CHAPTER 1
My emotions are mixed as I watch LaSalle County Sheriff Lisa Murphy walk in the door of our law office. I haven’t seen her since we worked together to unmask a killer several months ago outside the town of Ottawa, Illinois, a case with far reaching repercussions I’m still suffering from. Her stiff posture and demeanor telegraph lingering unease about seeing me again.
I extend a hand. “Hi, Lisa.”
“Hey, Tony,” she says, smiling as we shake. She’s dressed in civilian clothes, a first in my experience. She looks a good five years younger in a lightweight summer dress that hangs loosely on her solid frame; its summery yellow hue is a good match for her short auburn hair and a coppery summer tan. Yet the same no-nonsense demeanor remains.
“Judging by your outfit, I assume this isn’t an official visit,” I say. My name is Tony Valenti, the Valenti in Brooks, Valenti & Williams, Attorneys at Law.
“I’m not here to slap cuffs on you, if that’s what you mean.” Her smile disappears. “But this isn’t a social call. Can we talk somewhere?”
“Of course.” A sense of foreboding creeps over me. “Coffee?”
She nods. “I’d love a cup.”
Joan Brooks pipes up from the reception desk. “How do you take it, Sheriff?”
We turn to Joan, the mother of our other founding partner, Penelope Brooks. Joan is our den mother and jack of all trades. She’s a Kansas transplant to Cedar Heights, which is a Southwest Chicago suburb.
“Hello, Joan,” Lisa says with an answering smile. “Black, thanks. How are you?”
“Always good,” Joan says cheerfully as she walks to a Bunn coffee station we leased to replace our old Mr. Coffee drip machine. I argued against the extravagance, mostly out of a sense of nostalgia for the days when Penelope and I first hung out our shingle as Brooks & Valenti, Rummage Sale Attorneys at Law.
A door opens and Penelope walks into reception with a smile as wide and open as her home state. She hugs Lisa. “Welcome, welcome, welcome.”
She and Lisa exchange small talk for the minute it takes Joan to deliver coffee for me and Lisa, plus Chai tea for Penelope. A plate of Joan’s home baking is set in the middle of the conference table. Nanaimo bars today.
I stand aside impatiently as Penelope and Joan make Lisa feel at home. For a pair of women who barely break through five feet in height, the Brooks women exude enough warmth and vitality to fill a concert hall … or maybe a football stadium. My patience runs out inside of a minute.
“Lisa has serious business to discuss,” I say, herding her and Penelope toward the conference room. Once we’re seated, I settle back in my seat and regard Lisa. “What’s on your mind, Sheriff?”
“Let’s stick with Lisa this morning,” she says with an uneasy smile.
“Lisa it is,” I say. “What’s up?”
“You have an appointment with Syl and Andrea Bolton tomorrow.”
I glance at Penelope, who is nodding. Good thing one of us pays attention to our calendar.
“Did they tell you why they’re coming?” Lisa asks.
“They made the appointment through Mom,” Penelope replies. “I understand they want to file a wrongful death lawsuit.”
Lisa nods. “I sent them your way.”
Penelope’s mug pauses halfway to her mouth. I share her surprise but recover first.
“Why?” I ask.
“Their son, Ty, was murdered a few days before Christmas last year.”
I grimace and mutter, “Happy Holidays.”
“I know, right?” Lisa mutters. “I don’t know what happened and I can’t find out.”
“Why not?” Penelope asks.
And why bring it to us? I wonder.
“It happened in prison,” Lisa replies with a sigh. “The Benjamin L. Stevens Correctional Center, named after the man who owns far too much of LaSalle County.”
“Why can’t you find out what happened?” Penelope asks. “Isn’t DOC cooperating?”
“It’s a private prison. The Department of Corrections just mails a check every month. They don’t get involved beyond that.”
“But private prisons were banned a few years ago,” Penelope says in confusion.
“Times change,” Lisa mutters.
Now that she says so, I recall something about this in the news. It’s not something that impacts us, so I didn’t follow the story. I make a note to look into it when I have a few minutes.
“But to answer your question, Penelope, I couldn’t find out what happened because Buck Stevens didn’t want me to know, and Buck gets what he wants.”
“Buck being Benjamin L. from the prison name?” I ask.
“Yep. Big man about town, corrupt as a bent politician, ruthless as a Mafia don, vile as Vladimir Putin.”
“Just an all-round nice fella, huh?”
Lisa shoots me a tight smile. “An absolute gem of a guy. Buck Stevens has his hand in every cookie jar in the county. That corner of Illinois ought to be called Buck’s County.”
“You think he had a hand in Ty’s death?” I ask.
“Not directly. He’d never get his hands dirty. I doubt he ordered it, but whatever happened is okay with him. When we tried to investigate, we ran into a brick wall at the prison gate. Everyone we spoke with was on message.”
“What was the message?”
“Nobody knows anything about who killed Ty. It’s as if a hunting knife mysteriously materialized in the shower and carved him up before flying away back to where it came from, leaving nary a trace of evidence. Nobody saw a thing. Nobody heard anything. No one can imagine what might have happened.”
“You’re not buying?”
“No.”
“What do you think we can do that you can’t?” Penelope asks. With her brown hair cut in bangs, she’s a young carbon copy of her mother: solid frame, clear blue eyes, perfect teeth that set off her radiant smile, and a heart as big as the Kansas plains she hails from.
“Conduct a proper investigation,” Lisa replies. “Our local State’s Attorney won’t touch the case, such as it is. I’m not sure how much I trust him and his staff, anyway, and I certainly don’t trust anything coming out of the prison. Hell, I even had doubts about some of my own people. What this needs is a sharp, tenacious investigator to dig deep—someone trustworthy. Tony fits the bill perfectly.” She turns to me with a frown. “I still feel awful about you losing your license over a case in my jurisdiction. I can at least steer a little investigative work your way to help pay the bills.”
I shrug. “No hard feelings, Lisa. I did what I had to do, and you did what you had to do when ARDC contacted you. I don’t have any regrets. You shouldn’t, either.”
The Attorney Registration & Disciplinary Commission is the body that investigates complaints against lawyers and metes out discipline. Lisa’s testimony to the ARDC put the final nails in my disciplinary hearing coffin. I’ve now been suspended for several months.
“Sucks when you do the right thing and pay a price for doing so,” Lisa grumbles.
“Tony’s still part of the team,” Penelope says. “We hope to have him back practicing soon.”
“Oh yeah?” Lisa asks in surprise. “I thought it was a two-year suspension.”
“We appealed,” Penelope says. “ARDC heard the appeal last week and is supposed to rule within thirty days, so we should hear something by mid-September.”
“Do you like your chances?” Lisa asks.
“You should have heard how persuasive Tony’s advocate was in that hearing,” Penelope replies with a laugh. “Those people wouldn’t dare rule against me!”
I chuckle. Penelope had put on a spirited case on my behalf, arguing that I bent the rules in the service of justice and helped lock up a killer in the process. All true, but I committed one of lawyering’s cardinal sins in doing so. The stuffed shirts at the ARDC seemed delighted to strip me of my license to illustrate the high ethical standards to which Illinois attorneys are held. Well, unless you’re a mover and shaker at a white-glove firm who works hand-in-glove with white collar crooks, and folks like that never darken the door of Brooks, Valenti & Williams, Attorneys to Little People and Lost Causes.
“So, I’m available for whatever investigative work you have for me,” I inform Lisa, happy to change the subject.
She clears her throat. “Actually, I’m not the Sheriff down there anymore.”
The announcement pulls me up short. “That puts a different spin on things.”
“It shouldn’t.” she says. “A case needs to be investigated. You’re an investigator.”
“Where are you working now?” Penelope asks.
To my mind, that’s only half the question. “And why?”
Lisa sighs. “Ty Bolton’s murder was the last straw. As long as Buck Stevens ruled LaSalle County, I couldn’t do my job. So, I quit.”
“And now you’re asking me to work with a Sheriff Stevens approves of?”
“Sam Parker is a good cop, Tony.”
“So are you, Lisa. What makes you think she can get farther than you did?”
“I wouldn’t be here if I thought she could. We’re asking you to take a crack at it. Sam will do what she can to help, but she’s every bit as hamstrung as I was. Syl and Andrea Bolton—and Ty—deserve better.”
“I’m sure they do,” I say. “That doesn’t explain how you expect me to accomplish what you and this Sam Parker couldn’t do.”
“I have faith in you, Tony,” Lisa says with a shrug. “Simple as that.”
“And if I find something that can lead to charges?”
Lisa shakes her head no. “I can’t imagine that happening unless the State’s Attorney changes his spots. Realistically, I’m just hoping you can find the truth. Mr. and Mrs. Bolton deserve to know how and why their son died.”
Noble motives, for sure, but this sounds like a fool’s errand.
“And that’s it?” I ask. “An inmate gets murdered, we find out who and why, and no one goes to jail. That doesn’t seem like a good use of our time.”
“We’ll have to discuss this with Mike,” Penelope says. Mike Williams is the third partner in our little law firm, a wily criminal defense attorney who’s as good a friend as I have. We plucked him from the ranks of the Cook County Public Defender’s Office a year ago.
“Lisa, you didn’t answer Penelope’s question about where you’re working,” I say.
“I’m working as a State’s Attorney investigator.”
How does that make any sense? Didn’t she just tell us the State’s Attorney is bent?
“Isn’t that out of the frying pan and into the fire?” I ask.
“Not in LaSalle County,” Lisa replies. “I’m working in Springfield for the Sangamon County DA.”
“Wow, that’s a complete change of scenery,” Penelope says. She settles back in her chair, crosses her legs, and steeples her fingers beneath her chin. “Tell us about Ty Bolton’s death, Lisa.”
She does, leaving us anxious about tomorrow’s meeting with the Boltons. It seems that someone in LaSalle County is powerful enough to reach inside Stevens Correctional Center to kill an inmate and then successfully cover their tracks. Taking on this case will send me back to unearth more of that county’s secrets … poking the bear, so to speak. What if the bear turns on the inquisitive investigator? I was lucky to escape my last adventure in LaSalle County unscathed, personally if not professionally. I wonder if tempting fate there twice might be one time too many.
CHAPTER 2
Joan ushers Syl and Andrea Bolton into the boardroom at two o’clock the following afternoon. They’re a mixed-race couple; she’s white, he’s Black. Andrea, in particular, seems beaten down by grief. I know she’s in her mid-forties, yet she appears years at least a decade older: face creased with deep sorrow lines, the corners of her mouth perpetually turned down, blue eyes dull, whether from grief or medication I can’t say. Her shoulder length hair is more white than black, and her faded blue jeans and an aquamarine tee hang loosely on her gaunt frame, suggesting she’s lost considerable weight. My heart goes out to her as she places her frail hand in mine.
“I’m sorry for your loss, Mrs. Bolton.”
“Thank you,” she says in a halting voice.
My eyes turn to her husband. Syl Bolton is a bull of a man, perhaps six inches shorter than my own six feet five inches, but he’s broader than I am by a good margin. His burly forearms stretch the fabric of the rolled-up sleeves of his denim work shirt, his barrel chest strains his shirt buttons, and massive thighs are barely contained by dark-blue Dickie work pants. His handsome face is set in a scowl as he runs a hand through his graying hair. A neatly trimmed salt and pepper mustache twitches as he looks beyond Penelope and me. “Where’s Williams?”
“Mike?” Penelope asks.
“Yeah. The Black partner. Why isn’t he here?”
“Did you specify that you wanted to see him?” Penelope asks.
Syl looks to his wife, who uncertainly shrugs a stooped shoulder.
“You didn’t say?” he asks her.
She shakes her head. “I don’t remember.”
“But I asked you to, Andy,” he says, but there’s no animosity or judgment in his words, just weariness.
Penelope steps into the uncomfortable silence. “Let me see if Mike’s available.”
After she steps out of the room, Syl meets my gaze. “No offense, but I’d feel better to have a brother involved in this.”
“No offense taken, Mr. Bolton. I’ve seen enough of our legal system in action to understand how you feel.”
He eyes me skeptically. He has no idea just how skeptical he should be. As eager to help as we may be, we’ve never tried a wrongful death case. After reading up on the topic, I wonder if the best course of action might simply be to refer the Boltons elsewhere.
Syl’s eyes turn expectantly to the door as we hear Mike’s baritone voice approaching. Looking for all the world like a child as she leads six-foot-six Mike into the room, Penelope smiles at the Boltons.
“This is Mike,” she says.
Mike shakes hands with Syl and Andrea, then steps back and locks eyes with Syl. “I understand you want a brother on the case?”
“Damn straight I do. You know why.”
Mike replies with a curt nod. “I do, but you need to understand something about this office, Mr. Bolton.”
“What’s that?”
Mike steps between me and Penelope and rests a hand on each of our shoulders. “My partners are indifferent to skin color when they assess people and cases. They fight equally hard for their clients, be they White, Black, Brown, or polka dotted. Understood?”
Bolton appears unconvinced, but nods—skeptical but willing to give us a chance. Fair enough.
Mike isn’t satisfied with the half-hearted acceptance. “Tony defended my brother in a murder case, Mr. Bolton. There’s no one I’d rather have on my side in a court of law.”
Syl regards me for a long moment but says nothing.
“Tell me what you want from us,” I say.
“I want the bastards who killed my boy to rot in hell,” Syl replies.
Well, that’s succinct. As the father of a teenage girl who’s been in jeopardy, I recognize the sentiment. “I understand you’re considering a wrongful death lawsuit.”
He nods. “I’d prefer to see criminal charges, but it doesn’t look like that’s in the cards. Not in LaSalle County, not while that bastard Buck Stevens rules the roost.”
“You want to file against Stevens?” I ask.
“And his damned jail. Yeah.”
I realize we’re leaving Andrea out of the conversation and make eye contact with her. “Not to put too fine a point on this, Mr. and Mrs. Bolton, but that will involve a lot of work on our part, and a case like this can drag on for a very long time—especially when the defendant has deep pockets and is litigious.”
“Which certainly seems to describe Buck Stevens,” Penelope adds.
“You’re worried we can’t pay you,” Andrea says softly.
“A lawsuit against Stevens won’t be an easy undertaking,” I say. “We’ll need to hire experts, put in long hours deposing witnesses, and conduct an extensive investigation. They’ll file one motion after another and drag their heels every step of the way. It won’t be cheap.”
“We’re under no illusions about any of this, Mr. Valenti,” Syl says. “Ty played college ball and had a cup of coffee in the NFL. He didn’t transition out of football well, but he had a college teammate who made it big and stayed in touch, a young man whose uncle died in that same prison. Nobody was charged. Seems to me that something’s not right in that damn place.”
I can’t argue the point. “Who’s this friend of Ty’s?”
“Can’t say,” Syl replies. “He wants to remain anonymous, but he’s willing to pay whatever it costs to see this through. He thinks he should have stayed in closer touch with Ty, thinking it might have helped our boy land on his feet when he found himself back in the real world.”
So, cost is no object. Ty Bolton was almost certainly murdered and some rich son of a bitch with things to hide thinks he’s above the law. This is exactly the type of case we exist for. I give Penelope a look. She nods. Mike does the same. Still, I’m not ready to fully commit.
“Sounds like the kind of David and Goliath case we’d be happy to tackle, but it’s not exactly in our wheelhouse,” I tell Syl and Andrea. “So, before we can say that you’ve got yourselves some lawyers, we need to get up to speed on everything concerned. If we’re not confident of being able to do a good job for you, we’ll be obligated to pass on the case.”
“But we want you,” Syl says sharply.
“And we appreciate that, but Tony’s right,” Penelope interjects. “Please give us the weekend to look into this.”
CHAPTER 3
The next day, a Saturday, my daughter, Brittany, and I take the dogs on a pre-dinner stroll. Brittany is walking Dolly, a three-legged German Shepherd, while I’m dragging Deano along in an effort to keep up. He’s an aging black lab who—somewhat like me, according to my smartass daughter—isn’t as spritely as he used to be. True, perhaps, but there’s no need to rub it in.
“Excited to get started at DePaul?” I ask as we reach the neighborhood park at the end of Liberty Street. My little girl will start university after Labor Day, which is only a week away. She recently decided to attend DePaul in Chicago instead of my alma mater, Marquette, which is in Milwaukee. Her stated reasoning, which is only partially tongue-in-cheek, is that she doesn’t trust me alone with the dogs. I’m okay with whatever her reasoning is; it’s going to keep her living at home.
“Yeah, I am, Pops. I’m going to major in Criminology and minor in Public Law and Political Thought.”
“Interesting choices,” I say cautiously. She’s been talking about going to law school for a year or two. I hope the idea will l lose its luster—one lawyer in the family is enough. Some say it’s one too many.
She picks up on my thinking and laughs. “I’m still planning to go to law school, old-timer. I think criminology is a pretty good thing to know if I’m going to be doing criminal law, don’t you think?”
“Sure,” I reply glumly. Law is bad enough; criminal law is the worst option. No point arguing. Maybe the minor will influence her to pursue public law and policy. “Interesting minor.”
She shrugs. “Could be. I don’t have to declare yet, but it seems like a sensible option.”
We fall silent as we cross a narrow parking lot and enter Independence Park, which is three blocks long and two blocks wide. There’s a well-worn walking path around the park’s perimeter. Trees surround the lawn on three sides. The dogs sprinkle a little pee as soon as we’re on the grass, then Dolly trots ahead, anxious to get on the pathway. Even seventeen-year-old Deano puts on a minor burst of speed … and I do mean minor.
“I’m a little nervous about school, Pops,” Brittany says. “I don’t know a soul at DePaul.”
“No one?” I ask in surprise. I assumed at least one or two kids from her Hyde Park preparatory high school would be there. “You’ll be okay, Get involved in a few things.”
“I will. Intramural volleyball should help, and I plan to join the drama club.”
She should know about the new case we’re contemplating. “We might take on a new case in LaSalle County. I’m going down tomorrow to have a look at the murder file.”
Brittany slows and turns a concerned look on me. “Murder? Again?”
I rest a hand on her shoulder and smile. “Different case, different people, honey. Nothing to worry about.”
I feel a shudder pass through her. Our last case down there got ugly.
I pull her into a hug. “Nothing to worry about, kiddo. Those folks are all locked up.”
She nods. “Yeah, well, you still haven’t gotten your law license back, have you?”
“Soon.”
“And you’re going to work on a Sunday,” she adds. “You haven’t done that lately.”
Also true … and I’m going in on Sunday in the hope of not being noticed. Change the subject. I pass along the latest news from my father, who is living with his sister in Italy. The discussion takes us all the way around the park and out.
“This place has really grown on me,” Brittany says as we saunter along Liberty Street. “I like the families gathering in the park, how people know each other, that there’s some history here. Wildercliffe seems pretty sterile in comparison.”
Wildercliffe being the upscale gated community in Atlanta where we lived with her mother back in the day when I was a high-flying corporate lawyer, married to an equally high-flying Coca-Cola executive. I miss none of it. Cedar Heights is real, and I feel grounded here in a way I never did in Atlanta. I’m glad Brittany has adapted. This is a world I wanted her to get to know.
We stroll beneath the towering trees that arch above our street and its modest bungalows for a long moment before Brittany shoots me a sideways glance.
“I hope you’re not going to bring home another pile of trouble from LaSalle County.”
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