Nausea climbed up her throat, and Georgia barely made it back to her Toyota. The soup, which had seemed so welcoming moments earlier, was now a bleak reminder of what she’d just heard. She got out of the car, ran to a trash bin, and pitched it. Back in the car she sucked in deep breaths of air.
Georgia didn’t believe in coincidence. Last Monday a man tailed her down Sherman Avenue in Evanston. A dark SUV barreled around the corner and someone inside shot him. The next day she got the note from Savannah, which, according to DNA testing, was legit. After tracking the wrapper to Benny’s a few days later, she interviewed Bruce Kreisman, who led her to what looked like a sex-trafficking den. Little more than twenty-four hours after that, someone in a dark SUV shot out her tire. Now Bruce Kreisman had turned up dead.
Even an idiot could connect the dots. Who did Bruce Kreisman talk to after he took her to the warehouse? What was that person’s connection to her sister? And what was so important that he was killed for it? She supposed his deadbeat pals back in Florida might have tracked him to Chicago, but unless he’d done more than was on his rap sheet, his crimes down there didn’t warrant an execution-style murder. Then again, if the Russian mob was involved, they didn’t need a reason to kill. It was part of their MO.
Someone didn’t want her poking around and was going to lengths to let her know. They could have killed her along with Kreisman. But they didn’t. Why? Why shoot out her tire instead? And where did Chad Coe fit in? Was he the head honcho? Or just a soldier in the chain of command?
She started the engine and punched in the address of the warehouse on her GPS. After a number of twists and turns, she pulled up to the curb. The building was dark, all the doors closed. It looked deserted, with no sign of the homeless squatter. She wondered if the Dumpsters were still full of the detritus from the women, but even if they were, it wouldn’t tell her anything. Except that they’d canceled their garbage service. But she ought to check. She went around to the back and lifted the Dumpster’s lid. The trash was still there: pink bathrobe, food wrappers, empty pregnancy test kit.
The flurries intensified as she drove home, snowflakes whizzing and zooming every which way. Her wipers groaned and scraped across the windshield. She should spring for new blades. It would make things clearer. Not like this case, if you could call it that. Like the snowflakes, all she had were maddening bits and pieces.
She was at a distinct disadvantage. She knew nothing about the other side except that they might have Savannah and they might have killed Bruce Kreisman. They, on the other hand, knew her, where she lived, and who she was talking to.