I took one last survey of the room. Several pieces of art hung on the walls. I assumed some of them might’ve been her work. They all seemed to be very modern and very abstract. I crossed the plush carpet and entered the bathroom and immediately wondered why someone would need one this large. It was big enough to host a track meet. Everything had been done in salmon-colored marble and gold. A large claw-foot tub anchored the center of the room, and a shower that could fit an entire football team ran along the back wall. Like the rest of the rooms, everything was immaculately organized.
Just as I turned to leave, something caught my attention. Underneath the vanity was a shiny metal garbage can shaped like a standing turtle. But that wasn’t what stopped me. It was a very small piece of paper sitting in the otherwise empty bin. I knelt beside it, trying to get a look at what it said without touching it. That proved impossible, because it seemed to be turned upside down. I pulled open several of the vanity drawers until I found a pair of tweezers in a makeup bag. Doing my best CSI impression of a forensics specialist, I carefully picked up the piece of paper with the tweezers and turned it over. It was more like thin cardboard, as if it had been part of a carton. The words No Brand were written in simple black letters. The rest of the word or words were missing. I kept the paper firmly in the tweezers, walked over to the desk, and pulled open a few drawers until I found a box of envelopes. I took two of them and placed the torn cardboard in the first envelope. I sealed it and slid it into my coat pocket.
I then went back to the bathroom and picked up the small silver-handled brush on the back of the vanity. It had been elaborately monogrammed with her initials. I slid it into a separate envelope and slipped that into my coat pocket also.
I was just about to leave the suite when my cell phone rang.
“Cayne,” I answered.
“We just got the call from the Fifth Floor. We’re officially on board.”
It was Burke. He rarely if ever felt the need to identify himself, and it seemed like he always started his conversations somewhere near the middle.
“Whoop-dee-doo,” I said. “So, we’ll be on the same team yet again. Crime as Chicago knows it will never be the same.” I wondered if my visit to Gerrigan had prompted him to make it official. Maybe his air of nonchalance had been only a facade.
“Spare me the sarcasm,” Burke said. “I already have a migraine just thinking about it. But this one is different. They’ve told us in no uncertain terms to be very quiet about this. No press. No missing persons signs. Nothing that will bring any attention to it. The order was simple. Find this girl dead or alive and bring her home.”
“What’s the inside word?”
“It’s all over the place. Internally, everyone’s guessing; no one has any real leads yet. We’re getting word she might’ve gotten mixed up with a different crowd, maybe drugs, maybe political activists. We have no idea right now, but we’re trying to run everything down. There’s speculation about a whole revenge angle someone’s taking against her father. Gerrigan has definitely made some enemies on his way to making billions, fucked plenty of people over. Someone could be settling an old score.”
“I get the part of him pissing off some people, but the kind of people that would take his daughter? The guy lives on the North Shore.”
“Don’t let Gerrigan’s wealth fool you,” Burke said. “He’s tough as a railroad tie. Always has been. He hasn’t made all his money playing golf at the country club. So, what have you got so far?”
I quickly brought him up to speed on all that I had detected. I did, however, leave out the last phone call Tinsley had made to Dr. Brad Weems and her interactions with Patel. I wanted to shake that tree first to see if anything fell out. But I knew I wouldn’t have a lot of time. It wouldn’t be long before Burke’s team would run down the phone logs.
“So, what’s next?” I asked Burke.
“We need to press hard on this,” he said. “It’s been over a week. The odds aren’t in her favor or ours. The last time some rich girl went missing, her body washed out of the lake after three months.”
I remembered the case well. The daughter of two Northwestern surgeons had last been seen leaving her Gold Coast apartment building for an early evening run. She never returned home, and her parents reported her missing two days later. Everyone pointed at the boyfriend, who it had been discovered was secretly dating her best friend. Despite an abundance of circumstantial evidence, nothing was ever proved and no one convicted. Two kids fishing on the lake found her body in the Fifty-Ninth Street Harbor.
“You don’t find it a little suspicious that the daughter of one of the city’s wealthiest families goes missing, and instead of making an easy call upstairs, the mother shows up at a local station to
