Angela’s hands were shaking. She couldn’t bring herself to go back outside to talk with the garbagemen, to deliver the sandwiches in exchange for them taking the couch. Instead, she ran to the bathroom, lifted the lid to the toilet, and vomited until her eyes teared and her sternum ached.
CHAPTER 6
Chicago, October 16, 2019
RORY MOORE PULLED NEXT TO THE UNMARKED SQUAD CAR, DRIVER’S side to driver’s side. She rolled down her window and pushed her nonprescription glasses up the bridge of her nose. It was dark and shadowed inside her car. She was sure Detective Davidson couldn’t see her eyes, always a plus.
The detective handed her a manila envelope through the window.
“Autopsy and tox results,” he said. “Plus all the notes and interviews taken on the case.”
Rory took the package, saw Camille Byrd’s name printed on the bottom of the folder, and thought of the girl’s shattered Kestner doll and her father’s pleas for help. Rory dropped the file on the passenger seat.
“You’re officially on the case,” Ron said. “I filled out the paperwork this morning.”
“When was the last time any of your guys looked at any of this?” Rory asked.
Davidson ballooned his cheeks as his exhaled a defeated breath. Rory knew he was embarrassed by the answer he was about to offer.
“It’s over a year old, with nothing new in months and over five hundred new homicides so far this year. It’s cold.”
Rory’s mind flashed back to the morning in Grant Park when Ron had shown her where Camille’s frozen body had been found. Rory’s heart ached, the way it did for the victim of every case she took on. It was why she was so selective. Within the tiny world of forensic reconstruction, no one could do what Rory Moore routinely accomplished. She had breathed fresh life into cases that were colder than a Chicago winter. It was simply in her genes. Her DNA was programmed to see things others missed, to connect dots that looked scattered and incongruent to everyone else. She left the straightforward reconstructions—the car wrecks and suicides—to others in her profession who were better suited to handle such trivial cases, the ones detectives could figure out on their own with a little effort and a lucky break. Those clinical cases never challenged Rory. She reconstructed cold case homicides, cases others had abandoned and given up on. But she accomplished this by developing a deep and personal connection with the victim. She accomplished this by learning their story, discovering first who they were. Why they were killed always followed. It was a taxing technique that drained her emotionally and often brought her closer to the victim for whom she was seeking justice than she was to anyone else in her life. But it was the only way Rory knew how to do her job.
Rory knew that Ron Davidson, who ran the Homicide Division inside the Chicago Police Department, was under pressure from every direction, political and social, to pull Chicago’s unsolved murder rate out of the toilet. The city had one of the nation’s lowest homicide solve rates; so when Rory agreed to take on Camille Byrd’s icy cold, unsolved homicide, it represented an opportunity for Ron to knock a case off his docket without expending many resources. Rory reconstructed crimes on her own, rebuffing assistance from any of the Homicide detectives. For years, the force had kept Rory on retainer, and if she weren’t so selective about the cases she took on, she’d have a new one every week.
“I’ll take a look and let you know what I find,” Rory finally said.
“Keep me posted.”
Rory’s window began its ascent.
“Hey, Gray,” Davidson said.
Rory stopped the window halfway up, looked through the glass at him.
“Sorry about your dad.”
Rory nodded and started the window back up before the two cars drove off in opposite directions.
CHAPTER 7
Chicago, October 16, 2019
RORY WALKED INTO THE NURSING HOME AND ENTERED ROOM 121. The lights were dim, and the television cast the room in a blue glow. A woman lay still in the bed, her eyes open but not acknowledging Rory’s presence. Rory approached the hospital bed, which sported tall guardrails on either side to protect its occupant. She sat in the adjacent chair and looked at the woman, who continued to stare at the television as if Rory were invisible.
She reached out and took the woman’s hand.
“Aunt Greta. It’s me, Rory.”
Her great-aunt inverted her lips, sucking them into her mouth the way she did after the nurses had removed her dentures.
“Greta,” Rory said in a whispered voice. “Can you hear me?”
“I tried to save you,” the old woman said. “I tried, but there was too much blood.”
“Okay,” Rory said. “It’s okay.”
“You were bleeding.” Her great-aunt looked at Rory. “There was too much blood.”
A nurse walked into the room. “Sorry, I tried to catch you before you came in. She’s having a bad day.”
The nurse adjusted the pillows behind Greta’s head, placed a white Styrofoam cup with a straw extending out of it on the over-bed table.
“Here’s your water, hon. And there’s no blood around here. I hate blood, that’s why I work in this place.”
“How long has she been like this?”
The nurse looked at Rory. “Most of the day. She was fine yesterday. But, as you know, dementia takes them back to another part of their life. Sometimes just briefly, other times for much longer. It’ll pass.”
Rory nodded, pointed at the Styrofoam. “I’ll get her to drink.”
The nurse smiled. “Call me if you need anything.”
As soon as the nurse was gone, Rory’s great-aunt looked at her again.
“I tried to save you. There was too much blood.”
Greta had been a nurse, and though it had been many years since she practiced, the dementia, which was ravaging her mind, pulled her back to the darkest moments of her profession.
Greta went silent and looked back at the television. Rory knew it would be one of those visits. Her great-aunt was ninety-two years old, and her mental capacity varied widely. Sometimes she was as sharp as ever. Other times, like tonight and over the past two weeks since Greta had learned about the passing of Rory’s father, she was lost in the past. In a world that Rory could not penetrate. The best chance over the last several years to catch her in a coherent state came at night. Sometimes Rory came and went in a matter of minutes. Other times, when Aunt Greta was alert and talkative, Rory stayed into the early hours of morning, talking and laughing like she remembered doing as a child. Few people fully understood Rory Moore. Her great-aunt Greta was one of them.
“Greta, do you remember what I told you about Dad? About Frank, your nephew?”
Greta chewed some more on her capsized lips.
“The funeral was last week. I tried to bring you, but you weren’t feeling well.”
Rory saw her great-aunt’s chewing grow faster.
“You didn’t miss anything. Except me squirming in the corner trying to