Every Breath You Take: A Novel (A Kristen Conner Mystery Book 2) (19 page)

The second picture was taken by a techie at the crime scene. Probably Jerome. His head has been straightened on the bed where he died. The right eye is open, but lifeless. Where the left eye should be is a crater. The supraorbital foramen and sphenoid that make up the eye socket are gone. The temporal and zygomatic that form the cheek are destroyed. The parietal is half-missing. Whoever wielded the Stanley got to his brain through there.

Underneath Durham’s two pictures is a long row with seven pictures. All males. All handsome. White teeth. Year-round tans. All attended Farnsworth High School in River Forest, Illinois, a western suburb of Chicago. Farnsworth is a small, exclusive, highly-ranked university prep school run by the Catholic Dominican Order. The ten boys formed a friendship that endured the separation of six different colleges, and five of the ten living out of state for up to five years before returning to Chicago.

We have run through Durham’s email and social media accounts. The group has stayed in close touch for years through daily emails and in the past year by using Google Hangouts. He’s got a Facebook account but has never used it. The topics the friends cover are male. Sports. Dirty jokes and dirty pictures. Politics. Gossip. Trash talk and personal insults. Memories. Exploits in the bedroom—these are no gentlemen, they kiss and tell.

Neither Jack nor Derrick ever married. Four are divorced. Four are currently married. Either all four wives come to the get-togethers or none come and are replaced by Bobbie’s escorts. Yep. It is a group built on secrets. These friends have thought through their cheating ways carefully and work as a team.

Five have good jobs. Three of those five are in family-owned businesses, so who knows how much they work. Two others are professionals: a lawyer and an accountant. They just don’t go into the office. No dummies in this group. The three ringleaders are Jack Durham, Derrick Jensen, and Kelly Granger. They are the three that don’t work. The three are supplemented by family trust funds. Durham’s alpha male status seems to have been a function of personality and money. My sense is he had the most of both. Based on the email, social media, and phone records, nobody else seems to have spent close to as much time as Durham keeping the group together. Durham might have been a sleezebag, but he was committed to this group of friends. With a billionaire dad he had means to do so.

I wonder what will happen to the rest of the Lost Boys now that Peter Pan no longer lives in Neverland. I don’t think Derrick can pull off a leadership role. Jack scheduled parties at the Soldier Field suite for all home games and an away game in San Diego. I wonder what happens after that.

On the morning before Durham was murdered, his father, Robert Durham, Sr. and his brother, Robert Durham, Jr., landed in Chicago from Moscow on a private jet.. The younger Durham hasn’t followed his brother’s footsteps. Both brothers have law degrees, but this one seems to work hard at his father’s side. He is married with three kids. He is heir apparent to a law firm that mixes estate planning, mergers and acquisitions for family owned companies, private equity, and personal law for a very high-end client list.

I don’t know much about planes, but Don and Randall yammered on and on about Durham, Sr. owning a Bombardier Global 5000 like two Georgia teenagers who just saw Dale Earnhart, Jr. drive by at Talladega. I think Talladega is in Georgia. Maybe Alabama. My connection to NASCAR is I think Jeff Gordon is cute—and my FBI van driver looked like Gordon. The Global 5000 apparently could make the 5,016 miles between Moscow and Chicago without refueling. Randall and Squires nodded at each other silently and solemnly on that point. I’m glad I know that now.

Durham was murdered on Thursday night, September 20, the same night I flew home to Chicago from Washington, D.C. The funeral was held on Tuesday, September 25, the day after I was introduced to the case and the same day I was assigned to work undercover as an independent contractor. The funeral was closed-casket of course. Not sure the guy who did makeup for
Lord of the Rings
could have fixed up Jack for open viewing.

There is a computer monitor with electronic files of the case basketed together. I click on a photo album of the funeral. I look at the Durham family. Mom has her head buried on her husband’s shoulder. In the next she has turned to her younger son for comfort. In another it looks like Durham, Jr. is trying to wipe a speck from his eye. In the next his expression is stoic but his eyes are shiny. What emotions must be caroming throughout the family?

Durham, Sr. was interviewed by officials of the CPD at his offices in the Standard Oil Building. The presence of his attorney, another member of the firm, was not considered suspicious, but standard procedure for a billionaire. Stanley McGill is a partner in Durham and Durham, and is both Durham, Sr. and Durham, Jr.’s personal attorney. He was the nice man that kept to himself at the Bears game.

I read the interview transcripts for Senior and Junior again carefully. Without ever having seen them together live, with just one glance at the photos, you can tell these two think, talk, act, and even look alike. Jack, the older son, is the one who doesn’t fit in. He was different physically and definitely wired differently than his brother and father. A little like the Jacob and Esau story in the Bible; this elder son, too, appeared to have lost his birthright—and his father’s blessing—as a contributing member to the family’s business and fortune. Senior and Junior answered every question in precise, short responses. No elaboration. Just the facts, ma’am. Without listening in or being there I could feel a palpable lack of emotion.

What was going through Robert, Sr.’s mind? Disappointment in his son? This murder case feels a little like another biblical story that starred two very different brothers. The prodigal son. In the Durham case it wasn’t the younger, but the older that ran off to a far country and slopped with the pigs.

Family members are always persons of interest. Billionaires are not exempt. But with the two of them just returning to the country from a business trip, neither has generated any suspicion. Neither had much contact with Jack and both apparently headed straight home after landing. Their accounts have been verified by spouses and drivers.

Still, if this case is about money, wouldn’t Junior have to be a big suspect? Half of the family fortune he is working to build—which his brother was working equally hard to squander—would have gone to Jack upon the father’s death. Now it’s all Durham, Jr.’s.

As a detective, you learn early to follow the money. Randall was stating the obvious. The problem is the complexity and magnitude of money involved with those closest to Jack is beyond our understanding. At least mine. We have a couple of financial forensic investigators working overtime to look for anomalies and suspicious transactions. I still balance my checkbook manually—with a pencil.

I look at my watch. I was in early and Don is uncharacteristically in late today. He and Martinez must have had a long scintillating conversation with Penny.

I run through things in my mind again. The younger brother definitely has a motivation and the oldest one in the book: money. I’ve felt Penny is hiding something from day one. But shouldn’t Junior still be looked at closely? It just stands to reason his older brother would drive him crazy. I read through the reports on his profligate spending. It was not uncommon for Jack to buy a quarter-million-dollar car, get tired of it, give it away, and buy a new one. The family is loaded and can afford his reckless spending. But wouldn’t that be a recipe for disaster over time?

Durham’s mother was interviewed at their gated estate in Burr Ridge. Just reading the transcripts I was assaulted with a tsunami of her emotions. Despair. Confusion. Anger. Overwhelming sorrow. Moms don’t tend to kill adult children. This case will be no different.

He was such a beautiful little boy. . . . He was so charming. . . . I don’t know when I lost him. . . . He could be so kind. . . . He didn’t care about anybody. . . . I was invisible to him. . . . He didn’t like coming to the house. . . . He didn’t like Robert and I coming to his apartment. . . . I always believed he would settle down and start a family. . . . I set him up on a date with one of my best friend’s daughters and was humiliated at what he did, how he acted that night. . . . I don’t know what happened to him . . .

People respond differently to trauma. Mr. and Mrs. Durham are living proof of that.

Underneath the pictures of the ten friends is a bingo board of pictures, mostly female. Connecting lines have been drawn from the guys to the girls and there is enough red crisscrossing that I think everybody in this group has been with everybody.
Gross
. There is one exception. Penny Martin. She has only been with Jack.

On the left of the board is a large photo of Bobbie Ferguson. All lines meet at her. She’s considered a key to solving the murder. She was a prime suspect for less than a day. Something Penny said made Blackshear and Zaworski take a closer look at her but her alibi was airtight. Doesn’t mean she wasn’t involved as an accomplice. Definitely doesn’t mean she isn’t hiding something that is holding back our investigation. I’m convinced of that.

All of Jack’s friends had enough money to hire a killer. But hired killers don’t usually use a hammer as a weapon and then vomit at the murder scene.

That bespeaks rage and amateurism. In other words, a family member.

I think I’ve caught up with the other investigators on the case, but I started a couple days late and was put on an assignment that has isolated me from all but one official interview—the one with Penny Martin.

What are they missing? What am I missing?

There are other friends of Jack and his gang that are lower on the totem pole—though my anthropology professor pointed out that lower on the pole means you are more important—and their pictures are at the bottom of the board. They interacted with Jack and his nine closest friends from time to time. But there were ten who were close as brothers. A . . . what do you call a group of ten? Three in the inner circle. The godfather is now dead.

At the Bears game I saw seven of the nine survivors. I saw no family members but was told that Durham, Sr. and Durham, Jr. were at the game together in another suite. Apparently Senior was drinking heavily, which is not common for him. Reports say that Junior and Senior’s chauffeur had to help him to the car before the fourth quarter started.

What is going through the mind of a father who has lost his oldest son? What is going on in the mind of a mother who, according to reports, is on a shopping trip in New York City less than a week after her son’s funeral?

One parent is chasing thoughts away with drink and the other by buying stuff.

Only one of Bobbie’s contractors is highlighted. Penny. Based on our last meeting, Konkade has told the financial forensics team to turn her accounts upside down—from bank statements to PayPal to charge cards to cable bill and everything else.

Speaking of the Sergeant, Konkade walks in.

“How long is it going to take?” I ask him.

“Good morning to you, too, Kristen,” he answers. “How long is what gonna take?”

“Penny’s finances.”

“Hopefully this week,” he says. “We gotta get some help. We’re getting nowhere.”

“You said it. With a case this big, you’d think we’d have something solid.”

“It’s strange,” he says. “Never seen anything quite like this one. Part of the problem is everyone who might remotely be a suspect is being cooperative but not very helpful. The old man is grinding us with the Mayor and the press, but not even he has a single idea on who did it or where to look.”

“Do we need to look at the old man?”

“When’s the last time you remember a dad killing his son?”

“Marvin Gaye?”

“Yeah, you’re right, but that’s the exception, not the rule.”

“Maybe we need to visit him again.”

“Even if you’re right, KC, don’t do anything until you clear it with Zaworski or Blackshear or Czaka or whoever is running this thing.”

“Thanks for the heads up on that, Sarge, I was getting ready to head over there in a few minutes and didn’t think it was big enough deal to let anyone know.”

He laughs.

“So this week?” I ask.

“All the independent contractors do quite well financially, but nothing like Durham and his friends. One of the guys told me it will go much faster. He said looking at their numbers will be like switching from three dimensional chess to checkers. Accountant humor, I guess.”

I am reviewing the board one more time when I realize Martinez is standing next to me. I nod. He doffs his fedora, complete with a little feather in the silk ribbon, and smiles.

“
Ay, mi chica, eres muy bonita
.”

Antonio is okay. But I know he likes to tease me by flirting with me in Spanish. I give him an angry glare, which is what he was waiting for, and he gives out his loud laugh. As he does, Czaka rounds the corner.

“Glad my homicide detectives find murder to be so amusing,” he scowls. “We need a break folks,” he says as he stomps off.

“El jefe está en muy mal humor hoy,”
Martinez whispers under his breath.
“Muy mal
. It’s like Zaworski never left.”

“When is Zaworski coming back?” I ask him.