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.”