Look Closer

“Wicker Park,” I tell the cabbie.

I keep my head down so there’s no chance he sees my face. As for my voice, well, I’m not good with disguising it, but I try to sound hoarse and even cough a little to add to the effect.

He’s playing pop music in the cab, something by Panic! at the Disco, so clearly somebody up there thinks I deserve punishment for what I’ve done.

“North, Damen, and Milwaukee,” I specify.

Just a couple blocks from Christian’s house.

THE DAYS AFTER HALLOWEEN

85 Jane

“Thanks, Simon. See you tonight.” The meeting with Simon Dobias confirmed, Jane Burke punches off her phone and looks around the master bedroom inside Lauren Betancourt’s house. It is spacious and nicely decorated but not as ostentatious as she might have expected. Simple and elegant. High ceilings and ornate crown molding, large flat-screen TV with torchlights on each side, a fireplace below. No chests of drawers in the main living room; those are reserved for the walk-in closet. Must be nice.

“Today would be great. As soon as possible.” Andy kills his phone and looks at Jane. “The chief security officer at the Grant Thornton Tower is sending us a list of all companies in their building and everyone who has been assigned a key card,” he says. “We should have it by day’s end. That’ll be an exhaustive list of everyone working in the old Chicago Title & Trust Building, as your FBI friend put it. Did you talk to Dobias?”

“I talked to Simon, yeah. We’re going to his house at eight tonight.”

She checks her watch. What a day so far. Feels like it should be midnight, not four-thirty in the afternoon. It’s only November 2, day two of this investigation, and it feels like week twenty.

“His house? Not the station?”

She shrugs. “I want to see his house. And I wanted to see how he’d react to the idea of my being in his house.”

“You thought he might not want you looking around in there? Might resist, might offer to come to the station?”

“Yeah, but he didn’t. He said it was my call, whatever I wanted.”

“Like he doesn’t have a care in the world.” Andy wags a finger at her. “Just what he wants us to think!”

“Now you’re mocking me.”

“I am, it’s true,” he says, “but that doesn’t mean I think you’re wrong. I just think it’s early. I want us to keep an open mind. I mean, we have a lot of reasons to believe that Lauren was having an affair that turned ugly—and we don’t think Lauren would be having an affair with Simon, do we? I mean, with their history? Lauren would be the last person on the face of the earth Simon would cozy up with. And vice versa, I’d suspect.”

“Well, that’s why we’re here, right?” Jane sweeps a hand. “Let’s look for evidence of another man being here. Someone other than Conrad. Assuming they’d come here for their liaisons.”

“It would make sense,” says Andy, heading into the walk-in closet. “If he’s married, like we think, they can’t go to his place. Conrad’s permanently living in the condo as of mid-September. Who wants a hotel with security cameras and doormen and credit-card receipts when you can just come here and get your rocks off?”

“I’ll check the bathroom,” she says. She drops her bag off her shoulder onto the bed and removes some paper evidence bags.

Andy comes out of the walk-in. “Nothing in there at first glance. Conrad definitely cleaned out his side in there. It’s totally empty.”

Jane walks into the master bathroom, full of marble, a claw-foot bathtub, enormous shower. A double vanity with medicine cabinets on each end made of ornate cabinetry, as if they were furniture pieces. She pictures her tiny little bathroom and makes a noise.

Andy joins her in the bathroom and takes the medicine cabinet on the left. “This one definitely looks like Lauren’s,” he says.

Jane opens the one on the right. Contact solution, lotion, ibuprofen, vitamins—

“Hey,” she says. “Look at these.”

Andy walks over. “A shiny black electric razor. Pretty fancy one. And what’s that—a matching trimmer?”

“Like a trimmer, yeah, for nose hair or hair in your ears. Pretty fancy one,” says Jane, peering at it, not wanting to touch it yet, even with gloves on. “The brand is ‘BK’ and this is . . . titanium, it says. Yeah, fancy.”

“Would a woman use a nose-hair trimmer?” Andy asks.

“I never have. I pluck. But the electric razor? This has to be a man’s.”

Andy pulls out his phone and types on it. “Here we go,” he says. “The Bentley-Kravitz Elite Men’s Care Set,” he says. “All titanium, and it comes in matte-black. Toothbrush, nail clippers, electric razor, nose-hair trimmer, and dental-floss holder. A five-piece set. This thing retails for nearly nine thousand dollars, for Christ’s sake.”

He shows her the photo. Yep, it’s a match.

She holds up an evidence bag and uses a pen to tip the nose-hair trimmer off the shelf and into the bag. She repeats the process with the electric razor, using a different bag.

“These could be good for prints,” she says. “It’s something you hold pretty firmly. If you can even get fingerprints off titanium.”