Hush (5 page)

The lobby was where the press waited, hoping
to get an unauthorized scoop. So far, the Sheppard murders hadn't
been publicly connected with the earlier homicides. There were
around four hundred murders a year in Chicago, down from an
all-time high of eight hundred. If the victim wasn't famous, the
homicide didn't attract attention, and was only given a few lines
in the Herald. But let somebody make some sort of comparison and
the lobby would soon be swarming with camera crews.

Max spotted Alex Martin, a fairly new
reporter on the police beat. New reporters had it tough. Most
police officers trusted and worked with only a few journalists. The
others they ignored, so it was hard for anybody starting out to get
a fresh story.

But Alex was young and ambitious, energetic
and relentless. He had so much energy it was exhausting to spend
five minutes with him. He jumped up from where he'd been sitting
scribbling notes.

"Detective Irving!"

Leaving his sandwich and wrapper on the
bench, he hurried up to Max, looking like he'd stepped right out of
a Gap ad with his khaki pants, his wild tie, his leather sandals.
"Detective Irving! May I talk with you a moment?" He glanced in
Dunlap's direction, a brief question bringing his dark eyebrows
together, quickly dismissed her as nobody important, then focused
back on Max.

"About this murder." With the skill of a
desperate man, he stepped in front of Max, blocking his path. "The
Sheppard case. Any leads?"

Max stopped in his headlong flight for the
door. He let out a deep, weary breath, wishing the guy in front of
him would vanish, taking the woman and her cat with him.

"Is it true that a baby was murdered
too?"

"You know damn well I can't talk about the
case right now. When I know more, we'll get you a copy of the
report."

"What about a press conference? Do you
foresee this being big enough to merit a press conference?"

"We don't hold press conferences for every
murder in Chicago."

"Yeah, but I thought this might be
different."

"Only if you make it different. You won't do
that, will you?"

"You mean pad a story?"

"Exactly."

"Hell no. I mean, no. Of course not."

"Good."

Max glanced to his left, ready to indicate to
Dunlap that it was time to go. She wasn't there. He spotted her
near the check-in desk, talking to the street person they'd passed
earlier. She was holding up the cage so he could look in at her
cat. The man was nodding and smiling now—two pet owners comparing
notes. Ivy pressed something into the man's hand—money, Max
supposed—then quickly caught up with Max.

"What a relief to see you treat everyone with
courtesy," she said conversationally once they were outside in the
parking lot with the noise of an overhead street ramp, the heat,
the people. "And here I thought it was just me."

"Should I be more like you and give every
homeless person in Chicago money?"

"The reporter was just doing his job."

"I don't have the time or the inclination to
be charming."

The reality of being back in Chicago was
beginning to sink in. A part of Ivy couldn't believe she was here,
in the city where such awful things had happened, where her life
had changed so drastically.

She could feel her mind slipping.

Don't fall apart. Not in front of him. Not in
front of anybody. Don't fall apart.

This is what I wanted, she told herself.
True, but that didn't mean it didn't scare the hell out of her.

The noise. The chaos. Had it always been this
bad? Cars honking, sirens blaring, the shriek of bus brakes, and
the smell of diesel when the huge vehicle pulled away from the
curb? Construction, wood-planked walkways, jackhammers. How did
people stand it? How did they think? Function?

The man beside her seemed oblivious to it
all.

It was two o'clock in the afternoon. They
were driving through city traffic, Max Irving steering with one
light hand on the wheel. There were cars in front, cars behind, to
the left, the right. She tried to shut herself off, tried to block
out the noise of the traffic, to block out the past that suddenly
didn't seem like the past anymore.

Confusion. So much confusion.

"Here." Max startled her by tossing a folder
in her lap. She stared at the bold, black print: Sheppard Case.

"Go on. Open it. That's why you're here,
isn't it?"

Ivy opened it.

The first thing she saw was an eight-by-ten
color glossy of the murdered mother. It was a close-up of her face.
Straight, chin-length blond hair, matted with blood, blue eyes open
wide. Lividity on the right side. Lividity occurred when the heart
stopped mixing plasma. The red cells settled like sediment in wine,
turning the skin anywhere from red to purple. From the photo,
anyone with a slight knowledge of forensics would be able to see
that the victim had been moved several hours after the death. So
the head shot, horrific as it was, wasn't taken simply for shock
value— although Ivy was fairly certain that's why Irving had not
only tossed it to her, but why he'd put it on top. Talk about
staging. She refused to play his game. She slammed the folder shut
and closed her eyes, resting her head against the headrest.

"Not going to puke, are you?"

"Certainly wouldn't warn you if I was."

She may not have ever profiled an actual
case, but she'd spent the last ten years profiling everyone she
came in contact with, from bank teller to grocery clerk. Ivy had
honed her profiling skills until she'd gotten so good at judging
the book by its cover that she'd been in danger of becoming a
parlor trick at the psychology department's yearly Christmas
party.

Irving was easy. A hotshot detective,
burnt-out but unwilling to admit it to himself. Used to have a
sense of humor, but didn't have time for such nonsense anymore.
Problems on the home front. Looking at him, a layman might conjure
up a trophy wife, one he ignored unless they were fighting about
his job and his lack of attentiveness. But Ivy had noted his
rumpled clothes, his air of distraction—an ongoing state that clung
to parents, especially single parents, who were juggling two
worlds: the world of work and the world of home.

What she didn't understand was why he had it
in for her. "Why do you resent me so much?" She opened her eyes and
lifted her head. "Is it because I'm a woman?"

"That has nothing to do with it."

"Because I'm from Canada?"

"Oh, come on. I don't want to get into
this."

"I do." Anything to get her mind off the
past. Earlier she'd been too tired to fight with him. Now she
welcomed it.

"I don't have anything against Canadians. I
just think we can handle this without your help."

"You didn't handle it before."

"I wasn't on the case before."

Somebody cut him off. He laid on his horn,
then missed the light completely. "Shit," he said, slamming his
hand against the steering wheel. Apparently he wasn't as oblivious
as she'd thought.

In the backseat, right behind his head, Jinx
decided it was time to complain by letting out a long, weird,
drug-laden meow.

"You wanna know what bothers me?" Irving
asked, his voice and demeanor reflecting ever-increasing agitation.
"That cat. That damn cat. I don't think somebody who has to haul
her damn cat with her is going to know jackshit about a serial
killer. I don't think somebody who keeps flinching"—he snapped his
fingers in front of her face, she flinched and drew back in the
seat—"every damn time a horn honks is going to be able to handle a
case like this. I don't think spending ten years with your nose in
a book is quite the preparation you need for this job. I worked my
ass off to get where I am. I went to George Mason University. I
trained at Quantico. Do you know how hard it is to get into
Quantico?"

Okay, she could see his point, understand why
she was a sudden irritant. She wished she could tell him the truth,
tell him why she was every bit as qualified as he was, but she
couldn't. And anyway, none of that really mattered. Not Max
Irving's opinion of her, or her lack of a satisfactory
presentation. Catching the killer, that's what mattered.

Ivy was ready to take the first apartment
they looked at, just to get it over with, just to get out of
Irving's car, get out of the noise, get Jinx settled, take a couple
of aspirin, be alone. She needed to be alone so all of this could
settle, could soak in. This being in Chicago, a place of
unspeakable horrors. Here. Now. All around her.

Memories. She kept holding them back, holding
them back. . . . But they were building. She didn't know how much
longer she could hang on, how much longer before they came crashing
into her mind.

"This place is no good," Irving said halfway
into the tour of the prospective apartment.

Ivy opened her mouth to protest when Irving
grabbed her arm and dragged her with him down the dimly lit hall
that smelled of marijuana, body odor, cooked cabbage, and the
rotten smell a building succumbed to when the termites were done
with it.

She planted her feet firmly on the floor and
wrenched her arm free, feeling true anger for the first time that
day, for the first time in maybe . . . years.

"What the hell are you doing?" she
demanded.

"Keeping you from making a stupid
mistake."

She wanted to slug him. Instead, she pushed
at him with both hands while the manager watched from the open
doorway of the apartment they'd just exited. "Don't tell me what to
do," she said. "Are you always such an ass?"

"Only when I have to be."

"That's reassuring."

He began ticking off the reasons she
shouldn't take the apartment. "Bad locks. Bad windows. Cockroaches.
And ... a crackhead living in the hallway."

She followed the direction of his gaze to a
dark corner where she could barely make out a human shape curled up
on the tile floor.

There were times to hold your ground, and
times to let that ground be conquered and taken. Irving could damn
well place his flag and take the battle for his own.

His mobile phone rang and he quickly answered
it.

"What time do you get off work?" Irving asked
the caller. Then, "I'll be there to pick you up. Understand? No
catching a ride with anybody, no taking off to Ryan's." A pause.
"No excuses. I'll be there at nine o'clock."

When kids were little, you dropped them off
at the sitter and didn't worry about them for the rest of the day.
When they got older, got to be teenagers, it was a completely
different story.

"A teenager?" she asked after Max ended the
call.

"Yeah." There was a lot of weight in that
single word.

"Ah." She nodded.

"A son," he added, as if by telling her she
would understand how much more difficult having a son would be over
a daughter. Which told her he didn't have a daughter.

"Ah."

"You have any kids?"

She'd been asked the question so many times
in her life that her reply was instant and without emotion. "No,
but my friend Helen says having a teenager is like living in a war
zone where you have to be hyper- vigilant at all times."

He laughed and tucked his phone away.
"Ethan's a good kid. A great kid. We're just going through a rough
patch right now. We'll get through it."

It wasn't his words, but rather the emotion
and emphasis behind them that told Ivy he loved his son very
much.

The next apartment met with his reluctant
approval. It was a turnkey, meaning the basics like sheets, towels,
TV, and dishes were supplied. And there was a grocery store a block
away.

The place had no living room to speak of.
Upon stepping inside, you were immediately in the kitchen. The
first thing you smelled was gas from the pilot light. Right there
was a small table with two black stools, a few steps more and you
were at the white enamel sink. To the left of the kitchen area was
the bedroom, with the bathroom off that. Next to the double bed was
a window with white paint so thick it would be hard to open or
shut. Ivy could tell that the building had once been nice, years
and years ago; it still had that hint of past elegance, like
beautiful wooden floors and ornate ceiling lights.

Students lived there. And businessmen whose
real homes were somewhere else. Construction workers. Displaced
people in a transient period of their lives. Some kids. Mothers in
the middle of a divorce. Or maybe their husbands had abused them
one too many times and they'd moved out.

Not a happy place.

But a real place.

"Get another dead-bolt lock on the door," Max
told the landlord.

Ivy collected Jinx from Max's car. Max seemed
suddenly more than happy to carry her huge black suitcase up the
two flights of stairs. He put it down just inside the door and
placed the case files—one thick, one thin—on the narrow kitchen
table.

"There's no direct subway line from here to
Grand Central Police Station," Max told her. "You'll have to take
the Green Line to Central, then catch a metro bus."

"I'm sure I'll get the hang of it." Even
though she was in an unfamiliar area of Chicago, she had a good
sense of direction.

After Max left, Ivy sweet-talked the
still-drugged Jinx, opening his cage so he could come out when he
felt like it. She offered him water that he refused to drink and
poured dry cat food in a bowl.

While he was still indisposed, she walked
down to the corner store and picked up some groceries, along with
other necessities like toothpaste, toilet paper, and cleaning
supplies.

Back at the apartment, she donned a pair of
yellow rubber gloves and cleaned the bathroom—claw-foot tub, sink,
medicine cabinet, and toilet—with a disinfectant so strong it made
her eyes and throat burn.