An Eye for Murder (32 page)

“I got caught in the storm.” He edged closer to the wheelbarrow. I tensed. “I knocked, but you didn’t answer the door.”

“I didn’t hear you.”

He yanked a thumb. “I tried to wait it out in the truck, but my windows do not close. When I saw you shut your windows, I knew you were home.” The storm was so loud he was shouting. The water streaming down had plastered his clothes to his body.

My eyes darted to the metal object that had dropped to the ground. Squinting through the rain, I made out a pair of pruning shears.

I relaxed. “Come in.” I put the safety on and laid it on the hall table.

He followed me in. I fetched a towel which he ran over his head, face, and arms, and then draped around his neck. His eyes fixed on the gun. “You are in trouble, Ellie.”

I looked at the floor.

“Is it your ex-husband?”

“No.”

“Your daughter?”

I shook my head, feeling a pang of longing for Rachel. “Your new friend?”

I saw the concern etched on his face.

“How can I help?”

“You can’t. I shouldn’t even be here.”

“This is big trouble.”

I nodded.

“You cannot tell me?”

“It has to do with the woman I’m working for.”

He raised an eyebrow. “The hosta woman? In Lake Forest?”

“Yes.” I was surprised he’d remembered.

“You must wait until the storm passes.” I looked outside. Curtains of rain lashed the lawn. Wind rattled the windows. We went into the kitchen and sat down.

We were on our second cup of coffee when the phone trilled. I knew I shouldn’t answer it. It could be Marian. Or Roger. But what if it was David? I stared at the phone. It continued to ring. An eternity passed. Finally, my machine picked up.

“Ellie, it’s Roger. I’m calling for Marian. She needs to meet with you. She says it’s important. Please call her.”

The machine clicked off, and the message light blinked. Fouad and I exchanged glances.

Chapter Forty-eight

By dusk, the rain tapered off, but a sticky film of humidity hung in the air. I parked in back of Walgreen’s near Dad’s. Five minutes later, a blue Chevy turned in and circled the lot, slowing as it came abreast of the Volvo. Dory was driving. Raoul opened the door, and I climbed into the back. She pulled out and turned east. Both of them were in dark clothes. Dory’s hair, pulled back with a band, was hidden under a baseball cap. “You were right,” I said. “Marian called. She wanted to meet with me.”

“You didn’t call her back?”

“No.”

“You see? You have been watched. Your home. Your phone. Even your E-mail.”

“My E-mail, too?” Dory nodded. I remembered the garbled messages that never got through to Karen and Mac. They had been thorough.

We cruised down Ridge Road through Evanston. Like Oak Park, Bronxville and Bethesda, border towns are often more livable than the cities they adjoin.

“Why me? Why did you recruit me to help you?”

Dory met my eyes in the mirror. “It was partly this Skulnick business. The way you talked about him. Something was odd. And then, when David looked exactly like Marian’s father, and I saw Marian’s reaction, I knew something was going on.”

“You saw it, too.”

“I tried to warn you.” I recalled when she showed me the picture of Paul Iverson in Marian’s office. “But we didn’t know how much you knew until I got the call from Stephen Lamont.”

“Lamont?” I leaned forward. “You’re working with Lamont?”

She sidestepped the question. “When I left the campaign, the public, sanitized version was that I resigned. But Lamont knew I’d been fired. He wouldn’t say how he knew, but I got enough out of him to realize it came from you.”

I frowned. “That wasn’t intentional. He manipulated me into it.”

“Isn’t that what they’re supposed to do? He’s not bad, you know. For a reporter.”

“If you can tolerate the species. Roger’s looking for him, by the way. He seems to have disappeared.”

Raoul cleared his throat. “He’s on assignment.”

“For you?”

“For himself, mostly.”

“He told me someone’s been E-mailing him,” I said. “Anonymously. Telling him to look closely into Marian’s campaign. Any idea who that might be?”

Raoul smiled. “Don’t worry. He’s safe.”

“I’m sure of that.” I turned to Dory. “Is that why you left the campaign?”

She gripped the wheel. “No. It was Wolinsky. He pressured me to sleep with him, but I wouldn’t.” I flashed on an image of Dory outside Marian’s hotel room in Rockford, her face spasming between fury and anguish. Raoul reached for her hand.

I leaned against the back of the seat.

When I opened my eyes, we were on Michigan Avenue. During the day, the strip of road between Oak Street Beach and the Conrad Hilton is brash, bright, and confident. But when night falls, the street devolves. Figures slip in and out of shadows, cars creep by, strangers prowl back alleys. Away from the pools of light, a sinister, more primitive force lurks the streets, linking passion and danger in a macabre dance. Demonstrators at the ’68 convention were beaten up near here; Andrew Cunanan stalked his prey close by.

Dory and Raoul were talking in low voices. I yawned.

“Good,” Raoul said into the rearview mirror. “We’re almost there.”

I stretched my arms. “I’m still wondering about something.

Did Marian hire me because of my skill or because she had to keep me close?”

“I don’t know,” Dory said. “But it goes to the heart of the matter. Who was—who is—in control.” She twisted around. “I can tell you this much. When the subject of a video first came up, Roger thought of you right away. Without any prompting.”

I looked out the window as we headed east on Superior. “So it was totally serendipitous that I went to work for her in the first place?”

Dory shrugged.

Another Jungian coincidence.

Chapter Forty-nine

At the outdoor parking lot, a stooped old man with a toothless grin took our money and wished us a good evening. As we walked the two blocks to the River North office, patches of fog drifted past us, their smoky tendrils dissipating on contact. Raoul retreated to the Italian restaurant next door. He would wait outside. If anyone went into the building, he’d call Dory’s cell, let it ring twice, and hang up.

Dory’s key opened the outer door, and we quietly entered the narrow lobby. The building wasn’t big enough to warrant a security guard, but a sign advised us that the alarm system was connected to the Eighteenth Precinct. I hadn’t noticed it before. The small, rickety elevator deposited us on the third floor.

I tried to swallow my fear. If I hadn’t thought Rachel might be in danger, I would never have let myself get talked into this. “Are you sure we should—”

Raising a finger to her lips, Dory slipped her key into the lock. It turned easily, but the door squeaked as we stepped through. I heard it latch behind her. Just inside the door on the wall was an electronic keypad. Dory opened it, tapped in four digits, and a red light turned to green. She blew out her breath. I’d never noticed the alarm before either. How did she know they hadn’t changed the code since she left? An uneasy feeling swept through me.

The reception area was shrouded in darkness and, except for the tick of the clock, it was still. A car passed below, its radio blaring heavy metal. A pair of white headphones lay on the marble-topped desk. We rounded the corner. Light from streetlamps poured through the large, patterned windows, spilling distorted fleur-de-lis shadows across the floor. As we circumvented the pit and passed Roger’s office, Dory scowled.

Marian’s office was a few feet away. The door was closed.

Dory pulled another key out of her pocket, fit the key into the lock, and opened the door. A dark expanse stretched out. I let my eyes get accustomed to the absence of light, and gradually, shapes dissolved out of black. At one end of the room was Marian’s round conference table, chairs, and the sofa. At the other end was her desk, her computer monitor on top. Dory glided over to the hard drive underneath.

The machine whined as it cranked up. A moment later, a blue glow washed over everything. I walked over, aware that precious minutes were slipping away. Finally, the cursor changed from an hourglass to an arrow. Dory clicked on Marian’s E-mail, which promptly asked for her password.

Dory typed in the letters S-T-E-E-L, and the program opened. Over a hundred messages appeared in her in box. Either Marian never deleted anything, or she got more fan mail than a rock star. Dory and I scanned the list, looking for anything with the words
Gibbs
or
Covenant
or
Church
in the return address.

We had almost reached the bottom of the list when I pointed to an entry: [email protected]. Dory opened it, and we read the first few lines. It was a request for more information about Marian’s domestic policies. Impersonal and bland, it was soliciting the type of information many organizations do when they evaluate which candidates to support. Dory and I traded glances. She motioned to the printer. Raoul had said to print out anything we found. I turned it on.

As the printer whined, she kept scrolling. At the bottom of the page was another E-mail from Covenant. She started to open it, but the printer stopped, and she reached for the paper. She was about to stuff it in her bag when a noise outside the door made me freeze.

Dory jerked her head around, angling her head to listen.

A squeak sounded. Someone was opening the outer door. Panic shot across her face.

“Someone’s coming. We’re fucked. Get out!” she hissed. She raced to the door, and her outline disappeared.

I grabbed the paper from the printer, just as light from the reception area flooded the big room. There was no time to get out or to shut down the computer. I threw myself under the desk next to a warren of crossed cords and wires. The wires were attached to a power strip with a glowing orange light on one end. I flipped the master switch on the power strip. Everything went dark. And quiet.

Except for the steps thudding across the floor.

I held my breath, fear piercing my skin like a sharp blade. Who was out there? Where had Dory gone? It flashed through my mind that the office alarm code had in fact been changed, but Dory hadn’t realized it. Maybe it had been programmed to accept the old code and simultaneously trigger an alarm. Which meant that they might have suspected her all along. Maybe they’d tripped the alarm to trap her.

More footsteps tramped across the floor. The sounds of a struggle echoed through the walls. Grunts, definitely male. A voice hissing, “Fucking bitch!” Then a groan, this time female. I looked around wildly. There were no panels covering the sides of the desk. Whoever it was would spot me as soon as he looked into Marian’s office. I thought about climbing out the window, but it was covered with bars. There was no room behind the couch and no closet in the room. I pulled out the Colt, crawled out from under the desk, and ran to the door, throwing myself behind it.

From the other room, I heard more scuffles, and then what sounded like a swift exhalation of breath. Another rustle. A thud. Then silence. Was it over? Were they leaving? Seconds later, two muffled cracks split the air. Oh God. I released the safety on the Colt. More footsteps. Headed toward Marian’s office.

All at once the door banged into my face and crushed me against the wall. Pain ripped across my nose. I sagged down the side of the wall, a wave of dizziness washing over me. The Colt clattered to the floor. I covered my face with my hands, feeling something warm and sticky and metallic smelling. A pair of arms dragged me out from behind the door, whipped me around, and threw me against the wall.

I tried to get my wind, but something solid and hard hit me from behind. My knees buckled, and I fell sideways to the floor. I tried to break the fall with my hand. A sharp pain snaked up my wrist. I groaned, trying to shift back on my haunches, but a heavy weight slammed down on top of me. Something pushed my face into the floor. I felt hot breath on my cheek, and a gravelly voice hissed in my ear.

“Don’t even think about it, bitch.” My tongue tasted dust and grit. I smelled rancid body odor. “Get the cuffs.” Another voice grunted. Footsteps sounded to my right.

Black rubber-soled shoes filled my field of vision, and the weight on my back shifted. Someone pulled my right hand then my left behind my back. Pain sluiced through me. I heard a click, felt cold metal banding my wrists. Then something else stabbed the small of my back. A gun?

Sour cigarette breath strafed my face. “You get up now, nice and easy, and walk to the elevator. Got it?” Someone grabbed my hair and pulled it away from my face. Spasms of pain tore through my scalp. “Got it?” He pulled tighter. My head felt raw. “Tell me you got it.”

I moaned.

“Good.” The throbbing around my head eased. I felt a prod as something hard was thrust deep into my back. “Just in case.”

Someone else grabbed my shoulders and pulled me up. I stumbled forward, losing my balance. Rough hands clutched me and broke my fall. I took a tentative step, then tried to collapse and melt the way I’d been taught during the ’60s.

The jab in my back deepened. “You do that again, I’ll shoot you with your own gun.” The Colt. I tried to twist around. The jab got deeper. A shove pushed me out of Marian’s office. Beyond the door, between Marian’s and Roger’s office, a dark form lay motionless on the floor. Dory. Bitter anger welled up in me. Where was Raoul? What happened?

They shoved me into the elevator, facing me against the back wall. As the door closed, someone threw a blindfold around me and pulled it tight across my nose. The rush of blood prompted a new wave of dizziness. A wad of what tasted like cardboard was stuffed into my mouth, forcing my tongue back against my throat. I gagged. Someone stretched tape across my mouth. The elevator door opened again, and I was pushed through the hall.

Hinges squeaked against metal. I’d never used the back door to the building, but I knew it led to a makeshift parking lot off the alley; Marian and Roger parked there. The door closed, and we were outside. I breathed in air scented with garlic.