Chapter 31
I walked into Huddleston Park around nine that night, the approximate time that Chandler had taken her fateful stroll. I wanted to see what the park looked like at that hour, get a feel for it. This was Lincoln Park, so condos, bars, and upscale restaurants hemmed the park in on all sides, and there was a lot of open space with playlots, sports fields, and tennis courts set out around the perimeter. I found the pedestrian path and followed it in, a thick canopy of trees mottling the light from the streetlamps. I couldn’t see any woman walking alone along this path at night even in this neighborhood, which was known to be safer. Why had Chandler?
I stopped at the head of the path, scanned the empty park, not seeing a soul in it. I turned and looked behind me, toward the bright lights of the street—lots of people out and about on bikes, walking, strolling. Wouldn’t someone have heard a gunshot or a scream?
I plucked a small flashlight out of my pocket and walked on, listening, alert, armed. The path forked at a big memorial fountain with water spouting out of the trunks of iron elephants, and a few feet from that, I saw the emergency phone Chandler must have used. I lifted the receiver, got a dial tone, hung up.
They’d cleared away the crime-scene tape, but Tanaka had explained the scene clearly enough to me. Chandler had been found just inches from a broken sewer grate. I trained my flash on the path, swept it right and left till I found the grate. It was rusted, had a gap on one side, where the metal had worn away and fallen off. I toed the grate. It wobbled.
I squatted down and trained the light into the hole but couldn’t make out much of anything in the murk, though I could faintly hear water dripping and could smell the stench of stagnation and rot. Overhead the leaves on the trees rustled. So, he came up behind her, shot her, and ran? I stared at the phone again, then at the grate. Maybe a few hundred feet to the left lay a softball field, its lights blazing, but none of that shine made it to this spot.
Why here? I looked around. No cameras. I pulled at the grate to see if I could lift it or slide it, but it was too heavy. I stuck my hand through the opening, flexed my fingers, pulled my hand out clean.
I heard footsteps and shot to my feet, whirled to find Marcus standing on the path yards from me, his hands in the pockets of a dark trench coat, his expression unreadable. I backed up. Neither one of us said anything for a time.
“I knew you’d need to see it,” he said finally.
I kept my eyes on him but worried about the rest of the path, the parts I couldn’t watch. I worried about who else might be on it and what they planned on doing. I worried that someone might be Farraday, back for more, this time with help. An ambush. I hadn’t told anyone where I was going tonight. My mistake. If I went missing from this park and my body ended up in some landfill, no one who loved me would even know where to start looking.
“What are you doing, Marcus?”
“Following up. It’s still my case. You and Tanaka seem to have forgotten that.” He took a step forward.
“Marcus.” It was a warning.
I hadn’t meant it to come out so harsh, but he was the last person I wanted to see in a dark park at nine at night. I scanned the bushes, looking for Farraday. Marcus slid his hands out of his pockets, then displayed them so I’d see he had nothing in them. It was no comfort at all. I held my breath, braced.
“I’m a cop, not some street thug after your purse.”
I didn’t answer. I checked the fountain to see if anyone was hiding behind it. “Is Farraday with you?”
“No reason he would be. I figure he’s halfway to the nearest rehab by now. He’s dead in the water.”
“That leaves you hanging,” I said.
“Not as much as you’d think. He wasn’t my only connection. I can always make a deal. We never did walk in lockstep.”
“Seriously?” I would have laughed if I hadn’t been 100 percent worried about walking out of this park alive. “Did you know he was following me? That he’d meant to come after me?”
He didn’t answer right away, which made me wonder about his hesitation. “No.”
“I don’t believe you.”
He moved forward again, one step.
I shook my head. “Marcus, I swear to God.”
“I’m a cop.”
“So you keep saying.”
“What happened to our spirit of cooperation?”
“That’s Tanaka and me. You? Back it up.”
He took a step back, smiled, calm as anything. That was the creepy part. “We found a gun down that hole, a Glock seventeen. Could be the one used on Chandler.” He glanced at the grate. “Also found a muddy glove.”
I didn’t look. I knew where the grate was. I was standing just inches from it.
“Chandler was found right where you’re standing,” he said. “Why do you think he ditched it?”
“Good question. Why don’t you head on out and check on that?”
“Guess I’d better. I wouldn’t want to be ‘set straight’ like Farraday was.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Another pause. “Your guy paid him a visit, had a little talk about the incident at your office. I heard it got intense. Me? I’ve got no beef with him, unless he takes exception to this little meet after the fact.”
Eli and Farraday? “When was this?”
“Yesterday.” The cocky look on his face made my blood boil. “I guess chivalry isn’t dead. Funny, though, I didn’t think you went in for that sort of thing, but I guess people change.”
I glared at him. “Some don’t.”
He looked around, then back at me. “Have a good night.”
He walked off down the path. I didn’t follow him. Instead, I waited until he was out of sight, and then darted off across the softball field, staying under the lights, out in the open. I ran all the way back to my car, my legs shaking.