Panici was the link. He was the thread that stitched these men together, knotting them into a tangled ball of greed. I didn’t know what they were up to yet, but it all screamed construction. Every name I came up with had a connection, not just to Panici but to construction companies or construction projects or construction money. Now I needed to find out if Panici was also connected to Judge Atkinson.
Tiana Williams, Judge Reynolds’s coordinator, was the one direct contact I had at the moment to the inside workings of the office, so I stood outside the Family Court administrative office, hoping I could get a few minutes of her time.
Feeling my phone ping, I glanced at the screen. Mateo Ortiz. Hmm. “I’ve got something,” his text read. I stepped away from the door and dialed.
“It’s Andrea Kellner. I got your text.”
“Hey. I’ve been thinking about what you said about people getting sick,” he said. “I don’t want my name out there, I need to work, but I couldn’t live with myself if somebody died. Can we talk without anyone knowing it was me?”
“We can talk off the record,” I said.
“I saw Gaetano give Morales money. He keeps a safe in the back office. During the day, the manager pulls cash from the registers so there’s never too much in any drawer. It ain’t the best neighborhood, and there was a robbery about five years ago that cleaned out thousands of dollars. After, he bought these safes that only he and the manager can open. Reduces the loss if we get hit again. Anyway, I walked into the office one day looking for the manager, and I see Gaetano with this wad in his hand. He slipped it into a manila envelope when he saw me.”
“And you saw Gaetano give Morales the envelope?”
“No, but I was out in the back loading trash, and about five minutes later, Morales walks out the back door. He pulls an envelope out of his jacket pocket, looks inside, and then puts the envelope back in his pocket.”
An anonymous former employee saying that he saw money changing hands was a decent bit of confirmation that the bribes were happening, and I could use it, but I still thought there was more to the scheme. More people, more restaurants, more crime.
“Do you have any direct knowledge that Morales was pulling this stuff at other restaurants? I assume you have friends in the industry. Is anyone talking about this stuff where they work?”
“Not that I’ve heard, but Morales will be making a lot of money off of Gaetano soon. He’s going to be opening five more restaurants in Chicago and wants to go nationwide. Who knows, maybe Morales will get a cushy corporate job out of this at some point.”
“Thanks, Mateo. If you hear anyone talking about Morales and other restaurants, please let me know.”
I phoned Brynn, sharing the information Mateo had given me about witnessing the bribe, and wondered if Gaetano’s expansion plans meant anything beyond lining Morales’s pockets.
Calls out of the way, I stepped inside the office, seeing a room humming with activity and markedly different from my visit just a few days earlier. Justice didn’t stop for death, and court cases needed to be processed even while mourning the loss of a colleague. Several new floral arrangements graced a line of tall file cabinets along with a photo of the man, forming a makeshift altar to honor their loss.
The woman who sat at the closest desk looked up quizzically. I started to ask for Ms. Williams when Tiana saw me across the room. Smiling, she motioned me over.
“Is there some news?” she asked immediately.
“No, I’m sorry, Tiana. I don’t have anything new to share about Judge Reynolds. I know CPD is doing everything they can.” I hated to dash her moment of hope, but until there was new info, I had nothing to ease her pain.
Her face deflated. “Sorry, I guess I made an assumption when I saw you.”
“I understand. I wish I had something to tell. Did you hear about Judge Atkinson?” I asked.
“Of course. We went on lockdown for the second time in a week. Hard not to know when fifteen members of your family start texting you all at once, terrified that you’re in danger. What in the hell has happened to this world? I can’t understand any of it.” She shuddered and I sensed not just for herself.
“Neither can I. But I’m trying to figure it out.”
“Wait, are you saying these murders are connected?” Her face went pale, and she stared opened-mouth at me.
“Let me be clear,” I said. “I have no official information that these murders are connected, but there are some elements that suggest to me that might be the case. I don’t want to go into those details, but I’m doing what I can to find out if that’s true.”
“So someone could be targeting judges? What a terrifying situation.” I saw fear in her face as she looked around at her coworkers, trying to gauge their risk by simply coming to work.
“Would you mind looking at a photograph for me?” I said, pulling out my phone. I tapped on a picture of Felix Panici and showed her my screen. “Does this man look at all familiar to you?”
She took the phone, expanding the image. “No, not to me. Who is he?”
“An attorney.” I left it at that. Speculation wouldn’t be helpful. I also didn’t want to taint her memory by using a name she would have come across in the course of her work.
“Well, that doesn’t exactly narrow it down. Can’t throw a pebble in this building without hitting one of those.”
A woman approached us. Her eyes were bloodshot, and strands of hair fell loose from her topknot as if she hadn’t had enough time this morning to get ready.
“Tiana, I need to look at a file with you when you have a minute,” she said. “I might have another override issue. I think we should walk it through together so I can figure out what I’m doing wrong.”
“Of course. I’ll be over in a few minutes. Wait, I should introduce you two. This is Justine. She worked in Judge Atkinson’s office until about a month ago. This is Andrea Kellner. She’s a reporter working on a story about the judge.”
“It’s nice to meet you,” I said. “I’m so sorry about Judge Atkinson. Had you worked for him long?”
“I’m in shock. I worked for him for almost eleven years. How could this happen?”
I had no words for her. Nothing that could comfort. There was no explanation that would calm the disbelief or ease the hurt. Murder didn’t work that way. Sudden death of any kind didn’t work that way. The best we ever had was an explanation so that our logical brains could try to make sense of it somehow.
“Tell me about Judge Atkinson. What was he like to work for?” I was thinking about Peter’s comment about a bribery accusation. Even if it hadn’t amounted to anything, an accusation like that continued to hang around, whispered about in the hallways of law offices and the courthouse like all salacious gossip.
“He was tough. Liked things the way he liked them. Not Mr. Warm and Fuzzy by any stretch of the imagination, but you needed to know him for a while to get past that. He just didn’t suffer fools, and he could smell bullshit the minute it walked into his courtroom. A lot of the new attorneys were afraid of him. But it was the attorneys who weren’t afraid that should have been. Atkinson tore into those guys when they screwed up. I think he went even harder on the arrogant guys. Always seems to be guys, doesn’t it, who treat the courtroom like it’s a country club where they can make deals over a steak and whiskey lunch instead of arguing their case.”
“Would you call Atkinson a stickler for procedure, then?” Despite his gruffness, I sensed Justine had a respect for the man.
“More of a stickler for knowing your place in the hierarchy, I would say. It was his court; therefore, he got to run it the way he wanted. Attorneys needed to get in line.”
Although prickly to some, his approach wasn’t unusual in the court system.
“Is this man familiar to you?” I pulled my phone back out and handed it to Justine.
She paused, looking at the photo. “Yeah, I remember him. I needed to speak with the judge about a schedule conflict that was kinda complicated, so I went over to see him in his office. When I got there, the judge was in the hallway with this guy. It was strange off the bat. I could tell he was an attorney, and that there was tension between them. I got the impression the judge was trying to shoo him away. Thought him showing up like that was inappropriate, like maybe he was trying to buttonhole the judge. It was just an impression I had, so I’m not sure. I only kept the judge’s court schedule, so if there was a personal appointment, I wouldn’t have known. However, it was clear the judge didn’t want to talk to him.”
“Do you have any idea what this guy wanted to talk about?”
“Mostly, what I heard was the judge telling this attorney he needed to leave. Other than that, I remember hearing the judge saying, ‘You’re out of line’ and ‘I’m not doing it.’”
There it was. Panici’s connection to the second murder victim.