Relentless (Elisabeth Reinhardt Book 1) (36 page)

“Why, Jake?” Custer asked, “We have to swipe a Ford?”

“No, idiot,” Jake snipped, “that’s our ride out of here.”

Joseph
Fisher was right on time and ready. Sitting high in his “Windy City Towing” truck, he waited for his brother’s friends to get in. Blankets and jackets were piled on the back seat and an old ski jacket with a hood in the front. Jake and Slim jumped in the back while Custer donned the coat pulled the hood over his face and slouched down in the seat. Joseph worked for a towing company and had been in and out of the hospital garage all day jump starting vehicles that refused to start in the cold. Each time he arrived he stopped at the front gate, showed the cops on duty his ‘Windy City Towing’ ID and his work orders and was waved in. On exiting, he was asked to stop his truck and step out while the interior underwent a search by police officers. Now as Joseph was leaving the garage with his stowaways he stopped on the floor above the exit and told the killers to get out. They were to run down the garage steps and hide behind the dumpsters behind the hospital. Joe was to pick them up in 10 minutes.

They turned onto the Dan Ryan Expressway heading toward the South Side, followed by an old blue Chevy van. It turned onto the ramp after them and stayed two cars behind. Traffic was light given the weather and the hour, but it was dark and the men were absorbed in conversation. They didn’t notice an old van keeping pace with them just a little behind. The driver was tall with broad shoulders and wore a grey hoodie that covered most of his face. It didn’t matter though, cause no one in the car he was following had paid him the slightest attention. Jake was chatty, telling Joe and his gang all about his good buddy Ray Fisher and some of the shit they pulled when they were cellmates. He made it sound like summer camp, laughing and telling tales. Since they were starving, they decided to head toward an all-night bar Joe knew called Uncle Jimmy’s featuring ribs and steak subs. When Ray walked into the bar Jake bolted over to greet him with a big bear hug. The Fisher brothers were good company, everyone was in a partying mood. They were alive, free and sitting in a warm place drinking frosty Buds. Life doesn’t get much better than this, they thought, while the man in the van sat in the shadows and snapped their pictures through the greasy window.

Two dark SUV’s crept through the rutted snow and turned into a long winding driveway that led to the remote Illinois farmhouse. They pulled around to the back and stopped at a stand of pine trees. The lead driver pushed a button three times and a battered old barn door opened automatically. The SUV’s drove into the barn, past some stacks of hay and waited until another door opened leading to an underground garage. A small blue light flashed three times on each dashboard. Two men and one woman got out. Moving in formation, they walked quickly through an archway, looked into the mirror on the wall and passed through a sliding metal door into an elevator. In minutes, they were inside the compound, busy with activity. Elisabeth Reinhardt greeted them warmly at the door. Manny at the computer was talking on his cellphone. “That’s good,” he was saying, “I’ll tell them. We’ll let you know. Shalom.” Gina was bewildered. Apprehensively she looked around the room.

“What is this place?” she asked her therapist, “Who are all these people?” Elisabeth briefly explained Chevra
Hatzolah and that she had become their
protectee
. They were all here to help her. Gina looked around the room into the eyes of her rescuers. She was very grateful and said so in a small, honest voice. They were all strangers to her except for Pablo and Gil. “Even you Gil?” she asked, “You are part of this group?” There was a hint of confusion in her voice, disappointment or a feeling of betrayal. “Why didn’t you tell me?” she asked him.

Intervening gently, Dr. Reinhardt said
“I’ll explain everything to you in a little while. This is all very overwhelming, give yourself some time. We’ll talk about everything soon.” Taking her arm, Dr. Reinhardt guided her around the room saying, “Let me introduce you to everyone, Gina.” 

Following introductions,
Manny said, “That call was about Edna Goodwin and Rhoda Eades. They’re safe at one of our residences in Kentucky. We need to decide if it’s safe for them to go home.”

“I think it probably is
but I’d feel more comfortable if we waited until these guys were caught. We just don’t know what they’ll do when they can’t find Gina or even if they have other people helping them back in that area. These two women are still their best bet of finding Gina so until this is all over they are best kept safe with us. Holding people for ransom, to manipulate you, Gina, is not beyond their capacity. I say leave them where they are until these guys are caught or killed.” The decision was unanimous.

“Can I speak with them,” Gina asked.

“Sure,” Simon said, “I’ve got an untraceable line over here, come on and I’ll set you up in the office.” He took Gina to a small office near the computer tables and left her there chatting with her old mentors.

Resuming the meeting, Elisabeth
referred to a list on the table in front of her, “Let’s hear from the ‘big boys’,” she smiled referring to Gil and Pedro.

“The most promising lead is this Ray Fisher character,” said
Gil, “He’s a bad dude with first rate connections for all the wrong stuff. He’s not been out very long and he’s already dealing guns and drugs from his Aunt’s home on the South Side. The aunt is named Bernadine Grant. She’s 85 and suffers from macular degeneration among other things, so she’s nearly blind. Joseph Jeffrey (aka JoJo) has lived with her for most of his life. He takes care of her now that she’s not able to see much. Raymond and JoJo have the whole deal going on. They’re doing a little cooking in the back shed, running some numbers, the whole 9 you know, everything but the ladies. They’re not hooked up with other gangs, but we turned up something interesting last night. T-Max was out taking a look at things and what should we find?” he paused for effect… everyone waited making ‘go ahead signals,’ “another watcher. That’s what he found!”

“Really?”

“You’ve got to be kidding?”

“Who’s watching them but us?”

Everyone talked at once.

“Here’s what happened,” Pablo jumped in,
“T-Max just called this in to me. He’s still on the house. He says the house was dark when he pulled up around midnight. Just one inside light on, a dim one, like maybe the light over the stove was on.  No one was moving around or anything. The house is in pretty poor condition with a long, narrow back yard, surrounded by a 5 foot high chain link fence and crowded with 2 car sized sheds. Both of those shed doors are padlocked and there are motion sensor security lights. They have two pit bulls that patrol the place. The dogs were in the house last night. He saw them looking out the windows a couple of times. Anyway, T-Max says around 3AM a car and a truck pull up. Sign on the truck says ‘Windy City Towing.’ Four guys get out of the truck three of them are our killers acting all buddy, buddy with old Raymond. They walk right up on the back porch bold as anything. Didn’t look over their shoulders or look up and down the street. Nothing like that! Just walk on into the house.”

“Then,”
Gil continues, “T-Max said everything is quiet for about 5 minutes and up pulls this ratty blue van. It slides into a space about 3 houses down from Ray’s place, turns out his lights and just sits there. He never gets out. So T-Max say he slides down real low and takes a peek with his binocs and guess what…?”

“
The other guy’s got his binoculars out too! He’s staring at Ray’s house.” Pablo jumps in, “So he waits about 10 minutes. It’s real dark out there, but he slips on night gear so he’s practically invisible and sneaks up close to the van. He gets the license number and a clean shot of his mug. By this time the guy’s taking photos of the house.  His camera keeps flashing, so T-Max can gauge where the guy is and gets some shots of his own. Then he sneaks around the block, gets back in his car, big as life and drives on out of there.”

“So,” Stella picks up the conversation, “we have to get the low down on this
new guy and what’s he’s doing in all this. He’s in this somehow. Either he’s a cop or he’s on the other side of the law. I’ll get on the phone and see what I can find out.”

“
Good, Stella,” Gil says, “I’ll check with my peeps at CPD.”

“Why not just go in there like SWAT and shoot the bastards?” Simon asked.

“That’s a possibility,” Pedro replied, “but we need to make sure we’re not missing anything. We don’t want to walk into something we can’t handle. We need to scope this thing out first. The last thing we need is to let them get away again. The first rule of …” he stopped mid-sentence and looked up.

G
ina was standing a few feet away looking at the group. “Don’t stop on my account,” she smiled, “and if I have a vote I say let’s go get them!”

“Atta girl,” Gil exclaimed.

Gina smiled at him, “I can’t continue to live my life in fear and I could not live with myself if he killed another look-a-like. So, I’m in
,” she said pulling up a chair, “what’s the plan?”

Margie’s Place
was a crowded greasy spoon around the corner from the Chicago Office of the FBI. Narrow bands of daylight squeezed around posters taped haphazardly to the plate glass. ‘Chicken Dinner $8.99’…
‘Burgers, Steak and Ribs’…
‘
Open 24 hours a day
’…
The room was crowded and noisy, soft rock barely audible above busy restaurant racket. Dust, grease and stale cigarette smoke hung in the air mingled with fried food and grilled meat.

Gil and T-Max rose in tandem, extending their hands as Chester, Lou, three members of the Multi-State Task Force, two detectives from the Chicago Police Department, two representatives
from the Chicago Office of the FBI and a nervous looking spokesman from the Mayor’s office introduced themselves. Their common goal was clear, but jurisdiction was not. An air of energy, urgency and competition permeated the space. Federal law took precedence under usual circumstances. Kidnapping automatically fell under the jurisdiction of the FBI and since this was taking place in Chicago, the Chicago FBI thought they should take the lead. However, Chester Rugger who had established the Multi State Task Force had called in the FBI Behavioral Analysis Unit from Quantico. Given time and energy they had already invested in hunting down these killers it seemed like they had earned a place in this investigation.

The first and last murder victims were from Hurricane and three more bodies had just been discovered in his area
, so Chester was determined that he and the BAU agents who’d been working the case from the beginning should have the lead. They had the most victims, had been working on it the longest and had the most information about this gang. But, Chicago law enforcement claimed dominion because the killers were now in the heart of Chicago. It seemed that should take precedence, public safety was a huge factor as they had nearly 3 million
people to worry about
. The fact that Chicago’s mayor proclaimed his city’s law enforcement would capture this gang on national television intensified the struggle for case control.

In addition to the unwieldy assortment of officials involved in the case, this private group called ‘Protect and Serve,’ with strong, though informal, links to Chicago Police, was in charge of security for the Comar Children’s Hospital, where the last two murders and an attempted kidnapping had just taken place.
At first Chester and Lou thought that the group calling itself ‘Protect and Serve’ was not official and they should be excluded. However they seemed to have some sort of protective history with this female doctor the killers were after and in fact it appeared they had her hidden away somewhere. These Protect and Serve guys also had ties to some secret Jewish vigilante group that was pulling strings and staying one step ahead of the police. But no one was talking about them. Chester could not imagine how they were going to get anything done so encumbered were they by all of these official and unofficial people. It was hard enough to track down these killers without dozens of people tripping over each other in the process. The chain of command was unclear and there were too many groups scrambling for control of the investigation. Now they had these two unofficial groups pushing their way into the middle of things. He wanted to throw them out but it seems they were well connected with the Chicago PD and well ahead on much of the current investigation. They seemed to have the doctor; they seemed to know about the killers’ connections in the city and maybe even where they were hiding. Chester had no idea how all this had happened. Who were these people?

To complicate matters, the news media had invaded the city; they were swarming around the
hospital and every law enforcement agency, interviewing, bribing and eavesdropping, making confidentiality impossible. That’s why the group decided to meet in this busy eatery. They needed to meet outside of official turf in some ordinary place. They wanted to blend into a crowd, just a bunch of hungry guys getting together for lunch. Their growing sense of urgency was palpable. They were sitting on a powder keg and they knew it. This frozen metropolis had been thrust into the role of host to a nation-wide manhunt.  Three killers were running rampant in the city, a massive shooting spree could erupt, and women could be kidnapped and murdered. Public disclosure was a sensitive topic. If they revealed too much to the public, gun sales would go through the roof so John Q citizen would be armed and dangerous. People would be shooting each other left and right. Women would be afraid to leave their houses. Police would be flooded with emergencies and diverted from their task of finding the killers. Hospitals had been alerted to prepare for a public disaster. The police presence on the streets had been doubled. All officers were assigned to pull 12 hour shifts. Jurisdiction had to be resolved at this table and right now. Every minute was critical. 

In the end Chester and Lou decided to keep their eye on the target. They would work with whoever seemed to have the best information and the strongest approach to capturing the Parkland Killers, regardless of their official status or lack
thereof. If these strangers were in the best position to stop these killers even if it meant breaking jurisdictional protocol, they would work with them. The Parkland Killers would leave Chicago in one of two ways, in handcuffs or in body bags. It didn’t matter which.