The Big Keep: A Lena Dane Mystery (Lena Dane Mysteries) (21 page)

And although I hadn’t said yes to Starla...he wasn’t entirely wrong. I didn’t know how good this guy was, but he had to be pretty good—he’d found out about the pregnancy, and he’d followed me to In-N-Out, which meant he’d known I was staying with Cristina, and where she lived. If he was that good and he tried hard enough, he could find my recent phone calls to LA, my emails about the case file. Fuck.

And then an icy spear of an idea shot through my mind: he knew about Nate. If he’d followed me from Babies R Us, he’d seen the comic book store, where my family was, and he’d seen me drive away with Nate. He’d seen Rory and Toby, too, if he’d followed me to Babies R Us. This guy knew about my whole life, and he knew that I hadn’t dropped the case like he’d said. I began to shiver in my seat, although I told myself it was just the rain and the car’s air conditioner.

“Lena, what’s happening?” Nate demanded, unable to be quiet any longer.
 

I looked at him. “What’s happening is that I am losing my mind,” I declared brightly. “For a second I thought I saw a guy I put in jail
years
ago, can you believe that?” I shook my head, pasting on a bemused smile. I started the car. “You’ll go along with my story when I blame the baby hormones, right?”
 

As soon as I dropped off Nate, I called Starla and told her I’d take the case.

I know, I was breaking my promise to Toby. But I was too exposed. The only way to make sure that the people I loved were safe from this guy was to do the thing he thought I was doing anyway: hunt him down. I had to get to him before he got to me.
 

On the phone, I explained my rates and my usual process to Starla, but I got the definite impression that she wasn’t really listening. It seemed like she was too busy doing a happy dance. She agreed to my rates and asked me how soon I would get started.

“Right away,” I told her, “But I have a condition.”

There was an uncertain pause. “Like...cancer or something?”

I rolled my eyes. “No, I mean I have one condition for working for you. I want your permission to tell Nate anything I find out about Jason, at my discretion,” I said firmly. “Even if it’s something embarrassing to Jason’s memory.”

“Absolutely,” Starla promised. “He has every right to know, too.”

I watched my rearview mirror the whole way home, but I didn’t see any headlights that looked suspicious. Somehow that didn’t make me feel better, partly because he already knew where I lived, and partly because if it were me, and my target had made me, I’d go back to the rental place and get a new vehicle so she wouldn’t see me coming again.
 

That night, I didn’t tell Toby about being followed. I knew exactly what he’d say: that seeing a beige Camry, one of the most popular rental cars in the country, twice in one day was just a weird coincidence. And the car that had nearly run me down had just been some typical Chicago jerk. He’d say I was just looking for an excuse to jump back in the case, and he would use his lawyer powers against me until he had me half-believing the whole thing was in my head.

But I
knew
I was right. I might have been a shitty mother and a lying wife, but I’d never been wrong when it came to trusting my gut on cop stuff. Jason Anderson’s killer had been in that car, and he was gunning for me.

I just needed more evidence, I decided. As soon as I had something concrete, I would show it to Toby, and he would help me figure out how to stop this guy before he hurt me or anyone I cared about.

Nate included.

The next morning I went into the office early and pounced on the file that Starla had left with me. Jason Anderson’s original trail had dried up once I’d found his screenplay treatment. Since there were no real specifics in the screenplay, the whole thing had seemed like a dead end—except that now I had something new: the trip to Chicago. I pulled out the credit card bill right away and started looking through the charges.

It was immediately obvious that Jason hadn’t used the card for
all
of his expenses. There weren’t nearly enough meals to cover a four-day trip, for one thing, and none of the purchases were for less than twenty dollars. So he’d had some cash with him, but he’d used the card for big-ticket items: flight, rental car, gas, and one very expensive restaurant: $150 for a meal at L’Etoile. Rory and Mark had gone there for their fifth anniversary, and that number sounded about right for a meal for two. But who had Jason been wining and dining? I wouldn’t rule out the possibility that he had been cheating on Starla—the guy wasn’t exactly known for his enthusiasm for monogamy.
 

I set that aside for the moment and went back to the credit card bill. Something was missing, I realized. There was no hotel on the bill. I tapped a pencil on the desk next to me. Jason had had somewhere to stay. And it wasn’t with his son. Interesting.
 

Jason had also paid for gas twice in four days, which seemed like a lot. I went online and searched for the addresses of the two gas stations, comparing them to the date and time on the bill. The second time he’d topped off the tank, it was at a station near the airport, right before he returned the rental car. But the first station was way southwest of Chicago proper, almost to Joliet. Why would he be in Joliet?

I frowned, trying to piece together the timeline. Jason had arrived in Chicago late on a Monday, and Tuesday afternoon he stopped at a gas station an hour southwest of Chicago. He could have gone farther south and bought gas on the way back to the city, but then why fly into Chicago at all? No, the amount he’d paid for gas wasn’t enough for a full tank; he’d just been topping off. Which is something you do before you go back to your starting point. I looked at the map again. Nate’s suburb, Vernon Hills, was to the north, so it wasn’t like Jason had even gone to look at his son. There was a small airport, but if he’d taken a puddle-jumper somewhere, the ticket would probably have shown up on his credit card bill with the other expensive items.

So where had he gone?
 

Then I got it, and felt like an idiot. Unless it was a private residence –which seemed unlikely, given Jason’s disinterest in all things Chicago –there’s really only one place in that area where someone would be likely to visit: Stateville Correctional Facility.
 

Every Chicago cop knows about Stateville, because it’s supposedly one of the toughest prisons in the US. It’s a Level 1 facility, the highest possible security classification in the country, and the prison’s reputation and history have turned it into kind of the boogeyman for Chicago criminals, as in “if you don’t roll over on your partner, we’re sending you straight to Stateville.” The really, really bad guys go there, and most of them never come out.

But that didn’t really explain why Jason Anderson would want to visit. He was writing a screenplay about a real-life hired killer, so I could see him wanting to interview a prisoner. But why come halfway across the country? There was a pretty big prison an hour and a half north of Los Angeles. Hitmen weren’t my specialty or anything, but surely they had some hired killers there. Was there something special about one of the Stateville prisoners?
 

My memory clicked, and I dug through my desk mess until I located the old copy of
Sunset Dies
. I paged through until I found the section I wanted: where “Caleb” talks about his father dying in prison. Maybe it was true? But if Jason’s father had died in prison, that still didn’t explain why he’d visit. Could Jason’s father, Nate’s grandfather, still be alive and in Stateville?

I leaned back in my desk chair, trying to think. It was early, and I couldn’t have caffeine, and it was even getting hard to spin the chair in circles without throwing up these days, so I just rested a hand on my belly, and absently tapped out a rhythm on my desk with my free hand. There
had
to be something significant about one of the Stateville prisoners.
 

Going back to the computer, I messed around some search engines for awhile, and learned more random facts: that Stateville was at one point the home of Leopold and Loeb and Richard Speck, and that John Wayne Gacy had been executed there. But if there was a website listing famous current prisoners, I wasn’t finding it.
 

I thought for a few more minutes and then reached over and picked up the office phone to call Sarabeth Warrens. Public service ran in Sarabeth’s family: I knew she had a sister who was a 911 dispatcher, and when we were working together she had often mentioned a little brother who worked in Corrections. Her phone rang six times, and I was getting ready to leave a message when she answered, a little breathless. “Vice, this is Warrens.”
 

“Sarabeth, it’s Lena Dane.”

“Hey, Lena!” she said excitedly, or as excitedly as Sarabeth gets. “How are you? I heard congratulations are in order.”

That threw me for a second. Toby must have been spreading the word to some old colleagues. Crap. “Um, thanks, Sarabeth. Listen, I have this problem on a missing persons case I’m following up on.” I briefly sketched out the details of Jason Anderson’s trip to Chicago. “Do you still have a brother with the DOC?” I asked.

She snorted. “Kevin? Yeah, he’s still with Corrections. He keeps applying to Chicago PD, but they don’t want him.” Lowering her voice, Sarabeth added, “Honestly, I think it’s an IQ thing. Kevin was never the brightest bulb.”

There were people in the CPD who used to say that about Sarabeth, but I wouldn’t dream of joining them. “Does he work at Stateville?” I asked hopefully.

“Nah. He was at Joliet ‘til it closed ten, twelve years back, but then he transferred down to Decatur.”

“Oh, okay,” I said, disappointed.

“But listen, Lena,” Sarabeth continued, “you might want to talk to the department’s PR guy.”

“Uhhh...” I dug through my memory for a name. “Jeffers?”

“Yeah, that’s him. Whenever we get a call from someone with that kind of specific question, like looking for famous hitters, we’re supposed to direct them to him. If your guy was trying to get information, he might have called Jeffers himself. Or at the very least Jeffers should be able to point you at the right person to talk to.”

It was a good idea. And, as far as I knew, Toby didn’t know Jeffers. “Thanks, Sarabeth, that really helps...and could we maybe keep this conversation between us? I don’t really want this getting around.” You know, to my husband.

“No problem. Never talked to ya,” she said cheerfully.
 

And that right there was why Sarabeth had lasted this long as Flanagan’s partner. She was too laid-back for words. It was also why she would never advance past detective – she didn’t have the innate curiosity needed for the really tough cases.
 

26. Better Studied

I dimly remembered Jeffers as a short, compact black man with a remarkably intricate goatee. I called him through the main CPD switchboard and spent a few minutes reminding him who I was and exchanging mild pleasantries. Then I explained that I trying to track down someone who had been researching famous hitters.

“Did you get a call from him, maybe four or six months back? His name was Jason Anderson, but he sometimes used aliases.” I rattled off a couple.

There was a long pause. “You know, I think I did,” Jeffers said slowly, in a surprised voice like maybe he wasn’t used to actually being helpful.

“Do you remember what you told him?”

“Not really,” he admitted. “I get so many calls from writers.”

I tried another approach. “Okay, let me ask you this: If someone called today asking about famous paid killers in Chicago, what would you tell them?”

“Hmm...Hang on a second, something’s tugging at my memory.” He put me on hold, and I sat through Peter Gabriel’s “In Your Eyes” and most of “Call Me Al” before he got back on the line. “Sorry, had to take a call in there, too. Listen, there’s a civilian writer in Naperville who was working on a book about Chicago murderers four, maybe five years ago. He called here about twice a week for months, trying to set up interviews with different cops. Drove me nuts.” He chuckled a little. “If someone had called me for information, I’d probably sic ‘em on the guy just for revenge. He’d know far more than I would about the history of professional killers in the city.”

“Do you have a name and number?”

Sometimes it pays to be an ex-cop. Jeffers gave me the information, no questions asked.

I called the writer, Scott Trevors, but had to leave a message. Damn. I googled him and found about 120 hits. One of them was from Amazon, offering a true-crime book called “History of the Hitman: An Exploration of Chicago’s Professional Killers, 1880 – 1980.” Catchy title. I stared at Trevors’ author photo. He was a benign-looking man in his early sixties, wearing a hunter-green sweater vest over a shirt and tie. His expression was stern and unsmiling, as though he were trying to convince you of something just through the photo. The book was already out of print, but I ordered it anyway and paid extra to have it overnighted.
 

The rest of Thursday passed uneventfully, although I did have to tell Bryce I was back on the Jason Anderson case when he cornered me about billing hours. He gave me the “why must you play with matches” look, but Bryce knows better than to go up against me when I’m looking stubborn. And pregnant.
 

At 5:45, just as I was packing up to go home, Scott Trevors called back. I explained who I was and what I wanted to know. It sounded vague and confusing even to me, but right away Trevors said, “Could you be referring to John J. August?”

“I believe that’s right,” I said. August had been one of Jason’s aliases in LA. “Did you ever meet with Mr. August in person? I could describe him.”

“Why yes, young lady. Mr. August was in town...oh, let’s see...about four months ago. He took me out to a very nice dinner and we discussed his topic in great detail.”

“Would this be at L’Etoile?” I said, actually crossing my fingers like a little kid.

“It was. I take it that’s your man.”