“Hey, buddy, you can’t flop here,” he yelled. No movement. “Dude, c’mon, you’re killing me here.”
The guy was sitting with his back to the restaurant wall, a blanket covering him head to toe, only the soles of his shoes showing. “Yo, brah. You got to move it along, comprende? Why you pick out here anyway? It’s funky as shit back here.”
He looked around, his nose crinkled in disgust. He had Imelda waiting, a night of boom chicka boom planned; he didn’t have time for some homeless guy taking a nap by Carmello’s smelly cans. The shoes looked pretty new. Small feet for a guy. Pink laces. There was a purse next to him, some of its contents spilled out on the greasy ground—a compact, spare change, a pair of eyeglasses. A purse? A woman? “Ah, that’s just sad, man.” Manny nudged the foot with his foot. “Lady. Lady, you gotta get up, okay? You gotta get yourself to a shelter. You can’t lay out here like this. It ain’t safe.”
When he got no response, he tugged on the blanket, and it slipped down to the woman’s waist. Manny stumbled back, his heart in his throat beating a mile a minute. The scream that flew out of his mouth brought Earl running out the back door, cleaver in hand.
“What the fuck?” Earl said. “They’re just rats, you big chicken.”
Manny pointed at the woman, her eyes open, her slender throat cut ear to ear, blood staining the front of her shirt. Earl screamed, dropping the cleaver. Manny had never stopped. Two desperate voices echoed off the metal cans. Imelda and the club, the boom chicka boom, no longer at the forefront of Manny’s mind.
CHAPTER 40
The next morning, Griffin stood at the whiteboard, grim of face and in a lousy mood. Chicago had more or less become inured to overnight gang shootings, carjackings, and violent deaths and assaults, but when the bodies of three white woman showed up on the city’s front doorstep, the race to keep up shifted from a marathon to an all-out sprint. Media was going nuts. Some goon even equated their killer to a modern-day Jack the Ripper. None of it was helpful. All of it was added pressure CPD didn’t need.
The room was tight, warm; the odor of sweaty cops who’d been working through the night was strong. Griffin turned to her detectives, all assembled. They looked like a battle-worn battalion who’d just had their asses handed to them.
“Another female victim,” Griffin said. “But not like the first two. Differences?” No one spoke. “What are we, in ninth-grade algebra class? Differences. Somebody.”
“She was fully clothed,” Symansky said. “And the bastard only slit her throat.”
Kelley raised his hand, but when Griffin glared at him, he slowly put it down. “He left her wallet with her ID in it. Money’s gone, though. No cell phone, so he probably took that too. Her camera looked pretty banged up. It was found close to her.”
“Evelyn Wicks,” Lonergan said. “Thirty-one. Tourist. There was a hotel key card in her front pocket from the InterContinental. She’s in town with a friend—Susan Fahey. They’re a couple of Brits.”
Griffin gave Lonergan her full attention. Lonergan wasn’t out of the doghouse yet. “Why wasn’t Fahey with her?”
“I got that.” Bigelow slid his glasses down off his head to read his notes. “Fahey says Evelyn went out to snap some pictures around two yesterday. She begged off. They’d been out sightseeing most of the day.”
Lonergan nodded. “Then Fahey falls asleep, and when she wakes up, it’s almost seven, and she sees Wicks isn’t back. She starts callin’ her phone but gets no answer. That’s when she buzzes the front desk and they called us. But by then, Wicks had been found behind Carmello’s.”
“Fahey’s coming in,” Bigelow said, “so we’ll see what else she can tell us.”
“Tourists. Jesus,” Griffin muttered, turning back to the board. “So a robbery gone sideways?”
“Or a murder and an opportunist who’s got no problem robbing a corpse,” Symansky said. “May the son of a bitch rot in hell.”
“Why didn’t he take her camera, then?” Kelley asked. “It’s scuffed up—maybe she fought for it before he slashed her—but it’s still worth something, right? A run-of-the-mill mugger, a crime of opportunity like we’re saying, they would’ve taken the camera and either sold it at the nearest CTA station or handed it off for someone else to sell it.”
“The camera’s SD card was missing,” Foster said. The room quieted. Everyone turned to face her. “I assume the camera had one when she left her hotel.” She looked around at the detectives and could almost see the wheels turning in their heads, though no one volunteered a response right away.
“She took a picture of something she wasn’t meant to,” Li said, breaking the silence. “Or of someone.” She rose, padded over to the board, where a map pinpointing the body dumps was pinned. “The hotel’s here. She was found a block west. Here. She could have taken the stairs on Michigan. Maybe looking for the Billy Goat. Tourists get turned around looking for that all the time. Maybe she snaps a couple of photos there, then starts walking around. Snaps the wrong thing.” She turned toward the team. “Absolutely plausible.”
Lonergan grumbled. “Or the thing fell out of the camera when it got busted? Then got twisted around underfoot when the scene ramped up. Nobody was lookin’ out for an SD card. Or maybe she took the card out herself to have it developed somewhere.”
Symansky laughed. “Developed? Lonergan, what century are you from?”
Lonergan’s face colored, his mouth twisted into a snarl. “Shove it, Symansky.”
“All right, cut it out,” Griffin barked. “What else?” She clapped her hands impatiently. “C’mon. So far we have a lot of theories, no definitives. Give me definitives. Our dance card’s full, people; I don’t have to tell you that. In addition to Wicks, three other homicides came in overnight.” Groans went up around the room. “Welcome to paradise. Wicks’s autopsy’s number one priority. It looks like she connects by age, by race, but she’s obviously not a redhead, and she wasn’t hacked to pieces and left naked by that dumpster. The missing SD card’s curious? Let’s look for it in case it did get trampled on. Maybe it was in her pocket; maybe she swallowed it—I don’t know. I’m grasping here. Talk to me.” Griffin scanned the room. “Now!”
“Bigelow and I can take the autopsy,” Lonergan said.
“No. I’m shaking things up. Foster and Li take the autopsy. You and Bigs talk to the friend, Fahey? Symansky, Kelley, you take the guy who found the body, and you’re on cameras this time. I’m spreading the pain around. Start around the Billy Goat. I can’t think of anything else down there she’d want to take pictures of. And I don’t think I have to impress upon anybody here how quickly we need to do all of this. Now get out.”
The phone in Griffin’s office rang, and her face fell. Then the phone in her pocket started up, her ringtone the theme to the TV show Cops—“Bad boys, bad boys, whatcha gonna do, whatcha gonna do when they come for you . . .” “All of you, get out there and get me something before they peck me to death.” She rushed back to her office and slammed the door shut.