Every Breath You Take: A Novel (A Kristen Conner Mystery Book 2) Read online

  “We landed from Moscow less than twenty-four hours ago,” Robert Sr. grumbled.

  “Let’s get this over with, Dad. We need to help the police any way we can.”

  “You do know that family members, including us, are always suspects?” Robert Sr. asked his son. “I’d rather neither of us give a formal interview under any circumstances while suffering from jet lag.”

  “I’m fine, Dad. You’re fine. All that matters is helping the police find Jack’s murderer.”

  “Had you two been talking?” Robert Sr. asked.

  “Yeah, we had,” Robert Jr. said. “It’s hard to believe but we were actually getting along. I thought we might be starting a new chapter as brothers. Then this happens.”

  Robert Jr. put his face in his hands and began to weep.

  Robert Sr. stood up from behind his desk, walked over, and put a comforting hand on his son’s shoulder.

  “Let your mom know you and Jackie were getting along, would you son? She’s not doing well and it would mean a lot to her.”

  He nodded his head yes as his shoulders continued to shake.

  The doorbell chimed.

  “Before you get that, Stanley, let me say something. I loved my son very much. This has been the worst day of my life. I want the murderer caught and put away for life. I’ll do anything in my power to assist. But I won’t have our family turned into a media circus.”

  The door chimed again. McGill nodded and went to answer it.

  12

  I COULD GET used to this. I’m 35,000 feet over Dayton, Ohio—that’s what the flight map says anyway—sitting in United Airlines first class. The FBI bought me a regular economy class ticket but has a deal with certain airlines, including United, that if any first class seats are open, their people get a bump up front.

  The flight attendant brought me a bowl of warm mixed nuts while we were still at the gate. Not just peanuts, but the expensive stuff, like walnuts, cashews, Brazilians, and they threw in a few macadamias for good measure. The guy in a business suit next to me was gulping Maker’s Mark on the rocks before we were airborne and is fast asleep. His snoring is fairly quiet now but every ten minutes or so he gives a jerk and a loud snort. He better get checked for sleep apnea.

  I need to invest in a briefcase. My old fashioned doctor’s-style carryall under the seat in front of me is worn out. I don’t load up my purse for a trip around the world like my sister does. But I have enough personal stuff to go along with my vintage laptop—a couple generations away from the sleek thin models they are selling now—that when you add papers and reports from my time with the FBI, my purse is stuffed, overflowing, and straining at the seams. I think the security guy at Reagan International was ready to throw the whole thing away and put it out of its misery. Good for me Willingham called ahead and had an escort smooth the way for me through a crowded security line to make my flight in plenty of time.

  My laptop—three years old with a battery that didn’t get me out of Pennsylvania—is poking out the top with my FBI training notebook, a couple magazines, and a cardboard envelope that contains the employment offer from the FBI. It’s marked “confidential” and the flight attendant has looked at it with curiosity a couple times.

  I told Deidre Cook this morning that I had already made my decision. The answer was no. Cook basically refused to accept that. She told me to think about it a couple more days before giving my final answer. The problem is I don’t want to think about it anymore. We have an early phone appointment scheduled for Monday. Today is Wednesday. That gives me almost five days to stew. I’m not good at the kind of process that prolongs decisions. I want to decide and move on. This lack of closure will probably ruin my whole weekend.

  I will be coaching the Snowflakes on Saturday. Tiffany’s dad has been running practices for the three weeks before our first game. I talked to him on the phone twice while I was at Quantico to give him some training drills and ask how the girls were looking. Both times he hinted that it may be good for us to be co-coaches. I didn’t take the bait. The Snowflakes have a head coach. Me. What is Tiffany’s dad’s first name?

  “Anything else to drink?” the flight attendant asks.

  I’ve already had three cups of coffee today and don’t need to get any more wired up. I drank three glasses of apple juice this flight and visited the bathroom twice already. Even if first class is much roomier on leg room, I don’t want to wake the guy who is contentedly snoring in the aisle seat. It may be good to check if he’s alive, however. I haven’t heard the guttural rumble of a grizzly in hibernation for at least five minutes.

  “I guess one more apple juice,” I answer.

  Why is it so hard to turn down free stuff?

  I start to think about being back in the office. After the year we’ve had, I’m looking forward to normal, boring, routine murder—even if such a thing doesn’t exist.

  I’ll be in the bullpen at the Second in two days. I miss the place. I kind of wish I could end my leave of absence and go in tomorrow. I haven’t heard a thing from any of my colleagues. I wonder if anyone missed me while I was gone.

  • • •

  “You look worried, Robert. What is on your mind?”

  “Marjorie is the main thing.”

  “She’s a mother. This is going to be tough on her.”

  “I know, Stanley. Oh do I know. I had to call for Dr. Parker to come over last night. I was really getting worried.”

  “I don’t think this is the time for her to leave town, Robert. She’ll need you and Junior.”

  “I’m not flying her to our place in the Hamptons until after the funeral. And Stanley . . .”

  “Yes, Robert?”

  “I really wasn’t asking your opinion on how to handle my family.”

  • • •

  I should have stopped at a bathroom along what feels like a mile-long trek from my arrival gate to the escalator that lowers me toward the center of the earth to the baggage level where my beat-up suitcase will arrive whenever it decides to get there. I might pee my pants if there isn’t a public bathroom down there. I’ve already passed the point of no return from the terminal and can’t go back if there isn’t.

  I step from the escalator onto solid ground and there is the whole gang.

  “Aunt Kristen,” Kendra yells as she bounds forward and gives me a big hug that challenges my bladder control. James lets out a whoop and leaps in my arms. I bend sideways to put my carryall on the ground and everything spills all over the floor. I see my tube of red lipstick rolling toward the Wisconsin-Illinois border. I do know how to make an appearance.

  Jimmy and Kaylen are beaming. Mom was right. Kaylen looks ready to pop. Mom didn’t say it that way. But wow is she big.

  Note to Kristen: No size references around older sister.

  I hustle her direction to save her the effort of waddling. Mom is holding a sign that says, “Welcome Home, Kristen.” Even my drop-dead gorgeous news reporter sister is here. Did she miss me or did Mom wear her down insisting she come along?

  Klarissa beams at me and then sticks out her tongue. Everyone gathers around to give hugs. I stand face to face with Kaylen and can’t help myself. I have to do it. I put both hands on that belly. I want to connect with Kelsey—but what I really want to do is make sure that bump is real.

  It’s so wonderful to be home with the people I love, but I’m going to burst if I don’t take care of business first. I spot a sign with a stick figure wearing a skirt.

  “I’ll be right back,” I say as Jimmy pushes my stuff back into my bag. My older sister’s husband is a “golly and shucks” nice guy, but he is just savvy enough not to make eye contact with anything in a woman’s purse. I notice, however, he gives the FBI envelope a quick and curious glance.

  I’ve decided if I want something to be noticed I’m going to write “Confidential” on it in big, bold, red letters.

  • • •

  The seven of us are just legal in Jimmy and Kaylen’s minivan. If you
count what Kaylen is carrying we are a seatbelt short. James got assigned to middle of the back row between Kendra and me. He isn’t happy and has now yelled, “Not fair, why does Kendra get a window seat!” four or five times. I’ve turned sideways a couple times to tickle him, which he likes, but that winds him up and makes him even louder. He’s now squirming and throwing elbows so I decide to stop the tickling to save myself from bruised ribs.

  Jimmy and Kaylen are sitting up front. Somehow she’s twisted around to talk with us without looking too uncomfortable. Her eyes sparkle and she can’t help but smile. It’s not a big vehicle. Her hand has gravitated to Jimmy’s shoulder and she rests it there. Familiar affection. She might not even know her hand is there but that’s still where she wants it to be and so does he.

  I am not jealous of good things that happen to my family members. Heck, I drive a Mazda Miata that is what—fifteen years old? Klarissa drives a nearly brand new Nissan GT-R that I’m quite certain cost what I make in a year. That doesn’t bother me at all. At least not much.

  But looking at the affection that flows between Jimmy and Kaylen reminds me that I’m thirty years old and have never had a serious relationship. Never. My last date was with Austin Reynolds—it ended as well as our conversation yesterday. Before that I sorta dated a guy from church who bought me a diamond ring after I told him we weren’t an item. Wow. My prospects for finding Mr. Right don’t feel real bright. But I am still happy weaving through Chicago highway traffic in a happy little minivan with my happy little family.

  I look over at Klarissa. My younger sister has the looks and the highest paying job in the family—her prospects are much brighter than mine. But she looks a little sad. She looks over at me and then back at Jimmy and Kaylen. I think we just read each other’s minds.

  I look at her left cheek where she was sliced by a knife. Even in a traumatized condition in the back of an ambulance, she opened her eyes, glared at everyone, including me, and demanded that a plastic surgeon be brought to the emergency room.

  Smart girl. She looks fantastic as ever.

  • • •

  “Anything to report?”

  “Not a word. It’s all quiet.”

  “The mayor said we’d get updates.”

  “It’s a murder investigation. This won’t be the first time he’s overpromised and under delivered to you.”

  “I’d like another set of eyes and ears on this thing. That was my son who was murdered.”

  “Let me think about how we might do that, Robert.”

  “Don’t think too hard, Stanley. Just do it.”

  13

  Billionaire Heir Murder—Too Many Suspects?

  Arnold Vanderhooven | Chicago Journal

  September 21, 7:00 a.m. CST

  What might be baffling detectives of the Chicago Police Department in the gruesome murder of billionaire heir, Jack Durham, is not a lack of suspects—but rather, too many suspects.

  A friend of the deceased who spoke on the condition of anonymity said this: “Jack Durham was the life of the party, but when he got drunk, which was most of the time, he was loud and abusive. He made a lot of enemies along the way. So it’s very fair to say there are a lot of people who would like to see him dead.”

  IF THAT’S HOW his friends talk about him, I’d hate to hear from his enemies. I skim through the article and a quote from Mayor Richard Doyle jumps out at me: “Our police treat every life and every crime with equal concern and determination. The murder of Jack Durham is certainly and justifiably a top priority.”

  Apparently the mayor is getting hammered by the press for showing favoritism to a political supporter.

  I’m not very political and don’t feel any need to defend our mayor. But the criticism doesn’t seem very fair.

  • • •

  Two years ago we had the fewest murders in Chicago since 1965. We were back under five hundred for the year. We were enjoying being part of a two-decade-long decline in violent crime in America. In the past two years murder rates have continued to drop nationally. But not in Chicago. We are surging upward.

  I have enough of a guilt complex that I sometimes feel responsible.

  Even when national murder rates are down, the statistics never tell the whole story. Not every city and neighborhood benefits equally. White, mixed, and Hispanic areas have had relatively equal drops in murder. But our African-American and immigrant neighborhoods never had the same decline rate, which makes the recent local climb in murder all the worse.

  I’m not sure why Allen Johnson, the ChiTownVlogger—stupid name but a very popular blogger with more than a million readers, who was in the middle of my last case—was so intent on attacking Commissioner Fergosi for being incompetent. I think Fergosi has done a great job heading up the Chicago Police Department. When he brought in a consultant from Philadelphia a couple years ago and promised change, everyone moaned and groaned. Consultants don’t get paid to tell you everything is okay. They make their big bucks flipping over the apple cart and then telling you they know how to put the apples back in it—even if they don’t have a clue. But the guy Fergosi hired had paid his dues in local enforcement in a couple big cities and actually had some great strategic ideas that Fergosi jumped on, particularly on working with the judiciary to be more aggressive with warrants for weapons searches with known felons. That was the biggest reason we were down almost twenty percent on murders.

  Then the politicians and judges got involved and shut down the strategy—profiling—but everyone points a finger at CPD when murders are back up. Way up. Even with more budget cuts, I don’t think I have anything to worry about with job security—except for my temper and a running feud with Czaka. Don tells me I need to be patient and Czaka’ll give me what I want. Why should I be patient on something as straightforward as having access to the files on my dad’s shooting so I can investigate on my own time?

  “Would you like to try our new apple strudel coffee cake?”

  I look up from the table at a preternaturally happy young man in a green apron carrying a tray with coffee cake samples in little white cups that might be big enough to hold two aspirins. I politely decline. I consider mentioning to him that the fuzzy little goatee he has going probably isn’t going to have its intended impact for another year or two. Unlike Deputy Director Robert Willingham—apparently the Love Doctor—I hold my counsel.

  I’m sipping a shot-in-the-dark at JavaStar—a plain cup of coffee with two shots of espresso dumped in—waiting for my younger sister, Klarissa, to show up. In the past year our relationship has been a roller coaster ride. The first three or four months we fought at our regular pace. Then we had three or four months where we got along better than at any other time in our lives. Then we had an ugly fight. Then she was taken hostage and I saved her life and she moved into my place because she was afraid of the dark. Then I spent a month and a week in Virginia as part of an FBI training program.

  I think saving her life and living together put us back on an upward climb. Saving someone’s life can do that. Does it matter we have never talked through our ugly incident?

  I was on an overnight trip with my dad for a soccer tournament when I was in high school. I asked him why he and Mom were fighting so much lately. He said that they went to a marriage enrichment seminar to learn how to communicate better—and now they were arguing about everything. Better to leave some things left unsaid, he told me. He then told me to never lie to my mother but that I didn’t need to mention what he just said.

  I smile at the memory.

  I hear the door open and look up. It is Klarissa. A guy two tables away has been looking my way for the last five minutes trying to make eye contact. I am officially forgotten. Forever. The apple strudel guy makes a beeline in her direction in case the barista behind the counter jump overs and gets to her first to offer a sample of their new blonde roast. I laugh. How does Klarissa do it? She doesn’t walk into rooms. She makes an entrance.

  • • •

 
“Like I said, I don’t start until Monday, so I just stopped by the office for ten minutes yesterday. I have no clue what’s going on,” I say to Klarissa.

  I ended up buying a piece of the coffee cake. Klarissa has been sipping on a tall skinny soy latte with nutmeg sprinkles for the last thirty-five minutes and has drained at least an inch and a half off the top. I’m thankful she didn’t get the coffee cake or we would be here all day. Although, unlike me, she does share her food. Since she eats slower and less in quantity than any other human being I know, I would have eaten both pieces.

  “So you really don’t know if the Second got the Durham murder. You’re not just holding out on me?”

  “I’m not holding out but even if I knew anything, we’ve already covered this. I’m not feeding you inside information.”

  “Tell me something I don’t already know.”

  “You’ll have to get your scoops the old fashioned way and bribe somebody else on the force.”

  “We don’t use the word bribe,” she says primly.

  Then we both laugh. We’ve had this discussion a couple hundred times. She’s in news and I’m in law enforcement. I’ve let her know that if I was the type of lowlife government employee that broke my vows of confidentiality she would be the first I would blab and sell my soul to—but not to hold her breath waiting. That’s good enough for her. The promise of being first.

  She sometimes knows what’s going on before I do. I’ve never had the desire or nerve to ask her if she really is paying CPD officers for news leads.

  Dad did thirty years on the force before he was shot. When I told him I was applying for a job on the force after college, the first thing he told me was to keep my nose clean, that there were too many dirty cops. He said the first time you take a favor it will feel innocent, but that’s how the bad guys get their hooks in you. I’ve kept my nose clean—not even a free cup of coffee from Dunkin Donuts, which seems to be a standing offer for CPD. Of course it might be a marketing strategy where coffee is a loss leader so they can make their profits on the boxes of donuts that are always in the office.