Trigger City (4 page)

I
t was warm for late September
and the sky was clear and I felt like walking. Terry and Angela lived in Andersonville, a hip, recently gentrified neighborhood on the north side. I walked the clean, tree-lined streets and counted the
FOR SALE
signs until I lost count. Most of the rentals had gone condo. Which was happening all over Chicago, including my neighborhood south of the Loop.

The week before, I'd gotten another letter from my landlord—just a friendly reminder that time was running out. The building was going condo. After renovations it would be called the Burnham Park Lofts. Which was funny because it was about fifteen blocks south of Burnham Park, and funnier still because Burnham Park was a fake name given by developers to the neighborhood properly known as the South Loop.

The “Burnham Park Lofts” would boast modern kitchens with Sub-Zero refrigerators and trash compactors. Jacuzzi tubs in the bathrooms. A communal workout room and a roof deck complete with hot tub. All this can be yours, starting at $395,000. My unit was a two-bedroom. The second bedroom had served as a workout room, and
although I still used the recumbent bike, the punching bags had hung silent since my injuries. My apartment was priced at an even $439,900. Plus about $600 a month in maintenance fees and taxes.

I couldn't afford it, and my lease was up at the end of October.

Terry and Angela loved Andersonville and it looked like a nice place to live, but I couldn't see myself living there. It was becoming a family neighborhood.

I walked south into Uptown, which seemed more like my kind of neighborhood. Uptown had been trying for years to gentrify, but all the surrounding neighborhoods had beaten it to the punch and there was nowhere nearby for the poor folks to go. So it was holding on to its shabby charm. I slid over to Broadway and took in the neon glow of tattoo parlors, the homemade signs in the windows of army surplus shops and Jamaican grocers and used bookstores, and the warm aroma of Mexican take-out joints.

When I got to Lawrence I stopped in at the Green Mill. Thursday is swing music night, but the big band was on a break between sets and the place was mercifully quiet. I took a stool at the bar and signaled the bartender with a nod. The bartender came over with a generous pour of Appleton Estate twelve-year-old over ice and put it in front of me, water back. I hadn't set foot in the place in at least a month. I like bars where they remember your poison.

I swiveled on my barstool to face the booth that had been Al Capone's, back in the day. From Capone's booth, you could keep an eye on both entrances, and you were five steps from the bar. Behind the bar there was a trapdoor in the floor that led to a system of subterranean tunnels, and you could emerge a block away.

Capone's booth was now full of young urban professionals, who knew nothing of the tunnels and who didn't have the sense to keep an eye on either entrance. There were four of them. Double dates, I figured. They were too young and frivolous to be married. They drank Cosmopolitans and Bullshit-Tinis and wore Versace suits and carried Prada purses, and everything anybody said was hilarious, judging by the recurrent spasms of too-loud laughter that erupted from the booth.

I hated them. Then I hated myself for hating them. I finished my drink, dropped enough money on the bar, and resumed my walk.

I meandered down to Wrigleyville, over to Clark and Addison, and stopped across the street from Mecca.

Wrigley Field.

Yeah yeah, I know. I've heard it all before, so save your breath. Sometimes it sucks being a Cubs fan.

I stood for a minute and admired the oldest ballpark in the National League. A beautiful ballpark, where some truly ugly baseball had been played this year.

I continued my walk south. I could've hailed a cab or hopped the Red Line down to Roosevelt. But I knew that I would do neither. Since leaving the Green Mill I'd been fingering the HM Nichols keychain in my pocket and Joan Richmond's apartment was within walking distance. I wouldn't be going home tonight.

I crossed Belmont, well aware that if I turned east and walked a few blocks, I'd be standing in front of Jill's yellow brick apartment building. But I didn't turn. A few blocks south of Belmont, I stopped at Jake's Pub for a pint of Guinness. Jake's is a friendly place that caters to neighborhood regulars and has a very good jukebox, but I didn't stop in for the music.

When Jill and I were an item, we'd spent a few evenings at Jake's and I knew she sometimes met friends there for drinks after work. I didn't know what the hell I'd say if I bumped into her. Vince was almost definitely right—I should forget about her and move on with my life. But I still had it bad and I didn't know how to let go. I did a circuit of the long barroom, nodded at a few familiar faces.

Jill was not there.

By midnight I was lying in Joan Richmond's bed, reading her diary.

Joan Richmond did not catalog the daily events in her life, so much as her emotional state. She'd write about how upset she was about some annoyance and how she shouldn't allow such things to bother her so, without ever being specific about what had triggered the upset.
A feeling of isolation prevailed throughout the diary and Joan often wrote about feeling “different” and “disconnected” from the people at work, in bars, on the bus. She wished that she could be “like everyone else.”

As if everyone else were alike.

But then this flash of insight:

Not a light read. I skimmed some, looking for anything related to Hawk River. Found it, although she never wrote down the company name.

Joan worried about her decision to quit her job without ever saying what led to the decision. She worried about how
Daddy
would react, and her fear of disappointing him was palpable. Then she would chastise herself for caring what he thought and that would lead to a new round of reliving the trauma of her childhood abandonment by a mother who died and a father who was never there.

And then I noticed the alteration. About a dozen pages had been removed from the diary. They'd been cut out cleanly, right at the binding, so it was easy to miss. It looked like a professional job, not just someone tearing pages out. With the pages removed so carefully, I knew
there wouldn't be fingerprints. Anyway, it could've been Joan who removed the pages. Maybe she'd written something that she later regretted saying. Maybe she'd cut them out carefully so that she wouldn't be reminded of it when she flipped through the diary.

Or maybe it was someone else.

Joan had been an irregular diarist. Sometimes six entries in one week, other times weeks would go by between entries. She was always careful to record the date in the top right corner of the page, whenever she started a new entry. Terry had said she quit her job at Hawk River ten months ago. Douglas Hill said she began work at HM Nichols eight months ago.

The missing pages fell right in between.

M
any people believe houses can hold
the emotional residue of a terrible event that took place within. They say they can feel the lingering vibrations. I don't buy it. I think, once we learn that a place has a tragic history, we project our own sadness onto it. But sitting in my car across the street from Amy Zhang's town house, the feeling was strong. So strong that, had I been the superstitious type, I'd have thought I was picking up paranormal vibes. Since I'm not, I didn't.

The sky was a solid sheet of gunmetal gray right down to the horizon and had been making ominous threats of rain since morning. In the small front lawn, a
FOR SALE
sign swayed back and forth with the wind. The grass was brown in patches and needed cutting and the flowerboxes displayed dying dwarf dahlias in differing degrees of decay. Put all that together with the knowledge that a man shot himself inside this house, leaving his wife and daughter behind…easy to conjure a feeling of sadness without any vibrations from the spirit world.

Amy Zhang had arrived about twenty minutes earlier. I figured she'd had time to settle in, so I left my car and crossed the street and rang the doorbell.

“Very sorry to bother you, Mrs. Zhang,” I said. “I have just a few quick questions by way of follow-up on the investigation.” As I spoke, I withdrew my badge wallet from my breast pocket but didn't actually open it. Her eyes darted to the wallet and as they left the wallet and returned to my face, I flipped the badge open and shut and returned it to my pocket. “If your daughter is home, we can do this tomorrow during school hours.”

Amy Zhang sighed. “Come in and remove your shoes.” Her accent was soft but noticeable. I took off my shoes and followed her to the living room. She said, “I just made a pot of tea, Detective…?”

“Dudgeon. Call me Ray. Thank you, tea would be nice.” Amy Zhang slipped into the kitchen and I slipped out of my raincoat and sat. There was a new couch and a freshly painted wall where Steven Zhang had blown his brains out. The wall was blue, a dark enough shade to keep the bloodstains from showing through. Amy Zhang returned and put a teacup in front of me and sat on the couch.

She was a small woman—about five-two and slender—and pretty, with a heart-shaped face and deep brown eyes and raven hair cut in a pageboy. A pretty face, but the eyes were tired and dark circles under them spoke of nights without sleep and days filled with worry. She said, “I don't remember meeting you…you weren't one of the detectives from before.”

“No,” I put a business card on the coffee table between us, “I'm not with the police—I'm a private detective, working for Joan Richmond's father.”

“But I thought—”

“I know you did.”

“You tricked me.”

“I allowed you to make the wrong assumption.”

Amy Zhang's eyes moved to the right, then back to me. She said, “You
helped
me make the wrong assumption.”

“It was the surest way of getting inside. But I don't want to mislead you. You don't have to talk to me.”

She sat and looked at me for almost a full minute. Finally she leaned
forward, put her cup on the table, and said, “Are you really working for Joan Richmond's father?”

“Yes. Mr. Richmond is having trouble coming to terms with Joan's death. He feels that he might be able to accept it if he had a better understanding of how and why things happened the way they did.” Thinking
Dudgeon, you are such a scumbag. If you were a human being, you'd just walk out of here and leave this woman alone.

Again Amy Zhang examined me for a long time before speaking. “I will try. I owe him that. I don't expect forgiveness, but please tell him how deeply sorry I am.”

“He doesn't blame you.”

“With a thing this terrible there's blame for everyone. I'm sure he has some for me. And not without reason. I misjudged how fast Steven's condition was…deteriorating.” She said it like her words had no meaning, but she'd probably gone over it twenty times with the cops. “I should have called emergency and had him committed by force…for evaluation. I should not have waited.” She picked up her cup, put it down again without drinking any tea.

She seemed more frightened than grief-stricken. Her delicate hands came up and thin fingers hooked her hair behind her ears. With her ears showing, she looked ten years younger. She pulled a Kleenex from her pocket, dabbed at her eyes, and smiled a shy apology.

“Your English is perfect,” I said.

“It has to be. I work as a translator.”

“At the consulate?”

“I would
never
work for them. I work at the university, helping Chinese students with their English. And at the UIC Medical Center, translating for Chinese patients.”

“Was Steven's English as good as yours?”

“No, he was—” She stopped herself, formulated a new answer. “His English was fine. His accent was more pronounced and his vocabulary limited, but he was fluent.”

I said, “The police file indicates that Steven did not have a history of mental illness.”

“That's correct. Nothing until about a month before…”

“Do you have any idea what might have triggered it?”

“No.”

“Was he on any medications? Prescription, over-the-counter, recreational?”

“None. Nothing.”

“Any idea why he focused on Joan Richmond?”

“No, and I doubt that there was a reason. He was ill.”

“Did you know Joan? Were you friends?”

“We never met.”

“Reason I ask, I was reading through her old e-mails, and she asked Steven to give you her best regards.”

“Well, I, um…we spoke on the phone a few times, when she called for Steven.”

“Did that happen often?”

“Just a few times. Steven often brought his work home with him.”

“You mean his work at HM Nichols, or when they worked together at Hawk River?”

Her eyes darted away. “I don't know what you mean.” There was a tremor in her voice.

“Steven worked on contract for Joan at a company called Hawk River, about a year ago. This doesn't ring a bell?”

She didn't answer me, just stood up and disappeared into the kitchen again. She was gone for a few minutes and then returned with a small glass of what looked like sherry.

“I understand this is a very bad time for you and your daughter—”

“My daughter cannot even
step
inside this house anymore. She barely eats, suffers nightmares…. Sometimes I don't think she'll ever smile again. So do not pretend to understand. You may be able to come in here and ask me questions I've already answered, but do not talk about my daughter.”

Amy Zhang's attitude had changed, but it had changed before I mentioned her daughter and my
spidey senses
were now tingling. Yes,
she was frightened and maybe I was a scumbag for inserting myself into her life while her grief was so fresh. But there was something wrong about her. Something very wrong.

“So you never heard of Hawk River? That's odd. Your husband worked there for seventeen weeks.”

“I know very little about computers. Steven and I did not talk about his work. He was self-employed. I don't know the names of the companies he worked for.”

She was lying. And she was scared. I let the silence build. Her hands were clasped together in front of her chest and she squeezed them together so tight that I thought her fingers might snap like twigs.

“Please,” she said, “what do you want me to say? I said everything right.”

Said everything right?

“What the hell does that mean?”

“It…it's nothing. It, I just…I said everything right. I told you, I told you everything I know.” Her hands unclasped, clasped again. She couldn't look at me. Her performance was falling apart and she knew it. “I told you everything I know,” she repeated. “If it's not good enough, I can't help that.”

“Are you in some kind of trouble, Mrs. Zhang?”

“You mean besides the fact that my husband killed a woman and then committed suicide?” she snapped. Before I could formulate an answer, she stood and gestured to the front door. “Just go. I'm tired, I have a headache, and I don't like being tested.” She turned and ran upstairs and I heard a door slam.

I saw myself out.