‘Milo?’
He held the cell phone up to see the time. It was five-fifteen, before dawn, a usual time for Carlotta to call. But he’d been sound asleep, and his first thought was relief. There’d been no cage. He knew about the bars now, and the arms behind them – arms that had never been Judith’s.
‘What is it, Carlotta?’
‘I got another yellow card. In a blank envelope, no postage, like the last one. But, Milo?’
‘Yes?’
‘This one is different. And I think there’s someone down by the cross street, watching the house.’
‘Right now?’ He rolled on to his knees and stood up.
‘I think so, yes. I heard the mail slot, found the envelope. I looked outside, saw somebody walking away fast.’
‘Where is he now?’
‘I think at the corner. The darkest corner, opposite the street lamp and in the shadows of the big bushes. I lost sight of him there. He’s small.’
‘Someone out walking a dog?’ he said.
‘There was no dog.’
He said he’d be there in thirty minutes.
It was still dark by the time Milo got to Carlotta’s neighborhood. He parked two blocks away and came up the sidewalk, watching the houses on both sides of the street. No one lurked behind any bushes. It was cold, barely twenty degrees. It was not a time for anyone to linger.
He crossed into Carlotta’s cul-de-sac. There were a dozen cars and three panel vans parked along the street. Someone could have been hiding inside any one of them, slouched low. He was sure that was what had happened the last time, when the pictures of him leaving Carlotta’s were taken.
He saw no one.
Like always, she opened the door before he got to the house. Like always, he stepped into suffocating heat. Like always, she was dressed in thick fleece pants and at least two sweatshirts to ward off a chill that would never go away. And, like always, her face was drawn tight by the grief that had hollowed out her life. They had that in common, that hollowing. He supposed it was why he always came when she called.
They sat next to each other at the dining-room table and he put on fresh latex gloves. She handed him a Ziploc bag.
‘It’s blank, of course,’ he said, of the yellow card inside.
‘I don’t understand,’ she said.
‘Someone used you to get me here, and hung around to make sure I came.’
‘To take pictures?’
‘Most likely,’ he said.
‘They did their damage last time. What’s left to lose?’
‘Credibility, in case I discover something.’ He reached for the Ziploc bag that held the blank envelope.
She put her hand on his wrist. ‘Tell me what’s going on.’
‘They might be getting closer to solving the case,’ he said, but that wasn’t the whole of it.
‘That Deputy Glet?’ She pressed down harder on his wrist. ‘I’ve seen him on TV, but all he says is that Wilcox will be arrested for the murders.’
He pulled his hand away. ‘He’s got new leads, Carlotta.’
‘On the boys?’ she said.
‘Of course, for the boys,’ he said, trying to not snap at the woman. He was in a hurry, now; he wanted no more talk. He wanted to get outside, out from the stifling heat of her house, away from the heat of her desperation. But, mostly, he wanted to get outside for another look to see if someone might be waiting.
‘That deputy keeps saying he’s investigating other things. But those things might distract.’
He stood up. ‘The cops should have interviewed every damned one of the boys’ classmates. Your boys went horseback riding, I think. The cops should have discovered that. They should have learned about Wilcox.’ Sweat from the heat was dripping into his eyes. He wiped it away. ‘I should have learned it, too.’
She followed him to the door.
‘We must be careful, Carlotta,’ he said.
‘Careful?’
‘Careful that we don’t become a distraction again. Careful they don’t focus on us.’ He stepped out into the cold and pulled the door closed behind him.
Outside, in the growing light of the dawn, he saw no one lurking. But, as he headed down the sidewalk, the devil took his hand. He stopped, raised his middle finger, and took a slow turn in all four directions before continuing on to his car.
He went back to his apartment for a shower and coffee. On his way to the Pink, he called Glet’s cell phone to remind him of the phone call the deputy had promised to make. But he got Glet’s voicemail, so he reminded that instead.
He called the Dead House for an update on Tana Damm.
‘My God, her neck’s a mess, hacked,’ Corky Feldott said. ‘The bastard was no surgeon. Chunks of flesh are missing.’
Rigg thought again of Aria’s musing that the killer might be a woman, and Carlotta’s description of the person watching her house being of slight build. ‘How much strength was needed to cut her head off?’
‘Not that much, if the killer was patient. We’re pretty sure it was a saw, but dull.’
‘Could a woman have done it?’
‘Mr Rigg, you’re not suggesting a woman …?’ He let the question dangle.
‘I’m trying to keep an open mind. Any hope for recovering foreign DNA?’
‘The body was so frozen …’
‘You’re sure about the freckles?’
‘A tiny cluster behind the knee, as I told you before,’ Feldott said.
‘That’s the last of the body marks listed on the yellow card. Let’s hope that means Tana Damm is the last of our victims.’
‘Let’s hope,’ Feldott said.
‘And killed within the same brief time as the others?’
‘So I presume.’
‘Why stop at four girls?’ Rigg asked. ‘Why kill in a short spurt and then quit? Why write down body marks, as if on a shopping list? And why include Anthony Henderson’s birthmark on that list? To tip us that it’s the same killer?’
‘I can’t fathom this,’ Feldott said, clicking Rigg away.
Rigg held up the Ziploc bag for Aria to see through her glass wall. She was on the phone, but gestured for him to come into her office.
‘Of course, Luther,’ she was saying. ‘Of course.’ She hung up.
‘Luther loves me?’
‘He wants to make sure you lay off McGarry.’
‘McGarry’s potentially a big story if he links to Lehman and Richie Fernandez. That can draw readers.’
‘He’s got a big balloon payment coming due.’ She arched her eyebrows almost comically, nudging.
A thought began to grow in his mind. ‘We’ve talked about Donovan having other investors …’ he said slowly.
‘Donovan formed a limited partnership to buy the paper. The identities of the other investors are shielded,’ she said, but her eyebrows remained high. She knew something she wasn’t saying.
‘If Charles McGarry is among them, it would explain a lot,’ he said. ‘He needs McGarry’s cash, and I chased the man right out of the country …’
‘As I said, the identities of the other investors are shielded. But they do know each other very well, Milo.’
‘Donovan killing my Fernandez reporting to protect an investor would trash our credibility.’
‘It might not matter if he can’t meet his balloon payment,’ she said. ‘What’s in your new bag?’
He set the Ziploc on her desk. ‘Carlotta got another card.’
‘Blank on both sides,’ she said, picking it up. ‘Why?’
‘To get me to go to her house in the wee hours.’
She groaned. ‘For pictures?’
‘Even worse, I paused outside to raise a finger.’
She laughed hard enough to open a drawer for a tissue. ‘I’m sorry, none of this is funny,’ she said, dabbing her eyes. ‘So, was it the killer again who dropped off the card, or some hound who got tipped about the yellow cards and saw a way to snap a picture to sell to the Curious Chicagoan?’
‘The lid’s on the yellow cards; there’s been no mention. I think it had to be the killer, like the first time, but now he’ll submit pictures anonymously to ruin my credibility.’
‘Maybe Donovan will frame one of you and your upraised finger to remind him why he should never have bought the Examiner. And you can hang one in your caboose, which is where you’ll be exiled for forever, to remind you of the journalist you’ll never be again.’ She leaned forward across her desk. ‘You need a huge story. You need to learn what Glet’s chasing. No idea what’s bigger than the boys and the girls?’
‘He won’t say.’
‘But he’s still acting solid on linking Wilcox to the boys, right?’
‘For reasons I don’t understand. He says the proximity between the stables and the forest preserve matters, but, according to Feldott, he doesn’t have DNA. I just tipped Glet to have Bobby Stemec’s classmates interviewed to see who worked for rides at the stables. He’ll come across Peter Tanson.’
‘He won’t do it himself?’
‘Too busy with that mysterious bigger stuff.’
She said nothing, and Rigg got the feeling that she was looking right through him, as if she couldn’t see him.
‘Aria?’
She shook her head. ‘Sorry. I’m worried that Glet and his hack boss, Lehman, will drop the ball on the girls like they did on the boys.’
‘I’m hounding Glet to make a call. I need some digging.’
‘Oh, no,’ she said, but she said it without surprise. She’d expected it.
‘You said you like risk, Aria.’
She stared straight back, forming a slight smile. ‘Wouldn’t that be … crossing a line?’
‘Risks often are.’
‘Poor Donovan,’ she said. ‘Call Lehman to come get the latest card before you break out your shovel. And see if you can make some progress on those other stories I’m expecting.’
He left her office, but he looked back through the clean glass and saw that she’d turned to look at Benten’s woods poster, and she was smiling full out now.
He called Lehman. He was put right through. ‘I got another yellow card. It’s blank on both sides.’
‘Those cards, they’re being left for you how, again?’
‘My car.’
‘Bullshit. You’re at the Pink?’
‘Yes.’
‘I’ll send somebody by.’
‘Have you talked to McGarry lately?’
Lehman hung up.
Rigg called Glet’s cell phone and this time got through. ‘You’re moving on my tip about the classmates?’
‘I got men on it.’
‘I got another yellow card. Lehman is sending someone to pick it up.’
‘What’s this one say?’
‘Nothing. Blank, front and back. Stick your nose in it, Jerome. See if Lehman gets fingerprints.’
‘Why send a blank card?’
‘To take pictures of me picking it up. How are you doing on my phone call?’
‘I’m on it,’ Glet said.
Rigg picked at the stack of stories he’d been dodging and was on the phone, interviewing the owners of a new carwash, when two of Lehman’s deputies came to pick up the envelope and the card. After that, he was to call a school district superintendent about the need for a new swimming pool in a high school, and then he supposed he ought to write something about a miserable stretch of road that contained a miserable number of new potholes. The afternoon ahead looked like what his career had become – a miserable road of potholes.
It was too much. Without a glance through Aria’s glass wall, he left. He drove into the city, found a cabbie who took ten dollars to call his dispatcher. Rocco Enrice was still on vacation or off sick or something.
There was yet another new desk man at the Kellington Arms who didn’t know a damned thing about any damned thing.
Potholes, every one of them, deep enough to stall a story.
He drove home. After climbing the exposed central stairs, he had the thought to go to the balcony rail and look out over the street.
Someone was there, in a black hoodie and a long black coat, beside a tree. A man or a woman, he couldn’t tell.
He stood still in the cold night air, knowing he was backlit by the new lightbulbs and totally exposed. The person across the street could have been out for a walk, or waiting for a ride, or doing any of a number of different, innocent things. Not all the people out in the night were evil.
He was tired. It was late. He went to his door and his Scotch.