“Don’t forget your date,” Herb calls after him.
Sakey picks up the poster and takes it with him, making sure Jenna faces him rather than the press. I turn my attention back to the bush, not expecting to find anything else, and being surprised when I see a white business card on the ground. I ask Herb for another bag and use the barrel of my Colt to nudge it inside. The front reads:
ONE MORE DEAD PERVERT
Courtesy of
TUHC
The ink on the card is slightly smeared, and the edges have a fine perforation to them. The killer probably printed it himself using his home computer and those blank business card sheets available at office supply stores.
I frown, not liking this at all. In my experience, killers who leave messages aren’t likely to stop any time soon. I have a bad feeling that there’s more to this than hiring a mercenary to avenge a rape.
I stare back at the apartment, viewing the line of site. Perhaps two hundred yards. With the proper rifle, not a difficult shot at all. My mom, a former Chicago cop herself, used to have a Winchester Model 70 she’d inherited from her father. During my teenage years we’d go on afternoon excursions down to southern Illinois farmland and regularly hit ears of corn from four hundred yards, and probably farther, with thirty-aught-six rounds. She’d sold the gun de cades ago – not much use for long arms in an urban environment.
Herb gives the card the same treatment he gave the bullet, holding it at arm’s length to read it. Glasses are in his future.
My cell buzzes. I free it from my inner jacket pocket and slap it to my face.
“Daniels.”
“Lieutenant? This is Bobalik, Homicide from District 20, Ravenswood. Heard you got a sniper.”
“News travels fast.”
“Let me guess – one shot to the head, through the window from a few hundred yards away, vic was a sex offender?”
News must travel even faster than I thought.
“Yeah. How did you know?”
“I’m at a scene on Leavitt,” she says. “Victim’s name is Chris Wolak. Same MO.”
“Got a time of death?” I ask.
“Call came at a few minutes after five.”
Ravenswood is a Chicago neighborhood about five miles away from us, but Bobalik’s victim died at the same time ours did. I frown at the obvious conclusion.
“It gets better,” Bobalik says. “Guess what happened in Englewood at the same time?”
“One more dead pervert,” I say, quoting the card.
I fill Bobalik in on the details, then hang up and relate everything to Herb.
“Three snipers,” he says. “Jesus. Why don’t we ever get the normal cases? A guy gets drunk, shoots his neighbor for playing his radio too loud?”
I look at the business card again and wonder the same thing.
6:12 P.M.
JACK
ON THE CAR RIDE to Ravenswood my phone rings again. I inwardly cringe, hoping it isn’t another sniper death. The fates smile; it’s my fiance.
“Did I catch you at a bad time?” Latham asks.
I picture him in his office, wearing a snazzy suit. Red hair. Green eyes. Boyish smile. Broad shoulders and trim waist. That leads to me picturing him without the suit. I almost say something dirty, but don’t want Herb to hold it over my head for the rest of my life.
“Your timing is perfect,” I say into the phone. “Are you calling to accept my mother’s kind invitation?”
“I’ll do my best to cram in as much of Mom’s home cooking as I possibly can.”
I live with my mother in the suburb of Bensenville. That’s a big no-no for Chicago cops (living outside the city, not living with your mother). But the mortgage is in her name and so far I haven’t been caught. I love Chicago, but Mom wanted a more laid-back lifestyle and I wanted to keep an eye on her because she’s getting up there in years. So we bought a cute little ranch house in a woodsy area and I braved a daily one-hour car ride to and from the Job.
It’s about as much fun as it sounds. To make up for the commute, I get to experience the joy of weeding, painting, home repairs, cutting the lawn, tarring the driveway, cleaning the gutters, and countless other homeowner tasks that I so enjoyed living without when I had an apartment in Wrigleyville.
But at least Mom is happy.
Since Latham proposed, Mom has been inviting him over more and more, foisting food, drink, and conversation on the poor guy. It isn’t easy for Latham. Not just the travel back and forth from the city, but he had a bout with botulism earlier this year and hasn’t fully recovered. He still retains some residual paralysis in his legs, and an aversion to food in general.
Thankfully, the paralysis doesn’t extend to his other parts.
“It will be a few hours,” I say. “I’ll be tied up until at least seven or eight. Can we eat at nine?”
“That’s fine. I’m on my way there now. I promised Mary we’d play some rummy.”
“Mom guilted you into coming early?”
“Not at all. I enjoy spending time with your mother. Besides, we play for money. I’ve already won her pension, now I’m going for her Social Security.”
I smile. “Mom told me she was up sixty bucks.”
“She cheats, Jack. She looks all cute and harmless, but she’s a wily one. I think she deals from the bottom of the deck.”
Can a woman ask for anything more than her future husband hanging out with her mom? Plus he’s caring, funny, attractive, and he puts up with me. Good sex sealed the deal.
“See you later,” I say. “I love you.”
“Love you too, Jack.”
“Love you more.”
“No, I love you more. See you to night.”
He makes a kissing sound and I grin and make a kissing sound back, then we hang up. I glance at Herb, who does a good job of ignoring me by occupying his mouth with a chocolate power bar. Herb insists he snacks on these for energy, even though he has more than enough energy already stored in the extra eighty pounds of fat he carries around.
“That probably doesn’t have much fiber in it,” I offer.
Herb licks some chocolate off his fingers. I once asked Herb what the difference was between power bars and regular candy bars, and he told me that power bars had more calories.
