Regarding Anna (34 page)

“That must have been upsetting.”

“You got that right. In my head, I knew it couldn’t have been her, but my heart wasn’t listening to my brain at the time, and I kept driving around that area looking for her like a crazy person. The next thing I know, a police car is behind me with its flashing lights on. Apparently, someone had called them to say there was a suspicious man in a truck combing the neighborhood.”

“Oh, dear. So how did you explain to the police what you were doing?”

“I told him the truth—that I thought I saw someone I knew and was just trying to find her. He told me if I didn’t leave the neighborhood, I’d be arrested for prowling.”

“I wonder if it was the woman with the baby carriage who called the police.”

“I don’t know, but every day after that, I looked for her on my way to and from that house on Kinzie.”

“You never saw her again?”

“No. I never saw her again.”

Driving up to the prison was intimidating—if the thirty-foot concrete wall surrounding it didn’t remind you of the type of people who were confined within, the numerous guard towers looming over the wall did.

At the main entrance, we showed our IDs and explained the nature of our business. We signed in and then were escorted to the administration building. A guard took us to a small windowless room with a table and four chairs. We sat in silence until an older matronly woman came in and asked us to write down the name of the person who was of interest to us and for what years.

I wrote down ELMER EDWARD BERGHORN, 1944 TO 1958.

The woman glared at me like I had just asked her for a piece of the moon.

“It’s not like we’re the FBI with those fancy computers, you know.”

“I’m sorry if it’s an inconvenience, but I am told they
are
public records, so...”

She left in a huff.

“What? Did I give her too many years to look up?” I whispered.

“Probably. I wonder if they still do malaria experiments on the inmates here,” Tymon whispered back.

“They really did that? I thought those were just rumors.”

“No, I think it’s true. The inmates would volunteer in hopes of a shortened sentence.”

I got the chills. “It’s creepy in here.”

Miss Sourpuss finally returned forty-five minutes later and handed me back the piece of paper. “No one here by that name for any of those years. I’ll show you out.”

“Would it be possible to see inside one of the round inmate houses? Peek through a window or something?” I asked.

She gave me a blank stare.

“It’s just that I’ve heard they’re pretty unique, and we’ve come such a long way...”

“This isn’t a tourist attraction. We don’t give guided tours.”

“I thought maybe just a—”

“Follow me,” she mumbled.

We walked down a short hallway to a waiting room. On the walls were photographs of the interior of some of the buildings that housed the inmates.

“This is as close as you’re gonna get. They’re called roundhouses, by the way.”

Hundreds of cells, four stories high, lined the walls inside each of the roundhouses. In the center of the floor was a three-story watchtower where someone inside had a clear view inside all the cells. It was impressive.

“Seen enough?” she asked.

“Yes, thank you.”

She directed us from behind until we got back to the guardhouse, where we picked up our IDs and signed out.

“Nice place to visit, but I wouldn’t want to live there,” Tymon said with a smirk.

Joliet Correctional Center was a much older prison and not at all like Stateville—no concrete wall surrounding it and just one building on a much smaller piece of property. An armed guard greeted us inside the main door. We went through the same drill and were ushered into a waiting room.

After waiting a full hour, the young man came back with the piece of paper I had given him with Berghorn’s name and possible years as an inmate. On it he had written JULY 5, 1943 TO FEBRUARY 2, 1958.

We were led back to the reception area where we picked up our IDs, signed out, and exited the building.

I skipped down the walk leading to the parking lot. I could hear Tymon behind me laughing.

Elmer Edward Berghorn had spent fourteen-plus years in prison for tax evasion, embezzlement, money laundering, and bribery. Looked to me like the Joliet Correctional Center deserved a failing grade in rehabilitation.

THIRTY-THREE

The No. 54 Bus

The first thing I did when I got home from our prison road trip was add some dates to my timeline to make sure everything fit.

One possible scenario I envisioned was that Berghorn had been desperate for money after his son was born with a condition that was expensive to treat, so he embezzled money and didn’t pay his taxes. If he went to prison in July of 1943, that meant the Feds had probably been close to nailing him in the preceding months, and Berghorn knew it. That must have been when he got desperate enough to plan to rob O’Gowan.

I struggled with the ambivalence I felt toward Elmer—his doing bad things for a good reason. I couldn’t condone any of his wrongdoings, but I understood why he did them. Not only did I understand why, but I admired him for it. Somewhere along the line, he must have lost sight of the consequences of his actions.

I felt a moral obligation to turn him in for practicing law without a license, and I had all the information I needed to report him to the State’s Attorney’s office. But with most of his clients having been illegal immigrants with little to no rights, the consequences of his actions would likely have been greatly diminished. And I kept thinking about his son, who was better off with Elmer home to care for him than behind bars. My finger was on the trigger, but I was reluctant to squeeze it.

There were obstacles to consider with respect to getting him on other things. It would have been nice if Elmer’s fingerprints had been all over that photo he’d crumpled up and left behind when he broke into Minnie’s house. And as for my parents, so much time had passed, and the only strong evidence against him would be testimony from Henry—and how likely was he to make a statement against his own cousin?

I wasn’t sure what to do, and it wasn’t something I felt comfortable discussing with anyone else. My mind kept drifting to a place where I didn’t want it to go—doing something underhanded to make sure Elmer paid for what he’d done. Had I been certain of not getting caught, I might have given in to that temptation.

* * *

When Tymon came down to steal some coffee, I told him I was going to stake out the Baird & Warner real estate office for a couple of hours a day until I spotted Essie. It had been over three weeks since Essie had disappeared, and I was afraid if I let any more time pass, I’d never find her. He didn’t like the idea.

“I thought you said she doesn’t work there anymore.”

“Apparently, she doesn’t work at that location, but she could still work for them, and she still has old clients.”

“That’s a long shot don’t you think?”

“Maybe.”

“And you’ll be a sitting duck.”

“For who?”

“Berghorn.”

“I think he’s lost interest in me. As far as he knows, O’Gowan’s money is long gone.”

“And what if he’s after more than just the money?”

“Like what?”

“Wasn’t it you who decided there may be a secret room in the basement of your old house? And then when he busted in here that day and demanded you give him something, he didn’t say what, did he?”

“It was the money.”

“Maybe it wasn’t the money. Maybe it was the combination to the safe he found in that room in the basement.”

“Which I have.”

“You have what?”

“The combination to the safe.”

“Then that settles it. You’re not going.”

“And I see that neither are you.” I wanted to take back those words.

“I’ve been here this long...”

“What about the other guys?” They’d been there for three weeks. “I think it’s okay if we relieve them from their duty, don’t you?”

“C’mon. The poker games are great.”

He made me smile.

“Tell you what. I’ll do the daily stakeouts with you. We’ll bring sandwiches and eat lunch in the car every day while we watch the place.”

“A daily picnic.”

“Something like that. How will you know it’s her by the way? You’ve never even seen her, have you?”

“No, but Fern has, and she’s described her for me. And she doesn’t drive, so that’s another factor for narrowing it down.”

“Start tomorrow? Pick you up at eleven?”

“Okay.”

When Tymon left, for some reason I was close to tears.

As I sat there, I began to realize that maybe I did know why. I was twenty-three years old. I had no permanent place to live. No job. No real identity. There was an ex-con out there who might think I had something he wanted, and I had close to $125,000 in a safe deposit box and another $125,000 hidden somewhere in the house that was clearly not mine.

I had myself a good cry before tackling the laundry that had been piling up for three weeks and then looked forward to all that ironing.

* * *

Tymon and I were on our first stakeout together. We parked in a bank parking lot across from the Baird & Warner office in full view of their front door and the two nearest bus stops. Other than that, the landscape that held us captive was completely uninteresting.

I had packed a sandwich and bag of chips for each of us.

“What does she look like?” he asked.

“According to Fern, she’s quite plain—medium brown hair, wears modest clothes, sensible shoes, no makeup. But you must have seen her back in the day if she and Anna were friends.”

“People change. Look at me. I used to have a full head of dark, wavy hair.”

“A real Valentino then?”

“I could turn a head or two back then. Anyway…you have a receipt for this safe, and it’s dated when?”

“It was in either late 1939 or early 1940.”

“And the date on the basement build-out receipt?”

“A few months after Anna was killed. May, I think. May of 1943.”

“And when did Minnie buy the place?”

“Close to Memorial Day, 1943. What are you thinking?”

“I told you before there could have been a safe in Anna’s hidden room in the basement, and the timing would have been right that Anna bought it right after she bought the house. Your parents had the room in their basement built shortly after Anna died, and they could have moved the safe in there.”

“That makes my parents look like criminals.”

“On second thought, a floor safe couldn’t be easily maneuvered up and down a ladder. Those things are heavy.”

“How heavy?”

“I’m thinking since it was called a floor safe on the receipt, it’s got to be bigger than one you would set on a shelf or something. So it’s going to weigh at least a couple hundred pounds.”

“Could they have hoisted it up and down with a rope?”

“I suppose if they had the right equipment, but we’re talking a big deal here. That wouldn’t be something you could do without someone noticing.”

“Someone like Henry?”

“Someone like Henry.” He glanced at his watch. “It’s one-thirty, Gracie.”

“Okay. Let’s call it a day.”

* * *