Shaken (12 page)

24:36:19…24:36:18…

“What happens when this reaches zero?” I asked.

“Don’t ticking clocks just make everything more dramatic?”

“Answer the question, John.”

“Open the envelope, Jack.”

Inside was a color photograph. It showed a boy, Caucasian, perhaps twelve years old. A close-up, his whole face filling the shot. He had brown hair, brown eyes, and looked like a million other kids. His lips were curled up in a small, private smile, as if he had a joke he wanted to tell.

“Who is this?” I asked, staring over at Dalton.

“What would you do, Lieutenant, if you knew how much time you had left? If you knew, to the very second? What would your final thoughts be before saying goodbye?”

I felt myself going from jittery to cold. “What are you telling me?”

“I’m saying that we can only be here for so long. For some, it could be years before we leave. For others, it could be just over twenty-four and a half hours.”

I turned the photo over. On the back, in black marker, was written:

“What have you done here, John?”

“I’m leaving the country tomorrow. There are over one thousand storage facilities in Chicago, and another thousand in the surrounding suburbs. Good hunting, Jack.”

The elevator dinged behind me. Two men in suits got out. I put my hand on my holster.

“Who are these guys, Herb?”

“
Still checking their plates,”
he answered.

I watched the men spot us and begin to walk over. Their suits were tailored, expensive. They didn’t seem to be carrying.

“Are you saying, John, that this child only has twenty-four hours left to live?” I asked, watching the new arrivals.

“My client is saying no such thing,” one of the men said.

“Car belongs to a lawyer, Jack,”
Herb buzzed in my ear.
“Name is Simon Bradstreet.”

I knew of Simon Bradstreet. He defended all the big mobsters in Chicago.

“I invited Mr. Bradstreet here to make sure my rights and personal freedoms weren’t violated,” Dalton said. “The Chicago Police Department has a nasty reputation for coercion. I know you aren’t the type to beat a confession out of a suspect, Lieutenant, but one never knows how do-gooders will react when children are involved.”

“Want me to come up, Jack?”
Herb said.

I thought it through. Dalton hadn’t actually said he’d abducted a child, or that the child was in danger. He’d carefully chosen his words, and he’d recorded our entire exchange. I had no evidence to arrest him, and I couldn’t question him without his consent.

But at the same time, I couldn’t let this bastard leave if he had a child locked in a storage facility somewhere. What I needed was to stall.

“It’s great of you coming out to this part of town at the request of a client,” I said. “But this isn’t the best neighborhood. Both of you are driving such nice cars. I’d hate to see them vandalized. Tires slashed. That sort of thing.”

“Are you threatening to slash our tires?” Bradstreet said. He barked a fake laugh, his chubby face jiggling.

“I’m doing no such thing,” I said, speaking slowly. “And how could I, since I’m here talking to you? All I’m saying is it would be unfortunate if it happened.”

“Are we done here?” Bradstreet said.

“I have a question for your client, before you go.”

“Mr. Dalton isn’t answering any questions.”

“I think he’ll want to answer this one.” I turned to Dalton. “Do you believe in evil, John?”

“I said, Mr. Dalton is not—”

Dalton held up his hand, shushing his lawyer. “Evil, Jack? In what sense do you mean?”

“I had this question posed to me years ago, when I was a cadet. Which is true evil? Someone who enjoys committing evil acts? Or someone who commits evil acts for monetary gain?”

Dalton made a steeple out of his fingers. “Let me tell you a story. About two men. They both worked for…let’s call it a company. One of these men enjoyed committing evil acts. He enjoyed it a great deal. So much so that the only way to ever stop him from doing it was to put him away forever, or kill him. The other man, he learned early in life that killing was something he was good at. But he never had any passion for it. In fact, he never had much passion for anything. This lack of emotion, however, made him very good at what he did. Smart. Careful. Deliberate. Because he knew that once emotion got involved, mistakes could be made.”

“What happened to these two men?” I asked.

“You know what happened to the first one. As for the second one, we won’t truly know what happens for at least twenty-four more hours.”

He turned to leave. “But which one is more evil, John?”

Dalton glanced at me over his shoulder. “There’s no good or evil, Jack. Each of us is the hero in the movie of our life. The only difference is that some of us are better at justifying our actions to ourselves, while others beat themselves up for every mistake they make.”

The trio walked away. And there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it.

Present day

2010, August 10

H
e stares at the iPhone screen. It’s much easier to see Jack Daniels now that the lights are on. That green night vision was blurry and didn’t allow for much detail.

But now, the details are perfect. Crystal clear. He even has controls to zoom in. To pan. To tilt. It’s amazing how far technology has come, and it’s thrilling for him to see this woman, his nemesis, bound and gagged and waiting for the pain to begin.

She’s sleeping. Or pretending to.

Rest now,
he thinks.
Enjoy unconsciousness while you can, whore.

Then he slips his hand inside his underwear and watches, a line of drool dripping down his chin, waiting for Jack to wake up.

Twenty-one years ago

1989, August 16

“J
ack?”

“Alan!” I quickly pulled away from Shell, wondering if my boyfriend had seen us kissing. “Hi!”

Alan’s face screwed up in confusion. He wore the standard Alan outfit: acid-washed jeans, a blue iZod shirt, the pennies in his loafers nice and coppery bright. His thick, wavy blond hair was long in the back, the bangs short and hugging his tan forehead. In his hand he had a dozen roses, which made me feel positively awful.

“Did I…come at…a bad time?” Alan said, sizing up Shell.

“Is this your boyfriend?”

Shell asked.

“Uh, yeah.”

Shell put on a big smile and stuck out his hand, walking over to Alan. “Pleased to meet you, Alan. Shell Compton. Officer Streng is going to be working undercover in my business.”

Alan shook Shell’s hand, but he looked somewhere between wary and angry. “And by undercover, you mean she has to have her shirt off?”

I looked down at my blouse. I’d undone the first three buttons, and somehow Shell had managed to remove the last few. I buttoned up, wondering how in the hell I was going to explain this.

“I run an escort service,” Shell said. “Someone is murdering my girls. Officer Streng is going to pretend to work for me, to try to find the killer. I needed to take some sexy pics of her for her portfolio. That’s how my clients pick their dates.”

“Three women have died so far,” I quickly added. “The files are on the kitchen counter.”

“I see,” Alan said, though he didn’t sound very convinced.

“Are we done?” I asked Shell, though it was more a statement than a question.

“Yeah. Let me pack up my lights and—”

“I can do it and bring them tomorrow morning.”

Shell nodded. “Sure thing. See you later. Good meeting you, Alan.” Shell stepped around him, then let himself out.

“That was weird,” Alan said. “Nothing like walking in on your girlfriend with another guy and her shirt off.”

“My shirt was on,” I said. “It was just open. Are those for me?”

Alan held out the flowers. I took the bouquet, gave it the perfunctory sniff, and engaged in an awkward hug with my boyfriend. I still was jittery from the shock of him showing up and surprising me, and wasn’t sure what I was actually feeling. After all, Alan had never said
I love you
, and he’d completely forgotten my birthday.

“Happy birthday,” Alan said. “I love you.”

Whoa. He loved me? How was I supposed to respond to that? Say it back? Did I even want to?

Instead of responding in kind, I held Alan at an arm’s length and searched his eyes. “My, uh, birthday was yesterday.”

“You’re kidding, right?” Alan said. “I wrote it down. It was this Tuesday.”

“Today is Wednesday.”

His face pinched. “Oh, geez, Jacqueline. I’m so sorry.”

“It’s okay,” I said, even though it really wasn’t. “At least now I know why you didn’t call.”

“Did you do anything special at least?”

“I did a prostitution sting and found a dismembered woman in a Dumpster.”

“Fun. Was there birthday cake?”

I smiled, relaxing a notch. “No, there wasn’t.”

“I missed you.”

“Missed you, too.”

But did I? If I really did miss Alan, why was I playing tonsil tennis with some other guy?

“I know I’ve been kind of…distant…lately,” he said, hooding his eyes. “The fact is, I’ve been thinking a lot. About us.”

“And what have you been thinking about?”

Alan crouched down, like he was tying his shoe.

But he wasn’t tying his shoe.

He was kneeling.

And he had a small, black box in his hand.

“I’ve been looking a long time for a woman like you, Jacqueline. I love being with you, and when we’re apart, I think about you.”

Oh my God. Oh my God oh my God oh my God. He was—

“Jacqueline Streng.” Alan opened up the tiny box and took out the gold ring with the diamond in it. “Would you make me the happiest guy in the world and marry me?”

Present day

2010, August 10

I
was having a horrible nightmare where I was tied up and someone was going to torture me to death. So there was no feeling of relief when I woke up and realized I was tied up and someone was going to torture me to death.

The Catherine Wheel, with its horrible Guinea Worm attachment, whirred in my vision, and next to it the digital clock continued its countdown.

1:40:26…1:40:25…1:40:24…

It reminded me of a case I had a few years ago. Another countdown, on a digital watch.

I hoped this one would end better than that one had.

My brain was still fuzzy, and I couldn’t remember what had led up to this point. I also had no idea how I’d get out of this. If I didn’t know where I was, how could anyone else?

I scooted backward, peering behind me, eyeing the concrete block I was tethered to. Then I looked at my burning wrists. There was blood, but not as much as I’d expected, and the pain was far out of proportion with the actual damage. The wounds were no more than bad scrapes, but the glistening salt crystals made every millimeter of exposed flesh scream.

Unfortunately, the damage I’d done to the rope was even less impressive than the damage I’d done to myself. For all of my hard work, the nylon cord was barely frayed.

But seeing the Catherine Wheel had steeled my resolve. If I had to saw off both of my hands to get free, I would.

I closed my eyes and began to rub the rope against the corner of the block, whimpering in my throat, biting the ball gag so hard my jaw trembled.

Three years ago

2007, August 8

I
hung up my cell phone and watched the cab pull up. Dalton and his associates climbed in. Good old Herb had slashed the tires of Dalton’s Caddy and the Benz, based on my not-so-subtle suggestion, in an effort to keep them on the scene and buy some time while I called Libby Hellmann, the state’s attorney.

Our efforts had bought us five minutes, and they were for naught. Hellmann had agreed with my original assessment; we had absolutely no evidence, and no probable cause, which meant we couldn’t get paper on Dalton. No search warrant. No arrest.

Deep down, I knew Dalton had a child in a storage locker somewhere. A child who was running out of time. And there wasn’t anything I could do. Even if I’d tried the loose-wire/vigilante-cop route and attempted to beat a confession out of Dalton, his lawyers showing up had squelched that plan. Not that it was ever a plan to begin with. I was pragmatic about following rules when confronted by a greater good, but unlike Mr. K I had no stomach for hurting people.

The only minor victory we scored was the look on the lawyer’s face when he saw the flat tires. When he went up to Herb, spouting off about suing and calling superiors, my partner told them a story about a roving band of tire-slashing thugs who had a vendetta against luxury cars, which was why my Nova was spared. When asked why he didn’t do anything to stop it, Herb replied, “I asked my lawyer, and he advised me not to.”

I truly did love the man, in that brotherly/sisterly way.

“Follow the cab?” he asked. “Or break into his car?”