I bundled Bear into the back of the Mustang and drove again to the South Side. I parked in a covered lot near the university theater. I didn’t know how seriously to take Bolton’s threat of keeping track of my investigation, but I left my iPhone in the car, happily alerting anyone to the Mustang’s location, but not to mine. Bear and I crossed the quads, disguised as a woman with a dog.
Lydia’s apartment was almost a mile to the south, beyond the Midway Plaisance boulevard, where the 1893 White City had been built. Once we crossed the Midway, Bear picked up his pace. He’d been sticking to my left leg as if chained there, but now he surged ahead, trotting down Kimbark Avenue to a three-flat halfway between Sixty-second and Sixty-third Streets. He stood at the locked gate, wagging his stub of a tail.
The gate lock would have been easy to undo, but I waited for Elisa. I didn’t know if Norm Bolton or Sergeant Pizzello were keeping an eye on me, but I had that prickly feeling along my scalp that you get when the neighbors are peering from behind their curtains. They would know who came and went, and I was definitely not a regular, although Bear clearly was.
Elisa didn’t keep us waiting long.
“That dog!” she cried. “Isn’t that the dog that belongs to the man you asked about, the one with the weird name?”
“Yep. This is Bear, Coop’s dog, and he knows this building.”
She fumbled with her key ring, finally found the one that undid the gate and the one for the front door. Once we were inside the hall, Bear ran up the stairs, his toenails clattering and skittering on the uncarpeted floor. He trotted down the second-floor hallway and stopped in front of a door at the end, his doggy face stretched into a wide grin. We’d clearly found where Coop had been living.
He was barking and whimpering while Elisa fiddled with the lock. She kept dropping the keys, tension stretching her skin so tautly that her cheekbones jutted out in almost skeletal relief.
As soon as she turned the knob, Bear pushed the door open and rushed into the apartment. He disappeared into the back and began to bark, the sharp urgent sounds of warning.
“Must he make that racket?” Elisa cried.
I didn’t answer. My lesser nose had picked up the sickly sweet odor the dog had been tracking. I followed on dragging feet. Bear was standing in front of a closed door, scratching at it, hurling his shoulder against it. Just as I reached it, he managed to force it open. We were in the bathroom. A man was in the tub, head slumped at a steep angle. The sight was shocking, so shocking the details registered only slowly: the blood covering his head, congealing in the hair, covering the arms of his suit jacket. The suit—he’d been fully clothed when he was attacked. The tub was dry—he’d thought he could hide in here but he’d been cornered. He’d tried to protect himself from the blows that had battered his head—his crossed arms had fallen onto his knees.
Behind me, Elisa made a strangled sound. She was choking, vomiting, and I turned to try to get her head over the toilet but ended up with the remains of her breakfast on my arm and jeans leg.
I led her to the kitchen, where I took off my shirt and pants and rinsed them in the sink. It was unpleasant to put the clammy clothes back on, but less unpleasant than wearing her vomit. When I’d bathed Elisa’s face under the tap, I took her into the hallway.
“I’m calling the police. You stay out here.”
“Who—was it the man Coop?” she whispered. “What was he doing in Lydia’s apartment?”
“It wasn’t Coop. I’m pretty sure it’s a man named Simon Lensky.”
“Who is he? Why was he in the bathtub?” Palurdo was struggling to regain control.
“I know almost nothing about him, but Leo Prinz worked with him on a presentation. Now they’re both dead.” I didn’t try to answer her other question—why was Simon in the bathtub, why was he even in the apartment—because I could only guess. Whoever killed him hadn’t beaten him with the gavel: Simon had been missing only a day or two, and the gavel had turned up before that.
I called Pizzello, instead of 911.
“You know, Warshawski, there are judges who’d agree you’re stalking me.”
“Sergeant, I’m looking at what’s left of Simon Lensky. His battered body is in a bathtub on South Kimbark. Do you want the details, or should I hang up and call 911?”
She took the address. “And don’t touch anything. That includes anything. I’ll be there straightaway.”
Straightaway from Fifty-first and the Ryan would give me about fifteen minutes to scope the place. I wouldn’t have a second chance to look before the cops went through, tagging and bagging.
Bear had left the bathroom while I was on the phone. He’d gone through the rooms, looking for Coop, and now was slumped in the open doorway to the hall.
When I looked through the apartment’s three rooms, I saw they’d already been searched, but by pros. Things weren’t tossed around as they are when an addict is looking for valuables.
The unit was sparsely furnished, making it quick to examine: a chest of drawers, a bed, and a straight-backed chair in the bedroom; a few chairs, a table, and some bookshelves in the main room. A handful of pans, a few bowls and cups in the kitchenette. The food was minimal as well: dried beans, molding cheese in the refrigerator, a half-eaten bag of tortilla chips. The only concession to taste, a pottery teapot and a collection of loose teas. All these had been spread on the kitchen counter.
Bear’s excitement when we reached the building made me certain that this was where Coop had been living, but he’d left precious little sign of it.
The sheets had been stripped from the twin bed, so I couldn’t tell if Coop might have left telltale hairs in the linens. The mattress and box springs had been slit in multiple places, along with the curtain hems and pillows. Whatever the killers were seeking was small.
A fifty-pound bag of dry dog food in the mop cupboard showed that at least a dog had been here. The killer must have gone through the dog food, but it hadn’t been emptied, the way the teas were, so I stuck my hand inside, probing for something small, like a flash drive, but didn’t feel anything.
The closet and the drawers in the bedroom dresser were half open. They were almost empty, except for a few pieces Lydia had left behind, but one drawer held a navy sweater, big enough for a man. Elisa had come into the room behind me; she seized it from me.
“I made that for Hector, after Jacobo died, when Hector began trying to explore his father’s roots. You can see it here, the white star of the Chilean flag.” The star was on the chest, where it would have covered Hector’s heart. Elisa buried her face in the wool, rocking on her heels.
I had trouble looking in the bathroom, with Simon Lensky’s battered eye sockets staring at me. Using a kitchen towel to keep from overlaying fingerprints, I made myself open the medicine cabinet. No toiletries. A tube of organic toothpaste, Lydia’s prescriptions for Ativan and Haldol, the bottles still almost full.
There was no sign of a computer or charger—no trace of current electronics. Coop used a cell phone, but he’d probably taken the charger with him when he bolted.
An old sound system stood in a corner, not plugged in. It included a DVD player, but no television. If thieves had come in and taken the computer and a television, they would have taken the sound system, too—so either Coop never had electronics or the killer had taken them.