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TWENTY-ONE

SERGEANT KYLE JANOWSKI READS the intake reports from last night over lunch. Part of the paperwork that comes with his rank, though it’s his least favorite part of the job. He does it over a late lunch, a tuna sub with chips.

The intake was higher than usual last night, given that it was Halloween, which usually spawns overactive imaginations and worried neighbors, even in a quiet town like Hemingway Grove —

Wait.

The Bowers house. Officer Dunleavy took the call last night. Kyle reads it, does a double take.

“A dead rat ?” he whispers.

Someone put a dead rat in the Bowers kid’s trick-or-treat bag? Wrapped it up and everything?

Kyle puts down the reports, spins around in his chair, and goes to his computer. He types in a search and pulls up a news video from thirteen years ago, a reporter from channel 7 news in Chicago, a woman whose hair flaps in the wind as she speaks.

“We are live outside the federal courthouse in downtown Chicago, where reputed organized crime boss Michael Cagnina was just sentenced to over sixteen years in prison following his conviction on multiple counts of tax evasion.”

Right. Kyle remembers. The feds “Al Caponed” Cagnina. Couldn’t get him on the violence or extortion, so they got him on tax evasion.

“Cagnina, who was believed to run the crime family that dominated organized crime from Chicago to Kansas City, was suspected in the Halloween Massacre of two years ago, when three witnesses scheduled to testify against him were assassinated, all in the same day.”

Right. Kyle remembers that well, too. Everybody heard about it. It happened not long before Marcie came back to Hemingway Grove for good. He always wondered if her representation of one of those dead witnesses had something to do with her return to HG.

He pulls up what he can on the witness whom Marcie represented, Silas Renfrow. He finds a documentary on PBS from around that same time, well over a decade ago. A narrator with a baritone voice tells the story as photographs and video of mob boss Michael Cagnina move on and off of the screen.

“Little is known of Silas Renfrow, the man long believed to be the mysterious gunman who carried out the execution orders given by Cagnina during the violent reign of the Cagnina crime family. Though authorities long suspected him, Renfrow was rarely photographed and kept such a low profile that he was often referred to as Silent Silas. Renfrow never paid taxes, never held a job, never put his name on a mortgage or lease or utility bill. That didn’t stop the FBI, ultimately, from apprehending him after months of surveillance.

“Renfrow was one of the three witnesses killed in the so-called Halloween Massacre after gunmen stormed a secret detention center outside of Rockford, Illinois, murdering half a dozen federal marshals before killing the three witnesses scheduled to testify against Cagnina. Though they could never prove their claims, the FBI has long suspected that Cagnina was behind the execution of these three witnesses.”

For his final search, he clicks on another video, this one from not long ago — also from a Chicago news station, but the reporting is taking place hundreds of miles west of there, outside a federal supermax prison.

“Joan, any minute now, former mob boss Michael Cagnina will be released from federal custody in Florence, Colorado, after serving over thirteen years of his sixteen-year sentence for tax evasion …”

Kyle shakes his head. Jesus. Michael Cagnina got sprung this past May, only five months ago.

And now Marcie’s having all this trouble.

It can’t be a coincidence.