The Reign of the Kingfisher: A Novel

PROLOGUE

HERE IN THE BLACK-LIGHT NIGHT of another endless Chicago winter is a boy walking home later than he ought to be. The streets are barren, unrecognizable. Streetlights flicker a dull orange. Yesterday’s snow falls like ash from the rooftops with each gust of wind.

It’s December 1983. The end of the beginning of a new decade.

The boy moves in a skip-step, unaware of the blistering cold, the empty streets, the faltering lights, the whistling wind, the new decade. He tucks his pointed chin into his zipped-up coat and feels his breath thaw his frozen lips.

Somewhere out from the brick tenements and the cars on blocks, he hears his mother’s voice asking him just where on God’s green earth he has been all day. He’s been hearing it all night. He answers her out loud, practicing for the moment itself, as he cuts into an alleyway to make up time. When Portia’s dad came to pick her up after the Bulls game, I forgot to ask him for a ride, and I couldn’t call you because all the pay phones were used up or busted. Wires all tangled, cut loose, hanging from the wall. So I took the bus back to Halsted and walked the rest the way.

It was all true, or most of it. But at this time of night, coming home without notice, the truth didn’t count for much.

He crosses the street and cuts into another alley.

You should have seen Reggie Theus, Mom, you should have seen him move. Might as well have been out there all alone.

To which his mother will say something about gangs and drive-bys and pedophiles and psychopaths and crack addicts—her litany of midnight dangers—but these things are impossible to take seriously on a night like this. A blanket of stars is suspended above the humming web of power lines running slantwise and longways over the tenement rooftops. Pulsing red lights of jet planes and satellites spinning, spinning, through space. He would walk like this all night if he could. He would tread each city block, hands in his pockets jangling sixty cents change, maybe stopping off outside of Portia’s apartment to try and get her attention without waking her father.

He would wait for her face in the window.

As he steps into another alleyway, a car passes behind him in the street. A white Lincoln Continental moving in a slow, slick crawl. He feels the heavy weight of a stare coming from behind the tinted windows, which are darker than the night itself. He freezes, midstep. Every muscle in his body contracts and holds. He becomes aware of the way the streetlights are spaced along the street and he sees that he is between them, shadowed, and so he doesn’t move and maybe prays for the car to pass him by.

The engine picks up and the car pulls away, hesitantly. He waits until it turns a corner down the street and he listens until he hears nothing but the sound of his own heart, beating wild like a rabbit trapped in his chest.

The street is empty again but he no longer feels alone.

He takes off running, bounding over potholes and piled bags of trash. He’s got three more blocks to go before he reaches his building, but why is he just now worried about that? This is the same night that Portia laid a delicate, clandestine, don’t-tell-your-mother hand on his lap while Reggie Theus sunk six outside buckets like it wasn’t anything. He is invincible.

He reaches the mouth of the alley just as headlights crawl up on his left. It’s the same Lincoln Continental, drifting malevolently beneath streetlights. He steps back into the shadow of the alley and presses himself against the wall, and he hears the engine settle into a steady whine as the car floats down the street, predatory. The passenger-side door opens and the car stops. A man steps out and his body unfolds. He wears a leather jacket that shines. Each crease and wave of the fabric ripples as he walks. He wears sunglasses in the moonlight. His hair is kept in a neat afro, recently trimmed. His shoes are snakeskin, and the color shifts from iridescent green to purple to black as he walks.

The man brings one hand from his pocket and holds it out, his fingers curling inward to say, Come here.

The boy is unable to do anything but to nod and to follow. He tells himself in a meek, compromising voice that if this man wanted to kill him he would have done it already. He tries to look confident and brave. He tells himself to breathe in deep and jut his chest out like a man, but he feels his shoulders falling inward and his head turning down. He is withdrawing, diminishing with every scattered heartbeat.

The snow still falls, but he hears his mother’s voice, softer now, like she’s calling out to him from behind a closing door.

How old are you? the man asks in a lacquered voice.

Thirteen.

Thirteen. What are you doing walking around here at one o’clock in the morning, Mr. Thirteen?

I was at the Bulls game.

You were at the Bulls game?

Yes, sir.

Who won, then?

Bulls.

He spits on the ground and twists his face. What was the score?

Eighty-eight to eighty-three.

They play the Bucks, right?

Yes, sir.

The man laughs sharply and stops. He studies the alley walls. I fucking hate the Bucks, Mr. Thirteen. Hate them to hell.

Yes, sir.

Hey. The man steps forward. Come on now, look up at me.

He looks up and meets the man’s gaze. It is insistent, maybe halfway kind. His jaw muscles flex before he breaks into a smile as if he’d been holding it in. You don’t have to talk to me like I’m your pastor or your daddy, all right? What’s the matter, Mr. Thirteen? You’re looking scared. What’s going on? You scared of me?

The boy shrugs and sniffs. He feels the cold for the first time and he shivers.

You’re scared of me. I can tell it. I can see it. Look, you don’t need to go and get scared. I saw you back there. He points in the direction of the street behind the boy. My friend is driving and I see a kid and I think to myself, ‘It’s late. No thirteen-year-old kid ought to be walking around here so late.’ I asked my friend to pull up to see if you’d like a ride. That’s all that’s happening here. A helping hand to a kid. Thirteen years old.

Thank you, but I’ll just walk.

Kid your age oughtn’t be walking this late. You say you’re thirteen.

I am.

Oughtn’t be walking so late.

I’m just three blocks away.

Whole lot can happen in three blocks. Believe me when I say I seen it all.

Like what? he asks, voice cocked in pathetic defiance.

The man raises his eyebrows, amused. There are people here, Mr. Thirteen, people who just want to do bad. They don’t care if you just saw the Bulls play and they don’t even care if the Bulls whooped up on the fucking miserable Bucks. They just want to hurt you. They like hurting people. It makes them feel good to hurt people.

The man stands with his legs spaced and his arms behind his back, a military posture. The boy isn’t satisfied with the answer, too much left undefined, but he doesn’t press it any further. He doesn’t have a choice.

Let’s get going, Mr. Thirteen. He points to the car behind him, coughing up a long tendril of exhaust, same color as the clouds gathering over the rooftops.

The boy consents with a slow nod and the man walks ahead of him, holding the back seat door open and gesturing inside. The leather interior is warm and smells like cigarette smoke. Menthol. There is a woman seated next to him on the other side of the seat, her head turned away. Her hair is red, the glowing of embers in a dying fire. The man gets in the passenger seat and gestures to the driver, a large and varicose man whose catcher-mitt hands dwarf the steering wheel. This is my buddy, Olander, the man says, getting comfortable in the leather seat, pulling at his jacket.

Olander nods, breathing heavy. His eyes are sleepy and bloodshot. His head is bald and wrinkles of skin fold over his shirt collar.

And that thing of beauty next to you, kid, that’s Miss May. Miss May, the woman with the heart of gold. He smiles in the rearview, a half-hid grin. Ain’t that right, Miss May? You got a heart of gold on you, don’t you? Maybe you should say hello to our guest, Miss May.

She doesn’t turn away from the window, but she raises a hand and curls a single finger through a stray strand of hair, and the boy watches this cryptic motion as though it could unlock every mystery he’s ever encountered in his thirteen years of living.

R&B music filters through the radio in half-static frequency. It somehow matches the longing pitch of this night, the flicker of a distant streetlight.

The interior of the car is polished and immaculate, the color of ice cream fresh and glistening in a bowl. There is a woman’s ivory hairbrush at the boy’s feet on the floorboards. He resists the sudden urge to pick it up and hold it in his hands, to run his fingers through the teeth for a stray hair to examine in the streetlight.

The man turns the rearview mirror away from Olander so that he can keep an eye on the boy. His eyes float in the reflective surface. Snow begins to fall outside, scattered and lazy.

Where does he live? Olander asks, his voice a hushed baritone.

Where do you live, Mr. Thirteen?

West Lincoln Apartments. Just down that way.

West Lincoln Apartments, the man repeats, propping his feet up on the dash. His leather shoes reflect his face, his eyes moving back and forth between Miss May and the boy in imprecise intervals, lingering on her for moments that seem to pause and hold.

Miss May wears a shiny skirt, like a disco ball. She wears a tank top that cuts off just above her belly button. She has tattoos that writhe on her skin. On her shoulder blade, a cartoon duck the boy recognizes but cannot name. She does not have a coat with her and the boy wonders how she could survive without a coat while standing outside on the street on a night like this. Because he knows what she is. He doesn’t have a name for it and he doesn’t understand the exact nature of it, but he knows as well as he has to what she is. And he can’t pull his eyes from her.

Her hair is long and curled tightly into springs that bounce when the car turns.

I don’t want to work with the Mustang guy anymore, Miss May says, her voice rattling from the window, hollowing out. The guy with the Mustang. No more, no thanks.

No one says anything.

Did you hear me, Richie? I said no more guy with the Mustang.

What’d he do? Richie asks without turning around. Did he do something to you?

What does it matter what he did? I didn’t like him. End of story.

It matters because he paid for something and if he did something else, I guess I’d consider it theft of some sort.

It wasn’t like that.

What happened, then?

I didn’t like him. End of story. Give him to someone else. I don’t want any more of him.

They’re not all Prince Charming, May. Not all of them can be Mr. Hotshot. You know this.

He must have been seventy years old. Had an oxygen tube. It clicked and clicked. Distracting as all hell.

Since when do you care? What’s gotten into you?

He was rude and nasty, too. I don’t need that sort of stuff in my life right now. I got enough going on without that sort of nastiness.

Smoke one and relax. He passes a soft pack behind his shoulder to her. You’ve had a long night. So have I. So have we. So has everyone else in this shit-show city. All of us tired and griping.

She takes two cigarettes from the pack and throws it back up front. She takes one cigarette in each hand and offers one to the boy, who stares at it, trying to make sense of the offering. He finally shakes his head and she shrugs, stuffing the extra cigarette behind her ear and lighting the other. When she strikes her lighter, he can see her face in the orange glow. She is older than he thought she would be, maybe his mom’s age or a little bit younger. She holds her cigarette between her thumb and her forefinger the way he’s seen other kids hold joints. She’s beautiful. She exhales smoke into the space between the two of them, as if to cloud his line of sight. He thinks he sees her smile before the smoke masks her.

Olander pilots the Lincoln slowly through the snow-littered street. They sit without speaking. The car’s heat blasts through the vents. The back of Olander’s head sprouts pear-shaped droplets of sweat. His breathing is loud. They are two blocks away from his apartment.

Then there is a crashing noise. Unannounced. The crush of metal. So loud that it can’t be real. The car jerks and spins across the snowy street, and the boy falls against the window and May presses against him, her hair falling in his face. The car finally comes to a rest and they are quiet. Ears ringing. The snow has picked up, falling in a dense curtain, rendering the outside world invisible.

What the fuck was that? Richie asks.

I don’t know, Olander answers, his hands still gripping the wheel. I don’t know, Richie.

May sits back up. She still has the cigarette between her fingers and she takes a long drag.

You two all right? Richie asks, turning around.

May nods. So does the boy.

Far-out shit, Richie says, and then he starts to laugh. I thought we were going to fall right off the earth. Down, down, down.

The driver’s-side door suddenly swings open and Olander’s body is pulled out into the snow flurry. One single motion. It happens so fast that no one responds, the remaining three simply staring at the open door, the thick falling snow now drifting into the warm leather interior.

On the radio, someone sings, I’ll be true to only you.

A piercing cry, high and shrill. The oxygen empties out of the car. The boy moves as close as he can to the window, trying to peer through the snow, his face against the glass, but all he can see is white. He grips the leather seat to steady himself.

Another cry, the same pitch, but this time it takes shape into a word and it is the voice of Olander screaming, Richie.

Richie stares wide-eyed out the open driver’s door, then reaches behind his back and removes a polished six-shooter. He counts to himself, Three, two, and then he throws open his door and jumps out. The door slams shut behind him.

From the lessening curtain of snow the boy sees shapes, defined by rough contours, shifting suddenly to nothingness. He sees movement, but movement is all he is sure of.

The boy tries to listen to what is going on outside the car but his heart pounds loudly in his ears and the wind howls. Blues riffs crackle from the radio. The streetlights illuminate the snow in flashing intervals, giving the impression that time has broken, pausing and then lunging forward. He tries to count the seconds.

He hears a voice, Richie’s, scream, No!

A face careens from the snow and smacks with a heavy thud against the boy’s window. He jumps back with a shriek. The features of the face are distorted against the glass. After a moment, he can tell that it is Olander. The large man’s tired countenance is replaced with a gaping mouth, split-lips, and a twisted, bleeding nose. Three of his teeth are chipped and one is missing. He looks to be gasping for one last breath, which fogs the window. His crazed eyes spin lazily in their sockets and he looks to the boy in a way that is desperate and scared, but in the next moment he is jerked back into the swirl of snow, disappearing like a magic act.

May sits next to him, smoking patiently on her cigarette.

The boy frantically pushes down on the locks on the doors that he can reach, his palsied hands fumbling. He feels sick. Streaks of Olander’s blood cover his window like paint from a brush.

The snow parts momentarily. He sees a man, much taller than Richie and much thinner than Olander, his skin and his clothes the same midnight shade, standing pin straight against the brick wall like he’s waiting for a ride. His face is covered and then he’s gone, the snow resuming its torrential fall, but his image burns brightly in the boy’s mind.

Something thunders atop the hood of the idling car and rolls off. The car shakes under the tumultuous weight.

On the radio, a trumpet angles up along an arpeggio.

A few seconds pass. The boy thinks of getting out of the car and running as fast as he can, but his ears still ring with Richie’s bloodcurdling scream and his eyes still ache with Olander’s bloodied face, pulpy and broken against the glass. He breathes like he’s just run a mile and he feels like he has. Every muscle of his body is tied up in knots and he wants only to fall asleep in his bed.

A shadow passes over the window, the unmistakable outline of a man. The boy closes his eyes and pulls his knees to his chest, wrapping his arms around them, as if to hold himself together.

Are you happy? May shouts, her voice echoing from the car windows. At first the boy thinks she is talking to him, but then she adds, I know you’re out there. I know you can hear me. You can hear everything, can’t you? Can’t you?

Her voice grows louder with every syllable, shaking with rage. She pounds on her window with her fist. Dull thumps, dead in the air.

Are you happy now? her voice strains. Is this what you wanted?

She pauses as if there will be a reply, but it doesn’t come.

I never want to see you again. Never. Miss May’s voice falls slightly, but it is still loud enough to somehow echo in this small space. You’re a monster and I hope that’s all you see when you look in the mirror forever, for as long as you live. A fucking monster.

She falls back into her seat and covers her eyes with a hand. Then she says, much softer, Kid, I’m going to go check on Richie and Olander. Stay right here.

She shuts the door behind her and he watches her for as long as he can until the snow picks up once more. When he can’t see her any longer, he listens. He places his ear against the window, his breath fogging the glass. He hears snow crunching under footsteps back to the car. When the door opens, it’s Miss May. She sits back down in the back seat and withdraws the second cigarette from behind her ear and lights it.

They’re gone, she says flatly. He took them away somewhere.

He nods as if this makes sense. He stares down at his hands again. His vision blurs and his eyes burn with tears he won’t allow to fall.

Are you going to be all right to walk the rest of the way home?

Then the tears come. At first, they’re silent, dripping down his cheek in long streaks, but in a moment it’s his entire body shaking, and he’s making noises he’s never heard himself make. She scoots next to him and pats his back, scratching lightly up and down his spine with her long, manicured fingernails, and after a minute or two he’s calm.

I’ll walk you home. You need to get home. Someone will be worried about you.

I don’t want to go outside, he whispers.

You’re safe. He wouldn’t hurt you. Besides, he’s gone now. I promise.

He shakes his head.

Kid, she says in a gentler voice, it’s OK to be scared. But be brave, too.

She grabs his hand and he follows her out of her door. A thin layer of snow drifts in whorls across the street. When he takes a few steps from the car, he turns and sees that it had skidded longer than he had thought. The front-left side of the car is smashed, the broken headlight dangling like an eye out of socket.

Come on, May says, squeezing his hand and walking him down the street.

She wears heels that leave her feet exposed to the freshly fallen snow. Her long pale legs appear blue and he isn’t sure if this is the reflection of light from the snow or if she is freezing. He thinks it may be both.

My apartment is that one over there. He points at the next block over, at a rust-colored building whose windows are dark except for one window on the fifth floor, his kitchen window. He knows his mother is seated at the table, her hair in curlers, her head in her hands, waiting for him.

May leads him to the concrete stoop and lets go of his hand. Maybe you don’t tell anyone about this, she says, not looking at him but at the direction they had come from. Maybe just keep it to yourself. A secret of ours, OK?

OK.

She lingers for just a second, and then she turns around and heads back. He stands entirely still, waiting for an answer to a question he isn’t sure of, and watches her walking down the street, dissolving with each step, harder and harder to make out, until he catches only glimpses of her outline here and there, until finally she is gone.

1 THE VIDEO

MARCUS WATERS WOKE SLOWLY to the tinny ringing of his cell phone—a digitized marimba that erupted into the room. The emerald numbers on his nightstand clock read 5:04 A.M. and a crosswind entered the cracked bedroom window, carrying with it the smell of the neighbor’s lilac bush and last night’s whispering rain.

He answered and heard breathing on the line while he rolled over across the startlingly cool empty half of a king-sized bed.

Is this Marcus Waters?

Who is this?

Lt. James Conrad calling from the Chicago Police Department.

What is this about? Marcus asked, hearing the panic in his own voice before he felt it melting across his skin.

Sorry to disturb you, Mr. Waters. I was told to contact you and ask that you come down to the station. The voice ran through scripted lines, pausing between sentences. We are simply hoping that you may be able to answer some questions for us.

Is my family OK?

I was told to tell you that this does not, so far as we know, directly involve your family.

What is it about, then?

I was told to tell you that we received something that we’d like you to take a look at.

Can you please tell me something that you weren’t told to tell me?

Honestly, Mr. Waters, the officer said as he broke into a thick downstate drawl, a stew of vowels, I’m just the guy who was told to make the phone call. I got no fucking clue what’s going on down here. It’s nuts.

Marcus heard in the background phones ringing and voices shouting out orders.

When do I need to come in?

We sent a squad car to pick you up. It should be arriving shortly.

I just woke up. I still need to shower.

I was told to tell you that it is a time-sensitive matter. Keep an eye out for your police escort.

He rose from bed and changed as quickly as he could into khaki chinos and a starch-white collared shirt. The motions of dressing before the day had yet begun felt vaguely calming, intimately familiar. A pantomime of his life before retirement several years ago, back when he would rise like a saint from the dead at four in the morning, silently so as not to wake his sleeping wife, who, if woken, bolted upright with the blankets clutched in her fists, her beautiful black-woven hair matted down her cheeks. Cherrywood eyes piercing the darkness in silent reproach.

Old habits being what they were, he tried to be quiet as he pulled his socks over his bare feet, even though there was no one left in the house he might disturb.

He found his old leather shoulder bag in the back of the closet, covered by a collection of wing tip shoes he’d not worn in years. He regarded the bag for a few moments before shrugging and throwing it over his shoulder. Through this simple motion, he sensed the years condensing into a single point like a star collapsing. He felt like a journalist again. Not just a retired journalist, but a red-blooded, red-eyed journalist, waking up before the sun to chase the day ahead.

He pulled the curtain from his living room window. No cop car. No nothing. The street was empty. He paced flat-footedly along the hallway where pictures of his family hung in intervals, arranged in chronological order. With each step he took, another picture, another year. The faces aged like some static tribute to time itself. As he reached the end of the hallway, the pictures contained a large, growing family—babies, children, adults, and at the center, two old wizened faces that Marcus only ever recognized when he leaned in close, his nose brushing against the glass—himself and his late wife, Denise. Their faces seemed to look back at him like strangers, half-aware of his probing stare.

He arrived at the last picture of the family as a whole. It had been taken two years ago, just a matter of weeks before his wife’s death. In it, everyone wore pastel-colored T-shirts that his youngest daughter, Lisa, carefully coordinated. Lisa had tortured herself over color gradients and bodily arrangements—Marcus openly adored his daughter’s obsession with details. In the picture, the family was arranged in front of a gazebo, smiling brightly. Denise stood behind Marcus, who was seated in front of them all in the position of the patriarch. She gripped her husband’s shoulders.

He shuffled back down the hallway and peered out of the window. A cruiser idled in the street, looking vaguely otherworldly with the siren off but the lights flashing red and blue.

As soon as Marcus sat down in the passenger seat, the driver said, I’ll tell you right now, all I know is that about half an hour ago, the station was deathly quiet as it ever is this late into the night, and then everything went apeshit. Haywire, bedlam. All that.

He pulled out into the street and turned the flashing lights off.

The driver was a young black cop with a trim beard through which peered an ear-to-ear smile even as he spoke of total chaos. He wore suspenders over a too-tight white collared shirt. He introduced himself as Detective Jeremiah Combs and insisted that Marcus call him Jeremiah.

You’re a detective? Marcus asked warily.

Don’t worry. Jeremiah smiled. Only reason I’m the one taking you in is because it’s all hands on deck right now. I’m happy to do it, though. Feels almost good to be back in a patrol car. Keeps me humble.

Over the cruiser’s radio, a woman’s voice fed numbers through the decaying frequency. Jeremiah put his lips to the radio and said, Mr. Waters and I are en route. He set the radio back down.

The street, awash in headlights, was empty. Ghostly. No soul in sight save for the few cats that had escaped their homes for the night, wandering the suburban jungle in long strides, their luminescent eyes tracking the police car from indeterminable distances.

No, I don’t know what the situation is down at the station, Jeremiah said, responding to a question Marcus hadn’t asked. He spoke with a South-Side affectation, each word blending into the next. I saw some unfamiliar faces before I left, which makes me think they were feds or some other agency personnel. FBI, by the look of it. They all come in wearing suits, even though it was three or four in the morning. Their hair is perfect. They whisper into their cell phones. Supposed to be all inconspicuous, but you can spot them a mile away. Like, who are they trying to kid, you know?

Marcus hummed, too tired and too confused to muster a coherent response.

They joined the highway. The city skyline emerged from the indigo pulp of clouds and smog. The beacons at the top of the skyscrapers pulsed white and red, warding off air traffic and hypnotizing the city’s insomniacs at their windows.

So are you from Chicago originally? Jeremiah asked, though the time for small talk seemed to have passed already.

South Side.

Yeah? Me too. Which part?

Englewood.

Englewood? Jeremiah repeated.

The very same.

Jeremiah’s eyes danced between Marcus’s moon-pale skin, his cardigan with tweed elbow patches, the Italian leather shoulder bag, his pleated chino pants.

Guess we’re just two peas in a pod. Jeremiah smiled.

Marcus understood Jeremiah’s suspicion, but it was true that he had spent his early childhood years with his single mother in a government-subsidized building directly in the brick-and-mortar heart of Chicago’s South Side. It was also true that when Marcus was six years old, his mother had met and promptly fallen in love with a philosophy professor from Northwestern, Corn Wallace, who frequented the university hospital she worked at due to his type-one diabetes. After the marriage, Marcus and his mother moved into Corn’s spacious home in the north suburbs, where Marcus grew up watching The Twilight Zone, reading his stepfather’s collection of Proust, and playing padded street hockey in the cul-de-sac.

Jeremiah pulled off the exit and maneuvered the car at a high, throttling speed beneath the skeletal belly of the L, Lake Michigan visible through the spaces between buildings, the barges and skiffs gliding along its surface. Marcus looked for a single person in sight on the sidewalks or in a window, but there wasn’t anyone. The engine roared and echoed and bounced from the buildings that stood still on either side of the street.

Jeremiah led Marcus through the crowded halls of the precinct, sidestepping throngs of uniformed officers walking shoulder to shoulder. Phones rang in chorus. A conglomeration of musk colognes hung stagnant in the air. Commands were shouted from everywhere, muddled and lost.

At the end of the hall, they arrived at a corner office, the hallway windows obscured by blinds. Marcus read the name on the door: Police Chief Gregory Stetson.

A low groan rose like bile from Marcus’s throat.

Jeremiah knocked on the door and it swung open immediately. Stetson stood in the open space in a pressed suit, a fresh crew cut, his cartoonish-wide shoulders filling the doorframe. A hairbrush mustache covered his upper lip. He dismissed Jeremiah with a nod and turned back to Marcus.

Thank you, Mr. Waters, for coming on such short notice, Stetson said, smiling in an aggregate of hostility and hospitality. I’d introduce myself, but I think that would be largely unnecessary and—he pretended to search for the word that was already loaded in the chamber—"a little outlandish, wouldn’t you say?"

He held out a calloused, fleshy hand.

When Stetson had been appointed police chief fifteen years ago, Marcus had covered the story with a few strong word choices, outlandish among them. Stetson’s career had always been something of an anomaly. He’d spent only a couple short years as an officer before being promoted to homicide detective—the youngest in CPD history. When he was appointed police chief just seven years later—again, the youngest in CPD history—none of Marcus’s police contacts would offer a good reason for the promotion, though they also refused to condemn their new boss on the record. Off the record was another matter entirely. Unable to go to print with his suspicions, however, Marcus settled on calling the mayor’s appointment of Gregory Stetson to police chief outlandish. It had seemed like the only appropriate word at the time. Even so, Marcus regretted it now.

Happy to be here, Marcus said, submitting to the unrelenting grip of Stetson’s handshake. He felt the bones in his hand bend.

After what felt like too long, Stetson released Marcus’s hand and motioned for him to take a seat in front of his desk. A football signed by the ’85 Bears was buried beneath a ziggurat of file folders and, at its base, half-drunk cups of coffee, their Styrofoam rims lip-stained an antique sepia. In the corner of the room, a taxidermy bobcat was in midleap, claws raised.

Before getting into this, Stetson said, leaning back into his leather chair, I trust that you, Mr. Waters, understand that whatever is revealed to you in this office remains in this office?

Yes, Marcus said.

Stetson bit down on a pen cap and raised his eyebrows. I hope you’ll forgive me for being skeptical, because I know that you retired from the press corps a few years back, but I also happen to know about the book you published last year after retirement. So I’m going to say it one more time. Everything that I am about to tell you and show you is strictly off the record. You are here as a consultant. Do you understand that?

Marcus nodded.

And frankly, Stetson continued, "if you were to leave here with the sensitive information I am about to show and go tip off one of your old cronies at the Inquisitor or go and start writing a follow-up book to the previous one, well, I would take that very seriously. By seriously, I mean prosecution. This is a very sensitive matter. Are we understanding each other?" Stetson asked.

Yes. He tried not to flinch.

Very good. Stetson rapped his knuckles on his desk. You ever heard of the Liber-teens?

The who?

"The Liber-teens. They’re a group of computer hackers—excuse me, hacktivists—based here in Chicago, or so we think. But I didn’t bring you down here to talk about them. I was just curious."

Stetson turned his computer monitor around. A video program was already opened, the screen frozen, black.

We received the following video as a zip file attached to an email at approximately three in the morning. I’d like you to take a look.

Who sent it?

The email address is disposable from one of those email generator sites. Anonymous, or so I’m told. Tracing it would be near impossible. Even with a warrant, we’re not sure if we could make heads or tails. Any other burning questions before we get started here?

Marcus shook his head.

Stetson pressed play and sat back, turning his chair to look out over the crossword grid streets below. With his back turned, he said, This is where I advise you to hold on to your breakfast.

Pixels flooded the screen, sharpening gradually as seconds clicked forward. Coughing came through the computer speakers. The pixels finally smoothed together in a sweep of black and blue to form coherent images. A light swinging gently from a ceiling like a hypnotist’s pocket watch, casting oblong shadows across a room, the concrete walls of which were covered with metal racks. The time stamp at the corner of the screen gave the day’s date, fifteen minutes after