“Look, I know you want this over, but this is way too much. I know her! Known her for years. She’s one of the good ones. Lots of the kids around here owe their lives to her and her work. She’s done wonders for this town and never asked for anything. Hell, last year, she took on the mayor and Finch over a zoning dispute and won hands down. She might be a little older now, but she’s still a pistol.”
“A pistol yes. But as far as I can find out, she’s a pistol that’s been missing in action for a while. And I know why.”
Decker sat back. Whatever Terry had in mind, he was not too sure about it, but he was already anted up, so he might as well see the hand. “Okay, Bridger. This better be good.”
Terry took a deep breath and started in. “All this started about a year and a half ago. Dr. Broche found a girl in one of her jailhouse programs who turned out to be a superb cellist. Her name was Bethany Moss. She had minimal training, but she had this natural ability that made up for it. She had never even really played before, but she had a real talent for it according to everything Broche put on her Facebook page. The kind that comes along once in a lifetime. Anyway, Broche pulled every string she could find to get her an audition to some of the local music academies. And they loved her. Before she got out of jail, she had offers of scholarships and grants galore. She had a real shot at getting a life.”
Terry stood up and began to pace. He could feel Charlie trying to fit what he was hearing with what he had already learned. Terry knew he had to put this together the right way the first time.
“The only problem was that while she was in the joint, her mother,
Veronica Moss,
went to court and had her parental rights taken away. She already had two of her son’s boys and one apiece from her two other daughters, plus Bethany’s two girls, but she was a religious zealot and swore she wasn’t going to let her kids ruin anymore lives if she could help it. When Bethany got out about a year ago, she went to the house and tried to reason with her, but she wasn’t having it. Her mind was made up, and with the court on her side, she figured she didn’t have to listen. Broche even went down to the garage to try and talk to her on Bethany’s behalf, but according to one of the cabbies postings on Facebook, Veronica wouldn’t even listen. Pop Martin tried to get the two of them to come to some kind of accommodation, but in the end, once he realized that there was no way to argue logic with Moss, he sided with her just to keep the peace. That was what got him put on the list.”
Decker scowled as he asked, “What list?”
Terry shook his head. “My bad. At this point, I don’t think there was a list. Point is Pop went against Broche and that was bad news. But the real trouble came when Bethany couldn’t stay at her mother’s house. With no place to go, she stayed with a friend who was still in the life. It didn’t take long between the environment and her depression for Bethany to fall back into old habits. Really bad old habits. She was dead of an OD less than a month later.”
“And you think Broche went all mastermind and what not after that?”
“No. First, she confronted the mother again, and this time, it got physical. Broche got kicked off the property. Two months later, the killings started.”
Decker laughed out loud again. “That’s it? That’s your big proof?”
Terry had to chuckle himself. “Oh no, my friend. This is just where it started.” Suddenly, Terry looked at his watch and nodded to himself. “But we can talk in the car. We need to get moving.”
Decker looked confused. “Why? Where are we going?”
“To find the other half of this dream team. He should be heading home about now.”
“Home from what?”
“The night shift at Weinhart’s meats. He’s a butcher there.”
On his feet, Decker reached for his phone. “Gimme a minute and I’ll have a squad car pick him up. This time, like you said, we’ll make sure that—”
But Terry held up his hand. “Whoa, partner! If this guy is as far gone as the last one, all he’ll do is lawyer up and you can’t use the same ploy this time if he does. We need to find Broche. And he’s the only lead we have to find her.”
“What the hell do you mean?”
Terry sighed. “She’s pulling the strings; this guy is just a puppet. For whatever reason, if the clown we had in custody was any indication, they would rather die than turn on her. But if we can get to her, my money says she’s the decent sort that won’t be able to face her actions. We confront her with what she’s done, I think she’ll crack.”
Decker wasn’t so sure. “Really? You got no case, no proof, nothing! And you think that she’ll own up to this just because you make the accusation?”
Terry was already heading for the door. “Yeah, I do. And if not, we go to plan B.”
Decker shook his head. “And just what the fuck is plan B?”
Terry opened the door and motioned Decker through as he shrugged. “I’m working on it.”
On the way to the car, Decker tried to put together the pieces as Terry had given them. He had to admit that the pieces fit but that did little to make them more palatable. The idea that Dr. Broche was behind a series of the most brutal murders Chicago had ever seen was beyond him.
No, that was wrong. One thing he had learned was that nothing was impossible when it came to mankind. Even the good ones. If she had snapped, he’d help get her a lawyer if he had to. Like he said, this was his town and she was a good part of it. Given the things she had probably seen, he could almost understand her anguish, perhaps even her actions, to a point, but to take it to this level indicated an illness of the mind. Something that perhaps time and good medical care could fix.
He suddenly realized that despite the apparently ridiculous nature of the thought of her being involved in this, he was actually beginning to consider it as a possibility. He was afraid of what was being said about her, but he was more afraid of what his belief said about him. He abruptly decided he didn’t want to think about it anymore. Better to go on autopilot and let things happen the way they wanted. They would anyway, so why worry?
Decker led Terry to the garage and his car. Terry’s rental was still at the safe house, assuming that Roan or another of Decker’s minions hadn’t returned it for him. Decker had told him the rest of the travels they did would be done in his car. He seldom drove but decided that it was time to break out his
pet,
as he called it.
His
pet
was an old-school Mustang, circa nineteen seventy. Five hundred and fifty horsepower and a suspension designed to handle every kind of curve you could find. The car even looked like Decker, white with a blue interior. The tires looked to be rated to about two hundred miles an hour and the car looked as if it could do it easily. With it, they could be at Weinhart’s in a few minutes. Although Terry didn’t think he was going to enjoy the trip at all.
Decker slid behind the wheel with the satisfied look of a man sitting down in his favorite recliner. He turned the key and let the engine roar into life like a lion awaking from a deep and troubled sleep, shattering the quiet of the parking garage and triggering a pair of alarms on cars parked close to him on either side.
Terry noted all this with a sigh. He was sure this would not be a pleasure cruise now.
Weinhart’s was on the far side of town and about twenty minutes or so away, by Decker’s driving. The car hadn’t been out for a while, but Decker pushed it hard after a few minutes, just to get the feel of it again. It was clear he enjoyed driving the car and would have done it more often but for the rigors of his job.
Terry, meanwhile, sat waiting for the questions to begin. He knew Decker was having trouble with this, but the fact that he was still going along showed that he was, at least, trying to keep an open mind. That was all Terry needed.
Inside
his
mind though, Charlie, also still in the dark as to Terry’s findings, had his own questions. And no qualms about asking them.
“Your conclusions seem logical, but since I am not privy to the way you arrived at them, could you explain how this adds up?”
Terry hushed him, saying,
“I give Decker another couple of minutes before he starts in, and then, I can finish. All I can say now is that the trick with the computer really worked. I never realized you could do that so well.”
Charlie surprised him there, saying, “
I didn’t know it would work so well either. To tell the truth, ever since we had that encounter with Mir and Traci, I seem to be more...capable is the only word that comes to mind. As if the contact somehow improved our connection. Or at least my end of it.”
Terry agreed.
“Yeah, well you keep on getting better, because I get the feeling this ain’t over yet. And it only seems like it’s gonna get worse.”
On the ride over, Decker spent most of it deep in thought, mulling over what Terry had told him. As unlikely as it seemed, it was an answer to what was going on though it was not one that Decker would have ever come up with.
Dr. Broche was, as he had said, a local legend. Her New Garden program had saved hundreds of inner-city kids. And that was after a career in the army. She was past sixty but that was as close as Decker could put her age. It was like everything else, hard to believe but not impossible.
The hard part for Decker was that it was just so out of character for her. She wasn’t the kind to look for revenge. Hell, she was one of the staunchest opponents to the death penalty. Killing anyone didn’t fit his image of her. And he said so.
“Look, Bridger, you think she’s behind this, so tell me why somebody with her rep would do something like this? Not to mention how?”
Terry folded his lips in and nodded. Time to explain this fully.
“Okay, think of it like this. This girl was the ultimate success story if she made it. A former junkie, teenage mother, the whole nine yards. She would have verified all her work. Would have made it easier for whoever came after her to do the job as well. Then, she lost her to the worst thing possible. The very thing she was fighting all the time. The fight with Bethany’s mother was the first clue.”
Decker nodded as he darted around a car that took too long to move when the light changed. “All that is fine, but how do you make the leap from that to being the one killing cabbies?”
“But she isn’t killing cabbies,” Terry exclaimed. “She’s killing the ones she thinks are responsible for the death of her protégé. The cabbies that died were all
suspected
of drug trafficking. None of them had ever been convicted, but they all had a hand in it. Bethany’s girlfriend that took her in was probably one of their best customers, maybe even a runner or dealer, but she was definitely in on it. That was why she died first!”
Decker turned to look at Terry wide-eyed. “What do you mean first? She wasn’t a cabbie.”
Terry was ready for that. “No, she wasn’t a cabbie, but she was the first one that died in this. Being a junkie and a hooker, no one noticed and no one made the connection. She died nearly two weeks before the cabbies started dying.”
They were pulling onto the street Weinhart was on, so Decker eased off the engine to keep the noise down so as not to draw too much attention to them. He still had questions though.
“So she puts all this together in two weeks?”
“Dedication is a strange thing. She might’ve had them set up for something else and realized that they could be used for this in mid-stream.”
Immediately, Decker seized on that. “Wait a minute. What if she has a partner of some kind. A partner could mean she’s being controlled somehow, couldn’t it? I mean, if you think about it, that could be an option here, right?”
Terry blinked as the thought suddenly rammed itself home. “Of course! You know her better than me. It didn’t occur to me that there could be someone else pulling
her
strings!”
Charlie chimed in his opinion.
“How could you miss that possibility?”
Mentally, Terry answered,
“Because all the motives...the only motives I can find are hers. If this is somebody else’s game, what are their motives? And how would they make her go along with them?”
Charlie had an answer.
“Suppose their goals coincide? Or he gives her what she wants in exchange for her doing whatever it is he wants? They both achieve their goals that way.”
Terry nodded. He had missed that possibility. And to him, it should have been obvious. No, that wasn’t right. He didn’t know this woman. Rule one was that the first thought was generally right. He hadn’t considered this as an alternative, because he had fit all the pieces to her. He couldn’t figure out a reason why anyone would help her do this, so his initial idea was still, in his mind, sound. Still, he was willing to entertain the idea that there could be more to this than he had thought.
So he added out loud, “If there is another element to this, we’ll have to find out their role when we find Dr. Broche. She’s the key, at least for the moment. As light as the evidence is, it all points to her as near as I can figure. The trick is what we find when we get there.”
Decker nodded. He felt somewhat reassured that there was at least the possibility that there was an excuse for Dr. Broche’s actions.
They sat in the idling car just down the street from the main entrance to Weinhart’s, watching men and women stream out of the building and head to cars parked across the street. Wienhart’s had more than a hundred employees and each shift had enough to cause a flood of people to crowd the narrow street. With Charlie’s help, Terry scanned the crowd for his quarry. At the same time, he handed his phone to Decker.
Indicating the picture on the screen, he told Decker, “This is our boy. Samuel Carter.”
Decker took the phone and studied the image of the man on it. There was nothing special about him. He looked average to the extreme. But as Decker thought about it so did Cole. He pulled his phone out and brought up the picture he’d shown to Chans earlier and compared the two. It was clearly the same man.
“And your hacker found this guy when?”