Chapter 10
Louise
The day after the body is identified, Louise Pratt likes to observe. Watch the behavior of the people close to the victim. See who comes to visit the bereaved and how long they stay.
Her decades in Homicide with Chicago P.D.
have taught her much about reading patterns and body language, identifying the one thing that isn’t like the others, honing her instincts.
She thought her edges would dull when she moved to Grace Park three years ago but, if anything, with the slower pace, the chance to reflect, they’ve sharpened.
At first blush, this screams domestic. Bitterness, jealousy, hurt, humiliation, the standard cocktail of a marriage gone awry. All things being equal, you start with the wife and rule her out—or in—before going further. Allison herself said so to Louise.
But all things are not equal here. Your average person doesn’t wrap a body and toss it in a dumpster. To say nothing of the fact that Finley was a big guy compared to Allison’s relatively average size.
Then again, Allison Brice is not average.
Polished, educated, successful—she may not register as the likeliest of candidates.
But people don’t act in character when they commit murder.
A murder like this one, a stab to the heart, could be either premeditated or spontaneous.
But the aftermath, the panic, the desperation to cover up the crime can drive the most composed person to make extreme choices.
Allison Brice is not only intelligent generally but police-smart.
Dropping a body in a dumpster injects all kinds of doubt into an investigation before it even begins.
For one, it buys time. The body, if properly concealed, won’t be found until days later in a landfill or sorting facility.
The offender composes herself, plans for the ensuing investigation, gets her ducks in a row.
Maybe relevant evidence on the victim becomes compromised by the passage of time or by natural interference like insect intervention.
And time of death becomes far more tenuous.
Allison would surely know that a medical examiner wouldn’t be able to pin down time of death to more than a range, possibly as wide as twenty-four hours, like the M.E.
here, who said Finley died anywhere from forty-eight to seventy-two hours before his discovery.
The wider the range of time, the more doubt, the greater the opportunity for an alibi, the easier to suggest alternative scenarios.
Not to mention that you don’t know where Finley was killed. You don’t have a crime scene yet. And wherever it is, the offender’s had days to clean it up.
In the several hours Louise has sat here, four different neighbors have stopped by Allison’s house to give their condolences, each with food.
Allison’s brother, Luke Rankin, the baseball coach with some legal troubles of his own, stopped by just after Louise arrived around 7 a.m. with Starbucks in hand and hasn’t left yet.
Otherwise, it’s been Allison at the door, dressed in a simple sweater and blue jeans, receiving hugs and trays of food and brief visits.
Louise checks her phone. A text from Marly, her daughter and the reason Louise left CPD and moved to Grace Park. Marly was diagnosed with cervical cancer three years ago, when her twins—the first two of Louise’s seven grandkids—were still in elementary school.
It had been time to leave, anyway. Thirty years at CPD was enough.
Homicide was a humming conveyor belt in the city, mail guaranteed to arrive daily.
The bodies came fast, the brass and media prioritized speedy resolution over truth—there was no time for nuance, for dissecting motives, for getting a real taste for a case when you were drinking from a fire hose.
Before she can respond to her daughter’s text, the phone buzzes. A name pops up that she recognizes but hasn’t uttered or even thought about for well over a decade. A prosecutor with whom she worked twenty years ago.
“Bruce Ghadiali?” she says into the phone. “I haven’t heard from you in a dog’s year.”
“Louise! Glad this number still works for you. How’s life in the suburbs?”
“I sleep more,” she says. “You still at the state’s attorney’s office?”
“Guess I’m a lifer. Sorry to call on Easter. Are you with family?”
“Not ’til later. Right now, I’m sitting on a house,” she says. “Homicide victim’s wife.”
“That wouldn’t be Allison Brice’s house, would it?”
Louise lurches forward.
“I didn’t know you still worked cases,” says Louise. “A big supervisor like you?”
“I don’t, but it became news,” says Bruce. “Y’know Luke Rankin was the coach of that local college team that went to the World Series? And then his big-shot sister comes in to represent him. The office didn’t want to be embarrassed on a high-profile case. So I was summoned.”
“I only know a little about the case. He was caught with prescription drugs in his car a couple months back? I figured that would wrap up pretty quickly in a plea or even a quick trial.”
“I did, too.” Bruce laughs. “We were both wrong. It’s taken some crazy turns.”
“How crazy?”
“Batshit crazy,” he says.
“And…you think your drug case is related to my murder case?”
“I’d bet my life on it,” he says. “Which is why I’m assigned to your murder case, too.”
Three more women, one accompanied by a man, stop by the Brice house over the next hour. Louise zooms in and snaps a photo of each person. If they drove, she takes a photo of their license plate and runs it.
In contrast to Grace Park, on Chicago’s western border and essentially a miniaturized version of the big city, Grace Village is like an exclusive club.
The plots are larger, the streets quieter and smoother, full of manicured landscaping.
Lots of family money, multigenerational residents. The consummate bedroom community.
The Brices, who likely bought their house back when Allison was a government prosecutor, not a fancy private lawyer, seem to have followed the advice of purchasing the least expensive house on the nicest street.
They have a corner lot that’s smaller than most, a narrow Tudor with stucco and red wood trim, likely three bedrooms at most, all very well attended.
Around eleven, about the time Louise is readying to leave for an Easter service with her family, another car pulls up.
A Corvette. A woman gets out, a walk that’s more like a strut as she crosses the lawn to the front door.
Louise raises her binoculars to her eyes. The leather jacket’s the giveaway.
“I’ll be damned,” Louise says. “That’s Jennifer Harper.”
Louise waits until Harp leaves a half hour later and follows her Corvette. She doesn’t bother being subtle, finally putting the cherry on her dashboard, as if Harper couldn’t spot an unmarked cop car with her eyes closed. They both pull into a gas station by Main Street.
“Louise Pratt, I thought that was you.” Harp looks the same as always as she gets out of her car. Leather jacket and attitude, great hair.
“Harp!” Louise worked more than one joint task force with Harp, who was one of her favorite FBI agents.
Some of that was a natural alliance, two women in a world dominated by men.
Still, Harp had bigger brass than most of the boys, who couldn’t decide if they were intimidated by her or wanted to fuck her. Or both.
Her problem was the drink. Not because it affected her work but because it affected her personal life, which spilled over into work. But damn, before they ran her out, she was a force.
“Happy Easter,” says Harp. “You’re…here now? Grace Village?”
“Grace Park Municipal Police,” says Louise. “Currently investigating the Brice murder.”
Harp isn’t one to easily betray her thoughts, but Louise detects a brief wince. “I go way back with Allison at the G,” says Harp, explaining her visit. “We’ve stayed buds.”
“Is she a client?”
“Well, don’t beat around the bush or anything.”
Louise smiles. “You may recall I’m direct to a fault. And that’s not a ‘no.’ ”
Harp allows for that. “If she were a client, I wouldn’t tell you.”
“Right, but if she weren’t a client, you’d tell me she’s not. C’mon, Harp. A dead husband and a wife who was divorcing him? A contentious divorce, Allison’s words? And now I see she had a private investigator? That’s too good for an old detective like me to resist.”
Harp slaps her on the shoulder. “You wanna grab a drink and talk old times, I’m your gal. Otherwise, Lou, I’m not interested. Good seeing you, though.”
“I’m asking nicely so far,” says Louise.
Harp, halfway back to her car, stops and turns. “Come again?”
“Look, Harp, tell me you only work for her on the law firm side. Look me in the eye and tell me that? I won’t bother you. Hell, I’ll buy the drinks. But I think you were doing personal work for her. And the more you don’t wanna talk to me, the more I wanna talk to you.”
Harp puts her hands together. “The part you’re missing here, Lou, and I always liked you—the part you’re missing is I don’t give a single squirt of piss what you want.”
“And the part you’re missing,” says Louise, “is that the more you resist, the more I insist. Don’t make me go nuclear. And don’t pretend that your conversations with her are privileged. Not for personal work. Don’t insult either of us.”
“There are other privileges I could assert.”
“What, you’re gonna take Five?”
“Maybe so,” says Harp, warming to it. “Maybe I have something to hide. Maybe I decline to answer on the ground that my answers may incriminate—”
“I’ll immunize you,” says Lou.
Harp’s mouth closes. A hard blink of those eyes.
“I’ll do it, Harp. I’ll immunize you and force you in front of a grand jury. You can tell a judge to go fuck himself and see how that works out.”
Harp’s mood has deteriorated considerably, her eyes fallen, arms folded.
“Figure, what, six months in county for contempt? Probably lose your investigator’s license, too.” Louise shrugs. “You’d do the same to me if the roles were reversed.”
“Fuck.” Harper throws up a hand. “No good deed goes unpunished, I guess.”
“I know, I know—you drive out here to pay your respects, and look what it gets you,” says Louise. “But I was gonna find you eventually. You just saved me a little time.”
As she drives away, Louise dials Bruce Ghadiali. “I netted my first fish,” she says. “Allison’s private investigator. I have a feeling we’re gonna learn a lot of secrets from her.”