Kill Me Twice (A Zeke Edison Novel Book 1) (8 page)

Zeke’s new friend on the Evanston Police Department, Sergeant Charles Manley, was waiting for him when he and Reggie returned to his house on Sheridan Road that evening. Two patrol units were parked at the curb out front. Manley got out of one. Two cops with a very scared, very large teenager locked in the back seat occupied the other.

Manley walked over to where Zeke had stopped his Porsche just a few feet onto the driveway.

Zeke lowered the window and gave Reggie a look —
best behavior
— before turning to Manley. “Something going on, Sergeant?”

“Yeah. See the kid in the back of the unit with my two people?”

“Yes.”

“Your neighbors, the ones with the kids at your party, reported him being up a tree on their property looking over at your house. Mom and Dad called the police, but their kids beat them to the punch. They called Mr. Black first.”

Maybe having the phone number listed wasn’t such a bad idea, Zeke thought.

“What happened then?” he asked.

“Mr. Black and several of the people working on your house went next door to investigate, many of them with portable power tools in hand.”

Zeke glanced over at the kid. He was scared but not disfigured.

“Doesn’t look like they got any remodeling done,” Zeke said.

Reggie had to stifle a giggle.

“No, not a drop of blood was shed. That was a good thing for everyone. But the kid was climbing down from the tree when Mr. Black and the others arrived.”

“Bet he climbed back up,” Reggie said.

“He did, ma’am. When he refused to climb down, Mr. Black sent a man to fetch a ladder.”

“Damn, did anyone get video of this?” Reggie asked.

The question made both Zeke and Manley think.

What with the kids calling George, and every smart phone being a videocam …

“I bet they did,” Manley said. “I’ll have to talk to them about that.”

“They might have caught him going up the tree the first time,” Zeke said. “You’ve got him for trespassing, if that’s the case.”

“So you don’t think he’s just a fan who took things a bit too far?” Manley asked.

Zeke took a longer look at the kid, who needed a moment to see he was being sized up and look the other way.

Turning back to Manley, he said, “What I think, Sergeant, is that kid looks a lot like the two guys who took a run at Reggie and me in Chicago. The CPD identified him, and you bagged him.”

Roberta Lane was working late at her desk in the newsroom at Tribune Tower, as usual. She hated taking her work home. That happened on occasion, but she tried to keep it to a minimum. Whenever she returned to her apartment, she preferred to lock the world out. Her job had long ago persuaded her that evolution worked way too slow. Humanity, if it deserved that title, still followed the law of the jungle far more than any other.

It would have made her weep, if her heart hadn’t turned to stone.

Earlier that day, she’d found a reporter at the paper who both owed her a favor and was on good terms with A.J. Price, the
Trib’s
retired pro basketball columnist. Cashing in the chit that was owed, she’d gotten the colleague to ask Price to call Zeke Edison and tell him she was trustworthy. Now, she had to wait and see if Price would come through for her.

Meanwhile, she replayed her conversation with Zeke in her head, the one with him and his “dominatrix.”

That idea was a hoot: a brute of a football player being submissive to any woman. Roberta was all but certain the unidentified woman was putting her on, but it was still funny. Maybe she should start wearing leather to the newsroom and carrying a whip in her handbag. Who knew, it might improve her career outlook. Get interview subjects to be more forthcoming.

“What’re you smiling about? You’re going to ruin your reputation.”

She looked up and saw her editor, Tim Davies, standing next to her desk.

“Just imagining ways to improve the world,” Roberta said. “You know what a do-gooder I am.”

Davies laughed. “Yeah, well, your task just got harder, even though the world is probably better off than it was a while ago.”

“What happened?” she asked.

“I got word from that new kid on the police beat, Peccararo.”

“Yeah?”

“Hector Campos, the contractor who got that sweetheart deal to paint every last bridge in town, was found dead … in more than one location.”

“What? I understand the dead part, but —”

Davies held up a hand. “Hector’s head was found on his office desk, his torso, arms and hands were found in his car and his lower extremities were found at the front door of his house, standing there like they wanted in. His wife made the discovery. She told the cops, ‘Yeah, it’s him.’ I guess the killer was counting on her to make the identification.”

“Jesus, that’s horrible,” Roberta said.

“Yes, it is. Also suggests something, doesn’t it?”

“Sure does. Hector Campos was about to be arrested and was trying to cut a deal for himself. What about Paul Callas?”

Callas being the city official who gave the painting contract to Campos.

“The cops and an assistant state’s attorney went to talk with him, let him know how things are coming apart, so to speak. Mr. Callas wasn’t at home and didn’t answer repeated calls to his cell phone, which the cops say must be either turned off or shit-canned.”

“He might be dead, too,” Roberta said.

“That or running as fast and far as he can.”

Roberta thought about the overall situation. “This Peccararo kid must have a pretty good source to get all this.”

“Unlike you and me, he’s likable. The way I see it, someone threw him a great big bone, and there’s a reason for that.”

Roberta nodded, knowing just what Davies meant. “With Campos dead and Callas missing, the cops and the prosecutor are going public with the story to scare Jonas Dawson, the guy who introduced the other two guys.”

“And they want Dawson because he’s the guy who can give them Donald Magro.”

Magro was close to the top of the Chicago underworld’s food chain.

If the state’s attorney could get him to flip …

“Holy God, this is getting big,” Roberta said.

Davies replied, “Yeah, it is. That’s why I want to make sure you don’t lose sight of one thing. With a killer or killers who look like they learned their craft at butcher’s school running around loose, and all the bodies that are probably going to fall, I really don’t want to see your rump roast turn up anywhere.”

Roberta’s face turned an angry red. “Hey, you can’t take —”

“Wouldn’t dream of taking you off the story,” Davies said. “What I’m telling you is: Watch your ass.”

“Yeah, right. Because you wouldn’t want to lose a good reporter.”

Davies smiled. “That, too. But you are my favorite ex-wife.”

He squeezed her shoulder and left.

A minute later, A.J. Price called, saying he’d spoken to Zeke Edison for her.

“Who’s there?” Paulette Mallory asked in response to the knock at the door.

“It’s me, Reggie. You have some clothes on? If not, and you’re modest, can you jump under the covers and talk with me for a minute?”

Paulette was staying in a bedroom with newspaper covering the windows and no door on the adjacent bathroom. George had called a shop in Evanston and had a bed sent over, but there was no frame in stock so it rested on a wooden floor that was going to be refinished.

Wearing a Lake Forest College T-shirt and a pair of gym shorts, Paulette opened the door. Reggie stepped inside. Paulette poked her head out of the room to look up and down the hallway before closing the door. Reggie liked that and smiled.

“It’s just me,” she said, “but it’s good to be careful.”

Paulette looked at Reggie. The two of them weren’t likely to become the best of friends. Not that a feeling of animosity existed between them. They just weren’t simpatico.

“What do you want?” Paulette asked, trying not to sound too abrupt.

“Zeke asked me to stop by. He has a few questions he’d like answered, but he didn’t want to intrude if you were in bed or showering.”

Paulette smiled. “He’s really very considerate for someone who …”

Reggie laughed at Paulette’s hesitation. “Could bite the head off a rhino?”

“I don’t follow football, but I have heard of his reputation.”

“You never saw
The Play?”

Paulette shook her head. “George told me about it but, no, I haven’t seen it.”

“You want to?”

“You mean now?”

Reggie took out her phone. “I have it bookmarked. Sometimes, watching it keeps me from going off the deep end myself. Other times, I look at it just to get hot.”

Reggie’s candor made Paulette blush.

“I don’t think I’d have either of those reactions.”

“How do you know?” Reggie intended the question as rhetorical and dropped the phone back in her pocket.

Maybe it was the thought of missing an opportunity that got to Paulette, seeing Reggie’s phone slip out of sight. “You know, as long as I’ve hired Mr. Edison …”

“You should know the guy who’s working for you?”

Reggie showed Paulette the video clip. It’d had been set to music and edited to combine several angles on full-speed collisions followed by bodies recoiling to all points of the compass in super slow motion. Whenever one of the players hit the ground a combination of a bass note on a guitar and a thump of a drum marked the impact.

Paulette cringed as she watched, but she couldn’t look away.

Reggie smiled as if she wished she could have been in on the action. As the clip ended, she said, “Damn thing never gets old for me. That’s my guy who started all that.”

“I’m amazed anyone survived,” Paulette said softly.

“Most of those guys, pro athletes, are made of tough stuff. Maybe you’ve felt that when you take George’s arm.”

Paulette blushed again. Reggie refrained from laughing.

“Anyway, you’ve got one really strong guy working for you in Zeke.”

“Yes, I’m glad about that. Maybe we should get to those questions he’d like you to ask.”

“Right. Mind if I record your answers?” Reggie held up her phone.

“Go right ahead.”

“All right. The first question is so obvious Zeke feels embarrassed he didn’t think of it when the two of you first spoke. Where did you first encounter Jonas Dawson?”

“The food area at the Northbrook Court. I usually don’t eat fast food but I was hungry, and there he was, Jonas Dawson.”

“You noticed him first or he saw you?”

“I think he must have seen me first because when I noticed him he was definitely staring at me.”

Reggie nodded. “I think that’s a fair assumption. We know when guys are trying to creep us out or worse, don’t we?”

“Yes, we do.”

“But how did you know he wasn’t just one of a million jerks who do that kind of thing?”

“I didn’t, not at first.” Paulette didn’t need a video clip to replay that moment, and Reggie could see that she was reliving it. “What was different was I couldn’t look away. Most times, you break eye contact immediately, right?”

Reggie said, “Not so much with me. I want them to turn away first. Sometimes, I walk right up and insist on it.”

“I’m not that brave or strong or whatever.”

“You can learn, believe me. Talk to George about it.”

Paulette nodded. “Maybe I will. But with Dawson I felt like I was trapped. I had to keep looking at him, and that’s when everything started coming back to me. I’d lived before as my Aunt Pamela and … and Jonas Dawson had killed me, strangled me. It was horrible. I could feel his hands on my throat again. Then he started walking toward me.”

“Did you run?” Reggie asked.

“I ducked into a nearby ladies room.”

“Did you wait him out?”

“That was my first idea, but I didn’t know how long he’d wait for me. I felt trapped, but then a large group of women who knew each other came in. When they left, I left with them.”

“That was smart. Was Dawson waiting?”

Paulette nodded.

“What’d you do then?”

“I hopscotched from one group of shoppers to another. I got to my car and drove away.”

“Dawson continued to follow you up to that point?”

“Yes. The way he looked at me, it was clear he was angry I outsmarted him.”

“Okay. Then you found your way to Zeke. That was good.”

“Is there anything else?” Paulette asked.

“Yeah. Was anyone else in your family a numbers person?”

“Yes, I told George. My mother was.”

“Not your father?”

“No, he had a landscaping business until he retired. Mom kept his books until she passed away. And Aunt Pamela was also a CPA.”

“Is your father still alive?”

“Yes, he lives up in Wilmette, a block east of me.”

“As far as you know, did he ever get a look in the trunk that had belonged to your aunt?”

Paulette frowned. “Zeke asked me if I did, and I told him I didn’t. And I don’t know if my dad did either.”

“Is the trunk still around?”

Paulette shrugged. “What I do know that my dad doesn’t throw anything away, and he’s still living in the same house where I grew up.”

Reggie bobbed her head. “That’s good.”

“You think Mr. Edison will want to talk with him?”

“I’m sure he will, first thing in the morning.”

“Will you be there, too?”

“You and me both,” Reggie said.

Paganini and Chopin sat opposite each other in a booth at the back of a greasy spoon on Harlem Avenue, Chicago’s city limits on the West Side. The door to the alley where their car was parked with the key in the ignition was three feet away. If that avenue of escape was cut off, the stairway to the joint’s basement was next to the rear door. A passageway under the diner led into the adjoining building.

If that exit was also blocked, they still had a choice. Give up or detonate the bomb in the basement that would level half the block and presumably anyone trying to kill or arrest them. At that point, it all depended on whether they wanted to take their chances in court or go out with a bang.

The names under which Paganini and Chopin worked were pseudonyms given to them by Donald Magro. Unlike gangsters who had to toil under nicknames like Eggs, Squint or Mad Dog, their boss considered the two killers to be virtuosos with a variety of weapons. Also, like their namesakes they were of Italian and Polish heritage.