The Ringer (15 page)

Her head jerked back in surprise from the slap of a snowball. “You’re going down, buddy.” She huffed out mushy particles of froth from her mouth, ready to do battle.

“Uh oh,” he taunted while he fumbled with the load of wood. “You’re not mad, are you?”

“No, but you will be,” she challenged, circling him for the kill. She scooped up a healthy palm of mush and kept her eye on the target. She packed her weapon tight. “They called me snowball queen in high school.”

“Why, because you could toss one hell of an ice ball?”

“No, silly. Those gooey sticky treats are damn delicious.” She laughed while bombarding him with ball after snowball. Quality was not her goal; instead, she leaned on quantity to throw him off-balance.

One after another, she melded the snow together in her hands to chuck them hard at the detective. He tried to knock a few good ones out, but he wasn’t as close to the ground as she was. He rushed her. Tangled with one another in a pile, she laughed so hard her side began to hurt.

Something vibrated between their bodies. “What is that?”

He patted his goose down jacket. “Got it, got it,” he said fishing his phone out of his pocket. “Thornbird.” He laughed and put his cell on speaker.

“We have a problem, Jax. A big problem,” Raff’s thin voice rattled.

“What’s wrong?”

“That email you sent me last night. Your dad was right. The John Doe you found and this missing kid are the same.” Raff’s words came out in such a rush Lane strained to hear her over the connection.

“The kid’s mom made a stink about the autopsy report, and most of the John Does were cremated before they could be claimed, but the kid’s body wasn’t. Now it’s allegedly missing and—”

“Wait a minute, Raff. You’re going to have to slow down.” He got out of the snow and reached down to help Lane up while his partner continued to rattle off statistics and cases.

“I found a similar report. That same summer, Dennis Bleacher’s sister went missing, and he filed a report. I just got off of the phone with him. He managed to hunt down his sister’s remains before they were cremated. At first, he didn’t think it could be her. According to the autopsy, she had scars from a surgery that she’s never received. When he started to go into detail about the surgery, someone knocked at his door,” Raff whined. “There was a commotion, and it sounded…. Well, it sounded like Mortiz.”

“Shit,” he growled. “What happened?”

“I don’t know. The line went dead. Maybe I’m wrong. I’m not sure. I can’t get him back on the phone.”

The fear in Raff’s voice gave her the shivers. Her first impression of his partner had veered toward tough biker chick. Whatever scared a woman like Raff had to be bad.

“I’m worried.”

“Don’t be,” he assured her. “You and your brother are safe. Besides, Nate can move you if it gets too heated.”

“What about you?” she asked, her voice was lighter.

“For now, we’re okay since the roads are closed.” His words made Lane look around at their isolated piece of paradise.

One road led to the house positioned on top of a hill. They couldn’t be attacked from any angle other than straight on.
A regular ol’ western standoff. No wonder he picked this place
.

“Mortiz and Franco are city mice. We’ll be safe until the snowplows come by. In the meantime, give me what you got and I’ll dissect it.”

“Jax…I found out more about Lane’s mark. He’d been in contact with the Lockland facility.”

“Sure, he’s a transporter. He had to pick up bodies.” He shrugged.

“A medical facility is not the same as a hospital. There were dozens of phone calls to and from Lockland facilities from a specific number on a daily basis.”

“So?”

“Sooo, the calls dropped off around the time Tara Penske went missing,” Raff told him. “I’m going to try to get the numbers off of her cell phone as soon as I can, and I’ll do my best to get the voicemails and text messages, without a warrant.”

“Wow! Your brother can hack the state’s system? He’s good.

“Yeah, he is.” Raff sighed. “I have a bad feeling Tara and the transporter blackmailed the wrong people.”

“Send me everything,” he hollered before disconnecting the call. A red flush attacked his face and a manic light entered in his eyes.

“What?”

“We’re close,” he said. “Very close.” He snatched her up and lifted her into the air. Caught up in his infectious enthusiasm, she laughed with him.

“But nothing Raff said made a bit of sense.” She choked on their giddiness.

“Some of it did, and that’s why she’s scared.” He set her down and grabbed her hand.

“What about the wood?” She reminded him of the neglected logs that laid abandon on the ground.

“If I’m right about this, we won’t need them.” They made a dash toward the house.

The Shedd Aquarium was filled to the brim with tours of children. Julian politely bullied his way past everyone. He found the journalist Trevor Lowell in front of the Caribbean Reef exhibit. Coral tones of aquatic light guided him closer to the tank, a perfect spot away from prying eyes that might recognize him.

“Gosh, Captain, I would say you’re ashamed of me,” the reporter had the nerve to joke. He held out his hand for him to shake, but Julian ignored it. Fake sincerity never sat right with him, so why pretend?

“What do you want, Lowell, dinner and a date?” He turned away from the throngs of kids who moved in a single-file line past them.

The hipster roach would get very few moments of his time. Besides, if he grabbed the journalist by the throat and choked the shit out of him, it would definitely change the trajectory of his career.

“Where’s Detective Thornbird? I was expecting him.”

“He’s unavailable at the moment. Perhaps I can help you. Tell me, Mr. Lowell, what’s your story about?”

A green sea turtle floated close to them with a school of parrotfish trailing behind. Julian would have found the Shedd peaceful minus one journalist.

“To be honest, Captain, I’m not quite sure yet. If I spoke to Detective Thornbird he might be able to cast some light on a few troubling findings.” The journalist squinted at him through his black-framed glasses and gave him a slimy smile. The kid must have believed they were playing a game of Twenty Questions.

“How so?” he asked.

“I don’t have all the details, so I would be speaking out of turn—”

“Take a shot,” Julian pushed him, tired of the merry-go-round they were on.

“It’s not much, but a strange shooting…it’s the one where your detective may or may not be involved.” Lowell smirked at him. “Well, I’m not one hundred percent, but I do believe the nameless John Doe in the morgue is my informant.”

“You believe?” he replied, positive the kid had no clue. “But you don’t know.”

“Unfortunately,” Lowell said as he stepped closer, “he never showed up to our meeting.” The little pipsqueak barely cleared the bottom of his chin, his attempt at intimidation laughable.

“Maybe he got cold feet,” Julian suggested.

“And maybe he got shot. However, the body on a slab in the city morgue has no name.”

“How about you give me the name you think he should have, and I’ll look into this.” Everything was still within his reach, he realized. The Top Cop position hadn’t slipped through his fingers after all.

“That’s confidential.” The journalist frowned.

“Afraid I can’t help, then.” He turned to leave, but stopped short when the kid grabbed his arm. He stared at his hand until he dropped it.

“I could write I’m not getting any cooperation from the Chicago PD and you in particular.”

“Write what? From where I’m sitting, you don’t have a story. Don’t you paper boys usually have a subject or a topic—shit something?” He chuckled at the reporter’s flimsy evidence. “Next, you’ll be asking me to write a damn piece for you,” he snapped.

After about half of a minute staring, the punk finally got the good sense to look away.

“You’re right, Captain. Maybe I can write about bullying in junior high school. It’s on the rise, and from what I hear, your son has firsthand knowledge of it.”

“If you so much as print a word about my son’s troubles in school, I will sue your rag for slander. Trust me. The principal won’t talk, and I’ll give the
Tribune
the records of that freak show kid who falsely accused him of bullying.” Lowell opened his mouth to protest, but Julian decided he was done. He walked away. “You have a nice day,” he told the reporter before he left him in the busy aquarium.

Another busload of children entered the building. He made it around the throng of grade-schoolers to step into the unseasonably warm Chicago October afternoon. Armed with the knowledge that the paper had nothing to print, Julian decided to forgo the taxi. He headed toward his office to clear his head.

The new house was in escrow, and his son would soon be on his way to boarding school and far, far away from him.

“What about Matty Szohre, Captain?” the journalist called out. “Don’t you think his parents deserve the truth?”

At the mere mention of the kid’s name, the sensation of frigid ice spread through his chest. No one could ever find out what happened to him. “I’m Homicide, missing persons is not my beat,” he said with more edge than he actually meant. “You should take this up with the boys downtown. They’re the ones who screwed the pooch on that case, if you even want to call it a case. Come on, Lowell.” He glanced at the hipster shit over his shoulder. “You should find a more suitable career.”

Julian headed toward his precinct with less pep to his step, but with more determination than ever.

***

Jax drove the handyman’s pickup through the Colorado Mountains. It was Stu’s old relic of a truck, a sturdy battle-ax that worked great with the harsh weather.

Nowhere close to the twelve inches every news outlet predicted, the city plow had moved the remains of the snowstorm to the sides of the highway. The roads were clear enough for them to leave at dawn the next morning.

“Okay, Lane, once more,” he pushed for her to go over the evidence again.

They had been at it for some time. The truth was near, and since Raff’s phone call the day before, the needling sense of anticipation hadn’t left him.

She wrestled with the notes on her lap. “Johnny Mac, the cheating husband, was shot outside of Paddy’s bar.”

“But why?” he asked. They had invented a game of questions help them sift through all the pieces left dangling.

“Johnny Mac worked with Lockland Medical in some capacity.”

“And Lockland Medical is involved, how?”

“There is no evidence to suggest Lockland Medical is involved in any wrongdoings—”

“Except for the hit issued on you, the owner’s estranged wife, who coincidentally looks exactly like his brother’s missing assistant, Tara Penske.”

“The Tara Penske angle is all alleged,” she told him. “But I’ll give you points for creativity.” She flipped the pages back and forth. “We’re looking at this wrong.”

Jax grabbed the remainder of his Starbucks while he let her sort out whatever raged within her mind.

“There’s a common denominator between the John Does?” she muttered.

“Homeless, died of natural causes,” he threw out.

“What makes them homeless?” She went through her notes.

“No ID’s.” He shrugged. “They were all fairly healthy, but that could be attributed to their age.”

“Two of the bodies had recent surgeries, correct?”

“Yeah,” he confirmed. “From what we can tell.”

“What about the rest?”

“Six bodies all found in the same circumstances, discovered in popular areas where transient men and women tend to hang out. But there’s nothing else about mysterious surgeries. Cremated before anyone could get a good look at them and one body lost within the Cook County system.”

“Is that normal?” she asked. When he glanced over again, he found her biting her lip.

At first he had devised this game to run down facts and pass the time, but she was better than he imagined. He didn’t want to overload her with anything too heavy, especially after what she’d learned about Parker.

“We’ve got some time before we arrive at—” Jax picked up the file he had wedged between his seat and the middle console. “—Dennis Bleacher’s, brother of Sarah Bleacher,” he read. “Maybe we can learn more once we arrive in Omaha.”

“Yeah.” Lane continued to study the papers in front of her.

“Hey.” He tipped her chin up with his fingers before she took his hand and moved it to her mouth, the soft flesh of her lips gracing his fingertips. “Any time you want out, I’ll take you to the nearest train station and drop you—”

She kissed him, cutting his words short. Warmth spread throughout his body.

“No.” She kissed the center of his palm. In return, he ran his hand over her face as she gave him that mega-watt smile. He worked hard to resist her charm and stop the freefall his heart went into every time he looked at her. When it came to Lane, he was a willing victim.

“I’m staying with you.”

“Okay,” he mustered up. Hopefully, he didn’t sound too much like a lovesick goon.

***

Blood on the sun. Jax had always heard it was a bad sign. He drove the truck onto the gravel driveway of a desolate ranch with the remainder of the day at their back.

“Is this Dennis Bleacher’s house?” she whispered. “It doesn’t look like anyone’s home.” She sat rigid in the passenger’s seat, her hands balled in fists.

Instincts. He could tell Lane’s were riding high. As a rookie he stamped down those lifesaving tingles. Intuition would whisper in his ear telling him trouble was ahead. Soon enough he learned if he wanted to keep his career and his life intact, he would have to listen to his gut. A soft glow from the sun bounced off Dennis Bleacher’s ranch style house. Soon, the last bit of light would slip beneath the equator. He wanted to visit the man who’d made a stink about his sister’s death before it got too dark. Jax He put the truck in park and reached behind the seat.

“Normally, I would leave you here,” he told her. He examined the house. From the outside, there was no movement. It appeared empty. He believed the man’s dead body would be inside, and that’s why he couldn’t leave her alone.