Sergeant Bohler stopped by a week later. Her eyes were puffy and her cheeks seemed sunken. She looked like she hadn’t slept in a month. That didn’t surprise me.
Her uniform was different, too. That didn’t surprise me, either.
‘You can’t return my phone calls?’ she asked in a rasp.
‘I’m racing to get my furnace working before winter.’ She’d been calling twice a day. I wasn’t ready to talk; there was still so much thinking to do.
Her eyes narrowed, recognizing the lie. ‘Got any of my coffee left?’
‘Plus newer, old yellow Peeps,’ I said. I’d bought more like the ones she’d brought over, hoping their sunny color would bring cheer. They hadn’t, though I was optimistic about a report yet to come.
She sat heavily at the plywood table as I put the last of her grounds in the coffee-maker. ‘You haven’t been in the news since that first day,’ she said.
‘They only pestered me about calling out Marilyn Paul’s name. I told them she’d worked for the Democrats, was murdered and no one seemed to be investigating the case. They accepted that’s all there was to it and left me alone.’
‘Wade was on the news last night, first time since he went underground after that mess in the ballroom. He’s saying he and Theresa buried the Jane Doe in their family plot because everybody deserves a proper interment.’
‘He’s got connections everywhere, including the medical examiner’s office. No one else would want the body so the ME let him have her the moment he was done.’
‘Where she can never be examined again?’
I could only shrug at that. ‘Next, Wade will say that Theresa’s health is getting dangerously worse. Then, after another month or two, he’ll announce that she passed away. He’ll have a friendly mortician bury a weighted coffin next to Jane Doe, and that problem will be put in the ground.’
‘Officially dead at last.’
‘He’s tidying up, Bohler.’
I put four Peeps onto a paper towel in the microwave. Such was her weariness, she made no move to get up and flee when I turned it on.
‘They’ll never identify Halvorson’s body either?’ she asked.
‘Even if the cops did suspect it was Halvorson, there’s no one to compare his DNA to. Red’s sister-in-law told me her husband had no other blood kin, so short of digging him up for comparison, the young man in the woods will remain a dead end John Doe.’
‘Chicago PD might still have blood evidence taken at the convenience store.’
‘Worthless as well, even if they knew to compare it to the young man’s body in the woods. A match would prove nothing, unless an eyewitness came forward to say the person shot was Halvorson.’
‘And that could only be Wade, and he’ll admit no such thing.’
I nodded.
‘So there’s nothing to tie Wade to the convenience store killings?’
I nodded again.
‘And proving Wade owns the land across the street won’t tie him to the bodies there either,’ she said, speaking faster now. She was coming at Wade from every direction, testing his vulnerability.
‘Even if it can be proved he owns it, he’ll just say the bodies were buried there without his knowledge.’
‘Case closed, for sure,’ she said.
I turned suddenly from the counter, for she’d spoken almost gaily.
‘I meant, that’s too bad,’ she said quickly.
I slid the towel of collapsed Peeps out from the microwave, added some scrapings of the bit that had seeped out from beneath the door and brought it with coffee to the table.
‘There’s still that DNA recovered from Marilyn Paul that you threatened me with, remember?’ I said.
‘I never did submit that to the lab, you know,’ she said, smiling outright now.
‘I know,’ I said.
‘How?’
‘I have a friend at that lab,’ I said. It was a lie. It was Jenny who knew someone in the Cook County Medical Examiner’s Office.
‘There was a recycling cart full of empty soda cans in Wade’s guard shack but I heard that none matched Marilyn,’ I added.
‘So, Wade’s in the clear?’ she asked. It was the big question, the reason she’d been calling, the reason she’d driven out after I hadn’t returned her calls. She was desperate to know, desperate to sleep.
I shrugged that away, too, and asked, ‘New uniform?’
‘I’m on loan to the forest preserve police. I chase out neckers at dusk and chain gates.’ She took a sip of the coffee and grimaced. I’d made it too strong, suddenly anxious to use it all up. ‘My boss wanted me gone for the stir I created at Wade’s back slope.’
‘He’s wrong to want that. Bodies were found. They were just across the street, instead of down Wade’s back yard.’
‘Doesn’t matter,’ she said.
‘Wade complained?’ I remembered his threat to have her badge, but now I suspected he was merely bluffing, creating another ruse.
‘He probably complained just enough to make himself look innocent.’ She fingered a Peep but left it on the paper towel. ‘Woods are everywhere in this thing, right? I mean, Wade’s back slope, the trees across the street and now my non-future as a forest preserve cop?’ She forced a laugh at the symmetry. ‘I’m going to quit. I’m going back to private security. I used to work it sometimes as a second job.’
‘I know,’ I said.
That startled her. ‘How?’ she asked.
‘I asked Jeffries, the Democrats’ security chief. He remembered you from a few years back.’
She nodded absently. She saw no threat.
‘Is this almost over?’ she asked.
‘Wade is tidying up,’ I said.
She left visibly happier than when she arrived, despite not having had a taste of Peep, or even asking what I’d meant.