Stirred (4 page)

“How do you know it’s Luther Kite?”

Silence.

“Herb? You there?”

“He…uh…Luther left something. Something with your name on it. You really don’t need to come here. I’ll drop by your place when I’m finished.”

“See you in ten.”

I pressed the end call button.

A vehicle pulled up alongside me—Phin in his new Ford Bronco.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “Need a ride?”

I put my hands on my ever-expanding hips. “Will you take me to the crime scene? Or are you going to try to control me again?”

“I think I can restrain myself.”

I was still ticked-off at Phin, but the alternative was riding with McGlade. Being stuck in a car with Harry McGlade was slightly less pleasant than having cavities drilled.

“Okay. Hold on.” I returned the phone to Harry and told him where we were headed.

He frowned. “You sure you want to do this, in your condition?”

“I’m pregnant, McGlade, not helpless.”

“What about your precognition disease?”

“It’s preeclampsia.”

“For some reason I knew you were going to say that.”

I sighed. “That’s precognition.”

“I thought you said it was preeclampsia.”

“It is. You’re the one with precognition if you knew what I was going to say.”

He shrugged. “I probably picked it up from some call girl. I should have seen that coming.”

It was always a puzzler whether McGlade just liked to mess with people’s heads, or if he truly was that stupid. I voted for stupid.

“You’re stupid,” I told him.

“And you’re huge. I can actually feel the pull from your gravity. Shouldn’t you be home in bed letting things orbit you?”

I frowned. “I’ll still have preeclampsia whether Luther Kite is on the loose or not. I’d prefer for him to be out of the picture.”

“Okay. Lemme beat the Dice level on TowerMadness and I’ll meet you there. Shouldn’t be more than twenty minutes.”

My crazy preggo eyes bored into him.

“Kidding,” he said. “I’m on my way.”

I hoofed it back to the Bronco, and Phin and I drove in a strained silence to the police blockade on Kinzie—six black-and-whites, lights flashing. A traffic cop tried to wave us past, but I spotted a tall guy I knew standing among the uniforms.

“I’ll get out here,” I told Phin.

His mouth became a tight line. “I don’t like you being out of my sight.”

“They won’t let you on scene.”

“Why are they letting
you
on scene? You aren’t a cop anymore.”

“I have friends in high places. Besides, the Chicago Police Department owes me.”

He continued to give me a pained look. “You know how worried I am about you?”

“There are two dozen cops here,” I said. “I’ll be fine.”

“That’s not what I’m worried about, Jack. The doctor said—”

“It was just one seizure, Phin. You’re overreacting.”

His eyes went hard. “Overreacting? He was talking about the possibility of your liver rupturing. Kidney failure.”

“The odds are against it.”

“Coma.”

“Not going to happen.”

“Death, Jack. You
and
the baby.”

“No one is going to die,” I said. This worrywart, sentimental side to Phin was off-putting. I preferred the guy who beat up gangbangers and stole cars.

“Jack…”

“Just give me my phone.”

Reluctantly, he reached into the diaper bag, and I spotted another bag of chips. I was tempted to ask for those as well, but managed to control the craving. Besides, eating chips at a murder scene was probably bad taste, no matter how delicious they were and how much every cell in my body screamed for them.

Pregnancy sucked.

“Be back in ten minutes,” I said, and then exited the vehicle and walked into the fray.

One of the uniforms stopped me, and I asked him to get
Detective Tom Mankowski
. After a brief exchange, the tall guy sauntered over, his face breaking into a smile when he saw me. He had longish hair, a strong nose and chin, and in profile bore a striking resemblance to Thomas Jefferson on the nickel.

“Hey, Lieut. Congrats on the baby.”

“Thanks, Tom. And you don’t have to call me Lieut anymore.”

He grinned. “Old habits. You want to take the tour? They already cut the body down.”

“From where?”

He pointed to the Kinzie Street railroad bridge, jutting over a hundred feet into the air at a forty-five degree angle, just one more architectural erection in a city filled with them. The rusted bridge had been locked into a permanent raised position years ago, when it fell out of use. Constructed of crisscrossing girders, it shared the same antique, utilitarian look as the Eiffel Tower. Tom was pointing to the bridge’s midsection, where I saw a length of rope dangling down into the river below. Beneath the bridge, on a wooden walkway, I spotted several paramedics and the obligatory sheet-covered body. Behind them, in the parking lot of the
Chicago Sun-Times
building, media vans and reporters had gathered behind yellow crime scene tape.

Tom led me through the chaos, down some concrete steps, and over to the body. It was windier, and a good five degrees cooler, on the pier. A river smell—partly water, partly muck—wafted up at me. My old partner and good friend, Sergeant Herb Benedict, was leaning against one of the bridge supports. He wore a gray, off-the-rack Sears suit, a tie too wide by several decades, and a large mustard stain on his lapel. When he saw me, his walrus mustache turned down.

“Damn it, Jack. You shouldn’t be here.”

“Time of death?” I asked.

Herb sighed. “ME says between two and three
A.M.
”

I looked around, didn’t see the medical examiner.

“Where’s Hughes?”

“Getting coffee. Jack, you really should—”

“Don’t start, Herb.” I clasped my hands, discreetly rubbing away the pins-and-needles sensation that had begun during my walk over. “How was she hung up there?”

“By her wrists. Rock-climbing rope, looped over one of the girders.”

“Traceable?”

“We’re checking it out. But probably not. You can buy parachute line anywhere. I got some on Amazon.com that I use for shoelaces. Unbreakable.”

I peered up into the gray, overcast sky, drizzle speckling my face, squinting at the underside of the bridge. “How far up?”

“About forty feet.”

It was too steep to climb. “Grappling hook?” I asked.

Tom shook his head. “Implausible.”

“How do you know?” I asked.

“They tried it on that show,
Mythbusters
. Can’t throw one more than twenty feet high.”

“So how’d he get the rope up there?” Herb asked.

While they looked up, I looked down, searching the scarred, wooden dock. After ten seconds, I bent over, spotting something that looked like a gray stone.

“Got your gloves on?” I asked Tom. “And a bag?”

Tom fished out a pair of latex gloves and snapped them on. Herb provided him with a plastic evidence bag. Tom nudged the lead weight inside, using a knuckle. It was teardrop shaped, about the size of a walnut, weighing several ounces. On the end, a brass clip, with a bit of monofilament knotted on.

“Fishing sinker,” Herb said.

Tom nodded, getting it. “Tied to a thirty-pound test line. He threw it up there, hooked it around a support beam, then tied it to the rope and pulled it up.”

“Threw it,” I said. “Or cast the weight with a pole.”

“Think he talked the vic into coming down here to do a little night fishing?”

I shook my head. “Not with a hundred feet of climbing rope wrapped around his chest.” I stared back at the reporters. “Does the
Sun-Times
monitor its parking lot at night?”

“They’ve got a watchman,” Herb said. “No cameras.”

“Killer probably parked there, had his gear in the trunk. Or he had it waiting for him on the scene when he arrived with the vic. You check the walkway with an alternate light source?”

Herb nodded. “No blood.”

I clucked my tongue, thinking. “So he lured her down here, or brought her down unconscious, and killed her on the spot. Fingernails?”

“Clean,” Herb said.

Often victims would scratch their attackers, giving us DNA evidence. Clean nails meant the murderer had been in control for the duration of the crime.

I eyed the climbing rope swaying in the breeze. Trying to haul up a body attached to one end would have required a great deal of physical strength and effort. Or…

I spotted the other end of the rope, wound around the railing near the stairs. “Ask the watchman if he saw any trucks or vans with a trailer hitch. I bet he tied the other end to his vehicle, pulled the vic up by towing her.”

Now to the part I’d been dreading. I turned my attention to the body under the bloody sheet. “We have an ID?”

“Jack.” The tone in Herb’s voice wasn’t a warning. He was pleading with me not to continue.

“ID?” I repeated.

He sighed. “Purse was on her. Jessica Shedd. Lives in Wrigleyville.”

“Cause of death?”

“Hypovolemia.”

Blood loss. I felt the baby kick, or maybe it was my stomach doing flips. Much as I didn’t want to view the victim, I asked Tom to lift up a corner of the sheet. Since I was a civilian and couldn’t interfere with the chain of evidence, I might mess up the prosecutor’s case if I touched anything.

Tom complied, and I forced myself to remain detached.

“Jogger spotted her this morning at dawn, called it in. When I got on scene, I thought she had some extra ropes hanging from her. But they weren’t ropes…”

Herb’s voice trailed off, and I tried not to look at the loops of intestines snaking out all over the dock. She was naked, on her side, her wrists bound together with plastic zip line. I focused on her face. Eyes wide. Mouth hidden under a strip of duct tape. I backed away, the stench commingling with the rank smell of the river.

I took out my iPhone.

“Sorry, Jessica,” I whispered, taking a few pictures. Then I turned to Herb. “You said the killer left me something.”

“It’s still, uh, in her…”

Herb glanced down, and I forced myself to stare at her slit-open belly.

It had been partially buried in the offal—a paperback book in a zippered plastic bag, so covered with blood that it almost looked like another organ.

I squatted, holding my breath, squinting through the gore.

Written on the bag in permanent black marker:

JACK D—THIS ONE WAS A REAL SWINGER—LK

Herb took some pictures. Tom knelt beside me and tried to lift the book, but met resistance.

“It’s wired to her ribs,” he said, his expression a mixture of revulsion and anger.

It took a few minutes to locate a pair of wire cutters, and the paramedics did the job while I stared out over the river, rubbing my belly, thinking back to my last encounter with Luther. Remembering the promise he’d made me.

“I’ll be seeing you. Soon.”

I shivered, suddenly very cold. Herb stood beside me.

“Did Phin and Harry talk to you about Lake Geneva?” he asked.

“Lake Geneva? In Wisconsin? Why?”

“There’s a spa there, specifically for pregnant women. We were all thinking…maybe it would be a good idea for you to take it easy these next few weeks. Get out of town.”

“My doctor is here in Chicago.”

“The spa has some of the best doctors in the state, Jack.”

I eyed my friend, saw true concern on his chubby features. “If I ran away every time some lunatic made me a target…”

“She was alive, Jack. When Luther hauled her up. Hughes says she could have been struggling for a few minutes, maybe even half an hour. It looks like raw butchery, but there was actually a lot of skill involved. She didn’t die right away.”

I wiggled my toes, which felt like they’d fallen asleep.

“I quit the force to get away from all of this,” I said softly.

“I know. Hopefully this will be the last one.”

“Yeah. Hopefully.”

“So, Geneva…”

I shook my head, willing my strength to return. “While it’s flattering to have the three of you try to decide my fate, I’ll pass. And I kindly caution you not to do anything like that ever—”

“Enough,” Herb said.

I turned to him, surprised by the anger in his voice.

“You’ve been playing this macho mother bullshit for too long, Jack. We’re trying to help you, and you’re fighting us every step of the way. You
cannot
do this alone. All you’re accomplishing is hurting yourself and the people who care about you.”

I was unsure of how to answer. Herb and I rarely fought about anything, and him scolding me like that left me at a loss for words.

“Got it!” We turned to look at Tom, who was holding up a paperback book like a trophy. He eased it out of the bloody bag.

“
The Scorcher
, an
Andrew Z. Thomas
Thriller,” he read off the garish cover, which depicted the face of a demented man grinning while holding up a lighter.

“Thomas?” Herb said. “He was that infamous writer. Allegedly killed a bunch of people and then vanished.”

“I read this one,” Tom said, tapping the book’s spine. “A pyro is setting all of these people on fire. Got this one scene where the bad guy fills one of his victims with lighter fluid by sticking a hose down his throat. Then throws lit matches into his open mouth until he ignites.”

“Nice,” I said, wondering what sort of warped mind could think up something like that. I’d hate to meet one of those thriller writers in person.

“It was actually pretty good,” Tom said, apparently sensing my distaste. “Held back on the really gross stuff. Sort of like Stephen King–lite.”

“Check if anything is inside,” I told him.

Tom flipped through the book, found a dog-eared page around the midpoint.

Chapter thirty-one, page 102.

Strangely, the letter
p
in the word
cops
had been circled.

I gave it a quick scan.

The Scorcher ~ Andrew Z. Thomas

The cops were everywhere. Sizzle could see the lights from the pigs’ cars flashing through the windows. They had the warehouse surrounded, their pig-voices blaring through the bull-horns, ordering him to come outside, to surrender.