The fight lasted only seconds before a team of guards broke it up. But that was long enough. One man was sent to the infirmary with a broken nose and a gash deep enough to need stitches. The other was taken to solitary confinement.
Liam didn’t hear what started it, and it left him even more on edge, certain a fight could break out over anything. He asked to be returned to his cell and decided that, from then on, that was where he’d stay. To hell with stretching his legs. At least there he was safe.
Jacob Reed
Jacob entered Liam’s building carrying a box perhaps two feet in diameter. He was dressed in a brown pair of pants and a matching coat with a UPS logo stitched into the right breast pocket. He made his first attempt to get past the concierge by ignoring him, but that was a no-go.
“Excuse me,” said the man in the blue blazer and black tie sitting behind a marble desk.
Jacob kept walking.
The concierge stood up and shouted, “Excuse me, sir!”
Jacob kneeled, awkwardly supporting the box with one knee, and pulled the earbud out of his left ear. There wasn’t any music playing. The earbuds were just part of the show. “Yeah?”
“Can I help you?”
Jacob nodded to the elevator. “Package for 2100.” Then he started walking again.
“Sir!”
There was only one right away to pull this off. Jacob needed someone to show up and make a fuss while he tried to sweet-talk his way inside. If someone made a fuss loud enough and long enough, Jacob was certain the frustrated concierge would eventually send him on his way. Who needed to be bothered with the protocols of a UPS delivery when there was a crazy person cussing up a storm?
Actually, if Jacob had someone who could show up and make a fuss, he wouldn’t need to be here at all since the plan would be entirely different. But he didn’t, not anymore, so he’d have to make the best of it. He detoured toward the concierge and placed the box on the desk next to the sign-in log.
“You can leave it here,” the concierge said.
“No can do. Got to get Mr.”—he glanced down at the label—“Parker’s John Hancock for this bad boy.”
“It’s fine. I’ll sign for it.”
The concierge reached out his hands to grab hold of the package and Jacob pulled it away. The box was empty, that much would be obvious to anyone who picked it up. “I was instructed to hand it directly to Mr. Parker and Mr. Parker alone.”
The concierge eyed Jacob suspiciously. “Let me call up and see if I can reach him for you.”
“Sure,” Jacob said. What did he care? Liam was in jail. The concierge could place as many calls as he liked to Liam’s condo. But he also knew the jig was up. He was never getting past the lobby. Everything he did from here on out would simply be about exiting the con gracefully.
While he waited for the concierge to get off the phone, Jacob put the box on the floor and feigned impatience. He placed his hands on his hips, tapped his foot, checked the time on his cellphone, groaned. Anything to seem like he was a man on a schedule, just someone trying to do his job.
“No answer,” the concierge said when he hung up.
“Fine,” Jacob said, sounding annoyed. He scooped up the box, did a one-eighty, and headed for the exit. “You know, this is the second time this has happened to me today.” He pushed through the revolving glass door, ignoring the concierge’s request for a delivery notification slip.
This wasn’t over. Jacob was going to get into Liam’s condo. He had to.
Liam Parker
Patricia showed up at eleven o’clock the next day. In a small room similar to the one in which Bash interrogated him, she told him his hearing would be Friday and that the judge assigned to his case was more likely than most of his peers to grant bail.
I only have to make it one more day, Liam thought, and then said it aloud as if he needed to hear the words for them to feel real.
“That’s right,” Patricia said. “That’s the good news. Now, as far as who saw you going into Elise’s apartment, I checked with the management office at her building. The only security camera they have is in the lobby. Unfortunately, it was on the fritz. They said they had maintenance scheduled for Monday and that it’s working now. But, for us . . .” She shrugged. “Nothing. So Detective Wyatt must have a witness.”
Liam shook his head. “Nobody saw me go in or out of her apartment.”
“The prosecution will have to hand over a witness list at some point. We will find out who it is. The problem is it will become your word against theirs, and when the jury weighs their testimony with the totality of the evidence, it’s hard to know who they’ll believe.”
Liam Parker
Liam was granted bail and Patricia told him to come by her office next week so they could get started on his defense. Liam said he would, then took an Uber home. He was tired and numb, looking forward to a shower and sleeping in his own bed.
When the driver pulled up to Liam’s building, there were reporters everywhere, all hoping to snap a photo of the crime scene circuit’s rising star. One saw him and pointed. They swarmed the car, snapping photos, shouting questions.
The driver cracked his window. “Get away from the vehicle! Hey!” He slammed on his horn, but it didn’t make any difference. The reporters crowded in closer, shouted their questions louder. “Don’t touch the vehicle!”
“Keep going,” Liam said.
Happy to oblige, the driver pressed on the gas, then the brake. The car lunged forward a couple of feet. Finally, the reporters jumped back, clearing a path. “What was that about?” he said, when they’d left the melee behind. “You somebody important?”
Liam shook his head. “Not particularly.”
The driver seemed to rightly understand that Liam didn’t want to talk about it. “So where are we going now?”
Liam wasn’t sure. He wanted to be somewhere that felt safe and familiar. Next to his own condo, the only place like that was David’s. When ConnectPlus was in its infancy, they’d spent many days there plotting their success. David had always lived alone, so unlike Liam’s house in the suburbs, which at the time was overrun with the chaos that was small children, it was also always quiet.
Liam pulled out his cellphone and called his friend.
“Of course, come on over,” David said. “You shouldn’t be alone right now.”
When Liam arrived, Elise’s Pomeranian greeted him at the door and Liam felt a strange mix of anger and betrayal, somehow directed at the dog even though the dog was a victim too.
“I’ve made up the guest room.” David handed Liam a glass of wine and directed him to the kitchen. He was wearing an apron with “Chefs do it with Spice” printed across the front. Even tied in place, the apron hung loosely on his lanky frame. “I thought a nice meal might do you some good. Feed the body, feed the soul. Lasagna’s still your favorite, right?”
“Yeah, sure,” Liam said halfheartedly. He didn’t have much interest in food right now.
David washed his hands. He cracked two eggs into a small plastic bowl and beat them with a whisk. “How are you holding up?”
Liam took a sip of his wine and placed the glass down on the kitchen island. While David worked, mixing the eggs with a variety of cheeses and cooking a pound of ground beef in a skillet, Liam talked about his time in jail. He was terrified of losing at trial, of going back, of—dare not think it—spending the rest of his life there. Eventually he worked his way around to the witness Bash had mentioned.
“The detective told me I was the only one seen going in or out of her apartment, but it’s not possible. It’s just not. The building doesn’t have any cameras on Elise’s floor, and nobody was there to see me. I mean nobody. I even tried knocking on the neighbors’ doors after I found her body. No one was home.”
David, who was sprinkling Parmesan cheese on top of the lasagna, looked up from his dish. “You haven’t seen the article in the Tribune, have you?”
“What article?”
David wiped his hands on his apron. He looked up something on his phone, then hesitated. “Huh. Looks like they’ve already got a story out about your release.” He tapped the screen, presumably to navigate to a different page, and handed the phone to Liam. “Anyway, read that.”
Liam took the phone and read:
Suspect Arrested in Logan Square Murder
Elise Watson, a twenty-eight-year-old female, was found dead in her Logan Square apartment on October 2. While Ms. Watson’s murder could be seen as just one more in a series of killings that has already topped 300 this year, the circumstances surrounding it and the only suspect are noteworthy.
According to unnamed sources within the Chicago Police Department, lead detective on the case Sebastian Wyatt has arrested and charged local businessman Liam Parker with the murder.
Mr. Parker, co-owner of downtown advertising agency ConnectPlus, is the last known person to have had contact with Ms. Watson and was found on the scene when the police arrived. There was bruising on the victim’s neck, leading investigators to believe Ms. Watson had been strangled.
“There was a lot of noise coming from next door,” said neighbor Ashley Carlson.
Ms. Carlson went on to say that she looked through her peephole and spotted Mr. Parker outside the apartment. “He was the only person I saw come anywhere near [Ms. Watson’s] apartment that night. He was covered in blood. He looked crazy.”
Mr. Parker’s fingerprints were the only ones found on the body. His fingerprints were also found on her phone, from which his text messages were deleted. It is believed these messages were deleted to conceal any communication Mr. Parker and Ms. Watson had before her death.
Ms. Watson’s wrists had been slit post-mortem which, also according to unnamed sources within the department, was an attempt to disguise the murder as a suicide.
Liam put the phone down on the island and took another sip of wine. He didn’t know what to say. That had to be the witness Bash was talking about.
“That article was making the rounds at the office on Wednesday. I had to hold an all-hands to quell the alarm. I told the staff not to worry and to direct any questions concerning your”—David hesitated, looked down at the lasagna—“situation to me.”
His situation. Liam found a dark humor in the euphemism. David had made it sound like he was dealing with an ailing parent or any of a hundred other things that might go wrong during his life. This was nothing like that. If anything, “giant shit show” would’ve been more accurate.
“How’d they take it?” he asked.
“They’re shaken. No surprise. How would you feel if you found out your boss was charged with murder? But they’re working.”
“That’s good.”
David slid the lasagna into the oven and set the timer. Then he leaned forward, gripping the edge of the kitchen island. “This isn’t an easy thing to say.”
Liam’s pulse quickened. Oh, God. What now?
“I think you should stay away from the office for a while. Let me run things. Your presence there isn’t going to do anyone any good, is it?”
That’s it? Liam thought. Perhaps because of everything he’d been through lately, he was expecting worse. If anything, Liam might have suggested the same thing, had he thought of it. “Sure. I mean, of course.”
David looked pleased. He nodded toward the phone. “So what are you going to do about that woman?”
“What do you mean?”
“What do I mean? You need to talk to her, Liam. You need to straighten her out, make her understand why you were knocking on her door. She needs to see the situation from your point of view. You think the police are going to help her do that? There’s no way she can reliably say you were the only one at the apartment that night. But she seems to think she can, and you need to find out why.”
“Shouldn’t Patricia do that?”
“Your lawyer?”
“She’s got a PI—”
David threw his hands up. “Oh, that’s even better, isn’t it? What would you think if you were her and some private dick came around asking questions? I can tell you, if it was me, I’d be more suspicious. No, Liam. You need to do this yourself.” He took a breath, then came around the island and put a comforting hand on Liam’s shoulder. “Speak to her from the heart. Trust me. It’s the best way to handle this.”
Christopher Bell
Emma and Chris had come from different worlds. In high school, Chris kept his nose in his books, while Emma rarely opened hers. Chris kept an eye toward Harvard. Emma didn’t think any further than the next party. Chris had few friends, but they were carefully selected and principled. Emma hung out with anyone and everyone, and still had phone numbers of people Chris would have called “morally flexible.”
One such individual was a man named Arkin Prichard. Arkin worked in the Chicago Transit Authority’s IT Department. Emma didn’t elaborate on how the two knew each other, but she did say that in high school he was the kind of person who could get you things and, as it turned out, still was.
When Chris showed up at the transit authority’s headquarters, he could see Arkin pacing around the empty lobby on the other side of the glass doors. He was alone, which Chris had expected.
Chris rapped on the glass.
Arkin, sporting a buzz cut and a CTA jacket, zipped up, scurried over to the door to let him in. “Bastards turn off the heat at night,” he said after he opened the door.
Chris didn’t mind. It was warmer in here than it was on the street, and he’d be back in his car soon enough.
A stack of bills changed hands and disappeared into Arkin’s pocket. Arkin didn’t insult Chris by counting the money.
“Come on,” Arkin said, and led Chris to a door on the third floor. A placard on the wall beside it read IT Department. Arkin swiped his badge in front of the security reader. There was a click and a red light on the reader turned green.
Inside were a series of long white tables in rows with translucent partitions dividing them into workstations. Arkin sat down at one of the workstations and gestured to the chair at another.
Chris wheeled the chair over so that he could see Arkin’s computer screen.
“What time frame you lookin’ for?” Arkin asked as he brought the computer to life and logged in.
“Friday morning. Let’s begin at two o’clock. Belmont Station.”
“Coming up,” Arkin said, and went to work. A fisheye view of the station’s entrance appeared on the screen with a clock in the lower-left corner that read 02:00:00. As he fast-forwarded the black-and-white image, he said, “Tell me when to stop.”
From the camera’s angle, Chris could tell it was attached to the underside of the tracks. It looked down on the road that ran beneath them, a station map mounted behind glass near the entrance, a Dunkin’ Donuts with walk-up windows, and cement pillars with cartoonish faces painted on them.
For a while, that’s all he saw. Then, a homeless man pushing a shopping cart zipped back and forth a couple of times at high speed. A group of college kids raced down the sidewalk. A blur of gray transformed into a man as he ran toward the entrance and stopped to pull out his metro card.
“Pause it,” Chris said.
Arkin did.
Chris couldn’t make out the face of the man standing in front of the turnstile and wasn’t entirely sure he remembered what the thief looked like anyway. But he could see another man entering the camera’s view from the right and that man he recognized as himself. He pointed at the guy who had stolen his wallet. “Who’s that?”
“Let’s see if we can find out.” Arkin minimized the video and brought up a different application. “I just have to match up the time on the video to the time he scanned his Ventra card,” Arkin explained, his voice trailing off as he quickly navigated to a search form and filled out the required fields. He pressed Enter.
The screen refreshed. The personal details of the man who’d stolen Chris’s wallet appeared: name, address, phone number.
/> Chris couldn’t believe it. Emma was right. Arkin had been able to provide him with everything he needed. “Do you know if the police have been by to take a look at this yet?”
“I don’t know. That would’ve gone through security.”
Chris chewed on his lip, digesting the news. In the end, he knew it didn’t matter. Either way, he had only one choice. He had to go by the thief’s apartment now. The longer he waited, the greater the odds were he’d never get the ring back.
But he didn’t feel comfortable visiting the thief’s apartment alone at night. He needed backup. The people Chris called his friends would not be suited for such a task. He needed somebody with Arkin’s moral flexibility. And since Arkin was already here, sitting not two feet away, he asked, “You want to make a little more money tonight?”
Jacob Reed
Jacob was sitting in the dining room of his basement apartment, his laptop open on the small wooden table in front of him. He began digging into Liam’s life through his social media accounts and public records. He found a birth certificate, a marriage certificate, information on his divorce and the birth of his children, which led him to other social media accounts and other records. After enough digging, he believed he had found a way into Liam’s condo. It wasn’t going to be easy. It would mean becoming a new kind of criminal. But it had to be done.
With his plan formed, Jacob closed the lid of his laptop, ready to call it a night. He crossed the dull, creaking floors that once might have been called mahogany, turned off the light, and made his way to the bathroom to pee. He looked forward to soon having a bathroom that was wider than the length of his outstretched arms.
While he was peeing, he thought he heard a knock and, when he stepped out of the bathroom, he was sure he heard another. Jacob was immediately on edge. Very few people knew where he lived, and none of them dropped in unexpectedly.
He quietly moved to the door to listen for voices on the other side. There was a large bay window beside the door, but he always kept the blinds closed, so there was no chance of being seen. He leaned in close, trying to pick out any small sound he could. It turned out, he didn’t have to listen very hard.
A Reagan Keeter Box Set: Three page-turning thrillers that will leave you wondering who you can trust Page 29