LITMIR.BIZ

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tongue from hanging out. We just know you better than most.”

      Robert shrugged and tried his best to look innocent. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, sir.”

      Lieutenant Fischer let out a huff of air. “Of course you don’t. When Sawyer arrives, get your butts out to the scene. Blaze and Wasimole are still there. They could use some help talking to neighbors. Details are online in the case file.”

      Robert shifted in his chair and reached for his computer keyboard. But he let his hands rest on the keys.

      Visions of Carmen Jimenez weren’t that easy to push aside.

      They’d danced, just once. It was expected, after all. And she’d felt perfect in his arms. And her scent had danced around him, making his head spin. He’d made small talk. Nice wedding, wasn’t it? Is your brother starting high school soon? Are you busy at work?

      She responded, her voice soft and sexy, with just a bare hint of a Spanish accent. Very pretty. Yes, he is looking forward to playing in the band. Always lots to do.

      And when the music had ended, he hadn’t wanted to let go. But she’d stepped away, murmured a quick thank-you and left him standing in the middle of the dance floor.

      And later, when he’d tried to catch her eye, she’d looked away, and he wondered if it was deliberate. Toward the end of the evening, he hadn’t had to wonder anymore. He’d finally worked up the courage to ask her to dance again and when she’d seen him approaching, had practically run into the ladies’ restroom to avoid him.

      He didn’t need it written on the damn marquee. She wasn’t interested. So he’d forgotten about her.

      Right.

      Well, he was working on it.

      He tapped on his keyboard and brought up the case file. In their system, every entry was date-and time-stamped. Detectives Blaze and Wasimole, two veterans, had been on the scene within fifteen minutes of the call coming in at four o’clock this morning. Shortly after that, they’d entered a brief narrative into the electronic case file and updated it twice after that.

      Victim had been discovered by a couple of sanitation workers. They hadn’t touched the body. That was good. More than fifteen residents of nearby apartment buildings had already been interviewed and nobody had seen anything. That was bad.

      There were multiple stab wounds, and fingers on his right hand had been severed and removed from the scene.

      That wasn’t a surprise.

      The first victim had lost two fingers on his left hand. The second, two on the right. The third, two on his left hand.

      Left, right. Left, right. There was a crazy symmetry about the handiwork but the end result was always the same. The kids were dead. Although it hadn’t come easy. Coroner had determined in the first three deaths that the mutilation had occurred prior to death, which meant that they’d suffered the pain, then the blood loss; and finally the bastard had killed them by suffocating them by covering their noses with duct tape and stuffing a red bandanna in their mouths.

      The killer hadn’t bothered to remove the bandanna once the kids were dead.

      Robert checked the notes. Yep. Victim had been found with his nostrils taped shut and a red bandanna stuffed in his mouth. He clicked on the pictures that had already been uploaded and started scanning them. They were gruesome and made his empty stomach twist.

      When he heard Sawyer’s footsteps, he was grateful for the interruption. His partner shrugged off his heavy coat, pulled out his desk chair and sank into it.

      “You look like hell,” Robert said.

      “It’s amazing the trouble one little tooth can cause,” Sawyer said, his lazy drawl more pronounced than usual. “Catherine was up several times during the night. That doesn’t happen very often.”

      “How’s Liz?” Robert asked.

      “Fabulous,” Sawyer answered, sounding like a very happy man. “Although she wasn’t too crazy about me giving Catherine my leather belt to chew on. That is, until she saw how well it worked.”

      “Southern tradition?” Robert asked.

      Sawyer shook his head. “Midwest desperation.”

      Robert stood up. “Well, we got another kind of tradition going on here and quite frankly, it sucks.” He pointed at his computer. Sawyer got up, rounded the desk, stood behind Robert, and quickly read through the information.

      “Henry Wright,” Sawyer said, resting his eyes on the text that had been added just an hour or so ago once the body had been identified.

      “Alderman Franconi’s nephew,” Robert added. That wasn’t in the notes.

      “This is going to get interesting fast,” Sawyer said.

      “I know the area,” Robert said. “Residential, mostly multiunit apartments. Some commercial.”

      Sawyer picked up the gloves that he’d tossed on his desk. He pulled them on. “Let’s go knock on some doors. But take pity on me, for God’s sake, and stop and get some coffee on the way. It’s freezing out there.”

      “It’s January in Chicago. What do you expect?”

      “It would be nice if it got cold enough that all the killing stopped.”

      “It’s cold,” Robert said, “but I don’t think hell has frozen over yet.”

      The two men piled into their unmarked car, with Robert driving. He pulled out of the police lot and five minutes later, found street parking in front of their favorite coffee shop. Once inside, he waited patiently while Sawyer had to flash a picture of six-month-old Catherine after the woman behind the counter asked for an update on the little girl.

      Robert was damn happy for his friend. Liz was a great woman, and given how much she and Sawyer were enjoying their adopted daughter, Robert figured they’d be adding to their family in no time.

      He wasn’t jealous.

      Hell, no. He had the kind of freedom that married men dreamed about.

      Back in the car, he sipped his coffee, grateful for the warmth. It hadn’t been above twenty degrees for two weeks, which meant that the four inches of snow that had fallen three weeks ago lingered on. Most of the roads were clear, but the sidewalks that hadn’t been shoveled right away now had a thick layer of hard-packed snow, making walking dangerous.

      It was dirty and grimy and very non-postcard-worthy. Even in the high-rent area known as the Magnificent Mile, things were looking a little shabby.

      Ten minutes later, Robert left the car in a no-parking zone. Five feet away, the alley entrance was still blocked off with police tape. He looked around. When he’d been a kid, he’d lived just a few blocks from here. For a couple years, he and his mom and husband number three had shared an apartment in one of the low-income high-rise buildings. His mom still lived less than ten blocks away.

      He’d spent a fair amount of time on these streets. The area still looked much the same. There were a couple small restaurants, a dry cleaner, a tanning salon and one of those paycheck advance places where the interest started doubling the minute your loan payment was late. There was a church a block down, and the neighborhood school was just around the corner.

      Buses ran up and down these streets in the daytime, leaving the snow-packed sidewalks tinged with black exhaust.

      Sawyer crushed his empty coffee cup. “Ready?” he asked, pulling the collar of his heavy coat tighter.

      “Sure,” Robert said. He tossed his empty cup over his shoulder into the backseat.

      It wasn’t hard to see where the body had been found. The hard-packed snow was an ugly combination of black soot and fresh blood. Detective Charlene Blaze was talking to one of the evidence techs, who was still scraping the snow for something. He didn’t see her partner,

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