CHAPTER SIX
“Looks like this guy lived a little larger than Mr. Pierce,” Marcus observed as the police cruiser pulled in front of a massive, three-story house in Chicago’s prestigious Gold Coast neighborhood.
“Lakefront property, Bentley parked in the garage, full-time maid? Forget about it.”
Detective Whitaker’s last sentence came out Fuhgeddaboutit.
The Chicago PD officer assigned to work with them was a seven-year veteran of the force, but he’d grown up in Brooklyn, and his accent remained staunchly New York.
Kate noticed the instant camaraderie between Marcus and the lanky Brooklyn transplant and hoped that would cheer her partner up a little.
He’d spent the flight over in moody silence that Kate was too afraid to break.
“Funny thing is, this guy fell on hard times in recent years,” Whitaker informed them.
Kate raised an eyebrow. “Oh yeah?”
“Yeah. Guy managed to get off for murder, but who wants to do business with someone who has that kind of court case hanging over their head?”
Now Kate was very interested. “Tell me about that.”
“He was accused of murdering his partner three years ago. That wasn’t my case, so I don’t have a lot of details, but it was big news in Chicago.
They found the guy—Gene Parker—dead in a hotel bathroom with a gun in his hand.
Looked like a suicide at first, but the more we looked into it, it was clear he’d been killed and staged to look like he’d killed himself. ”
“I definitely want to know more about that,” Kate said, “but let’s check the scene out first since we’re here.”
“Sure thing.”
Whitaker led them into the house, just as opulent inside as it was outside, with marble tile floors, granite countertops, and expensive black leather furniture.
Still, there were signs of the financial stress Whitaker references.
The furniture was expensive but lean. No coffee table, no rug, only a small table with four chairs.
The walls were bare of artwork, and when Marcus opened the fridge—a habit of his ever since he'd found a severed hand in the refrigerator in one of his earliest cases with the Bureau—he found it empty save for a few takeout boxes and a half-full carton of milk.
“Body’s upstairs,” Whitaker informed them.
“Maid discovered him after hearing a noise. Probably walked into the room right after the murderer escaped. Found the window open. I closed that, by the way. I used gloves so I didn’t mess up the scene, but I figured you didn’t want dust and leaves blowing in. I hope that was all right.”
“That’s fine,” Kate said. “Where is she now?”
“She went home. She was incoherent on the phone. Couldn’t get a straight story out of her until we arrived on scene. She was sitting on the porch holding a kitchen knife. I talked her down and figured out what happened, then sent her home.”
“And you’re sure she isn’t a suspect?” Kate asked.
“Reasonably sure. She didn’t have any blood on her. When you see the body, you’ll know why that matters.”
“Where exactly was he found?”
“In his study.”
He pushed open a door, and Kate stepped into the scene.
She knew immediately that this was different from Blake Pierce's crime scene.
Despite Whitaker's point about blood, there was no widespread blood around the study.
In fact, Kate saw no blood at all save for the blood soaking the lower half of the man slumped in a high-backed chair behind a dark maple desk at the back of the room.
Derek Hammond’s eyes were open. He looked up at the ceiling with a resigned expression, almost as though he saw his death coming and believed he deserved it. On the left side of his chest, just below his sternum, a wide mouth opened, liver-red with blood.
And on the desk, a series of symbols had been scrawled. Judging by the flecks of blood visible in the symbols, the same knife that was used to kill Hammond was used to write the message.
Her heartbeat quickened. Her throat went dry. This was him. This was one of Cox’s disciples.
“Looks like a single stab wound,” Marcus said. “Went up the sternum into the heart.” He lifted Hammond’s hands one at a time and observed, “No defensive wounds. Nothing under the fingernails. Doesn’t look like he fought back.”
“You think he suffered?” Whitaker asked.
Kate looked at Hammond’s eyes. “Not from the murder, but he suffered.”
“Deep,” Whitaker said.
His tone wasn’t insulting, but it was clear he dismissed Kate’s observation out of hand. She couldn’t blame him. It was hard to convince locals that the emotional aspect of these cases mattered.
She looked at the large panel window that faced Lake Michigan. “This is the one you closed?” she asked Whitaker.
“Yeah, that’s the one. I used gloves, and I just put my fingertips right here.” He pointed at the corners of a small handle. “Did my best not to mess anything up.”
“Did you take pictures before you closed the window?”
Whitaker looked stricken. “Ah, shit. No. I usually do, but… Sorry.”
Kate looked at him. “You usually do, but…”
He shifted his feet uncomfortably. “Well… I mean, the guy was a murderer.”
“He was acquitted, right?” Marcus asked.
“Yeah, he was, but so was OJ. He clearly did it. He only got off because his lawyer convinced a judge that we sweated him too hard in interrogation.”
“I thought you said you weren’t involved with the case,” Kate said.
"I wasn't, but I know the people who were. They were good people. They followed the rules. They did everything right. They were screwed because he was rich. You know, at the time."
“Any of them suffer career consequences?” Kate asked.
"What? No, no, nothing… no one in the police department had a motive to commit this murder. It's part of the game. You win some, you lose some. Sucks, but it's the way it is. You can't hold grudges."
“Some people still do,” Marcus pointed out.
“Sure, but not these guys. They weren’t happy about it, but they let it go. And the department didn’t punish them for doing their job and losing to a nine-hundred-dollar-an-hour hotshot from Columbia Law School. We all moved on.”
“Well, someone didn’t.”
“Why don’t you pass along the names of ‘these guys?’” Kate suggested.
Whitaker frowned and replied coldly. “Sure. I’ll email them to you.”
He was upset now. Kate didn’t blame him, but she wasn’t just going to take his word for it that the detectives who came out on the wrong end of the case three years ago didn’t hold a grudge. She’d met a lot of detectives during her career. They all held grudges.
“What do you make of these symbols, Kate?”
She returned to the desk and studied them more closely.
To her surprise, the symbols were clearly recognizable English letters.
Most were arranged in no pattern Kate recognized, and the gaps between the words varied in size as much as the length of the words themselves.
Punctuation appeared to be limited to occasional dashes, forward slashes, and asterisks.
The individual characters were small, and the overall message was unusually long.
That didn’t necessarily mean the translated message would also be long, but it definitely meant the killer had spent some time up here after they killed Derek Hammond.
Most of it was impossible to decipher at first glance, but the top row was fairly clear.
THO*U SHAULT TPHOT KEUL.
That could only mean the sixth commandment, Thou shalt not kill.
There was no doubt about it. This was the Lawgiver’s work.
“This is one of Cox’s disciples,” she told Marcus. “The top row means ‘thou shalt not kill.’ I’m not sure what the rest means, but that gives me a good place to start.”
She took her phone out and took pictures of the code. Marcus did the same with the body while Whitaker stood to the side, scowling.
“Detective, you can call CSI to take over,” Kate said when she finished. “Have them put a priority on results from this scene and contact me immediately when they have any information.”
“Yeah, of course,” he said curtly. Then, maybe realizing that being standoffish to the feds wasn’t a great idea, he said in a more pleasant voice, “Look, just do me a favor and don’t let the detectives know I gave you their names.”
“Chicago PD doesn’t trust the feds, huh?” Marcus said.
“We don’t trust anyone but our own,” Whitaker replied. “It’s a problem.”
They got the names along with the name and contact information for Hammond’s maid, Juanita, and his ex-wife, Sarah. Armed with that, they left the property.
"I want to start with the detectives who investigated him for the previous murder," Kate said. "Why don't you follow up on that, and I'll work on the cipher?"
“You don’t want to talk to the maid and the ex-wife first?”
“Not yet. This was a commandment killing. That means Hammond was slain for breaking the commandment. We’ll find out why he was killed, and by extension who killed him, by figuring out what went wrong with his first murder trial.”
"So, you think he did it?" Marcus replied. "You think the acquittal was bogus."
“I think Cox thinks that,” she replied, “and so does his disciple.”
"Fair enough. I'll go talk to the detectives. Text me the address of the hotel. Please, something nice enough that I don't have to think about bedbugs."
“When have you ever encountered bedbugs, Marcus?’
“Never, and I want to keep the streak going.”
She chuckled. “All right. Bedbug-free accommodations, I promise.”
“You’re a peach.”
Whitaker drove Marcus back to the precinct to talk to the detectives. Kate took the rental car and headed for the hotel.
Kate thought of the long message, neatly inscribed with the tip of the weapon used to kill Derek Hammond. If this was anything like the previous commandment killings, this wasn’t personal to Cox, not with Hammond anyway. This was only his twisted version of divine justice.
Kate suspected this was personal to the killer, though. The violence of the death, the outpouring of the cipher, it all pointed to someone holding their rage in for a long time and finally releasing it.
And if that rage wasn’t contained, it would release again.