Dante's Poison Page 15

  At one time, you couldn’t miss the paper’s headquarters, which occupied a commanding site on the banks of the Chicago River. When it was built in the 1950s, the gigantic glass box with the paper’s name festooned in ten-foot-high letters on the roof was the very epitome of modern “Chicago” style. But as the decades wore on, the building began to seem like so many other featureless relics of the Cold War, so that not even the preservationists protested when a certain real estate mogul knocked it down to make way for a hotel-residential tower topped by a $32 million penthouse. The newspaper now resided less grandly in an annex of the massive Merchandise Mart next door.

  Klutsky came to fetch me at the entrance on Kinzie, and we went up to Welsh’s office in a glass-partitioned corner of the newsroom that did little to mute the cacophony of telephones ringing in the background.

  “Fucking printers’ union,” Walsh bellowed as we came in. “I’ve got creditors salivating to get their hands on the paper’s assets and legal bills piled higher than the Hancock Building, and all they can think about is how they’re going to get their next COLA. Not to mention all the fine folks who think their newspaper should be delivered to their doorstep every morning for free. What I need is a time machine so I can go back and strangle Steve Jobs and all the other assholes who invented the Internet.”

  I pictured Ed Asner dressed in today’s business-casual attire. He had the gravel-pit voice to go with it.

  “Did I tell you that our ad revenues are down another five percent? It’ll serve ’em all right when the only news they can get is from some two-bit blogger reporting on UFO sightings in New Mexico.”

  “Wait,” Klutsky said archly. “Didn’t we run a story just like that the other day?”

  “Wiseacre. You know I didn’t have a choice. It came over the wire from AP, and there would have been hell to pay if the Tribune picked it up and we didn’t. Nation’s a trillion dollars in debt, the politicos are in total gridlock, and the Corn Belt hasn’t seen a drop of rain since last July, and what do they want to read about? Space aliens and celebrity fetuses. Christ, am I ready for retirement. So what have we got here?”

  Welsh got up out of his chair, and Klutsky introduced us.

  “I remember you,” Welsh said immediately, shaking my hand. “From that feature Tom wrote. Aren’t you the doctor who went back to seeing his patients literally the day after he went blind? I gotta tell you how much I admire that. If it was me the lights went out on, I wouldn’t have left the house for a year.”

  “Yeah, well, don’t believe everything you read in the papers,” I said, sending a disgruntled look in Tom’s direction.

  “So, how do you manage it? It must be hell getting around. And not following sports events. I go crazy missing a single period of the Blackhawks.”

  Apparently someone else who had never heard of radio. “It’s given me more time to catch up on my knitting,” I said, smiling and taking the chair he pushed toward me.

  “See, that’s what I mean,” Welsh said to Klutsky. “On top of everything, a helluva sense of humor.”

  “Laughter is what keeps me going,” I agreed.

  “So how can I help you?” Welsh returned to the seat behind his desk and squeaked heavily down, while Klutsky took the one to my left.

  “I was hoping you might answer some questions about Rory Gallagher.”

  “OK. But what’s your interest? Unless he was your patient. In which case, I’d sure like to get your story.”

  “Sorry, I didn’t know anything about the man until two weeks ago.” I described my involvement in the case, the attack on Hallie and me, and the note left at my office. I slid the copy over his desk. Welsh picked it up and read.

  “This is great,” he said happily. “Just great. I’ll have it on the front page tomorrow.”

  “Not so fast,” I said. “First, there’s something you can do for me.”

  “I’m all ears,” Welsh said. Then: “Sorry, I should have phrased that differently.”

  “I’ll try not to let it depress me. How much looking into Gallagher’s death has your paper done?”

  “Pretty much none,” Welsh conceded. “I mean, once the police arrested Barrett, there wasn’t much to follow up on. The story was already out of the can. All we had to do was report it and shed some crocodile tears over the loss of our dear, departed colleague. Why? You think there’s a question about whether she did it?”

  “Could be. For starters, the motive the police pinned on her is a little thin.”

  “Not as far as I’m concerned. In my business you see it all the time. Middle-aged woman attached to a guy with a wandering eye discovers he’s getting it on with a younger broad. She can’t stand being replaced, so she does him in. Hell, it’s just like the Scarsdale Diet doctor and that woman—what was her name? Plenty of dough, high-profile career, but all it took was being passed over by a seventy-year-old for her to go off the deep end. Like they say, ‘hell hath no fury.’ And I’m not even going to bring up change of life.”

  Klutsky, by my side, chuckled. “Good choice, Sam. Your wife might get wind of it.”

  Welsh said, “Here’s one for you: how does a man know when his wife is in a bad mood?” He paused before delivering the punch line. “If she’s in menopause, whenever she’s awake.”

  Klutsky and Welsh laughed uproariously.

  “OK, fellas, that’s hilarious,” I said. “But just for the sake of argument, let’s say it wasn’t Barrett. How many other people might have welcomed seeing Gallagher dead?”

  “How high can you count?” Welsh replied. “Klutsky here must have told you his fan club didn’t extend very far around here. But hating a bastard is a far cry from killing him. And I doubt you’ll find many among the folks he put away who aren’t still in prison or whiling away their remaining hours in a nursing home.”

  “I don’t suppose you’d admit to wanting him out of the way yourself?”

  Welsh didn’t pull any punches. “The company lawyers aren’t here to put a gag order on me, so I’ll be candid with you. Damn right I wanted him off my payroll, if only to get the feminist office squad off my tail. But kill him? Sorry, I have too much to look forward to when I’m outta here.”

  It sounded sincere, but I wasn’t sure I believed him. “OK,” I said. “But how about stories he was working on? Wouldn’t it be a motive for murder if Gallagher was about to blow the lid off something?”

  Welsh discounted this. “Maybe when he was younger, but Gallagher hadn’t come up with a credible scoop in years. I stopped paying attention to his column long ago, except to hand it over to the aforesaid lawyers every week to make sure it wasn’t going to land us in another stink.”

  “Can you try to find out? There must be something in his files to indicate what he was working on.”

  “Can’t help you in that department, either,” Welsh said matter-of-factly. “The police went through Gallagher’s office and walked off with everything that wasn’t bolted down, including his computer. I doubt there’s so much as a paper clip left in there.”

  For a newspaperman he was mighty uninquisitive. “How about your servers?” I said impatiently. “The police didn’t walk off with them, too. Can’t you look there?”

  “I could, but I doubt it would turn up what you’re looking for. After the last bill for e-discovery, Gallagher was under strict orders to keep anything sensitive on his machine at home. I could have one of my IT people go through the backup tapes, but it’s going to take time—and money. What’s in it for me?”

  “A story, if I find one. And if I don’t, I’ll give you permission to print that note in your hand.”

  Welsh said, “Let me think about this for a minute or two.”

  I listened while he breathed heavily, no doubt weighing my request against his budget woes.

  “OK,” Welsh said finally. “I’m in. If there’s something there, where do you want it sent?”

  I gave him my and Bjorn’s addresses.

  “Don’t mention
it,” Welsh said, as I was thanking him and getting ready to leave. “Just remember to reward me properly if anything comes of it. And what would you say to me hanging onto this little piece of paper here as security?”

  I grinned broadly at him. “You must think I’m blind.”

  Back on the street again, I was pondering what to do next when my phone rang. It was Rusty Halloran.

  “Are you somewhere where you can talk privately?” he asked.

  “At the moment, I happen to be standing on a corner outside the Merchandise Mart, so no. But I could come over.”

  “Please do. There’s been another development concerning our friend Levin.” He sounded unhappy.

  “I’ll be there ASAP,” I said.

  Even when I was sighted I always found the streets around River North confusing, so I used my phone to plot a course from the Mart to Rusty’s offices, first heading two blocks east on Kinzie until it met up with LaSalle. I turned left at the corner and threaded my way through the clinking cutlery and grilled-steak aroma of an outdoor café before continuing up the block into a stiff wind. The sun was searingly bright, but it was easy to tell that fall wasn’t far off, and I shivered each time I passed through a shadow, as much from the sudden drop in temperature as from the thought of the raw, monotonous winter to come. Another three hundred feet brought me to Hubbard, where I waited for the whoosh of south-flowing traffic on LaSalle to subside before crossing over. Remarkably, the ten-minute trip did not yield a single offer of assistance. I would have congratulated myself on another successful passage through the Twilight Zone if I hadn’t been preoccupied with what Rusty had to tell me—and fearing the worst.

  When I heard what it was, I was only partially relieved. “A second suicide?” I said from one of the cigar-smoke-infused leather chairs in his office.

  “Unfortunately, yes. Just the other day. Another New Trier student he was treating for depression,” Rusty said grimly.

  “How?”

  “Overdose of alcohol and mommy’s painkillers. The young lady’s parents were away for the weekend in Door County and found her when they got home. She was seventeen.”

  “Jesus. How’s Levin taking it?”

  “How do you think?”

  I shook my head in worry. “He needs to be seeing another shrink. Have you had any luck convincing him?”

  “No, but I’ve started a rearguard action through Betsy. She was going to stop by the home today. Nobody is as persuasive as my wife when she’s got a campaign to sink her teeth into, so keep your fingers crossed.”

  “I will, but maybe I should talk to Levin, too.”

  “That would be ideal if we didn’t have a court date coming up. We need to keep your knowledge of the second death to a minimum.”

  “Won’t the fact come in anyway?”

  Rusty gave out a long sigh. “It shouldn’t. Usually evidence of so-called ‘other bad acts’ can’t be introduced to prove that a person acted similarly in the case at hand, the rationale being that it’s highly prejudicial to the defendant and nearly impossible to contradict. But there are exceptions to the rule. I’ll fight like hell to keep the girl’s suicide out of it, but with two dead kids in the mix, I don’t know of many judges who’ll go along.”

  Poor Levin. And with two adolescent suicides on his track record, it wouldn’t be long before the state board was breathing down his neck—whether he deserved it or not. I tried to think of something that might help.

  “I wonder if it could be the beginning of a cluster,” I said. “They’re unfortunately common in people under the age of twenty-five. Was Danny Carpenter’s death the subject of a lot of attention?”

  “It was all over the North Shore papers for a week, in addition to the candlelight vigil his parents’ neighbors staged at their church. And I’m not including all the flowers and signs left at the place where he smashed up his car. For weeks you couldn’t go up or down that part of Sheridan Road without seeing it.”

  It was frustrating, but such community outpourings of grief often made the situation worse, leading other vulnerable teenagers to follow in their peers’ footsteps. That plus the wrong kind of media coverage—too much focus on the method and place of death—only increased the risk of further suicides.

  “That might be an avenue of inquiry, then,” I said. “Find out whether the girl knew Danny and how she reacted to his death. She may or may not have mentioned it to Levin, especially if she was trying to hide suicidal ideation, but her friends might be able to say. And keep your ears open for other similar cases. God forbid another kid should go off and kill themself, but it would take some of the heat off your client. Three or more suicides over a short period of time is enough to get the health department to step in.”

  “I won’t wish for that, but I’ll keep it in mind. And now perhaps you’d be willing to share what happened to you? Somehow I don’t think you cut yourself shaving,” Rusty said, referring to the bandage still stuck to the side of my head.

  I was glad he brought it up. There were a few things I wanted to ask him.

  “So Hallie was concerned from the start that Jane was keeping something from her,” Rusty said after I’d given him the whole story, including the events of the bond hearing, the attack on us, and the provocative, pasted-together note.

  “Can you think of a reason for that, besides her being guilty?”

  He thought about this for a few minutes. “Hmmm . . . guilt is certainly one possibility, but not the only one. When was the last time you partook of the sacrament of confession?”

  I groaned. “You should know better than to ask a lapsed Catholic that. There aren’t enough mea culpas in the world to cover all the years I’ve gone unabsolved of my sins. What about you?”

  “I still go weekly. Not because I’m a believer in the man upstairs, but as a cheap form of therapy. It’s the one place I can go to unburden my conscience with absolute certainty that nothing I say will ever be known to anyone besides myself and the good father. Can you say the same about your business?”

  “Not a hundred percent, but pretty close. Patient confidentiality is one of the core ethical values of the profession.”

  “And one that you would go to great lengths to preserve?”

  “Absolutely. The only reason I can think of for breaching it would be to save another person from serious harm, or to defend myself in a malpractice suit.”

  “Well,” Rusty said, “The same, or a similar thing applies to lawyers. A lawyer can’t disclose a client’s secrets—even to another lawyer—except in rigorously defined circumstances. And while those circumstances include the malpractice situation you refer to, they don’t include defending oneself against a murder charge.”

  I was beginning to catch on. “So you’re saying that the information Jane was withholding from Hallie might have had something to do with one of her clients?”

  “If you’re looking for an explanation besides her being guilty of the crime, it’s something to consider. Perhaps instead of a lover’s quarrel, she and Gallagher were fighting over privileged information that somehow ended up in Gallagher’s hands. The fellow was an investigative reporter, wasn’t he? And in a downward spiral according to the news reports I read. Perhaps he abused her trust to lay his hands on something he wasn’t entitled to.”

  I thought back to the bond hearing, the testimony of the witnesses who had overheard Jane and Gallagher arguing. What was it Jane had said? “You won’t get away with it!” Could she have meant something entirely different than what the police imagined? It certainly fit into my theory that Jane had nothing to fear from Gallagher’s attentions to Lucy Sparks. And it would explain what Jane had gone looking for in Gallagher’s place afterward.

  “All right,” I said to Rusty. “I’m following you. But I find it hard to believe that faced with a choice between going to prison and damaging her client, she’d choose the former. Nobody’s dedication to ethics runs that deep.”

  Rusty chuckled. “Just as nobody wou
ld ever accuse you of being cynical. But while I agree with you about human nature, Jane may have been biding her time, waiting to see how the case developed before she told Hallie. Or she decided that revealing the true reason for their quarrel would only hand the prosecution another motive for poisoning Gallagher. And don’t forget, if my theory’s right, disclosing whatever she knew would in all likelihood have cost Jane her license.”

  I thought about this, too. “Tell me something else. Under your rules, what would happen to Jane if the hypothetical information we’ve been discussing came to light on its own—I mean, without her being the disclosing party?”

  “It depends on how you define your terms. A lawyer who sets in motion a chain of events that is sure to result in disclosure of a confidence—for example, tipping the police to where their client buried a murder victim—is as guilty of an ethical lapse as someone who simply fails to guard their tongue in an elevator. Of course, you’d have to be able to prove it.”

  “But if you couldn’t prove it,” I pressed. “If our theoretical lawyer were clever enough to tip a third party in a way that could never be tied back to them, what then?”

  “I’d say our hypothetical tippee should be worried about who he’s dealing with.”

  Over a corned beef sandwich at a nearby deli, I considered my next steps. My conversation with Rusty had given me the first plausible explanation for Jane’s mysterious behavior but still left me tantalizingly in the dark. Clearly, I was supposed to find out something she was not permitted to tell me outright. What other reason could there be for a message that couldn’t be linked to her through state-of-the-art forensic techniques? Given all the tools at the cops’ disposal, I was sure they could identify the brand of paper and paste used to compose the note, but I had little doubt they were of a type that could be picked up in any drugstore. And with Jane’s intimate knowledge of police methods, it was a safe bet that whatever materials she used had long since vanished. Come to think of it, I had probably smelled them going up in smoke when I was sitting in her penthouse. It brought home once again my limitations as a detective. I couldn’t simply stroll over to see what was smoldering in her fireplace in the middle of a summer day, or draw any conclusions about the woman—except that she had expensive taste in sofas—from the items on display in her home. The only thing I could do was listen.