“They’ll get another chance to take him out,” Ben said. “Arrogant guys like that don’t stay clean for long. He’ll make another mistake, and they’ll nail him for it.” Ben patted me on the shoulder, and then turned and kissed the top of the headstone. He paused for a moment, before he turned back to me. “I’ve got to get to work, Jack, but it’s good to see you. You should come around for a beer some time. Watch some football.”
I nodded in response to the token offer. I wasn’t going to take him up on it, and he knew that, but it was part of the routine that we had. I waited until Ben had walked down the pathway before I turned back to my Claire.
Then, we talked. I told Claire about my latest investigation, about my apartment, about how I knew she was there for the sunset. I told her about the songs I’d been listening to, about the current news, about the latest political dramas. I told her the Cubs had a winning record, about how the Bears had a chance next season, and how the Bulls were shaping up. I loved talking to Claire, imagining that she was there, still with that cheeky grin on her face. We talked about Casey, and how much help she’d been to my current case. Claire would’ve liked Casey. I was sure of that.
After an hour of talking, I quietly sung her happy birthday, wiped the tears from my eyes, and said goodbye. Goodbyes were the worst. I was always terrible at them.
Walking back to my truck, my thoughts drifted to the memories I had of my wife. As time ticked by, now almost five years, the memories were fading. I hated that. I hated that I was forgetting about the small moments. I hated that I was forgetting the smell of her perfume. I hated that I was forgetting about how she moved.
Forgetting about her, not having her fill my head every moment of every day, felt like I was betraying her memory.
But the thing I hated most of all, the thing that really got under my skin, was that I’d lost the chance to make new memories with her.
Chapter 15
It took two days for the black eye to go down. There was still a blue mark under the eye, but nothing that a touch of Casey’s make-up couldn’t fix. We’d spent a number of days gathering information on our suspects, but we couldn’t really build a bigger profile than the one we already had. We knew everything there was to know about DiMarco and Wilkerson—their daily habits, their favorite restaurants, their favorite bars, who their friends were, who they worked with, and who they hated. We knew their favorite colors, their favorite sweaters, and their daily movements. But none of that brought us closer to proving that Anthony Waltz was murdered.
The previous day, Casey had placed a tracker on DiMarco’s car. It was illegal, and I didn’t like it, but Casey didn’t mind bending the rules when it came to surveillance. The data showed that he hadn’t been near Fittler’s place.
Our next step was to talk to the people who knew the world that Waltz was involved in. The plan was for Casey to mingle with lawyers in the Gold Coast, heading to the bars where his associates were known to frequent, and I was going to work my way through his local haunts in the Downtown area. These weren’t the little dive bars that I was used to, these were classy bars for classy people. The types of bars where the drinks were expensive, the service was seamless, and where rich old men found themselves talking to pretty girls barely old enough to buy a drink.
I dressed in my best suit, the one that almost choked my neck, and did my best to blend in. If we were going to find the killer before he struck again, then I needed more information. Somebody, somewhere had to know something.
There were bars throughout the city known to be frequented by the best defense lawyers in town. I started in the best bars, ordered half-strength drinks, and targeted those sitting alone. Everyone was happy to chat once I told them I was a criminal defense attorney in town from New York, working a case for an Illinois based client. Talking to the disenfranchised men in the bars, I heard many stories of people on the edge. They all had their own stories of turmoil, of how close they’d come to pulling the trigger. No one questioned the bullet taken by Waltz, Hudson, or Stone. They’d all thought about it. Seventy-five-hour work weeks could do that to a person.
By the time I had made it to the fifth bar on my list, I was growing tired of the same stories. It was the same narrative over and over and over again—middle-aged men slaving in the rat race, working in a firm that was committed to making money, facing the fact that life was passing them by. It was mid-life crisis territory for most of these guys. Faced with the idea of mortality, faced with the idea that they weren’t immortal, a lot of the lawyers were questioning why they did what they did, and whether it was all worth it.
The same question had crossed my mind once. The thought of death didn’t scare me, but the thought that I might be letting my best years pass me by was frightening. As I got older, I began to realize that life doesn’t go on forever. My energy levels were starting to slow. My hair was starting to gray. It took longer to recover from physical activity. And I realized that I’d never
