Hot Case Page 2

  “Okay, let me rephrase that,” I said. “I knew you were here and was wondering why you didn’t stop to say hi.”

  “I wasn’t here to see you. I also wasn’t here to talk about you, if that’s what you were thinking,” she informed me. “Commander Aniceto and I had department business to discuss. There’s been buzz about some cult activity in the area, and I was consulting with him.”

  Cult activity?

  That made sense, I thought, my interest suddenly picking up at the word cult.

  While the academy was its own district in the sense that it had its own commander, it sat in the middle of Mom’s district. So of course she would take advantage of Aniceto’s background. Several years before taking this job, he’d been a detective in the gang units with a specialty in cults.

  But before I could prod Mom about this cult activity, she asked, “So how’s the job?”

  “I had a recruit quit on me today.”

  “Good.”

  “It doesn’t feel good.”

  “Would it feel better if the recruit became a cop and then got hurt or killed in the line of duty? We can’t make people into what they’re not.”

  So why was she always trying to do that with me? I wondered. “You’re right. She didn’t have what it takes.”

  “She?” Mom nodded. “It’s hard being a woman on the force.”

  Didn’t I know that. It had to be even harder for Mom, considering she was one of the few women who’d made it big in a predominantly male field. Only she’d sacrificed something on the way to the top. She’d forgotten that Silke and I had needed a mom who would be there to tuck us in at night, someone who would soothe our hurts when we were kids.

  “Have you spoken to your sister yet?” Mom asked.

  Ah, so suddenly we were related. I knew she wanted me to counsel Silke, to see if I couldn’t help my twin figure out a professional path that would make sense to our mother.

  “Silke listens to you, Shelley. You’re closer to her than anyone.”

  “I don’t want to live her life for her.”

  For one brief second an unfamiliar expression crossed Mom’s still beautiful face. She seemed unsettled…guilty…and then her expression cleared. Still, the fact that she might be affected hit home.

  “All right, I’ll talk to her,” I said in a rush. “No guarantees, though.”

  Mom nodded, and I swore I heard relief in her “Good. You’ll report back to me, then.”

  The last part ruined my generous mood—it sounded too much like her giving me an order. Not like my mom, but like my superior. I gave her a noncommittal nod in return and we went our separate ways, me wondering once more what it would feel like to have a normal family life.

  A spin in my red Camaro convertible chilled me out. Though I lived close enough to the academy that I could be home in ten minutes, I took the long way via the expressway and let the power of the engine hum through my veins. The sports car was my one vice and driving it made me feel better. I’d always wanted a Corvette, but even a used one had been too rich for my bank account, so I’d settled for a secondhand Camaro instead.

  I was in better spirits by the time I got home to my cats. I opened cans of food for them and nuked a dinner for me. The open kitchen area was actually decent—nice wood cabinets and fairly new appliances—but unfortunately, I’d never learned to cook.

  My one-bedroom conversion condo was a rental in a recently gentrified area. Some yuppie bought it as an investment, not to live in but to rent out. Fine by me. All my life, I’d lived in city apartments, and being able to afford a nice space like this one kept me from feeling deprived. Being a homeowner sounded like too much work anyway.

  I ate my dinner while watching one of those reality programs about cold cases. Most of those solved were years or even decades old, and new technology like DNA testing got investigators evidence that had been lacking before. An unsolved murder was never officially closed, but if there were no clues, no witnesses, nothing to go on, it fell to the side in light of more productive cases.

  I got a vicarious high from watching old murders being solved. This one was about a woman who’d supposedly died in a fire twenty years before. Her body had been found beneath the building’s ruins, and she’d had a bullet in her head. The investigation had revealed the fire had been arson, intended to cover up the murder.

  Every time I watched one of these programs, I thought of LaTonya Sanford—my last case as a working detective—and wished I could have put some closure to it. The girl’s mother and little sisters deserved to know why she’d disappeared. Sometimes I even dreamed about nailing the killer. About seeing that justice was done. I’d suspected possible cult connections because of the bizarre way she had been killed, but no one had believed me. No one in the violent crimes squad had been able to wrap his or her mind around the concept of a young woman being completely drained of blood.

  I could still see her poor, lifeless body sprawled across that alley. I still felt sick about letting her down. Unfortunately, Junior Diaz had disappeared, too, so I’d had no support.

  As I had done so many times over the past months, I slipped a tattered folder out of a file drawer and threw it on the low table in front of the couch.

  I considered the folder for a moment before opening it and spreading out the materials across the table. I shouldn’t have this folder. I knew that. But I’d never taken the originals out of the murder book that I’d made up despite the fact that I was told there was no case. They were still safely back at the area office. What I had were copies of the official materials. Well, some of the stuff was. My reports, primarily. I had other things in here, too. Personal research, mostly on cults. I hadn’t turned up anything shady on LaTonya herself, convincing me that she was a true victim.

  I stared at a copy of her school ID blown up to life size. She stared back at me, her dark eyes accusing.

  No body, no case, no one cared. No one but me.

  My lieutenant had indulged me for several days after the incident, during which I’d become obsessed with finding an answer as to what had happened to her. But my co-workers had rolled their eyes at my continuing to investigate a murder without a corpse. Detectives weren’t assigned partners. They were given case loads and the opportunity to mix it up themselves. I helped someone with his cases—he helped me with mine. Only no one would. They’d laughed at me instead.

  And then the ax had fallen. I’d just begun researching cults when I’d been cut off at the knees. Not only had I been ordered not to pursue something that wasn’t even a case, but I’d also been given administrative leave for the rest of the week and then had been ordered into psych evaluation.

  While I’d been powerless, Junior’s body had been found in a garbage can a few alleys over from where I’d gone to meet him. Mom had given me the skinny—just about every bone in Junior’s scrawny little body had been broken. Speculation was he’d been murdered because of the witness he’d given up on a multiple homicide he’d helped me solve a few months before the Sanford girl died.

  I wasn’t so sure that was true. I figured his death was somehow connected to LaTonya Sanford’s death. But by then, my instincts meant nothing to the department.

  As a rubber-gun officer, I’d been assigned to the callback center, answering phones and writing up dozens of reports a day until, after weeks of probing my mind, the therapist had declared me sane. His professional opinion? I was a straight arrow and dedicated to the job, but I was also hard, tense and brittle and had temporarily snapped from too much stress. He’d also concluded that I would be no danger to myself or to the department…unless that kind of stress built up in me again, of course.

  Undoubtedly the reason I hadn’t been allowed back at Area 4. I’d been shoved into the training academy, where—should I become delusional again—at least I would be off the streets.

  I hated it, but there was nothing I could do about it.

  And what about the victim?

  LaTonya Sanford hadn’t been considered a case at all, at least not a homicide. She’d been deemed a missing person, a teenage runaway, and since she was seventeen, no official effort had been made to find her.

  I knew she was dead, though, as cold a case as they came.

  I replaced the research in the folder but left it on the table. Mostly I tried to forget about something over which I had no control, but the mention of cult activity earlier had stirred up my emotions. I shut off the television before the next segment started. I jumped into a hot shower in hopes the needles of water would beat the blues out of me. After pulling on pajamas, I climbed into bed. I wasn’t used to the physical stuff I’d done earlier, not to mention that stress exhausted me.

  No sooner were my eyes closed when I drifted off….

  She sprawls across the alley, her skirt around her waist. The winged gargoyle high on her outer thigh grins at me. Her jaw is dislocated…ear ripped…eye rolled out of its socket onto her cheek.

  “So young. Just a kid,” I mourn.

  Suddenly, she sits up and with her good eye stares at me accusingly. “Your fault,” she whispers, the sound raw. “You left me…
lost me…sealed my fate…”

  I sat up with a gasp, my heart pounding. It took me a minute to get my bearings. I checked the clock—2:12 a.m.

  Great.

  The middle of the night and now I was awake.

  I’d had all of three hours of sleep. I rarely slept through the night anymore.

  Disturbing the cats, who’d snuggled down next to me, I rose and paced off the vestiges of the nightmare. At this rate, I was going to wear out the carpet.

  Wanting something to get my mind off bad things, I fetched a DVD I’d rented. I loved mysteries and suspense stories whether books or movies. My twin went for the woo-woo stuff like those Evil Dead movies she forced me to watch with her. A guy going after zombies with a chain saw…right…but I guess everyone deserves a guilty pleasure.

  Mine would be watching a romantic suspense-thriller, maybe because it had been so long since I’d had a romantic experience myself. Dating had been difficult enough when I’d been in uniform. But once I’d made detective, my life had no longer been my own. And since then…well, who would want to hook up with a cop some considered a fruit loop?

  While I was setting up the DVD, I got the first prickling along the back of my neck. The uneasy feeling had something to do with Silke, but I wasn’t interested.

  Silke and I were identical twins with a bizarre mental connection that she played on—one of those inexplicable twin things that used to freak me out. I knew a lot of people would love to have a psychic connection with someone. Not me. I’d rather focus on other realities, so now I just ignored it. When we were kids, we messed around with the connection sometimes. We also fooled people by trading places. But as we grew up, we grew apart. Matured.

  Well, at least I had.

  What could you say about a grown woman of nearly thirty who colored her chestnut hair bloodred, whitened her pale complexion with makeup and smudged her green eyes with enough dark stuff to look like a raccoon? That’s what my sister had been doing lately between gigs on stage. While I earned a degree in criminal justice, my twin got one in theater and started using the name Silke instead of Sylvie because it sounded more theatrical. Though she got paying parts once in a while, she mostly worked as a waitress, lately at a Goth bar.

  The prickling intensified.

  Flashes of a couple kissing on screen got my interest and when Play was highlighted, I hit Enter to start the movie. I flopped onto the couch and the cats joined me. Sarge settled near my neck, his whiskers tickling my ear as he purred into it, while Cadet stood with two paws on my leg until I scooped her into my side and got her to lie down, half on my leg.

  The movie had just started with a couple in tongue lock when my pulse shot up and it suddenly became hard to take a breath. My physical reactions had nothing to do with the on-screen kiss, though. What I was experiencing wasn’t romantic. It was fear mixed with some other heart-palpitating emotion.

  “Silke, what the hell?” I murmured as both Sarge and Cadet, obviously sensing something weird was going on, moved away from my body heat to stare at me from a safe distance.

  Normally, I was able to ignore Silke’s signals, but these were so strong they got my attention.

  The phone rang and I snatched it up. “Silke?”

  “Shell,” she said, “something awful happened tonight.”

  “How awful?” I tried to keep my voice even when I was feeling anything but. This wasn’t going to be good news, whatever it was. “What?”

  “One of the Goth girls says she found Thora Nelson on the street under the tracks…dead!”

  Chapter 2

  Silke Caldwell parked her car in a well-lit area on Randolph Street in front of the building that housed Heart of Darkness, the bar where she worked, just as her sister had ordered. The bar was closed and the area was dark but for the streetlights.

  So where was Shelley? she wondered, trying to zone in on her twin mentally. But, as usual, Shelley wasn’t receiving. It took all Silke’s energy to crack her sister’s defenses and she simply didn’t have it in her tonight.

  They’d been closing up the bar when Raven had come crashing back inside and had pulled Silke aside with a wild story about Thora Nelson being dead. Raven had been too scared to call the police, and Silke had listened to the details that had left her dumbstruck. The devil was in those details, the reason she’d believed Raven. The reason she hadn’t called 911 herself.

  She checked the clock in the dash for maybe the tenth time. Twelve minutes and counting. The bar was closed now and she was out here alone.

  Poor Thora—the popular Goth girl would never have to wait for anyone again.

  Even as she thought it, Silke felt her stomach clench. What a shocker, and yet after the things Thora had told over her the past few weeks, why was she so surprised?

  Only…who was next?

  Her?

  She slashed a hand across her eyes and came away with a smear of black makeup on the back of her hand.

  How did Shelley do it? Silke wondered. Being a cop, coming in contact with violence and death on a regular basis? No identical twins were ever less alike. It had been obvious from the time they were kids and Shelley had beat up a boy who’d been torturing Silke that her twin took after their policewoman mother. Shelley had always been tough and could stomach anything without emotions getting in her way.

  A knock at her car window made Silke jump. Heart pounding, she turned to see Shelley peering in at her. Opening the door, she flew out of the driver’s seat. “Shell, I’m so glad to see you.”

  Shelley hugged her and rubbed her back the way she used to when they were little and their mother was working late at night and Silke was certain a monster lived in the basement. Shelley had always promised to protect her. It was only recently that Silke had begun exploring a different way to protect herself….

  “So where’s this Raven?” Shelley asked.

  “I don’t know. She wouldn’t call the police, and while I was talking to you on the phone, she left without saying a word.”

  “But you know how to get in touch with her.”

  “Only if she comes into the bar. I mean, I know her, but we’re not exactly friends.”

  Shelley had wanted her to call 911, and then, in exasperation, had said she would do it herself. But Silke had pleaded with her sister not to, insisted that it was imperative she come down here herself first. Then she could call whatever officer she saw fit.

  “All right, let’s see what we’ve got. Lock your car and get in mine.” Shelley indicated the Camaro.

  Silke quickly settled into the passenger seat.

  “It’s…she’s over on the next block,” Silke whispered. Thora wasn’t an it. She was a person. Or she had been before someone had drained the blood from her. That’s what Raven had said, the reason she’d wanted Shelley to come in person. Not that she’d told her sister that detail yet. She wanted Shelley to see for herself. “Make a right on Lake.”

  Lake Street was straddled by an elevated rapid transit structure for the Green Line that ran west into the suburbs. There weren’t any stations close by—the old one at Halsted had been demolished. Now the Halsted/Randolph area was being gentrified, so the CTA was going to add a station sometime in the near future. But the fact that there was no station now meant there was little foot traffic in the area, especially late at night. Or early in the morning, depending on how one viewed it, she guessed. Bar-hoppers and restaurant-goers parked their cars along here if they didn’t want to pay for valet parking. As did the car hikers themselves and employees of the local businesses.