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“You lied to us,” Foster said. “Your pickup from Teddy’s can only vouch for you until about ten thirty Sunday night. What’d you do after she left? Where’d you go? And if you don’t have anything to hide, why are we looking at you with dyed hair, a shaved chin, and a train ticket in your pocket?”
Rimmer’s eyes rabbited around the room. He began to bounce in his chair like he had to pee. “Okay, look, I lied about the woman, but I didn’t want you thinking I did something when I didn’t. I know how it looks, me breaking up with Peg, her ending up dead, but you got the wrong guy. I figured I’d head out of town and give you cops a chance to do some work for once and find that out for yourselves.” He looked over at Li, whose face gave nothing away. Foster watched as his Adam’s apple slid up and down on his throat. “No offense,” he added.
“That’s the dumbest move I’ve ever heard of,” Li said.
Rimmer dropped his head to the table, his forehead to the metal top. “I know this looks bad. You don’t think I know it’s bad?” He lifted his head up. “But it’s not me. It looks like it could be me, but I swear, I left that bar and never went back. You got a Bible? Bring it in here. I’ll swear up and down on it all day.”
Li laid a photo array of young women on the table, Mallory Rea’s driver’s license photo included. “You recognize any of these women?”
Rimmer took a look. “I have never laid eyes on any of them in my life.” He gave them the three-fingered scout sign. “Swear to all the gods—Buddha, Jehovah, Raijin—”
“Where did you go after your date left?” Li asked. “And before you lie, know that we’ve got video of you walking out of your place right after she ditched you. Street cameras.” Foster slid Li a look. She knew of no such video.
Rimmer let out a frustrated growl. He was cornered, caught. He bounced more. “Weed. All right? I was selling weed. I’ve got a side hustle, okay? After what’s-her-name left, I got on it. And it wasn’t like I could cop to that, could I? I don’t exactly look like a dispensary, do I?”
“Where were you selling?” Foster asked.
He shook his head emphatically. “No way. Far as I go on that.”
“Would you rather get dinged for the weed or as a possible suspect in a homicide?” Foster asked.
Li leaned forward, whispering across the table. “Be smart. Go for the weed.”
“Another reason I was skipping town. Exactly this. You guys get a sniff of something and latch on like leeches. I figured the train station was safe; I mean, who hangs out at the train station?” He rolled his eyes. “The one time one of you is not somewhere eating a cruller.”
“We’re going to need the name of your weed guy,” Foster said. “And anyone else who can place you.”
“Or?” Rimmer asked, his eyes moving from Li’s to Foster’s.
Foster flipped the page in her notebook. “Your date said you made an interesting comment about her hair. She said you twisted it, caressed it, and remarked that you wished it were red instead of blonde. Red, like Peggy’s. Odd thing to say.”
“Really odd,” Li said.
“I sold a couple of bags to Monk in the cemetery on Irving Park Road,” he blurted out. “Around eleven. Then I went back home. When I heard about the second girl, I knew I’d be the one you guys would be looking for, so I knew I had to bounce. My buddy Blake cut my hair, his girl Caroline helped me dye it, and I made for the station. I figured you guys would be too busy to check, right? Bigger fish and all that?”
Foster slid over a legal pad and pen for Rimmer. “Write down their full names, addresses, and phone numbers, please.”
“Even Monk’s?”
Foster let a beat pass. “Especially Monk’s.”
Li sat stone faced, watching Rimmer sweat and wrestle with his predicament. Rimmer flicked her a look every second or two. “What’s wrong with her?” he asked Foster.
Foster looked over at Li, then turned to smile at Rimmer. “Nothing. Names, addresses, and telephone numbers.”
They needed the rest of the afternoon to confirm it all, but the info checked out—the haircut, the dyeing, even the Sunday-night weed selling. Joe Rimmer was an infant in a man’s body, a weed pusher, a lousy boyfriend, a disappointing lay, but he couldn’t have killed Peggy, and they didn’t yet know enough about Rea to push him on that. As Foster suspected, Li’s mention of the video had been a ruse to get Rimmer talking. He’d also agreed to a DNA swab before they let him go, so at least they had that if they needed to match it to any physical evidence left behind on Rea. It was the best they could do.
Li looked up from her computer at 9:00 p.m., well past end of shift. “That’s it. My eyes are crossing. I’m going home to kiss my baby.” She stood, stretched. “Before he forgets what I look like and starts calling someone else Mama.”
Foster checked her watch. She hadn’t realized it was so late. She’d eaten nothing but frustration and a McDonald’s side salad all evening. “See you in the morning.”
Li slipped on her jacket. “What about you? There’s nothing else we can do tonight.”
“I won’t be much longer,” Foster said.
Li hesitated. “Okay, then. Mañana.”
Foster watched her go. “Right.”
CHAPTER 32
The lights were on in the loft apartment. The windows were hers. It was late but not too late. A little after ten. Why were all the lights on? Why wasn’t she asleep in bed? She was an adult, of course, no longer a child, so bedtimes were long ago a thing of the past. Still. The trees across the street provided good cover, though the bench was hard and cold on a cool, crisp night. It was easy enough to sit and wait and watch her pass back and forth in front of the windows, not knowing anyone was watching. Maybe she was expecting company? That would be interesting. Maybe she was worrying a problem and couldn’t sleep, pacing the floor hoping to find a solution.
How alive she was, how striking. An artist. Of course. The creative mind was truly a marvel. To have in one’s nature and in one’s very bones the conjurer’s art of transformation, the ability to cobble beauty from nothing or turn light to dark or the reverse.
Art was humanity in reflection. It was invention and God spark, both expression and divination. Was she thinking about these things now? Had she ever thought about the origins of her strength? About how deep the power to transform ran and how far it could go? There was an indomitability in sea change and mightiness in a creator’s hand. Did she know this yet? Sense it?
The lights flicked off. The windows went dark. Bed, or . . . ? No. Amelia emerged from the building moments later dressed in a leather moto jacket and tight jeans. Art in motion. She slid into a sleek silver convertible parked at the curb. It suited her. Like a modern-day Argo sailing off toward adventure and glory. Pleasing. Truly. She revved the engine, checked herself in the rearview, and sped away. Where was she off to, this goddess, this Diana, this originator? This learner, this tyro.
A slow whistling started, unhurried, unfazed. It echoed in the still night. Someone to watch over me. Fitting. An inside joke. There was time yet. All the pieces weren’t yet assembled but soon would be. Everything had its season. Turn, turn, turn. No need to rush.
CHAPTER 33
She’d meant to only drive around, get some air, feed her soul, but she’d somehow ended up in front of Bodie’s apartment watching the sleeping block as though it were a job she was being paid for, as though she alone were responsible for all the messed-up lives sleeping in the city, not just her brother’s. As though she alone were the sentinel, the one who kept the brakes on.
When she went out, it was to cleanse her palate, to invigorate her mind, to stimulate her so that she could paint and, by painting, move the world around. Despite what Bodie had told her, she knew that peace and quiet were not what brought him out at night. Bodie didn’t get things right. He was like a pair of mismatched shoes or a wrong-way driver on the interstate. Odd. Out of sync.
Amelia parked across the street and waited without a single guarantee that Bodie would venture out. She could just go up and ring his bell, and they could talk, but she knew Bodie would lie, and she knew she would let him because Bodie needed those lies to live.
Eleven thirty p.m. That was when he walked out of the building and turned east toward Lincoln Park. It would be empty this time of night, Amelia knew, which she supposed was why Bodie chose it. She slipped out of the car and followed at a distance, across the street, head down, collar up, with an itch of eagerness and a fair share of apprehension coursing through her.
She’d followed Bodie before. Bodie had been her job for as long as she could remember, even when he ventured far away and bounced back again, and now, after the girls, the roof, and Westhaven. After the death of that young woman on the Riverwalk.
He always headed toward the park. Some nights he stayed in, but there weren’t too many of those. Bodie was a creature of habit. He liked routine, predictability, structure, which she’d always thought made him a prime candidate for institutionalization, though once there, he rebelled against the confinement. Odd. He was like a restless cat, always caught on the wrong side of a door. Amelia chalked it up to a wide streak of Morgan disquiet, inherited from their father, a complicated man—an unsolved puzzle, she suspected, even to himself. And as far as inheritances were concerned, well, disquiet was the lesser of evils.
She lasered in on Bodie’s back as he turned onto Cannon Drive and passed under the stone arch of the Grant Monument, good old Ulysses sitting atop his horse, the moon shining down on the weathered bronze. A few late-night dog walkers passed, pulling scrawny rescues along behind them, their phones in hand, texting or watching videos, oblivious to everyone around them.
The monument was as far as she knew she could safely go. If she followed him onto the pedestrian path, he’d surely look back and see her. But she knew his route and knew he’d be back this way, so she picked a bench off the path, behind a tree, and she waited, burrowed into her jacket. The temperature was dropping, and the lake nearby smelled like a wet dog, but the gentle whoosh of the water, a dark, undulating void from where she sat, lulled her into an almost Zen-like state. Forty minutes. That was how long Bodie would take. It wasn’t the walk that worried her so much; it was what came after.
She drew back when she heard footsteps approaching from the path. It was Bodie, and it was too soon, barely a half hour since he’d disappeared down the path. She watched from behind the tree as he moved past her, then watched as he stopped in his tracks a good distance from her and just stood there, his hands in his pockets, his chin up, face toward the moon. What was he doing? It wasn’t until he began walking again that she allowed herself to breathe. Discovered? Did he somehow know she was there?
She gave him an extra-long lead, then crossed the street and followed him back, tracking him all the way to the bars along Lincoln Avenue, watching as he slipped into one under blinking neon lights. He chose a different one each night. This one was just a block north of his apartment. This was how he had gotten into trouble before. Amelia knew that he would emerge near closing with a woman on his arm. A last-call consolation who’d walk back to his place on liquored-up legs. It shouldn’t have been her business, but it was. Amelia was in no position even to judge, seeing as she and Bodie shared the same predilection.
But her brother always took things too far.
She waited across the street, keeping an eye on the door of the bar for Bodie and his date, watching the street as hip bar hoppers in their messy twenties strolled the sidewalk or swayed at the curb waiting for Ubers. Why had Bodie stopped back there on the path? He’d never done that before.
She had an hour to think about it, tucked into the littered doorway of a closed shoe-repair shop, before Bodie reappeared with a young woman, far younger, she noted, than he was. Thin, tipsy, not drunk. She flitted around him like a firefly kissing the flames of a campfire. She appeared up for a good time. A pink feather boa fluttered in the night air as she pulled her coat tight and her floppy hat down, very Janis Joplin–esque.
They started walking toward Bodie’s place. Amelia followed. She followed them all the way back and waited until they went inside, then hung around until the lights flicked on in his apartment, then went out in the bedroom. A glance at her watch. Just a little after one.
She was cold, damp, and so she called it, confident that Bodie would stay put for a while. There was a bar she knew, one that was open until 4:00 a.m., so she headed there. She wasn’t seeking company, though she wouldn’t turn it away if she found it. Amelia needed inspiration to feed her artistic nature. She needed life.
CHAPTER 34
Dr. Mariana Silva couldn’t sleep. She hadn’t slept a single night through since Bodie Morgan had walked out of Westhaven and away from her three days ago. Truthfully, she hadn’t had an untortured night for years, her mind too busy to shut off, vengefulness and a sense of urgency feeding the fire in her belly. How dare they? She had been the best in her field, the leading authority. Years of study, years of sacrifice and dedication, and it was gone, important doors closed in her face, like she was no one.
She paced the floors of her home office, her curtains opened to the middle of the night, an entire city beyond her windows, not caring if she lived or died. She was the best. Her research on psychopathy, her findings, were being taught in medical schools all over the world, but here she was. Stuck at insignificant Westhaven, a hellhole far beneath her, unworthy of her talents. They said she’d breached protocol, overstepped her bounds, gone way too far. They were wrong. She hadn’t gone far enough. She’d been on the brink, the very precipice of a breakthrough, only to have everything blow up in her face. Colleagues she respected suddenly refused to acknowledge her, and she discovered that she had no friends. She’d given everything to the advancement of science, and it had given her destruction in return.
But she had a plan. A book. Something to prove that Dr. Mariana Silva was still a force to be reckoned with. Her book on antisocial personality disorders with case studies highlighted to prove her theories would transform the psychiatric field and return her to her rightful place. And when she got there, when she was back, there would be hell to pay for those who’d cast her out.
The book was where Bodie Morgan came in. She had known him the moment he’d sat down across from her in their first session at Westhaven. She was enthralled by his brokenness and hungry to plumb its depths. He sought out women, coveted them, yet feared them. Silva found the broken a complex wonder, an intriguing excavation project, one she’d chosen over a personal life of her own. What could a husband and children give her that picking through a twisted mind could not?
Stravinsky wafted out of her stereo speakers as she stared out her window at the Chicago skyline and the desolate ribbon of Lake Shore Drive lit up below. Even this city didn’t deserve her. She was languishing here, dying on the vine, treating mild depressives and bipolars when she was made for much, much more. But the book and Bodie Morgan were her ticket out. All she needed was a plan, a way forward.
She could think of little else but that bogus childhood he’d tried to sell her. He an only child growing up with doting, loving parents on a quiet farm somewhere in Indiana. The two long years at university before striking out on his own. She chuckled unpleasantly now as she recalled it. Oh, it was stress, he’d said, that had driven him to the roof of his building, loneliness that led him to follow those women. Who did he think he was talking to? She sipped her wine, drew the curtains. He thought her a fool, just some hack at an insignificant hospital who couldn’t see what was right in front of her. That’s why she’d authorized that day pass. It was an experiment. She wanted to see how angry he got, how frustrated, at having a taste of freedom, only to have it yanked away and then quickly restored. Delayed gratification. Stress. Manipulation.
She turned from the window, set her glass on her desk, and pulled back the panels that covered a wide, tall corkboard. Quietly, she lifted a pair of scissors from her desk, picked up the morning’s paper, and cut out the article on Mallory Rea’s murder. Carefully, she cut around the photo of the lovely young woman who’d been found on Lower Wacker, not far from the first woman, Peggy Birch, the one with the pretty red hair.
How their mothers must be suffering, she thought as she worked the scissors around the two-column piece on the front page. Two deaths. Two young women. Few details, but she didn’t really need them. The moment she’d seen Peggy Birch’s photograph, she’d known. Such a pretty girl. The kind Bodie was drawn to, the type he preferred. The second woman didn’t fit. Silva stared at her photo, the brown hair, the blue eyes. What had drawn him to her? It was likely even he didn’t know. She would get the answer, though, when she had him back.
She used pushpins to tack the article on Rea up on the corkboard. The photo she’d secretly taken of Bodie Morgan was pinned next to it, along with an index card with his address. That would be her next move, an in-person appeal, an earnest offer of help. When she had him, she would study him, use him, help him, for science and for herself.
Stepping back to study the board, she took it all in, the drama shaping up before her. The articles on Birch and Rea were pinned by red pushpins. The locations where they’d been found were pinned by blue pins. Cop blue. She thought it fitting. Her head angled as she stared at the black-and-white photo of the female detective caught sweeping past the cameras and reporters at one of the murder scenes. Identified as Detective Harriet Foster, she was one of the lead investigators on the cases. Was she up to it? Silva wondered. She looked serious enough, determined, but she was up against a predator, and that required an extra gear. She searched for signs, tells, that Foster had that extra gear, but she wouldn’t know until she looked directly into her eyes, until she could see what she was made of. That was Silva’s talent, her calling.
