Bones. They found bones while demolishing a parking garage to make room for an extension on an office building in Chicago. Google bought the building and the garage and needed room. A backhoe revealed what the crew was pretty sure was a human skull. Suddenly all work stopped and the place was crawling with cops circling an opening in the concrete.
A CSU team was there with the head of the Medical Examiner’s office. Definitely human. Adult male. The surrounding area was excavated carefully, the gathering curious kept behind yellow tape.
At headquarters, a pair of CPD detectives pored over the records for the garage. Built in 1975. The body was found under part of a slab where the cement was poured on August 2 of that year. Forensics couldn’t be certain, but suggested a male, Caucasian, between 50 and 75 years of age. One shot to the back of the skull. A 0.22. That’s pretty much all they knew when the team sat late in the afternoon in a semi-circle at Police Headquarters downtown. Lieutenant Brisco, from the cold-case bureau, was on point. Missing persons contributed several officers, and two homicide detectives sat in the back, listening. The shorter one jumped up, said he was calling Detroit PD, and was gone before his tall partner could ask why.
Three days later, the group reassembled for their daily briefing. They couldn’t really investigate until they could ID the victim and they’d only gone down dead ends. As they were breaking up to continue their needle-in-a-haystack work, a forensics clerk handed Brisco a piece of paper. He, Brisco, told everyone to wait. He turned to the board and with a marker wrote “HOFFA.”
The tall detective looked to his buddy with the friend in Detroit.
“So that’s it then?”
“That’s it.”
Terry Brewer, Author 