Kindred In Death

He broke off, got slowly to his feet. In place of frustration, a cop’s memory of a case that hadn’t gone down quite right, came shock. “The boy. It’s the boy you think killed Deena?”

“It’s leaning that way, yes.”

“But, for God’s sake, he would do that, he would do that to an i

“Irene Schultz aka Illya Schooner was beaten, raped, and murdered by strangulation in Chicago in May of 2041.”

He slid back into the chair as if his legs dissolved. “Patterson?”

“No, he was alibied. I’ll have the full file later this morning, and will reach out to the primary on the investigation, but he looks clear on it.”

“How could he blame me? How could he blame me for that, and kill my child?”

“I don’t have the answer for you. Captain, did Pauley-Patterson-did he threaten you in any way?”

“No, just the opposite. He cooperated fully on the surface. Played the ‘there must be some mistake, please can I see my wife.’ He never asked for a lawyer. When I pushed the illegals, the cloner in his face, he put on the shock, the disbelief, then the shame. He played it like a symphony.”

“You said it was the middle of the night when you pulled him in. But she didn’t try to stall, try to get her PD to push for a bail hearing?”

“No. We stalled some, let them stew and caught a couple hours of sleep in the crib. The APA wasn’t coming in until morning anyway. It didn’t make any difference in her statement. I felt for her. Goddamn it, goddamn it, I felt for her. She protected him, and he let her. I felt for her, and that little boy. The little boy crying for her. Now my daughter’s dead.”

Sometimes, Eve thought, having the answers didn’t ease the pain. Even as she went down to her office to search for more answers, she felt the weight of that on the back of her neck.

She found the Chicago file in her incoming, and sat down to read it through. She’d given it a first pass when Lieutenant Pulliti contacted her via ’link.

“I appreciate you reaching out, Lieutenant.”

“Happy to. Just because I took my thirty a couple years ago doesn’t mean I’m sailing on Lake Michigan. Cap said this was about an old homicide. Illya Schooner.”

“That’s right.” He’d retired young, Eve thought. He couldn’t have been more than sixty-five, with a full head of dark hair, clear brown eyes. Either the job hadn’t put the years on his face, or he’d spent a chunk of his pension getting face treatments.

“Rape-murder,” she said. “Vic was female, mid-twenties.”

“I remember,” he interrupted. “I was working the South Side back then. It was rough, hadn’t come back far from the Urbans. Scary time.”

“I bet.”

“They’d worked her pretty good. Cap said he sent you the file.”

“That’s right.”

“So, you can see, they worked on her. Took some time to mess her up that bad.”

“You say ‘they.’ The ME reports state it appeared she was struck by both a left- and a right-handed attacker. But it’s not conclusive.”

“The Stallions worked in pairs back then.”

Eve scrolled down to his notes. “The gang that held sway on that area held the illegals and sex trade.”

“The Stallions were the illegals and sex trade on the South Side. They held it more than a decade. She infringed. For them, it was business. Somebody tries to cut into your business, you take them out. Hard.”

“But you looked at the husband.”

“Yeah, we looked hard, too. Seemed overkill even for the Stallions, unless she was cutting big. And if she was cutting big, where was the cut? Rules of play, they’d’ve warned her off first, or if she was any good maybe give her a chance to work for them.”

Pulliti tapped the side of his nose. “It didn’t smell right.”

“You couldn’t tie him in, the husband?”

“Alibied right and tight. Had the kid at home. About the time she was getting the shit raped out of her, he was knocking on a neighbor’s door to ask for help since the kid was sick, and his wife was-he said-at work. Neighbor verified.”

“Yeah, I see that.”

“But it didn’t smell right. We’re knocking on doors and everybody says how he keeps to himself, hardly says boo, stays with the kid at night, takes him off during the day while the woman sleeps, or goes off on his own. But that night, the night he needs an alibi, he knocks on somebody’s door. Sure was convenient.”

“You think he set her up?”

“Thought it, felt it. See, the Stallions, back then, they’d initiate a member, or a business partner. Beat-down or gangbang, take your choice. You take the beating or the banging, then you give them their cut of your business.”

Sex and drugs, she thought. Quick money, big money.

“You think she went with them for that voluntarily?”

“Maybe, or maybe he gave her over. They’d take a trade, especially a woman. I’ll tell you, that’s the way it smelled to me, but there wasn’t one shred of evidence pointing that way. She was the meal ticket from what I can find, not that they had anything much to show for it.”

“Just a couple months’ rent in the financials,” Eve interrupted. “Not hefty chunks.”

“That’s right. Not a hand-to-mouth kind of thing, but not your caviar and bubble wine either.”

“Under the radar,” Eve voiced.

“You could say. So, maybe he gave her over to the Stallions, and things got out of hand. I don’t know, but it was just too damn pat with him. He comes up with the line about how they were having marital problems, and she was having trouble with illegals. But the neighbors said they never heard them fighting. And they looked like a nice little family any time they went out together, except the woman looked kinda worn down.”

As she talked to him, Eve made her own notes, formed her own theories.

“This address, where she and the man and boy lived. What kind of neighborhood was that?”

“Solid middle. Working families, a lot of kids. They had a good apartment in a nice building. Nothing flashy, but nice. The husband, he had some flash.”

“Did he?”

“Expensive wrist unit, shoes. The boy had plenty of trendy toys. They had upmarket electronics. He was working in e-repair, consulting sort of deal, and she was-according to him-a professional mother. But he hardly put in any time on the job, and did most of the looking after the kid, according to the neighbors. I asked him about the wrist unit. Said it was a birthday present from his wife.

“He was off,” Pulliti said. “My gut said he was off, but the evidence said he was clean.”

When Chicago had given her all it could, Eve sat back, closed her eyes. He was off, but came away clean. There was a pattern.

He let the woman take the fall for him-just as he’d let the woman sleep with, live with his own brother, and like he may have let her scoop up johns and marks in gang territory.

Sex, she thought. Did he like her to use sex to scam? Was that part of a thrill?

When had the illegals come into it? When had she started using?

MacMasters said she might have needed them to have sex with her marks.

Maybe so. Not with the brother. It’s kinship in a twisted way. They’d looked alike, and she’d lived the con of making a family.

She pushed up, paced to the window and back. Paced to her board and away.

No, he hadn’t knocked on a neighbor’s door out of sheer coincidence the night of her murder. No way in hell. But it wouldn’t have been just a cover for the cops. Couldn’t be. They’d never have put him at the scene of the murder.

Covering though. Covering his own ass while she was being raped.

He knew something was going to happen to her, something bad. Something that could involve the cops coming to the door. A deal. A setup. A trade.

But the boy grows up and goes after MacMasters, mirroring the crime against his mother on MacMasters’s daughter. Why? Because MacMasters was the arresting officer, in another city, two full years before his mother’s murder?