Chicago Police discovered the partial remains of a girl or young woman in a 55-gallon barrel yesterday on Chicago’s lakefront. The barrel, probably trapped in the ice out in Lake Michigan until it began to melt, washed up to the shore along Montrose Harbor. Chicago Park District personnel, thinking it had fallen off one of the cargo ships that ply Lake Michigan, opened it and discovered a mutilated body. Chicago Police released it to the county medical examiner, who has scheduled a news conference for this afternoon at two o’clock.
It was the next day, a Saturday, at noon. The office was deserted except for Rigg and Aria. Though she’d dressed down a fraction by wearing tailored black slacks and a black cashmere sweater, she still wore her pearls. Rigg didn’t know her well enough to inquire whether she wore them to bed.
‘We can’t do more than a bulletin,’ he said. ‘A damned waste of time.’ He’d been up half the night, fuming over his missed opportunity to tail Lehman and McGarry.
‘Another dead girl is a waste of time?’
‘No, but racing to the lake just to watch a sealed barrel being loaded into an ambulance is.’ He took a breath. ‘They’d only hint that she’s not all there. If that’s true, they might never identify her.’
‘What’s your guess? Is it the Graves guy?’
‘It’s a different modus operandi. The Graves girls were unmarked. The barrel girl was mutilated, dismembered.’
‘And both sets of girl killings are different from Stemec Henderson,’ she said.
‘Maybe the killer is being clever by varying his attacks.’ It was another of the things that had kept him up all night.
‘The Montrose Harbor girl, she was frozen, like the Graves girls?’
‘That’s something else I didn’t get from being pulled off that tail.’
‘You’re angry.’
‘Somebody from the Bastion could have run over to Montrose Harbor in ten minutes to report that nothing’s known yet about the barrel girl. On the other hand, Lehman left here furious with McGarry. We should focus on that, for now.’
‘Not that business about crossed toes; he answered that calmly enough. And both of them seemed genuinely confused about the other marks you mentioned.’
‘McGarry blurting about Richie Fernandez is what set Lehman off,’ he said. ‘Lehman hustled McGarry out of here right after that, and they headed out of town. Fernandez is a story.’
‘Route 39, Ogle County,’ she said.
‘Route 39?’
‘That’s where McGarry and Lehman were headed – or they were until, by your own admission, they spotted you tailing them and pulled into that bar.’ She smiled.
‘How do you know where they were headed?’
‘Lousy grilled cheese.’ Her smile broadened. She was enjoying the taunt.
‘What the hell are you talking about?’
‘Nobody eats at that dump of a bar. They offer cheese, ham and baloney sandwiches in sealed plastic bags that they heat in a microwave until the bag balloons up enough to kill whatever is growing inside. Horrible.’
‘I’m not following this,’ he said.
‘McGarry has an estate just off Route 39 with an in-house chef, wine cellar and cold imported beer on tap. They wouldn’t eat at that bar when they could avail themselves of that. No, they stopped there so they could have a look back at whoever was so obviously tailing them, and wait you out, if necessary. Your tail was blown.’
‘You’ve been to McGarry’s estate,’ Rigg said.
‘Several times, in a previous life. It’s secluded. Lots of pines and bushes surrounding the perimeter, though you can see in easily enough.’
‘Good place to sweat a suspect,’ Rigg said.
‘Richie Fernandez?’
‘Why not?’ he asked.
‘Maybe. So, how did you know about those toes and the other marks?’
‘I got tipped, the same way I got tipped about a fourth physical marker that I didn’t mention – a tiny purplish birth mark.’
‘Why hold that back from Lehman and McGarry?’
‘That tiny purple mark was behind Anthony Henderson’s ear.’
‘My God!’ she said, understanding instantly.
‘A blank white envelope was dropped in Carlotta Henderson’s mailbox by hand – no postmark. Inside was a yellow index card, computer printed, listing those crossed toes, a tight cluster of three freckles that appear as one, a small ankle scar and that tiny purple birth mark, which Carlotta confirmed was Anthony. Whoever left the yellow card knew about minor marks not only on the Graves girls, but also on one of the Stemec Henderson boys,’ he said.
‘The killer,’ she said.
‘The same killer,’ Rigg said.
‘You’ve got to tell Lehman where you got the card.’
‘Carlotta made me promise to keep her out of it …’
‘Because she got so trashed in the press?’
‘Yes.’
‘Could you be holding back because you also got so trashed—?’
‘I’ve already lost what I had to lose.’
‘The ankle scar and the freckles?’ she asked, but knew the answer to that question. She was changing the subject. ‘Waiting for two more girls?’
‘We’ll know whether it’s two, or maybe only one, when they find the rest of the barrel girl,’ he said. He went to his desk to make a call.
‘How did you know I’d be in on a Saturday?’ Corky Feldott asked.
‘Everybody’s working this Saturday.’
‘Montrose Harbor girl,’ Feldott said. ‘We’ve got nothing yet for release.’
‘What’s missing?’
‘Her head, right hand, left arm and left ankle are missing, but you can’t report that.’
‘Where’s the sense in that?’
‘We’re thinking the killer couldn’t fit all of her inside one barrel. We’ve got people with binoculars along the shoreline, looking for another one.’
‘No reported missing girls fit her description?’
‘None that jump out, but we need …’ Feldott let the implication dangle.
‘The rest of the parts. I understand,’ Rigg finished for him. ‘Could the Montrose Harbor girl have been killed at the same time as the Graves sisters?’
‘No telling. Like the Graves girls, she was frozen.’ Then Feldott asked, ‘What’s Jerome Glet doing at Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms?’
‘Glet’s with Feds at ATF? I didn’t know.’
‘Strange, isn’t it, when all hands are supposed to be working the Graves case?’
‘And now the girl in the barrel,’ Rigg said. ‘He should be all over that.’
‘Strange,’ Feldott said.
Rigg went back to Aria’s doorway. ‘I’ve got to run into the city, check something out.’
‘What’s up?’
‘Something that might explain McGarry and Lehman beating it out of here.’
The tables were empty. Lucille was behind the cash register. Gus, presumably, was behind the grill window, invisible.
‘Seen Richie?’ Rigg asked her, but it was not why he’d come.
‘Not since the sheriff came, asking about him. Or you, afterwards.’
‘Is this the guy that was with the sheriff?’ Rigg showed her the picture he’d summoned up on his phone.
‘That’s him,’ Lucille said.
‘You’re sure?’
‘Gus!’ she shouted.
Gus came through the swinging door, nodded at Rigg in recognition.
Rigg held up his phone.
‘That’s the guy came with the sheriff, looking for Richie,’ Gus said. ‘Who is he?’
‘I’m not sure yet,’ Rigg said, putting his phone into his pocket.
But he was. He’d shown them McGarry.
‘Learn anything?’ Aria asked when he got back.
He paused outside her office. ‘More than I’d hoped.’
‘What did you learn?’
‘First, a phone call,’ Rigg said, and walked to his desk to call Glet’s cell phone.
‘Glet here,’ the deputy said, picking up for the first time in days.
‘Glet where?’ Rigg asked.
‘What the hell are you doing, calling me on a Saturday?’
‘Trying to figure out what the hell you’re doing at ATF. You haven’t been home.’
‘Who told you that?’
‘Woman next door.’
‘Well, I’m home now, not that it’s an invitation for you to stop by. I been working late nights and leaving early in the morning. That old bat goes to bed right after nine, regular as clockwork, and doesn’t wake up until ten the next morning. She’s into the vodka, five minutes later.’
‘What are you doing at ATF, Jerome?’
‘It’s no secret. Officially, I’m assisting our federal friends in an illegal weapons distribution case.’
‘And unofficially?’
‘Something more.’
‘Something about the boys, as you implied last time we spoke?’
‘It’s always the boys, Milo. I told you I never forgot. Not for publication yet, but ATF picked up someone who might know something.’
‘Like what?’
‘That’s all for now.’
Glet was playing cagey. Rigg would hold back, too, like he’d held back with Lehman and McGarry, and not say anything about the yellow card that linked the boys to the girls. ‘I’ve got something new on Richie Fernandez,’ Rigg said instead. ‘Remember I told you it was two cops that pinched him?’
‘One of them was Lehman, you said, and that the guy was never booked, that he never returned to his flop. Catch-and-release, I said it was probably, and Lehman scared him so bad the guy left town.’
‘The other guy along for the bust wasn’t a cop. It was McGarry.’
For a moment, there was only silence, and then Glet said, ‘That doesn’t need to be no big deal, Milo. The M.E.’s a real interested party this time around. You hammered him for not helping on Stemec Henderson. Maybe he pushed Lehman to get him involved so he could look good. We all want to look better, this time.’
‘Lehman came to the Pink yesterday. He brought McGarry.’
‘What for?’
‘They wanted to brace me about going to the Graves place about a tip I got.’
‘McGarry doesn’t brace anybody; he’s too soft. What tip?’
‘Just a tip, for now, Jerome, unless you want to tell me more about ATF.’
‘I can wait.’
‘What if Lehman’s got Fernandez somewhere?’ Rigg asked.
‘Stashed without being booked, like we talked last time?’
‘I called around. Nobody knows anything about Fernandez and, when I asked Lehman about him, he acted as confused as everybody else. But McGarry? He got real nervous. Cracked a sweat. Lehman had to hustle him away.’
‘You’re saying McGarry helped Lehman do a nasty on Fernandez?’
‘I don’t think Fernandez was a catch-and-release,’ Rigg said.
‘McGarry? McGarry’s not a doer; he’s a … he’s a keeper,’ Glet said, but he said it softly, as if he was trying out the idea on himself. And then he hung up before Rigg could ask what he meant.
Rigg walked back to Aria’s office. ‘I just told Glet how nervous I made McGarry when I asked about Fernandez.’
‘And?’
‘I think I might have agitated Glet a little, too.’
She looked at her watch. ‘Do you have dinner plans?’
‘I never have dinner plans.’
‘Let’s go for grilled cheese,’ she said.