With an extra-large coffee that I’d scooped up from the neighborhood gas station, I headed toward our district but was detoured by a call from Lutz.
“Hey, Jesse. You driving?”
“Yep, just turning onto East Sixty-Seventh. Why?”
“Come to the First District instead. We’re meeting there. That maniac has to be put down with whatever means necessary. The FBI has a lot of resources on their end, and they’ll be keeping us informed with everything they do.”
“On my way. Did you get any sleep?”
Lutz huffed into my ear. “Probably about as much as you did, but I bet you have on a clean change of clothes.”
“You slept at the hotel?”
“A wrinkled suit is the least of my concerns. We’re meeting in their roll call room at eight fifteen.”
“Got it.” I ended the call and placed the phone in my jacket pocket but pulled it back out when another call came in. “McCord speaking.”
“Jesse, it’s Danny. I’ve been trying to call Lutz, but it goes straight to voicemail.”
“That’s because he was talking to me. What’s up?”
“An officer scouring the sidewalks just outside the hotel located both spent shell casings. Finding evidence in the daylight hours obviously proves much easier than at night. The officer has the area cordoned off, and the casings were left as found. Mike and I are headed there now to pick them up.”
“That’s great news. Are they .223 Remington’s, like in the first shooting?”
“That’s what I was told, and we’ll compare them to the casing we have in evidence. My hunch is they were fired from the same weapon.”
I slapped the steering wheel. We had something that would connect the cases, even though we believed it was the same shooter, anyway. “Find anything in the hotel room or on that emergency exit door last night?”
“Nope, but according to the maintenance supervisor, there wasn’t a work order put in to repair a broken lock. We’re pretty sure that fire escape is where the shooter was positioned. No viable prints were found, though.”
“Not surprised.” I turned onto State Street off Cermak Road. I’d reached the First District station in a matter of minutes. “Were the shell casings found in the area below the fire escape?”
“Yeah, but there are a lot of factors to take in like wind, distance the casings fell, rolling down the sidewalk, you name it, but the fire escape looks good for this one.”
“Another reason why nobody could pinpoint a room the shots came from is that he didn’t shoot from a room at all. Okay, I’ll pass that information along to Lutz, and every guest on that floor will have to be interviewed.”
“That floor is divided up between rooms and a maintenance service area. The guest rooms go left out of the elevator, and the service area goes right. The fire escape is at the end of a hallway on the right side.”
I groaned. “So guests have no reason to turn that way to go to their rooms?”
“Nope, and there’s a lower floor set up the same way.”
“Got it. I’ll pass everything along to Lutz, but chances are he’s already heard the news. While you’re out on the sidewalk, see what’s directly across the street. Maybe a camera from another building caught the muzzle flash or movement on that fire escape. We’ll catch up with you guys later.”
“You bet.”
I ended the call with hope that Forensics could give us more than two rifle casings with no prints on them at all—or planted prints from somebody else. At least they could compare firing pin marks to see if the ammo was shot from the same AR-15 as before.
Mills met up with me in the station’s parking lot. He’d just sucked in a last drag off his menthol cigarette before stamping the butt into the pavement then tossing the squashed end into the nearest trash can.
I wrinkled my nose. “You stink.”
The heavy cigarette smell clung to his clothes as we walked to the building’s entrance.
He snickered and waved me off. “Pansy ass. Either you’ll stop talking about it, or I’ll quit for real, but that’s yet to be determined.”
I laughed. “Pansy ass? And that’s coming from a two-hundred-twenty-five-pound tatted meathead who smokes menthol cigarettes? Good one. Anyway, an officer combing the area this morning found two shell casings on the sidewalk outside the hotel.”
“No shit? That’s good news.”
“Don’t hold your breath in hopes of fingerprints being on them.”
Frank pulled open the door, and we passed into the lobby. “Yeah, we both know how that turned out last time.”
We showed our badges and exchanged good-morning nods with the desk sergeant then continued down the hallway to the roll call room. Lutz waved us over as soon as he saw us.
“Did you hear the latest?”
“Yep, Danny called me after not being able to reach you.”
“Right, but that’s not all.”
I furrowed my brows. “I haven’t heard anything else. What’s up?”
“Detective O’Hare, the lead from the Seventh District, said his guys are pretty certain they’ve found the shooter’s location.”
“Really? Where?”
“They believe he shot from the rooftop of the laundromat across the street. It’s three buildings down on the left, around fifty yards from where the officers were gunned down.”
“Why wasn’t that building searched right away?”
Lutz let out a hard sigh. “I guess because nobody would have thought a shooter would be perched up there in broad daylight, especially with the chance of being seen by people coming in and out of the building to wash their clothes. SWAT looked for people inside after arriving on scene yesterday, but the laundromat was empty. They must have scattered after hearing the gunshots.”
I glanced around the room as it filled with law enforcement personnel. “Do we know there were patrons doing their laundry when the shots were fired? SWAT arrived twenty minutes after the 911 call.”
Lutz raked what little hair remained on his head. “It’s a theory. There were clothes in the machines. Anyway, the rooftop is tar-based and gets soft in the morning sun. They found footprints, signs that somebody may have been kneeling along the edge of the building, and a liquor store receipt pressed into that warm tar, probably dropped out of a pocket and accidentally stepped on.”
I scratched my cheek as I thought about that. “The receipt could have valuable prints on it and a lot of information we could use. Danny and Mike are tied up with those bullet casings right now, and I’m sure they’ll be at the hotel for a while.”
Henry joined in on our conversation. “It’s all good. The forensic techs are on their way to Englewood to start processing the scene. They’ll scoop up that receipt as soon as it’s photographed.”
I sighed with relief and tipped my chin toward Mills, who was already headed to one of the few empty seats left. “We better grab those chairs before they’re gone.”
The deputy superintendent of police took center stage and pounded his fist on the podium as he demanded the sniper be taken down with deadly force if necessary. He wanted the best detectives from every district to set up a task force and to put an end to the sniper once and for all. Little did he know that the entire Chicago PD had been working the case for days and had spread themselves dangerously thin, yet we still had nobody in custody.
Each of the twenty-two districts throughout the city was assigned a full-time detective to work the sniper case. From our district, that responsibility fell on my shoulders. I was elected from the Second District pool of available detectives to be part of the task force. That made twenty-two detectives in all, working day and night while rotating shifts until the shooter was caught. We would begin that day.
After the meeting ended, Lutz pulled me aside. “I hate to lose you to the task force, but you’re the best man for the job. Between Chicago’s finest detectives and the FBI working the case, that maniac will be caught in no time.”
“I’ll do my best, Boss. Frank, Henry, and the rest of the guys can handle the workload. They’re all pros.”
Lutz patted my shoulder. “And that’s what I’m counting on, from all of you.”
The task force would be set up at police headquarters on South Michigan Avenue, and everyone assigned to participate in the operation was told to head out.
I wasn’t sure how the operation would work, if we’d be divided into teams or what, but I knew I’d be in the company of the city’s most experienced detectives.
The drive to police headquarters took fifteen minutes. A war room of sorts had already been set up and was ready for our use.
I entered the room with Tommy Sanders, who I knew from the Seventh District. Computers and telephone lines filled the tables in the large room, and a wall map with red pushpins in three spots indicated where the shooter had struck.
“Long time no see,” Tommy joked.
We had both worked the Englewood area yesterday, looking for evidence left by the shooter.
I didn’t know every detective there on a personal level, but many faces were familiar. Handshakes took a few minutes before the meeting began.
I whispered to Tommy as we searched out seats next to each other. “Talk to O’Hare yet?”
He nodded. “Yeah, I guess Forensics is out on that rooftop as we speak.”
The task force was led by Sergeant Ron Everly, who reported to the police headquarters commander, George Randall. Sergeant Everly stood at the head of the table, scanned the room, and began. “Everyone here has a role to fulfill in order to catch the perp, and everyone’s input is extremely important. The FBI has a lot of resources at their disposal, so don’t be afraid to reach out, but do it through the proper channels. Anything you gentlemen need, suggestions you have, or leads you want to pursue, let me know. I’ll reach out to the commanders or the FBI. We want this takedown to be a team effort, and by doing that, we’ll have our man in custody very soon. I’d like to hear your suggestions, as the best detectives this city has, on how you’d like to proceed.”
I spoke up right away since we didn’t have time to waste behind a table. We needed more feet on the ground. “We’re in our third day without an arrest. We have countless officers and SWAT patrolling the city’s streets, looking for anything that seems off. News bulletins have gone out on every TV station with what little we have as a personality description of the perp, yet he’s still at large.”
“And the FBI is working with a profiler to see if they can tighten up that description a bit. Word is, the shooter’s spot may have been located at the Englewood scene,” Sergeant Everly said.
Tommy took his turn. “That’s my district, sir, and it appears that a rooftop on a nearby laundromat could be the sniper’s nest. Officers at the location found what seems like evidence of recent activity, and forensic techs are on the scene now. What I’ve heard is that a liquor store receipt was located on that roof, and I’m ready and willing to follow up on that as soon as Forensics clears that rooftop.”
The sergeant scanned the room and counted heads. “We have three locations and twenty-two detectives. How about dividing up the locations and get the best men out there to conduct in-depth knock and talks again and follow up on every lead that has come in from those districts.”
I looked around the room, and every detective was nodding. Tommy, myself, and five other detectives took the Seventh District, and the Eighteenth and the Second were divided among the rest.