Kiss Her Goodbye (A Thriller) Read online

  An eternity for Jessie.

  But for Jack …

  He was trying to cover, but Rachel could see the look of hopelessness in his eyes as he stared down at the evidence spread across the table.

  “This is it?” he said, speaking to no one in particular. “This is all we’ve got?”

  He was surrounded by most of his team: Sidney, Al, Darcy Payne, Franky Garcia. A.J.’s absence was a palpable, living thing dulled only by shock and disbelief.

  “CPD’s still looking for the Suburban,” Sidney said. “Maybe they’ll get lucky.”

  “I don’t want lucky, Sidney, I want results.” Donovan looked around the room now. “Has anybody bothered to contact A.J.’s folks?”

  “I talked to Bill Klein in Austin,” Rachel said. “He’s on his way over right now.”

  “What about my ex? Has she been notified?”

  “The Caymans are in the middle of a level-three hurricane. Phones could be down for days.”

  “Son of a bitch!” Donovan exploded, sweeping an arm across the tabletop. Weapons and evidence flew everywhere. The agents around the table jumped back to avoid the debris, staring at Jack in stunned silence.

  After a moment, Rachel crouched down, gathering up a handful of books and returning them to the table. The Book of Changes. Metempsychosis in the Modern World. The Doctrine of Eternal Life. Gunderson’s choice of reading material was interesting, to say the least, an odd counterpoint to his public persona.

  It also, strangely enough, reminded her of her grandmother, a woman who took great stock in ancient folklore and the promise of eternal life. She could just imagine the conversation the two would have….

  Among the litter were a half dozen washed-out Polaroid photos, shots of Gunderson and Sara standing in front of the Lake Point Lighthouse.

  Funny, Rachel thought. She’d never really looked at them as normal people. Yet here they were, happy and smiling like a pair of love-struck high school kids on an all-day field trip.

  Setting the Polaroids on top of the books, she looked at Jack. His eyes were bloodshot.

  “Maybe you should take a break,” she said.

  Donovan glared at her. “Why are you even here, Rachel? You’re off the clock.”

  Heat rose in Rachel’s cheeks. The words stung and Jack knew it, but at the moment he didn’t seem to care. She’d seen him in a dozen different moods, but had never known him to be cruel. She felt tears coming on and held them back.

  Be tough, Rache. He didn’t mean it.

  She wished she could say something to him, something that would ease his mind—a bit of Grandma Luke’s wisdom, perhaps. But she came up empty.

  Lowering his gaze, Donovan stomped past her and exited the room.

  SHE FOUND HIM in his office, sitting at his desk, head slumped forward, eyes closed. The newspaper clippings, police reports, and photographs that normally covered one wall had been ripped down and scattered across the floor.

  Rachel looked at them, then at Donovan.

  She closed the door behind her.

  “Jack …”

  He didn’t open his eyes. His voice was soft, faraway. Filled with regret. “What the hell have I done, Rache?”

  “Don’t start thinking like that. This is all Gunderson.”

  “Is it?” He looked up at her now. “I knew what he was. I should’ve protected her. If I was any kind of father …”

  “Stop,” Rachel said. She moved around to his side of the desk, perched on the edge. “Let’s just concentrate on finding Jessie.” She reached over and squeezed his shoulder, a gesture of comfort, but somehow more than that. “You will find her.”

  Donovan nodded absently, but she could sense that he didn’t quite believe it.

  “When I was in that train car,” he said, “Gunderson asked me how it felt knowing I’d abandoned my own daughter. What do you say to a question like that? Truth is, when Jessie needed me most, I let her down. Made her feel like she didn’t matter.”

  “For God sakes, Jack, quit beating yourself up. You’ve changed things, you’ve tried to make up for it. None of us can claim sainthood.”

  He stared at her a moment, offered her a wan smile. “Guess I’m way beyond grumpy now.”

  She returned the smile, held his gaze.

  He didn’t look away.

  Then the door flew open and Sidney Waxman burst in, flushed with excitement. “We just got a call from CPD.”

  They both looked up.

  “They found the Suburban.”

  26

  IT WAS RAINING when he got there. The weather reports had promised a presummer storm, but nobody had believed it until the first drops started falling.

  By the time Donovan was on the road and headed across town, his wipers were churning full blast. He couldn’t help feeling as if he’d stepped into an old movie, where the weather always served to underscore the main character’s mood. All he needed to top things off was the plaintive wail of a jazz trumpet.

  The Suburban was parked at the side of a narrow, two-lane road about fifty yards from a highway underpass. It sat next to an empty parking lot that was surrounded by a chain-link fence. A faded, rain-drenched banner across the fence said ALL DAY PARKING—$6.50.

  The other side of the road held a couple of forties-era Quonset huts with roll-up doors: JUNIOR’S AUTO BODY. A handful of cars in various stages of disrepair were parked out front.

  Before the night was over, someone from the Chicago Police Department would be contacting both the parking lot attendant and Junior’s team of fender pounders to check if anyone had witnessed the Suburban being dropped off. There was only a thin hope they’d have anything significant to offer, but it had to be done.

  The street itself was crowded with patrol cars and cops in yellow rain slickers, the crime-scene carnival at full tilt. The Suburban sat with its doors hanging open, protected from the rain by a canvas canopy, as forensic technicians went through it with meticulous care.

  Donovan watched them as he pulled up, knowing they wouldn’t find much. A few cigarette butts, a couple of stray candy-bar wrappers. Judging by the litter in Gunderson’s train car, he’d been addicted to both chocolate and nicotine, two demons Donovan himself had never fallen prey to.

  He killed his engine and got out. A uniformed cop stood nearby, clutching a handful of leashes, straining to hold back a pack of search dogs.

  A voice called out behind him. “Agent Donovan?”

  Donovan turned as a lanky plainclothes detective carrying an umbrella approached.

  “Ron Stallard,” he said, shaking Donovan’s hand. “Just heard about A.J. Can’t believe it. Under any other circumstances I’d be celebrating Gunderson’s send-off with an Irish coffee and a big fat cigar.”

  Donovan nodded, involuntarily summoning up the image of A.J.’s mutilated corpse. It was an image he’d just as soon relegate to a part of his brain he never used, but he knew it would take him a while to get it there. In the meantime, he had no desire to talk about it, even if Stallard did. Better to stick to the business at hand. “You got anything for me?”

  Stallard seemed to sense Donovan’s mood and didn’t push it. Reaching under his raincoat, he brought out an oversized evidence bag containing a blue cardigan sweater. A machine-stitched Bellanova Prep logo was visible beneath the plastic. “Found this in the Suburban. Your daughter’s?”

  Donovan nodded again. The first time he’d seen Jessie wearing it, he’d complained that it was half a size too small, a comment that had provoked an exasperated sigh.

  “Rain’s a bitch,” Stallard said. “But it looks like the dogs’ve managed to pick up the scent.”

  Donovan felt his heart accelerate. “So what the hell are we waiting for?”

  THE DOGS LED them straight to the underpass. They barked and whimpered, dragging their handler behind them, as Donovan and Stallard followed. The underpass was high and twice as wide as the road, a nice respite from the rain. Its cement walls were scarred by graffiti—name
s, gang symbols, and crude drawings of male and female genitalia lit up by their roaming flashlight beams.

  Traffic crawled by overhead, stalled by the sight of all the cop cars and flashing lights below. Horns honked, echoing faintly through the underpass.

  The men said nothing as they walked. Donovan’s heart pounded in his chest, anticipation pumping through his veins like a hit of speedball. Could it be this simple? Could Jessie really be here somewhere?

  They were nearing the middle of the underpass when Waxman and Cleveland caught up to them, raincoats dripping.

  “Where you been?” Donovan asked. “I thought you left right after me.”

  Waxman grunted. “A coupla honchos from D.C. showed up just as we were about to leave. Making a lot of noise.”

  “What kind of noise?”

  “The kind you don’t need to hear right now.”

  “Give me a little credit, Sidney.”

  Waxman sighed. “They wanted details on what happened between you and Fogerty. Had questions about your state of mind.”

  “And?”

  “I get the feeling they’re thinking about putting you out to pasture on this. They even brought a Bureau psychologist along.”

  “Jesus,” Donovan said.

  “For what it’s worth,” Stallard told him, “you’re quite the celebrity back at the house.”

  “Meaning?”

  “The tune job you did on Fogerty. That’s something a lot of us have wanted to do for a long, long time.”

  The dogs came to an abrupt stop at a large manhole, barking and sniffing and scratching at the cover. Stallard gestured for the dog handler to back off. The cop jerked their leashes and led them away.

  Donovan gestured to Waxman and Cleveland. “Give me a hand with this.”

  The three men crouched and tugged at the manhole cover, but it was wedged in tight and refused to budge.

  “Anybody got a pry bar?” Waxman asked.

  Cleveland grunted. “What d’ya bet we’d find one in the Suburban?”

  “Fuck that,” Stallard said, joining in. They kept at it, huffing and straining until the cover finally scraped free. They dropped it to the blacktop, the heavy clang bouncing off the underpass walls.

  Donovan shone his flashlight into the hole. A rusted metal ladder disappeared into blackness.

  He knew exactly where it led.

  “Freight tunnel,” he said, then slipped the flashlight into his coat pocket and climbed onto the ladder. “You boys wait here.”

  “Easy,” Cleveland told him. “If Gunderson was down there, it could be booby-trapped.”

  “I’ll take my chances.”

  Donovan started down, then stopped a moment to look up at Waxman. “Tell your buddies from D.C. if they think they’re getting me off this, they’re the ones who need that psychologist.”

  THE CHICAGO TUNNEL system was built in the early 1900s, when the country was in the midst of a great electric-railway boom. Sixty-two miles of intersecting tunnel and track were laid forty feet below street level in hopes that businesses citywide would utilize the system to haul coal, ashes, mail, and assorted dry goods. Pint-size locomotives ran day and night, chugging beneath the city like worms in dirt.

  It was, however, an interesting idea that never quite worked, largely because getting the freight into the tunnels in the first place was a labor-intensive pain in the ass. It made more sense to throw the freight onto a truck and drive it across town….

  The Chicago Tunnel Company teetered on the verge of bankruptcy for several decades until it finally gave up and abandoned the tunnels in 1959.

  Since then, a handful of the drifts had been refurbished and used by ComEd to stretch electric cable to its customers. The rest were left to neglect. Access to the system was restricted and scattered throughout the city, mostly via manhole, but here and there you’d find a building that had a freight elevator connected to the tunnels.

  Donovan knew this because one of his first assignments as a uniformed cop was to patrol certain accessible sections of the tunnels to make sure no trespassers were skulking around.

  It didn’t surprise him that the trail from the Suburban led down here. He was convinced that Gunderson and his crew had used the tunnels to avoid capture after the Northland First & Trust robbery.

  The ladder descended into the blackest darkness Donovan had ever known. Dropping to the ground, he silently cursed as he sank ankle deep into icy water.

  Scavengers had long ago stripped the tunnel system clean, taking the much needed reciprocating pumps along with them. Without the pumps, rain and river water had seeped into several of the drifts and remained there, stagnating.

  The water sloshed, echoing through the darkness, as Donovan turned and took his flashlight out, flicked it on.

  He was in middle of a grand union, a three-way intersection of tunnels. The tunnels were no more than seven feet high, probably less than that in width, and made of nonrein-forced concrete.

  The question was, which one to take?

  His shoes sucked mud as he moved. Lifting a foot out of the water, he shone his light on it, wondering if this was where Gunderson had picked up the mud on his work boots. Could he have been making preparations down here before he grabbed Jessie?

  The mud might explain the boot prints on the bus—but what about the fertilizer? Where had it come from?

  Maybe A.J. had been right, maybe Gunderson had been cooking up a combustible, and Donovan wondered if he should take Al Cleveland’s warning a little more seriously. Like the train yard, this place might be booby-trapped.

  Yet, as he moved forward, fanning the narrow beam of his flashlight over the seamless tunnel walls, he felt no threat. Except for the mud and the water and the missing trolley wire that had been stripped away by scavengers, the place seemed undisturbed. He doubted much had changed down here since the system was abandoned. And despite Gunderson’s love of explosives, the idea of a booby trap just didn’t feel right.

  Not here, at least.

  So what, then, was this all about? Why had the scent from Jessie’s sweater led him here? Gunderson had told him that she was buried somewhere. Had he been speaking only figuratively? If so, forty feet below street level would certainly qualify.

  But what about the oxygen tanks? The air down here was cool and a bit musty, but plentiful enough to keep someone alive. So why had Gunderson warned that Jessie would soon be gasping for breath?

  It didn’t make sense.

  As Donovan stood there, trying to puzzle it out, the slosh of the murky water gradually subsided and he thought he heard a sound.

  He stood perfectly still. Listened.

  Yes.

  It was faint and muffled, coming from somewhere far off. It sounded like …

  Like someone crying.

  Donovan’s heart kicked up a notch. Jessie?

  He wanted to move, to spring into action, but the noise of the splashing water would make it impossible to determine which direction the sound was coming from.

  He shone his light toward the two adjoining drifts, wishing he had the dogs down here to pick up Jessie’s scent. Listening intently, he tried to trace the source of the sound and finally settled on the tunnel to his left, knowing he could double back if he had to.

  He pressed forward, traveling several yards into it, feeling the floor beneath him angle downward. He sank deeper into the water as he progressed, until it was nearly at waist level. The crying grew louder with each step.

  It was Jessie. He was sure of it.

  Who else could it be?

  The burial, the oxygen tanks, were a lie. Gunderson had been playing him, that’s all. Instead of putting her into the ground, he’d left Jessie alone down here—cold, frightened, and unable to find her way out in the dark.

  The crying was still muffled, but he was close enough to recognize her voice.

  “Jessie!” he shouted, sweeping the flashlight beam wildly.

  The crying continued unabated.

 
; “Jessie, it’s me! It’s Dad! Can you hear me?”

  No answer. Just the crying.

  Donovan tried to pick up speed, but the water was like a living force, slowing him down. He half expected something dark and malevolent to reach up and grab his legs.

  Then all at once he was at the end of the tunnel, blocked by a concrete bulkhead. The bulkhead housed a steel door that looked like something from a German U-boat. Doors like this had been placed in the drifts that dipped under the river. A safety precaution in case of a collapse.

  The crying came from beyond the door.

  “Jessie, can you hear me?”

  No response.

  “Jessie?”

  She was probably in shock. Possibly drugged.

  “Hang on, kiddo. I’ll have you out of there in a heartbeat.”

  Clenching the slender barrel of the flashlight between his teeth, Donovan gripped the wheel mounted in the center of the door and—

  —Al Cleveland’s warning flashed through his mind again:

  Booby-trapped.

  What if the thing was booby-trapped?

  He froze, stopping just short of turning the wheel. Grabbing the flashlight, he shone it along the seam of the door, looking for telltale wires.

  Nothing.

  The lower half of the door was submerged in at least three feet of water. Popping the flashlight between his teeth again, he crouched, sinking to his shoulders, a pungent stench filling his nostrils as he ran his hands along the seam.

  No wires. No molded bits of plastique. No signs of anything unusual. Satisfied, he stood up, his clothes now plastered to his skin, the chilly air enveloping him.

  Jessie’s sobs continued unbroken.

  “I’m coming, kiddo, I’m coming.”