“Fuck off.” He shoved a report under my nose. “Guy’s name was Robert Robles. Chicago native. Born in a toilet at the old Greyhound station. Mom left him there for the cleaning crew.”
“Not exactly the way you want to come into the world.”
“No. DCFS bounced him al over the place. A few juvie offenses, but nothing too bad. Kid turned eighteen and decided he wanted to see the world. Two years in Somalia with the Eighty-second.”
I flipped through his service record, lingering on Robles’ photo, dress greens with beret cocked to one side, lips parted, eyes trying hard to make a kil er into a soldier.
“Guy knew how to shoot,” I said and turned the picture over.
“Yeah. He did another two years in the military when he got stateside. Looked like a lifer. Then he receives a general discharge. Not real y sure why yet.”
“And after he got out?”
“Don’t know. He had no family that we know of. Work records show him in Seattle for six months, working a construction gig. Then he disappeared.”
“Until he reappeared and started lighting up Chicago.”
“Pretty much.”
“I don’t know this guy, Rodriguez.”
“I sort of figured that.”
“So why was he so interested in me?”
The detective shrugged.
“What else you got?” I said.
“We found his rifle, a Remington 700 just like the Loop shooting. He dumped it along with a camera and some other items in a duffel bag near the scene. Also got a trace on both weapons.” Rodriguez pushed across another piece of paper. “Fifty 700s were clipped from a warehouse outside Hammond two weeks ago. These are the first two to surface.”
“Meaning whoever lifted them might have forty-eight more,” I said.
“Always the optimist, Kel y. Feds sent a team down there last night. The locals had a tip on a lukewarm suspect, but were sitting on it. Lawson suggested they expedite things.”
Rodriguez turned over a picture. The man was middle-aged, maybe Russian, with a flat nose, heavy forehead, and black tongue hanging past his chin.
“They found this guy, strung up by a wire in his bedroom closet. Been there awhile.”
“Robles didn’t like a trail?”
“Apparently not.”
“What else?” I said.
Rodriguez pul ed out a second file.
“A maintenance worker found her yesterday morning, dumped alongside an auxiliary line of tracks in the subway.”
I ticked open the folder and picked up a crime scene photo. The woman I’d seen wrapped in plastic was named Maria Jackson. She was black, early twenties, with her throat cut to the bone. I ran my eyes across the police report.
“We figure it’s gotta be connected,” Rodriguez said. “Coroner says she’d been dead six, eight hours.”
I looked at the photo again. Cracked glass for eyes and the smile, wicked and deep, yawning just beneath her chin.
“So Robles, or his accomplice, cuts her throat somewhere else and dumps her.”
“According to the feds, there is no accomplice,” Rodriguez said.
I looked over the top of the file. “Who is she?”
Rodriguez turned up a booking photo of the victim, throat intact, body warm, blood stil pumping nicely through her veins.
“Jackson was a working girl. Vice says she could usual y be found on a corner near Cabrini-Green. What’s left of it, anyway.”
Rodriguez produced a street map of the area around Clinton and Congress.
“There’s a parking lot under the highway, next to the Blue Line stop. City actual y owns the property. CTA keeps a maintenance access door right here.” Rodriguez tapped at the access door I already had a key to. “It’s a half mile or so from the street to where the body was actual y found, but that’s the closest entry point to the subway.”
“Forensics?”
“Our guys found trace evidence of blood on the door frame. Preliminary match to the victim.”
“Anyone in the neighborhood see anything?”
“Bus station’s a block away. Not exactly the best spot to pick up a reliable witness. Otherwise, the block’s ful of factories. We figure he dumped her at night. Place would have been like a ghost town.”
Rodriguez flipped the files shut, put on his watch, and drained his coffee. “Course, none of this matters much. We got the guy who kil ed Maria Jackson. Or, rather, you got him.” The detective smiled, cocked his finger, and shot me.
“What are you doing now?” I said.
“I’m about to get rid of you. Why?”
“I told Hubert Russel I’d meet him later this morning. He’s been working the stuff I gave him.”
“I just got some paper on him.” Rodriguez picked through the pile on his desk.
“Hubert?”
“Kid was leaving a party in Boystown last week. Car fol owed him down the street. Couple of guys got out and pushed him into an al ey.”
“Tough guys, huh?” I began to read through the report Rodriguez had handed me.
“Witness said it was a green Camaro. Said they came out of the car with what might have been a basebal bat. Owner is an asshole named Larry Jennings. Been arrested twice on similar assaults.”
“You guys get a tag number on the car?”
“Back of the initial report.”
I turned the report over and saw the number, along with Jennings’ phone and address on the Northwest Side.
“So why didn’t you pul him in?” I said.
“Hubert wouldn’t cooperate. Refused to ID his attackers. Claimed he tripped and fel on the way home that night. Hate Crimes guys said it’s not unusual. Kid just doesn’t want the hassle.”
“Or his name in the paper.”
Rodriguez shrugged. “Maybe.”
I sighed and flipped the file shut. “Can I keep this?”
The detective waved his assent. “So what is the kid working on? Oh yeah, your train crash from the seventies.”
“Eighties.”
“Whatever.”
“You want to take a ride over later. See what he’s got?”
“We got time for breakfast?”
“I told him I’d swing by around ten.”
Just then Rodriguez’s phone rang. He picked it up and grunted. I walked out to get some coffee. When I returned, the detective was tugging at his tie.
“Got a visitor out front. Rita Alvarez.”
“Who’s that?”
“You read the papers, Kel y?”
“Sure.”
Rodriguez smoothed out the lapels of his jacket. “She writes for the Daily Herald. Smart, tough.”
“And I assume good-looking?”
“You assume correctly.”
“Pretty early for a reporter. What does she want?”
“Don’t know. Something about the case.”
“Guess she doesn’t realize it’s closed either. Mind if I stick around?”
Rodriguez shrugged and led me down a smal hal way, then through a maze of cubicles. On the way, I dialed Rachel’s number.
“Damn.”
“What’s that?” Rodriguez said.
“Tried Rachel twice this morning.”
“No answer?”
“No.”
“It’s barely seven. She’s probably sleeping in. After yesterday, I can’t blame her.”
“Yeah, but she usual y picks up the phone.”
The detective stopped and turned. “You worried?”
“I just wish I’d stayed at her place last night.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“Stupid.”
Rodriguez shook his head. “You don’t take care, you gonna lose that woman. Come on, it’s this way.”
CHAPTER 35
Rachel lay at the bottom of a deep wel, cool air flowing over her skin. She wanted nothing more than to rest, slip into the comfortable black that pressed down al around her. Then the darkness began to lighten. The low buzz above her became distin
ct sounds, voices. Rachel opened her eyes. The first thing she saw was the brick used to hit her, a foot from her head. Beyond that, the empty face of the boy who’d used the brick. He was lying on his side, eyes open, throat gashed. The boy blinked once, a bubble of saliva at the corner of his mouth, and issued a low groan as his lungs emptied. Then he was dead. Rachel inched back from the widening pool of communal blood. To her left was the boy’s flashlight, throwing crazy shapes up on the wal s. From the right came sounds of a struggle. Then another body hit the floor. It was the second boy, tumbling out of the shadows and smiling vacantly at her for a moment before a hand grabbed his shoulder and flipped him back into the darkness. The man who’d brought her to this place picked up the flashlight and shined it in her face.
“Greedy fuckers. Must have busted through the lock on the door.”
He ran a hand across her flanks, much like he’d size up a dog at the pound, checking to see what was broken.
“Beat you up pretty good, huh?” He spit on the tiled floor and uncuffed her from the pipe. Then he moved to a corner of the room. Rachel pul ed the torn pieces of her clothing together and took inventory of the rest. The boy had hit her a glancing blow, knocking her sil y, but not completely out. Her cheek felt crushed, her left eye didn’t work very wel, and the bones in her jaw rubbed together where they shouldn’t. She tried to flex her left hand and realized she also had a couple of broken fingers. Then she glanced over at her would-be rapists, one with his jeans stil partial y undone. Just kids. Fuck that. If God ever gave her the chance and the man who sat in the corner ever gave her his knife, she’d kil them al over again.
“You okay?”
His voice was rough, but welcome. She nodded and tried to stand up. The room around her tipped and tilted. She dropped to the floor and emptied her stomach against the wal.
“Take your time.” The man was inspecting a long, black rifle and spoke without looking at her. She wiped gingerly at the blood on her face and realized she was crying. Then she huddled back near the radiator. The man was talking to her, but his voice seemed far away.
“You understand what I’m saying?” The man was close now. She shook her head.
“No matter.” He crouched down and shackled her again to the pipe. Then he left the room and returned, carrying a video camera and a tripod.
“Got a schedule to keep, Rachel, so don’t fuck with me.”
She watched him set up the tripod and mount the camera. He knew her name and had let her see his face, which meant he was going to kil her, or expected to die himself. Or both. She tried to process that as he pul ed the shade off a window, uncuffed her from the pipe and dragged her to a chair in the middle of the room. A thread of light wound its way into the apartment and, for the first time, she was able to get a larger sense of where she was. The door to the room she was in stood to her right. Behind her was a wal, with a huge hole in it, leading to a second room that dead-ended into a second wal. She had seen the holes before. Cops cal ed them honeycombs, tunnels dug out by gangs and used to link apartments in CHA highrises. There weren’t that many public housing high-rises left standing in the city, and they were mostly abandoned. If that’s where she was, there’d be no one close enough to hear her.
“We have to make a recording,” the man said and moved the camera between her and the window. He shoved a piece of paper in front of her. “This is what you have to say. Play any games and you wind up like your pals over there. Do it right and you might get out of this room alive. Course a lot of that depends on your boyfriend.”
For the first time she saw some emotion, a dance of light across pale blue eyes, then gone. The man turned his back on her and began to fiddle with the camera again. She looked at the watch on her wrist like it belonged to someone else. She was further amazed to discover it was stil working and read 7:00 a.m. On cue, a church bel tol ed out the hours. A lonesome siren picked up the note, its cry waxing and waning in the streets below. Over the man’s shoulder, she could see Chicago’s skyline sketched in subtle morning shades. And then she knew exactly where she was. It had to be.
“I think I’m going to be sick again,” Rachel said, testing her jaw and finding she could talk. The man turned back toward her. “Don’t be,” he said.
The siren was clearer now, harder and cold as it moved closer.
“If you want to do this, then hurry up,” she said and hung her head low.
“Okay, we’re ready.” The man moved behind the camera. “Remember, say what’s on the paper. Nothing else.”
The red light flared just as the church bel was finishing, the siren moving in and out, looking for trouble in some other part of the neighborhood. Rachel put her hands on either side of her swol en face and rubbed her good eye gently. Then she looked into the camera. The man waited. Rachel gave it five more good seconds before she cast her gaze down and began to read from the paper.
CHAPTER 36
Rita Alvarez stood as we came in. The reporter shook hands with both of us, smiling brightly, but focusing mostly on the detective. Rodriguez answered the unasked question.
“This is Michael Kel y. He’s a private investigator, attached to the task force. If it’s al right with you, he’s going to sit in.”
Alvarez nodded. I didn’t know the name, but I recognized the face. She’d been one of the media throng at the CTA shooting in the Loop. I’d thought she looked smart back then. Now I’d get to see if I was right.
“I know who Mr. Kel y is,” Alvarez said. “And yes, by al means, I think it would be good for him to be here.”
The three of us sat. We were in a smal room used by cops to question suspects and potential witnesses. In Chicago, the questioning often continued until the latter became the former, so it al seemed to make sense. Alvarez had brought a slim buff-colored folder with her. She laid it down on the table and folded her hands over it as she spoke.
“Thanks for seeing me on such short notice. And so early in the morning.”
Rodriguez didn’t respond. Like any good cop looking to extract information, he’d let Alvarez do most of the talking.
“As I indicated on the phone, I have some matters I’d like to discuss in connection with the recent sniper shootings.” The reporter dropped her eyes briefly to her folder, found nothing there, and looked back up. “I’ve come across some information that may be relevant to your case. I’m happy to share it with you before we go ahead and publish. In fact, I’d prefer to. But I’d like to get some assurances.”
Alvarez waited. Rodriguez waited. I watched. Final y, Rodriguez spoke. “We’re not in the business of giving assurances, Ms. Alvarez.”
“Rita.”
“Rita. I can get someone from County in here if you want. But if this is relevant evidence, I’d suggest-”
“Save it, Detective.”
I smiled to myself. I liked Rita.
“If you don’t want to talk, off the record, I leave and go with what I have. Then you can cal in the state’s attorney, subpoena me, or whatever else you want. But the information wil be public…”
I shuffled my feet and shifted in my chair. Alvarez turned on cue.
“And we may not want that?” I said.
Alvarez let the question hang, then moved her attention back to the detective.
“What sort of assurances are we talking about?” Rodriguez said.
“I want an exclusive on this story. Inside the task force. Access to the key players. Any breaks in the investigation before the competition, and a ful, exclusive debrief after the case is put to bed.”
“The case is already closed,” Rodriguez said.
“Maybe you should take a look at what I have before you go too far with that.”
That brought a grimace from the detective and a reluctant nod of the head. “Let’s see what you got.”
Alvarez pul ed a single sheet of paper out of her folder and slid it, facedown, across the table. Rodriguez left the item untouched for the moment.
“How many people
know about whatever it is we have here?” the detective said.
“Myself and my managing editor know about the letter’s contents. This is a copy. I have the original in a safe place, including the envelope it came in.” Alvarez shrugged. “It showed up sometime yesterday. We learned about it last night. There’s no stamp, no postmark, and we’re not exactly sure how it was delivered. We used gloves once we realized what we had. Stil, you’re gonna get my prints and probably prints from the mailroom. At least.
”
Rodriguez turned over the page. It was just a few lines, printed in block letters.
RITA, I DID SOUTHPORT AND THE OTHER. ME ALONE. USED A. 40-CAL AND REM 700. HERE’S ANOTHER ONE, IF U NEED MORE CONVINCING. FUCK THE MAYOR. FUCK THE FBI. CARDINALS HATS ARE NEXT. CITY TOO.
NBC.
“I checked my notes and the wires,” Alvarez said. “You guys never offered details on the weapons in any of the shootings. If this is al wrong, just tel me, and I’l write it off as a prank.”
Rodriguez looked up from the letter. “What’s ‘another one’ mean?”
Alvarez pul ed out two more pieces of paper and pushed them over. “These came along with the letter.”
The first page was a street map of the area near Clinton and Congress. The second was a duplicate of the subway map that had been left on my doorstep. The spot where Maria Jackson’s body was found was marked with an X and the word BODY scrawled beside it in the same blue Magic Marker.
“Looks to me like a section of the subway,” Alvarez said. “I’m sure the CTA can tel you exactly where to look.”
The reporter read our faces and tried hard to keep the smile out of her voice. “Unless, of course, you guys already know everything I’m tel ing you.”
Rodriguez pushed the pages over to me and leaned back in his chair. “Son of a bitch.”
Now the reporter grinned for real. “I knew it.”
Rodriguez tipped forward again. “We have our deal, Rita. Don’t fuck with me on it.”
“I came to you, Rodriguez.”
“Yeah, wel, don’t get so fucking excited. Makes me nervous. Yes, the details on the weapons are correct.”
“And the maps?”
The Third Rail mk-3 Page 11
