Davy Ellis, looking like he’d just stepped off the Ralph Lauren runway, raised his hand.
“The mayor said-”
“The mayor said not to apprehend him during the money drop. The drop is over. Isn’t that right, Superintendent O’Loughlin?”
All eyes locked on the super. Her voice radiated a lot more authority than mine did.
“If we find him, we grab him.”
I adjourned the meeting, and began to work with Baker putting teams together. Rick came up, his pretty-boy looks spoiled by a scowl. He took my elbow and edged me aside.
“Not very professional, Jack.”
“About as professional as telling the super to take my gun.”
“You were going to do something stupid.”
At least he didn’t deny it. But that didn’t make it any less of a betrayal.
“I do a lot of stupid things,” I told him, and let my eyes add extra weight to my words. Rick caught the implication and walked off. There would be no more footsie with Special Agent Hottie. Good-looking men were nice, but loyalty was a helluva lot nicer.
After my team was organized enough to roll, I tracked down the super, who was in a heated discussion with the PR guy.
“I need my weapons,” I said to her.
O’Loughlin reached into her enormous jacket pockets, pockets so large they belonged on a clown or a mime.
“If you apprehend or kill the suspect,” Davy said, “it could get out that the city knew about his plot, and that we paid him off. Think about the outrage, the lawsuits, the damage to Chicago’s reputation.”
“All I’m thinking about,” I said evenly, “is getting him so more people don’t die.”
“It would be impossible to recover from-”
“I forgot to mention,” I interrupted. “The last time I spoke with the Chemist, he asked me why we hadn’t gone public about the money. I told him to take it up with Davy Ellis of Ellis, Dickler, and Scaramouche, that you were the one suppressing his story. He didn’t seem happy.”
Ellis turned a lovely shade of pale beneath his perfect tan. Peripherally, I saw the super’s lips twitch, as close as I’d seen her get to smirking. I turned away, tucked my guns into both holsters, and then headed for Chateau Élan on North and Clybourn to ruin Captain Bains’s joyous occasion.
CHAPTER 32
FROM THE OUTSIDE, Chateau Élan looked like it was designed by an ancient Roman architect with a column fetish. The facade boasted ten of them, thick and white and supporting a vaulted roof. Six columns graced each side of the building, and two held up the marquee on the front lawn, which proclaimed congratulations to Mr. and Mrs. Bains and Mr. and Mrs. Rothschild.
The valet seemed anxious to park my car, until he found out I was a cop and not going to tip. I parked in the valet area just the same-I’d done enough walking for the day. I was followed into the lot by a parade of cop cars, including the Mobile Command bus. When Bains showed up, he was going to have a stroke.
The lobby had a few marble statues, a fountain, and a lot of flowers and plants. I talked to a Hispanic cook, who led me to a comb-over manager named Bob Debussey. Bob appeared ready to cry when I laid out the story for him.
“Oh dear. This is horrible. Oh dear oh dear.”
“Where do you keep the liquor?”
“Oh dear. There’s a wine cellar, and the cooler. Both locked. Oh dear.”
“Who has keys?”
“I do, and my assistant manager, Jaime. Oh dear.”
Between oh dears I gleaned that there were no new hires recently, there haven’t been any strange people hanging around, and they’d gotten their latest liquor delivery this morning.
“I was missing a case of champagne, and a bottle of Oban. The groom’s father specifically wanted that scotch. The driver had the champagne, but had to go back for the scotch. Marty would have never messed up like that.”
“Who’s Marty?”
“The previous driver. Wonderful man. Died a few weeks ago. Heart attack, right after dropping off our order. Oh dear.”
I directed the mob of police entering the lobby to ask questions, take names, secure the perimeter, and search for IEDs. Bob led me, Rogers, and a perky CSU girl named Patti Hunt over to the wine cellar. Hunt was lugging a large black ALS box, and Rogers had a kit similar to Hajek’s. Bob fussed with the keys, shaking so badly I felt the wind. When he got the door open, he pointed out the stack of boxes in the near corner, sitting in front of a large wine rack that took up the back wall.
“This is presumptive, guys,” I told the team, “not evidentiary. Get me some clues, and the court case can be built later.”
Hunt found an electrical outlet for the alternate light source, Rogers dug out an aerosol can of ninhydrin, and I snapped on some latex gloves and eased a bottle of Perestroika vodka from the top carton.
“The driver today,” I asked Bob. “Was he wearing gloves?”
“Oh dear. No, I don’t believe so. He brought the boxes in on a dolly. I don’t remember gloves.”
“Is this the bottle of scotch he forgot?” I pointed to the Oban sitting on a wire rack.
“Yes. He brought that to me about an hour ago. Said he was sure he packed it the first time.”
Rogers spritzed the Oban and the vodka, and Hunt switched on the ALS and pointed the silver wand at the bottles, bathing them in green light. Nothing fluoresced.
“It’s at five fifty-five nanometers,” Hunt said.
“Nini is a picky lady,” Rogers said. “Try six hundred.”
Hunt dialed up the spectrum, and the light went from green to orange. It also brought out a dozen yellow prints on the Oban bottle, and three on the vodka.
Rogers looked at them through a loupe.
“Gloves on the vodka, at least seven different prints on the scotch.”
I took another bottle out of the top box, and a bottle out of the box beneath it. Then I went to the shelves and pulled a few random bottles. We did another spray and glow.
“All gloves on the new bottles, prints all over the old ones,” Rogers concluded.
“The distributor doesn’t wear gloves,” I said, “and he packs the liquor himself. These should have prints on them, unless they’ve been wiped down or switched.”
“But they don’t look like they’ve been opened.” Hunt pointed at the cap on the Perestroika. “The safety seal is still on.”
She was right. And the jet injector, powerful as it was, couldn’t shoot through glass. I placed three identical bottles of vodka on the floor and looked at the fill levels. All of them were uneven by a wee bit. But was that the Chemist’s doing, or were all liquor bottles slightly off?
I unscrewed the cap off of one.
“Lieutenant,” Hunt said, “if you’re thinking of taking a shot, that’s a poor way to test for toxins.”
Rogers raised his hand. “I’ll volunteer to try it.”
I squinted at the cap. There didn’t seem to be any signs of tampering. I took a tentative sniff. Smelled like vodka.
“Rogers, pass me that loupe.”
I held it to my eye and saw a tiny crystal winking up at me on the rim. I ran my pinky-my only finger currently lacking a decent fingernail-around the inside of the cap, and felt a bit of roughness.
“Unless the Perestroika master distillers use ground glass as a secret ingredient, I think we’ve found our toxic liquor. What else came with this shipment?” I asked Bob.
“Oh dear oh dear. A few cases of beer, and some pop. It’s all in the cooler.”
I ordered Rogers and Hunt to go with him, and I opened two more bottles, whiskey and rum. Each had overshot their recommended daily allowance of glass. I called the super.
“It looks like Bains is the target. It’s the liquor. I’m going to shut everything down here.”
“I’ll talk to your captain. We can let the reception go on anyway, bait a trap for the Chemist.”
“I was thinking about that, but it’s too dangerous. There might be other things tampered with, and I don’t think Bains wants to use his son’s wedding for a sting operation.”
“Agreed, Lieutenant. I’m glad I put you in charge of this case.”
I was going to remind her that I wasn’t her first pick, or even her tenth pick, but instead I said, “Thanks, but it isn’t over yet.”