The detective shrugged. “Don’t count on it.”
We came up on a back entrance. The plywood that covered it over had been pried loose, and we slipped inside. Dim light and a current of warm air greeted us. The high-rise might have been a shel, but the city was stil heating it and providing electricity. We picked our way through the lobby, sectioned off with scratched Plexiglas. Metal mailboxes scored with bul et holes ran along one wal, and the linoleum floor was covered with broken glass and a handful of syringes.
Rodriguez motioned up and took the lead. We climbed the staircase in single file, guns drawn. An elevator door stood open next to the fourth-floor stairwel. I glanced down into the black hole. A set of eyes looked back.
“What the fuck?” A head popped up from the hole, hands already behind his head, gaze fixed on the barrel of my gun. “You guys five-oh?”
Rodriguez pul ed the young man out of the shaft and shoved him up against the wal. The kid was maybe fifteen and held a narrow, angled head atop a precariously long neck. He wore loose baggy jeans and an oversize Chicago Bul s jacket.
“What’s your name?” Rodriguez said.
“Chubby. You five-oh?”
“Shut up.” Rodriguez took out a smal flashlight and shined it into the shaft. Al eighty-five pounds of Chubby had been sitting, or maybe sleeping, on the top of the elevator car that sat just a few feet below us.
“How long you been here?” I said.
“I come in once, maybe twice a week. Get warm. Sleep a little.”
“You seen anyone around?” I said.
“What you mean by ‘anyone’?” Chubby’s voice rose at the prospect of perhaps having a card to play.
“A guy who doesn’t belong,” I said. “And a woman.”
Chubby shook his head. “No woman. Seen a white dude. Maybe yesterday. Don’t think he saw me, but he was coming from upstairs.”
“You get a look at the guy?” I said.
Chubby smiled. “White dudes al look the same to me.”
Rodriguez grabbed the kid by the col ar. I glanced at the detective, who let the kid go. Chubby stepped back and watched both of us closely.
“You know which floor the white guy might have been coming from?” I said.
“I’d say top floor. No one else up there for sure.”
“Why’s that?” Rodriguez said.
“No wood on the windows. No heat. Colder than shit up there.”
Rodriguez jerked his head toward the stairs. “I need you to go down into the lobby and wait. You’re not there when I come down, I come looking for you. And that ain’t good.”
Chubby glanced back toward the elevator shaft. “I got some shit down there.”
“Forget it,” Rodriguez said. “Now get the fuck out of here before I lock you up.”
Chubby didn’t care about his stuff. Chubby also wasn’t moving. “You slick boys goin’ upstairs, best take me with you. I know how it works.”
“How what works?” I said.
“The layout. Nigger can shift right down the hal way for you. See if your boy’s there and tel you exactly where. Now, how much that worth?”
I put my gun to his nose, and Chubby’s grin fel apart at the seams.
“You want to help?” I said.
Chubby kept his eyes on the gun. I took that as a yes.
“Do just what we say and don’t say a word unless we ask you a question. You got it?”
Chubby nodded.
“Okay,” I said. “Get behind us and fol ow.”
And so we began to climb again, traveling on the edge of Dante’s circles-also known as Chicago public housing. Twice we heard a groan, once a thick whisper and some quick footsteps. Each time, Chubby slipped away, only to return with a nod to keep climbing. Eleven flights later, we hit the top.
“This is it,” Chubby said, hunched in the stairwel. “No heat up here. Only safe place for a white man.”
I edged my head around the corner and took a look down the corridor. Our guide was right. The wind was whistling through blown-out windows, dropping the temperature to whatever it was outside. I could only see two units on my left. Neither had doors on them. I ducked back into the stairwel.
“Any of the apartments up here have doors,” I said.
Chubby shook his head. “Not likely.”
“You think you could take a look for us?” Rodriguez said.
“Sure.”
“Go ahead,” I said. “Just walk down the hal and right back. Nice and slow. We’l be watching.”
I stepped back and motioned with my gun. Chubby eased past us and around the corner. Thirty seconds later, he was back.
“Know exactly where your boy is.”
I felt my heart jump and my fingers itch.
“How so?” Rodriguez said.
“Last apartment on the right,” Chubby said. “Got a door and maybe a lock on it. Gotta be your boy.”
“That unit tunneled out?” I said.
“They al got tunnels up here,” Chubby said.
“Stay here,” Rodriguez said.
I crept around the corner and moved down the hal way, the detective on my shoulder. Chubby was right. None of the units had doors, until we got to the last. We stacked on either side. I took a deep breath and nodded. Rodriguez raised his boot and kicked in the door. I went first, ducking low and scooting along the wal. It was warmer in here, fetid, with fractures of light cutting up the floor. I saw a shape and moved toward it. Somewhere behind me, Rodriguez yel ed “Police.” I was turning over a body and staring down at a young black man, eyes open, dead. There was a second boy close by. I took off my glove and felt for a pulse. Blood greased my fingers as Rodriguez ripped the shade off a window covered over in plastic. The apartment’s north wal had been boarded up, sealing the unit off from the rest of the floor. The opposite wal had a huge hole in it. Rodriguez ducked through it and popped back out.
“Bedroom. Clear.”
An empty chair sat in the middle of the main room. A second interior door stood ajar to my left. Rodriguez eased the door open with his foot and ducked in.
“He must have moved her.” The detective’s voice drifted back through the unit. I was staring at the chair Rachel had sat in just a few short hours ago.
“Kel y, you hear me?”
I kicked the chair across the room. “I heard you. He knew Rachel had tipped me on the video. Knew I’d come here.”
“Couldn’t have taken her too far,” Rodriguez said and paused. “Kel y, come in here.”
I walked into the third room. Rodriguez had his back to me and was running his flashlight over what looked like a bed. I moved up behind him and felt my throat tighten. The mattress was stained with blood.
“Looks like those stains have been here awhile,” Rodriguez said. “There’s more on the floor. I’m thinking Maria Jackson.”
The detective turned toward me. He held a buff-colored envelope between his fingers.
“What’s that?” I said.
“It was taped to the wal over the bed. Got your name on it.”
I turned the envelope over. There was my name in block letters. Inside was a single photo. It was an old shot. Denny McNabb wore a White Sox hat and Peg had what looked like a can of Old Style in her hand.
“Who are they?” Rodriguez said.
“Jim Doherty’s neighbors.”
“Someone’s playing games.”
“Yeah.”
Rodriguez sighed and kicked at some stray glass on the floor. I slid down against the wal and studied the photo.
“I can’t keep a lid on this much longer,” Rodriguez said. “Not with the bodies next door.”
“Bring Lawson in now.”
“You sure?”
I looked down at my cel. The text message light was blinking. It was from Hubert Russel.
“Yeah. Have her get a team in here. Get someone over to pick up Hubert as wel. Tel Lawson I need two hours. Then they can move on the South Side.”
“You think she�
�l go along?”
“She wants this guy dead. And she wants it off the books. I’m betting she gives me the window.”
“What about Rachel?”
I wasn’t going to ride to her rescue. At least not the way I’d planned. Instead, it was gonna have to be his way.
“I’m thinking you take Chubby and work the neighborhood. If this guy moved her, it had to be today. Maybe someone saw something.”
Rodriguez crouched down so our eyes were level. “Two hours. Then we come. And remember, don’t wait on this prick. You get a shot, take it.”
The detective straightened and walked into the other room. I could hear him on his cel, making his first cal s, cranking up the logistics on a team for Cabrini. I needed to get going. Instead, I flipped open
my cel and clicked on the first of Hubert’s texts. The message was one line: HANG ON TO THIS. MORE TO COME, INCLUDING VIDEO. H.
Hubert had attached a JPEG image file. I opened it.
“Vince,” I said. He stuck his head through the hole in the wal, held up a finger, and finished up his cal.
“What is it?” the detective said.
I showed him the picture Hubert had sent me. And, more important, the date that it was taken. And that’s when everything changed.
CHAPTER 43
Hubert sat back and listened to the sounds outside his window. Then he entered a new command into his computer and waited. He’d been pul ing at this string for a while. It kept his mind off the bruises on his face.
A batch of search results popped up on the screen. Hubert clicked on one and began to read. After a few minutes he pul ed out Jim Doherty’s files and pored through the old clippings a second, then a third time. Hubert shook his head. He glanced toward the kitchen knife lying flat on his desk and grinned. Like he could ever stick that into anyone.
Hubert opened up the text message and photo he’d sent out earlier in the day and thought about its implications. He wanted to try Kel y’s cel again, but decided to wait until he had the details worked out. Hubert punched up the camera built into his Mac and hit RECORD. He talked for twenty minutes, laying out his thoughts while they were fresh, speculating about the curious things that were popping up in Jim Doherty’s old files. He had just started a new recording file when there was a sound outside in the hal way. Hubert terminated the recording, sending a copy to Kel y, and got up. He glanced at the knife a second time, but left it on the desk and walked to the door.
CHAPTER 44
Rodriguez and I agreed. This guy had been wired into us from the start and it had to stop. No cel phone contact. No e-mail. Rodriguez would coordinate with Lawson and handle Cabrini. I’d head to the South Side and whatever waited. Somewhere along the line, I hoped one of us would find Rachel. Alive.
I checked my watch. It had already been almost an hour. I cruised the neighborhood one more time. Checked Jim Doherty’s house. Then Denny and Peg McNabb. Both looked empty. Locked up tight.
I parked two blocks away and stepped out of my car. Wind from the east screamed high in the bare trees, rattling storm doors and blowing paper bags across the street. I crept through a patchwork of yards. It was dark, but I’d done my homework and didn’t make a sound. Ten minutes later, I slipped over a fence, into the McNabbs’ backyard. It took me less than two minutes to work the lock to the basement door free. I half expected to hear Peg’s TV going upstairs, but there was nothing. I pul ed out the revolver Rodriguez had given me, crept up the cel ar stairs, and into the kitchen. They were both on the floor, facedown, hands tied behind their backs. Denny had managed to wrap one of Peg’s fingers in his. And that was how I found them. Each with a single gunshot wound to the back of the head.
I checked upstairs, but the rest of the place was empty. Then I sat in the kitchen with the old couple and watched light from the street play across the house next door. A shape moved behind a window. Or maybe I just wanted it to be so. Either way, I was over the fence in what felt like a heartbeat and pressed up against the side of Jim Doherty’s bungalow. Taped to the back door was a picture, flickering in the night. It was the same image Hubert Russel had sent to my phone. At least we were al on the same page.
I peeled the photo off the door, turned the knob, and walked inside. The retired cop was sitting at his kitchen table, a shotgun pointed at my chest.
“You surprised?” he said.
I looked at the photo again. It was the police graduation shot for James Nelson Doherty. He was smiling, proud and happy to be commissioned a police officer in the year of our Lord 1982.
“A smart friend of mine sent me this today,” I said.
“Figured it out, huh?”
“You didn’t become a cop until ’82. Two years after the crash.”
“So I couldn’t have been a uniform up on the platform when those cars derailed. That’s exactly right. Drop the gun.”
Doherty had a red binder with black block lettering on the table, along with a hard black case. He had a Mac on the floor by his feet and flipped it around with his boot so I could get a look. Rachel was on-screen, blindfolded and handcuffed to a chair. There was a shotgun five feet away, locked into a shooting stand and pointed at her head. I laid my gun on the ground.
“Where is she, Jim?”
“I assume you went to Cabrini. That was clever. I’l give your woman that. But let’s not waste the little time we have with loose ends.”
“That include your dead neighbors next door?”
“They were very old and they died together. You have no idea what a blessing that is.”
“Yeah, I envy them.”
“Shut up, Michael. And sit down.”
I did.
“You got it figured out yet?” Doherty said. “Or you want me to fil in the blanks?”
I held up the photo. “You were on the train.”
“Help.”
I turned to the sound, coming from the doorway of the crippled CTA car. James Doherty moved his face into the broken light. His skin was the color of wet cement, his eyes, blue marbles that rolled around in his skull before settling on me. Five feet below him, the woman with the green scarf and soft smile had been thrown against the car’s back door. The accordion metal had crushed the woman’s legs, and her pelvis was pinned under a twist of steel. Even that would have been okay until I saw the second piece lodged just beneath the ribs. It was the broken-off end of a girder that had split the door on impact. The girder was dark green and rusted, slick with blood, and slid in and out of her side each time she took a breath, which wasn’t often enough. The woman with the soft face was dying. Even to a kid, that much was more than clear.
“I didn’t recognize you until I saw the photo,” I said.
“Sometimes life takes its pound of flesh to the bone.” Doherty croaked out a laugh, and I could see the fine strands of insanity tangled up in it. “But I recognized you, Kel y. Minute you walked into the district as a rook. Same mayonnaise face you had as a kid. Stil looking for his daddy.”
I crawled toward Doherty, and we pulled at the hot, rusted metal. He mumbled and prayed as we worked. Then he kissed the woman’s face and tried to keep her awake. After about a minute or so, she still hadn’t moved. I heard a sound from the back of the car. A CTA conductor’s hat floated above us. Below it, my father’s red eyes.
“Please,” I said.
Something like pity flicked across his face and I thought he might try to save her. Then the pegs were reset. My old man grabbed me by the neck and threw me toward the back of the car and the open connecting door. I hit an edge, slumped across the threshold, and felt the night on my face. I looked up at the L tracks looming above me, a couple of firemen’s hats peeking over the side.
“Get out the fucking door,” my old man bellowed and tried to follow me to safety.
Doherty reached out and grabbed for his leg. My old man put a boot in Doherty’s face and slammed him into the side of the car. For a moment, there was nothing but a silent tremor that rippled through my finger
s. Then the train lurched, this time badly. Quiet moans became screams. Steel groaned and rivets popped. A seam of metal split the length of the car. The woman with the soft face moaned once as something pierced her anew. Doherty reached, but his fingers were greased with blood, and she slipped away. Then she was gone, leaving nothing behind but a cold wind, chasing Jim Doherty’s screams through a gaping hole to the blank pavement below.
“He killed her,” Doherty said.
I shook my head. “She would have died whether she fel or not. The doctors told us that.”
“You mean the doctors paid for by your city. He was a coward. He kil ed her. You both did.”
I felt Doherty’s eyes, crawling across my soul, finding the dark crevices where guilt fed on a child’s doubt, and a woman’s pain echoed. I shook my head free, but the man with the shotgun had seen enough to smile.
I was dragged up to the tracks in a fireman’s sling. My father, right behind me. I took one look down into the street, but she was already covered with a sheet. They tried to talk me into an ambulance, but I twisted away, ran from the elevated, then walked twenty blocks home. That night, my old man drank a pint and a half of Ten High bourbon. He called me into the kitchen sometime after midnight and asked me what I saw on the train. I told him nothing. He beat me with his fists, asking the same question with every blow. I kept saying nothing because I didn’t know what answer would be better. But there was no right answer. And there was no beating that was going to hurt worse than knowing what my father was. And knowing that every time he looked at me, he’d see his own cowardice reflected there. And hate me for it.
“If I’d found him, I’d have kil ed him.” Doherty tilted forward in his chair, tipping the twin barrels of the shotgun a touch closer. “And maybe that would have been enough. Maybe helped both of us.”
“Who was she, Jim?”
“Her name was Claire.”
“Your wife?”
“Engaged.”
I shifted in my chair, edging closer to my gun on the floor. “My dad’s dead. I did what I could that night. You know that. So did the cops. So did the doctors.”
The Third Rail mk-3 Page 14
