CHAPTER TWENTY TWO
what could have been

The team heads out to a crime scene, to find out that the victim is Blair Williams, where Kim found him shot and left for dead in an alleyway, who is now on his way to Lakeshore.

"Kim alright?" Adam asks, walking over to Sam, Hank, Kevin, Brayden and Antonio.

"Yeah" Hank says.

"Okay, I ran the address through NADDIS." Jay says, walking over to the group, "Pretty much what you'd expect. Areas known for trafficking. There's two houses on the block that are both indexed. Known suppliers in each"

"Alright, well, we're gonna have to run both. Question is, anybody know if Blair had a problem with drugs?"

"No, he barely even drinks" Kim says, walking over to the group. Sam puts an arm around the brunette to bring her into a side hug and says, "It's gonna be okay, Kim"

"Sarg, I got something" Hailey shouts through the gated fence from Blair's car and as the team walk over to the blonde, she shows them the money in the trunk of his car and says, "There's at least 20k in there. All small denominations"

"Alright. Well, work your CIs. Reach out to gangs, narcotics, farm for witnesses, PODs. If they haven't been shot up, we might get lucky" Hank says.

"Yeah, I'm gonna head to the hospital" Kim says.

"Kim" Trudy says, as she approaches the group.

"Yeah"

"I just talked to the hospital detail. Blair coded in the ambulance. He died en route. I'm very sorry"

Sam looks at Kim and sees the hurt in her eyes, the pain, cause Sam herself has felt it, been through it and it sucks.

🌙🌙🌙

Sam tapes Blair's picture onto the whiteboard and says, "Blair Williams, 32 years old. Born and raised in Connecticut, wealthy family. Studied politics at Princeton, moved to DC shortly after graduating"

"Spent his career as a political consultant. Good reputation too" Jay says, "Been in Chicago the last two months working for Kelton. Found last night, 10:18 p.m., two GSWs. So far, nothing on forensics or ballistics"

"Okay. Blair got any link to drugs? Any priors?" Hank asks.

"Yeah. Believe it or not, he got popped for possession at 17. He got pulled over on a traffic stop, and the cops found seven grams of cocaine on him" Kevin says, as Kim goes to grab the file from him.

"Alright, so he didn't get charged with intent to distribute?" Antonio asks. Kevin shakes his head and says, "No. Apparently, his parents had pretty good lawyers"

"I ran through Blair's texts and calls" Adam says, walking onto the bullpen from the tech room, "Um..mostly business, personal texts, but there is one that stands out as being a little strange. It was a conversation with a burner phone. Looks like Blair was trying to buy something. Blair to the burner, 'Will you give a good price?'. The burner responds, 'Meet me 8 p.m. The green lounge'"

"Let me see" Kim says, and Adam hands her the file.

"Sounds like a drug deal to me" Antonio says, sitting on the corner of his desk, "Green Lounge, that's the bar outside englewood, right?"

"Yeah. Lots of drugs, lots of fights" Adam says.

"Roll on it" Hank says.

"You got it, boss"

~~~

"There" Brayden says, pointing at the two male figures in the security footage at the back of the bar.

"Is the Blair?" Sam questions.

"The clothes are a match"

Sam then fast forwards the tape a bit then pauses it to get a license plate number, "Got him. Blue buick"

"Plate is John 774089" Brayden says, typing it into the system and they get a hit, "Well, that's different. Cars registered to first city fellowship in englewood"

"That's a church"

🌙🌙🌙

Sam stops the car in front of the church and the two detectives get out and the brunette spots the suspects car and says, "Bray. Blue Buick"

"What is Blair doing hanging out with a reverend at a bar known for rocks and blows?"

"Hopefully, we're about to find out" Sam says, as she opens the door to walk inside the church, then shouts, "Reverend Dennis?"

The two then see a couple plants knocked over, looking to be a struggle and the detectives reach for their guns and Brayden shouts, "Reverend Dennis, Chicago PD" as they walk down the hall. As soon as Sam opens the door she says, "Body"

Sam kneels down next to the reverend, as Brayden clears out the rest of the church and takes out her radio and says, "5021 kennedy . Male victim, GSW to the hip, GSW to the neck. Roll an ambo to 4329 south 51st street" then she puts down the radio and puts her hands on the reverends neck saying, "Reverend? Dennis? Dennis, can you talk? Who shot you? Helps on the way, okay? Stay with us. Stay with us"

🌙🌙🌙

"I think he was bleeding out for a while. There's no witnesses, no phone. The shooter probably snatched it" Brayden explains to Voight as they walk down the hall to the bullpen.

"Looks like Dennis might have known the shooter. He was in the back making tea when it happened. No sign of a struggle" Sam says.

"Yeah, there were four casings, which means the shooter missed twice at close range. So he was not a professional"

"Hey, this guy Dennis...are we sure that he's a legitimate reverend?" Kim asks.

"Yeah, he was ordained"

"Well, Blair wasn't religious, so I have no idea why he was meeting with a reverend"

Sam checks her phone and says, "Ballistics came back as a match. Nine millimeter that killed Blair, killed Dennis too"

"Okay. Maybe he's a political donor. They were meeting to maybe talk about the election"

"I ran that theory up the ladder" Antonio says.

"Yeah?"

"No one from Kelton's staff recognized the name"

"Did they know if Blair had any enemies?" Jay asks.

"None that stood out as anything more than political divides. I mean, all they said was Kelton's really pissed that he's way behind in the polls, that everyone was pretty much drowning in it. Except for Blair. He had been talking about a new opportunity he had, but no one knew what he meant by that"

"Guy's listen to this" Kevin says, walking onto the bullpen, "If this brother's a man of god now, that was not always the case. He's got three drug charges. Full name, Dennis Reed, spent a decade of his life running drugs for the G park lords before he found the church"

"Well, well, well" Hank says.

"Maybe it was never a full turn. Just faith as a front. Church is a good place to funnel money" Brayden says, having seen a lot of it when he was in Narcotics.

"He's still dealing, he meets Blair somehow, they see a chance to make some money, do some business, a new opportunity" Adam says.

"Then someone swoops in, kills them both to end the sale" Antonio says.

"Alright, let's just take it step by step. First, let's confirm that Dennis was still actually dealing. And search Blair's hotel. I mean, if these two were moving heavy product together, they were wearing damn good masks for the world. Let's peel 'em back"

Jay sees Brayden walk into the break room and he follows him in there, closing the door behind him and asks, "I told you to stay away from Sam. What part of that statement, didn't you understand?"

"Listen, man, she's my partner, alright? There's nothing going on between us. And why are you so concerned about it anyways? Are you afraid she's gonna step out on your marriage like you did?"

Jay narrows his eyes and says, "What did you just say?"

"You heard me. You cheated on her and who did she go crying to, either, Kelly, me or Adam. She shouldn't even being giving you a second chance, but she is because that's who she is and you don't deserve her"

"And you do?"

Brayden shakes his head and says, "I'm not saying that. But I sure as hell know you don't"

"Hey!" Hailey says, storming into the room, "We can all hear you"

The two detectives look out into the bullpen to see the attention is all on them. Sam shakes her head in disappointment and walks aways.

~~~

After Antonio, Adam, Kim and Hailey bring in a suspect by the name of Nate Lewis. Sam and Voight are now in interrogation questioning him.

"Like I said, I don't know nothing about those murders or no damn gun" Lewis says.

"Yeah, the problem is, bro, that damn gun is the damn murder weapon of Dennis Reed and Blair Williams" Hank says.

"Blair Williams? I never met that dude!"

"Nate, I don't care if you never met him, or you knew him or you went camping together" Sam says, leaning on the cement wall, "What matters is, you killed him"

"I don't know who or what you're talking about"

"But you did know Dennis?"

"Sure, I've known him for years"

"And you got angry because he started dealing again in your territory" Hank says.

"No, no, no, no, no. I got upset because he started shaking my ass down for donations to his church"

"Come on, Nate, Nate, Nate!"

"I never talked to him about drugs!"

"Listen to me. We got the murder weapon and we got motive. You wanted to end the sale. With your resume, that's enough to put you away for life. You understand? So, we're trying to do you a favor. Now, give us your version of the story, the ASA will take that into consideration"

"Man, I'm done talking. Lawyer"

In the viewing room, watching the interrogation is Kim, Antonio and Adam and Dawson says, "Lawyer or no lawyer, we got enough to charge him. Hey, Kim, look, I know it's not a perfect result, but at least it's something"

"Yeah, I guess" Kim says, leaving the room.

~~~

"I know what this case looks like, but it's not about drugs. Blair's vice was politics" Kim explains to the team, flipping the board over, "He won every campaign that he ever worked on, and he was gonna win this one, too. He played hard, probably dirty. Now, I'm thinking that the 20k that we found in his trunk, probably had to do with something political"

"Yeah, so the question is, what could Dennis know or have in his possession that was worth 20k to Blair?" Hank asks.

"Probably something to do with Price"

"Kim, I'm not trying to go against you here, but we dug into Dennis. We know he and Price knew each other, but we didn't find any questionable or illicit connections between them" Antonio says, "We ran Dennis through Kelton's background, his campaign through Price's. Nothing hit"

"Jasmine Price. What about his daughter, Jasmine? Blair was looking into her. He did a full background check"

"Alright, Blair is digging into Jasmine. Why don't we do some digging of our own? See if there's anything real there" Hank says.

🌙🌙🌙

Sam and Kim walk into a college coffee shop and Sam says, "Are you Vanessa? Can we talk to you for a sec?"

"About what?" the girl asks.

"About Jasmine Price"

"Is this about her father becoming mayor? Cause I never met him"

"We're not reporters. We're cops" Kim says, showing Vanessa her shield.

"Oh. Sorry. Sure. Yeah, we can talk" Vanessa says, then looks at her co worker, "Cover me?"

"Yeah" the woman says. Vanessa, Kim and Sam walk over to an empty part of the cafe and Kim asks, "So, you and Jasmine, you were roommates?"

"Yeah, for two years, but we were never best friends or anything. We ran in different crowds. Just sort of stayed out of each other's way, you know? Until she left school for a bit. Why, what's this about?"

"Why did she leave school?"

"I'm not really sure. She just never came back after fall break. She kind of just disappeared. I said the same thing to that other guy about a week ago"

"What other guy?"

"I'm sorry, I forgot his name"

"What did he look like?" Sam asks.

"He was about your age. Black, Asian. Dressed really nice"

"Blair" Kim says.

"Yeah, that's it. Blair. He had a lot of questions about Jasmine, too"

"What kind of questions?"

"He wanted to know about some guy she was dating from the city before she took a leave of absence. I didn't remember his name. I'd only met him a few times and he was kind of scary. A little wild and..." Kim cuts the girl off by showing her a picture of Dennis Reed and says. "This him?"

"Yeah, that's the guy"

"Thank you" Sam says, as her and Kim leave, "I'll call Voight"

🌙🌙🌙

Voight walks onto the unit from talking with Jasmine and Ray and Kim hops off her desk and asks, "You talk to Jasmine?"

"I did"

"She admit to dating Dennis?"

"Yeah, they dated a few months. Partied more than they should have, but according to her, that's about it"

"So, we still don't know what Blair had on Jasmine or Ray that was so valuable," Sam says.

"If Blair found something, he found it doing opposition research, right? Let's do the same. Just focus on the two, three months Jasmine dated Dennis. But listen, we soft shoe this, okay? Anybody asks, it's just for background. None of this goes in the report yet"

🌙🌙🌙

The team is at the tech lab going through every month that Jasmine and Dennis dated, to find something on them. Kim walks down the steps towards the team and says, "Guys, September's a bust. Let's move onto October"

"October in a college town. Gonna be a hell of a lot of police reports" Jay says as the team look on the computers, "Alright, Evanston, October 2016. We got DUIs, disorderly conduct, drug possession. Nothing connected to Jasmine or Dennis"

"Well, maybe she got picked up, a cop knew who she was?" Adam says.

"Well, if that's the case, not a whole lot Blair can do without an official record" Hailey says.

"She may not have been picked up, but she was partying" Kim states, tapping on the mouse of the computer she's at, "she deleted her social media for all of october. But her icloud? Look at this. She looks like a different person"

"See, his icloud, everything that doesn't match his reverend rebrand got removed or deleted" Kevin says.

"Why not delete everything?" Antonio questions.

"That, I do not know" Kevin says, then looks over at Kims computer, "Wait, who is that? Do facial rec on her because I recognize her from these photos"

"Got it" Antonio says, "Anna Welk. One prior for possession, deceased, october 17, 2016, cocaine overdose"

"Yeah, I got an EMT report" Sam says, "Paramedics respond to a home in Evanston on the morning of October 17th. Patient Anna Welk pronounced dead on arrival"

"I think I got something. I need a jump drive. We got to get this to Voight right away" Kevin says and Hailey tosses him a harddrive.

🌙🌙🌙

Kevin plays the video he found on the big tv at the tech room back at the district, where Dennis and Jasmine brag about the money they're getting from the drugs they're selling and it also shows Anna Welks overdose.

~~~

Hanks walks onto the unit with an ASA behind him when Antonio asks, "Hey, how'd the talk go with Price?" but Voight ignores him and walks into his office, "What the hell was that?"

~~~

Sam stands with Kim as Adam and Kevin bring in Alderman Ray Price for the murders of Blair and Dennis, but unknowingly to everyone but Voight, Ray just took the rap for his wife, Alicia, who was the one who actually did the murders.

🌙🌙🌙

"I can't believe Price killed Blair and Dennis. I mean, what an insane world we live in" Sam says, as she and Jay walk into their bedroom from saying goodnight to their daughter.

"I know. You think he would've really won the election?" Jay asks, as they get into bed. Sam nods her head and says, "I do. Now, my bets are on Kelton winning. And once he does, you know damn well, he's getting rid of Intelligence"

Jay sighs and says, "Yeah. But we'll be fine. Our family, I mean. We're good. And I'm sorry about earlier"

"It's okay, but you have nothing to worry about with me and Brayden. We're partners, that's it"

"I know, and I trust you. I'm sorry" Jay says, leaning in for a kiss, which Sam accepts. Sam smiles, tracing her hand down her husband's shirt and underneath it to feel his toned stomach. Jay doesn't have abs, per say, but Sam doesn't care, not one bit.

Jay deepens the kiss more and says, "Are you trying to get laid, Mrs. Halstead?"

Sam smiles, nodding her head saying, "Yes I am" while moving onto his lap, "And it feels like you are too, Mr. Halstead"

Jay chuckles, flipping them over, then brushing some hair out of his wife's face and says, "I can't help it. You're so damn gorgeous"

"Daddy!" Gracie's voice cries out over the baby monitor. The couple sighs and Jay lays on his back and says, "I can't.."

"I know. I'll go see her. Just relax" Sam says, kissing her husband one more time before getting up and going to see her three year old.

a/n;

Poor Kim 😔 she really liked Blair. She needs all the love she can get rn!
We're getting real close to the end guys! 😭
Counting down the chapters till the end of the book; 3 left!