Her breathing was starting to get heavy now, ragged. And Mal was making it worse, scaring her like this. She didn’t know what he was capable of. “You can trust me, Mal. You know that,” she whispered.
“I do know that, Michelle, but it’s not me I’m worried about. I mean, we work for someone, don’t we, hon? Charles Danko isn’t forgiving, the way I am. Danko is tough enough to beat them at their own game. He’s a genius.”
She grabbed the puffer out of Mal’s hand and depressed it twice, shooting the soothing spray into her lungs.
“You know the cool thing about ricin?” Mal smiled. “It can get into your bloodstream a hundred ways.” He depressed his index finger twice, as though he was triggering an imaginary inhaler. He smiled. “Chht, chht.”
He had a glint in his eye she hadn’t seen before. “Whoa, now that would really get that chest of yours into a state, wouldn’t it, hon? Chht, chht.”
Chapter 72
It was bedlam at the Hall that morning. As scary as it had ever been since I entered police work.
An A.D.A. being killed. August Spies’ victim number three.
By six A.M., the place was teeming with a hundred Feds: FBI, Department of Justice, ATF. And reporters, crammed into the fifth-floor news room for some kind of briefing. The front page of the Examiner had a big banner headline: WHO’S NEXT?
I was going over one of the crime scene reports from Jill’s killing when I was surprised by Joe Santos and Phil Martelli knocking at my door. “We’re real sorry to hear about Ms. Bernhardt,” Santos said, stepping in.
I tossed aside the papers and nodded thanks. “It was nice of you to come here.”
Martelli shrugged. “Actually, that’s not why we’re here, Lindsay.”
“We decided to go back through our records on this Hard-away thing,” Santos said, sitting down. He pulled out a manila envelope. “We figured if he was here, given what he was up to, he had to turn up somewhere else.”
Santos removed a series of black-and-white photos from the envelope. “This is a rally we were keeping track of. October twenty-second. Six months ago.”
The photos were surveillance sweeps of the crowd, no one in particular. Then one face was circled. Sandy hair, a narrow chin, a thin beard. Huddled in a dark fatigue jacket, jeans, a scarf that hung to his knees.
My blood started to race. I went up to my board and compared it with the FBI photos taken in Seattle five years before.
Stephen Hardaway.
The son of a bitch was here six months ago.
“This is where it starts to get interesting.” Phil Martelli winked.
He spread out a couple of other shots. A different rally. Hardaway again. This time, standing next to someone I recognized.
Roger Lemouz.
Hardaway had an arm around him.
Chapter 73
Half an hour later I pulled up on Durant Avenue at the south entrance to the university. I ran inside Dwinelle Hall, where Lemouz had his office.
The professor was there, outfitted in a tweed jacket and white linen shirt, entertaining a coed with flowing red hair.
“Party’s over,” I said.
“Ah, Madam Lieutenant.” He smiled. That condescending accent, Etonian or Oxfordian or whatever the hell it was. “I was just counseling Annette here on how Foucault says that the same forces which historically depress class affect gender, too.”
“Well, class is over, Red.” I flashed the student an “I don’t want to see you in here in about ten seconds” look. It took her about that long to gather her books and leave. To her credit, Red flashed me a middle finger at the door. I returned the favor.
“I’m delighted to see you again.” Lemouz seemed not to mind and pushed back in his chair. “Given the sad affairs on the news this morning, I fear the subject is politics—not women’s development.”
“I think I misjudged you, Lemouz.” I remained standing. “I thought you were just some pompous two-bit agitator, and you turn out to be a real player.”
Lemouz crossed his legs and gave me a condescending smile. “I’m not sure I understand what you mean.”
I took out the envelope with Santos’s photos.
“What I’m really getting a kick out of, Lemouz, is that I’m what’s keeping your ass away from Homeland Security. I pass along your name, with your public statements, the next time I see you, it’ll be in a cell.”
Lemouz leaned back in his chair, still with an amused smile. “And you’re warning me, why, Lieutenant?”
“Who said I am warning you?”
His expression changed. He had no idea what I had on him. I liked that.
“What I find amusing”—Lemouz shook his head—“is how your blessed Constitution is so blind to people in this country who are wearing a chador or who have the wrong accent, yet so high and mighty about the threat to a free society when it comes to a couple of greedy MBAs and a pretty D.A.”
I pretended I hadn’t even heard what he just said.
“There’s something I want you to look at, Lemouz.”
I opened the envelope and spread the FBI photos of Stephen Hardaway across the desk.
Lemouz shrugged. “I don’t know. Perhaps I’ve seen him.… I don’t know where. Is he a student here?”
“You weren’t listening, Lemouz.” I dropped another photo in front of him. A second. And a third. The ones taken by Santos and Martelli. Showing Hardaway standing with him, one with his arm draped across the professor’s shoulder. “How do I find him, Lemouz? How?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know. These photos are from some time ago. I believe he was a professor detained after nine-eleven. Last fall. He hung around a couple of our rallies. I haven’t seen him since. I don’t actually know the man.”
“That’s not good enough,” I pressed.
“I don’t know. That’s the truth, Lieutenant. He was from up north somewhere, as I remember. Eugene? Seattle? He hung around for a while, but it all seemed to bore him.”
For once, I believed Lemouz. “What name was he going under?”
“Not Hardaway. Malcolm something. Malcolm Dennis, I think. I don’t know where he is now. No idea.”
There was part of me that liked seeing Lemouz’s slick, superior veneer crack. “I want to know one more thing. And this stays between us. Okay?”
Lemouz nodded. “Of course.”
“The name August Spies. You know it?”
Lemouz blinked. The color came back to his face. “That’s what they’re calling themselves?”
I sat down and pushed myself close to him. We had never let the name out before. And he knew. I could see it on his face.
“Tell me, Lemouz. Who are the August Spies?”
Chapter 74
“Have you ever heard of the Haymarket Massacre?” he asked me, talking as if I were one of his students.
“You mean in Chicago?” I said.
“Very good, Lieutenant.” Lemouz nodded. “To this day, there is a statue there. To mark it. On May first, 1886, there was a massive labor demonstration up Michigan Avenue. The greatest gathering of labor to that point in the history of the United States. Eighty thousand workers, women and children too. To this day, May Day is celebrated as labor’s official holiday around the globe. Everywhere, of course,” he said with a smirk, “but in the United States.”
“Cut to the chase. I don’t need the politics.”
“The demonstration was peaceful,” Lemouz went on, “and over the next couple of days, more and more workers went out on strike and rallied. Then, on the third day, the police fired into the crowd. Two protestors were killed. The next day another demonstration was organized. At Haymarket Square. Randolph and Des Plaines Streets.
“Angry speeches blasted the government. The mayor ordered the police to disperse the crowd. One hundred seventy-six Chicago cops entered the square in a phalanx and stormed the crowd, wielding their nightsticks. Then the police opened fire. When the dust settled, seven police and four demonstrators lay dead.