by Brandi Reeds
“Go ahead,” the sergeant says with a chuckle. “Someone oughta use it.”
“I suppose.” I laugh at the joke I’ve heard dozens of times.
“By the way, food for thought.” The sergeant slips a form of some sort beneath the glass window. “Could use another good soldier.”
It’s an application for employment with the Chicago Police Department. “Very funny. Do you know how long it took for the fire department to take me seriously? And you think I want to go through that initiation again with the PD?” It wasn’t the only reason I’d opted to join the fire department—the biggest reason being a plea from my father, who thought the police force too dangerous for even a tough broad, his words, not mine—but cops were known for being considerably harder on female applicants.
“Hey,” the desk sarge says, “we give all rookies a hard time. Not just the ones with tits.”
“Excuse me . . . have you seen some of the veterans around here? The chief himself, I’ll bet, could fill a C cup.”
The desk sergeant holds his gut while he laughs. “See? You can hold your own.”
Maybe I can. I keep the application.
I wind through a maze of metal desks and canvas partitions, where everyone’s too busy to pay me any heed, to Decker’s cubicle. For as cluttered as Lieutenant KJ Decker’s apartment is, his workspace practically advertises that he’s always in the field. Fat files are rubber-banded and labeled and lined up in straight piles on his desk. Someone has been compiling reports and evidence for him.
I take a seat and fully intend to busy myself with a game of solitaire on my phone, or maybe, while I wait, I’ll get my online grocery order ready so I can eat something other than takeout this week. But the file atop the stack may as well have a neon arrow blinking at it: open me, open me, open me.
There’s just something about Margaux Claire Stritch that I can’t stop thinking about. I know my experience at the scene is still fresh, and I ought to give myself time to process it all. I also know delving into the details isn’t going to help me put it behind me anytime soon, but I pull the file from the top of the stack and loosen the band.
After a quick look around—everyone here is preoccupied—I open the file.
There’s not much in it yet, but that’s not surprising, considering it just happened.
I sift through copies of photographs—evidence, pictures printed off the victim’s social media pages . . .
I practically gasp when I see her suicide note.
Short and sweet, as they say, Margaux’s suicide note—separate from the note she left her neighbor—is composed of seven words: I’M SORRY. I CAN’T DO THIS ANYMORE. It’s written in measured block letters, but the signature has flourish: Maggie.
It seems to be written in pencil.
It could be that’s all she could find at the moment. But the message’s length is rather interesting. Given she’d taken the time to put on lipstick, she’d recently gotten a pedicure, and she was wearing a nightie when she died, her final words seem cold and impersonal. The scene of her death was intimate. The bra in the corner of her living room. The lingerie and the absence of panties. Nothing impersonal about it . . . except for this note.
I peel a sticky note from the stack on Decker’s desk and write a notation regarding the lack of intimacy in her last words.
On a second note, I jot, Short suicide notes=usually written quickly. This lettering is too precise. Writer was not in a hurry.
A third: Female victims/younger victims usually write longer notes.
And there’s something else about the signature that doesn’t ring true . . . it appears she lifted the pencil tip from the paper several times while signing her name. I slap another sticky note to the margin of the photo and draw an arrow to one of the incidences: Indication of forgery?
Now that I’m into it, I can’t wait for Decker to research the possibility and fill me in, so I pull up a graphoanalysis site on my phone. While I know it won’t be admissible as exact science in court, graphoanalysis might jump-start some theories, which will lead to asking the right questions, which might lead to answers.
I scribble onto another note: No X-formations or strike-throughs in the signature. Usually see these things in the penmanship of suicidal people.
Narcissist indicators here: writing in all caps. Do narcissists kill themselves?
And there’s something else bugging me. It’s about the name she signed. Sure, Maggie could be a nickname, but something tells me that if she were going to sign a nickname to her suicide note, she’d probably address the note to someone specific. I could be wrong, but I write a note suggesting Decker follow up.
Just for kicks, and because I have time to kill, I do an internet search of Margaux’s name. She has a Facebook page, an Instagram, and a Twitter account. I can’t access all her information, but nowhere is it suggested that she’d ever used the name Maggie. I write down the names of a few of her friends. Maybe Decker can interview them to find out.
While surfing through the little bit of publicly accessible content on her pages, I come across a picture of her with an older couple . . . the same man and woman the chief and I encountered on the way into her building early this morning, the same people Decker approached, with me at his side, to tell them Margaux was dead. Her adoptive parents.
I stare into Margaux’s eyes on my screen.
“What happened to you?” I ask her smiling, two-dimensional face.
The question is coming too late, I know. The time to ask would have been prior to the final event—when there was still time to prevent it.
I google her adoptive mother’s name, Helen Akers, and learn that she’s a former journalist turned philanthropist, a staunch Catholic woman who, when she isn’t campaigning for her husband, volunteers and raises funds for Catholic charities. Margaux’s adoptive father is a councilman for the city of Chicago, Alderman Richard Akers, nicknamed “everyone’s granddad,” who recently announced a leave of absence.
Further digging reveals the alderman is under investigation for misuse of public funds . . . and that he has a gambling problem.
Ah.
That explains all the media attention.
She’s related to a politician. And not just any politician. A politician under investigation.
The next article reveals that for the past several months, Margaux was a dancer at the Aquasphere Underground. I haven’t heard of the club, but it raises an obvious question: Did an obsessed regular stalk her and kill her?
But murder by hanging? It’s just so . . . weird.
If it’s murder, the hanging is a cover-up for whatever really happened. A strangulation, perhaps—as Decker speculated.
As I read on, I learn that the deceased was just accepted to law school.
“Dancing was a means to an end,” a source, who prefers to be identified only by the name she used at the club, Gail Force, revealed. “She was saving for tuition. She was good, an amazing performer. But that’s not all she was, so don’t turn her story, or her life, into something sleazy. She was smart, intelligent enough to know how to make money fast, because she didn’t have time to waste earning it by waiting tables.” Force recently retired from the underground scene, but when asked whether her departure was prompted by a choking incident involving Stritch, as some patrons have said, she declined to comment.
I take a screenshot of the quote and text it to Decker.
I put the pieces together: Margaux needed money fast for school. Everyone’s granddad had money problems. Are the two issues connected?
Maybe. But the fact remains: Margaux had planned the next phase of her life. While she probably wasn’t thrilled with having to dance in order to garner an education, it was working. Why go through the trouble of making that happen if you’re only going to end it?
I slap a sticky note, on which I’ve scribbled this question, on the inside flap of the file, and turn to the next photograph. It’s a somewhat grainy image of the vestibule out front at
this very station, a snapshot captured by the station’s security camera.
I check the date and time stamp.
In the days before she died, she was here.
The next image, time-stamped less than five minutes later, has her exiting. I doubt she was here long enough to file any sort of report, but if she did, her complaint or concern could point Decker in the right direction.
Was she here because she was afraid of something . . . or someone? Or because she knew something she shouldn’t have known?
But when I leaf through the file, I confirm that no report was filed. Likely, she left the station before she spoke to anyone.
My stomach growls.
When I hear someone moving on the other side of the cubicle, I quickly close the file.
“Jessie?” I look up to see one of Decker’s colleagues, his sometimes partner, Lieutenant Jimmy Oliver, peering over the cubicle divider. There’s a mug in his right hand.
“Hey, Ollie.”
“Was that your stomach? Jeez, eat something.”
“Yeah, I guess I should be heading to lunch.”
I check the time.
I’ve been waiting here nearly an hour and a half.
I scroll through my text messages and, of course, find none from the elusive lieutenant alerting me he’s had a change of plans.
“I’m guessing Decker isn’t going to show.”
“If you’re waiting for Decker, you might be here until Christmas. We’re partnered up this month, and I hardly see him.” He sips from his mug. “You guys back together?”
“Um, no. That’s a big no. Just wanted to talk to him about the case we were both called to this morning.”
Ollie points to the application for employment. “Are you finally gonna bite the bullet and join us in uniform?”
“I wear a uniform,” I remind him.
“You could make a real difference here.”
“Yeah, yeah. Hey, by any chance do you know . . . this morning’s victim . . .”
“Heard you cut her down.”
“Yeah, I did.” I nod. “Any evidence of sexual assault?”
Ollie raises his brows.
“It’s just that I know what she was wearing, and I just stumbled over an article that stated she was an exotic dancer. The more I think about it . . .”
Ollie shrugs.
“Right,” I say. “You can’t tell me.”
“Like you haven’t been thumbing through that file for the past hour?”
Busted.
“I can’t tell you because we don’t have the autopsy report,” Ollie says. “But if I have to guess . . . I’d say odds are better than average.”
Time tumbles backward for a moment, and suddenly I’m there in Mom’s trailer—the place she holed up in after she left us. And there he is: the guy she’d dragged home from the bar that night. And the way he’s looking at me . . .
“Jessie?”
When I hear Ollie say my name, I shiver and force myself back to the present. It was so long ago. Not nearly as bad as it could’ve been. And I survived.
“You okay?”
I blink away thoughts of the past—that monster’s stale breath and coked-out eyes—and meet Ollie’s glance. “Yeah. I just must be hungrier than I thought. I’m gonna jet. Good to see you.”
I stuff the application for employment into my shoulder bag and stand.
“I’ll tell Decker you stopped by,” Ollie says.
“Oh, that’s all right. Don’t bother. It’s no big deal.” And then, perhaps with a pace bordering on rude exit, I head toward the door.
Chapter 6
KIRSTEN
I print out the article I found via an internet search.
Margaux worked at the Aquasphere.
Hmm.
It’s a bar downtown, hip, with separate underground facilities catering to the sexual fetish crowd.
I know Ian has been to the Aquasphere.
I’ve been there with him. Not in the tawdry Underground, of course, but we had drinks in the upstairs bar with a couple we used to hang out with last year before a Blackhawks game.
It’s the same bar Donna tended before she and Doug hit it off.
The same bar where she and Doug—and Ian, who was there that day for drinks with clients—met.
I lean back in my chair and nibble on the arm of my reading glasses.
So the plot thickens.
I need help sorting it all out. I want answers.
Again, I try my husband’s cell phone, which still routes to reception at the law firm: “No, Mrs. Holloway, he isn’t back yet, and yes, I’ll be sure to tell him you called. Again.”
The red panties practically glare at me from my purse.
I wonder if Donna knew Margaux. Or if Donna knew that Ian did.
I navigate to Facebook and find Donna’s page, which is littered with photographs of her and Doug holding colorful, frothy drinks with a variety of Caribbean backdrops. A quick scroll through her friends list tells me they weren’t connected on social media. I don’t see any pictures of Margaux, and there is no reference to her whatsoever in Donna’s recent history.
She posts selfies chronically, so I can see exactly what she’s been up to and where she’s heading.
Last night, she wore a black dress, pink pearls, and fuchsia pumps. She and Doug were out to dinner.
This morning, she was nursing a hangover in Hello Kitty pajama pants.
I’m about to message my new cousin-in-law, requesting a lunch or a conversation, when another update pops up on her page.
Now her selfie tells me she’s getting ready for yoga.
Well, I suppose I know where to find her, then.
I glance down at what I’m wearing. Perfect.
One perk of running my husband’s errands all day is that I perpetually live in yoga attire. I pull my hair back, grab my mat and a water bottle, and am out the door.
I make good time to the studio I used to frequent when we lived in Evanston. When I walk in, only a few minutes late, I spy my husband’s cousin’s new bride in child’s pose near the front of the studio.
We exchange a glance during our first warrior pose.
I offer a wave, which she returns.
Ian hasn’t called all day, despite my leaving several messages, and it’s after three.
I might be the only person constantly checking her watch at yoga class, but I can’t relax, even in Savasana.
The girl at the Fordhams’ wedding was a dancer at a fetish club.
Her panties are in my purse.
She’s dead.
My husband is avoiding me.
And I’m supposed to namaste my way through this?
Relaxation is a pipe dream at this moment.
Donna seems just as fidgety.
For someone who just recently returned from a long honeymoon in Aruba—and boy, does she have the tan to prove it—she seems off, disconnected. Or maybe she’s just losing her fight with the hangover.
Once class comes to a close, I approach the newest member of our family. “Coffee?”
She pauses for a second too long before nodding. “I only have a few minutes.”
“To go, then?”
“So tell me all about it.” I pour a fourth sugar into my latte at Backlot Coffee on Central. “How was Aruba?”
“It was amazing,” Donna says. “I wouldn’t mind staying there through the winter months. Two days back and I wish we’d never left.” She hasn’t once taken her gaze from her coffee cup, which she stirs with a stick incessantly as we exit the café and begin to walk toward the parking garage. She’s distracted. Or maybe she simply doesn’t want to be here with me.
I understand the latter. Given we have very little in common, we’d make unlikely friends.
“At least our weather is still pretty decent,” I say. “Though we had some insane fog this morning in Mettawa.”
“What?” She looks up finally. “Oh yeah. But how are you?”
The tilt
of her head and the pout of her lips tell me she, like the rest of my family, is under the impression that I’m still not managing the transition to an empty house.
I hate that that was her first impression of me a few months ago—as an out-of-control, sobbing mess. No wonder she’d rather keep her distance.
We stop at a traffic light and wait for the walk symbol. “I’m fine,” I say. “I’d rather just move on and forget it happened altogether, but no one seems to allow that.”
“I didn’t mean—”
I silence her with a hand on her forearm. “I didn’t mean you.” I smile and roll my eyes. “I meant my husband.”
“The only reason I mentioned it at all is that you look sad today.”
“Actually, so do you.” And maybe it’s not socially acceptable to say what I’m about to say, but . . . “It’s a strange feeling, isn’t it? To suddenly be someone’s wife? To have their aspirations precede your own?”
“Who says that’s going to happen?”
“You quit your job, right?”
“I’m relieved,” she says without hesitation. “I tended bar for the money, and now I don’t have to put in those long, late hours.”
“Still, I’m sure it was empowering, in a sense. All those men thinking you’re gorgeous . . . which you are.”
“Thank you, but . . .” She shrugs. “That’s actually one of the reasons I’m relieved. I mean, no one aspires to be a bartender. Trust me, if I could have afforded an education, I’d rather have landed anywhere but the Aquasphere.”
“Tell me: What did you want to be when you grew up?”
A weak smile begins to form on her lips. “Oh, it’s silly.”
“Nothing’s silly about childhood dreams.”
“I wanted to be a wedding coordinator,” she says after a minute. “I saw 27 Dresses when I was in high school, and I thought . . . how great would it be to help people get married?”
What a lovely thought, and if her wedding is any indication of the events she’ll put together as a coordinator . . . “You should do it. Go get your degree in leisure. Doug will help.”
“What did you want to be when you were a kid?”
I laugh. I haven’t thought about that in years. Maybe a decade or more. “I wanted to learn how to fly an airplane.”