Keeping It in the Family (Linstead)

Chapter 50

"Jay," Lindsay said when she answered.

"Denis Pawlowicz wasn't here yesterday, Erin. Julia was, but he wasn't. They both lied to us about his whereabouts. Arrest the son of a bitch."

"Will do. And we'll pick her up too," was all she said before ending the call. There would be time for a proper debrief later.

By the time Halstead and Purrazzo got back to the 21st with Misha, both Denis and Julia had been picked up and brought in. Leaving Purrazzo to deal with getting the statement from Misha, Halstead went up to Intelligence. He found Olinsky in there at his desk, typing away on his keyboard.

"Hey, Al. Big break, huh?"

"Jay. Yeah, big break. Lindsay and Ruzek are interviewing Denis. Burgess and Atwater are with Julia. My money says he somehow got those kids to go into the house, and he killed them. I'm thinking they were dead before the parents even called us to report them missing."

"Yeah, probably were. Although that leaves the question of where they were when we looked around the house."

"Stashed in the attic or something?" was Halstead's guess.

"Maybe. Or in the trunk of his car. Guess we'll know more when one of them talks. My bet is on the wife. She'll probably want a deal to get off with the providing a false alibi rap. Lindsay already said she'll offer that if she has to."

"It's crazy how you can sometimes go from having almost nothing on a case to a major breakthrough just like that," Halstead said, clicking his fingers.

"Yeah."

Halstead got the impression that Olinsky wanted to be left alone to concentrate on whatever he was working on. Taking the hint, he decided to go and check in on the interrogations. Julia's seemed like the best place to start.

Within a couple of minutes, he was entering the observation room. Through the two way mirror, he could see Burgess and Atwater sitting at the table in the interview room. Across from them was Julia Pawlowicz, who had clearly been crying.

"So you drove out into the country. Then what happened?" Atwater asked.

"We pulled over somewhere, in the middle of nowhere. I demanded to know what Denis wanted to show me. He'd been stringing me along for an hour. I was scared that it was going to be something to do with the girls of course. But I didn't know what to do. None of it seemed real to me, you know? Like, how could I be in that situation? How could it be my husband involved in two kids going missing?"

"But you figured by that point that was what the situation was? That Denis was behind Marie and Stacey's disappearance?"

Julia looked down at the table. "I guess. I don't know what I was thinking."

"So Denis pulled the car over. Then what happened?" Burgess asked.

"We got out and he went to the trunk. I followed him, and he opened it."

"What was inside?" Burgess asked.

"The girls were inside."

"Marie Palmer and Stacey Garrett?" Atwater asked, wanting everything to be totally clear for the record.

"Yes," Julia said, looking down again.

"Were they alive?" Burgess asked.

"No."

"What happened next?"

Julia looked up at her. "I think you know what happened next. Denis took them out of the trunk, threw them in the ditch, poured gas on them and lit them on fire."

Halstead had heard all he needed to. Whether Denis Pawlowicz confessed or not, he was going down for life. As for Julia, her false alibi deal was long gone. She was looking at an accessory to murder charge now, and would do serious time. "Pieces of shit," he muttered to himself as he left the observation room.

"I want to congratulate you all on a job well done on this one," Lindsay said that evening. The whole team had been assembled in the main Intelligence room before the shift finished. "Of course I wish we had been able to find the girls alive, but that was never on the cards unfortunately. Pawlowicz admitted to enticing the girls into the house, and said once they were inside 'things didn't go as planned'. We may never know what really happened or what he did to them. But what we do know is he's going to spend the rest of his life behind bars. And we got it done in just over a day. Again, well done everybody. Anyone who wants to head to Molly's, I'll be there to join you in about an hour once I've done some paperwork. Everyone else, I'll see you in the morning. Okay, that's it."

The meeting broke up.

"Molly's?" Halstead asked Purrazzo, thinking that a drink sounded very appealing.

"I was meeting Sylvie there anyway," she replied with a smile.

As everyone collected their things and left, Lindsay sat in her office, working on the paperwork she needed to get finished. She hadn't bothered closing the door. Soon enough there was silence, everyone else having left.

Or so she thought. A couple of minutes passed, then she became aware of a figure standing in her doorway. She looked up. It was Olinsky, looking unusually awkward, like he felt out of place or something.

"Al? Everything okay?"

"I've, uh, got to give you this." He stepped forward and offered her an envelope.

Lindsay took it, looked at it, then looked back at up him. "What's this, Al?"

"It's my resignation."

A/N: The world caved in on Denis Pawlowicz real fast once his in-laws blew his alibi out of the water, and Intelligence got a quick result.

But we end chapter 50 with a shock. Alvin has put in his resignation! What do you think his reasoning is?