CHAPTER SEVEN
Marcus’s phone buzzed as Whitaker drove them to the precinct. Cheryl. He opened it, giving into a brief, intense moment of hope.
Need time to think. Going to Liza’s for a while. The apartment is yours for now if you want it.
He stared at the message for a long moment. Emotions rolled through him on a loop. Grief, fear, rage, confusion, back to grief, then fear, and so on. Think? Think about what? For God’s sake, this wasn’t such a big deal.
Of course it is. You know it is. It’s not just a big deal. It’s the deal. It’s the reason your marriage isn’t working out.
He replayed the argument in his mind. He and Cheryl were squabbling over something stupid again, and Marcus, exhausted from the Marsh case and the hours of grilling by internal affairs about his part to play in Kate going AWOL, didn’t have the energy to do it. So, he told her.
“I’m too tired to fight about this. Whatever you say is fine. Let’s just let it go.”
“Of course you’re too tired!” Cheryl had replied. “When it has to do with your bitch partner, you’re right there, aren’t you? Always available. But when I want to have a conversation about our marriage, it’s always, ‘I’m too tired. I don’t want to do this. Can we just let it go?’”
“Don’t call her a bitch. She’s not a bitch.”
Cheryl’s lower lip had trembled. That was Marcus’s warning.
That was his chance to pull back, to beg for mercy, to listen to what she had to say and agree with it whether he actually agreed with it or not.
If he’d done that, he might have had a chance at getting out of the argument.
Instead, when Cheryl fired back, “No, of course not. She’s your precious Valentine.
She’s the most important woman in your life. ”
And Marcus had blurted, “At least I can fucking talk to her!”
And that was that. Cheryl had recoiled as though he’d slapped her. Then she’d kicked him out of the apartment they shared. He’d tried calling, tried texting, tried calling her mother, her sister, then, in desperation, her friends who hated him and always had. None of them had answered.
And now this. Time to think. About what? About leaving for good this time? About finding someone else to make out with to make him jealous again? About another forty-five-minute talk about how the fact that Kate didn’t completely repulse him made her feel insecure about their relationship?
“Here we are,” Whitaker said, pulling him out of his thoughts. “18th District headquarters. Home to the concierge police force of Chicago’s rich and famous.”
He parked the car, and Marcus followed him inside the spacious concrete and glass building. It took an effort for him to put his argument with Cheryl in the back of his mind, but he managed.
All eyes were on him as Whitaker led him to the Doghouse, the workspace occupied by the 18th district’s investigators.
He stopped outside the building, pointed out Gorman and Troy, the detectives responsible for Hammond’s initial murder investigation, then excused himself with a weak excuse about paperwork.
Clearly, he didn’t want to be seen pointing out his buddies to the feds.
Marcus entered the large room, and once again, all eyes fixed on him.
He let it roll off his back. He was used to hostility.
He was a big man, and that made other men insecure.
He was a fed, and that made local cops insecure.
He had a good relationship with his partner, and that made his wife insecure.
He was just really good at making people think less of themselves.
He approached Gorman and Troy and nodded. “How’re you doing?”
Gorman, an older, mustachioed man with a prodigious belly and very dark brown eyes swiveled in his chair and regarded Marcus. “I’m not sure. How am I doing?”
“Well, the killer that got away didn’t get away the second time,” Marcus said. “I’m sure you’re feeling some way about the fact that Derek Hammond is dead.”
Troy, a somewhat younger, considerably thinner man, chuckled. “Well, we’re not planning on sending flowers if that’s what you mean.”
“And we were both sitting underneath that camera all night if that’s what you mean,” Gorman added, pointing at a security camera that pointed in the general direction of their desk.
“Triple homicide,” Troy explained. “Woman and her elderly parents stabbed to death in a home invasion.”
“Shit,” Marcus said. “That’s no fun.”
Gorman chuckled. “Fun is not part of this job description.”
“No, it’s not,” Marcus agreed. “Thank you for the alibi, by the way. I wasn’t looking forward to asking the two of you where you were last night.”
They both nodded. Their faces softened a little. It was the job. They got it.
“Any idea who might have killed him?” Marcus asked.
Gorman scoffed. “Take your pick. Guy was persona non grata in the real estate world. Real estate is a swamp filled with crocodiles and snakes, but one of the big rules is if you have beef with someone, you hit their wallet, not their persons and not their families.”
Marcus nodded. He’d heard that before. “And Hammond is believed to have broken that rule.”
“Hammond absolutely broke that rule,” Troy replied.
“There’s no question. We caught him on camera entering the hotel with Parker and leaving alone.
We have a bloodstain on his coat with blood matching the victim.
We have well-attested eyewitness accounts that the two of them had been arguing for years about the direction of the company and the alleged misuse of its finances by Mr. Parker.
Those arguments exploded into a full-blown altercation when it was discovered that Mr. Parker was using company funds to ahem…
enjoy some time with women on the weekends. ”
Marcus raised an eyebrow, but he wasn’t here to investigate Gene Parker’s murder. “So, let’s say for sake of argument that Hammond did kill Parker. If the rule is don’t kill people, then why would one of the other bigwigs in real estate have him killed? And why wait three years?”
Gorman shrugged. “I’m not saying one of his fellow princes did him in. I’m just saying there’s no doubt he’s the killer, and people knew it. He got off because his lawyer claimed we didn’t let him use the restroom for eleven hours while we interrogated him.”
“That true?”
“Sure is,” Troy replied. “Because he never asked. Not one time. We would have let him go if he asked, but he didn’t.”
Marcus folded his arms over his chest. “I don’t want to sound like an asshole, but I’ve been involved with a trial here and there. I’ve never heard of anyone getting off because of that.”
The detectives shared a look. Marcus kept a placid expression on his face and waited.
Gorman sighed. “Allegedly, some of the evidence was contaminated. The bloodstains on Hammond’s shirt were sampled, and it was claimed that someone switched the samples out with samples of Gene Parker’s blood taken from the crime scene.”
“Ah,” Marcus said drily. “That would do it.”
Troy scoffed. “He was guilty, man. We all knew it. He was going to get off because of some pretty-boy lawyer. It’s not right. I wasn’t gonna let—”
Gorman shifted in his chair and cleared his throat. Troy got the hint and clammed up.
Marcus didn’t let them get away with that. “So, you planted evidence.”
Gorman only stared. Troy visibly struggled to contain himself, then lost that struggle.
“The guy was going to get away with murder. We couldn’t allow him to.
You’ve never met someone who you knew was guilty but knew was going to walk?
You’ve never thought the world might be a better place if you made sure that didn’t happen? ”
“No,” Marcus said without hesitation. “Can’t say I have.”
He understood where these guys were coming from, but come on, planting evidence? That was a slippery slope that dropped you straight into hell.
Troy chuckled bitterly. “You’re one of the lucky ones.”
Gorman, frowning after his partner’s diarrhea of the mouth, asked, “Are you here to investigate us for a closed case?”
Marcus shook his head. “No. I’m here to investigate Derek Hammond’s murder. It wasn’t you guys, but it sure as hell was someone. Can you name anyone who was maybe particularly upset about the case? Someone who thought that justice had been miscarried and someone should right that wrong?”
“Everyone thought that,” Troy said.
Marcus was beginning to get frustrated. “Wonderful. Got it. Everyone thought he was a piece of shit. Everyone hated that he got away with it. Jeez, what an asshole. Do you have any idea who that might be?”
“No,” Gorman said. He lifted his hands and let it drop. “Look, we lost. We tried. We did our best, our goddamned best. It didn’t work out. That sucks, but it’s the way it is.”
“We knew we weren’t going to get him after the evidence tampering thing didn’t work,” Troy said.
“So, we had two options: be bitter about it and let it turn us into burnt-out husks before our time, or let it go and make sure that we did better in future cases. It hurts. It really does. But if you don’t find a way to deal with hurt, you end up dealing with it, if you know what I mean. ”
He tapped the gun holstered to his belt. Images flashed across Marcus’s mind, memories of people who’d come back from Afghanistan but not all the way back. Tears flowing from a man’s eyes while he swallowed a shotgun barrel, string tied around the trigger and his right big toe.
“Yeah. I know what you mean.”
“For what it’s worth,” Gorman said. “I hope you find the killer. Like Troy said, we’re not going to send flowers to Derek Hammond’s funeral, but neither of us want a vigilante running around Chicago.
Justice is meant to be undertaken by a society, not an individual.
Sure, some people fall through the cracks, but that’s preferable to letting justice be whatever people decided it is based on how they feel at any given moment. ”
“I agree with you there,” Marcus said, staring pointedly at the detectives. It might have been petty of him, but he was pleased when Troy reddened. “Again, thanks for talking to me. I’ll reach out if I have any further questions.”
“Good luck, Special Agent.”
He left the precinct. Now that he wasn’t there sniffing for blood, the other detectives and officers ignored him.
Whitaker caught up to him in the lobby and asked if he needed a ride to the maid’s house, but Marcus declined and said he’d walk instead.
He wanted a few minutes to breathe before he moved on to the next part of the case, and the short walk to the hotel gave him those few minutes.
He picked up his phone and typed a dozen different responses to Cheryl. He deleted each one. What could he say that he hadn’t already said a thousand times before? If she didn’t believe him anymore, that was her problem.
And deep in his heart, behind his anger, his willpower, and the love he still held for the woman he had married, was the truth he didn’t want to acknowledge.
Sometimes, he wondered what it would be like if he had met Kate before Cheryl. Sometimes, he wondered what it would be like if they had tried to be more than just partners, more than just friends.
And even deeper down, he was pretty sure it would have been a damned fine life if they had.