“You anticipated that I would fail.”
“Your mother died of a rare blood disorder shortly after you and Bodie were born. She suffered horribly in those last days. You can see now why I kept it from you? To spare you both.”
“Yes, I see now. And you loved her.”
“Of course.”
Clearly, now, she could see there was no real resemblance. Funny, how the mind worked, how conditioning happened over time, clouding things, forcing the eye not to see what the brain knew it did. If anyone would have asked her days ago, she would have sworn that she was this man’s spitting image. But now she was Anika Jensen, not Amelia Morgan or Davies. She had parents who’d loved her, a different life. “About your plan . . . ,” she said. He put warmth in his eyes when he looked back at her, but she knew better. It was a thing he did.
He wagged his finger at her. “Our plan.”
“Right.”
What could she have become if she hadn’t been corrupted by this? she wondered. It was far too late to know. He’d lied to her, to Bodie. She knew she was looking at her mother’s killer. She could feel something coming for her. It was like a train roaring down a track, its lights flashing a warning. Impact was inevitable.
“You seem distracted,” he said. “You can’t be. I need you at the top of your game. Are you?”
Amelia smiled sweetly. Her mother had been pretty. She and her father had made a handsome couple. She wondered what they were like together before this man came along. “Of course. Dad.”
His face brightened. “Good. I haven’t shown you the best part. The basement.” He brushed past her, heading toward the kitchen. “Follow me.”
Amelia turned to watch him, steel in her spine. Gone. Someone new in her place. “Right behind you.”
CHAPTER 75
Foster peered into the car with the dead woman sitting in the driver’s seat, the victim’s head leaning back against the headrest, her throat cut, blood everywhere. It wasn’t a fresh kill. It looked like the woman had been there for a while. The car wasn’t disabled. It had been driven into the empty, scraggly lot under the L tracks at Lawrence Avenue. Li walked around the car on the passenger side, shining her flashlight into the back seat.
“Who found her?” Foster flicked a look at the PO’s nameplate. “Mendoza.”
“Security guard was walking through. Saw the car sitting here. He thought it might be stolen, so he looked inside and got the shock of his life.” Mendoza angled her head toward the shell-shocked Black guy standing dazed in a cop huddle several feet away. “That’s him. Wendall Price.”
“Did he touch anything inside?” Li grimaced at the spray of blood on the inside of the windshield, on the dashboard, the steering wheel, all over the woman’s T-shirt, painting it a dull, rusty crimson. The car smelled of metal and body stench, the woman’s eyes half-open, her mouth frozen in a rictus grin that testified to the pain and surprise she must have experienced in her last moments.
“He says he didn’t,” Mendoza said. “I believe him. When we got here, he had his head between his legs. He says he faints at the sight of blood.”
“He found her when?” Foster asked.
The uniform referred to her notes. “About an hour ago. We rolled up six minutes after. No telling how long the car’s been sitting here without anybody paying it any attention. We’ve been on pins and needles waiting for another redhead dump, but when we got here and saw she was blonde . . .” She looked around at the busy crime scene. “This is out of the way, L tracks overhead. No idea what this is.”
“ID?” Foster asked.
“Found her bag with her wallet inside. Money in it. Tammy Bergin, thirty-four. Lives over in Andersonville. Drives Uber. The decal is in the back window. The car’s registered to her.”
Li reached into the car, checking the seats, the floorboards, Bergin’s bag. “No cell phone.” She checked the console, the dashboard GPS and nav system, her nitrile gloves skimming lightly over the bloody touch screen. “Nav is wiped. We’ll have to go through the company to get her last pickup.” She backed out of the car. “That won’t be a hassle.” She said it facetiously. “But I don’t think we’ll learn anything we don’t already know, do you?” Her eyes met Foster’s.
“Bergin’s face is on Amelia’s wall,” Foster said. “One of the unidentified is now identified.”
Foster leaned against the windowsill in the women’s bathroom, the lights off, her head down, eyes closed, listening to the rush and movement of the cops beyond the door. An Uber driver? That didn’t seem planned. It hadn’t been a clean kill either. Amelia was getting reckless, messy. She and her “father” were killing now just to kill. When would they stop? What could she do to make them stop? Li’s voice from the doorway startled her eyes open.
“Found something,” Li said. Foster looked up to see the worried look on Li’s face. “What’re you doing standing in the dark like an idiot? Um, I mean, sorry. Did I say that last part out loud?”
Foster lifted off the sill. She liked Li’s bluntness. Her partner was growing on her. “Found what?”
“A house. It might be where they are.” Foster followed Li back to her computer. “We know about the house in Naperville, so I kept thinking maybe that’s his thing. He likes houses. So I ran a check of all new house purchases, cross-checking them against the names—Davies, Morgan, Jensen.” Li plopped down into her chair and swiveled her monitor around for Foster to see. “Came up with nothing, of course. That would have been too easy. Then I started on the first names, cross-checking against what we knew of all three of them. Look.”
Foster leaned over, her eyes on the screen. “Frank and Anika Morton.”
Li stepped back, a satisfied look on her face. “Uncle Frank? Anika Jensen? They jumbled the names. Unoriginal, but whatever. But look down where it lists professions—accountant and art teacher. A bit of a stretch where she’s concerned. These people don’t exist. Nothing comes back on either of them that connects to who this paperwork says they are, but they fit with what we know about Davies and Tom. I googled the house. Check the photo.”
Foster leaned back to the screen. “The new house and the old one look similar.”
“Similar? They’re practically clones. That’s where he is, and where he is, she is.”
“Where is it?”
Li rubbed her hands together like a fiend in an old silent movie. “You’re going to love this. Mount Greenwood.”
Foster was sure she’d misheard. Mount Greenwood was a neighborhood on the city’s southwest side, populated in large part by city workers, firefighters, teachers, and cops. It was the farthest point away they could live from the worst of what the city offered up in terms of drive-by shootings and gang warfare and still be within city limits, which was required for city employment. “A family of murderers living in Mount Greenwood. They’re cocky bastards, I’ll give them that.”
Li scribbled the address on the legal pad on her desk, then underlined it several times. “That’s the place.” She was already out of her chair, grabbing her jacket. “Won’t hurt to drive by and take a quick look.”