A body in a Chicago alley. Three bullets in the back. A detective who cuts corners, and a sixteen-year-old girl who disappears before anyone asks the right questions.
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The call came in a little after four in the morning. An unidentified male. Near West 77th Street, close to the railroad tracks. Two patrol officers arrived first. They confirmed it. Dead as hell. Three gunshot wounds to the back. They didn’t touch a thing. Walked back to their cruiser, pulled out the crime scene tape, and sealed off the area.
Then the whole circus showed up.
By the time Detective Sergeant Mark O’Sullivan arrived, the detectives were nearly finished with their initial sweep. He ducked under the tape and headed toward the crime scene.
The body lay face down, half-hidden behind a dumpster. The dumpster sat in a long service alley behind a row of garbage containers. It had rained. A thin stream of filthy water ran down the center of the alley.
“Sully. Nice of you to finally show up.”
“Drop the sarcasm. I’m your sergeant now.”
“Sure you are.”
“Here’s your coffee. Three sugars.”
“Cute. You still remember.”
“Take it or leave it.”
Detective Rachel Vega grabbed the cup and took a long drink. Her expression softened.
“What’ve we got?” O’Sullivan asked.
“You’ve got nothing. Remember? You work a desk now.”
O’Sullivan let it slide.
“Male. About forty,” Vega said. “Three rounds in the back. CSU figures he’s been here a while. Before the rain, at least. They’re worried the weather screwed up the scene.”
O’Sullivan walked around the body. The man lay flat on his face the way only dead people can. He wore a dark jacket with three holes in it. One a few inches below the neck. Two close together in the middle of the back. Cheap jeans. Cheap shoes. Size ten, maybe. No wedding ring.
“Who called it in?”
“The manager of the lot behind us. And yeah, I know. That’s bullshit. Not at that hour. Probably some undocumented crew guy who found him. Doesn’t really matter.”
“Canvas the neighborhood?”
“You forget where we are already? This is the South Side. Nobody saw shit. Nobody heard shit.”
O’Sullivan nodded.
Either way, it was a miserable place to die. No reason for anybody to be here after hours.
Especially not in this shitty weather.
“No idea who he is?”
“Not yet. No wallet. Just a burner phone in his pocket.”
“Locked?”
“Locked.”
“What’s your gut say?”
“Not a choirboy. Small-time crook. Some deal went sideways. An argument. Somebody pulls a gun. Next thing you know we’re stuck with the paperwork.”
O’Sullivan nodded again.
“We’ll figure it out,” Vega said. “Bet his fingerprints are already sitting in AFIS.”
“Where are the shell casings?”
“What?”
“A bunch of idiots start shooting at each other in an empty alley. They stop to pick up brass?”
“Maybe they’re smart idiots.”
“And another thing. Look at the pattern. One cold shot, then a double tap.”
“Shit. Somebody with training.”
O’Sullivan nodded.
“That why they made you sergeant?”
At that moment one of the detectives waved them over. They were about to roll the body.
Three men in blue gloves crouched beside the victim. A fourth stood ready with a camera. They counted to three and flipped him over in one smooth motion. The front of his jacket was dry. Dark stains spread across the fabric where blood had pooled underneath him. His eyes were half open and glassy. One or two days’ worth of beard growth. His cheeks were turning red and purple from the early stages of rigor.
“What’s that?” O’Sullivan asked.
He pointed toward the man’s waistband. The jacket had shifted. Part of his shirt was visible. And something gray and shiny underneath it. One of the detectives carefully lifted the jacket. Then the shirt. A brown envelope had been taped to the man’s stomach. Gray duct tape. Wrapped all the way around his body.
“Open it,” Vega said.
The detective looked at the photographer. The photographer snapped a few more shots. Then the detective pulled out a utility knife and cut the envelope free. He handed it to Vega. She opened it.
A low whistle slipped through her teeth.
O’Sullivan stepped closer and looked inside. The envelope was packed with old dollar bills bundled together with rubber bands.
“Could be ten grand easy,” Vega said.
O’Sullivan looked at the body one last time.
“I’ve seen enough.”
He turned away.
“Get him out of here.”
Then he looked back at Vega.
“And I want a name on this guy before lunch.”
***
The autopsy recovered fragments of three standard 9mm hollow-point rounds from the man’s body. There was no way to tell which one had actually killed him. Otherwise, the victim was pretty ordinary. The medical examiner did mention one interesting detail. At some point in his life, the man had a molar filled somewhere in Europe. The ME estimated he’d died sometime between nine and eleven the previous evening.
In the end, the man’s fingerprints weren’t in AFIS at all. Detective Vega asked the medical examiner to request the dental records and then headed down to Digital Forensics. She found the analyst working her case.
“Get it open yet?”
“Pointless,” the man said. “But I’ve got the tower data for you.”
He handed her a printout listing every cell tower the phone had connected to.
It was a long damn list.
“Fantastic,” Vega said. “That’s probably half of Chicago.”
The analyst handed her another sheet.
“Incoming and outgoing calls. Broken down by tower.”
Vega ran a finger down the numbers.
“That’s—”
“Fifteen calls,” the analyst said. “Eight of them to the same number. Not much, but the phone isn’t that old. Carrier says the SIM was activated ten months ago.”
“Smart guy.”
“Or a beginner.”
“I don’t buy that,” Vega said.
Then she walked out.
***
The clock rolled past noon. Vega sat hunched over the paperwork from Digital Forensics. She picked up the phone and called the medical examiner’s office, asking for a decent photograph of the victim. A few minutes later it rattled out of the printer in full color.
“You avoiding me?”
O’Sullivan’s voice.
Vega didn’t look up.
“Where are we?” he asked, pointing at the photograph.
“I’m making progress,” Vega replied. “Thanks to actual police work.”
“Let’s hear it.”
“No name. But our friend here made several calls to an associate from the same area.”
“Associate?”
“Fine. Somebody he knew.”
O’Sullivan walked over to her desk and flipped through the papers.
“That’s still a pretty big area,” he said. “Want me to get you a couple uniforms?”
“I’m good. I’ll ask around myself first.”
O’Sullivan nodded.
“Don’t forget to eat,” he said.
Then he paused.
“And Vega?”
“Yeah?”
“Try doing this one by the book.”
“Asshole,” Vega muttered.
***
The tower coverage area stretched across most of southern West Englewood. Just a short drive from the crime scene. Vega figured the victim had to eat somewhere. Buy gas somewhere. Wash his clothes somewhere. So she stopped at every deli, gas station, and laundromat she came across. Everywhere she got the same answer. Shaking heads. Nobody had seen the man. Or nobody wanted to tell her they had.
She parked beside a fire hydrant and drank her coffee. She was tired. She’d been running all day, but she was too stubborn to go home and grab a few hours of sleep. Not until she had something to show for it.
A basketball slammed into the fence beside her and made her jump. She got out of the car. Behind a tall chain-link fence sat a concrete basketball court wedged between apartment buildings. A group of boys were playing pickup. Their voices echoed off the walls.
“Which one of you wants twenty bucks?” she called out.
The game stopped.
“You a cop?” the biggest kid asked.
“Detective. Homicide.”
“Like NCIS?”
“That’s the Navy.”
“CSI then.”
“Something like that.”
“We don’t talk to cops.”
“Listen. I just want to know who killed this guy. But first I need to know who he is.”
“Yo, is that a dead body?”
The boys crowded together along the fence and stared at the photograph. The medical examiner had done his best, but a corpse was still a corpse. The unknown man lay on his back on an autopsy table. Shirtless, though the picture had been cropped above the chest. His skin was gray. His eyes were open so people could see the color of his irises. All in all, it wasn’t exactly pleasant viewing for anybody who didn’t deal with dead people for a living.
“That’s that girl’s dad, man,” one of the boys said. “Samantha something.”
“Rayne,” another boy said. “Pretty sure her dad’s name is David.”
He pointed at the photo.
“Yeah. That’s David Rayne.”
***
Vega raced back to the precinct. Finally. Some progress.
Halfway down the hallway, somebody from Forensics stopped her.
“That bag of cash from your victim?” the woman said. “Dead end. Random bills. Mixed serial numbers. Old bills, new bills. Trace amounts of cocaine, but no more than you’d find on your wallet or mine. Ten thousand and fifty dollars. Bundled in thousand-dollar stacks with ordinary rubber bands you can buy anywhere. We’re still working the prints, but I wouldn’t expect much. It’s just a pile of old money that’s passed through a whole lot of hands.”
“Forget it,” Vega said with a grin. “I’ve got a name.”
David Rayne.
According to the database, David Rayne was a U.S. citizen. Forty-two years old. Valid driver’s license. Rayne stared back at Vega from the screen. He had a little more color in his cheeks, but otherwise the DMV photograph looked an awful lot like the one from the morgue. According to DMV records, he drove an old Chevrolet Silverado.
Vega kept digging.
She found the address listed under his name. West Englewood. She wrote it down. One other person was registered at the address.
Samantha Rayne.
Vega wrote that down too.
Then she opened another database and pulled up Rayne’s tax records. Now things got interesting. David Rayne had worked for a string of different employers over the past few years. She didn’t even need to look them up. She already knew what kind of employers they were. Shit jobs. She made a note and wrote: 10K?
Then she got up and headed for Detective Sergeant Mark O’Sullivan’s office to tell him about the break in the case.
“We’ve got nothing,” O’Sullivan said.
“Are you blind?” Vega shot back. “We’ve got a guy with a burner phone and ten grand in cash getting smoked in a dark alley while working a string of sketchy jobs. Maybe this is a loose thread hanging off a bigger criminal network. Maybe he was some kind of fixer. Maybe he collected debts for somebody higher up.”
“Somebody kills the fixer and forgets to take the money?”
Vega shrugged.
“I see a guy with no criminal record trying to make ends meet. God knows what he was doing in that alley, but that doesn’t automatically make him a criminal.”
“There’s cocaine on the money.”
“Oh, come on. This is just like 2009 all over again.”
“Funny you should say that,” Vega snapped. “Because back then you didn’t do a damn thing either.”
“I’m your goddamn supervisor.”
“Only because you’re good at kissing the right asses.”
“Fuck you, Vega!”
He slammed his hand down on the desk hard enough to make her jump.
O’Sullivan stared at the wall for a few moments. Breathing hard through his nose. Vega watched his jaw working back and forth like he was chewing gum.
Finally he said,
“What about the daughter?”
“Haven’t talked to her.”
“Mother?”
“Not in the picture. Maybe they’re divorced. Maybe she moved away.”
“Who the hell leaves a kid behind in Englewood?”
“Fine. Maybe she’s dead.”
“How old is she?”
“The mother?”
“The kid.”
Vega shrugged.
“You don’t know?”
“I came here to report the victim’s name… boss.”
“Jesus Christ, Vega. Put that giant ego of yours aside for five minutes. We’ve got a dead guy and a daughter still living at his address. Go see her. You need to tell her the news.”
***
David Rayne’s apartment was on the second floor of an ugly brown building at the end of a dead-end street. An exterior walkway ran along the front of the complex. A narrow strip of grass separated the building from the sidewalk. It was covered in trash. A miserable place. The rain had started up again, which didn’t help.
Vega got out of the cruiser and entered the building. She climbed the stairs, found the apartment number, and rang the bell.
Nothing.
A narrow window sat beside the door. She peered inside. A coat rack. Several jackets. A hallway leading toward a kitchen. A curtain fluttered. She rang the bell again.
Nothing.
She moved to the larger window and looked through it.
Nothing.
The curtains were drawn tight. She pressed her ear against the glass. Heard something.
A thump. Fast footsteps. She thought about it for a second. Looked around.
“Fuck it,” she muttered.
She pulled her pistol and smashed a hole through the narrow window beside the door. The glass wasn’t much. Single-pane. It fell onto a pile of shoes with little more than a crunch. Carefully, she reached through the opening and unlocked the door.
The apartment smelled strange. Not bad. Just unfamiliar. The way somebody else’s home always does. This one smelled like damp earth, mixed perfumes, and moisture. It wasn’t quiet.
She could hear the muffled sounds of apartment life all around her. Voices. A television somewhere. Pipes knocking inside the walls. There was energy in the air.
“Hello? Chicago PD. Anybody home?”
Somewhere inside, something clicked softly.
Vega froze and listened.
“Hello? Detective Vega—”
A dark shape exploded out of nowhere and slammed her into the wall. Both of them crashed to the floor. The intruder was back on her feet immediately and sprinting toward the kitchen window. Vega grabbed a fistful of long hair. A woman’s voice screamed. Vega caught her wrist. The woman lashed out. An elbow smashed into Vega’s mouth hard enough to rattle her teeth.
“Stop! Police!”
The woman fought even harder. Vega kicked her behind the knee. The woman hit the floor. Vega dove on top of her, yanked her arms behind her back, and snapped on the cuffs.
“Knock it off!” she hissed, wiping blood from her lip. “You’re under arrest.”
“Leave me alone.”
“Too late for that, lady.”
The woman said nothing.
Just glared at her. Her lip was bleeding from the fall. A lump was already forming on her forehead. Her hair was a mess. Her large eyes burned with anger. Suddenly she looked very young.
“Come on,” Vega said awkwardly. “You’re coming with me.”
The woman didn’t say a word during the drive downtown. She sat silently in the back seat staring out the window.
“You Samantha?” Vega tried.
“Samantha Rayne?”
No response.
“Fine,” Vega snapped.
She touched her swollen lip.
“We’ll figure it out at the station.”
Vega parked the cruiser and escorted the woman inside. Several officers looked up when they saw her. Vega led her into a small processing room and called over one of the officers to assist. The officer photographed the woman for the file and then started taking fingerprints. Old-school. Ink and cards. Vega stood in the corner watching with a foul mood while the officer worked. The woman never spoke. Just watched. The officer watched too. His work. Her eyes. And everything in between. When he finished, he left the room. Vega followed him out. She slammed the door shut and left the woman handcuffed to the table. Then she told the officer to run the fingerprints. After that she turned and headed for her office, determined to get a couple hours of sleep.
***
“You actually arrested that kid?”
O’Sullivan kicked the couch in Vega’s office. Vega jerked awake. Her head hurt.
“What?”
“She’s a goddamn minor!”
“She hit me! She refused to identify herself.”
“Fuck that, Vega,” O’Sullivan snapped. “I’ve got a kid sitting in Interview Three in her goddamn pajamas who just lost her father. She’s got a split lip.”
“Oh, come on,” Vega shot back. “She looked plenty grown-up to me.”
O’Sullivan stepped closer.
“I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that.”
“Listen. She came at me, not the other way around. She started swinging. I saw a suspect trying to run, and I acted accordingly. For all we know, she could be involved in this whole thing.”
“But you don’t know that, Vega!” O’Sullivan shouted. “Not if you actually do the work!”
He paced across the office. For the first time all day, he looked genuinely desperate.
“Jesus Christ, Vega. What the hell happened to you?”
Vega said nothing. She swallowed harder than she meant to. She thought about the girl’s eyes. Big eyes. They had looked angry. Or had they been scared?
O’Sullivan sighed.
“A good sergeant would’ve pulled you off this case already.”
Vega opened her mouth, but O’Sullivan raised a hand.
“But we were partners.”
Vega wanted to argue. Wanted to say something. Anything. But O’Sullivan wasn’t finished.
“Go talk to her. Figure out what she knows.”
He shook his head.
“And for God’s sake, treat her like a kid who just lost her father.”
His eyes locked onto hers.
“Don’t screw this up.”
***
The girl was still sitting in Interview Three. A little more rumpled than before. A little paler. Still a pretty kid. The first thing Vega noticed was that she wasn’t wearing pajamas at all. Just sweatpants and a long tank top. For some reason, that annoyed her.
She walked over, unlocked the cuffs, and sat down across from her. A case file and her notes landed on the table.
“Samantha Rayne.”
The girl didn’t look up.
“I know that’s your name. We have your information now.”
Nothing.
“My name is Rachel Vega. I’m a detective with Homicide.”
No reaction.
“You’re Samantha Rayne. You’re sixteen years old. Your father is David Rayne.”
Vega stated it as a fact.
“Why did you run?”
The girl’s eyes flickered for a second. Then narrowed.
“Listen,” Vega said. “I don’t care that you hit me. This is about your father. Something bad happened.”
The girl looked at her.
Big eyes.
“He’s dead, Samantha. I’m sorry.”
Vega let the silence hang for a moment. Out of respect. Or something close to it.
She studied Samantha’s reaction. Or the lack of one. The girl’s shoulders sagged slightly. Her eyes drifted across the table.
Then she asked softly,
“What happened?”
“We don’t know exactly. Somebody shot him. He was hit in the back. He died on the street.”
“Where?”
“West 77th Street. Near the tracks. Mean anything to you?”
Samantha shook her head. She still wouldn’t look at Vega for more than a second.
“Why did you run, Samantha?” Vega tried again.
“I was scared.”
“Of me?”
The girl shrugged.
“Or somebody else?”
Samantha looked away.
“What can you tell me about your father?”
“He was okay, I guess.”
“And your mother?”
Samantha looked up.
“She left a long time ago. I was four. Maybe five.”
That surprised Vega. She made a note.
“Divorced?”
Samantha nodded.
“Did your dad have friends? People who came by the apartment?”
“Sometimes, I think.”
“You think?”
“There were people around sometimes. I don’t know who they were. Work people, maybe.”
“What did he do for work?”
“Different things. Something at a trucking company once. Then he drove trucks for a while. I don’t really know.”
Vega wrote it down.
“Anything else?”
“I don’t know. H-he was gone a lot.”
“Where?”
“Just… gone. Work and stuff.”
Vega studied the girl. She didn’t know what to make of her. She wasn’t crying. She wasn’t screaming. She was just sitting there. Looking defeated. Like a kid admitting she’d failed a math test.
“Any idea who might’ve killed your father?” Vega asked.
Samantha looked up.
“I don’t know,” she stammered.
Vega pulled out the photograph. The same one she’d shown the boys on the basketball court. She flipped it over and slid it across the table.
“Think, Samantha.”
Samantha stared at the picture. Every trace of color drained from her face.
“How do you like living in Englewood?” Vega asked.
“Too crowded,” Samantha stammered. “I’d rather be outside the city.”
“You live in a pretty shitty apartment.”
Samantha said nothing.
“Did you know your father had ten thousand dollars on him when he got shot?”
“I—”
“That’s a lot of money.”
Samantha stared at her with wide, confused eyes.
“Where’d he get that kind of money, Samantha? I thought he worked at some trucking company or whatever.”
Vega mocked the girl’s voice.
“I don’t know,” Samantha said quietly.
Vega watched her eyes. They darted around the table as if she were reading a map. She fidgeted with a bracelet around her wrist. A pulse throbbed in her neck.
“Do you know who shot your father last night, Samantha?” Vega asked.
Samantha said nothing.
“Was it you, Samantha?”
Still nothing.
“Did you shoot your father?”
The door suddenly flew open. O’Sullivan stormed into the room. His face looked like a thunderstorm.
“Detective Vega. A word. Right now.”
He all but dragged Vega out of her chair. Pushed her into the hallway. Threw one glance back at the girl staring at him with wide eyes.
Then slammed the door shut.
***
They left Samantha sitting there for a long time. Eventually O’Sullivan came back into the room. Vega was nowhere to be seen. O’Sullivan was still red-faced.
“Miss Rayne,” he said with a small smile. “My name is Mark O’Sullivan. I’m a Detective Sergeant with the Chicago PD. I’m very sorry about your father.”
Samantha looked at him with those big eyes.
“We’re doing everything we can to find the person who did this,” O’Sullivan continued. “Will you help us? Is there anything you can tell me about your father that might help?”
Samantha seemed to stare at him in silence for several long minutes.
Then she slowly shook her head and said softly,
“I don’t think I really knew my father all that well.”
***
O’Sullivan let Samantha go. What else was he supposed to do? He personally walked her outside. Called over an officer and told him to drive her home and make sure she got inside safely. Not exactly by the book. Then again, very little about today had been by the book. Tomorrow he would call Child Services. He stood there watching until the squad car disappeared from the parking lot.
Then he went back inside to give Detective Vega another piece of his mind.
***
The next afternoon a no-nonsense woman from Child Services showed up at O’Sullivan’s desk. Two sentences into the conversation, O’Sullivan knew he was in trouble. The woman had gone to David Rayne’s address in West Englewood to pick up the minor. The apartment was empty.
Samantha Rayne was gone.
O’Sullivan went there personally. He brought Vega along. Partly because she’d already been there once. Partly because he didn’t want to be the only dumb bastard involved.
They parked out front. Same depressing building. They walked up the exterior walkway. O’Sullivan noticed the broken window beside the door. The apartment wasn’t locked. Pointless now.
Inside, the air was cool and damp. Everything was still in place. A cardigan hung over the back of a chair. A few dirty dishes sat in the sink. Magazines were stacked carelessly on the corner of the couch. They checked the other rooms. Same story.
The apartment looked exactly like a place somebody had abandoned in a hurry.
“You believe me now?” Vega asked.
O’Sullivan took one last look around.
Thought about the girl he’d met.
The big eyes.
The quiet determination.
“No,” O’Sullivan said. “I don’t.”
***
After that, O’Sullivan did exactly what he was supposed to do. He reported it. A few hours later, every cop on the South Side had seen Samantha Rayne’s photograph. Squad cars crawled through the streets. Uniforms knocked on doors and asked questions. Nobody had seen the girl. Or nobody was willing to admit they had.
Samantha Rayne was never found.
The case lost priority. This was Chicago, after all. The girl became a name in a file. The file disappeared into a drawer. Nobody ever opened it again.
Detective Rachel Vega was suspended for six months. Officially, it was for smashing the window. Shortly before the suspension ended, she left Homicide. Rumor had it she wanted to go into business for herself.
Detective Sergeant Mark O’Sullivan stayed with Homicide for another eighteen months. Then somebody upstairs ordered him to take over a small team in the Financial Crimes Unit.
Most people around the department agreed on one thing.
It wasn’t a promotion.
The End.