The Black Cage by Jack Fredrickson

Author:Jack Fredrickson
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781448303557
Publisher: Severn House Publishers
Published: 2018-09-11T16:00:00+00:00

TWENTY-THREE

McGARRY ILL, STEPS BACK

Milo Rigg, Chicago Examiner

Cornelius Feldott, assistant Cook County medical examiner, announced this morning that he has assumed management of the department following the sudden illness of Medical Examiner Charles McGarry. Details of McGarry’s illness will not be made public, Feldott said, in respect for McGarry’s privacy, but he said that the illness is not life-threatening and that McGarry is expected to return to head the medical examiner’s office within the next month. ‘Our hopes and wishes are for his complete and speedy recovery,’ Feldott said.

McGarry’s illness comes at a difficult time, as his office is in the midst of assisting the Cook County sheriff’s department in investigating the murders of the Graves sisters and Jennifer Ann Day, and in the re-examination of the killings of Bobby Stemec and Johnny and Anthony Henderson, as announced two days ago by Sheriff’s Deputy Jerome Glet. The status of Richie Fernandez, who, according to witnesses, was arrested as a person of interest in the Graves case by Cook County Sheriff Joseph Lehman in the company of Charles McGarry, remains unknown.

‘Again, Richie Fernandez!’ Aria said, throwing her arms up in mock exasperation.

‘For now, and maybe for quite a while,’ Rigg said.

‘Feldott caught you by surprise with his announcement?’ Aria asked.

‘He gave no hint of taking over when we talked, even going so far as to pretend confusion about where McGarry might be.’

‘And about Beatrice Graves being penetrated?’

‘He didn’t flinch at that, either.’

‘How do we find out if the Day girl was sexually assaulted?’ she asked.

‘She was in the water for a long time. Even if evidence survived, I bet he’d quash it. He wouldn’t want Sex Crimes anywhere around.’

She turned to her keyboard, tapped keys and sent Rigg’s piece off. ‘You can’t say that last business about Richie Fernandez. You have no witnesses now.’

‘Fernandez is a story.’

‘A story that has no corroborating witnesses. You said Greg Theodore is watching you. He’ll sniff out the weakness and crucify you for sloppy reporting.’

‘McGarry is complicit in Fernandez’s disappearance. His hinges are coming loose. That’s why he’s pretending to be sick.’

Her desk phone rang. She picked it up. It was a short conversation, consisting twice of, ‘I’ll tell him.’ She hung up.

‘The Bastion beckons,’ she said.

He hadn’t been back to the Examiner’s headquarters since Donovan exiled him under the shadow of Carlotta Henderson, early the year before. Never as foreboding as the Chicago Tribune’s Gothic tower, as detailed as the Art Deco magnificence of the old Daily News headquarters or as boxily efficient as the former Sun-Times building, the majesty of the six-story, fortress-style brick Bastion always held, for Rigg, the scrappy resoluteness of the city’s third-largest newspaper.

‘Milo!’ Edna, the woman behind the reception desk in the Bastion’s grand marble lobby, smiled. She loved all the Examiner’s reporters.

‘I’m back!’ he said.

‘To stay?’

‘Probably just for minutes. I’m here to see Donovan.’

Her smile disappeared. Things had got steadily worse for print reporters since Rigg’s first day at the paper. Fresh-faced out of Chicago’s Columbia College, the school

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