BAITED BREATH

BAITED BREATH Part 12

Harts and Vonn met in Captain Wheeling's office.

"It's official," Wheeling told them. "Jerry Salem Bronwell was the front for at least three other criminal enterprises besides Jerusalem Brown. He's made our work a little easier by using the same initials for all his alter egos. Thanks to Ann Ballard's expertise, calls have poured in from Wisconsin, Indiana, and all over Illinois."

He consulted a file. "Maybe you've already heard this, Harts, but the FBI field office in Indianapolis has identified a man using the name Jersey Butler. He runs a child snatching ring from there up I-65 to Gary. He hasn't been seen in two weeks. They believe they have a lead on the houses where Butler held the children."

"That's great news, Captain."

"A biker gang who used Jerard Banks to move illegal firearms up I-43 from Milwaukee to Green Bay are on the hunt for him. They haven't heard from him in ten days, and he owes them money."

"They're shit out of luck," Vonn smirked.

Wheeling stacked the files on a corner of his desk and leaned back in his chair. "Our own Johnnie Bloom has apparently retired from passing counterfeit twenties at the local casinos. The Secret Service is looking for him at the riverboat casinos in St. Louis."

"We've told them to stand down," Harts said.

"Multi-jurisdictional agencies are now reviewing surveillance footage from the last year, looking for Bronwell's tell. It's hard to say how many more of his disguises we'll uncover. Oddly enough, someone recognized one of the characters Mrs. Ballard created as the Secret Santa passing out one hundred dollar bills at Union Station a week before Christmas."

"When the hell did Bronwell have time to work?" Vonn asked.

Wheeling ticked a list off on his fingers. "We've got people going through phone bills, personal planners, and interviewing employees to see if he was in town on any of the days these other JBs were spotted. I don't know why we're doing it, since there's no case to build, but the governor wants all the proof we can muster. The State has seized his assets. When they're liquidated, a long line of people will be applying to receive the funds to pay for all this legwork."

"Right now the task force is trying to piece together Bronwell's past. There are no records prior to 1986," Harts added.

            "Is he WITSEC? Who's his handler?"

"He's not ours," Harts explained. He hid a yawn behind his hand. "We're trying to figure out if he forged documents and invented himself.  We're looking for his doctor, college acquaintances, family, and colleagues. It will take some time to track down other possible aliases and search for the main headquarters; the warehouse with the guns, drugs, and contraband; the houses where he held kidnapped children. A team is painstakingly going through every property owned by someone with the initials JB in the tri-state area. So far, there aren't any usable clues from the funeral video."

"Not that it matters at this point," Vonn added, "we heard back from our inquiry into who printed the Andrea Doukas business cards. The entire transaction was done by phone and paid with cash. A courier delivered the payment and a different one picked up the finished cards and dropped them off at a restaurant. One with no CCTV. Tom Ballard taught his sister a thing or two about covering her tracks.

"In the meantime, we'll set up an appointment to meet the entire family. I don't believe in coincidences; there have been too many involving Bronwell's death and Bree Ballard. Not to mention that her brother, my partner, single-handedly uncovered the biggest crime front in the history of Chicago."

"Which we still wouldn't know about if not for the Ballard family," Captain Wheeling said with a dismissive wave of his hand.

**This is a pretty short offering. Look forward to more next week.

Here we learn a lot about Jerusalem Brown and basically nothing new about Jerry Bronwell. But every word is important.

Please return for another sample next Friday.

In the meantime, won't you vote and tell me what you think so far?