High Crimes

by Libby Fischer Hellmann

  She stood up. Georgia didn’t “do” conspiracy theories. The most logical explanation was that Remson was just a guy swept up in the illusion of adultery, like every other man on the planet. So why the threats? Retribution?

  There was something else, too. Based on what she’d been able to uncover, the FBI had to know about Remson. She wished she had an inside source who could fill her in; without it, she would be forced to duplicate the FBI’s work. She tapped a finger on the mouse. One thing was sure. Willie Remson had just shot up to the top of her suspect list.

  Chapter Nineteen

  It was after five when Georgia closed the lid of her laptop. Vanna and Charlie would be home soon. She should think about dinner. When she opened the refrigerator, the rancid, acrid odor of sour milk overwhelmed her. She pulled out a mixing bowl loosely covered with tin foil. Damn Vanna. She was expressing milk right and left; didn’t she know it had to go into bottles right away? Now it was ruined. Georgia dumped it out, ran the garbage disposal, and spritzed the air with room deodorizer.

  She pulled out stewing meat from the freezer and started peeling potatoes. Were Remson and Jarvis, Dena’s killer, connected? She’d run a background check on Remson last night. He was from New England and moved to DC for law school at George Washington. No connection to Iowa or Rogers Park. Still, it was possible they’d met at some random bar if Remson had come to Chicago or Jarvis had gone to DC. Hell, they could have met anywhere.

  She threw the meat into the microwave and pushed auto defrost: “1.0 lb.” Something else was bothering her. The FBI had access to the same data as Georgia. Dena’s Facebook history was an obvious place to look for suspects. If Remson’s threats were any indication, he was a dangerous guy. The Bureau had to be all over him. They must have gone over every detail of his life. Surveilled him. Maybe interviewed him.

  But his name never came up as a suspect. Of course, suspects didn’t always surface in the media. But for something as big as Dena’s murder—with CNN and every other media outlet crawling all over it—there would have been a leak. Someone would have reported Remson’s name. It wasn’t adding up. She checked his current location. Chevy Chase, Maryland. Just outside DC. Dena’s father was in DC too.

  She took the meat out of the microwave and started separating the little cubes. Halfway through she realized she didn’t have any onions. Or carrots. She left everything on the counter, threw on her coat, and headed out.

  Twenty minutes later she tossed the grocery bag of carrots, onions, and milk on the passenger seat. The only way to get a handle on Remson would be to find him and ask him about Dena herself. She thought about calling Paul Kelly to tell him this case was too complicated for one person. She needed a team of investigators in both Chicago and Washington. For the first time since going out on her own she regretted leaving the police department. They had resources.

  On the way home she blasted the heat, but the Corolla was slow to warm up, a danger in this frigid weather. She should take it into the shop tomorrow to make sure Vanna wouldn’t have any trouble when she drove it to class. Checking the side-view mirror, she noticed a man on a motorcycle behind her. His helmet and visor concealed his face, but he was bulked up in a jacket with plenty of padding. Bikers were rare on Chicago’s North Shore in winter, and today wasn’t mild.

  She veered off Green Bay Road onto Asbury. The biker did too. That was unusual. Just to be safe, she drove farther south than she needed to and turned left on Church. So did the biker. Damn it, she was being tailed. The light at Church and Green Bay was yellow, but instead of stopping she gunned the engine as the light turned red. Horns blasted, but the motorcycle was forced to stop.

  Georgia kept going, circling randomly around Evanston streets until she was sure she’d lost the biker. Who the hell was he?

  Back on her street, parking was at a premium; she finally found a space two blocks away. She made her way back to her building and shuffled up the stairs. As she fished out her key, she heard two female voices. Probably a student from one of Vanna’s classes. She stopped digging and listened. The other voice was familiar.

  Georgia kicked off her boots, slipped the key in the lock, and opened her door. There was no sign of Vanna, but a woman sat on the sofa bouncing Charlie on her knee. Older. Late fifties. Blond. Attractive. She prattled on to Charlie in baby talk, then paused, grinning, waiting for him to babble back. As Georgia approached, Charlie turned toward her. His expression brightened, and his little body squirmed in pleasure the way babies do when they recognize someone.

  The woman looked over at Georgia. Her chatter stopped and her smile disappeared. Georgia stared back. Her mouth dropped open. Silence swallowed the room. Charlie sensed something and stiffened. Then Vanna called out from the kitchen. “You’re really quiet all of a sudden, Mom. Is everything okay?”

  Chapter Twenty

  “Hello, Georgia,” the woman said.

  Vanna hurried out of the kitchen and lifted Charlie off her mother’s lap. Georgia turned to her sister, but she refused to make eye contact.

  “What’s going on?” Georgia managed to croak.

  Vanna swallowed. Charlie whined.

  “Don’t you recognize me, sweet pea?”

  Georgia wanted to flee, to run as far as she could as fast as she could. But her body wouldn’t cooperate. She felt paralyzed.

  The woman caught Georgia’s icy reaction. Her brows drew together, revealing deep lines on her forehead that indicated worry was her go-to expression. She gazed at Vanna, then at Georgia, then sank back on the sofa, less sure of herself. “Vanna called me a few days ago. I—I hadn’t heard a word from her in over a year. I didn’t know where she was, if she was even alive.”

  “That’s about par for the course, isn’t it?”

  The woman’s lips tightened. Georgia expected her to say more, but she reined herself in.

  “Is this true, Vanna?” Georgia asked. “Did you call her?”

  Vanna’s face paled and grew pinched. A terrified expression came over her. “We were fighting. You and Jimmy were gonna leave me. I didn’t know what to do.”

  Georgia squeezed her eyes shut. She’d been sucker punched. By her own sister. “So you decided you’d show me and bring Mommy in to take my place.”

  “No, that’s not—”

  “Sure it is, Savannah. That’s what we girls do. Break each other’s heart and run away before the other does it to us. After all, we learned from a pro. JoBeth Crawford. Our mother.” She spit out the word.

  “It’s different now,” their mother said. “Everything’s changed.”

  “You bet it’s different. We’re grown up now. And you’re old. You probably figure you can mooch off us, instead of the men who used to give you the once-over. How many have there been, Mother?” She emphasized the word. “Four? Seven? Ten? Oh yeah. Are there any other kids you want to tell us about? Brothers or sisters you walked out on without saying good-bye?”

  “Georgia . . .”

  “No. Keep your mouth shut. This is my home. And you can’t waltz back into my life after twenty-five years as if you’ve only been away for a week. Did you think I’d be happy to see you? A mother who never even sent me a fucking birthday card? Or made a phone call? Sent an email? Or a text for twenty-five years?”

  At least JoBeth was embarrassed enough to hang her head.

  “Georgia,” Vanna cut in. “I needed her.” It sounded like a plea.

  “Because I wasn’t enough.” It was a statement, not a question.

  “You were going to leave me.”

  “You know I would never do that.” Georgia turned to her mother. “You have twenty-four hours to get out of my apartment. And you too,” she said to Vanna, “if you go with her. But if you do, I never want to hear from you again. Do you understand? Never.”

  She was still clutching the paper bag from the grocery store. She looked at it as if it was suddenly a strange, unfamiliar object. “Here. You finish making dinner, JoBeth. You know how to make stew, right?
Meat. Potatoes. Carrots. Onions. It’s more than you ever did for me.”

  She dropped the bag, spun around, and stomped out.

  • • •

  She was driving aimlessly around the North Shore when the tears came. Long-overdue tears. The tears of a little girl whose mother didn’t want her. Tears of a daughter whose father abused her because she wasn’t her mother. Tears from a job she loved but ultimately lost. And a relationship gone bad. She careened around streets and plowed through alleys, not knowing or caring where she was. She didn’t know how long she’d been driving when she passed the lake, a dark, stolid reminder that the universe would never trouble itself about little Georgia Davis. The universe would go on whether she was happy or sad, alive or dead. She wasn’t on its radar. Would never be.

  The last time she’d felt so desperate she’d crashed into a concrete viaduct near Greektown and nearly died. She was drunk then, and the shame of where life had taken her was unmanageable. She was close this time too.

  She called Jimmy. Two hours later she met him at the apartment he’d rented from Luke. Hollow and hoarse, she fell into his arms, sobbing. He stroked her hair until she finally fell asleep.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  The Next Day

  The only green at the Green Mill Lounge was in the letters of the neon sign outside. Otherwise, the faded brown walls, dimly lit booths, and white-tablecloth-covered tables reminded Georgia of a woman trying to hide her age. There was a reason for that. The bar, first known as Pop Morse’s Roadhouse but renamed the Green Mill in honor of the Red Mill, or Moulin Rouge, in Paris, opened in 1907 on Broadway. Over its hundred-year lifespan, it had become an iconic landmark for serious jazz as well as a hangout for mobsters. Al Capone had his own booth with a view of two doors so that he could, if necessary, make a speedy exit through one when the cops raced in the other.

  There was also a secret escape route in the basement that led through a series of tunnels, originally built to ferry coal. During Prohibition not only were the tunnels used to flee the cops, but they also stored alcohol and provided a place for poker and craps.

  Georgia waited in a booth along the sidewall for Curt Dixon, Dena Baldwin’s boyfriend. Drawing on all her Darwinian self-will, she’d managed to paste on an expression of composure and competence. She sipped a Diet Coke with lemon.

  The front door swung open, and Curt entered. She recognized him from TV. He was the shaggy bear. He’d come through the ordeal without a scratch and was the unofficial group spokesperson after the event. Georgia raised her hand and waved. He saw her and ventured over.

  “Hi,” he said. “You’re Georgia.”

  She tried to smile, but she knew it wasn’t much of one. “

  Grab a draft if you want. On me.”

  He went up to the bar and came back with a tall glass stein.

  “You hungry?” she asked.

  He shook his head and sat across from her. “I thought all the interviews and press were over.”

  “I’m a private investigator. Dena’s family hired me.”

  His eyebrows shot up. “Is that so?”

  She took a sip of her drink. “Does that surprise you?”

  “Not at all. I’m kind of wondering why it didn’t happen sooner.”

  “Because . . .”

  “Well, mostly because of the calls.”

  “Calls?” Ruth had mentioned calls, Georgia remembered.

  “Dena would get these strange calls. Usually at night. No one spoke. But they’d hang for a while. Then disconnect when she pressed them.”

  “Press them?”

  “You know, ask who was there and what they wanted.”

  “Didn’t you star-sixty-nine them afterwards?”

  “We tried once or twice. But we got a message that said the number was unavailable.”

  “They worried you.”

  He nodded. “At first they were just once every few weeks, but right before the demonstration we got calls two or three times a week.”

  “Was Dena worried?”

  He picked up his mug. “You know—well, you didn’t know—Dena. She acted pretty casual. Eventually, though, she called the cops.”

  “Did they ever find out who was making the calls?”

  “Never heard.”

  “Do you have any idea who it was?”

  “If I did, I would have torn them to pieces.”

  “Easy, boy,” Georgia wanted to say. “You cared for her.”

  He set the stein down, and when he looked at Georgia, she saw his pain. “She was—she was a handful, but she was my handful.”

  Proprietary. “Tell me.”

  “She was smart, dedicated. Charismatic. Loyal. A natural leader. She really cared about the Resistance. And the group. Oh, and she was a born speaker. She could bring a crowd to their feet in thirty seconds. Frame everything that happened over the past year in a few sentences.”

  Curt Dixon was clearly smitten. “How did you meet her?”

  “I was living in Tennessee, but I—”

  “You’re from the South? You don’t have an accent.”

  “Dena didn’t like it.”

  Georgia had been born in Georgia but moved to Chicago when she was just a toddler. Still, it wasn’t easy to ditch an accent.

  “Anyway, once I found the group, I volunteered to help with admin, mostly moderating posts. I created some graphics too. It got so that we were in touch every day. We talked—messaged—about everything. A week or so later she asked me to come up and help her scout locations for a possible demonstration.” The lines on his forehead smoothed out, and a faraway look came over him. “I never left.”

  Georgia thought about Dena’s online relationship with Remson. Did she come on to Dixon the same way? Were the men two of many? “Did she feel the same way?”

  He hesitated. “Dena was a worrier, and she always found something to worry about. She tried to hide it, you know. She pretended to be the competent, always-in-charge leader. And she could be bossy. Even arrogant. But I knew that underneath that tough exterior was a sweet emotional marshmallow. She was vulnerable. I was there to support her. Ease her mind. Night and day.”

  Was that the reality of the relationship or just wishful thinking? “And did you?”

  “I did the best I could.” He swallowed, and his Adam’s apple bobbed. He took a swig of beer to mask it.

  “What kinds of things did she worry about?”

  “You name it. The group, the demonstration, safety, permits, security, the money to run everything, all that.”

  “What about personal things? Like her family?”

  Curt sat back. He went quiet. Then, “Well, she was worried about the family foundation. Do you know about it?”

  Georgia shook her head. “Not much.”

  “She said there was a problem. But she wouldn’t tell me what it was. Said it was family business.”

  No big surprise there, with her brother a public embarrassment. But Georgia noted it down. “What about enemies? Did she have any?”

  “Not really.”

  He couldn’t be that naïve. “Come on, Curt. A woman who stakes out radical political positions like Dena had to alienate some people.”

  “Well, of course. We had trolls. And bots,” he said. “I thought you meant personal enemies. People she knew.”

  Georgia eyed him carefully. Was he holding back? “Did she ever talk about anyone on Facebook, like, for example, other members of the group? For better or worse?”

  “Well, we talked about the admins sometimes. We were sort of the nucleus of the group.”

  “You, Dena, Ruth . . . ”

  “And DJ.”

  DJ Grabiner had been killed in the attack. “Tell me about DJ.”

  “He was from New York. But the most laid-back New Yorker I’ve ever met. He was a musician. Played the flute and keyboard. Part of a band for a while.” Dixon paused. “But then, after the election, he got political. Like a lot of other people.”

 
Georgia had run a background check on Grabiner. Dixon was telling the truth. “So. Back to Dena’s enemies. Anyone else you can recall?”

  He shook his head and took another swig of beer.

  So Dena hadn’t told him about Remson. Georgia wasn’t surprised. And Ruth, who knew about Remson, hadn’t said anything to Dixon either. Interesting.

  “Hold on. I do know she was spitting mad at her father. I sometimes . . .” He bit his lip.

  “What?”

  “I sometimes wondered if her rage at the president was tangled up in her relationship with her father. You know.”

  It was well-known that the current president had numerous affairs while he was married. Many accused him of being a sexual predator. “Because of the women?”

  Dixon nodded.

  Erica had mentioned affairs as well, Georgia recalled. “What about dissension in the ranks? Within the group?”

  He hesitated, took a pull on his draft. “Dena was a strong leader. And I guess there’s always someone who thinks they can do things better.”

  “Someone in the group?”

  He looked up, as if thinking about it. “No, not really. I mean, we quarreled about little things. But we all knew we couldn’t have come as far as we did without her.”

  “Who quarreled the most?”

  “If you’re asking if someone had a grudge against Dena, I don’t think anyone did. I mean, we would sometimes discuss whether something was the best solution, the best plan. But nothing major. At least not to my knowledge.”

  “What about Ruth Marriotti?”

  “Ruth? No way. She and Dena were close.” He squinted and leaned back against the booth. “Why? Do you think Ruth was— No. No way. On the day of the protest, Ruth was panicked when Dena was a few minutes late. She thought she’d have to speak to the group instead. She looked like she wanted to throw up.”