Doom with a View (24 page)

Dutch arrived at it one nanosecond before I did. “Like a stadium?” he asked. “There’s a lot of concrete in a stadium and it’s large and open with a whole lot of chairs.”

“You know,” I said, “that really might be it, Dutch!”

“And you’re certain she’s still alive?” he asked me.

I opened my eyes and glanced at Leslie’s picture again. “Yes. But I could also tell you that I don’t know that she has a lot of time. I’d give her a week to ten days. And there’s something awful surrounding her too. I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s slowly torturing her,” I whispered. “You guys need to hurry.”

“I’m on it,” he said. “Thanks, doll.”

After hanging up with Dutch, I turned back to Candice. “That’s settled,” I said.

Candice drew a big circle around Michael Derby’s name. “Road trip, to Illinois, tomorrow at six a.m. sharp.”

Candice arrived at my house at one minute to six a.m. looking very tired. “Want me to drive?” I asked when I took in the pinched corners of her eyes.

“That’d be good,” she said, moving out of the driver’s seat. “I want to do a little more research on Derby anyway.”

I slid into the driver’s side and after Candice had settled herself into the passenger seat, we were off. “What part of Illinois are we aiming for?” I asked.

Candice motioned to the dashboard navigation system. “Just outside Chicago,” she said as she pulled out her iPhone and began dabbing at the screen. “I’ve already plugged in the coordinates. All you have to do is follow the path it lays out for you.”

“Where does Michael attend college?”

“Chicago State University,” Candice replied, her eyes intent on the screen of her iPhone. “I was up half the night getting as much as I could on him.”

“Anything juicy?”

“Nada,” she said with a sigh. “The kid’s a brainiac. Going for dual degrees in biology and chemical engineering. He’s a straight A student, tutors on the side, and at the tender age of eighteen is already two grades ahead of most of his classmates.”

“Wow,” I said, impressed.

“He’s also a member of Mensa.”

“So he’s stupid,” I deadpanned.

Candice laughed. “A real dumb ass,” she agreed with a chuckle. “I used to hate kids like Derby when I was in school. They always ruined the curve for the rest of us.”

“What about the father?” I asked. “Did you get anything on him?”

To this question Candice’s eyes lit up. “Matthew Derby is one of those oily politicians we all love to hate. He’s had a variety of scandals hit his time in office, and the guy has managed to dodge most of them.”

“Like what?”

“Well,” Candice said, putting down her iPhone to fill me in, “the first scandal was back when Michael was just six years old and the senator was in his second term in the Illinois state legislature. It seems that his wife of ten years was a little fragile—mentally speaking—and there were rumors of her popping pills and having a nervous breakdown, when the
Chicago Sun-Times
broke the news that one of the secretaries in the senator’s office claimed he was having a torrid affair with an intern. Both the senator and the intern publicly denied the affair—”

“Surprise, surprise,” I interrupted.

Candice chuckled. “I know, right? Anyway, the press wouldn’t let go of it. The intern was a knockout and barely out of high school, and the senator was a good-looking guy who had campaigned hard on family values and appeared to stand stoically by his mentally fragile wife.”

“Lemme guess,” I said, eyeing her. “The wife filed shortly thereafter.”

Candice looked at me in surprise. “No,” she said, her eyes big as they regarded me. “And I’m surprised you’re so far off the mark. She committed suicide.”

My jaw dropped and the car swerved slightly. Candice made a squeaking noise as I barely avoided a guardrail. “Sorry!” I said, focusing my eyes firmly forward again. “And I’m surprised that I missed that too,” I said after a small pause. I hate it when I’m wrong.

“Anyway,” Candice continued after she’d recovered from the fright I’d given her, “as you can imagine, the press went crazy. Instead of backing off, like they should have, they blamed the senator, alluding that his wife’s death was his fault because of the affair. And to make matters worse, one particular reporter was caught at the fence of little Michael’s playground asking him if his daddy had ever mentioned having a girlfriend and how he felt about his mommy being so sad that she’d killed herself.”

“Are you
kidding
me?!” I gasped.

Candice shook her head ruefully. “Unfortunately, I’m not.”

“Whoa,” was all I could think to say as my mind drifted back to Professor Houghton and what a scum he was to suggest to future reporters that they go for the jugular.

“I know, it’s totally despicable!” Candice lamented. “But it actually worked in Derby’s favor in the next election. When the school told not only the competing paper what had happened but a local news station as well, the public outcry of what that reporter did was unbelievable. He was fired from his post and Derby won his reelection by a landslide and has been something of a sympathetic character in the public eye ever since. The guy can do no wrong.”

“And I’m assuming he pushes that license to the limit?” I asked, knowing there might be more that Candice had dug up.

She shrugged. “I haven’t been able to find anything concrete,” she said, “but there are rumors out there that suggest Derby’s not the man of the people he claims to be.”

“Like what?”

“Well,” Candice said, digging through her briefcase to pull out her notebook, “there was a little talk three years ago about a vacation home he bought on Lake Michigan. It only set him back three hundred thousand.”

“That’s a big chunk of change,” I said, not understanding the issue.

“He sold it six months later for over a million,” she said.

I whistled. “Nice turnaround.”

“Exactly.When questioned about it, Derby said that he’d purchased the home from a contractor friend of his who was having cash flow issues, and his buddy had sold the home to Derby at a significant discount. The senator said that he hadn’t really wanted the extra house payment and was, and I quote here, ‘delighted and surprised’ to sell it later for a significant profit.”

“Seven hundred thousand dollars would delight the hell out of me too,” I said.

“And then there’s the fact that in his run for the U.S. Senate to capture the seat of a retiring senator, Derby handily won the election against the opposing party.”

“Why is that so shocking?”

“The candidate from the opposing party was a nobody. He had no social skills whatsoever, did very little campaigning, and basically handed Derby the seat.”

“Huh,” I said. “How do you think that happened?”

“I don’t know, but it’s weird, you know? Like in all of Illinois there wasn’t a better-qualified candidate to run against Derby? It just sounds like someone fixed the election.”

“That is weird,” I agreed. “And do you know what else I think is weird?”

“What?”

“That of the four kids that hung out at that conference in Chicago two years ago, Michael is the only one who hasn’t gone missing.”

Candice thought on that for a minute. “Maybe it has something to do with the fact that Leslie is still alive,” she said. “Maybe the killer won’t think about going after Michael until something changes with Leslie.”

I nodded. “You really could be right,” I said, seeing her point.

“It could also be that the killer only had a chance to glimpse the three who were abducted. Maybe when they were being observed, Michael wasn’t with them. Maybe he was having dinner with his dad or something.”

“Another good point,” I conceded with a sigh. “I guess we won’t know until we talk to Michael. Which brings me to my next question.”

“Yes?”

“What’s the game plan?”

Candice smiled. “Sorry, forgot to tell you that part. We’re heading to the University of Chicago to find Michael and persuade him to talk to us. We’re going to have to be pretty sneaky about it too,” she warned.

My brow furrowed. “Why’s that?”

“Because the FBI will likely have a security detail assigned to him for his own protection, so the task force may become all too aware of our snooping around if we’re not careful.”

“And while Dutch may be okay with us interviewing Michael, the other guys on that task force won’t be so happy about it, so we’ll have to be careful not to rub their noses in it,” I said.

Candice pointed a finger at me. “Exactly.”

“What are we doing after we talk to Michael?”

“Depending on your mood, I thought we might risk an interview with the senator.”

“Why does that depend on my mood?” I asked.

“Because I
know
that will get back to Dutch, and he’d be in the hot seat for it. So if you’re feeling like you don’t want to risk getting him into trouble, then we’ll skip it.”

I grimaced. “Maybe we should skip it.”

“Let’s talk to Michael first and see how you feel, but it’ll be your call,” Candice assured me.

“Okay,” I said, already having a bad feeling about it.

A few hours later we arrived in Chicago and I gritted my teeth against the heavy traffic as we slowly made our way over to Michael’s school. Glancing at the clock, I was glad Candice had suggested we bring a few extra pairs of clothes, as she suspected we might be in town longer than just the day.

Once we made it onto the campus, it took a little while to find a parking space, but when I mentally handed our need for a slot over to my crew, we found one within about a minute. “You have good parking juju,” said Candice as we slid into the spot right in front of Michael’s dorm.

“It’s the crew,” I said, tapping my temple.

We got out and made our way into Michael’s dorm. The door was accessible only with a student ID, but Candice overcame this by waiting nonchalantly for a student to walk up and swipe his card, and once the student had entered, she grabbed the door before it closed.

Once in the lobby, Candice consulted her notes and informed me Michael was on the first floor. We went through a double set of doors into a very dark hallway reverberating with loud music and the stench of stale beer. My feet made a crunching noise and I looked down to see the carpet littered with cereal, candy wrappers, and paper. “They don’t seem to think highly of cleanliness,” I muttered.

“Did you when you were in school?” Candice asked.

I thought back. “Not so much,” I conceded. “Still, I’d like to think I was a little neater than this.”

We arrived at Michael’s door and Candice knocked loud enough to be heard over the noise in the hallway. The door was opened about fifteen seconds later by a short Asian young man with thick glasses and a pronounced overbite. “Hey there,” Candice said, flashing him a brilliant smile. “We’re looking for Michael Derby. Is he around?”

The young man ogled her for a full minute before answering. “Michael’s not here. His dad’s out of town and he always stays at the house when the old man’s gone.”

“Ah, I see,” Candice said, her voice dripping with sweetness. “He’s at the house on Greenwich, right?”

The young man shrugged. “I guess,” he said. “I’ve never been there.”

“Do you mind if we come in and talk to you for a little while?” she pressed.

I could tell the young man felt a little uncomfortable. He was swallowing a lot and his eyes were large and unblinking. “Are you guys from the FBI?” he asked. From his mentioning it to us, it was obvious they’d beaten us here.

Candice didn’t answer him directly, but hinted that he’d gotten it right by broadening her smile confidently and saying, “You’re very observant. I’ll bet not a lot gets by you, right?”

To this the boy lifted the corners of his mouth and stepped aside. We entered the dimly lit dorm room to the smell of musty laundry. Once inside I looked around. It was an odd room even for two college boys. Hanging from the ceiling were several models that looked like the latticework of DNA. Yet more models of amazing complexity all but covered one of the desks.

Dirty laundry nearly obscured one corner of the room, and on both unmade beds the linens weren’t tucked in at all, just mashed around to cover parts of the mattress. While taking in the room, I tried to keep my face as neutral as possible, especially since I noticed Michael’s roommate monitoring us carefully.

“I’m so sorry,” said Candice as we entered, “but I don’t think I caught your name.”

“Cheng,” he said, and I couldn’t tell if he meant that as his first or his last name.

“It’s nice to meet you, Cheng,” Candice said warmly, sticking out her hand. “I’m Candice and this is Abby.”

Cheng shook Candice’s hand awkwardly, giving it two hard pumps, then dropping it. And then he said, “I haven’t seen anyone suspicious.”

Candice cocked her head slightly. “My associates asked you to keep your eye out for anyone acting suspiciously?”

Cheng nodded.

“Well, I’ll bet you’ve been quite diligent, Cheng. And how is Michael since they paid him a visit?”

“I don’t know,” Cheng said. “He’s been staying at his house for the last two weeks.”

“Does his father often go out of town?”

“He’s in Washington a lot.”

“And Michael always goes to his dad’s home when he’s not there?”

Cheng nodded.

“And no stranger has approached you about Michael’s whereabouts?”

“Only you guys.”

Candice smiled again, then changed subjects. “I hear Michael is very smart,” she said.

Cheng shrugged. “I guess. He and I usually get the same grades.”

“Well then, you must be very smart too.”

Another shrug but this time with a blush.

“Are you two close?”

“Huh?”

“Are you friends?”

Cheng looked at her as if he didn’t understand her. “I dunno,” he said. “We’re roommates, so I guess so. I don’t really see him a lot. He’s at his house more than he’s here.”