by Dana Killion
The sky outside was dismal. Gray, windy, and looked biting cold. I threw on jeans and a chunky wool fisherman’s sweater, refreshed the hot water in my tea, then moved to my office. The room was functional, although I was still waiting for some furniture that was supposedly on a boat from Italy—likely a row boat, given how many times I’d heard the same non-answer update.
I grabbed a Sharpie and a pad of Post-its, then began filling a large custom linen tack board I’d recently hung with dates and events. Working back and forth between my notes and various reference material online, I began to lay out a timeline. I stepped back, absorbing the data and jotting down questions or additional issues that needed verification on a yellow legal pad.
As I looked at the information, my cell phone rang. Victor Kirkland. It wasn’t like him to call me on a Saturday. It wasn’t like him to work on a Saturday at all, given the seventy hours he put in between Monday and Friday.
“Andrea, I’m sorry to call you on the weekend,” he said, sounding breathless and nervous. “The police just phoned me. It’s happened again!”
“Slow down, Victor. What has happened?”
“Sorry, I just don’t know. I wasn’t sure what to do. I’m rattled. Another client has been murdered. Just this morning. The police tell me I’m just panicking, that Elyse’s killer is in jail, but her mouth was cut and they won’t listen to me. I didn’t know what to do. I thought you could help figure this out.”
The fear and shock tumbled out of his mouth while I listened, my mind racing, trying to put together the pieces of what he was telling me. Another client had been murdered? This couldn’t possibly be the same killer.
“Go back to the beginning,” I said, keeping my voice as measured as I could manage. “Who was killed? Why don’t you start with that? And then tell me what the police said.”
“Oh, yes, of course. Her name is Skylar Hayes. They found her this morning, dead on the ground next to her car. The police said they think it was an attempted carjacking. She’s a sales rep for a jewelry company and had some very expensive product in her car. She must’ve been taking her sample case to appointments. So of course they think robbery. Her car, the jewelry, probably both.”
“Tell me about her mouth. You said her mouth had been cut.”
“The police wouldn’t say anything more, but of course I couldn’t help but go there. First Elyse, now Skylar, two women going through nasty divorces, both having their mouths slashed, how in the world could I not make that connection?”
“Try to calm down,” I said, panic rising in my own chest. “I’ll see what I can find out. Give me her address.”
As he read off the address, a new thought crossed my mind.
“How did the police know to call you?”
“She was going to drop off some documents at the office this morning. Apparently the envelope was on the front seat of her car with the papers, and my card was stapled to the outside with a note. So they called me.”
“Thanks for letting me know, Victor. I’ll find out what I can.”
I hung up the phone, picked up the piece of paper with Skylar Hayes’s address, grabbed a coat, boots, and texted Cai as I headed for my car. Brunch would have to wait.
I parked in a metered spot on Ashland Avenue five blocks west of Skylar Hayes’s Lakeview home, knowing it was as close as I could likely get to the crime scene. Pulling on a cap and gloves, I threw my bag across my chest and headed west, picking my way around the slick, snow-covered spots on the sidewalks. The street in front of the Hayeses’ home was blocked on both ends by squad cars. Lights flashed off the snowbanks as confused neighbors tried to determine what was going on.
Like much of Chicago, the homes were a mix of multistory single family and converted three-flats. Largely Greystone construction, although because of looser historic zoning obstacles, many of the old wood-frame buildings were being torn down to make way for a developer’s idea of a modern box. The treelined streets and frequent front porches attracted those who wanted a family feel at a price more affordable than Lincoln Park—or diehard Cubs fans, as Wrigley Field was just blocks away.
As I rushed to join the crowd pushed back from the ambulance and the crime scene tape, I scanned the scene. The press had been corralled off to the opposite side of the street. There, a familiar face guarded the southern edge of the perimeter. A beat cop I knew from my years as a prosecutor. I snaked my way in.
“Hey, Tom, what dragged you out of bed on a cold, miserable Saturday morning?” I asked when I got close, already feeling the chill seep into my body.
“Looks like another crazy attacked a woman. Probably some dumbass addict seeing an opportunity to fund his habit. I hear she had a case full of gemstones. The guy probably thought she was easy pickings on an early Saturday morning. Who else would be out here in this weather?”
“I heard it was a carjacking?” I said, working him a little.
“I think he jumped her when she was getting into her car. Her keys were on the ground, not in the ignition, so he probably thought he had perfect timing. Took advantage of the moment. Ain’t clear if he knew she had twenty grand worth of baubles in her hand or if it was just dumb luck.”
“Doesn’t look so lucky for her. How did it go from jacking her car to her dead on the ground?”
He shrugged, then wiped away some ice crystals that were forming on his mustache. “Does anyone really know how these things escalate? Maybe she resisted? She’s pretty cut up, so something went to shit.”
“How do you know she had jewelry?” I asked, assuming the case was long gone. From where I stood I could see the burgundy Camry in the narrow driveway, parked alongside the well-kept Victorian home. The front door was only about twenty feet from the car, but to get to it meant walking down the steps from the front porch, through the gate, and along the wrought-iron fencing to get to the driveway. She hadn’t snuck up on him. So if stealing the car had been his main objective, why he hadn’t succeeded?
“This ain’t official, but I’d say the job got interrupted. Car door was open when we got here and the jewelry case was lying in the snowbank.”
That meant something had interrupted him and he ran off, or he had no idea the case held anything of value, which seemed unlikely. But why kill her? She had the car keys out. One good shove and he could have knocked her down, swiped the keys, and sped off.
“You said she was cut up. Any sign of the knife?”
“Not yet. But we’ll find it.”
“Thanks, Tom. Stay warm out here.”
“No kidding. I could sure use a coffee right about now.” He stomped his feet and rubbed his hands together.
“I’ll bring one over before I leave.”
I was about twenty-five feet away from the main action and couldn’t see much through the throng of police personnel. Ambulance, crime scene unit, and more cops than I could count swarmed the street around the vehicle. I scanned the barricade, looking for a better vantage point, and spotted Michael talking with an EMT. He was typing notes into his phone as they spoke. I maneuvered closer, hoping I could get into position to catch his attention and have a better line of sight to the activities.
Neither waving nor calling his name accomplished anything, so I pulled out my phone and sent him a text, knowing he would at least glance at it. Sure enough, he lifted his head and ran his eyes over the crowd. I raised my hand. He said something to the EMT, then headed my way.
“Do you have a secret police band radio at home I don’t know about?” he asked when he got close, giving me a small smile.
“Better. Lots of connections.”
“I don’t think I want to know.”
I leaned forward and whispered, “I heard her mouth was slashed.”
He lifted his eyebrows.
“Like Elyse Wright’s?”
He said nothing at first, conscious of the ears around us.
“I can’t confirm any of the details right now,” he said.
Hearing the clack of the g
urney snapping into position, we both turned as the EMTs lifted Skylar’s body and moved her to the waiting ambulance. The slam of the doors and firing of the siren put a hush in the crowd. I felt myself choke up, jolted by the finality of the sound. As the ambulance sped off, I could make out some of the markers the crime scene team had placed around the vehicle and noted their position. A flatbed tow truck would be here later in the day to transport the car for processing.
“Michael, she was also one of Victor Kirkland’s clients. Does she have the same cuts to her mouth?” I asked again, watching his eyes as thoughts shifted in his head.
He looked at me, holding my gaze for a moment, then nodded. “We’ll talk later.”
A cold, harsh wind slapped me in the face as he walked away, and in that instant, I knew the same set of hands had murdered both women.
21
I’d spent hours at the crime scene, pressing anyone I could for additional details. Learning from a chatty neighbor that the victim was thirty-four, a sales rep for a New York-based line of fine jewelry, and traveled the entire Midwest as her territory, selling primarily to boutiques and other small mom-and-pop retailers. She and her husband, Oliver, had been married for about eight years, only two of which sounded happy. They had no children, and she’d filed for divorce nearly a year earlier after finding his cocaine stash and a $10,000 credit card bill for his hooker habit. As a senior VP at a major accounting firm, he was none too happy with the idea that his reputation might be damaged.
Having exhausted the resources at the scene, I was now so cold that my fingers refused to bend and my toes were a vague memory somewhere inside my boots. I returned to my car, cranked the heat up to the highest setting, and turned on the butt warmer. Then I phoned Cai and asked if she could meet me for a late bite to eat. I needed a sane ear to listen to me vent and a steady heart to keep me grounded in reality.
My head was racing. There was no question in my mind that the same person had killed Elyse Wright and Skylar Hayes. Less clear was who and why. The women were linked in two obvious ways: they shared an attorney, and both had husbands who had misbehaved badly. Was it conceivable that the hired killer Gavin Wright had paid to take out his wife had also been hired to kill Hayes? I made a mental note to identify the opposing legal teams in both divorces.
As I drove back to the Gold Coast to meet Cai, I turned over options in my head. If the two murders were committed by the same hired killer, it seemed logical that the men would have had to have known each other and exchanged information. What was this, an Angie’s List for hit men?
Although I was only a few blocks from my apartment, I left my car in a paid lot a block from the restaurant, afraid that one more unnecessary moment out in the cold would lead to frostbite. At three o’clock in the afternoon, Le Colonial, my favorite Vietnamese restaurant, was sparsely populated, and Cai was waiting at a table in the window. Her long dark hair fell loose around her face as she scrolled through her phone.
She stood to give me a hug. “Your cheeks are so red that if I didn’t know better, I’d say you’d gotten sunburn.”
“Careful, I think I could give you frostbite on contact.” I took off my hat and coat but left the scarf wrapped tightly around my neck, grateful to be out of the wind. “I’m frozen to the bone. Thanks for rearranging your day for me.”
A waiter arrived at our table. Cai had already ordered a glass of wine. I asked for a pot of Jasmine tea and told him he could bring me a Cabernet chaser in about ten minutes.
“So what crisis popped up and undid your plans for the day?” Cai asked.
“Another woman has been murdered,” I said, grabbing the handle of the teapot that had just appeared and pouring a cup. “Let me get some of this down. I’ll order soup so I can thaw out, then I’ll tell you all about it.”
I ordered the canh hoanh ton, a seafood dumpling soup, and Cai got the banh cuon, an amazing chicken ravioli appetizer. I wrapped both of my hands around the porcelain cup and took a drink of the tea, feeling the steaming liquid spread warmth through my body. A second sip and I started to feel my hands again.
“So, are you ready to talk? Who was murdered? This is like a movie teaser.”
“Another woman going through a nasty divorce.”
“What? Oh God, that confirms it. I’m never getting married. The benefits don’t outweigh all the icky bits. Let me guess, the husband did it. It’s always the husband.” She pushed up the sleeves on her turtleneck and shook her head.
“I’m not sure yet, but here’s the odd thing. This victim shared a divorce attorney with Elyse Wright.”
Cai crossed her arms on the table, her face registering the questions I was already asking myself. “You think they’re related?”
I shrugged, glanced around for potential eavesdroppers, then leaned in a little closer. “It’s not the only similarity. The killer slashed her mouth.”
“I thought CPD believed Wright hired a hit man, so you’re saying two guys ordered the same hit man who killed these women in the same manner? How could that happen?”
“That’s one possibility. The only other I can think of is that their legal connection is coincidental and there’s some kind of serial killer going after women.” I threw out the theory, but the whole thing seemed too shaky to define yet.
“As ugly as it is, I think I like the first possibility better,” Cai said. “A killer cutting up random women would have the whole city freaked out, me included. What has CPD said about the hit man? They obviously have some kind of evidence that convinces them Gavin Wright had taken steps toward a murder-for-hire. Do they have any handle on this hit man’s identity or confirmation that Wright did anything more than initiate dialogue? I don’t know what the going rate is for wife killing, but fantasizing about it and paying for it are two different things.”
“So far, all I know is that Gavin had an email exchange with someone and that the dialogue was specific enough for CPD to bring him in. Granted, he was out on bond for the embezzlement, so getting him back behind bars wouldn’t take much. I have no idea if they’ve discovered a payment trail. It’s not the kind of thing that will show up on your Amex bill.”
“Sounds to me like you need to work your inside connections a little harder,” Cai said, winking at me.
Too bad it wasn’t that easy.
My phone buzzed. Victor. “Have you learned anything else?” he asked immediately. I’d given him an update while I was still at the scene, but clearly he was just as obsessed with this as I was.
“Nothing I didn’t share with you on our earlier call. I promise to let you know as soon as I hear anything more. Can you send me the names of opposing counsel in both divorce cases?” I asked. “I’m curious about any other connections between the women. Is there anything you can think of? Was Skylar threatened by her husband in any way?”
“I’m afraid my head’s a little fuzzy right now. I’ll need to take another look at the files, but nothing’s coming to mind at the moment. The husbands did not use the same counsel. That I’m certain of. I’ll send you a text later with the names, and I’ll go over their files with a fine-tooth comb. If anything looks unusual, I’ll let you know right away. And you do the same, please.”
“I sure will. Speak to you soon.”
Before I could reach for my wine, a news alert popped up on my phone. I read the brief story and shook my head in disgust. Wanting to be the first out of the gate, the Tribune was reporting the incident as a carjacking, quoting CPD’s press liaison in the process.
“You’re making faces. What is it?”
“For the moment, anyway, it seems CPD is trying to pass this off as a carjacking.”
“Sounds like a great way to make women all over the city terrified to drive alone.”
Ordering second glasses of wine, Cai and I tossed around all the bad divorce stories either one of us had ever heard. It wasn’t fair, but like Cai said, these were the stories that gave marriage a bad name. Once burned, twice shy, but on ridiculous
steroids. Very few divorces devolved to the point of one partner murdering the other, but given the heightened emotion, marital problems were usually law enforcement’s first line of questioning.
Cai and I ended our late lunch just shy of either one of us vowing off relationships forever, said our good-byes, then returned to our respective apartments. I didn’t imagine it had been the most productive conversation for Cai, given the date she had scheduled for later that evening. It wasn’t as if she were going to give up men for the rest of her life, and neither was I, but marriage, that was a story left unwritten. Luckily, neither one of us had to put that thought to the test. Michael’s live-together idea notwithstanding.
Walter was in his usual place just inside the door when I got home. He stretched and yawned, then rubbed against my legs, clearly having spent the day napping.
Despite the tea, the soup, and the wine, I still had a chill I couldn’t shake. Was it the cold or the additional murder? A bath and a quiet evening in front of the fire sounded ideal.
I filled the tub, poured in some Epsom salts, added a few drops of essential oil, and climbed in, allowing the heat to radiate through me while Walter did guard duty. Bathing was a task that both confused and fascinated him. He made a habit of sitting on the ledge, mesmerized as the water shimmered and swirled. I soaked for fifteen minutes, my mind processing unsuccessfully the possible connections between the murders. If not the husbands, then who?
I toweled off before the water got cold, dressed in a sweater and leggings, then lit a fire.
Needing a distraction, I sat on the sofa with my legs up, the latest thriller from my favorite author on the coffee table next to me, but I couldn’t clear my head. What were the odds that two men in the middle of a messy divorce had both hired the same hit man? It wasn’t as if this was the kind of thing you placed a Craigslist ad for. Well, at least not in an obvious way. How would they have found a hit man to hire? The only scenario that made sense was that the husbands had some other connection. I got up from the couch and went to my office, grabbing a legal pad, Post-its, and pens. My technique for problem solving ever since law school had been lists, notes, and what-if scenarios. By writing everything down and organizing my thoughts in some kind of visual manner, I could begin to see patterns.