The Morelville Mysteries Collection

Chapter 8 - Dana

Chapter 8 - DanaI was back in the Field Office early after my night of little sleep. I followed up with the U.S. Marshall’s Service on the extraction plan for Antoine “Freestyle” Robinson. I left him a basic message about getting in touch with me. When he called, I’d give him the info he needed to arrange a pick up by the Marshall’s. He’d be taken care of and out of my hands.

I called down to the lab. So far they only had a partial print from the envelope I’d gotten from Mel. They were running it through AFIS. No hits yet. I was stuck in a waiting game there.

Next on my list was research on the murder at Stateville Correctional Center. It wasn’t hard to find info on the incident and the prisoner that was killed. It was a bit harder getting the prison to open up the visitor log and let me know who’d been in to see “Vincent” the next day. And, to make it just that much more difficult, Vincent himself was proving even more elusive.

Once one Vincent Harris had been released from Stateville, he made exactly one visit to his parole officer; the next day. He hadn’t been seen by his P.O. since and he had vacated the halfway house he was supposed to have been staying in. If he was still alive, he was off the radar. His visitors the day before the rec yard murder were going to be my only hope of getting a lead to get to Relic and the shipment that was creeping up on us quickly.

While I waited for a copy of the visitor log to be emailed to me, I looked up his previously known addresses and I searched several databases for his next of kin. I managed to unearth a few living relatives with what I hoped were their current residences.

Restless, and it still being barely 8:00 AM, I ventured down to the lab to plead my case for a little urgency on Mel’s stalker case. It turns out, I didn’t have to beg or plead at all. AFIS had gotten a quick hit on the partial. The tech informed me it was my lucky day. I wasn’t so sure when I pulled the perps rap sheet a while later.

Tracking down Vincent, my only decent lead to Relic, was difficult. I hit the pavement after my visit to the lab and knocked on the doors of what known family of his that I could find but, since his prison release, most had claimed they either hadn’t seen him or they didn’t know he was out. Some were completely indifferent. They just didn’t care about the whereabouts of the man.

I was in a bad mood when I rolled back into the field office but, once I booted up my computer and I saw that the visitor logs for Stateville had been emailed to me, a little hope glimmered. Finding Vincent might be a lost cause but figuring out who delivered the hit order to him from Relic could be the key to cracking the whole investigation wide open.

The log, unfortunately, didn’t look very helpful. Vincent had, had only two visitors that day. Neither were members of his gang who might have been carrying a hit order. One visitor was actually his mother. I’d already spoken with her. She’d claimed no knowledge of his current living arrangements and repeatedly said she was praying for his safety. If she was acting, she was convincing. My gut feeling was that her statements to me were genuine. She loved, missed and feared for her son and she did not seem to be putting on an act about any of that.

Vincent’s other visitor the morning of the prison hit had been an attorney. I’d made the rookie mistake of not looking up his case. The man may have been his attorney of record or he may have been there on a different pre-text. I buckled down and tackled the state’s case file against Mr. Harris.

Harris’s attorney of record on the case that sent him up to Stateville had been a court appointed public defender. Surprisingly, the gang didn’t spring for a high dollar attorney for him which told me a lot about his level in the hierarchy of the gang. He was an expendable foot soldier.

Harris had plea bargained for a lesser sentence and skipped having a trial altogether. His visitor the day of the murder wasn’t the attorney from his original case. It had been a local Chicago area criminal defense attorney in private practice, Jonathan Joseph. I looked him up but didn’t glean a lot other than some case file numbers. I hadn’t personally heard of him and none of the cases I found seemed very high profile. I asked a couple of people around the field office, but since no one in the department really got involved in courtroom work, I got nowhere.

I called the law offices of Jonathan Joseph, Esq. figuring I might as well just try and get in to see the man. An answering service picked up and informed me that Mr. Joseph was in court. I left a message for him to call me back without referencing anything about the case I was working on. My hope was that a call from “Agent Rossi”, no other I.D. given, might generate enough curiosity to at least get a return call.

It was late in the day. I didn’t know how long Joseph would be in “court” or when he checked his messages. I tried his number again after 6PM central time. This time, I got voicemail. I left a message with my contact info and a request for a meeting. It was all I could do.

There really wasn’t anything else I could do in Chicago until I could connect with the attorney. Even then, if a face to face was necessary, a teammate in the field office could do it. I picked up my belongings, left the building and took a series of trains to Midway. I intended to get back to Cleveland tonight, come hell or high water.