"Mrs. Dunn, Ms. Moynihan, I so sorry for your loss," Meg began, though the entire time she spoke she was thinking about babies dying so she would not burst out laughing.
"It works," her friend Cheryl, an alum of Second City Improv, had told her years before. "It's fucking gross, but it works."
Meg had to admit that Cheryl was correct: It was fucking gross. But it worked, at least partly; enough that Meg could focus on what needed asking.
"Thank you," said the woman who was not too many years older than Meg, but was already a widow with three children.
"I know this is a difficult time for you and your sister, but in cases like your husband's time is of the essence; which is why I need to ask you some questions now, while the details are still fresh in your mind. Can I do that?"
"If it will help you catch whoever did this, then yes."
"Ok then," Meg answered gently before beginning.
The pair of riders were twins in almost every sense of the word, at least to the casual observers with whom they shared Route 72 as they exited Shaumburg and progressed west towards Genoa. They continued on this route to Byron before changing to Route 2 North, passing through Rockford before reaching the border between Illinois and Wisconsin. The entire route, called Summer On The Rivers, would total 180 miles if they chose to traverse its entirety, but November was not the season for such things. The weather had been very mild by Midwestern standards, but both the daughters of Jacob and Gabrielle Kane knew how quickly that could change, and so Beth and Kate had agreed that the border would be the furthest they would travel before turning around and heading home. It would take a keen eye indeed to spot the differences between the two Harley's, and also between the two women who wore riding leathers and helmets that were just as identical as the machines they straddled, and it was only when they reached their agreed upon turn around, brought their twin rides to a stop at The Rock Bar and Grill and removed their helmets that the first visual differences between the two women became apparent.
Kate had been replaying her morning's experience with Aric over in her mind almost the entire ride, and she still couldn't shake the feeling that those events that he had planted in her brain had happened to her. She still felt it in her muscles, and her bones; they way her throat felt as she screamed bloody murder while her stomach leapt up into that throat as they dived rapidly towards the approaching asphalt covered terrain of Manhattan. It was like every fiber of Beth's existence in that moment had been mapped and that map had been transferred to Kate. It was more than simple memory. Kate was Beth in that instance of time and space, and through her sister's connection with him she was also Aric. Kate could feel him in her sisters mind, the almost oneness of being as they defied gravity above the Metropolis that was Beth's home. But it was the brief glimpse at the end, as they sailed calmly over the blue water below them, as their sentiences flowed together, that Kate finally experienced what it was that Beth and Aric shared. She could draw that feeling back to life just by thinking about it, and with the feeling always came tears of joy. Beth had mentioned that it could become an addiction if she wasn't careful, and Kate could see now how true that was. Just the briefest glimpse, the merest taste, and Kate was ready to give whatever that beautiful man might ask for to feel it again.
But as luck would have it, that man was nowhere in sight; and it was a table for two and the lunch menu for the Kane sisters, a leisurely meal which was interrupted by a phone call.
"Where are you right now?" Barbara Gordon asked. Babs knew that Kate and Beth were riding a portion of Summer On The River, and she knew from experience which direction that would take them.
"Beloit. We're having lunch before heading home."
Kate could hear the sound of typing before Babs spoke again. "Can you swing by East Troy? It's only about forty minutes away."
"Swing by? What's in East Troy?" Kate asked as Beth picked up her own phone and started typing.
"GMB-Skogmo is in East Troy, at least the facility where Randy Dunn worked."
Beth held the phone up in front of Kate so she could see the small map and driving route displayed there. Kate looked at it for a moment before answering Babs. "Randy Dunn is..."
"John Doe 2022-11. The one from Milwaukee. My dad says his wife is in Chicago right now."
"And what, all the cops in Chicago took a sick day today? Doesn't he have a task force for this?"
"Yes, but you're already out there. And you said you wanted to spend time riding with Beth, so..."
"So you want us to visit a facility on a day when they're almost certainly closed, and do what? What is it they do again?"
"They are a German-founded multinational provider of sample and assay technologies for molecular diagnostics, applied testing, academic research, and pharmaceutical research."
Beth began typing on her phone again, and Kate knew exactly what she was looking up, and what description she would find. "Did you just read that off their web page?" she asked Barbara.
Kate could not see Barbara Gordon pull her hand away from the keyboard and push back from the computer. "Ummm...no?"
Beth held her phone up again to show Kate the verbatim text that Babs had just spoken. "Bullshit you did not."
"What do you want from me? I don't know anything about them. His wife says that he just didn't come home from work one evening. His job told the MPD that he had seemed fine, and had left work at the same time he always does. The have an APB out for his car. 2010 Acura. Wisconsin plate 615-TLP. That was over a week ago. She has no idea what he would have been doing in Chicago. Neither of them know anyone here, and she has never heard of the other two guys and again, no idea how her husband could know them."
"When did he turn up?" Kate asked as she picked up another french fry before dipping it in ketchup and popping it into her mouth.
Beth could hear a moment of quiet before Barbara Gordon's voice emanated from her sisters phone. "Early Wednesday."
"Then where the Hell was he for the week in between?" Kate wondered out loud.
"Good question. CPD is also keeping an eye out for his car just in case he drove here; but I don't think he came willingly, I don't think any of them did."
Me neither, Kate and Beth thought in unison. "Anybody checking the other two out?"
Barbara once again consulted her hand written notes. She recognized the name of the investigator that Laurel Lance had given her father, but the other name was a complete mystery. "ASA Lance has your friends are looking into the guy from New Jersey."
Kate had few friends, and none that she could think of in Jersey. "My Friends?"
"Well, Beth's friends. Jessica Jones, and somebody named Misty?"
Beth had met Misty Knight a couple of times, as well as her partner Colleen; but she didn't feel like she knew either woman well enough to form an opinion on either. Jessica, however...Beth had a very definite opinion where it came to her.
"If she convinced Jess to do some snooping, then it must be serious," Beth said to her sister.
What the fuck is going on? Kate wondered. Her silence went on long enough that Barbara felt that the time had come to resort to begging.
"So, will you take a ride for me? Please? Pretty please?"
The volume of Kate's phone was high enough that Beth had been able to hear every word. When Kate looked at her and raised her eyebrows in silent inquiry, Beth's response in the affirmative was just as silent.
"Fine. Send me the address."
Harvey stood at the SecureWyse FaxOCR terminal and continued to press the down button until he found the last item on his list. Jacob had needed to ask around for the first two dates when they would have received requests asking for data on the first two men. The last request, not even two days old, was easy to find. He pressed PRINT and retrieved the hard copy and added it to the file before logging out and walking away. Four of the printed documents were pure camouflage for the three that were his real targets. It was a half assed attempt, which he would freely admit, and it only hid him from someone looking that far back. He could ask someone to wipe the access log for the machine, but that would certainly draw unwanted attention. And in any case Harvey didn't think the DOJ had a rat problem, not for this at least. And if they did, each body that didn't ring any bells had to be making them think that their plan was fool proof. But another thought occurred to Harvey Abrams.
You have to log in to even check the log, he thought. Lets see who logs in but doesn't print anything. He would make it a point to visit the machine each day, and print out more bullshit requests (that were certainly not bullshit to the people who had made them). He just hoped, if they did have a rat, that their rodent was not as clever as he was.
"They're the same prints," Harvey said into his burner phone as he stood outside the Staples on Jefferson Davis Highway. "I'm no expert on fingerprints, but my eyesight's still good enough to recognize the same prints, submitted three times under three different names."
Three seconds of silence preceded Jacob Kane's voice. "Son of a fucking bitch."
"You should have the pdf in your inbox already. It's all there. And not just that. Something was applied to their faces, probably on the photographs, but check the last guy and see if his face has any residue that would alter how the fax interpreted his face when it scanned his photo. Tell your friend to compare the scans to the originals and he'll see immediately what I mean."
"Someone used the same set of untraceable prints for all three guys, and then did something to obscure their faces?" Jacob asked. "Then it's all local. It's local, and it's inside the CPD or the ME's office."
Harvey was nodding, even though Jacob couldn't see it. "It looks like it."
Jacob had no idea why he felt personally insulted by the possibility. He wasn't connected in any way to either organization that could be involved. "Shit."
"Who knows you're helping with this?" Harvey asked him. He was already looking over his own shoulder, covering his tracks, using his burner phone and considering dumping it and getting a new one. He knew Jacob always traveled with a host of armed guards, but still felt the need to warn him. "How exposed are you? This has to be bigger than one bad cop. Three related murders. A cover up of those murders. Someone is behind this, and they might think that one more murder will close this investigation down."
Jacob had thought of that already. "Jim Gordon knows. Kristen Fox knows. Some of their staffs know."
"If you tell one person, it's a secret. More than one is advertisement."
"I'll mention it to Victor," Jacob said, referring to his head of security, "but what would be the point of coming after me once I hand over everything I know?"
"They might not know that you handed everything over, and they might grab you to find out. Remember what these three guys went through before they died."
Tortured, Jacob thought. He knew the unspoken implication. He sat in his office and mulled the situation over for the amount of time it took him to open the document that Harvey had sent him before pressing the button on his phone that pinged Victor's personal comm.
Victor Fanucci walked into his office barely five seconds later. "Anyway, thanks Harv. You're off the hook. You can enjoy your long weekend, such as it is."
"Unless another body turns up in the Chicago River," his friend said before ending the call.
"I need an armed courier to run something over and place it directly into the hands of Commissioner Gordon," Jacob said to the large man standing in his office. It took Jacob less than a minute to copy the files to a thumb drive. "Have the courier wait with the commissioner while he reviews the information I'm sending him. Then tell him to have the commissioner call me. James Gordon and I need to have a conversation."
The former member of the Marina Militare took the small device from Jacob before speaking. "Expecting trouble? How armed?"
Victor observed the look on his protectee's face. "Bene. Ci penso io." {Right. I'm on it.}
It was a pretty good sized building. Its footprint took up a fair amount of space but, judging from the parking lot, less than fifty people worked in this particular location.
"Single story. Maybe they moved into an old warehouse, or someone had a fear of elevators?"
"Story and a half," Kate corrected her.
"Not that old. South facing windows, Looks like a reflective coating. UV goes in, IR doesn't come out. Passive solar."
"Take what the world gives you, and use it to your advantage," Kate said, "especially in Wisconsin in winter."
Their two motorcycles, Kate's brand new one and the five year old model she had just gifted to her sister, were the only two vehicles in the lot if they discounted the Ford Transit Cargo Van that sat at the far end of the building; the end with the pair roll up doors. Two large vertical metal tanks stood to one side of the door, both labeled in large green letters that announced Praxair to anyone who happened to be travelling along Emory Drive. On the other side of the standard size roll up door was a metal door fitted with a glass panel. To the left of that door was a black box that stood just below a posting listing names and phone numbers of persons and those persons titles. The cracked and worn asphalt that surrounded that side of the building was some small indication of neglect, but it was in the minority. Both women had removed their helmets and thin moisture wicking skull caps. Kate ran her gloved fingers through her short hair and shook her head before donning a pair of sunglasses while Beth took out the small hair brush she had used barely an hour earlier in Beloit. Her own Ray Bans went on a second later and the two women, still clad from neck to foot to fingertip in leather, began a quiet inspection of the outside of GMB-Skogmo Milwaukee, even though the city by that name was forty miles north east of where the building displaying the sign stood.
The coated windows made it difficult to see anything on the interior, but both women had noticed that all the exterior doors were fitted with uncoated glass and that the one next to the roll up door was on the side of the building that was most hidden from casual view.
"If I had known we were taking a side trip, I'd have come prepared, and Julia would have this door open already," Beth said as she looked at the card reader that stared back with its one red eye.
"Coulda, woulda, shoulda," Kate answered as the sisters stood shoulder to shoulder and gazed through the large glass pane.
Despite the fact that the Sun had crossed the meridian two hours previously the light was still bright and it took a moment for Beth to shield her eyes with her hands and allow those eyes to adjust before she could get a good look into that portion of the building that was clearly designed to take in materials and then send out finished products. Neither woman knew what they were looking for, and neither had any expectations of finding anything useful. As a result, Beth's heart leapt up into her throat as here vision settled on a wooden pallet waiting to be shrink wrapped; a pallet that contains many, many familiar looking objects.
"Fuck me."