Cold As Ice: Novel (A Kristen Conner Mystery Book 3) (33 page)

69

“WHERE YOU AT, KC?” Don asks.

“Driving up to Wrigleyville for an appointment with my doctor.”

“Why aren’t you meeting him at the hospital?”

“I was released.”

Is it a lie that I’m not telling Don that the doctor I’m meeting is Dr. Andrews, my therapist? How far does the sin of omission go?

He’s not interested and plows in, “Three things you need to know. Do you have a second?”

“Shoot.”

“First, the judge broke the seal on Bradley Starks’ juvenile record. Man oh man. This is a troubled youth with a long list of crimes, including some serious violence. He put a vice principal at his middle school in the hospital. The guy turned around in his office and Bradley hit him in the back of the head with a bronze bookend that was sitting on the guy’s desk.”

“How is he even in public school?” I ask. “Shouldn’t he be in a juvenile detention center?”

“That’s the second thing you need to know. Get this. Ed Keltto showed up in court to volunteer to be Bradley Starks’ mentor. If I’m reading the transcripts right, that swayed the judge to let him serve an in-school suspension and go on probation until he graduates from high school, if and when that happens. Did Nancy tell you that when she talked to you?”

“No. But she pointed us in that direction.”

“She probably felt too guilty to tell you one more time what a good guy her husband was.”

“So what happens next?”

“Blackshear and I are meeting up in your old neighborhood along
with a couple of uniforms. The uniforms will take Bradley to Cook County juvenile. We’ll question him there.”

“Does that change anything for Nancy or Levin?”

“Not until we talk to the kid. But it might.”

“How’s Blackshear taking it with his righteous arrests up in the air?”

“He’s not happy but he’s got his head on straight.”

“Wow. Nancy wasn’t lying about Bradley being in trouble. Why does this make me feel so lousy?” I ask him.

“Because it is. You ever get the feeling society is falling apart?”

I can’t answer. When I’m with my family, life feels pretty normal. Maybe even sweet sometimes—except when I think my baby sis is cheating on me. But this is so messed up that I wonder what in the world is going on that so many people are on the edge or over the edge of self-destruction and taking others with them.

“Third,” he announces.

There’s a dramatic pause.

“I gave Zaworski my letter and signed the papers before I hit the road tonight. It’s official. In two weeks I’m a civilian.”

No question this was coming. It still feels like a punch in the gut. I’m slow on relationships and don’t want a new partner. I’ll miss him and his expensive shoes, suits, and ties. He dressed our little team up. I’ll even miss his disapproving comments on my wardrobe and attempts at humor. If he hadn’t resigned, it was only a matter of time before he got promoted. But he’d still be around. It’s good to have a few friends who understand you.

Martinez. Blackshear. Zaworski. I have other friends—but I guess what Barnes said was right. I’m not always a team player. I’m not a free spirit as anyone can tell you—but I do hold the world at bay. I’ll still have old timers like Scalia and Soto watching my back, though I’m not sure Soto understands anything about me except my need to keep my hands up when I fight.

“You’re not saying anything, KC.”

“Sorry. I was just trying to figure out what turn to make. Congratulations, Don. I’m happy for you. And I mean that.”

I think I am. But I’m sad too. Does that make it a lie?

I think Dr. Andrews is in shell shock. There was no pushing and prodding to get me to open up this session. I hit her with everything right out of the gate. I started with Squires’ resignation and moved straight into my dad’s death. I wove in Ed and Nancy Keltto and unfinished business with the Cutter Shark case. I told her about getting caught up in internecine warfare with the Red Mafiya—and about the Bear’s attack and my subsequent dream. I can’t believe I remembered the word internecine. Inconceivable. I moved on to Reynolds and what happened between Reynolds and my sister but didn’t. I left out my feelings on a man getting killed before my eyes during the Durham case but brought up that maybe I should have accepted the job offer with the FBI that Willingham put together. By the time I told her how much I like coaching my niece’s soccer team, even if our team name is the Snowflakes and our jerseys are yellow, she had put her iPad down and given up taking notes.

“You have a lot on your mind,” she said.

I wanted to ask her how that made her feel but bit my tongue and just nodded.

“So how do you cope?” she asked. “What is your secret?”

“Do you believe in God?” I asked back.

“What I believe is not relevant,” she said.

“It is if you really want to know how I cope,” I said.

She didn’t answer but picked up the iPad and wrote a note with a fancy stylus.

I covered everything on my mind in fifty-five minutes.

“I think our time is up today,” she said.

Today sounds ominous. What will we talk about next time, I wonder? That was everything. I guess I could have talked about how my family has handled—and not handled—my father’s death.

“I have some questions I want to ask you next week,” she said. “I want to just say how proud I am of you for opening up.”

That takes me by surprise. I assumed she was writing “religious nut job” after I asked if she believed in God.

“What you did today, Kristen, is very important. Authentic relationships require authentic transparency. As humans we erect walls between ourselves and others, even people we love, because we are afraid what they will think if they see the real person we are. We grow closer as we take down the wall, sometimes one brick at a time, to be seen for who we really are. It is scary and takes trust to remove those bricks that we’ve carefully erected to protect ourselves. I think you did that just a little bit today and I applaud you. This is something we can build on.”

Build on. Yep, I’m going to be seeing Dr. Andrews for a while.

I like what she said, but put another way, I’m building an authentic relationship with someone who can’t have an authentic relationship with me because we are in a therapeutic relationship and it would go against her professional code to interact with me in any other setting.

I took down a few bricks and started an authentic relationship with someone I can’t have a relationship with—par for the course for me.

On my drive home I wonder how I can tell her I took the whole wall down and what she saw was probably all she was going to get. I am all for an appropriate amount of transparency. But I’ve somehow come to this notion that we aren’t an inside person and an outside person. We are what we do and do what we are.

I don’t know if that’s good theology or psychology. I might ask Jimmy what he thinks. He’s a very nice man. People love him. He listens and cares and helps. He’d be that way even if he wasn’t a pastor. But I’m not sure he knows how to respond to me. I’ve tried to broach a
question I have about my dad’s death but we haven’t gotten anywhere.

He’s not the only one that isn’t sure how to deal with me. I’ve been told on more than a few occasions that dealing with me is like dealing with a brick wall. Andrews is right about me putting bricks up.

I don’t stay too introspective very long. Maybe I have undiagnosed ADHD. Next thing I know I’m humming the Pink Floyd song, “Just Another Brick in the Wall.” That might not be the actual name of the song. But that’s the phrase I remember along with “teacher leave those kids alone.” That gets me thinking about Bradley. Oh man.

70

I CALL BLACKSHEAR.

“Yeah Conner?”

Maybe I should tell him he needs to take a few bricks down.

“What’s the status of the crime scene?”

“The Kelttos?”

“Yeah.”

“Still sealed.”

“I want to walk through it. Any chance we can meet in the morning?”

“You out of the hospital?”

“Yep.”

“My team has gone through it with a fine-toothed comb.”

Like their work on the O’Hare surveillance videos I want to point out, but stop myself.

“But I haven’t,” I say nice and firm.

“You’re not going to find anything we haven’t already put in evidence boxes.”

“I just need to feel the vibe.”

He sighs. “You got it. What time?”

“What works for you?”

“Eight in the morning too early?”

“Perfect.”

“Scratch that. We see Bradley early tomorrow. Has to be tonight.”

I’m tired, but beggars don’t make the rules.

“Even better,” I say.

“I can get there at sevenish.”

“Knock on my mom’s door when you’re in the neighborhood, Bob. I’ll stop by and see her. And thanks a ton.”

I stopped by Mom’s for dinner. I didn’t even have to explain that I am being shadowed everywhere I go by two CPD officers and one FBI agent. She now makes extra food as the rule of thumb. That meant the FBI agent, a guy I hadn’t met, John Turvy, ate with us. Mom made a mean pot of fiery chili and insisted I take bowls out to the guys in the squad car. As long as neither has my nephew James’ genetic propensity toward flatulence, that should help make a bitterly cold night go easier.

Blackshear called a couple times to say he was running late and didn’t show up until a little before nine. My eyes were heavy and my head was bobbing while we waited. Mom immediately talked him into a bowl of chili. She sent me outside in dropping temperatures to deliver warm blackberry cobbler and melting ice cream to the guys in the squad car—the ice cream wasn’t melting for long. Blackshear may have had his nose bent out of shape with me for making him work late, but he wasn’t turning down dessert. It’s a little before ten and we are finally ready to head to the Kelttos.

“So what are you looking for, Kristen?” he asks.

“Nothing in particular, Bob. I just sometimes get feelings. It happened on the fourth murder with the Cutter Shark. Gigi. Remember her?”

“Don’t even ask me that, Kristen. I’ve spent the last year trying to forget everything about that sick case.”

“I should do the same but you’ve heard what I’m dealing with?”

“No. What’s up?”

“That’s for another day. I just know that my dad and Big Tony told me you have to feel the crime scene. Scalia said he’d pray even though he wasn’t a particularly praying Catholic outside of Mass. We were so stuck on that case that I did it. All I could think of was a Bible verse when I went through her house. I don’t know the whole thing, but the point was basically, ‘watch and pray.’ So I did. And I felt something.”

“Like a ghost?” he asks as he unlocks the back door to the Keltto residence.

“No, you goof. Not a ghost. Just a feeling that helped me later on.”

“How?”

“I don’t know. It just did.”

We walk through the first floor slowly. Blackshear is watching me the whole time. That’s distracting. Then we cover the upstairs. I stand in a bedroom that is probably less than fifty feet from Bradley’s room next door. He was picked up three hours or so ago. I feel no vibe. Blackshear keeps peeking over at me.

“Bob, stop looking at me. I told you, I don’t see ghosts.”

“Sorry. Sorry. You have me curious.”

“Good. Then just do what I do. Watch and pray.”

“I don’t really pray, Kristen. That’s my wife’s department.”

“You either keep your eyes to yourself and start praying or I’m going to punch you in the nose.”

“I’ve always thought I should pray,” he answers, stifling a smile.

Okay. This is forcing things with him looking over my shoulder. I wasn’t expecting words to appear in a mist before my eyes with the name of the murderer, but I was expecting something. Just a better feeling for Ed and Nancy and what happened. I feel nothing.

“Done?” Blackshear asks, looking at his watch.

“The garage,” I say.

He purses and then puckers his lips. His mouth opens to speak the words he wants to say. But it closes. Blackshear nods and we bundle up our coats to brace against the lake wind that has worked its ways between houses, alleys, businesses, and walls to lash into us in the fifteen short steps between the back stoop and the side door of the one-car garage.

Blackshear flicks on the light. Even with everything organized and placed on shelves and hooks and in cubbies that wrap around three walls, there is nothing but a small path around the Malibu.

I look at a bucket with rock salt on my right. I shut the world out, including Blackshear. I pass the automotive section. A case of oil. Four one-gallon containers of windshield wiper fluid. Radiator fluid. Car wash and waxes. Leather care for car seats.

The next two steps take me into home maintenance, with tubes of caulk, cans of paint, half-used rolls of shelf paper, concrete sealer on the bottom shelf, and more. I can see around the car. The other wall is yard and garden supplies and tools. A lot of stuff for such a tiny yard.

I’m beginning to feel like I’m at a Home Depot or Lowes.

I stop at the back of the garage. There is a long tool bench that reaches from wall to wall. Above are cupboards. On top of the bench is an impressive array of power and hand tools. Beneath are portioned slots with different kinds and sizes of lumber.

I stop and look at the unpainted cupboards. We might be in an enclosed structure but it is freezing. I blow out and see my breath. I look over at Blackshear. He avoids eye contact. He wants to go home. I do, too.

I look at the last cupboard along the back wall. I reach in my pocket, pull out a small but powerful black flashlight and play the beam over the woodwork. If it was daylight and the garage door was open it would be easy to see, but Chicago is shrouded in gray during the winter, and the light bulb flickering on the ceiling of the garage is weak. But there it is, clear as day. A name has been scratched in the wood by an inexperienced juvenile hand.

Bradley.

Blackshear sees it and shrugs.

I walk back to the side door and get a stepladder. I prop it in front of the bench, two legs on a raised concrete slab, two on the floor of the garage. The bottom shelf is filled with magazines and stapled paper documents. I hand them down to Blackshear and we take a quick look-see. Do-It-Yourself woodworking magazines and plans. Hand-written scribbling in pencil.

Next shelf up I pull out a partially completed project. It is a box made out of mahogany or hickory or some other dark wood. Next to it are materials, including a roll of felt, to finish what looks like will become a jewelry box. I assume Bradley has started a project for his mom. Nice. Too bad he might not ever get a chance to finish it.

On the top shelf is a simple leather tool belt on top of a neatly folded apron. I look at the tan leather belt. The name Bradley has been burnished on the inside.

Looks to me like Bradley did more with Ed than he indicated to me at the bus stop.

Bradley. What did you do, Bradley? Did you kill the guy that was trying to help you?

“You getting a vibe Conner?” Blackshear asks, his voice hoarse.

“Yeah . . . just not sure what it means. How about you?”

“I’m praying but I’m getting a little weirded out, Conner.”