“I just can’t bear to go home with my baby lying in a drawer in the morgue,” Mrs. Whitby fretted.
“Harry’s right; we can’t afford to stay in that hotel for God knows how long,” Mr. Whitby said. “But if you want to stay on, we could move into Marc’s house, I suppose.”
“Not until a forensics team has been through it,” I said.
They argued it over among themselves while I turned onto Lake Shore Drive. The lake, at its lowest level in a century, looked sullen, not the roiling of a usual stormy winter, but the dull surface of a creature in retreat. Mrs. Whitby, staring through the windshield, seemed just as remote.
When I pulled up in front of the Drake, they still hadn’t decided who would stay and who would go, but Mr. Whitby had agreed that I could go ahead with “my business.” Amy got out with them, but after she’d hugged Harriet and her parents she climbed into the front seat.
“I can drop you at the train,” I said, “but I don’t have time to take you home.”
“I thought I’d ride with you, see what kind of help you need.”
I opened my mouth to protest but shut it again. I did need help, and Amy Blount was a skilled researcher. I invited her to come with me to my office while I tried calling the cops. “We’ll decide what to do next when I see what kind of reaction I get.”
Amy lifted her brows at the unorganized stacks of files, but didn’t say anything. She perched on Mary Louise’s chair and watched me while I tried the police. I started with Terry Finchley, a detective in the First District’s violent crimes unit. Terry had been Mary Louise’s boss when she was with the police. He was also a close friend of a Chicago cop I’d loved and lost, and he’s never quite forgiven me for how I treated Conrad. Still,, we’ve sort of worked together several times, and he takes my opinion seriously.
After I’d laid out such facts as I had, Finchley said, “It’s a jurisdictional problem, Vic. He died out in DuPage County. He’s their puppy.”
“But, Finch, he lived here on the South Side. His car’s here, his house has been cleaned out.”
“A car in front of an empty house isn’t evidence of a crime, Vic. I can’t send a forensics team down there, or ask the Twenty-first District to order one in. No crime has been committed there.”
“Burglary-“
“On your say-so only. He could have burned his papers. He could have had a power surge and lost all his files. No sale, Vic. You can talk to the captain, of course, but I can’t take it on.”
The captain was Bobby Mallory, my father’s oldest friend on the force. Like the Finch, he sort of respects my work without liking my doing it. In his case, it has nothing to do with my old lover and everything to do with my being his friend’s daughter. He gave me less time than the Finch had, and finished by saying, “The last I heard, your intuition wasn’t considered grounds for Chicago to demand jurisdiction of a body from DuPage County. We got five hundred unsolved homicides here in town. I’m not creating a political stink by trying to catch five-oh-one. Eileen wants to see you for dinner. Call her, set up a date. That nice boy of yours still being a hero in Afghanistan?”
“He’s over there being something,” I snapped. “You watch your step until he comes home.”
Meaning, don’t sleep around, Penelope, even if Ulysses is lying in the arms of a British journalist. I hung up savagely on that thought.
“You’re not seeing me at my most effective,” I told Amy. “But at least I can find out if the Cook County ME will do the autopsy privately.” I tried Bryant Vishnikov at the morgue, but he had the day off.
When I reached him at home, he snarled, “If I’d wanted live patients paging me day and night, I wouldn’t have gone into pathology. I thought my home phone was unlisted, anyway.”
“Is it? You didn’t tell me that. Marc Whitby’s father wants a second autopsy performed on hi., son. Would you be willing to do that?”
He waited a minute to .. ;swer. “It’s something I do do, and can do, but it’s not something Cook County can pay for, Vic. And you know, if I do a thorough autopsy and simply-find that the guy drowned with alcohol in his system, the family may not accept those results.”
“What would you charge?”
“For the tox screens, and the time and space, it could go as high as three thousand.”
I had no idea what kind of resources the Whitbys had, but I told Vishnikov to proceed and asked how we should get the body to him.