Wolf Point (Ashe Cayne) Read online

  PRAISE FOR IAN K. SMITH

  Praise for The Unspoken

  An Amazon Best Book of the Month: Mystery, Thriller & Suspense

  “With its huge, entertaining cast and smooth sleuth, this series kickoff recalls vintage Chandler or Hammett.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  “This fine series launch from bestseller Smith (The Ancient Nine) introduces PI Ashe Cayne, a former Chicago PD detective . . . Ashe is just one of many well-drawn, multilayered characters. Readers will eagerly await his return.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “Ian K. Smith has created a suspense story where the pages practically turn themselves all the way to the twist at the end.”

  —AuthorLink

  “Smith creates a fond and layered portrait of the Windy City, in all its multidimensional glory, as we traipse from fancy high-rises, to grungy boxing gyms, to tastefully decorated criminal lairs. Here’s hoping for many more installments in the series!”

  —CrimeReads, Most Anticipated Crime Books of 2020

  “Ian K. Smith’s The Unspoken is the start of a big, bold, original new series. Chicago PI Ashe Cayne is the perfect hero for our times. I can’t wait to read his next adventure.”

  —Harlan Coben, #1 New York Times bestselling author

  ALSO BY IAN K. SMITH

  Novels

  The Ancient Nine

  The Blackbird Papers

  The Unspoken

  Nonfiction

  Fast Burn

  Mind Over Weight

  Clean & Lean

  The Clean 20

  Blast the Sugar Out!

  The Shred Power Cleanse

  The Shred Diet Cookbook

  Super Shred

  Shred

  The Truth About Men

  Eat

  Happy

  The 4 Day Diet

  Extreme Fat Smash Diet

  The Fat Smash Diet

  The Take-Control Diet

  Dr. Ian Smith’s Guide to Medical Websites

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2021 by Ian K. Smith

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Thomas & Mercer, Seattle

  www.apub.com

  Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Thomas & Mercer are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

  ISBN-13: 9781542027861 (hardcover)

  ISBN-10: 1542027861 (hardcover)

  ISBN-13: 9781542022712 (paperback)

  ISBN-10: 1542022711 (paperback)

  Cover design by Shasti O’Leary Soudant

  First edition

  To my good friend Rachael Ray. If I can produce the same artistry with the written word that you have done with food, then it will have been a journey well traveled and a life well lived. I love you!

  CONTENTS

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  32

  33

  34

  35

  36

  37

  38

  39

  40

  41

  42

  43

  44

  45

  46

  47

  48

  49

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  1

  “PLEASE HELP US FIND who murdered our father,” Katrina Griffin said. She wore a snug yellow-and-black sundress with a matching purse that looked completely out of place in the midst of all the concrete pillars and old steel beams.

  I had just finished a thirty-minute session, working the heavy bag with Arnie “the Hammer” Scazzi in the gym he owned, tucked away in the basement of Johnny’s Icehouse in the West Loop. Minutes earlier, Katrina Griffin and her brother, Walter Griffin Jr., had walked up to me, introduced themselves, then asked if they could have a word with me in private. How they’d tracked me down here, I had no idea.

  We now sat comfortably in Hammer’s barren office. I had angled the standing fan so it blew exclusively in my direction.

  “Our father was a good man,” Katrina said. “He had a good life and enjoyed living it. He never would’ve killed himself. He wouldn’t do that to our mother, and he wouldn’t do it to us.”

  I had recognized both of them immediately when they approached me. I had seen their faces for many months in the newspapers and on television. Katrina was much shorter in person, slender, with curly shoulder-length hair and skin the color of melting chocolate. It would be difficult to believe the man sitting beside her was her brother had it not been for those eyes, a soft hazel that mesmerized, just like his father’s. Walter Griffin Sr., with his heart-stopping eyes and bespoke three-piece suits, had been a legend in Chicago city politics, a bigger-than-life personality, until one easy Sunday afternoon two years ago he’d put a gun to his head and killed himself on a deserted, forgotten piece of land along the northern bank of the Chicago River.

  At least that was the official account. Very few people south of Madison Street believed it. My father, who had known him for almost fifty years, was one of the doubters. I remembered him crying when he heard the news. My father rarely cried, but he had been angry. Walter Griffin had been one of the South Side’s biggest supporters, never forgetting the hundreds of thousands of families who still struggled to make it to the next day. Griffin had risen to great heights downtown, but he had always found a way to give back to the distressed communities that had nurtured him.

  “CPD and the ME both ruled your father’s death a suicide,” I said. “I’m not sure there’s much more I can do that they didn’t.”

  “That’s not what we were told,” Junior said. “Word around town is, you can find answers better than anybody.” He leaned forward. “Word is, if anyone can get to the bottom of this, you’re the one.”

  “Who told you that?”

  “Delroy Thomas.”

  I nodded. I knew Thomas, but mostly just in passing. He had been the alderman of the Twenty-Seventh Ward until he was investigated by the FBI, indicted, and eventually convicted for extortion and kickbacks. After spending three years of a four-year sentence in a federal prison camp in South Dakota, he now operated a soul food restaurant in the same ward he once represented. Frequented by politicians and community activists and a smattering of local residents, Delroy’s Catfish Corner held the political pulse of Black Chicago.

  “Your father had a lot of powerful friends,” I said. “You might be better off going to them. They’re much more connected than I am and have access to certain information and records that I don’t.”

  “That might be,” Katrina said. “But you’re the one who can get us the truth. Mr. Cayne, our family needs the truth.”

  I considered their words and the plaintiveness in their v
oices. They’d been young to lose their father—late twenties. I also considered how difficult this case would be and how many buried mines I would have to avoid. This case was a “heater” because of the prominence of the victim involved and his connection to other influential people. Taking it on would be dangerous. Their father had died with a lot of secrets, and there were many powerful people quietly celebrating that he had taken those secrets to his grave. It was also the middle of my golf season, and I had just gotten my handicap down to an eleven.

  “I understand what you’re saying and how important it is for you to have closure, but this is a bad time of year for me,” I said.

  “What does that mean?” Junior said.

  “I have a confession to make.”

  Both of them tensed a little.

  “I’m a golf addict. I swore an oath to the golf gods and to myself that this is the year for my handicap to finally crack into the single digits. And I only have about two more months of decent weather to get it done.”

  “Dad was a ten,” Junior said. “He played three times a week. If someone hadn’t killed him, his handicap probably would’ve been a nine or eight today.”

  “Where did he like to play?”

  “Everywhere. He never had to join a course because all his friends had memberships, so he’d play on their accounts. There’s no golf course in Chicago he didn’t play at least once.”

  This time of year, Buckingham Fountain was shooting water thirty feet in the air at full throttle. Tourists stood in front of it, posing for pictures, while kids chased each other along the manicured garden paths of Grant Park. Sailboats and yachts passed each other agreeably on the calm open waters of Lake Michigan. The city braved brutal winters every year just for these hot, carefree summer months. I thought about Walter Griffin and how this had once been his city, a man who had been born and raised on the hardened streets of the West Side and had counted friends as equally in his old neighborhood as he did in the corridors of power. He would never swing a golf club again.

  I turned my attention back to the Griffins. “Listen, there are plenty of other private investigators who don’t play golf and who take their work very seriously,” I said. “Plus, they’re a lot cheaper than I am. I can give you three names. All three will work really hard for you.”

  “We don’t want anyone else,” Katrina said firmly. “We want you, and we’re willing to pay whatever it takes.” She reached into her purse, pulled out a sealed envelope, and placed it decisively on the desk.

  I smiled. “The truth can be difficult sometimes,” I said. “People think they want to hear it, but really they don’t.”

  “We already know the truth,” Junior said. “At least part of it. Our father would never take his own life. Not in a million years. That’s not the man he was.”

  “And even if he wanted to kill himself, he wouldn’t have done it there,” Katrina said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Our father was a germophobe. Everything he touched had to be clean. He even traveled with flip-flops and a Ziploc bag so he wouldn’t stand barefoot in a hotel shower or touch a remote control with his bare fingers. There’s no way he would go down to a dirty, nasty place like that with rats and garbage and take his own life.”

  “We had plans that he was excited about,” Junior said. “The most excited I had ever seen him about traveling. We were two weeks away from going on safari in South Africa. My dad spent an entire year planning it. His father, my grandfather, had always wanted to go to Africa but died before he had the chance. Dad had bought all the tickets, paid for us to have our own house on a reserve for two weeks. He called us every day with the official countdown to our departure. Does that sound like a man who’s also planning to kill himself?”

  I had read all the stories and heard all the rumors, but I hadn’t heard about the trip. I had to agree that it didn’t make much sense that he would just up and put a gun to his head. Walter Griffin had every reason to love life. The consummate Chicago insider, he had been a close friend and trusted confidant of Mayor Bailey for the last thirty years. He’d sat on the most important charitable and civic boards, and his career had spanned several high-level positions in city government. Most recently the mayor had appointed him the president of the Chicago Board of Education, ultimately making him the boss of the entire Chicago public school system. Bailey had put him at CPS to help overhaul the entire corrupt and underperforming school system and lead the fight against the mayor’s eternal archenemy, the Chicago Teachers Union. Griffin had won several hard-fought concessions during the last contract negotiation with CTU and was expected to win a lot more.

  Then I thought about my father and how he had said Griffin’s death was an immeasurable loss to the South Side, a largely depressed part of the city that had many critics but few champions. The year before he died, Griffin had spearheaded a $9 million fundraising campaign for the University of Chicago Medicine’s Violence Recovery Program. It had helped thousands of families who had been victimized by violence positively reintegrate into society.

  “What does your mother think?” I asked.

  “She’s always believed that someone killed him,” Katrina said. “The second she saw it on TV, she knew they had finally gotten him.”

  “Who is the ‘they’ she was referring to?”

  Junior looked at his sister, then back at me. “Someone in or near the mayor’s office,” he said. “She’s convinced someone ordered the hit.”

  2

  “HAVE YOU LOST YOUR goddamn mind?” Commander Rory Burke bellowed. His voice started its rumble somewhere in the hollow depths of his barrel chest, then exploded out of his mouth like a cannon.

  We were sitting across from each other at Al’s Italian Beef at the corner of Grand and Wells in the River North neighborhood. This was Burke’s choice. I preferred Luke’s Italian Beef in the Loop. Construction workers on lunch break crammed the tiny shop. Two enormous beef sandwiches big enough to feed an entire battalion sat in front of us. Burke had already chomped his way through half of his. I had gotten full just watching him.

  “I didn’t want to take it,” I said. “I’d heard them interviewed on the news before, but there was something about seeing them in person and hearing the pain in their voices.”

  “Jesus Christ, you’ve gotten all soft on me?” Burke said. “Besides, I thought you didn’t take on cases this time of year on account of your damn golf addiction.”

  “Usually, I don’t,” I said.

  “But?”

  “I never thought Griffin committed suicide.”

  “The department did their own investigation independent of the ME,” Burke said. “They came to the same conclusion. He shot himself.” He took a long gulp of orange soda to chase a clump of beef and bread.

  I clapped softly. “The answer I expect from someone who gets a check signed by city hall every two weeks,” I said. “Now tell me what you really think.”

  “Fuck you!” After he had inhaled almost the entire second half of the sandwich and wiped his lips with the back of his hand, Burke said, “It never added up for me either. Griffin had his hands in lots of jars, people he owed money, deals he was constantly making, old friends he was constantly helping out. Maybe too many. But a guy like that, with all he had, taking his own life and then doing it that way. Never registered for me.”

  “Who worked the case?”

  “Gallagher and Suarez. Two of the best over in Central. They have almost fifty years between the two of them. It was before your time, but Gallagher was lead on the Girl X case back in ninety-seven.” I was in middle school when the Girl X case rocked the city. A nine-year-old living in the tough Cabrini-Green housing project had been on her way to school when she was abducted from a stairwell, viciously raped, choked, and left for dead. Four years later they nailed the monster, and the judge hit him with a 120-year sentence.

  “Central had jurisdiction, but did they keep the investigation local?” I asked.

&nbsp
; “Very. None of the other areas were called in to help.”

  Chicago was divided into three police areas: North, Central, and South. Each area had its own division of detectives. Burke was the commander of the South area. Griffin’s body and his red Cadillac convertible had been found downtown in an industrial area on the north bank of the Chicago River at a place called Wolf Point. It was mostly undeveloped land owned by the Kennedy family. That territory belonged to Central command.

  “How did they run the case?” I asked.

  “As best they could,” Burke said. “You know heaters like this are always a pain in the ass. Everybody’s looking over your damn shoulders. The paper pushers from HQ hadn’t worked a case in years, but they all slid out from behind their fancy desks and got their noses in there. Albertson is the commander over there. He’s smart. Rose through the ranks quickly. A little too much of a yes-man for me, but the Fifth Floor likes him.”

  Fifth Floor was cop speak for the mayor’s office, which occupied a meandering maze of rooms on the fifth floor of city hall. The mayor and police brass always had a strained relationship. Police procedure and mandates were supposed to be independent of politics and personal agendas. They rarely were.

  “I made a few calls inside,” I said. “I was told they moved through it really fast. A lot of hand-waving and checking the boxes, but nothing substantive.”

  “I don’t know all the details, but let’s just say it moved much faster than I would’ve run it,” Burke said. “Then again, I’m old school. A case like this needs time for everything to jell, to cut through the emotions and connections and let the evidence tell the story. But my goals are different. They all want their names on the supe’s door. I couldn’t give two shits. The brass wanted a quick resolution, so they got one.”

  “Even if the resolution was predetermined.”

  “The longer that case stayed open, the more public scrutiny it would’ve gotten.”

  “Have you seen the file?” I asked.

  “Never got a chance to go anywhere near it,” Burke said. “They had it flagged right away.”

  Heater cases were always flagged by the department. Normally, investigating officers could go to Evidence and Recovery Property Section—EARPS—and sign out the files on a case. When a case was flagged, department policy dictated that only investigators directly linked to a case or needing information from a case to help with another active case could look at the files. Their names and shield numbers were recorded. Anyone else poking around would be questioned.