I was?opping around, bogged down in a quicksand of emotions about my wife and daughter that proved that Ben Yates and Troy Clark were correct in kicking me off this case because it was too personal. It didn’t help that I might be falling in love with a woman whom I had almost gotten killed when I let my professional judgment become clouded by my personal feelings or, as my father would have said, when I was too busy thinking with my little head instead of my big head. Toss in an undiagnosed but undeniable movement disorder that could make me collapse quicker than the old Boston Red Sox in September, and I was a mess.
This much I knew. Colby Hudson and Thomas Rice were in business together and they had used the same method of protecting their wives from the risks of their criminal enterprise. That didn’t mean their wives were innocent of what was going on. Jill Rice admitted that she knew her husband was dealing drugs. It only meant that their husbands had insured them against that risk.
I had to stop at that. Thinking of Colby and Wendy as coconspirators, let alone husband and wife, was too disorienting. But there it was. I hung on to to the unlikely prospect that Wendy had been too naive, too in love, or too stupid to have known what Colby was doing.
Thomas Rice had supposedly given up his sources as part of his plea bargain. It looked like the U.S. Attorney had made a bad deal, because Rice plainly hadn’t given up his real supplier. It was likely that Rice, Javy Ordonez, and Marcellus Pearson worked for the same person or persons unknown. He, she, or they had been the real target of my investigation of Marcellus and when I got close enough to shake their tree, bodies started falling out.
They say that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. I had no choice but to test the definition and shake a few more trees. I started with a phone call to Marty Grisnik.
“What’s the latest, big man?” Grisnik asked.
I had pulled into the parking lot at the Ward Parkway Shopping Center.
“Still snipe hunting.”
“Catch any?”
“Getting close, but I could use some help.”
“That’s what I like about you, Jack. You don’t hesitate to ask people to waste their time on wild goose chases.”
“You might want to go along on this one. The geese are friends of yours.”
“How’s that?” he asked, his voice tightening.
“Tanja Andrija and her brother, Nick.”
Grisnik laughed, deep and long. “You are bullshitting me, right?”
“I hope I am. I just need to be certain.”
“The Andrija family has been on Strawberry Hill longer than you and I are likely to live. I spent half my life growing up inside Petar and Maja’s house. You drag them down for no reason, you’ll answer to me. You got that?”
“Wouldn’t want it any other way.”
“I assume you’ve got something solid that ties them in to the bucket of shit you’re trying to climb out of.”
“Colby had a thing for Tanja. I don’t know if that gate swings both ways. Last night, I stopped at the bar to ask her if she’d seen him. She said no and told me to get lost. I said I’d go out the back and she got real nervous, couldn’t wait to show me the front door.”
“You’re willing to ruin a family over that?”
“Not long after I left, Nick showed up driving a pickup. They loaded it with boxes and garbage bags. They were fighting the whole time.”
“You know what would happen you take that pile of crap to my D.A. or your U.S. Attorney? They’d laugh your ass right out of the room.”
“There’s one other thing, but it’s between you and me. Agreed?”
Grisnik sighed. “Agreed-and don’t forget the secret decoder rings.”
“I thought she was hiding Colby in the back of the bar but I was wrong. He was at her parents’ house. I think he broke in, probably looking for something. They caught him and he ran out. Happened just after I drove by. I caught up with Colby a few blocks from there. He didn’t implicate Tanja, but he put it out there between the lines.”
“So what happened to Colby?”
“He got away.”
“That’s it? He got away?”
“That’s it.”
“You still got nothing, but I know you won’t leave it alone until you put the parents in the ground. Tell you what. I’ll go with you to see them. I’m on my way to my kid’s soccer game. It’s my weekend. I gotta call their mother, piss her off about having to break her date with the?avor of the month. I’ll call you later. Don’t do anything stupid without me.”
“Don’t worry. I do stupid a lot better with you.”
My cell phone rang a moment later, the caller ID display showing that it was Ammara Iverson. I grabbed her call like it was lifeline.
“Where are you?” she asked.
“Eighty-fifth and State Line. What’s up?”
“Can you come in? Ben Yates and Troy want to talk to you.”
It can be hard to tell the difference between a lifeline and a two-hundred-pound test line with a giant steel hook until you’ve been snagged. I’d been asked, ordered, and threatened to stay away from this case. Now I was being invited back in. I felt the hook anchor deep in the?esh between my ribs.
“Any news on Wendy?” I asked.
“No, but we’re doing everything we can.”
“Then what do they need me for?”
“They want to go over some loose ends with you. They’ll be in the war room.”
Forget about the hook. This was a harpoon. Troy must have finally complained to Ben Yates that I was stepping all over his investigation. Yates had the manual tattooed to the back of his eyelids. If Troy had convinced him that I’d become that big of a problem, Yates would forget about my sick leave and suspend me without pay until I learned to sit at home and watch reruns of Celebrity Poker. If he knew that I was withholding information about Colby, he’d have me fired and go after my pension.
I was amazed how little I cared.
“Twenty minutes,” I said and hung up.
Chapter Sixty-five
I felt like a kid who’d been called to the principal’s office as I walked down the hall toward the war room. Heads popped up as I passed cubicles, some people nodding silent greetings that said “tough luck, old buddy, but better you than me.” Others chose the safe alternative and averted their gaze so that they wouldn’t turn into a pillar of salt.
I took the long way around in order to go past my office. The door was closed. The magnetic strip with my name on it had been peeled off the nameplate. At least no one else had claimed it yet.
I hoped to run into Ammara, but she wasn’t in her cubicle and she wasn’t roaming the hallways. I guessed that Troy had told her to call me, knowing I’d pick up. Whatever was going on, she wouldn’t have liked doing that. It wasn’t a good sign that she was avoiding me.
I stopped outside the war room, deciding whether to knock, but didn’t because asking permission to come in would have been an act of surrender. I opened the door wide, took two steps inside, stopped, and surveyed the room, hoping I had the rested, confident look of a man who’d just returned from vacation instead of someone who was living inside a Cuisinart running on slice and dice.
Ben Yates and Troy Clark were sitting on the far side of the room. Yates was reviewing a report, his white cuffs expertly shot past the sleeves of his dark gray suit coat, his hair trimmed and well-parted, his face relaxed but intent.
Troy had the haggard look of someone running a tough case on too little sleep and too much coffee. His eyes were puffy and his chinos and polo shirt were wrinkled. He was shuf?ing through photographs we both knew he’d already looked at a hundred times.
Neither acknowledged my presence. I knew the rules of this game. I’d been summoned, not as a colleague but as someone to be intimidated and interrogated. It was an approach reserved for suspects and subordinates. They were reinforcing the message by ignoring me, intending that I stand there like a supplicant until they could work me into their schedule.