Chapter 60 The Witness

Chapter 60 The Witness
The 18th District homicide unit operated on coffee, cigarette smoke, and the kind of dark humor that kept men sane while they looked at things no one should see. Detective George King had been part of it for twelve years, long enough to know that some cases followed rules and some cases followed nothing at all.

The mayor's murder was following nothing at all.

King stood at the edge of the Speedway VIP section, his hands in the pockets of a coat too thin for the November cold, and tried to make sense of what he was seeing. Four hours since the explosions. Four hours since the mayor's body had been scraped off the concrete. Four hours, and the scene was still chaos, with forensic teams picking through debris, uniforms holding back reporters, the wounded long since transported to hospitals that would never be the same.

"Detective King."

He turned. Captain Morrison approached, his face the color of old paper, his eyes avoiding the twisted metal that had once been race cars.

"The commissioner wants results yesterday. The governor's office is calling every hour. The FBI is sniffing around the edges, trying to claim jurisdiction." Morrison lowered his voice. "Find something, George. Anything. I need a suspect. Give me a name to give them."

King looked back at the wreckage. "I'll give you a name when I have one. Not before."

Morrison nodded and walked away. He knew better than to push. King had a reputation, a thorough, methodical, impossible to intimidate or corrupt cop. It had cost him promotions, friendships, and one marriage. It had also made him the only detective in the 18th who could be trusted to follow the truth wherever it led.

Wherever that was.

The first hour of investigation yielded nothing useful. Witnesses described explosions, panic, a shooter they couldn't identify. The security footage had been conveniently corrupted, a technical glitch, the track's IT manager explained, his sweat visible even in the cold. King made a note to interview that man personally.

The second hour brought him to the hospital, where the survivors were being treated behind layers of security that had nothing to do with the police. The families had their own people guarding their own wounded, and they didn't trust the cops any more than they trusted each other.

King found Don Rinaldi's consigliere in a private room on the fourth floor, guarded by two men who looked at him like he was something they'd scraped off their shoes.

"No visitors," one of them said.

"I'm not a visitor. I'm a detective investigating the murder of the mayor of Chicago." King held up his badge. "Step aside, or I'll have you arrested for obstruction."

The guard hesitated, then moved. King pushed open the door.

The man inside had no legs. That was the first thing King noticed, the way the sheets lay flat where limbs should have been, the morphine drip, the machines beeping rhythms that measured a life forever changed. His face was gray, his eyes glassy, but something flickered in them when King entered.

"Detective," the man whispered. His voice was wrecked. "Come to ask who did this?"

"Come to ask what you saw."

The man laughed, a horrible sound that turned into a cough. "What I saw? I saw a car fly into my face. I saw my legs disappear. I saw..." He stopped, his eyes focusing on something King couldn't see. "I saw a man in the upper deck. Just before the mayor fell. He was in a maintenance uniform. Walking away like he had all the time in the world."

King's pen moved across his notebook. "Can you describe him?"

"White. Medium build. Nothing special. That's the point, isn't it? He was nothing. No one. The kind of man you pass on the street and forget before you've taken your next breath." The consigliere's eyes found King's. "But I won't forget. I'll see that walk in my dreams until the day I die. Which might be soon, the way things are going."

"What things?"

The man's mouth twisted. "You're not one of us, are you, Detective? I can tell. Clean eyes. You are not yet on the payroll. You haven't been bought."

"Not yet."

"And you won't be." The man closed his eyes. "Good. Someone should know the truth. Even if it kills them."

King leaned closer. "What truth?"

But the consigliere was already asleep, or pretending to be, and the guards were already opening the door, and King was ushered out before he could ask another question.

He left with a description, avague, almost useless, and a name. The man in the upper deck. The walk he'd never forget.

It wasn't much. But it was a start.

The third hour took King to the morgue.

Five bodies lay on steel tables, each one a story cut short. The medical examiner, a woman named Chen who had seen worse but rarely this many at once, walked him through them one by one.

"Marco Andolini. Thirty-four. Cause of death: blunt force trauma. The car landed directly on him. There wasn't enough left to notify next of kin, but someone from his family already came to identify what they could."

King looked at the sheet, at the shape beneath it. "Andolini. That's one of the families."

Chen glanced at him. "You didn't know?"

"I knew. I just didn't know they were all here."

"They were all here." She moved to the next table. "Franco Vitale. Sixty-eight. Heart stopped before the car hit, according to the preliminary. Probably the shock. Died before he hit the ground, which is more than most of them got."

King studied the old man's face. Peaceful, almost. As if he'd simply fallen asleep.

"The new Conti boss. Twenty-nine years old. Still fresh on the job." Chen shook her head. "And the mayor. One bullet, base of the skull. Professional. Military, maybe. Definitely not some gangbanger with a grudge."

King stared at the mayor's body, at the hole that had ended a life and started a crisis. "Anything else?"

Chen hesitated. "One thing. The timing of the explosions, they were synchronized. Not just close. Perfect. Whoever did this knew exactly when those cars would pass that section. They had to have access to the race schedule, the drivers' speeds, everything."

"Inside job."

"Or someone who knew how to get inside information." Chen met his eyes. "This wasn't random, George. This was planned for months. Maybe longer."

King nodded slowly. "Then whoever planned it is still out there. And they're not done."

The fourth hour took King to the track's IT office, where a man named Prescott was waiting with the sweatiest palms King had seen in years.

"The footage," King said, not bothering with pleasantries. "Tell me about the footage."

Prescott swallowed. "Technical glitch. Happens sometimes. The system..."

"The system was working perfectly until three hours before the explosions. Then it wasn't." King pulled up a chair, sat down across from the man, and leaned forward. "I'm going to ask you once. Who paid you? And don't waste my time with lies. You will just worsen your situation."

Prescott's face went white. "I don't know...I can't...they'll kill me."

"They'll kill you anyway. The only question is whether I arrest you first and put you somewhere they can't reach." King's voice was calm, almost gentle. "Who paid you?"

For a long moment, Prescott said nothing. Then his hand shook as he reached into his pocket and pulled out a folded piece of paper.

"I don't know who he was. He gave me this. Said to call the number if anyone asked questions. Said they'd make it worth my while." He pushed the paper across the desk. "I didn't want anyone to die. I just...I needed the money. My daughter's medical bills..."

King took the paper. On it was a single phone number, written in precise, elegant script.

"Did you call it?"

"Not yet. I was going to. After you left. But..." Prescott's eyes pleaded. "What do I do?"

King stood, pocketing the paper. "You wait. And you pray that whoever this is doesn't decide you're a loose end before i find them."

He walked out, leaving Prescott alone with his terror.

The fifth hour found King back at his desk, the phone number burning a hole in his pocket. He should call it. Should trace it, find out who answered, build a case. But something held him back.

Instinct. The same instinct that had kept him alive for twelve years in a job that ate idealists for breakfast.

He picked up his phone and dialed a different number, an old contact in the FBI, someone who owed him favors and knew how to keep her mouth shut.

"Monroe," he said when she answered. "I need you to run a number for me. Quiet. No paperwork."

A pause. "George. The mayor's case?"

"Yeah."

Another pause, longer this time. "You know what you're stepping into?"

"I'm starting to get an idea."

"Good. Because from what I'm hearing, this goes deeper than any of us thought. The families are circling each other. The feds are waiting to see who blinks. And someone out there is playing a game that no one understands yet." Monroe's voice dropped. "Be careful, George. In this world, the truth doesn't set you free. It gets you killed."

She took the number and hung up.

King sat in the dark of his office, staring at the file on his desk. Five bodies. One shooter. A city on the edge of war.

And somewhere out there, a man with a maintenance uniform and a killer's walk was waiting for his next target.

The phone on his desk buzzed. Monroe's text: Number is a burner. Untraceable. But the last ping was near the Vitale compound. Lake Forest.

King read it twice, then deleted it.

The Vitale compound. One of the families. One of the names on the morgue's steel tables.

He thought about Franco Vitale's peaceful face. About the consigliere with no legs. About the mayor, who had smiled for photographs with men who signed his death warrant.

Then he picked up his coat and walked out into the night.

Somewhere in Lake Forest, answers waited. And George King intended to find them, even if they killed him.

Derek Rogers stood at Bella's window, watching the city lights flicker against the dark. Behind him, she worked at her desk, unaware that the man guarding her door had a device beneath her chair and orders that changed by the hour.

His phone buzzed. He didn't look at it. He already knew what it would say.

Asset's ssecurity maybe compromised. Detective King investigating. Eliminate if necessary.

Eliminate a detective. A man doing his job. A man who had probably never hurt anyone in his life.

Derek closed his eyes.

The clock was still ticking. And now, it had a name.

George King. An unknown man in the mafioso world.