CHAPTER 1
There’s a satisfying fullness that comes with doing things in threes, the driver thinks as he kills the headlights of an unmarked panel van while steering into the shadows of an alley. The van coasts to a stop with its sliding door three feet from the back door of a nondescript brick commercial building. Dumpsters obstruct the view between the vehicle and the building from both ends of the alley. A rat stares back insolently from the rim of a dumpster just beyond the windshield, then goes back to its business. The driver checks the mirrors to confirm that the rats are the only other living things in the alley, then kills the engine. It’s not the last thing the driver will kill this evening.
The driver climbs into the back of the van, peels open the packaging of a hooded protective coverall, and suits up—feet wrapped first in plastic food bags and then athletic socks. Reebok sneakers are pulled on and laced up. A full-face respirator and rubber gloves complete the outfit. A spray can of Mace is tucked into a pocket. The driver spreads a blue painting tarp over the bare steel floor. After the work here is done, the suit, gloves, and Mace container will be wrapped in the tarp and disposed of in a distant dumpster.
After a final check outside, the driver exits into the chilly early February evening, sniffs at the rank air of the alley, and softly slides the van’s side door closed. Wielding a twelve-inch hunting knife with a serrated blade, the driver inserts a key into the deadbolt lock of the building’s rear entry and slips inside.
+ + +
Marsha Williams glances at her silver Citizen watch, then saves and exits the life insurance quote she’s been working on. The watch, a birthday gift three years ago from her ex-husband, Reg, reminds her that he called a few minutes ago. He hadn’t spoken when she’d answered, so she’d hung up after ten or fifteen seconds of background noise. She considers calling him back but decides not to—he probably pocket-dialed. Reg will call back if he wants to talk. Besides, her eight o’clock appointment is already overdue. The Tanners are supposed to call when they arrive out front so Marsha can meet them at the street entrance. The agency keeps the doors locked after hours. The main floor of the building is occupied by daytime retail: a tailor, a drycleaner, and a day care center. The insurance agency occupies the second-floor offices.
At five after eight, Marsha walks to the top of the narrow stairwell that leads down to the first-floor entry to make sure the Tanners aren’t waiting there. Marsha’s seventeen-year-old daughter, Ashley, needs a little help with her math homework and is waiting for Marsha to come home so they can tackle it together. After waiting another minute, Marsha jogs down the tiled stairs to have a peek at the street. Still nobody. Damn. Probably stuck in traffic. It can be a problem in Chicago even at this hour.
Marsha checks her phone as she climbs back up the stairs—perhaps there’s a text or an email from her prospective clients. Her eyes are still on the phone when she strolls into the outer office and drops into the receptionist’s chair. The door slams shut behind her. Her eyes fly open as she spins around to find someone towering over her, wearing what looks like a black hazmat suit.
“What are you doing?” she asks in confusion. “How did you get in? What do you want?”
Her initial panic spirals into abject terror when the stranger steps closer with a spray can in one hand. The blade of an enormous knife flashes in the other.
Her assailant thrusts the aerosol canister at her and unleashes a torrent of scalding liquid into Marsha’s horrified face. The stream of Mace is the last thing she sees, but she feels every agony of the merciless stabbing and slashing of the knife attack that ends her life at age thirty-eight.
CHAPTER 2
Mike Williams refers to our basketball bouts as his hour to kick some white ass—sixty minutes that he flagrantly relishes every Wednesday morning. He’s a fair trash-talker in his deep, silky voice, albeit with the game to back it up. We’ve been friends since the Cook County Public Defender’s office assigned him to defend my father against a charge of murder eighteen-odd months ago. We teamed up to win an acquittal.
With the early-morning business types gone and kids in school, we have one end of the Cedar Heights RecPlex gym to ourselves for my weekly hoops beatdown. I’m currently flat on my back beneath the basket, panting for breath and sweating by the bucket. The ball begins to smack the hardwood two feet away as I edge up onto one elbow.
“You okay, Tony?” Mike asks with a smirk. With just a smattering of sweat on the cocoa skin of his forehead, he looks almost bored as he dribbles in place.
“Sure,” I croak. “Just give me a minute.”
He nods, then does a few crossovers, pops the ball through the basket a couple of times, and does it all over again.
Take heart, Valenti, I think as I push myself upright. Mike’s not quite his usual dominant self today. In fact, the score was briefly tied several minutes ago. That’s a first in the annals of Valenti/Williams hoops, at least after we start playing. Then again, the natural order of things had quickly reasserted itself, sending me to a twelve-point loss. So much for my big day on the court.
Mike is standing stock still with the ball grasped in one of his elephantine hands by the time I struggle to my feet. Something’s clearly on his mind. He shrugs off whatever is weighing on him and drains a couple more baskets to win the match, then gathers up the ball and meets my gaze. “So, Tony? Wanna go again?”
“Let me catch my breath,” I squeak.
He tucks the ball under an elbow and walks over to take a long pull from a towering red water bottle. He’s six foot six, an inch taller than I am. We both weigh in at around two hundred twenty pounds, depending on how much pizza and other crap I’ve scarfed down in the days before stepping on the scale. We’re both in our mid-forties and both retain most of our hair. His is tightly curled, mine is wavy. I’m handily winning the touch of gray at the temple competition. I like to think it makes me more distinguished looking than Mike.
I walk over to join him. “You’re not yourself this morning. What’s up?”
A cloud passes over his face. “You remember my brother, Reg?”
“Sure.” Reg, a phone engineer at a major cell phone manufacturer, had lent a hand getting critical cell phone evidence into our hands during Papa’s trial.
Mike’s expression darkens further. “His ex-wife was murdered a few nights ago.”
My water bottle pauses in midair. “Jesus, that’s awful.”
“Sure is. She was a sweet gal.”
My mind strays to a news report about a woman named Williams who had been brutally slain at an insurance office. I’m pretty sure that’s who we’re talking about.
“Kids?” I ask.
The question elicits a heavy sigh from Mike. “A seventeen-year-old daughter. This is hell for Ashley.”
“Mom had custody?”
Mike nods. “Shared, but she had primary custody. Ashley will be with Reg full-time now.”
“He got laid off a few months ago, didn’t he?”
Mike drains off some more water before he replies, “Yup.”
“What’s he doing now?”
“He picks up some consulting work here and there and works as a technician at a cell phone fix-it shop. The pay sucks, but he’s never missed a child support payment. He and Marsha have done a good job working through the divorce without a lot of bullshit. Ashley’s lucky that way.”
He pauses while his eyes drop to the floor. I reach for his shoulder after I see a tear splash onto the hardwood.
Mike looks up and meets my eyes. “Thanks, man.” Then he wipes the back of his hand across his eyes and musters some semblance of a smile as he pulls the basketball from beneath his arm. “Ready?”
“Let’s do some free throws.”
“First to twenty-one?” he asks.
I’m nodding when the ball slams into my chest.
“You’re up first, sport,” he says with forced joviality and a look of affected disdain. “I don’t wanna skunk you.”
I snort, hopefully with the intended note of derision. “That’s your first mistake, pal.”
Mike scoffs and reels off five in a row in the wake of my opening air ball. When he finally misses, I step to the line and clank a shot off the backboard.
Mike snags the ball, slams it down, and then kicks it the length of the gym. “Shit, man, this is so damn wrong!”
I freeze and await his next move.
He plants his hands on his hips and blows out a long breath. “The cops are already sniffing around Reg.”
“He’s a suspect?” That’s surprising. Reg seemed fairly easygoing the one time I met him.
“Of course, he is. He’s her ex. He’s Black.”
We lock eyes.
“Do you think he had anything to do with it?” I ask.
Mike’s eyes flash before he shakes his head. “He’s my brother, Tony. I know he isn’t capable of doing that.”
“Alibi?”
Mike sets off to retrieve the basketball, which is wedged beneath a wooden players bench. “Depends on the time of the murder. They figure it happened around eight o’clock. Reg left work at eight. It’s touch and go.”
“How far is his store from the murder scene?”
“Couple miles. Five-minute drive, tops.”
“He’s lucky to have you looking out for him. Not every potential murder suspect has a professional defense attorney in the family to lean on.”
Mike plucks the ball off the hardwood and tosses it from hand to hand while his brow creases in thought. “I worry about Reg talking to the cops.”
“Why?”
“You know the cops have him in their sights. Rightfully so, I know. I told him that the spouse and/or ex is always looked at. He didn’t like hearing it.”
I bite back the urge to utter the platitude of all platitudes at this stage of a murder investigation, which is that Reg has nothing to worry about if he’s innocent. That’s not how justice is applied in modern-day America—especially if you’re a Black suspect.
“Reg is gonna have to manage his temper and self-righteousness, or he’ll play right into the angry Black man stereotype,” Mike continues. “He has a bit of a temper and is still bitter about being downsized. He started drinking a bit after that. Now, with what’s happened to Marsha, I worry about the drinking getting worse.”
Mike carries the ball back to the top of the key and nails a pair of baskets. When I bounce the ball back to him after the second shot, he asks, “Mind if we stop?”
“Not at all.”
Mike beats me out of the shower and change room and is settled with coffee and a Danish from the snack shop when I arrive at his table for two. I’m startled by the anger on his face as he glares at the television.
“…many times have we seen this story repeated?” Gabby Garcia asks her television audience. Garcia is a hard-featured, local Latino woman with a helmet of bleached blonde hair. She first made a name for herself on the Spanish-language network Telemundo after being disbarred for prosecutorial misconduct while she was an assistant state’s attorney in Winnebago County just west of Chicago. The media maven recently landed a segment on Court TV as she moves up in the broadcasting world. I did a little reading up on the sanctimonious bitch after she weighed in on my father’s case last year, spreading unsubstantiated bullshit far and wide to further her personal agenda and boost her ratings. Her “facts” were so far off base that they would have been laughable if she hadn’t been tossing the bullshit into the middle of a murder trial. A little digging into her history unmasked her—it’s too bad more people don’t look into who she really is before they allow themselves to be manipulated. She lost her law license after withholding exculpatory evidence and soliciting bogus jailhouse testimony while prosecuting a murder trial. Garcia wears her disgrace like a badge of honor, suggesting she was an avenging angel whom corrupt liberal court officials were anxious to take down. Her show plays well with a largely female audience that laps up her fearmongering about bad men who prey on women, a dread she exploits and spreads far and wide—with or without facts to support her insinuations. Lord knows there’s more than enough legitimate fear in the world without this woman preying on it to whip up outrage about situations that she knows little to nothing about.
Garcia leans toward the camera. “Marsha Williams was yet another survivor who escaped her abusive husband’s clutches by becoming a successful entrepreneur in her own right.” She settles back, crosses her legs, and throws her hands up in a gesture of exasperation. “Reg Williams couldn’t handle that—his precious masculinity was threatened by a wife who struck out on her own! Marsha Williams was murdered on February fourth—six days ago! When will the police finally take this animal off the streets? After another woman dies?”
“What a crock of shit,” Mike seethes.
Garcia’s eyes narrow. “Who is Reg Williams? A heavy drinker who can’t hold a job. A man prone to violence—the classic dangerous ex-spouse. In short, just another loser. A thug!”
“Could she blow that dog whistle any harder?” Mike asks bitterly.
My eyes snap to Mike. “I missed that.”
“Thug,” he explains. “A word that nowadays denotes lawless, dangerous brown folks, my friend.”
While the program goes to commercial, I process what I’ve just heard. “Any history of abuse?”
“Hell, no,” Mike replies before he takes a bite of Danish.
“So, what was that about?” I ask. Gabby Garcia isn’t exactly known for letting facts get in the way of her rants, but her depiction of Reg was incendiary, even for her—especially at this early stage of a murder investigation. As far as I know, Reg hasn’t even been publicly identified as a “a person of interest,” that delightful euphemism law enforcement uses to paint a target on potential suspects. Aside from tarnishing the reputation of whomever they tag, it suggests that a thorough investigation is underway. People such as Gabby Garcia are a great way to spread the manure far and wide.
Mike dips his head and massages his temples. “They’re zeroing in on Reg. Dollars to doughnuts, some cop is feeding Garcia all the bullshit she needs to publicly tar and feather him.”
I stop just short of offering to represent Reg. I need to discuss things with my partner, Penelope Brooks, before doing so. The law firm of Brooks and Valenti may be lawyers to the poor and defenders of lost causes, but taking on a murder case is an expensive proposition. I also tend to get us into some tough spots. As my friend, retired Cedar Heights homicide detective Jake Plummer, warned my partner not two months ago, trouble seems to follow me around.
We hope you are enjoying the book so far. To continue reading...
Copyright © 2024 All Rights Reserved
Please log in to recommend or discuss...
