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“Detective Harriet Foster,” she muttered, “I can’t wait to meet you.”
CHAPTER 35
It was close to 2:00 a.m., and Foster should have gone home, but instead she walked along the Riverwalk listening to the city breathe and groan, whistle and sigh. Down here by the water, now that the frenzy of tourists and joggers and lookie-loos had gone, the quiet canyon of glass and steel was peaceful, the buildings and skyscrapers ringed around it steady watchers, lighted guardians as imposing as any rock formation.
She could see Teddy’s across the water, with its exterior lights on but closed for business. There was no one walking with her, no one else on the Riverwalk. She doubted it would have been any different at the same time on Sunday night as Peggy Birch had lain slaughtered and Keith Ainsley had slept. Peggy had come down here with someone. She’d walked down those steps of her own volition. It wasn’t Rimmer or Stroman, Dean or Keith Ainsley. On the video, she hadn’t appeared distressed; that dark figure hadn’t clutched her by the arm. Foster stopped and turned slowly in a circle. “Why here?”
Foster glanced at the decorative trees and the puny bushes where Peggy had been discovered. No clothes. Her backpack floating. No cell phone. Leaves. The sound of Foster’s hard-sole shoes echoed on the path as she made her way east toward the marina, smelling of wet earth and algae, the hint of rotten eggs more pungent here than it would be at street level. The lake.
Nothing at the marina but boats and more paths heading south. Plenty of places for Keith and his friends to party, though, on the lawn, at tables by the outdoor café, on benches. She wondered how often patrols came through. Had anyone rousted the group from the spot Sunday night? She’d have to check. She’d also check the marina cameras. Thai food. Peggy’s last meal. That needed a follow-up.
The dark figure. She was tired of referring to him that way. He’d been careful, hadn’t he? His head was always turned away from the cameras as though he knew where they were and how much they would capture. It also looked as though he’d made every attempt possible to stay just out of the full light of the streetlamps. They had approximate height and body type. And the duffel. Did it contain a change of clothes? The knife? Would it have been used to carry Peggy’s clothes, phone, and laptop away? Yet he’d thrown away the backpack with her ID in it. He hadn’t cared if she was identified or not.
A chilled breeze rolled off the river, and Foster burrowed into her jacket. She stood for a moment looking out over the water, watching the undulating blackness, imagining it went on and on and that there was nothing on the other side, that the spot she stood on was the end of the world. She had no use for killers, especially those who killed children. They were the worst of thieves. One last look at the boats, the water, the moon, and she turned back, retracing her steps along the path, back toward the Riverwalk and the bridge.
She should be home, getting ignored by Lost, getting a good half night’s sleep, getting ready for Rea’s autopsy, and yet here she was . . . hunting. Back at the bushes, she trained her small flashlight behind them, running the cone of light slowly along the wrought-iron fence, Lower Wacker just beyond it. A few yards from the bushes there was a gap in the fence, a gap that provided easier access from the Riverwalk to the service road. She walked through, stood for a time on the other side, then trained her light up and found the cameras. Rea had been found in that tarp maybe only a few yards away. The gap had to be significant, the cavernous quality here a contributing factor. Tossing bodies away, she thought, as though he were putting out the trash. Birch killed on the other side of the gap, Rea killed elsewhere but dumped here. Elsewhere . . . where?
She thought of H. H. Holmes—a man so sick, so twisted, that he’d made murder his vocation—and his house of horrors. Considered America’s first serial killer, Holmes had built his house of torture right here in Chicago. Having a place, a building, had given him the privacy to do as he wished for as long as it took. She prayed they weren’t going to have to start looking for a place. They didn’t have the resources or the manpower to check every building in the city.
She walked back and stepped through the gap, back onto the Riverwalk. Under leaves, under a tarp, under the street. Under. Hidden, but not well. She stopped, turned toward the fence again, slow enough that she didn’t dislodge the thought but quick enough to make the connection. Lower Wacker. The Riverwalk. Under the street. Under the feet of passersby. In the dark, out of the way, closer to hell.
“Hiding them,” she muttered. “But he wants them found, or why not just bury them in a ditch?” There had been Birch’s foot sticking out of the pile of leaves and Rea’s arm poking out of that tarp. The lipstick. “Presentation. Display. Proud of it.” She made another full circle, taking in the Riverwalk, the river, the bars, the bridge, the fence, the gap, the path, the bushes. A chill ran through her. “Oh my God.”
CHAPTER 36
At eight Thursday morning, Detective Li plopped her bag on her desk, startling Foster from what looked like yet another close examination of security footage. Since Foster and she were teaming up now, Kelley had moved to sit across from Lonergan, taking his Sammy Sosa bobblehead, leaving his tiny potted cactus. Griffin had a penchant for moving them all around like chess pieces on a board—no desk was sacrosanct, no spot wholly one’s own. This desk, that desk, it was all the same. Li eyed the plastic cube next to her bag that held photos of her son. Two seconds. That’s all it would take to pick it up and move it to another desk.
“More footage?” Li asked, peeling out of her jacket. Foster looked up, momentarily confused, like she was seeing Li for the first time or like she had lost track of the time, the day, or even the year. “You can’t have been here all night,” Li said, looking her new partner over. “You’re wearing different clothes.” Li checked her watch. She’d come in early, expecting to get a jump on things, only to find Foster already here, as if she’d been here for hours.
Foster stood, reached for her coffee cup, finding it bone dry. “I went home.” Li’s eyes held hers. “For a shower and fresh clothes.” Li’s brows lifted. “Then I came back,” Foster said. She glanced over at the clock on the wall. “About five hours ago.”
Li glanced over at Foster’s monitor, the footage freeze framed. “That the Birch crime scene?”
“Yes, but from an alternate angle. We should have Rea’s in a few hours. The person we saw with Birch didn’t go back up the stairs, right? And none of the cameras picked him up heading toward the marina. We know he circled back to Ainsley, touched him, and then he’s gone. He had to go somewhere. Walking, maybe, but it’d make more sense if he had a car parked along Wacker, right? Look at Rea—he wouldn’t have carried a body in a tarp for any great distance. So I went back last night to the Riverwalk. There’s a gap in the fence that separates the Riverwalk from the road. There are cameras, of course, but a few dead spots. If he parked in one of those spots, he could have easily slipped through the fence and driven away after killing Birch. That time of night, there wouldn’t be a lot of traffic going through. Maybe, if we can pick up footage along Columbus, north and south, around the time we’re looking at, we could get some plates to track down, then . . .” Foster stopped when she saw the look on Li’s face.
“You’re Lonergan-ing me,” Li said. She checked her cell phone, scrolling through it. “Nope. I didn’t get a call or text saying that’s what was going down.” She held the phone up so Foster could see it. Li could tell by the blank look on Foster’s face that she hadn’t even thought of calling.
“I couldn’t sleep,” Foster said. “I figured I’d take another look. Did you really want to walk the river at two a.m.?”
“That’s my job, isn’t it?” Li said flatly, not tempering the chilliness one bit.
Li had been in bed at 2:00 a.m., her baby son asleep in his crib, her husband working his thirty-third hour straight in the ER. And if she was being truthful, had she the choice between sleeping in a warm bed and walking the Riverwalk in the dead of night, she would have chosen the bed hands down, but she was a cop. Sometimes quiet nights didn’t happen. Sometimes cases bled into your homelife, and you had to spend 2:00 a.m. down by the river’s edge.
“You’re right,” Foster said. “I should have read you in.”
Li let it sit for a moment. “That kind of goes without saying though, doesn’t it?”
“My mistake,” Foster said. “Next time you’ll get a call.”
Li’s eyes widened. “There’s going to be a next time?”
Foster smiled. “I get hunches. I follow them.”
“All righty then. Next late-night prowl, count me in.”
“Deal,” Foster replied. “Buy you a coffee? A real one, not from the cop pot. As a peace offering.”
Li stood for a moment, studying Foster. If her new partner kept up the pace she was on, she was going to be a prime candidate for burnout. Li could see it in the lines around her eyes, the strain in her neck. Foster was tightly wound and forcing her way through her days. Li had noticed her secreting clips and pins and little things into her pockets. Now she couldn’t sleep, she said. Foster had no idea that Li knew why. Griffin had given her a heads-up about her son’s murder, and of course everyone knew about her former partner. But Foster didn’t talk about any of that. She hadn’t shared a single personal thing about herself, and it didn’t look like she ever would. Li, though, had other plans. She had no intention of working with a stranger.
“You cannot buy me with coffee, Harriet Foster,” she offered lightly. “I want chocolate. Lots of it. But for now, show me what we’re looking at so I can catch up.”
With the smoke cleared, the two went over everything again. Foster took the Riverwalk, paying close attention to the fence gap. Li took the captures from Michigan Avenue the afternoon of the march and running all the way up to the time of Birch’s murder. Rea’s autopsy had been pushed back until noon, which gave them more time to be careful and deliberate.
Li finally disengaged after hours of searching, rolling her chair away from the monitor, running her hands through her hair. “Oh my God, if I have to look at another frame, I’m going to beat somebody down.”
Foster faced her. “So I should have called you in last night, then?”
“Yes, but also hell no. You do you, Foster.” She stood, stretched. “I’m going for shit coffee. Want another one?”
“No thanks.” Her eyes went back to the monitor. “I’m wired enough already.”
Li walked away on leaden legs. “Good call.”
She was back in minutes with a fresh mug of scorched coffee that literally twisted her lips when she took a sip. Li tucked back in front of her computer to pick up where she’d left off. “We have less than an hour till the ME.” Foster nodded but didn’t answer.
“I’m married,” Li said. Out of nowhere, not related to anything. No time like the present, she figured. “With a son. Two years old.” Foster looked up. Li grinned. It was time to ease into knowing each other. “You didn’t ask, I know. But we should know a little about each other. Will, my husband, is an ER doctor at Rush. Very smart, very handsome. Very not Chinese. Also, very busy, rarely home. My mother moved in about a year ago to help with the baby. Walter.” She saw the perplexed look on Foster’s face. “After Will’s grandfather. Don’t ask. My mother wasn’t happy. Still isn’t, but what can she do, right? We call him Wally. It still sounds like an old man’s name. I go by my maiden name for the job. Otherwise, I would have had to do all kinds of paperwork and switch out that strip of masking tape off my locker.”
“Two’s a fun age,” Foster said.
Li snorted. “Is it? When? Because right now it’s a lot, and it’s constant. And my mother, my dear, wonderful, beautiful Chinese mother, is driving us nuts.”
Foster smiled and turned back to her screen. “An ER doctor. Wow. The scheduling alone.”
“Freaking tell me about it.” Li grinned over the rim of her cup. It was a start. Slow and easy wins the race. She tucked in to resume her search. “I’m seeing tons of pink backpacks from this march. Trying to pick out Peggy, even with that red hair, is like looking for a needle in a hundred haystacks.”
Foster was only half listening as the deserted Riverwalk played on her monitor, frames blinking as the moon shifted position or the streetlights above changed color. “I’m not having much luck here either. All I . . .” She stopped, leaned in, her eyes glued to the images. “Wait.”
Li rose and walked over to stand behind Foster. “See something?”
Foster pointed at a shadowy figure slipping through the gap. She froze the frame. “There. It’s him.” She checked the time stamp. Twelve thirty-nine, Sunday night. Foster consulted her notebook. “We have him with Ainsley at twelve thirty-six. Three minutes later he’s slipping through that fence.” She started the tape again, and they watched the figure move through the gap and disappear into the night. “Three minutes to walk back to Birch, maybe take one last look, and then vanish.”
“It sure looks like the same guy who came down the stairs with her,” Li said. “He’s carrying the duffel. Only it looks empty, doesn’t it? Like it weighs nothing.”
“Still no shot of his face,” Foster said. “His head’s down and turned from the cameras. He knows where they are. I’m not seeing a car. It has to be parked out of camera range, otherwise where’s he going?” Foster reached for her phone, dialed. “We need footage from Columbus and Michigan, Randolph and the Lake Shore feeders going east-west. His car will be on one of them.” While she made her call, Li sounded it out.
“Two people come down those steps, one of them Birch with her pink backpack. Ainsley’s there passed out. The one that’s not Birch checks him. They move on, out of the shot.” She leaned forward, focusing on the screen. “He’s back forty minutes later, bends down, touches Ainsley’s jacket, I guess, putting the spot of blood on it, and then, poof.”
Foster hung up and sat down again. “Through the fence and away.”
“You heard all that while you were on the phone?” Li asked, impressed.
“I can chew and talk at the same time.”
“Good to know,” Li said. “And we know this guy stepping through the gap in the wee hours of the morning’s probably not just some rando nightwalker because . . .”
“Most decent people, like Elyse Pratt, would raise the alarm when they stumble on a dead body, call the police. No 911 call came in on Birch until hours later from the bridge. So either Mr. Rando’s completely oblivious and didn’t see Birch lying there, which is highly unlikely . . .”
“Or he put her there,” Li broke in, “and was legging it, slow and easy. And he used the same escape route for Mallory Rea . . . skirting the cameras.”
“We need to find that car,” Foster said.
Li was already on it, sliding up to her desk again to begin the search. “And one cold SOB.”
CHAPTER 37
Dr. Silva stood at Bodie Morgan’s apartment door, her fist poised for a knock. She took a bracing breath and then rapped lightly, going over her pitch as she waited for the shuffling inside to get closer to the door. How she hated being in such a vulnerable position, having to literally beg, her very future dependent on someone like him. Protocol? Ethics? Boundaries? She was breaching them all, but she didn’t care. One way or another, she was going to get the hell out of Westhaven.
There was a peephole, but in a split-second decision she reached up and covered it with a finger. If Bodie knew she was at the door, he’d never open it. She could feel him on the other side, hear him breathing as he peeked through the hole to find it blocked. For a moment there was a groundswell of anticipation, hesitancy; then she heard the chain disengage and the door unlock and swing open. Bodie stood there. For a moment there was a look of irritation on his face, replaced smoothly by the well-practiced smile she remembered, followed by the disguise of the quiet, affable man she would stake her career on being as fake as fool’s gold.
“Dr. Silva,” he said. “Since when do shrinks make house calls?”
“You wouldn’t come to me, so . . .” She left the sentence unfinished, her eyes meeting his, a dance, a circling of minds commencing. “I wanted to make sure you were getting along all right. Coping. Can we talk?” Bodie’s eyes went hard as that something, that thing, flickered across them. Silva felt him pull in, close off, push her away without physically doing it.
“I appreciate the trouble,” he said, “but I’m fine.”
Silva glanced past him, hoping to get a glimpse of his apartment, but Bodie shifted to block her view. “Mind if I come in?”
He pulled the door in. “Actually, yeah. I’m kind of busy.” He angled his head, shooting her an amused look. “And since you’re technically not my doctor anymore, I’m a little confused. Why are you here? Isn’t this against some kind of rule or something?”
“Truthfully, yes,” Silva said. “I am going a bit above and beyond. But I want to help you. Get you back into sessions. I can see you’re struggling, and I’m worried that you might do harm to yourself . . . or others.”
For a second, she didn’t think he’d respond, but slowly a smile appeared. “So you’ve said. Every session. Like I’m some ticking bomb. This is about those women they found murdered, isn’t it? You think that’s me?” He laughed. “That’s the problem with psychiatrists. They see mental dysfunction everywhere they go. You’ve wasted a trip, Dr. Silva. I’m not your golden goose. You probed me so many times; well, I probed you right back. I know you want out of Westhaven. I don’t know what landed you there, but you hate it just as much as I hated it. And now you want me for . . . what? Am I your ticket out? Your prized pig? No dice.”
“Perceptive,” she said. But she wasn’t surprised. Most sociopaths were quite perceptive and more than capable of turning the tables. She had no leverage, but she couldn’t just let things go. “But that doesn’t change my willingness to counsel you, to help you work through issues that are holding you back and keeping you from moving forward. You have to admit that . . .”
