52: Clair pushed through the door of Tanks A Lot Aquarium and Fish Supplies on Fifteenth and felt a wave of hot, humid air wrap around her. She stomped the snow from her boots and unzipped her jacket.
Rows of blue tanks lined each wall of the narrow shop, with three aisles of various goods filling the middle of the store.
A man with long, gray hair looked up from the counter behind the register, his finger holding a place in the paperback he was reading, the latest Jack Reacher. “Can I help you?”
Clair had visited three similar stores this morning. Each had proven to be a bust. She shuffled over to the counter and showed the man her badge.
He set the book down on the counter and frowned. “Did you find it?”
“Find what?”
“So you didn’t find it.”
Clair narrowed her eyes. “I’m not sure what—”
“If you didn’t find it, you shouldn’t be standing here. You should be out looking. You’re wasting time.” He let out a frustrated snort. “My deductible is five thousand dollars. It’s only worth a fraction of that, so I can’t claim it, can’t afford to buy another one. I need you to find the bastard who took it and bring it back here.”
Clair held up her hands. “I think we need to start over. I’m a homicide detective with Chicago Metro, and—”
“Homicide? Why would a homicide detective be searching for my stolen water tank?”
“Someone stole your water tank?”
“Isn’t that why you’re here?”
Clair dug her phone from her pocket and pulled up the picture Kloz isolated from the security camera at the park. “Is this it?”
The man took the phone and studied the picture, pinching the screen to zoom in closer. “Hard to say, that’s a crappy picture. Could be. I think so. Where did you find it?”
“Do you recognize the truck?”
“Nope.”
Clair retrieved her phone and dropped it back into her pocket. “When was your water tank stolen?”
“When I filed the report. Shouldn’t you know this already?”
“Let’s pretend I don’t.”
“You clearly don’t.”
Clair had never beaten an elder, but the prospect was growing increasingly enticing. “When was your water tank stolen?”
He drummed his long fingers on the countertop. “Week after Christmas. Busted into the warehouse at the back and ran off with it.”
“Was anything else taken?”
“Twenty bags of salt.”
“Can you show me?”
He folded over the page in his paperback and gestured for Clair to follow. The fish watched as they walked past, and Clair tried not to look. Fish had always creeped her out. Some of these were large too. She pictured tiny little teeth in their mouths. How people swam in open water, she’d never understand.
A door at the back of the shop opened into a cluttered warehouse. The walls were lined with metal shelves and racks. Old glass tanks cluttered the corner to her left, stacked precariously atop one another like a clear game of Jenga. Three metal barrels overflowed with plastic pipes and tubes of various lengths and sizes.
To her left, a large machine churned with a sound not unlike a broken clothes washer. The contraption stretched on for about ten feet, with piping flowing from box to cylinder to tank. Smaller pipes disappeared into the wall, no doubt leading back into the front of the shop.
“That’s my water filtration system. All those tanks out there are salt water, which is far trickier than fresh. One slip with the pH, too much salt, not enough salt—any little thing can throw off the ecosystem, and they’re all dead. Doesn’t take long, either, couple hours at the most.” He stepped over, studied one of the gauges. “I had a large pufferfish a few years back, thing was damn near a foot long. Something spooked him, and the little guy blew up to the size of a basketball, released its poison, and took out almost half my inventory. I swapped out the old filter for reverse osmosis after that and haven’t had a problem since. Still need to keep an eye on levels, though.”
Clair didn’t care to hear about the life and times of pufferfish. “Can you show me where they got in?”
The shopkeeper gestured toward the back of the warehouse. “My guess is they used the door.”
There was a large overhead garage door with a smaller metal door to the left. The second door had two deadbolts and a slide bolt. The overhead door was electric. “Which one?”
“Dunno.”
“There was no sign of forced entry?”
His face pinched, turned red. “Like I told the first officer, the door is always locked. The overhead is always closed. I check them when I get in, and I check them again when I leave. They got in this way for sure. If the cops aren’t smart enough to figure out how, that’s on them, not me.”
Clair went to the smaller of the two doors, unlatched the deadbolts, pulled back the slide, and opened the door. The cold air rushed in, and she held her jacket closed with her free hand while studying the edge of the metal door. There were no scratches or dents. The door hadn’t been pried open. The deadbolts were both heavy-duty Medecos, tough to pick but not impossible. “You’re sure this slide bolt was latched?”
“You’d be hard-pressed to find a time when it’s not. I only use the big door, and that only opens with the remote in my truck or this button here.” He pointed toward a glowing button on the wall.
Walking back to the center of the room, he spread his arms out wide. “The tank was right here. I disconnected it from my truck the night before and filled it from the hose on the filtration system. Got it set up for the next day.”
“What was happening the next day?”
“I maintain sixteen large aquariums around the city, makes up nearly twenty percent of my business’s revenue. Think I can do that if I can’t haul water? Water evaporates, gets dirty, has to be replaced. I haul the tank on my runs so I can do a swap or replenish whenever necessary.”
Clair looked up at the garage door opener, a Craftsman 54985, according to the large decal on the side of the motor housing. A ladder leaned against the wall to her right. “Do you mind?”
He brought the ladder over and set it up under the opener. Clair pulled her car keys from her pocket, then climbed up and studied the back of the device. She found a yellow button, pressed it, then pressed the button on the remote for her own garage. The light bulb in the opener blinked as the unit memorized the signal.
When she pressed the button on her remote again, the motor above whirred to life and the door began to open. She pressed it again, and the door reversed.
“I’ll be damned.”
Clair climbed down off the ladder. “Who else has access to this space?”
“Just me.”
“No vendors, employees, landlord?”
“I hired a girl a few weeks back to help out up front, but she only showed up for a day. Nervous little thing. I don’t think she liked to be around people much.” He lowered his voice. “She was in Stateville Correctional for manslaughter, just got out. She told me what happened, and it sounded like an accident. Seemed like she was having trouble finding work, so I figured I’d give her a shot. We don’t do a lot of cash business here, and I didn’t see her walking off with a handful of fish. I’m a pretty good judge of character, and no alarm bells went off when I interviewed her, so why not, right? I’d been thinking of putting an ad in the paper anyway to get some part-time help.”
Clair’s eyebrows furrowed. “She applied for a job you hadn’t advertised? Not even a sign in the window?”
He shoved his hands in his pockets. “She came in on a busy day, saw I needed help, and offered. Like I said, I’d been thinking about advertising.”
“What was her name?”
“Libby. Libby McInley.”
Clair took out her cell phone and dialed a number from speed dial.
Straight to voice mail: “This is Detective Sam Porter of Chicago Metro, I’m—”
She disconnected.
Dammit. She’d meant to dial Nash.