Later that fall, as Peter started telling his side of the story, he claimed it all started when Dornick found out that I was trying to find Steve Sawyer. When Harvey realized what Petra was saying at the Navy Pier fundraiser, he’d gone at once to Les Strangwell. Although Krumas was afraid his own role in murdering Harmony Newsome might come to light, Strangwell’s only concern was to keep everything buried until after Brian made it through the primaries and the general election. That meant trying to keep the story under wraps for over a year. All summer long, while I had felt I was spinning my wheels in my search for Lamont and Sawyer, Strangwell and Krumas thought I was getting too close to Sawyer for comfort. And so they called on George Dornick.

Dornick, with his sophisticated technology and a crew trained at the School of the Americas in every known form of combat, surveillance, and torture, was happy to come to Harvey’s rescue once again.

At the end of the summer, as they were coercing Petra into helping them break into my home and office, Dornick had become more brazen and more violent. When Peter and Rachel came to Chicago after Petra disappeared, Dornick told them that their other four daughters were as good as dead if either parent told anyone anything about the Newsome murder, the Sawyer torture, the death of Sister Frances, the coercion of Petra. Rachel flew back to Kansas City and went into hiding with her girls.

All this emerged slowly, of course, but Terry Finchley called me periodically to brief me. As the fall wore on, a prosecutorial dream came true: Harvey and Dornick began attacking each other. Harvey claimed it was Dornick’s idea to blow up Sister Frances before she could confide in me. Dornick claimed he knew nothing about it, that Harvey and Strangwell had employed Larry Alito, a loose cannon, an alkie—Dornick had warned them that Alito was unreliable—while Strangwell said Alito was Dornick’s go-to boy anytime he needed heavy lifting that he wanted to keep private.

After a lot of hemming and hawing and horse trading, the State’s Attorney’s Office brought charges against Krumas for second-degree murder in connection with Harmony Newsome’s death. Krumas’s lawyer had been pressing for involuntary manslaughter and probation, but as the national spotlight started shining on Chicago’s finest, the state’s attorney realized he couldn’t afford to let Krumas off with nothing but a rap on the knuckles.