As Lynch went up the stairs, he could hear Johnny talking to his sister.

“That’s it, Collie. Just run that rag along there and get that extra grout up before it dries on the tiles. You’re doing great.”

He heard Colleen giggle. “It’s cold.”

At the top of the stairs, Lynch could see the boxes from the tile place, couple of corner pieces Johnny had snipped off sitting in an empty box.

“Fe, fie, fo, fum,” Lynch rumbled, turning the corner toward the bath. “I better not find things screwed up by no bums.”

“Daddy!” Colleen squealed, running out of the bathroom. She was only seven. Johnny walked out behind her, wiping his hands on a shop towel. Smile on his face told Lynch all he needed to know – kid had done things right.

“Hey, Dad.”

“How’s it going, buddy?”

“Got the floor in. Collie’s just helping me finish up. Gotta seal the grout tomorrow.”

“Let’s have a look.”

Lynch stuck his head in the door. Floor looked perfect. Couple more cut-up tiles outside the door than there should have been for a floor this size. Figured the kid measured wrong, or they cracked on him. But that’s why you got extras, and that’s how you learned.

“Damn. Looks real nice.”

“Didn’t we do a good job, Daddy?” asked Colleen.

Lynch scooped her up. “You did a great job, Collie. Your brother teach you how?”

Great big smile spread across her little round face. “Yep.”

“Is he a good teacher?”

Suddenly, she looked serious. “Daddy, he is the best brother in the whole world.”

Lynch reached out and tousled John’s hair. “Guess I’m a lucky man.” He buried his face in Colleen’s neck and blew a loud raspberry. She squealed again, Johnny smiled, and Lynch heard his wife coming in the back door.

“If the construction crew will come downstairs, I’ve got a great big bunch of weeds I’ve pulled out ready for dinner.”

Colleen laughing. “Mom, we can’t eat weeds!”

His wife shouting up the stairs, “Well, I might have something else for the picky eaters.”

Johnny smiling at him like he got it, like he understood how much it meant to be part of all this. Lynch thinking so what if he got traffic duty for life.

Later, Lynch was in the kitchen grabbing a beer from the fridge when his wife called him from the living room where she was watching the news.

“Honey, you better get out here. You’re going to want to see this.”

Lynch walked into the living room just in time to see Simba or whatever his name was standing on the street in front of several of his followers almost screaming into a row of microphones, looking a little washed out in the lights for the cameras.

“White fear-mongers tryin’ to incite hatred, say it’s the Black man you have to fear. It’s the Black man gonna break into your house, gonna kill you in your sleep, gonna rape your women. When Fred Hampton tried to say the Black man don’t have to live in fear, don’t have to live in shame, it wasn’t no Black man came for him. It was the white cops come and shot him in his bed. The white pigs come and murdered him and then walked away smiling while the white judges and white DA all say, ‘Yah suh, dat’s fine. You go on and shoot down that black dog.’ And now I hear dey coming for me, saying I killed the mayor’s pet boy, pretty boy walking around talkin’ how only the fine white man can save us poor Black folk. You pigs all come on. But don’t expect me to be lyin’ asleep in my bed. You want war, we be warriors.” He thrust his fist into the air, holding it there, and the line of black men behind him did the same. “By any means necessary.” All of them shouting in unison. Then he turned and walked back through the middle of the pack.

CHAPTER 15 – CHICAGO

Present Day

When John Lynch got to the Olfson plant, the mobile lab was pulled up near the east end. Meat wagon from the ME’s office after that, couple more units from technical services. Somebody’d set up a generator near the door, buzzing along like a power mower, couple of lines running inside. Lynch saw one of the lab guys coming out the door. Skinny guy with glasses and hair that was always falling in his face. Lynch trying to think of his name, then it coming to him. Novak. Kind of a grump. Lot of the guys called him No Sack because he’d lost a nut to testicular cancer a couple years back.

“Novak, how’s it going?” Lynch asked.

“You sure can pick em, Lynch. There’s like a billion square feet in this place.”

“Room work out? This the place?”

“Looks like. We got fresh gunshot residue on the inside of the window. Not much else. No prints that we can find, at least not upstairs. McCord call you about the stiffs?”

“Yeah. What’s that about?”

“The gangbangers you were looking for, ones that hung out here? Found four of them in the basement.”

“I’m assuming dead?”

Little smile from Novak. “Why don’t you go on down and have a look. Hate to spoil it for you.”

“OK. Hey, where’re we at with ballistics from yesterday?”

“You know, Lynch, I was going to check on that this morning, but then I got a call about how I had to get out here and toss an entire abandoned factory. Then it turns out we got a multiple in the basement, and, with the factory being the likely shooting location and being better than half a mile from the DOA yesterday, that gives me a crime scene about the size of Rhode Island. Ballistics is working on it. You want to call in, be my guest.”

One of the lines from the generator ran up the stairs. The other snaked down the hall and into a doorway on the left. Lynch followed the second line down the basement stairs. The tech guys had shop lights set up every twenty feet. Long hallway, doors leading out, all on the right side. What was left of some old furnaces, couple of rooms with machinery in them. Where the building turned in was a large room. Somebody’d set up some furniture down here. Green plastic chairs, a beat up old table with a big ass boombox on it. Three of the chairs were knocked over. Couple of ice chests under the table. Popeye’s wrappers and quart Beck’s bottles everywhere. Lynch saw three of the numbered yellow plastic tents the crime scene guys liked to set out to mark stuff. One was just to his left, inside the door. He could see a piece of brass on the floor next to it. Lots of gang graffiti. At the far end of the room was a dark area that ran back under the wall. Just outside that, four body bags were lined up on the floor. Lynch had seen plenty of the ME’s bags, these looked different. McCord was crouched near the end of the last bag on the right, had the zipper open. He looked up.

“Hey, Lynch. Welcome to Pee-wee’s playhouse.”

Lynch nodded. “You guys get new bags?”

“Nope. Perp must have bagged them for us. These look military. Bagged the bodies and shoved them back up under the wall here. Figure it’s that Keep Chicago Clean shit Hurley’s always pushing. Even your criminal element’s getting with the program.”

“Got a perp with his own body bags?”

McCord just shrugged.

“See we got some brass. They shot?”

“Haven’t unbagged them yet, figured you’d want to see everything in situ. But we’ve got no blood on the floor, no splatter on the walls. You want to help me unwrap them?”

Lynch pulled on a pair of latex gloves and helped McCord slide the bags out from under the stiffs. Four black males. As McCord and Lynch worked the last one out, his head lolled around like it was attached to the body with a piece of string. Two 9mm Smiths clanked in the bottom of the bag under the body.

“So these the gangbangers you were looking for?” asked McCord.

“They got the right tattoos, they’re wearing the right colors, looks like my boys. Guess they won’t be answering any questions. How long you think they’ve been down here?”

“They’re limp, so rigor’s come and gone. Bags kept the bugs out, so we didn’t get any help there, but based on some of the discoloration, a couple days anyway. Your guy must have run into them while he was casing the joint and decided he didn’t want their company.”