Chicago PD/Chicago Med fic: Caged Emotions (2/3)
PART ONE
PART TWO
PART THREE
-o-
The picture becomes clear quite quickly.
It’s not what Jay expects exactly, but the pieces come together more coherently than he would have thought. The business has been transitioned, power passed down to a series of high ranking lieutenants. Over the last few weeks, the entire business has been restructured with the major stake of the company being split up between a number of legitimate sources.
The sales are all above board. The paperwork is entirely in order. By all appearances, Scarro had simply planned his own retirement.
And that story sticks when they ask a series of feelers. It’s clear that Scarro hasn’t been forced out. There’s no usurpation. This is Scarro’s play, plain and simple.
Everyone thought it was a retirement.
The press will piece it together as a suicide plot.
But Jay’s got a missing brother, a kidnapped girlfriend and a gnawing fear in the pit of his stomach.
This is targeted at him.
Scarro’s set it all up. To protect his legacy. To ensure his fortune. To safeguard all he’s built.
To get revenge on Jay, once and for all.
-o-
Jay feels lost, but his team keeps their focus. There’s an air of desperation as they get to work, and while Jay feels it threaten to tear him apart, he takes some comfort in the way the others channel it. They can harness it. They’ve done the impossible before. Jay has to think they can do it again.
Not because he believes in miracles.
No, he’s more like Scarro in this way. He’s not big on divine providence.
It’s just hard work, persistence, and damn good police work. Sometimes, it’s enough.
Jay just has to hope this is one of those times.
They start by shaking the trees at Scarro’s organization. Ruzek and Atwater question as many people as they can, and those who aren’t willing to talk are hauled in on trumped up charges and interrogated. Burgess runs a list of every important connection and follows up, and they work through the list methodically and thoroughly.
It’s an impressive bit of work, to be sure. A massive undertaking.
It yields nothing.
A lot of people don’t know enough.
Those who might aren’t talking. They’re loyal.
And Jay considers it on the whole. He thinks about the time that’s passed. He thinks about the vigor of Scarro’s revenge. It’s possible he’s kept this as close to his chest as he can. He wants this secret to die with him, if only to spite Jay a little more.
But there are still clues. There are still two men on a surveillance camera and an unmarked van. They’re somewhere in this city, and if Jay can find them, then maybe he can find his brother and girlfriend.
They just need a break -- one break -- but there’s none coming. Several hours have passed, and all they’ve done is crossed people and places off their still-growing list of contacts, associates, and locations. Even the money is a dead-end. Scarro liquidated a large portion of his estate into cash with no record of where it is. It’s just gone -- much like Will and Hailey. A note on an investigative spreadsheet to follow upon, nothing more.
All it takes is one break, though. Jay knows this. Cases are made by a single, telling break.
But when Jay gets the break, it’s not the one he wants at all.
-o-
It comes to Jay personally. Two texts, directed at his private number. They’re from anonymous numbers, and each one has a video file attached.
The footage is in stark high definition, taking up a substantial amount of bandwidth while Jay waited for it to load. The images are crystal clear and in full color, suggesting that they’ve been made sparing no expense.
The clarity is almost surreal, in fact, and Jay stares at the screen blankly before he finally understands.
The first one has Hailey in the frame, and the camera moves along a concrete room, dark and shadowed. There’s nothing there except a plexiglass cube -- a clear cage -- where Hailey has been dumped unceremoniously inside. She’s awake, and she stares at the camera, even with her hands bound on her mouth gagged. The camera lingers, showcasing today’s newspaper in front of the glass before panning toward an oxygen tank. The camera zooms in, showing the supply, and it stays there a moment as the level ticks down a notch.
Panning out again, there’s one last image of Hailey in the cage.
Then, just as abruptly as it started, the footage stops.
Jay’s numb, staring at his phone so hard that his eyes start to blur. He’s beginning to shake, and he feels the tension as it builds and builds and builds. He’s somewhere between rage and terror, and the only thing that stops him from ripping apart everything around him is the fact that there’s still a second text.
With rubbery fingers, Jay presses on the next one, hoping it will provide some additional insights to put the sight of Hailey in that cage in some kind of perspective.
That’s what he hopes, at least.
It’s not what he gets.
The second message is much the same as the first. This room is brighter, with a window that looks out into the dim light. The camera struggles to focus in the shifting lightscape, but soon it draws into frame an all-too-familiar plexiglass cube.
Only this one doesn’t house Hailey.
This one, which looks the same size and thickness, houses Will.
Will’s not awake, slumped unconscious against the back wall. Jay can see him breathing, the rise and fall of his chest, as he sucks in air from the airtight confines of the plexiglass. The camera pans down here as well, revealing another newspaper from today. Next to it, there’s another oxygen tank, its levels dropping imperceptibly as the seconds tick by.
Zooming out, Jay is given one last look at his brother before the file ends and Jay is left sitting there.
Will and Hailey are alive, he tries to tell himself.
Just trapped in airtight cages with the oxygen running out.
And Jay with nowhere to find them.
He had to say this for Lester Scarro. He was powerful. He was extravagant. And he was never -- never -- a liar.
Hell, indeed.
-o-
Jay spends about two minutes unable to think or move. He sits there, staring at his phone, feeling like the bottom of his world has just fallen out.
For another minute after that, he’s shaking. It’s terror; it’s rage.
Finally, after three minutes, he remembers to breathe. He looks up, across the room. The rest of his team is hard at work, but Voight is watching him. Their eyes connect.
“Did you get something?” his boss asks.
Jay looks dumbly back at his phone. He’s surprised that his voice still works. “Yeah,” he says. “I got something.”
-o-
Jay shows his team because it’s the only practical thing to do. This investigation is a group effort, and Jay knows he needs them if he has any hope of seeing Will or Hailey again.
But he also shows them because it’s the only response he can muster. There’s resignation in the action. There’s acceptance. He shows them if only to admit to them -- and himself -- just how much he’s failed here.
They take in the videos quietly, stoically. Not quite professionally, though. Burgess has to look away at several times. Ruzek’s fingers are clenched. He hears Atwater mutter something under his breath.
After Jay shows them the video, Ruzek grips his shoulder firmly. Burgess wipes away a tear and has to excuse herself. Atwater is stony and silent. No one wants to say anything; they’re all afraid to speak.
All the tragedy; all the violence; all the death.
And none of them know how to handle it when it hits so damn close to home.
Finally, without finesse, Voight clears his throat and nods his head. “Well, that’s a lead, anyway,” he says. “Can we borrow your phone? Get it down to the lab?”
“I’ve already emailed the files to them -- and all of us,” Jay says.
It’s forethought he doesn’t know why he maintains. It’s not right, probably, for his cop reflexes to be so ingrained.
And he still missed all the signs that led to this.
Voight nods his approval. “All the same,” he says. “They’ll want to evaluate the original file. Check the source. Timestamps. That sort of thing.”
Jay nods because what else is he supposed to do? He holds out his phone and relinquishes it to Voight. Normally, this is a service he’d outsource, but he pockets the phone. He’ll take it down himself.
For safekeeping, maybe.
Because he knows how hard this is on all of them.
“Starting running it,” Voight says. “I expect fresh leads when I get back. It’s all hands on deck.”
It’s a rallying call, and the team responds, galvanized into action. Jay watches them, feeling limpid.
He looks at Voight.
Voight looks back.
They all know how bad th is is, how very, very bad this is.
But Voight understands it.
And Jay feels it.
Leads close cases, but not all cases resolve the way you want them to. Jay feels the oxygen grow tight in his lungs, each breath harder than the last.
They don’t work in a profession made for happy endings, after all.
Voight nods again and turns away. Jay closes his eyes, and hates each breath he takes as somewhere in Chicago, Hailey and Will’s air grows thin.
-o-
Voight comes back, and the team is ready for him. They have a list of notes from the videos -- conclusions, deductions, points to follow up, leads. The team quickly concludes that Will and Hailey are likely at different locations -- based on the look of each room, the sounds, and the exterior windows. At the very least, they’re in different rooms at the same location, but the team’s best guess is that they’ve been scattered across the city.
This makes sense to Jay, given Scarro’s personality. He’s a sadistic bastard. With the airtight tanks and lowering oxygen levels, Jay’s supposed to race against time to find them.
As for the cages, the team can’t be sure they’re legit. Atwater’s seen plexiglass cages before, and he confirms that they can be airtight, and Ruzek smartly points out that Scarro’s the the means and the resources. Burgess has looked up the make and model of the oxygen tanks, and those seem legit, too.
Best they can figure, Hailey and Will are locked in cages, and they do have a limited supply of air.
Which means their investigation has a strict set of constraints. If it takes too long, they’ll be recovering bodies and not Jay’s loved ones.
It’s Ruzek who brings up the possibility of a ruse. That maybe it’s a game they’re supposed to play. Maybe the stakes aren’t that high, because it’d take a hell of a lot of time, money, and prep for a guy who surely had something better to do.
Jay shakes his head “He didn’t, though,” he points out. “The guy killed himself and left a note for me. This is his last stand. He’s a crazy bastard, he’s a killer -- and he’s definitely not a liar. He plays for keeps. Win it all, lose it all.”
Atwater frowns deeply. “But why the elaborate set up?” he asks. “Adam’s right. This is a hell of a lot of trouble to go through. If he’s out for revenge, then why not just kill them outright?”
It’s not meant to be cruel, but the implication for murdering Hailey and Will still feels hard in Jay’s chest.
“Maybe the game’s the point,” Burgess says. “If he’s as much as a psychopath as we thought, then he probably wants to create a situation in which we have to try -- and fail. That’s, like, insult to injury. The power of hope, just to take it away.”
Jay nods stiffly. “He doesn’t want to hurt me,” he says. “He wants to humiliate me the way I humiliated him. This is no ruse. We have less than 12 hours to find Will and Hailey alive. He’s made it hard so we fail, but if we succeed--”
He can’t say it. The words fail him. Throat tight, he has to look down again, his eyes burning.
“If we succeed, we bring Hailey and Will home,” Voight finishes for him, adding a certainty Jay doesn’t feel. “And this time, success is our only option. So let’s start by running locations. Anything, and everything. We’ll start crossing of properties one at a time if we have to. Let’s go, people. 12 hours!”
It’s a call to action.
Jay can’t help it if it feels like a death sentence.
-o-
It’s a race against time.
Jay’s standing still, it seems, but his team is in full motion. They’re running addresses, cross-referencing as many professional connections as they can with Scarro’s organization. They’ve got patrols sent out scouring the city, and it’s a city-wide alert to all PD personnel, seeing if anyone recognizes something, anything.
It takes time, though. It takes seconds. It takes minutes. An hour passes. Then, too.
They’ve ruled out a lot of places, but Chicago’s a huge city, and there’s no guarantee they’re in the city. They could be anywhere.
Anywhere in a plexiglass cage, slowly running out of air.
They’re expecting feedback from the lab at any second, but Jay can’t imagine what that’ll tell them. It’ll confirm what they know; it’ll confirm what Jay’s felt, deep in the pit of his stomach, since he first saw the footage.
Scarro’s sadistic, but Jay’s leaning toward masochism at this point. Unable to participate -- unable to even think -- he tucks himself away in a corner and watches the video on repeat. He watches Hailey; he watches Will. Then he goes back and stars all over again.
It’s not right; it’s not helpful.
But this is all he has.
This is his only link to the two people he cares about most. He’s afraid if he puts it down, he’ll put them down. If he closes the message, that they’ll be gone for good, that he’ll never get him back.
Not that watching the video actually helps. Jay watches each one, almost on repeat, until he’s able to see it without wanting to hurl. He tells himself he’s looking for clues, but he’s long since memorized every nuance, every detail, every second. He sees the weariness in Hailey’s face. He sees the fear in Will’s. He sees the welded joints in the plexiglass cage, and he feels each tick of the clock as it counts down, down, down.
He’s aware that his emotional response isn’t getting them very far, but he doesn’t know what else to do. It’s his fiancee. It’s his brother.
In cages meant for him.
Jay’s unable to apply analytical skills at this point, but the others push themselves to do what Jay can’t. The videos are analyzed for accuracy -- and their validity is confirmed by two separate laboratory reports. The videos were recorded within the last day, and there are no signs of any tampering. The video has movement and sound; the newspapers displayed in each are accurate and unaltered.
More analysis shows that the videos have been sent from Scarro’s phone. They’re dated after his death, but the source is clear. There’s no sign of anyone else has tampered with the phone; they appear to be sent on autosend. They can only guess how long ago it was made. A day, maybe. Maybe less.
Moreover, there are some scant clues as to the surroundings. Although the rooms with the cages are clearly meant to be nondescript, there are a few telling features. There are glimpses of the outside world in Will’s room, with sunlight filtering in from offscreen. Hailey’s cage, however, is steeped in darkness, illuminated only by artificial lights. The walls are scraped, both made from cement. Although it’d be easy to identify the rooms if you saw one, it’s impossible to distinguish a location first. Dim, bleak and gray: the rooms look like half the crappy buildings in Chicago.
These are hard facts.
But they’re not the ones that leave Jay paralyzed.
Because he could take the unidentifiable Chicago basements. He could even deal with the plexiglass cages.
But the oxygen tanks, running lower on air by the second, that’s the part Jay can handle.
The seconds tick by.
Breath by breath.
According to the lab report, Will and Hailey have less than a day’s worth of oxygen.
Jay has less than a day to find the two most important people in his life.
Jay has the lab run the modeling three more times, just to be sure, and then he still pulls in three other people for a second, third, fourth opinion. They all agree, though. There’s no debate.
There’s 12 hours left.
12 hours left to find his girlfriend and his brother.
12 hours left before the two most important people in his life are dead.
12 hours.
Time stands still for Jay.
As it flies for everyone else.
-o-
They work hard. They work fast.
All the same, the moments slip past them.
An hour is gone.
Jay insists on hope.
-o-
They work hard. They work fast.
The moments are slipping faster, faster. Sand in an hourglass. Oxygen molecules in a tank.
Two hours. Three.
Hope’s something, but it’s nothing compared to actual, actionable leads.
-o-
Four hours.
They work hard. They work fast.
And the moments, the moments, the moments.
Jay finds the tipping point between hope and desperation and holds on for all he’s worth.
-o-
The team reconvenes, finally, going over their latest data.
Based on the lab report, they conclude that Hailey and Will are indeed in different locations. The clues in the video are scant, but they’ve got working profiles for both buildings. Hailey seems to be in a noisy area, so probably in the city, in a high-traffic area. The lack of natural light and the state of the room imply a basement, and there’s some debate of the wall materials that suggest the building has been made in the last 50 years.
That seems specific, but Jay knows it doesn’t rule out much. It’s still a needle in a haystack at this point.
The hope for Will’s location is a little stronger. Will’s video has less ambient noise, and there’s no hint of any traffic. The only sound is the clicking of the oxygen tank and a faint bellow, like from a train or boat.
A boat seems likely. In a fragment of the footage, they see water outside the window. Not the river; not a pond. The lake. He’s somewhere up and down Lake Michigan.
That’s something, then. Everyone nods, seemingly encouraged.
That’s something.
Jay harbors the growing fear, however, that it’s really not enough.
-o-
The first hit they get comes a short time later. It’s a professional location used by one of Scarro’s affiliates. There’s evidence that Scarro’s has been there, and he’s definitely used it to funnel some of his shipments even if he doesn’t hold the deed. It fits the profile of Will’s location well enough -- it’s by the water, and it’s currently unoccupied.
“Is this it?” Jay asks, looking at Voight.
Voight betrays nothing. “It’s the best we got.”
Somewhere, in two cages around town, the air is growing thing. Jay’s losing track of the moments, even as they stack up behind him.
“We’re running out of time,” Jay says, as if Voight doesn’t know.
But Voight does know. He holds steady. “It’s the best we got.”
-o-
Technically, Jay knows he’s supposed to stay back, but it’s a rule that no one is going to enforce. Voight will if he has to, and Jay knows his boss is watching him, but for now, he’s got tacit approval to tag along.
Jay will play by those rules if he has to, because the thought of Will in that place is too much. If his brother is there, Jay is sure as hell going to be there when they get him out.
It’s something he allows him to think, allows himself to believe. That they might have found Will. That he’s going to save his brother.
But the team clears the site, and there’s no call for backup. Jay sits in the car, perched on the edge of his seat, holding his breath. His fingers are fisted so tight that his knuckles are white, but there’s an all-clear.
Literally.
It’s all clear.
There’s no bad guys. There’s no sign that Scarro’s been there or that any activity has gone on recently. All the rooms are empty. There’s no plexiglass cage, no oxygen tank, no stupid, red-headed doctor.
It’s a dead end, is what it is. It’s hours wasted with nothing to show for it. It’s a partial tank of oxygen Will and Hailey can’t get back.
It’s failure, is what it is.
It’s just failure.
-o-
Hard and fast and the moments are gone. They’re squandered.
Jay’s stood at the tipping point.
And now, he crashes down.
-o-
The team regroups, but Jay can see it in their eyes. They’ve played their best card. They’ve given this all they have. They’ve got less than six hours left, and they’ve still got thousands of properties to clear. The odds of finding Will or Hailey alive, at this point, are pretty low.
No one says it.
They don’t have to.
The team regroups.
And Jay walks out.
There’s one option left. One is still on the table.
The avenue they started with.
The one Jay will end with.
-o-
Voight is the only one who follows him. He stops him in the parking lot, calm and diffusing. He’s not telling Jay to stop, but he’s also not letting Jay go.
“What’s your plan?”
Jay snorts, because that’s a funny question right now. “What’s your plan? You’ve got nothing, and you know it.”
Voight doesn’t bother to deny it. He’s not wasting time on niceties at least. “We’re going to keep looking. It’s slower than any of us would like, but that’s the only thing we’ve got.”
Jay shakes his head, face twisting. “But it’s not the only thing I’ve got.”
Voight’s face is impassive, but his eyes are quizzical. “You going to share your lead?”
Jay can’t bring himself to speak. He barely trusts himself to breathe.
“Tell me this, then,” Voight says. “Are you about to do something that I need to stop?”
“No,” Jay says, almost breaking on the word. “I’m going to talk to Michael Scarro, that’s all.”
This move seems to take Voight by surprise. “The kid?”
“He’s why Scarro did this,” Jay points out.
“But why would he tell his kid? He let the kid go to prison to salvage his reputation with his son,” Voight points out.
“Which means this is personal. And no one knows that side of Scarro better than Michael,” Jay points out. He shrugs, helpless. “I know it’s a long shot.”
Voight nods. “But it’s the only shot you got.”
“You’re not going to stop me?” Jay asks.
“Just call me if you find out anything,” Voight says. “And we’ll bring them home, Jay. I promise you that.”
Jay nods. He’s grateful that much.
Because he knows he hasn’t got much else.
-o-
At this point, speed seems irrelevant. Effort seems inconsequential. He’s not going to be fast enough; he can’t work hard enough.
But he has to try.
Jay sees his brother and his girlfriend in cages. The air would taste bitter to them now, and Jay has to try.
Michael Scarro is being held at a high security prison. Jay lobbied against it, arguing that the kid was a low flight risk and first-time offender, but his objections had been overruled. It’s not to Michael’s benefit, but it works to Jay’s favor now. The prison is right in the heart of Chicago, and Jay is there in less than 30 minutes.
There’s red tape involved with visiting someone on demand in a prison like this, and it doesn’t just happen because you want it to. But Jay plays all his cards -- he calls in all his favors -- and within minutes, he’s sitting down across from Michael Scarro.
Possibly the only other person on this planet screwed over as badly by Lester Scarro as Jay.
Michael has only been in prison a matter of months. It may as well have been a lifetime. He looks thinner, and his color has gone pallid. He sits a little hunched, protective of himself, guarded in a way that had never been necessary before.
Jay’s been breaking for the last six hours in horrible, painful ways.
Michael’s been breaking for the last six months.
Cages make sense now, as Lester’s medium for revenge. An airtight cage will get the job done faster, but the results for Michael are still the same.
Even so, the kid sits across from Jay, broken and spent, and he smiles. “Detective,” he says. “This is unexpected.”
In any other case, this would seem suspicious. It would seem like posturing. It might even be considered taunting.
But Michael Scarro is sincere, and Jay realizes instantly that this kid doesn’t know anything. He doesn’t know what his father’s done, and there’s no way in hell he’s in on where Lester has stashed Will and Hailey. It’s a dead-end, then. Six hours and counting, and Jay’s played his last card and come up short.
“You don’t know why I’m here,” he says, and it’s not a question, even if he sounds a little awestruck.
Michael shrugs, somewhat helpless. “You probably need something -- something about my dad,” he says. “There’s no other reason to visit, considering the length of my sentence and the total failure of my appeals.”
He’s not lying. God help them both, the kid isn’t even close to lying “You really don’t know,” Jay says.
Michael would have been full of guile six months ago, but today he looks at Jay steadily. “You mean that my father’s a criminal? I know that now.”
Jay has to shake his head. He can’t allow himself to dwell on the journey Michael’s taken to get to that conclusion, but it’s not the point he’s here to debate. “More than that,” Jay says. “This isn’t about what he did to put you in here. This is about what he’s doing now.”
Michael looks a little confused now. “They told me my father died,” he says. “Just yesterday.”
Jay nods, and he feels a pang of sympathy for the kid. “He did,” he says. “And he left behind one hell of a legacy -- one that put you in here, and one that’s about to take the lives of two other people.”
Michael’s too tired to be horrified. His shoulders slump even further, and his drawn features make him look haggard. “What now?”
Jay produces his phone, which he’s been given back from the lab. They’ve run all the evidence from it. They've told him it's given them all it can. Jay pulls up the videos and holds the phone out to Michael. He looks at Jay, reluctant, but then he takes it and plays the footage. He’s quiet while he watches. He barely breathes when Jay plays the second video.
When it’s done, he holds the phone back out to Jay. “Who are they?”
Jay accepts it, but he doesn’t dare look down for fear of losing whatever’s left of his precarious self control. “My girlfriend. My brother.”
Michael sighs, looking even more weary by the news. “I’m sorry. I really am.”
“I don’t want your apologies,” Jay tells him.
Michael starts to furrow his brow. “But what--?”
“They had 12 hours when I got this video, but now? Six, at best,” Jay says. “I need to find them, and your dad is dead, and no one else is talking.”
Michael’s finally starting to learn. He gives Jay a short, incredulous look. “And you think I can help?”
“You’re his son,” Jay counters.
“And I didn’t even see who he really was until after I went to jail for him,” Michael says.
“I know he’s visited you,” Jay insists, having looked over the prison records.
“And we talked about fishing,” Michael says. “I knew he knew more, but I could never bring myself to do it. I needed this to not be for nothing. So I played the game. For both our sakes, I played it.”
Lester had sent his son to prison to maintain the lie.
Michael, his father’s son in so many ways, is willing to say there to keep it, too.
Now Jay finds himself incredulous. “But you know what he did to you,” he says. He nods at his phone. “You’ve seen what he’ll do to these people, people who have nothing to do with him. My brother’s a doctor. He works in an ED. And he’s going to die unless you help me.”
“You’re missing my point,” Michael says. “It’s not that I don’t want to help you, but think about it. I’m in here for life, and he’s talking about fishing. Do you really think he’d ever tell me about whatever plans he might have had? Even if I’d asked?”
The point isn’t badly mad, but Jay’s come too far. More than that, Jay has nothing left. “Do you recognize the buildings? Where these videos were taken?”
Michael shakes his head.
Jay’s frustration flares. “But you have to know something. He was your dad. Why would he do this? How?”
The questions carry an accusatory tone, and Michael takes it. He bites the inside of his lip and thinks before he speaks. He sighs a little. “Look. He never told me anything, but I know my dad,” he says. “The fact that he’s done this -- to you, to your loved ones -- it doesn’t surprise me. It’s exactly what he’d do.”
It’s not an admission, and Jay’s not blind enough to take it as one. But he sees it for what it is: insight. Insight he needs. “Did he ever talk about plans? Revenge?”
Michael shakes his head. “No, just -- fishing. He said he was done with business,” he says. “He just wanted to get his personal affairs in order. I thought maybe he’d been having second thoughts. Maybe he was going to retire, or turn himself in, but that’s wishful sort of thinking. He sold off his business. He got his affairs in order. The only loose end was you.”
Michael nods at Jay knowingly.
For his part, Jay doesn’t know what to say. Somewhere across town, Hailey will be starting to gasp for air. Will will be feeling lightheaded if he’s conscious.
“What you’ve shown me -- it’s the kind of meticulous planning he excelled at,” Michael says. “He’s never taken responsibility for this. He blames you, I think. And this stuff -- it’s personal for dad. It’s always personal. You hurt him by putting me here. He’d want to hurt you. That’s what this is about. He’s trying to hurt you.”
It’s the conclusion Jay reached when he got the video. It’s not particularly insightful, and it’s not advancing his case. But these are words from Michael’s mouth. Jay can give context. Michael, though, has the ability to imbue meaning.
And the kid, after sitting silently through his own trial, is finally ready to talk.
So Jay does what he does. He presses. “So tell me about these locations,” he says, tapping at the phone again. “I just need a list, possible locations. Tell me, and I can help you.”
It’s a real offer; it’s a good offer.
But Michael shakes his head, somewhat helpless. “I don’t know,” the kid says, and he means it. He has no nuance; there’s no hint of deception. He shrugs. “I really don’t. But I mean, my dad was a guy who planned everything. It all had a purpose; it all had meaning. And he was obsessed with the case against him. He went over it, every detail.”
The kid is obviously trying to be helpful, but Jay’s got no time for pandering.
Hailey and Will have no time.
“So?” he demands.
Michael swallows, and he seems to focus on the task once more. “So,” he says. “If he really planned all this -- everything you say he planned here -- then he would have picked a place that meant something to you. He would have given it impact.”
“Impact?” Jay asks. He laughs, short and hard. “He kidnapped my brother and girlfriend.”
Michael nods, and his face is drawn. “And I’m sorry for that,” he says. “I had no idea. Until I got here, until I was in here, I just -- I didn’t believe it, any of it. I’m sorry.”
Jay raises his eyebrows, wishing he could laugh. “You’re sorry? You do realize that they may die, right? That your dad may have killed them already.”
Michael doesn’t flinch, but instead he sits forward, as earnest as ever. “You have to understand,” he says. “I never realized how big this was. To me, I mean, he was just my dad. My dad. I swear, I thought the charges weren’t real. I couldn’t bring myself to see him as the bad guy.”
It’s not that he doubts the kid’s sincerity, but it’s hard to sympathize. Jay clenches his fists and speaks through a tight jaw. “My girlfriend had nothing to do with his case,” he says. “And my brother? He’s a doctor. He works at the ED and saves lives. And your dad -- he took them. Put them in cages with 24 hours to live. That’s your old man.”
Michael’s eyes look wet, and he has to nod. “I know. I just -- don’t know how to make sense of it, any of it,” he says. He gives a helpless shrug. “I mean, he used to take me sailing, you know? We had these boats, and we’d go every weekend, just the two of us. He taught me to fish. He was the best.”
The fondness only hardens Jay’s bitterness. “He’s a murderer.”
Michael hems himself in, pressing his lips flat. “I know,” he says. “Again, I’m sorry, Detective.”
Jay huffs, and he pushes away from the table. “Whatever,” he mutters. “You were my last resort.”
“He’d pick a spot you know,” Michael says again, and his voice makes Jay stop and turn back. “I swear, I didn’t know my dad as well as I thought, but I know that about him. He’d pick something that matters.”
“Like what?” Jay demands.
Michael shrugs helplessly. “It would matter to you and him. To the case. I don’t know.”
They’re not so dissimilar, in the end.
What they don’t know.
Will cost them dearly.
-o-
It feels like a dead end, but Jay’s not stupid. More than that, he’s desperate.
Inherently, he trusts Michael’s instincts. He doesn’t think the kid knows where his father is doing his busy work, but his instincts in this seem legit. Scarro’s a precise son of a bitch. He’s probably left a trail of clues for Jay to follow.
Murder may be the endgame, but if Scarro wanted Hailey and Will dead, he would have killed them outright. By kidnapping them, by setting them up in cages, by sending the videos -- Scarro’s playing a game.
It’s about time Jay started to figure out the rules.
-o-
There’s no time, though. A legal case is slow and plodding. It had taken months to draw up charges and convict Michael Scarro for his father’s crimes. Scarro, by contrast, has given Jay a day to find his loved ones.
12 hours.
6 hours.
4 hours.
The air will be hard to find. The CO2 levels will start to be crippling. It will feel like breathing in soup, less and less clarity by the second.
And the seconds matter now.
They slip away from Jay, but it’s Will and Hailey who might never get them back.
-o-
It’s personal, though. So Jay keeps it personal. He goes back to his own case notes and opens them up, pouring through every detail he’s recorded over the years about Scarro.
He’s skimming through all of Scarro’s professional connections -- business locations, shipping centers, all of it. But it’s not right; he knows it’s not right.
Because this is personal.
Scarro sold the business for a reason. It has nothing to do with business. No one there is going to know anything. He’s not going to use the company locations. Because this is about Scarro’s son. He never lost control of the business; he lost his son.
He flips back to the start of the file, looking at the earliest background information on Scarro. It’s documentation about where he grew up, where he went to college. His marriage; his wife’s death several years after Michael was born. It’s a different story than the criminal one, so distinct that it’s almost impossible to understand how this is the same person who committed atrocities.
His first apartment.
The hospital where Michael was born.
The location of his wife’s grave.
The island in Lake Michigan they sailed every summer.
MIchael’s school.
Then, he sees another location. MIchael’s graduation gift. A building bought by Scarro, wholly on the up and up, and given to Michael in his own name. It’s not totally clear what it’s intended use was to be, but Michael had started renovating it. In fact, he’d been working on it the day he’d been arrested in connection with crimes at several of his father’s shipping facilities.
It’s very personal, then.
Flipping through the pages, Jay puts together more of the story. The building isn’t mentioned in the exchange of assets after Scarro sells out his portion of the business to his associates. With a few quick phone calls, he confirms that the building is still in Michael’s name. It’s been sitting vacant, still half renovated, in the heart of the downtown ever since Michael went to jail.
Jay can’t know for sure, but there’s a growing certainty inside him. It ticks all the boxes; it fits the bill. It’s personal, linking Michael to Scarro, and Scarro to Jay with seamless precision. If he moves now, they can have a team there within 30 minutes -- plenty of time to save at least one person Jay cares about.
He checks the time again, and tightens his jaw. He has to steel his resolve. Because those minutes he’ll used to find one of them?
Will use up all the time for the other.
Jay’s saving one.
And condemning the other.
It’s a hell of a choice to make.
But Jay knows it’s no choice at all.
He picks up his phone and dials Voight, who picks up on the first ring. “Gather the team,” he says curtly. “I’ve got a location.”
-o-
The team moves quickly, but they’re still up against the clock. With their full attention on this new lead, they have to abandon almost all other potential lines of investigation. It’s all or nothing, at this point.
Someone one will get it all.
Someone will get nothing.
Jay just doesn’t know if it’s going to be his brother or his girlfriend who he saves.
Or which one he’ll be burying.
-o-
The location fits the profile perfectly, and Jay’s certainty grows as they fall into position on the outside. The secure the area, creating a perimeter. No one has concrete cause to suspect tampering or sabotage, but the ruse to get them here has been elaborate. The last thing they need is a rescue operation with a body count.
Jay tolerates this prep with as much grace as he can muster. He stands, stiff as a board, counting the seconds in his head, doing all the calculations.
He takes a breath, wondering if there’s still air left in the cage.
He exhales.
He exhales.
-o-
Jay’s left his gun behind, because he knows Voight would never let him anywhere near the site while armed. There’s a part of him that knows that’s sensible; there’s part of him that’s pissed that he can’t take charge.
Mostly, though, he’s just ready to find out.
Scarro’s laid out the challenge.
And here Jay is. Meeting it. He’s staring hell in the face, and time will tell which one of them caves first.
The building is empty. They clear the first floor easily and quickly, and the team splits into two while the units go upstairs to secure the upper floors. Voight leads the Intelligence team downstairs, and it’s all Jay can do to keep right at their heels.
There is something unsettlingly familiar about the walk down the stairs, and the gray walls and cement floor come into focus. The dingy basement is like countless others across Chicago, but Jay knows it. The image is seared into his brain as he traces his gaze along the wall, across the floor.
To the discarded newspaper. To the oxygen tank. To the little timer counting down to zero.
And a plexiglass cage.
Jay can’t help himself. He lets out a yelp, panicked and near desperate. He brushes past his teammates without restraint, nearly slamming himself against the glass in his total preoccupation.
Because there, on the other side of the glass, is a familiar figure.
Smaller. Blonde.
“Hailey!” he yells, pounding his palms against it hard enough to feel the reverberation. “Hailey!”
She’s on the floor of her cage, leaned against the glass but still partially in a sitting position. Her head is dipped away, and from this position, he can’t see her face with her back to him. Behind him, the team is taking a more thoughtful approach to the situation -- securing the room, checking the seams of the glass and its integrity -- but Jay’s well past that.
He pounds against the glass again, nearly screaming this time. “Hailey!”
Somehow, on the ground on the other side of the glass, Hailey seems to rouse. Just a little at first, but Jay pounds the plexiglass again until she stirs completely, lifting her head and allowing her unfocused gaze to travel up. It takes her a moment to see him, a moment more to get her eyes to focus. She’s confused.
“Hailey!” he says, almost crying now. “Come on, Hailey! I’m here! You’re okay! I’m here!”
The confusion shifts in her face. She weakly turns, trying to push herself up to her feet. She doesn’t get there, her body too weak to support her, but from her position on the ground she looks up at Jay.
And smiles.
Like she’s known all along that this is exactly how this would end.
PART TWO
PART THREE
-o-
The picture becomes clear quite quickly.
It’s not what Jay expects exactly, but the pieces come together more coherently than he would have thought. The business has been transitioned, power passed down to a series of high ranking lieutenants. Over the last few weeks, the entire business has been restructured with the major stake of the company being split up between a number of legitimate sources.
The sales are all above board. The paperwork is entirely in order. By all appearances, Scarro had simply planned his own retirement.
And that story sticks when they ask a series of feelers. It’s clear that Scarro hasn’t been forced out. There’s no usurpation. This is Scarro’s play, plain and simple.
Everyone thought it was a retirement.
The press will piece it together as a suicide plot.
But Jay’s got a missing brother, a kidnapped girlfriend and a gnawing fear in the pit of his stomach.
This is targeted at him.
Scarro’s set it all up. To protect his legacy. To ensure his fortune. To safeguard all he’s built.
To get revenge on Jay, once and for all.
-o-
Jay feels lost, but his team keeps their focus. There’s an air of desperation as they get to work, and while Jay feels it threaten to tear him apart, he takes some comfort in the way the others channel it. They can harness it. They’ve done the impossible before. Jay has to think they can do it again.
Not because he believes in miracles.
No, he’s more like Scarro in this way. He’s not big on divine providence.
It’s just hard work, persistence, and damn good police work. Sometimes, it’s enough.
Jay just has to hope this is one of those times.
They start by shaking the trees at Scarro’s organization. Ruzek and Atwater question as many people as they can, and those who aren’t willing to talk are hauled in on trumped up charges and interrogated. Burgess runs a list of every important connection and follows up, and they work through the list methodically and thoroughly.
It’s an impressive bit of work, to be sure. A massive undertaking.
It yields nothing.
A lot of people don’t know enough.
Those who might aren’t talking. They’re loyal.
And Jay considers it on the whole. He thinks about the time that’s passed. He thinks about the vigor of Scarro’s revenge. It’s possible he’s kept this as close to his chest as he can. He wants this secret to die with him, if only to spite Jay a little more.
But there are still clues. There are still two men on a surveillance camera and an unmarked van. They’re somewhere in this city, and if Jay can find them, then maybe he can find his brother and girlfriend.
They just need a break -- one break -- but there’s none coming. Several hours have passed, and all they’ve done is crossed people and places off their still-growing list of contacts, associates, and locations. Even the money is a dead-end. Scarro liquidated a large portion of his estate into cash with no record of where it is. It’s just gone -- much like Will and Hailey. A note on an investigative spreadsheet to follow upon, nothing more.
All it takes is one break, though. Jay knows this. Cases are made by a single, telling break.
But when Jay gets the break, it’s not the one he wants at all.
-o-
It comes to Jay personally. Two texts, directed at his private number. They’re from anonymous numbers, and each one has a video file attached.
The footage is in stark high definition, taking up a substantial amount of bandwidth while Jay waited for it to load. The images are crystal clear and in full color, suggesting that they’ve been made sparing no expense.
The clarity is almost surreal, in fact, and Jay stares at the screen blankly before he finally understands.
The first one has Hailey in the frame, and the camera moves along a concrete room, dark and shadowed. There’s nothing there except a plexiglass cube -- a clear cage -- where Hailey has been dumped unceremoniously inside. She’s awake, and she stares at the camera, even with her hands bound on her mouth gagged. The camera lingers, showcasing today’s newspaper in front of the glass before panning toward an oxygen tank. The camera zooms in, showing the supply, and it stays there a moment as the level ticks down a notch.
Panning out again, there’s one last image of Hailey in the cage.
Then, just as abruptly as it started, the footage stops.
Jay’s numb, staring at his phone so hard that his eyes start to blur. He’s beginning to shake, and he feels the tension as it builds and builds and builds. He’s somewhere between rage and terror, and the only thing that stops him from ripping apart everything around him is the fact that there’s still a second text.
With rubbery fingers, Jay presses on the next one, hoping it will provide some additional insights to put the sight of Hailey in that cage in some kind of perspective.
That’s what he hopes, at least.
It’s not what he gets.
The second message is much the same as the first. This room is brighter, with a window that looks out into the dim light. The camera struggles to focus in the shifting lightscape, but soon it draws into frame an all-too-familiar plexiglass cube.
Only this one doesn’t house Hailey.
This one, which looks the same size and thickness, houses Will.
Will’s not awake, slumped unconscious against the back wall. Jay can see him breathing, the rise and fall of his chest, as he sucks in air from the airtight confines of the plexiglass. The camera pans down here as well, revealing another newspaper from today. Next to it, there’s another oxygen tank, its levels dropping imperceptibly as the seconds tick by.
Zooming out, Jay is given one last look at his brother before the file ends and Jay is left sitting there.
Will and Hailey are alive, he tries to tell himself.
Just trapped in airtight cages with the oxygen running out.
And Jay with nowhere to find them.
He had to say this for Lester Scarro. He was powerful. He was extravagant. And he was never -- never -- a liar.
Hell, indeed.
-o-
Jay spends about two minutes unable to think or move. He sits there, staring at his phone, feeling like the bottom of his world has just fallen out.
For another minute after that, he’s shaking. It’s terror; it’s rage.
Finally, after three minutes, he remembers to breathe. He looks up, across the room. The rest of his team is hard at work, but Voight is watching him. Their eyes connect.
“Did you get something?” his boss asks.
Jay looks dumbly back at his phone. He’s surprised that his voice still works. “Yeah,” he says. “I got something.”
-o-
Jay shows his team because it’s the only practical thing to do. This investigation is a group effort, and Jay knows he needs them if he has any hope of seeing Will or Hailey again.
But he also shows them because it’s the only response he can muster. There’s resignation in the action. There’s acceptance. He shows them if only to admit to them -- and himself -- just how much he’s failed here.
They take in the videos quietly, stoically. Not quite professionally, though. Burgess has to look away at several times. Ruzek’s fingers are clenched. He hears Atwater mutter something under his breath.
After Jay shows them the video, Ruzek grips his shoulder firmly. Burgess wipes away a tear and has to excuse herself. Atwater is stony and silent. No one wants to say anything; they’re all afraid to speak.
All the tragedy; all the violence; all the death.
And none of them know how to handle it when it hits so damn close to home.
Finally, without finesse, Voight clears his throat and nods his head. “Well, that’s a lead, anyway,” he says. “Can we borrow your phone? Get it down to the lab?”
“I’ve already emailed the files to them -- and all of us,” Jay says.
It’s forethought he doesn’t know why he maintains. It’s not right, probably, for his cop reflexes to be so ingrained.
And he still missed all the signs that led to this.
Voight nods his approval. “All the same,” he says. “They’ll want to evaluate the original file. Check the source. Timestamps. That sort of thing.”
Jay nods because what else is he supposed to do? He holds out his phone and relinquishes it to Voight. Normally, this is a service he’d outsource, but he pockets the phone. He’ll take it down himself.
For safekeeping, maybe.
Because he knows how hard this is on all of them.
“Starting running it,” Voight says. “I expect fresh leads when I get back. It’s all hands on deck.”
It’s a rallying call, and the team responds, galvanized into action. Jay watches them, feeling limpid.
He looks at Voight.
Voight looks back.
They all know how bad th is is, how very, very bad this is.
But Voight understands it.
And Jay feels it.
Leads close cases, but not all cases resolve the way you want them to. Jay feels the oxygen grow tight in his lungs, each breath harder than the last.
They don’t work in a profession made for happy endings, after all.
Voight nods again and turns away. Jay closes his eyes, and hates each breath he takes as somewhere in Chicago, Hailey and Will’s air grows thin.
-o-
Voight comes back, and the team is ready for him. They have a list of notes from the videos -- conclusions, deductions, points to follow up, leads. The team quickly concludes that Will and Hailey are likely at different locations -- based on the look of each room, the sounds, and the exterior windows. At the very least, they’re in different rooms at the same location, but the team’s best guess is that they’ve been scattered across the city.
This makes sense to Jay, given Scarro’s personality. He’s a sadistic bastard. With the airtight tanks and lowering oxygen levels, Jay’s supposed to race against time to find them.
As for the cages, the team can’t be sure they’re legit. Atwater’s seen plexiglass cages before, and he confirms that they can be airtight, and Ruzek smartly points out that Scarro’s the the means and the resources. Burgess has looked up the make and model of the oxygen tanks, and those seem legit, too.
Best they can figure, Hailey and Will are locked in cages, and they do have a limited supply of air.
Which means their investigation has a strict set of constraints. If it takes too long, they’ll be recovering bodies and not Jay’s loved ones.
It’s Ruzek who brings up the possibility of a ruse. That maybe it’s a game they’re supposed to play. Maybe the stakes aren’t that high, because it’d take a hell of a lot of time, money, and prep for a guy who surely had something better to do.
Jay shakes his head “He didn’t, though,” he points out. “The guy killed himself and left a note for me. This is his last stand. He’s a crazy bastard, he’s a killer -- and he’s definitely not a liar. He plays for keeps. Win it all, lose it all.”
Atwater frowns deeply. “But why the elaborate set up?” he asks. “Adam’s right. This is a hell of a lot of trouble to go through. If he’s out for revenge, then why not just kill them outright?”
It’s not meant to be cruel, but the implication for murdering Hailey and Will still feels hard in Jay’s chest.
“Maybe the game’s the point,” Burgess says. “If he’s as much as a psychopath as we thought, then he probably wants to create a situation in which we have to try -- and fail. That’s, like, insult to injury. The power of hope, just to take it away.”
Jay nods stiffly. “He doesn’t want to hurt me,” he says. “He wants to humiliate me the way I humiliated him. This is no ruse. We have less than 12 hours to find Will and Hailey alive. He’s made it hard so we fail, but if we succeed--”
He can’t say it. The words fail him. Throat tight, he has to look down again, his eyes burning.
“If we succeed, we bring Hailey and Will home,” Voight finishes for him, adding a certainty Jay doesn’t feel. “And this time, success is our only option. So let’s start by running locations. Anything, and everything. We’ll start crossing of properties one at a time if we have to. Let’s go, people. 12 hours!”
It’s a call to action.
Jay can’t help it if it feels like a death sentence.
-o-
It’s a race against time.
Jay’s standing still, it seems, but his team is in full motion. They’re running addresses, cross-referencing as many professional connections as they can with Scarro’s organization. They’ve got patrols sent out scouring the city, and it’s a city-wide alert to all PD personnel, seeing if anyone recognizes something, anything.
It takes time, though. It takes seconds. It takes minutes. An hour passes. Then, too.
They’ve ruled out a lot of places, but Chicago’s a huge city, and there’s no guarantee they’re in the city. They could be anywhere.
Anywhere in a plexiglass cage, slowly running out of air.
They’re expecting feedback from the lab at any second, but Jay can’t imagine what that’ll tell them. It’ll confirm what they know; it’ll confirm what Jay’s felt, deep in the pit of his stomach, since he first saw the footage.
Scarro’s sadistic, but Jay’s leaning toward masochism at this point. Unable to participate -- unable to even think -- he tucks himself away in a corner and watches the video on repeat. He watches Hailey; he watches Will. Then he goes back and stars all over again.
It’s not right; it’s not helpful.
But this is all he has.
This is his only link to the two people he cares about most. He’s afraid if he puts it down, he’ll put them down. If he closes the message, that they’ll be gone for good, that he’ll never get him back.
Not that watching the video actually helps. Jay watches each one, almost on repeat, until he’s able to see it without wanting to hurl. He tells himself he’s looking for clues, but he’s long since memorized every nuance, every detail, every second. He sees the weariness in Hailey’s face. He sees the fear in Will’s. He sees the welded joints in the plexiglass cage, and he feels each tick of the clock as it counts down, down, down.
He’s aware that his emotional response isn’t getting them very far, but he doesn’t know what else to do. It’s his fiancee. It’s his brother.
In cages meant for him.
Jay’s unable to apply analytical skills at this point, but the others push themselves to do what Jay can’t. The videos are analyzed for accuracy -- and their validity is confirmed by two separate laboratory reports. The videos were recorded within the last day, and there are no signs of any tampering. The video has movement and sound; the newspapers displayed in each are accurate and unaltered.
More analysis shows that the videos have been sent from Scarro’s phone. They’re dated after his death, but the source is clear. There’s no sign of anyone else has tampered with the phone; they appear to be sent on autosend. They can only guess how long ago it was made. A day, maybe. Maybe less.
Moreover, there are some scant clues as to the surroundings. Although the rooms with the cages are clearly meant to be nondescript, there are a few telling features. There are glimpses of the outside world in Will’s room, with sunlight filtering in from offscreen. Hailey’s cage, however, is steeped in darkness, illuminated only by artificial lights. The walls are scraped, both made from cement. Although it’d be easy to identify the rooms if you saw one, it’s impossible to distinguish a location first. Dim, bleak and gray: the rooms look like half the crappy buildings in Chicago.
These are hard facts.
But they’re not the ones that leave Jay paralyzed.
Because he could take the unidentifiable Chicago basements. He could even deal with the plexiglass cages.
But the oxygen tanks, running lower on air by the second, that’s the part Jay can handle.
The seconds tick by.
Breath by breath.
According to the lab report, Will and Hailey have less than a day’s worth of oxygen.
Jay has less than a day to find the two most important people in his life.
Jay has the lab run the modeling three more times, just to be sure, and then he still pulls in three other people for a second, third, fourth opinion. They all agree, though. There’s no debate.
There’s 12 hours left.
12 hours left to find his girlfriend and his brother.
12 hours left before the two most important people in his life are dead.
12 hours.
Time stands still for Jay.
As it flies for everyone else.
-o-
They work hard. They work fast.
All the same, the moments slip past them.
An hour is gone.
Jay insists on hope.
-o-
They work hard. They work fast.
The moments are slipping faster, faster. Sand in an hourglass. Oxygen molecules in a tank.
Two hours. Three.
Hope’s something, but it’s nothing compared to actual, actionable leads.
-o-
Four hours.
They work hard. They work fast.
And the moments, the moments, the moments.
Jay finds the tipping point between hope and desperation and holds on for all he’s worth.
-o-
The team reconvenes, finally, going over their latest data.
Based on the lab report, they conclude that Hailey and Will are indeed in different locations. The clues in the video are scant, but they’ve got working profiles for both buildings. Hailey seems to be in a noisy area, so probably in the city, in a high-traffic area. The lack of natural light and the state of the room imply a basement, and there’s some debate of the wall materials that suggest the building has been made in the last 50 years.
That seems specific, but Jay knows it doesn’t rule out much. It’s still a needle in a haystack at this point.
The hope for Will’s location is a little stronger. Will’s video has less ambient noise, and there’s no hint of any traffic. The only sound is the clicking of the oxygen tank and a faint bellow, like from a train or boat.
A boat seems likely. In a fragment of the footage, they see water outside the window. Not the river; not a pond. The lake. He’s somewhere up and down Lake Michigan.
That’s something, then. Everyone nods, seemingly encouraged.
That’s something.
Jay harbors the growing fear, however, that it’s really not enough.
-o-
The first hit they get comes a short time later. It’s a professional location used by one of Scarro’s affiliates. There’s evidence that Scarro’s has been there, and he’s definitely used it to funnel some of his shipments even if he doesn’t hold the deed. It fits the profile of Will’s location well enough -- it’s by the water, and it’s currently unoccupied.
“Is this it?” Jay asks, looking at Voight.
Voight betrays nothing. “It’s the best we got.”
Somewhere, in two cages around town, the air is growing thing. Jay’s losing track of the moments, even as they stack up behind him.
“We’re running out of time,” Jay says, as if Voight doesn’t know.
But Voight does know. He holds steady. “It’s the best we got.”
-o-
Technically, Jay knows he’s supposed to stay back, but it’s a rule that no one is going to enforce. Voight will if he has to, and Jay knows his boss is watching him, but for now, he’s got tacit approval to tag along.
Jay will play by those rules if he has to, because the thought of Will in that place is too much. If his brother is there, Jay is sure as hell going to be there when they get him out.
It’s something he allows him to think, allows himself to believe. That they might have found Will. That he’s going to save his brother.
But the team clears the site, and there’s no call for backup. Jay sits in the car, perched on the edge of his seat, holding his breath. His fingers are fisted so tight that his knuckles are white, but there’s an all-clear.
Literally.
It’s all clear.
There’s no bad guys. There’s no sign that Scarro’s been there or that any activity has gone on recently. All the rooms are empty. There’s no plexiglass cage, no oxygen tank, no stupid, red-headed doctor.
It’s a dead end, is what it is. It’s hours wasted with nothing to show for it. It’s a partial tank of oxygen Will and Hailey can’t get back.
It’s failure, is what it is.
It’s just failure.
-o-
Hard and fast and the moments are gone. They’re squandered.
Jay’s stood at the tipping point.
And now, he crashes down.
-o-
The team regroups, but Jay can see it in their eyes. They’ve played their best card. They’ve given this all they have. They’ve got less than six hours left, and they’ve still got thousands of properties to clear. The odds of finding Will or Hailey alive, at this point, are pretty low.
No one says it.
They don’t have to.
The team regroups.
And Jay walks out.
There’s one option left. One is still on the table.
The avenue they started with.
The one Jay will end with.
-o-
Voight is the only one who follows him. He stops him in the parking lot, calm and diffusing. He’s not telling Jay to stop, but he’s also not letting Jay go.
“What’s your plan?”
Jay snorts, because that’s a funny question right now. “What’s your plan? You’ve got nothing, and you know it.”
Voight doesn’t bother to deny it. He’s not wasting time on niceties at least. “We’re going to keep looking. It’s slower than any of us would like, but that’s the only thing we’ve got.”
Jay shakes his head, face twisting. “But it’s not the only thing I’ve got.”
Voight’s face is impassive, but his eyes are quizzical. “You going to share your lead?”
Jay can’t bring himself to speak. He barely trusts himself to breathe.
“Tell me this, then,” Voight says. “Are you about to do something that I need to stop?”
“No,” Jay says, almost breaking on the word. “I’m going to talk to Michael Scarro, that’s all.”
This move seems to take Voight by surprise. “The kid?”
“He’s why Scarro did this,” Jay points out.
“But why would he tell his kid? He let the kid go to prison to salvage his reputation with his son,” Voight points out.
“Which means this is personal. And no one knows that side of Scarro better than Michael,” Jay points out. He shrugs, helpless. “I know it’s a long shot.”
Voight nods. “But it’s the only shot you got.”
“You’re not going to stop me?” Jay asks.
“Just call me if you find out anything,” Voight says. “And we’ll bring them home, Jay. I promise you that.”
Jay nods. He’s grateful that much.
Because he knows he hasn’t got much else.
-o-
At this point, speed seems irrelevant. Effort seems inconsequential. He’s not going to be fast enough; he can’t work hard enough.
But he has to try.
Jay sees his brother and his girlfriend in cages. The air would taste bitter to them now, and Jay has to try.
Michael Scarro is being held at a high security prison. Jay lobbied against it, arguing that the kid was a low flight risk and first-time offender, but his objections had been overruled. It’s not to Michael’s benefit, but it works to Jay’s favor now. The prison is right in the heart of Chicago, and Jay is there in less than 30 minutes.
There’s red tape involved with visiting someone on demand in a prison like this, and it doesn’t just happen because you want it to. But Jay plays all his cards -- he calls in all his favors -- and within minutes, he’s sitting down across from Michael Scarro.
Possibly the only other person on this planet screwed over as badly by Lester Scarro as Jay.
Michael has only been in prison a matter of months. It may as well have been a lifetime. He looks thinner, and his color has gone pallid. He sits a little hunched, protective of himself, guarded in a way that had never been necessary before.
Jay’s been breaking for the last six hours in horrible, painful ways.
Michael’s been breaking for the last six months.
Cages make sense now, as Lester’s medium for revenge. An airtight cage will get the job done faster, but the results for Michael are still the same.
Even so, the kid sits across from Jay, broken and spent, and he smiles. “Detective,” he says. “This is unexpected.”
In any other case, this would seem suspicious. It would seem like posturing. It might even be considered taunting.
But Michael Scarro is sincere, and Jay realizes instantly that this kid doesn’t know anything. He doesn’t know what his father’s done, and there’s no way in hell he’s in on where Lester has stashed Will and Hailey. It’s a dead-end, then. Six hours and counting, and Jay’s played his last card and come up short.
“You don’t know why I’m here,” he says, and it’s not a question, even if he sounds a little awestruck.
Michael shrugs, somewhat helpless. “You probably need something -- something about my dad,” he says. “There’s no other reason to visit, considering the length of my sentence and the total failure of my appeals.”
He’s not lying. God help them both, the kid isn’t even close to lying “You really don’t know,” Jay says.
Michael would have been full of guile six months ago, but today he looks at Jay steadily. “You mean that my father’s a criminal? I know that now.”
Jay has to shake his head. He can’t allow himself to dwell on the journey Michael’s taken to get to that conclusion, but it’s not the point he’s here to debate. “More than that,” Jay says. “This isn’t about what he did to put you in here. This is about what he’s doing now.”
Michael looks a little confused now. “They told me my father died,” he says. “Just yesterday.”
Jay nods, and he feels a pang of sympathy for the kid. “He did,” he says. “And he left behind one hell of a legacy -- one that put you in here, and one that’s about to take the lives of two other people.”
Michael’s too tired to be horrified. His shoulders slump even further, and his drawn features make him look haggard. “What now?”
Jay produces his phone, which he’s been given back from the lab. They’ve run all the evidence from it. They've told him it's given them all it can. Jay pulls up the videos and holds the phone out to Michael. He looks at Jay, reluctant, but then he takes it and plays the footage. He’s quiet while he watches. He barely breathes when Jay plays the second video.
When it’s done, he holds the phone back out to Jay. “Who are they?”
Jay accepts it, but he doesn’t dare look down for fear of losing whatever’s left of his precarious self control. “My girlfriend. My brother.”
Michael sighs, looking even more weary by the news. “I’m sorry. I really am.”
“I don’t want your apologies,” Jay tells him.
Michael starts to furrow his brow. “But what--?”
“They had 12 hours when I got this video, but now? Six, at best,” Jay says. “I need to find them, and your dad is dead, and no one else is talking.”
Michael’s finally starting to learn. He gives Jay a short, incredulous look. “And you think I can help?”
“You’re his son,” Jay counters.
“And I didn’t even see who he really was until after I went to jail for him,” Michael says.
“I know he’s visited you,” Jay insists, having looked over the prison records.
“And we talked about fishing,” Michael says. “I knew he knew more, but I could never bring myself to do it. I needed this to not be for nothing. So I played the game. For both our sakes, I played it.”
Lester had sent his son to prison to maintain the lie.
Michael, his father’s son in so many ways, is willing to say there to keep it, too.
Now Jay finds himself incredulous. “But you know what he did to you,” he says. He nods at his phone. “You’ve seen what he’ll do to these people, people who have nothing to do with him. My brother’s a doctor. He works in an ED. And he’s going to die unless you help me.”
“You’re missing my point,” Michael says. “It’s not that I don’t want to help you, but think about it. I’m in here for life, and he’s talking about fishing. Do you really think he’d ever tell me about whatever plans he might have had? Even if I’d asked?”
The point isn’t badly mad, but Jay’s come too far. More than that, Jay has nothing left. “Do you recognize the buildings? Where these videos were taken?”
Michael shakes his head.
Jay’s frustration flares. “But you have to know something. He was your dad. Why would he do this? How?”
The questions carry an accusatory tone, and Michael takes it. He bites the inside of his lip and thinks before he speaks. He sighs a little. “Look. He never told me anything, but I know my dad,” he says. “The fact that he’s done this -- to you, to your loved ones -- it doesn’t surprise me. It’s exactly what he’d do.”
It’s not an admission, and Jay’s not blind enough to take it as one. But he sees it for what it is: insight. Insight he needs. “Did he ever talk about plans? Revenge?”
Michael shakes his head. “No, just -- fishing. He said he was done with business,” he says. “He just wanted to get his personal affairs in order. I thought maybe he’d been having second thoughts. Maybe he was going to retire, or turn himself in, but that’s wishful sort of thinking. He sold off his business. He got his affairs in order. The only loose end was you.”
Michael nods at Jay knowingly.
For his part, Jay doesn’t know what to say. Somewhere across town, Hailey will be starting to gasp for air. Will will be feeling lightheaded if he’s conscious.
“What you’ve shown me -- it’s the kind of meticulous planning he excelled at,” Michael says. “He’s never taken responsibility for this. He blames you, I think. And this stuff -- it’s personal for dad. It’s always personal. You hurt him by putting me here. He’d want to hurt you. That’s what this is about. He’s trying to hurt you.”
It’s the conclusion Jay reached when he got the video. It’s not particularly insightful, and it’s not advancing his case. But these are words from Michael’s mouth. Jay can give context. Michael, though, has the ability to imbue meaning.
And the kid, after sitting silently through his own trial, is finally ready to talk.
So Jay does what he does. He presses. “So tell me about these locations,” he says, tapping at the phone again. “I just need a list, possible locations. Tell me, and I can help you.”
It’s a real offer; it’s a good offer.
But Michael shakes his head, somewhat helpless. “I don’t know,” the kid says, and he means it. He has no nuance; there’s no hint of deception. He shrugs. “I really don’t. But I mean, my dad was a guy who planned everything. It all had a purpose; it all had meaning. And he was obsessed with the case against him. He went over it, every detail.”
The kid is obviously trying to be helpful, but Jay’s got no time for pandering.
Hailey and Will have no time.
“So?” he demands.
Michael swallows, and he seems to focus on the task once more. “So,” he says. “If he really planned all this -- everything you say he planned here -- then he would have picked a place that meant something to you. He would have given it impact.”
“Impact?” Jay asks. He laughs, short and hard. “He kidnapped my brother and girlfriend.”
Michael nods, and his face is drawn. “And I’m sorry for that,” he says. “I had no idea. Until I got here, until I was in here, I just -- I didn’t believe it, any of it. I’m sorry.”
Jay raises his eyebrows, wishing he could laugh. “You’re sorry? You do realize that they may die, right? That your dad may have killed them already.”
Michael doesn’t flinch, but instead he sits forward, as earnest as ever. “You have to understand,” he says. “I never realized how big this was. To me, I mean, he was just my dad. My dad. I swear, I thought the charges weren’t real. I couldn’t bring myself to see him as the bad guy.”
It’s not that he doubts the kid’s sincerity, but it’s hard to sympathize. Jay clenches his fists and speaks through a tight jaw. “My girlfriend had nothing to do with his case,” he says. “And my brother? He’s a doctor. He works at the ED and saves lives. And your dad -- he took them. Put them in cages with 24 hours to live. That’s your old man.”
Michael’s eyes look wet, and he has to nod. “I know. I just -- don’t know how to make sense of it, any of it,” he says. He gives a helpless shrug. “I mean, he used to take me sailing, you know? We had these boats, and we’d go every weekend, just the two of us. He taught me to fish. He was the best.”
The fondness only hardens Jay’s bitterness. “He’s a murderer.”
Michael hems himself in, pressing his lips flat. “I know,” he says. “Again, I’m sorry, Detective.”
Jay huffs, and he pushes away from the table. “Whatever,” he mutters. “You were my last resort.”
“He’d pick a spot you know,” Michael says again, and his voice makes Jay stop and turn back. “I swear, I didn’t know my dad as well as I thought, but I know that about him. He’d pick something that matters.”
“Like what?” Jay demands.
Michael shrugs helplessly. “It would matter to you and him. To the case. I don’t know.”
They’re not so dissimilar, in the end.
What they don’t know.
Will cost them dearly.
-o-
It feels like a dead end, but Jay’s not stupid. More than that, he’s desperate.
Inherently, he trusts Michael’s instincts. He doesn’t think the kid knows where his father is doing his busy work, but his instincts in this seem legit. Scarro’s a precise son of a bitch. He’s probably left a trail of clues for Jay to follow.
Murder may be the endgame, but if Scarro wanted Hailey and Will dead, he would have killed them outright. By kidnapping them, by setting them up in cages, by sending the videos -- Scarro’s playing a game.
It’s about time Jay started to figure out the rules.
-o-
There’s no time, though. A legal case is slow and plodding. It had taken months to draw up charges and convict Michael Scarro for his father’s crimes. Scarro, by contrast, has given Jay a day to find his loved ones.
12 hours.
6 hours.
4 hours.
The air will be hard to find. The CO2 levels will start to be crippling. It will feel like breathing in soup, less and less clarity by the second.
And the seconds matter now.
They slip away from Jay, but it’s Will and Hailey who might never get them back.
-o-
It’s personal, though. So Jay keeps it personal. He goes back to his own case notes and opens them up, pouring through every detail he’s recorded over the years about Scarro.
He’s skimming through all of Scarro’s professional connections -- business locations, shipping centers, all of it. But it’s not right; he knows it’s not right.
Because this is personal.
Scarro sold the business for a reason. It has nothing to do with business. No one there is going to know anything. He’s not going to use the company locations. Because this is about Scarro’s son. He never lost control of the business; he lost his son.
He flips back to the start of the file, looking at the earliest background information on Scarro. It’s documentation about where he grew up, where he went to college. His marriage; his wife’s death several years after Michael was born. It’s a different story than the criminal one, so distinct that it’s almost impossible to understand how this is the same person who committed atrocities.
His first apartment.
The hospital where Michael was born.
The location of his wife’s grave.
The island in Lake Michigan they sailed every summer.
MIchael’s school.
Then, he sees another location. MIchael’s graduation gift. A building bought by Scarro, wholly on the up and up, and given to Michael in his own name. It’s not totally clear what it’s intended use was to be, but Michael had started renovating it. In fact, he’d been working on it the day he’d been arrested in connection with crimes at several of his father’s shipping facilities.
It’s very personal, then.
Flipping through the pages, Jay puts together more of the story. The building isn’t mentioned in the exchange of assets after Scarro sells out his portion of the business to his associates. With a few quick phone calls, he confirms that the building is still in Michael’s name. It’s been sitting vacant, still half renovated, in the heart of the downtown ever since Michael went to jail.
Jay can’t know for sure, but there’s a growing certainty inside him. It ticks all the boxes; it fits the bill. It’s personal, linking Michael to Scarro, and Scarro to Jay with seamless precision. If he moves now, they can have a team there within 30 minutes -- plenty of time to save at least one person Jay cares about.
He checks the time again, and tightens his jaw. He has to steel his resolve. Because those minutes he’ll used to find one of them?
Will use up all the time for the other.
Jay’s saving one.
And condemning the other.
It’s a hell of a choice to make.
But Jay knows it’s no choice at all.
He picks up his phone and dials Voight, who picks up on the first ring. “Gather the team,” he says curtly. “I’ve got a location.”
-o-
The team moves quickly, but they’re still up against the clock. With their full attention on this new lead, they have to abandon almost all other potential lines of investigation. It’s all or nothing, at this point.
Someone one will get it all.
Someone will get nothing.
Jay just doesn’t know if it’s going to be his brother or his girlfriend who he saves.
Or which one he’ll be burying.
-o-
The location fits the profile perfectly, and Jay’s certainty grows as they fall into position on the outside. The secure the area, creating a perimeter. No one has concrete cause to suspect tampering or sabotage, but the ruse to get them here has been elaborate. The last thing they need is a rescue operation with a body count.
Jay tolerates this prep with as much grace as he can muster. He stands, stiff as a board, counting the seconds in his head, doing all the calculations.
He takes a breath, wondering if there’s still air left in the cage.
He exhales.
He exhales.
-o-
Jay’s left his gun behind, because he knows Voight would never let him anywhere near the site while armed. There’s a part of him that knows that’s sensible; there’s part of him that’s pissed that he can’t take charge.
Mostly, though, he’s just ready to find out.
Scarro’s laid out the challenge.
And here Jay is. Meeting it. He’s staring hell in the face, and time will tell which one of them caves first.
The building is empty. They clear the first floor easily and quickly, and the team splits into two while the units go upstairs to secure the upper floors. Voight leads the Intelligence team downstairs, and it’s all Jay can do to keep right at their heels.
There is something unsettlingly familiar about the walk down the stairs, and the gray walls and cement floor come into focus. The dingy basement is like countless others across Chicago, but Jay knows it. The image is seared into his brain as he traces his gaze along the wall, across the floor.
To the discarded newspaper. To the oxygen tank. To the little timer counting down to zero.
And a plexiglass cage.
Jay can’t help himself. He lets out a yelp, panicked and near desperate. He brushes past his teammates without restraint, nearly slamming himself against the glass in his total preoccupation.
Because there, on the other side of the glass, is a familiar figure.
Smaller. Blonde.
“Hailey!” he yells, pounding his palms against it hard enough to feel the reverberation. “Hailey!”
She’s on the floor of her cage, leaned against the glass but still partially in a sitting position. Her head is dipped away, and from this position, he can’t see her face with her back to him. Behind him, the team is taking a more thoughtful approach to the situation -- securing the room, checking the seams of the glass and its integrity -- but Jay’s well past that.
He pounds against the glass again, nearly screaming this time. “Hailey!”
Somehow, on the ground on the other side of the glass, Hailey seems to rouse. Just a little at first, but Jay pounds the plexiglass again until she stirs completely, lifting her head and allowing her unfocused gaze to travel up. It takes her a moment to see him, a moment more to get her eyes to focus. She’s confused.
“Hailey!” he says, almost crying now. “Come on, Hailey! I’m here! You’re okay! I’m here!”
The confusion shifts in her face. She weakly turns, trying to push herself up to her feet. She doesn’t get there, her body too weak to support her, but from her position on the ground she looks up at Jay.
And smiles.
Like she’s known all along that this is exactly how this would end.