By now my gut was sure that Shea, Piser and Halvorson had not left Chicago to take oil rig jobs together in California. They’d fled Chicago abruptly, split up and scattered to Laguna Beach, Reeder and Tucson. They’d quit on a lie. What my gut didn’t know was what triggered it.
I went to Chicago’s online newspaper archives for mentions of the Lakota Nation bar, seemingly the last place the four musketeers had been together. There was only one, and that was when the place was gutted to become an Italian restaurant, several years after the Delman Bean campaign.
I went into the kitchen and nuked a purple Peep. As I watched it collapse into a marshmallow smear I wondered if Shea’s message to Timothy Wade had nothing to do with the bar itself but was a more cryptic reference to their whole last evening together.
I left scraping the microwave for later and went back to my computer to print out a ten-square block map of the area surrounding the Democratic campaign headquarters. I then searched the Internet for mentions of the five streets surrounding it, adding the words, ‘crime, accident, disturbance and police’ and finished up by qualifying the search to include only events that happened during the four days that were likely the trio’s last in Chicago.
I got seven newspaper hits. A purse was snatched one block from the campaign headquarters; a window was smashed by two kids throwing a chip of terracotta that had fallen from a century-old building; a shoplifter was arrested in a women’s store, another in a Walgreen’s and a third in an office supply shop.
There was also a killing. The remaining two mentions reported the murder of a convenience store clerk two blocks from the campaign office and one block from the Lakota Nation.
The first, on November 6, reported the crime:
MOTIVE A MYSTERY IN CONVENIENCE STORE MURDER
At 12:48 this morning, November 5, a silent alarm summoned police to the Super Convenience Mart on West Willoughby Street, where the body of Anwar Farrug was found bludgeoned to death behind the counter. The cash register was full and a fifty-dollar bill lay on the counter, leading police to rule out a robbery. The silent alarm button, three feet away from Mr Farrug’s body, did not contain traces of the dead man’s blood, though both his hands had been bloodied. Police believe someone else pressed the silent alarm. The clerk’s gun was found dropped behind the counter. One bullet had been fired. Police are investigating.
The second mention of the case came two days later, in smaller type on a back page:
POLICE ASK FOR PUBLIC’S HELP IN CONVENIENCE STORE KILLING
Chicago police today requested help from anyone knowing the circumstances surrounding the mysterious murder of Anwar Farrug, a convenience store clerk found bludgeoned to death two days ago behind the counter of the Super Convenience Mart. Gunshot residue found on his hand and blood evidence found on the floor near the front door suggest that Mr Farrug fired one shot at his assailant, striking him, but likely not fatally, since the perpetrator managed to escape out the front door. Blood evidence of the same type was found leading away from the store to a spot on the street where presumably the perpetrator managed to get into his car. Unexplained are the fifty-dollar bill found lying on the counter and the absence of Mr Farrug’s blood on the silent alarm button, despite the fact that both his hands were bloodied, probably from cradling his head after he was struck. Anyone familiar with this crime is asked to contact their local police precinct.
I rootled more in the newspapers’ archives but found no further mention of the convenience store killing. Nowadays, shootings had become almost commonplace in Chicago as the city morphed into a major distribution hub for drugs moving through the United States, but I’d expected that, twenty years earlier, a convenience murder would have been more newsworthy. I took the absence of follow-up reports meant that no progress had been made on the case.
I leaned back and considered all the cops I was friendly enough with to call for more information. There were none. I called Bohler.
‘Ready to confess to killing Marilyn Paul, Elstrom?’ she asked, right off.
‘It could be a few lifetimes before I’m ready to admit to something I didn’t do,’ I said, taking no offense.
‘Why are you tormenting me with your call?’
‘I’d like you to research an old killing. Twenty years ago, a convenience store clerk got gunned down a little after midnight. Someone else’s blood was also found at the scene. I’d like to know what was learned.’
‘And you thought of me?’
‘I thought of no one else,’ I said, truthfully.
‘How is your inquiry relevant to anything in my life?’
‘I have no idea, but when I do, you’ll be one of the first to know.’
‘I’ll go along, but I expect a full explanation when I come to arrest you for Marilyn Paul’s murder.’
‘Maybe even sooner,’ I said.
Or so I hoped.