Glet called at 8:30 that Sunday morning. Rigg was sitting on his love seat with an open file box on his lap. In the four hours since he’d been rousted by the cage, he’d rearranged his wall of boxes so that the bottom ones were now on top, and he’d begun looking through notes he hadn’t gone over in some time. But the search for clues he’d missed would still be scattershot, because there was nothing else left for it to be.
‘Lehman is issuing a statement, no press conference, in thirty minutes,’ Glet said. ‘Two boys, both age ten, found a sealed, five-gallon drum along the beach two days ago. It was heavy, wrapped with waterproof duct tape. Thinking it was valuable, they snuck the drum into one of the kids’ garages and opened it last night after hockey practice. They freaked. The garage boy’s old man called the Chicago cops. They called us.’
‘Parts?’
‘All that were missing. McGarry brought in his three fancy doctors to sort of reassemble her. Five foot six, 150 pounds, mid-teens. Lehman thinks her face matches a photo of a missing girl.’
‘You’re working this?’
‘We got people on it.’
‘But not you?’
‘I’m working other angles, like I told you.’
‘Remember when I told you it was McGarry who was along for the Fernandez bust?’
‘So?’ Glet asked.
‘You said McGarry was a keeper, or the keeper. What did you mean?’
‘Nothing I can remember,’ Glet said, and hung up.
The beige receptionist at the Dead House shook her head. ‘No press right now.’
‘Call Corky.’
‘Cornelius,’ she corrected, not moving a finger toward her phone, ‘but Mr Feldott is busy.’
‘Call him anyway.’
‘No,’ she said.
‘I’ll wait for Corky,’ he said, motioning to the row of plastic chairs against one wall.
‘This isn’t a bus station,’ she said.
He sat on one of the chairs and smiled back at her glare.
Forty minutes later, two men emerged from the hall that led back to the morgue. One man was trembling, supported under one elbow by the second man. Corky Feldott followed close behind. He wasn’t sporting his perpetual grin that morning; the look on his face was stricken. Even his narrow necktie that day was black, funereal. With the barest of frowns at Rigg, he put his hand on the trembling man’s shoulder and then the two visitors walked out on to the sidewalk.
Feldott nodded to Rigg and motioned him over. ‘Poor people,’ Feldott said. ‘They’ve been sitting on a ransom card that never got followed by a money demand for a month, hoping their girl was alive.’
‘Card?’ Rigg asked, trying to sound casual.
‘Not for publication, but it wasn’t even a letter, just a little yellow thing,’ Feldott said.
‘Where’s McGarry?’ Rigg asked.
‘I’m handling this part of it,’ Feldott said.
Rigg asked about freckles and a faint, slight scar. Feldott nodded, remembering when Rigg had asked about them earlier, but said nothing further now. Feldott gave him details about the Montrose Harbor girl, asked him to wait until noon to file, so that the men who’d just left could notify their other family members, and sent Rigg on his way.
Noon was still two hours away and Rigg’s story on Fernandez was still single-sourced and flimsy. He had time to drive back to the Kellington Arms and try again. Not surprisingly, a different man was behind the counter.
‘Richie Fernandez,’ Rigg said.
‘Don’t know him.’
‘Busted here.’
‘Don’t know him.’
‘The night clerk saw it.’
‘Talk to him, then.’
‘Where is he?’
‘No telling which night clerk you’re talking about. A lot of us take turns at the desk. Get free nights that way.’
Rigg took out a ten. ‘Who else might have seen the bust?’
The man’s face came alive at the sight of the green. ‘I heard Wally was down the hall when the cops came.’
‘Is he here now?’
The clerk nodded, his eyes on the ten. Rigg handed it over.
‘Two fourteen,’ the counter clerk said.
Rigg went up and knocked.
‘Yeah?’ a voice slurred through the door.
‘Ten bucks for two minutes of conversation.’
The door opened ten dollars’ worth, which was more than a crack, less than a welcome. One red eye, part of a second and a face full of whiskers appeared behind the crack, in a mist of muscatel.
‘You saw Richie Fernandez get cuffed?’ Rigg asked.
Wally beckoned the money with a rub with his thumb and forefinger. Rigg folded the bill lengthwise and pushed it through the opening.
‘I was down the hall and saw it, sure.’
‘Was this one of the cops?’ Rigg held his phone to the gap so Wally could see Lehman’s picture.
‘Another ten,’ Wally said.
‘Five, after you look at a second picture.’
‘Up front.’
Rigg passed through the five.
‘Yeah, that’s him,’ Wally said.
Rigg then summoned up the digital McGarry.
‘The other, yeah.’
‘Your full name?’
‘Just Wally.’
And so it would be Just Wally, but it was enough.
He called Aria’s cell phone and asked her to meet him at the Pink. She said she was already there, working. He got there at 11:30.
‘You said you’ve got more than Lehman’s statement about the girl,’ she called from inside her office.
‘Write first, to release at noon,’ he said, and headed for his desk.
He’d worked it in his mind driving back, so it only took a few minutes. He forwarded it to Aria and followed it into her office.
According to a statement by the Cook County Sheriff’s Department, the girl whose body washed up in a barrel in Montrose Harbor has been identified as Jennifer Ann Day, 16, of northwest suburban Des Plaines. She disappeared December 30, after leaving her home to go to the public library. Her parents received a ransom note the next day demanding that they not inform the police and await further instructions that never came. Miss Day was a junior at Maine Township High School West. Funeral arrangements are pending. Cook County Sheriff Joseph Lehman is working alongside the Chicago and Des Plaines police departments in the investigation.
Perhaps related to the murder of Miss Day is the troubling disappearance of a person of interest in the Graves sisters’ killings, Richie Fernandez, of Chicago. According to witnesses at the Kellington Arms, Sheriff Lehman, accompanied by Cook County Medical Examiner Charles McGarry, arrested him at the hotel a week before the Graves girls’ bodies were discovered on German Church Road in suburban Cook County. Information about the arrest, including whether and where Fernandez is being held, has not been forthcoming. Both Sheriff Lehman and Medical Examiner McGarry have denied any knowledge of the arrest of Mr Fernandez.
‘Feldott wants some things held back,’ Rigg said. ‘Everything else was off the record.’
‘The yellow card the Day family received and that faint scar on their Jennifer Ann’s ankle?’ she said.
‘Most especially, Feldott won’t let me use those yet.’
‘Good, because you haven’t yet given Lehman your card,’ she said. ‘Turning it over might speed things up when one more victim is discovered.’
‘The one with the tight cluster of three freckles,’ he said.
‘And now you want to report Fernandez. Your two sources to the bust: they’re both winos?’
‘Maybe just the fellow down the hall from Fernandez’s room. I didn’t smell grape on the night clerk.’
‘And where is Lanz, these days?’
‘Perhaps still dining and sleeping free at the county’s expense, or quietly released. I can’t get any confirmation about him, either.’
She pursed her lips, glancing again at Rigg’s piece on her screen. ‘I don’t know. It seems extreme, you making such a show of Fernandez. Lehman would have to know there’d be hell to pay if he brought forth a suspect he’s been holding illegally. Unless …’
‘Unless Fernandez is no longer capable of being brought forth,’ Rigg finished for her. ‘Or, maybe Fernandez is fine and healthy, and they think nobody will care, so long as Fernandez is the guy.’
‘“They”?’
‘McGarry’s in on it, Aria.’
‘That’s problematic,’ she said.
‘Why?’
‘He’s rich,’ she said, ‘and Donovan likes rich people.’
He looked past her, drawn to the woodland picture Benten had taped to the wall. It looked to be the safest place on earth.
‘Milo?’
He turned back to her.
‘This is going to hit the fan. You’re accusing important people of suppressing information.’
‘Like I’m suppressing information by not reporting the card?’
‘We’re agreed that it’s time, right now?’ she said.
He nodded.
She managed a small smile, reaching for her phone. ‘Bombs away, babies.’
She’d insisted that Lehman come to them, and so they sat in Aria’s office.
‘Where the hell did you get this?’ Lehman asked, reading the pale yellow card through the Ziploc plastic bag. Rigg had replaced both of Carlotta’s Ziplocs with ones he’d run out to buy, to make sure no stray fingerprint of hers would be discovered. Aria agreed to keep her out of it.
‘Left inside my car,’ Rigg said. ‘I heard the Day family received a ransom demand on an identical card.’
Lehman set the bag on Aria’s desk. ‘This was how you knew to ask the Graves daughter about the crossed toes?’
‘And to ask you and McGarry about freckles and ankle scars. Jennifer Ann Day has a scar on her ankle.’
‘This card lists a fourth thing, a purplish birth mark. You didn’t ask about that.’
‘I didn’t,’ Rigg said.
Lehman stared at him for a few seconds. ‘What’s it link to?’
‘Anthony Henderson had such a mark behind his right ear,’ Rigg said.
‘Damn it,’ Lehman said.
‘The Stemec Henderson killer knows about that purplish birthmark, like he knows about the crossed toes on Beatrice Graves—’
‘And the ankle scar on Jennifer Ann Day,’ Lehman interrupted. ‘Same damn killer?’
‘Have you pressed Richie Fernandez about the Stemec Henderson boys?’ Rigg asked.
‘Who the hell is this Richie Fernandez you keep mentioning?’ Lehman asked, but his face showed no curiosity. He was lying.
‘Somebody you arrested. Remember how the name upset McGarry?’
‘Where exactly did you hear about this Fernandez?’
‘Tipped.’
‘We’ve been leaning on dozens of people,’ Lehman said. ‘Your Mr Fernandez could have been one of the hundreds we braced.’
‘This one you actually took away, you and McGarry. I’d like your comment on him.’
Lehman grabbed the Ziplocs off Aria’s desk and stood up. ‘In exchange for not charging you with withholding evidence in a murder investigation, I’ll count on you not to report this?’
Aria looked at Rigg, then at Lehman, and nodded.
‘Mum’s the word on the card for now,’ Rigg said.
‘See that you don’t,’ Lehman said to Aria, and headed for the door. Rigg followed him.
‘I need a comment on Fernandez,’ Rigg said.
‘I’ll ask my people,’ Lehman said, starting down the stairs.
‘He’s lying,’ Rigg said, returning to Aria’s doorway.
‘If Fernandez had been unproductive, he’d have been released and Lehman would have said that,’ she said. ‘If Fernandez had been viable, he’d have been announced.’
‘Luckily, McGarry is a part of it,’ Rigg said.
‘He’s not strong like Lehman,’ she said.
‘He can crumble. The question is how to squeeze him,’ Rigg said. ‘But first, let’s see what the mysteriously reclusive Deputy Glet has to say about all this.’
‘All what?’ she asked.
‘Everything he’s keeping secret.’ He went to his desk and called Glet. Again, the deputy answered right away. He was no longer dodging Rigg’s calls.
Rigg told him about the yellow index card he’d just given Lehman. ‘Four distinguishing features, two relating to the girls that have been found, a third matches Anthony Henderson. It’s the same kind of index card the Day family received with a ransom request. Same killer, then and now.’
Glet said nothing.
‘Why so silent, Jerome?’ Rigg asked.
‘You’re wrong.’
‘Things you learned at ATF?’
‘Later,’ the deputy said, and clicked him away.
A hand touched the back of his shoulder. ‘How about dinner and then a look at your file boxes?’ Aria asked.
‘I’ve got plans,’ he said. He had no plans. He hadn’t had plans since Judith was killed. But a plan to have plans with the gorgeous Aria Gamble seemed a most dishonorable thing to do.
He grabbed his laptop and hurried out the door.
He drove west in the dwindling dusk, passing out of the suburbs and into the farmland, as much away from Aria Gamble as toward hope of discovering something new. Three pickups and two cars were parked at the bar at the barren intersection, their owners inside, braced for another evening’s merriment of beer, grilled cheese and decorated deer heads. He drove on, trying to focus on what he might have set loose by taunting Lehman about Richie Fernandez, and not imagine anything about Aria Gamble at all.
He cut his headlamps at the last turn and shut off his engine along the side road that bordered McGarry’s estate.
The mansion was dim. Only a few low-wattage lights were on. Like when he’d come with Aria, all of the outbuildings were dark.
Five minutes later, headlamps sped through the intersection behind him and slowed to turn on to the drive leading up to the house. Rigg powered down his side window.
The electronic gate opened, the headlights shot up the drive and the car slammed to a stop next to the house. The headlamps switched off. The car’s interior light came on as the driver’s door was opened.
No new lights came on inside the mansion. Rigg stuck his head out his side window, straining to hear. Footsteps crunched on the snow, growing louder. The driver was crossing the ground at the back of the mansion.
A gentle sound of something being pulled softly across the snow came then. Rigg squinted across the great expanse of the rear grounds but could see nothing. He looked back at the mansion. The interior of the car remained lit. The driver had been in too much of a hurry to close the car door.
The gentle pulling sound continued for another few minutes and then it stopped. Again, footsteps crunched the snow, only this time they grew fainter. The driver was going back toward the driveway.
The car door slammed; the car’s interior light went off. A moment later, a new light was switched on inside the mansion.
Rigg started his car, turned it around and drove back to the intersection.
He’d taunted Lehman, and he’d taunted well.
‘What are you up to, Charles McGarry?’ he asked the night.