Chapter 3 - THE DRAWING IN LOCKER 417
“You gave them his location?”
My voice sounded like someone else’s.
Frank didn’t look away.
“Yes.”
I shoved the badge at his chest.
“You stood at his funeral.”
“I know.”
“You hugged me.”
“I know.”
“You told me you wished you’d been there.”
“I did.”
“You were the reason they knew where to find him.”
“No.”
The word cracked through the SUV.
I stared.
“You just admitted it.”
“I gave them a location.”
Frank leaned forward despite the blood soaking his shirt.
“It wasn’t the location.”
Matteo glanced back.
“What does that mean?”
“Tom knew.”
Hearing my father reduced to that familiar name almost broke something in me.
“Knew what?”
“That Kessler had me.”
Frank swallowed.
“Your father figured it out three days before he died.”
“Then why keep working with you?”
“Because that was your father.”
His voice softened.
“He didn’t throw people away just because they failed him.”
I hated how believable that sounded.
Frank reached into his coat and removed a folded photograph.
Old.
Creased.
My father stood outside a diner, younger than I remembered him, smiling beside Frank.
On the back, in my father’s handwriting:
Frank — if they ask, Calumet. Tell them 9:30.
My knees went weak.
“That’s his writing.”
“Yes.”
“He told you to betray him?”
“He told me to feed Kessler the lie he expected.”
“Then where was Dad really going?”
Frank looked at Matteo.
“That’s the question I’ve spent twelve years trying to answer.”
A car behind us accelerated.
Matteo made a hard right.
The SUV tires screamed.
“Seat belts.”
A sedan came alongside us.
Its passenger window dropped.
Frank shoved my head down.
Three gunshots punched into the SUV’s rear quarter panel.
Matteo didn’t flinch.
He drove directly toward a delivery truck entering an intersection, cut across its nose, and left the sedan trapped behind it.
The second car stayed with us.
“De Luca has another location?” Frank asked.
“Yes.”
“No.”
Matteo’s eyes met his in the mirror.
“No?”
“They found the last one.”
“Because it was a De Luca property.”
“And you think police property is safer?”
“I think predictable is dead.”
That ended the argument.
Twenty minutes later, we entered the underground loading bay of a closed printing company on the West Side.
Vincenzo De Luca was waiting.
He took one look at Frank and stopped.
“Mallory.”
“De Luca.”
Twelve years of hatred passed between them without another word.
Then Vincenzo saw the badge in my hand.
Something flickered across his face.
“Thomas’s.”
I closed my fingers around it.
“You knew he had it.”
“No.”
“Everyone keeps saying no after twelve years of lies.”
Vincenzo accepted that without protest.
A medic worked on Frank while I stood beside an industrial table covered with my father’s evidence.
Photographs.
Offshore account numbers.
The cassette.
The white lily card.
Vincenzo picked up the cassette case.
“May I?”
“You gave it to me.”
“I gave you what Thomas gave me.”
Frank looked over sharply.
“My father gave you the tape?”
“Not directly.”
“Then who?”
“My daughter.”
The room became quiet.
“Sofia was nine,” Vincenzo said. “The night Thomas pulled her out of that warehouse, he put her in his car.”
His voice roughened.
“He gave her a coat because she was freezing. Before another officer arrived, he slipped this cassette into the coat pocket.”
“Why give it to a child?”
“Because every adult around him wore a badge.”
That landed.
“He told her to give it to me and nobody else.”
Frank stared at the cassette.
“Tom knew.”
“He suspected.”
“Kessler?”
Vincenzo’s expression hardened.
“All of them.”
I picked up the plastic case.
There was an old white sticker on its side.
I had assumed the faded writing was a catalog number.
Frank leaned closer.
“Four-one-seven.”
“What?”
“That isn’t a catalog number.”
He took my father’s badge from my hand and flipped open the old leather holder.
Inside the lining was a shallow cut.
Frank pushed his thumbnail into it.
A tiny brass key dropped onto the table.
Stamped into the head:
I stared.
“You never found that?”
“I never cut the holder open.”
Vincenzo looked at the key.
“Union Station.”
“How do you know?”
“Those lockers used that key style before the renovation.”
Matteo shook his head.
“Half of them were removed years ago.”
“Not the historical row,” Frank said. “Lower concourse.”
An hour later, just before dawn, we stood inside Union Station.
Frank had refused the hospital.
The medic had bandaged him tightly enough to keep him upright, though Matteo stayed close.
Locker 417 sat behind a decorative brass gate in the preserved section.
The key turned.
Inside was no dramatic box of money.
No gun.
No ledger.
Just three things.
A small red-beaded bracelet.
A Polaroid photograph.
And a child’s drawing folded twice.
Vincenzo saw the bracelet first.
His face changed.
“Sofia’s.”
I picked it up carefully.
A tiny silver star hung from the elastic beads.
“She wore this the night Dad saved her?”
“Every day for two years.”
“Why would he keep it?”
“He didn’t.”
Vincenzo looked confused.
“I took it off her wrist in the hospital.”
Frank turned toward him.
“Then Thomas got it afterward.”
Which meant my father and Vincenzo had met again.
Another lie.
Another missing night.
I unfolded the photograph.
My father was standing beside a loading dock.
Sofia sat inside an ambulance wrapped in his coat.
Behind them were three policemen.
Frank.
A younger detective I recognized from the cassette evidence.
And a tall man in a dark suit wearing a red tie.
His face had been scratched out.
The child’s drawing made my blood turn cold.
Crayon figures stood beside a warehouse.
A little girl.
My father.
Three men with blue squares on their chests.
And one tall man wearing a bright red tie.
Over his hand, nine-year-old Sofia had drawn a thick gold ring.
Vincenzo went completely still.
“What?”
He didn’t answer.
“Vincenzo.”
His eyes remained on the red-tie figure.
“That ring.”
“What about it?”
“Sofia drew it exactly.”
I looked closer.
The ring contained a black stone with a gold diagonal slash.
Frank cursed.
He grabbed the Polaroid and angled it beneath the overhead light.
The scratched-out face was gone.
But the man’s hand remained visible.
The same ring.
I remembered seeing it somewhere.
Then Matteo pulled out his phone.
He searched for a photograph and turned the screen toward me.
Chicago Police Superintendent Raymond Kessler stood at a charity banquet.
Silver hair.
Perfect uniform.
Gold ring with a black stone.
I felt suddenly cold.
“He was there.”
Frank’s voice was bitter.
“He was always there.”
A sound came from behind us.
“Claire?”
We turned.
A woman stood beyond the brass gate.
Late twenties.
Dark hair.
Pale face.
Vincenzo whispered her name.
“Sofia.”
She wasn’t looking at him.
She was looking at the drawing in my hands.
Her mouth opened.
“That’s mine.”
I stepped toward her.
“You remember making it?”
She nodded slowly.
“Your father told me to draw everything I saw.”
My heart pounded.
“Do you remember the man in the red tie?”
Her expression changed.
Not confusion.
Recognition.
Fear.
“Yes.”
Frank took one step closer.
“Who was he?”
Sofia stared at the scratched photograph.
Then she looked at me.
“Raymond Kessler.”
My hands went numb.
“The police superintendent?”
“He wasn’t superintendent then.”
May you like
Her eyes filled.
“He was the man who told the others they could kill your father after they killed me.”
