They located Lora Fitz’s home address in Niles, as well as her current place of employment, a family restaurant over by the North Shore. Being hungry, they decided to try her work first. If they struck out, at least they got lunch. Nick drove so Annalisa had a chance to admire the view. Normally she loved the lakeside drive, the winding road along the shore with the city’s shining skyscrapers on one side and the vast expanse of Lake Michigan on the other. The water, usually a source of recreation and relaxation, had a predatory appearance today. The lake mirrored the sky, gray and choppy, and wind whipped high waves along the concrete barriers. “Take the next left,” she said turning her gaze toward the land.
Nick turned on the blinker. “I didn’t get down to the shore much when I lived here last,” he remarked.
“That’s how it goes around here. You stick to your own neighborhood.”
“I remember,” he said with a curve of a smile. “You brought me home to meet your family and they were mystified. ‘He’s from Florida?’ Like it was outer space.”
“You have to admit, it kind of is.”
He grinned. “Point taken.”
She rolled her neck until it cracked. “My parents grew up two blocks from each other, which was three streets over from where they live now. Pops used to say there were two single girls on his street, and he decided to start with the prettiest one. When she said no, he asked Ma to the homecoming dance. The pretty one got caught shoplifting bras from Marshall Field’s a couple of months later. Supposedly there’s a lesson in there somewhere.”
“He must’ve picked the right girl, if they’ve been married all these years.”
“Forty-four years this summer. Ma used to get red-in-the-face angry at him when he failed to show up on time for yet another dinner, the table set and four hungry kids whining at her by the time he strolled through the door well after dark. He’d just pour her a glass of wine, put on some Sinatra tune, and dance her around the kitchen to her place at the table.” They had made it look easy, this math where one couple somehow added up to a happy family, but Annalisa failed the test no matter how she tried. Colin had fled. Nick was a decent cook, but he’d never once danced with her in the kitchen.
She took a surreptitious glance at her cell phone, but it showed no new calls. Nick caught her looking. “Hoping Mr. Lovelorn will give you another buzz?” he asked.
She shoved the phone back in her pocket. “Have you considered what an awful nickname that is for this guy? Lovelorn makes him sound like a moony teenager with a crush, not a sadistic asshole with a bunch of nylon rope.”
“You’re not allowed to put ‘Sadistic Asshole’ on the front page of the papers.”
She pursed her lips and looked out at the leaden sky. “Maybe they should. Maybe then he wouldn’t be so pleased with all his awe-filled news coverage.”
His phone rang then, trilling over the speakers of the car. “Maybe he’s calling me now,” he said, trying for levity but failing. He pushed the button to take the call. “Carelli here.”
“Nick?” A young female voice, almost a purr, came over the line. “It’s Kelsey.”
“Speaking of moony teenagers,” Annalisa muttered, and Nick made a face at her.
“Hey, Kelsey,” he said easily. “What’s up?”
“Oh, nothing much. I just got back from a trip to the gym, and I’m so gross and sweaty.” Annalisa rolled her eyes dramatically and Nick swatted her. Kelsey continued, “I’m free this afternoon if you’re available to look at my bike. I’d be happy to repay you with a drink or whatever.”
“Or whatever,” Annalisa mouthed at Nick. He ignored her.
“I’d love to, but I’m at work at the moment. There’s a place on Everett Avenue that can help you if you need it fixed right away.”
“No rush. If you get off early, just come by. I’m just going to shower and then lounge around.”
Nick said goodbye and clicked off. “It’s not what you think.”
“Oh, it’s exactly what I think,” Annalisa replied with a dark laugh.
“She’s my neighbor. Her bike isn’t shifting gears smoothly, and I told her I’d take a look at it.”
“Look at her bike. Right.”
“You think I’m making it up? You heard the woman.”
“No, I think you really believe you’re going over to help her with her bike. It’s the ‘or whatever’ that comes afterward that’s always a surprise, right? Just like that time you wanted to help that waitress in the coffee shop down the street with her broken window. Or how you met that girl in the park with the lost dog. So many damsels in distress, and only one Nick Carelli to go around.” He said nothing, just stared ahead out the windshield. She felt a prick of conscience, then a burning curiosity. She knew she shouldn’t ask, but she couldn’t stop the words coming out of her mouth. “What about me, Nick? What were you going to help me with?”
He gave her a long look. “I don’t know,” he said finally. “Whatever it was, I never found it.” He turned his attention to the road, nodding at a squat brick building with a faded sign, once red and now a mottled pink, declaring it to be Monty’s Restaurant. “This looks like the place. Think Lora’s here today?”
“She didn’t answer her home phone. Either way, we’re getting something to eat.” Her empty stomach gave a painful rumble, disgruntled by her sense memories of Ma’s dinners and determined to make her pay. Her brothers would be over there now, probably enjoying a roast and mashed potatoes.
They entered through a heavy glass door and found a college-age brunette woman wearing way too much eyeliner manning the hostess station. She looked up from her cell phone as they walked in. “Two for brunch?” she asked, already grabbing the plastic menus, eager to move them through as fast as possible.
Annalisa didn’t follow her. “Is Lora Fitz working today?”
“Lora? Yes, she’s here.”
“We’d like to sit in her section if possible.” Annalisa smiled. “She’s an old friend.”
The girl shrugged and returned to check off a different box on her seating chart. “Right this way.” She led them to a brown pleather booth with a white Formica table, chipped on one edge. “Enjoy!” she said brightly and took out her cell phone for the thirty-foot walk back to the front of the restaurant. A young man flitted by to drop off waters, paper placemats, and tableware. “Lora will be right with you,” he muttered, like it was all one word.
Nick examined his reflection in the butter knife and brushed a lock of hair back from his forehead. “So, your father interviewed this woman originally?”
“Him and his partner.” She craned her head around, looking for any waitress who might fit the mental picture she had for Lora—an aging, washed-out blonde with a thickening waist. “And yes, I know what you’re thinking. If they gave Pops this part of the case, it probably means nothing.” Such a piece of nothing that no one even filed it correctly in the tomes of evidence reports.
“It’d be wild, though, if it were true.” He leaned across the table. “Imagine she got a look at him. We’d have the first real lead in this case in decades.”
Annalisa drummed her fingers on the table but didn’t reply. If it was a lead, it was an old one, not new. Chicago PD would look like fools for not following up when it was hot, with Pops and Brewster maybe getting the worst of it. They had talked to this woman and dismissed her story. “She may not even remember anything after all this time.”
“I disagree. I met a woman once in Florida who had been a member of the Chi Omega sorority house when Ted Bundy came through and attacked all those girls. She wasn’t at the house the night it happened because she’d gone to stay a couple of days with her aunt over in Pensacola. She came back to find the whole place roped off and a couple of her girlfriends dead. Eventually when they were let back inside, the walls and ceilings of the bedrooms were coated in blood. That was more than forty years ago now, but this lady talked about it like it was yesterday. You could see it in her face, how it changed her. I don’t think you come that close to evil and forget it.”
“I think we’re about to find out.” Annalisa had noticed an older woman in an apron approaching, a redhead not a blonde, although the brassy color was straight from a bottle. She walked with purpose, nimbly dodging the angled tables and small children running around.
“Hi, welcome to Monty’s,” she said, her voice low and gravelly. “What can I get you?” Her nametag said LORA so they had found the correct woman. She didn’t look like the wild child Harrigan had described. She wore a demure gray cardigan, the barest hint of makeup, and sensibly flat sandals on her feet.
Annalisa ordered the ham and cheese omelet with a side of fruit. Nick selected the burger and fries. “What we’d really like is the chance to talk to you, Lora,” Annalisa said, and Lora looked up from where she was scribbling their orders on her pad of paper.
“Me? What’d you want with me?” Her eyes narrowed with the skepticism of a woman who hadn’t been asked for anything more meaningful than a ketchup bottle in quite some time.
“We read your story about your encounter with the Lovelorn Killer.”
She stiffened visibly. “That was decades ago.”
“If you’ve seen the news, then you know why it’s important now.” Annalisa withdrew her police shield from the inside of her coat and showed it to Lora.
“Now.” Lora huffed the word with scorn. “That’s rich. I tell you guys all about this animal twenty years ago, and now you think it’s important. That woman who died? Grace Harper? She’s on you.” She pointed from Annalisa to Nick. “My conscience is clear.”
“We’re here because we want to listen,” Annalisa replied.
Lora pursed her thin lips, clearly not believing them. “Fine,” she said at last. “I take my break out back in half an hour. You can talk to me then if you don’t mind the smoke.”
She pivoted on her heel and returned to the kitchen to put in their orders. Later, she dropped off their food without a word. At the appointed hour, they laid their money on the table and went around to the back of the restaurant in search of Lora. They found her up against the brick wall near a dumpster, smoking and trying to keep out of the path of the fierce wind. It plastered her red hair against her pale face, and she clawed it back with one wrinkled hand. “What’d you want to know?”
“Everything,” Annalisa replied.
Lora squinted and took a drag. “You know I was on pills back then, right? I started taking them when my back went out. I needed them for work. Then I couldn’t work without ’em. The doc was the one who kept writing me scrips, but somehow it was all my fault anyway.”
“We’re not here to judge,” Nick told her. “And we’re not here to bust you.”
“Bust me for what? I’m clean.” She clutched her sweater closed and shivered. “I’ve got a good job here, a steady paycheck. I don’t need trouble.”
“If you saw him,” Annalisa said, “then he saw you. He’s still out there, and he’s still got those ropes.”
“Okay, okay.” She held up her palms in surrender and then crushed out her cigarette butt on the ground. “This guy, I hadn’t seen him before the night he came into O’Malley’s. It was a Tuesday, so business was slow. He had dark hair and a scar that cut across his eyebrow right here.” She indicated a slash in her left brow. “I asked him how he got it, and he said running with the bulls in Spain. I told him it was a bull story, all right.” She smiled at her own wit. “Anyways, we got to talking and he seemed nice, funny. He said he had some pot out in his truck, and would I like to smoke with him when I finished my shift? I said sure. So, we go out there after closing to his red pickup truck, passing this joint back and forth, and soon we were the only people left in the lot. It was a new truck—shiny, no rips in the seats. I thought he seemed normal. Nice, you know?”
“Yeah, I know the type. Then what happened?” Annalisa prompted.
“We started fooling around, and right away, he changed. He started slapping me, light at first, but then harder. He liked it when I yelped. I tried to call it off, but he’d locked me in. That’s when he pulled the rope out of his glove box. He tied my hands behind my back and bent me over the seat. Called me names that would make a sailor blush while he did me from behind. After, I was a mess, all shaking, my mascara running. He turned back into Mr. Nice Guy. He offered me tissues and a bottle of water. He said he would drive me home but I didn’t want him knowing where I lived. I had him drop me at the L and then I walked back from there.”
“Can you describe what he looked like?” Nick asked.
“Big, over six feet. Strong. Black hair, dark eyes. Scar like I mentioned. Kind of olive-colored skin—sort of like she has.” She gestured at Annalisa and pulled out her pack of smokes to light up another. Her hand trembled slightly as she took the first drag. “I didn’t say nothing at first about what happened in the truck. I figured it was my fault, going out there with him. We were both high. I knew what the cops would say if I tried to report it.”
Annalisa wished Lora was wrong, but she knew better. Back when Pops was on the job, there’d been a scandal because a woman called to report she’d been raped, and the officers not only didn’t believe her, they crank called her back, mocking her story. “What happened later?” she said. “Did you see him again?”
“I was scared he was going to come back to the bar, but he didn’t. After a couple of weeks, I started to relax again. My shoulders came down off my ears, you know? Didn’t jump a mile every time someone touched me. But then I was walking home after closing one night, over on Myrtle Street, and I heard this rustling in the bushes behind one of the houses. It was past two in the morning, and those streets are usually dead quiet by then. I looked over and I saw a man standing in the shadows right by the house. He wasn’t doing anything, just standing there, but I got the creeps. I booked it down the street and got the hell out of there. As I was running, I saw a red truck parked down the block, and that’s when I knew it had to be him. Ace, the same guy from the bar.”
“Did you see his face? The man in the shadows?”
“No, it was too dark. But he was the same size and shape. Then later, I saw that woman who got killed, Katherine Duffy, and her house was right next door to the one where I seen that guy. I read in the papers how he stalked the women before killing them. That must have been what I saw.” She shuddered and took a deep drag. “I could just tell by the way he was standing there so close to the house that he was up to no good. So that’s when I reported what happened with Ace.”
“Can you tell us anything else about the man?” Annalisa pressed. “Was he white? Black? Thin? Fat?”
“Big guy. Dressed in dark clothes. I didn’t see his face, thank God. What if he came after me?”
“If it’s the same guy, you did see his face,” Nick pointed out. “Do you think you could describe him for a sketch artist?”
Lora blinked rapidly, her lips parting in fresh horror. “You mean it really was him? You think I’m right?”
Annalisa’s cell phone buzzed in her pocket, making her jump. “Excuse me a moment,” she said, moving to the side. She dug it out and saw a text from Zimmer: The Tribune has a new letter.