind me.
“Something’s not right,” Burke said. “Mother walks into one of the districts to report her daughter missing. Desk sergeant has no idea who she is. Don’t add up that the father is one of the richest men in the entire state, and this thing isn’t even wired yet. Not a peep from the Fifth Floor.”
A case was considered “wired” when someone with big political connections and a direct link to the top office in city hall or the state legislature put in a call. Then word would quickly emanate from the fifth floor of 121 North LaSalle, that meandering oak-paneled maze of rooms officially known as Office of the Mayor. A man of Gerrigan’s wealth was sure to have a direct line to Mayor Bailey. Ignoring the difference in their personal politics, masters of the universe like Gerrigan hedged their bets and donated heavily to both political parties, so that regardless of the election outcome, they would always be in favor. Gerrigan was a staunch Republican. Bailey was a fifth-generation Democrat. The opposing political affiliations would never get in the way of doing business and making money. This was Chicago after all.