1
Larson parked the car in the lot behind the Mini Market where there were no lights over the lot after closing, and he and Kirk got out and walked. The streets of Groomsburg were so quiet and deserted late on a weeknight that Larson thought he probably could have parked in the middle of the street and nobody would have noticed. That was an exaggeration, but the store windows along here had all been dark for hours. People in these old towns on the river all seemed to get up with the sun, and go to bed with it too. The stop light at the intersection ahead of them that blinked red in the daytime was blinking yellow now.
Their destination was just past the light, so it wouldn’t be long. As they walked closer, he and Kirk scanned the area for signs of life, and saw nothing worth mentioning—no pedestrians, no headlights, nothing to worry about. They walked up to the electronics store, past the sign that said, “Computers, Phones, Warranty Repairs.”
The big problem with electronics stores was that every last one of them had cameras recording everything that went on inside or outside. Larson and Kirk never paused or looked up, so there wouldn’t be a recording of them peering into the shop or anything. They kept going past the window before they turned and went down the side of the building toward the back. They put on black face masks and Larson took out the roll of trash bags and peeled one off before they emerged and stepped toward the back door. Larson looked behind him and saw a car edged up to the rear of the building. What was that doing in the alley? But it wasn’t a police car, it was empty, and not running, so he didn’t let it distract him. He looked forward and saw Kirk standing under the first security camera pointing up at it.
Larson joined him, squatted and let Kirk, who was only about 160 pounds, climb up onto his shoulders. Larson stood and waited while Kirk slipped the trash bag over the camera and taped it closed with electrical tape. Then Larson carried Kirk to the next camera and stood still while Kirk put another bag over that camera and slid down to the pavement. Larson took out the crowbar, stuck the flat end into the space beside the metal door, and pried the door away from the jamb far enough to let Kirk push the blade of a screwdriver in to depress the lock’s plunger and push the door inward.
As the door swung open, they were surprised to see lights on inside. They both slipped in and Larson quickly swung the door closed behind them, but it didn’t seem to fit right anymore, probably because the door had gotten bent a little when he’d pried it aside. He saw a rubber doorstop on the floor, held the door shut, and jammed the doorstop under it with his foot.
He didn’t expect to be in the store for long anyway. All they had been sent to accomplish was to smash the computers and phones that were there for repairs and mess the place up, and that wouldn’t take much time. They were supposed to leave all the new computers and phones in the front alone. The bosses didn’t want Donald Whelan to go bankrupt and stop earning money. They just wanted to show him who he was dealing with—people who could get to him, his store, his family anytime they wanted and make him hurt. Steel doors and locks wouldn’t stop them.
Kirk was ahead of him, going through an open doorway into a larger space that was clearly a workshop. Larson followed him in, and then saw a spotless white table on each side of the next door, with a couple of stools under it. Above them and around the walls were sets of metal shelves with boxes that held cell phones, chargers, laptop computers, big-screen desk models, some with handwritten notes taped to them that looked like descriptions of computer problems, and bills that implied some of them were already fixed, waiting for somebody to pick them up and pay.
Kirk reached to the top shelf of the biggest set of metal shelves and stepped backward to pull it over. Boxes slid off shelves, dumping computers, phones, and parts onto the floor, and then the steel frame crashed down on top of them. Kirk looked back at Larson with a gleeful, delighted expression. Larson smiled too. Whelan would have to tell all those customers why he hadn’t fixed their stuff. It would pass the fear to the others like an infection.
Suddenly the door between the two workbenches swung open, and an older man looked in, already staring in shock at the floor. Larson knew it had to be Donald Whelan confirming what he thought he’d heard. Whelan gaped when he saw Larson and Kirk, but he didn’t shout or swear at them. He instantly pulled back and slammed the door behind him.
Kirk was after him in an instant like a dog after a squirrel, through the door and into the showroom. Larson was a few steps behind, and he saw Whelan crouch at the counter, reach under it, and pop back up to face Kirk holding a pistol. Kirk’s eyes widened as he stopped short, but Larson kept coming. He swung the crowbar into Whelan’s head, splitting his skull and sending a spray of blood across the counter and onto the white floor beyond.
It was midafternoon and Harry Duncan was in the office in his apartment on Huron Street in North Center Chicago. From the window above his desk, he could look between two old gray stone buildings and see the North Branch of the Chicago River a bit over a block away. He was gathering the last notes and records of the investigation he had just finished and adding them to the case’s fat loose-leaf notebook to be stored, when the desk phone rang. He picked it up. “Harry Duncan.”
“Mr. Duncan, this is Lena Stratton in the office of Ellen Leicester. She asked me to call because she’d like to meet with you this week. Would you be available for that?”
It took Duncan enough time to consider it that he had to cover the delay by saying, “Let me just see when I’m free. When and where would she like to meet? Her office?”
“She’d like to meet you at the Atwood Restaurant on West Washington. If you could make it tomorrow after three, that would work.”
Duncan realized his strongest response to the idea was curiosity, so he said, “I’m sorry, I’m busy tomorrow. Does she have any time today?”
“She could be available after six today, if that’s better.”
“I can do that. Let’s say six-thirty. And you said the Atwood?”
“Yes. I’ll make the reservation.”
“Thank you,” Duncan said, and hung up the phone. He couldn’t help wondering if Lena Stratton knew who he was. Assistants eventually came to know just about everything about their bosses, which was one of the reasons why when his last one left he had never replaced her. He decided that this woman probably didn’t know he and Ellen had once been married. To her Ellen was probably just US Attorney Ellen Leicester, and he was—what? Nobody. Ellen had been good at keeping a wall between what she knew and what others knew. He wondered what she wanted from him after all this time.
He finished the case record and stood the notebook upright on a shelf that held the last dozen, waiting for him to put them into storage when he got around to it. As he always did, he reminded himself to do it before the weight of them broke the shelf and dumped them on the floor. He had learned to call these notebooks “Murder Books” when he had worked Homicide. Too often these days that name wasn’t inaccurate.
At six-thirty he walked up to the restaurant. It was all windows, right in the State Street shopping district, and he spotted her from a distance, sitting alone at a table for two, facing the back of the room. She had just turned forty-two on March 20th—there was no way he could erase his ex-wife’s birthday and get that memory space back—and she still looked young. He stepped inside and she waved. As he walked toward her, he noted that she didn’t smile.