“What are you laughing at?” she said.
“ ‘A man’s reach should never exceed his grasp.’ ”
“Robert Browning. And that’s not what he said. Or meant. In fact, quite the opposite.”
“Excuse me?”
“The quote is: ‘A man’s reach should exceed his grasp, or what’s a heaven for?’ I was an English lit major, with a concentration in English poetry.”
“I stand corrected.”
She gave me a playful push. We started walking, hands linked loosely. Not meaning much, except everything. After about a hundred yards, we sat down again. I thought I saw a shadow along the water’s edge, but it was just a breeze off the lake. Sarah found a smooth stone and tossed it into the darkness.
“It won’t be like this for much longer, you know.”
“Be like what?”
She flicked a hand at a scatter of lights in the distance. “Like this. Northwestern. College. Grad school. Make-believe.”
“That’s what you think this is?”
“Absolutely. And a lot of people freak at the prospect of it ending.”
“You don’t seem like the type that’s gonna freak.”
“No?” She rolled over on the flat of her stomach and played sand through her fingers. “First semester, freshman year. I’m sitting on a bench outside Norris. All by myself. Middle of the day. People walk by. I smile. They don’t know I’m alive. I tell myself everything’s going to be fine. I’ve always been popular. Then I look down at my hands. They’re clutching my purse in a death grip. Heart’s beating a tattoo through my chest.”
“Why?”
“My world was getting bigger. Would I measure up?”
“You measure up just fine, Sarah.”
“Four years later, sure. But there’s always the next step. The next level.”
“You afraid of that?”
“Sometimes. Other times, I’m desperate for it. For anything real.”
A wild shiver of wind ran through us.
“It’s getting chilly,” I said.
“What happened today, with the two detectives, you think that’s something …”
“Real? Hard to say. Sure felt like it.”
“Havens scares me a little,” she said.
“He probably should.”
“Let’s talk about something else.”
“Okay.”
She rubbed the edge of her foot against mine. “I’m glad we took a swim.”
“Me, too.” I paused. “Maybe it should be our secret.”
“Are you ashamed of me, Ian Joyce?”
“Please.”
She kissed me on the cheek and traced the curve of my face. “It would never work, anyway.” Her voice hovered now, barely above a tipsy whisper.
“I know.”
“But it could have been fun.”
“Maybe it’s better not to talk about it.”
She was quiet again, and we listened to the surf.
“Friends?” she said.
“For sure.”
We sat in the dark and watched the waves, a mostly empty bottle and our stillborn romance lying on the sand between us. After a while, it got too cold, even for Sarah. I offered her my jacket, and she took it. We held hands and walked the rest of the way back to campus. I made sure she found her car. Then I walked home. My head hurt from the alcohol, and I wondered how well I’d sleep. But it wasn’t a problem. I closed my eyes and the waves were there, heavy and thick, sweeping me into the deep reaches of the lake, where I waited for the rip to take me under.
18
I woke to the sound of a knock downstairs. Jake Havens was at my front door.
“It’s Sunday morning, Havens. What do you want?”
“Thought we’d pick up Sarah and grab some breakfast. Unless, of course, she’s already here?” He shot a playful look up the stairs.
“Fuck you.” I pushed him into the kitchen. “Wait here while I get dressed.”
I pulled on some clothes, listening for footsteps as Havens explored my house. But I found him right where I’d left him, at the kitchen table, reading the morning Trib.
“Still nothing about the body in the cave,” he said and pushed the paper across. “By the way, why do you have me copying things when you have a photographic memory?”
“I don’t have a photographic memory.”
“Show me what you came up with.”
“What about Sarah?”
“She can wait.”
I pulled out my notes. Havens pored through them while I made coffee. When he’d finished, he stacked the pages into a neat pile and folded his hands over them.
“Good stuff, Joyce. Stuff I can use.”
“I’m thrilled.”
Sarcasm appeared to be yet another thing that had no effect on my classmate.
“You want to see what I’m working on?” he said.
“Lead on.”
We walked out to his car. Havens popped the trunk. Inside were three Bankers Boxes. I lifted one out. Heavy. Scrawled in Magic Marker on the side were names, dates, and case numbers.
“I’ve been busy,” Havens said with a grin.
“No kidding. What do we got here?”
“Let’s bring them inside.”
We lugged the boxes into my living room.
“Did Sarah tell you about the records center?” I said.
“She said everything in the files was cut up and blacked out. Tell me about the cops that stopped you.”
I gave him the firsthand account. Havens listened closely.
“Someone’s worried,” he said.
“My thoughts exactly.”
He opened one of the boxes and began to remove files.
“What is all this?” I said.
“Ever heard of ViCAP?”
“No.”
“Violent Criminal Apprehension Program. It’s an FBI program that analyzes crimes and sorts them into different categories.”
“What kind of categories?”
“All kinds. Guys that like to tie up their victims. Ones that like to use a knife. Strangle. Different variations of sexual assault. ViCAP identifies the signature of a crime and then matches it up with similar cases. Gives the police a way to look for patterns.”
“And you have access to ViCAP?”
“One of my law profs at Chicago does. I told him I wanted to get a jump on the assholes from Evanston.” Havens winked. “He let me run Harrison’s case through the system. Pretty interesting.”
Havens pulled out a laptop and powered it up. “I punched in all the signature details I could think of. Age of the victim. Kidnapping. School. Proximity to water. Strangulation, drowning. Some evidence of a knife.”
“Yeah?”
“Then I ran a search in the Chicagoland area. Anything within a five-year window of Skylar Wingate.”
My head felt heavy, and my skin itched. I wanted Havens to get to the punch line. The barrister in him, however, was nothing if not methodical.
“I picked five years because I thought it was a reasonable amount of time to expect a killer to be active. If you look at the research on most serial killers—”
“What did you find, Jake?”
Havens pointed to two case numbers highlighted in a document he’d opened up on his laptop. “Two cases. Within three years of Wingate’s death.”
“How close are they?”
“You tell me.” Havens reached into one of the boxes and pulled out a folder with a green tab. On the cover was a picture of a kid, smiling in his Little League uniform. “Nineteen ninety-six. Billy Scranton from Indiana. Ran away when he was thirteen. Six months later, they found him partially buried in the forest preserve. Maybe a mile from Skylar. He’d been drowned. Possibly strangled.”
A second jacket hit the table. On the cover was a blurry shot of a black kid.
“Ninety-seven. Richmond Allen. Fourteen. Another runaway, from Texas. They found him in a wooded area on the South Side. Twenty miles from Caldw
ell Woods, but near a lake. He had a rope around his neck. Just like Skylar. And water in his lungs.”
“No one ever connected the cases?”
Havens shook his head.
“And they’re still unsolved?”
“That’s where it gets interesting.” Havens opened up a second box and pulled out a stack of red-tabbed folders. Where did he get all this shit? And where did he get the time?
“Both cases were ‘solved.’ ” Havens made quote marks in the air with his fingers. “Remember, this was still the early days of DNA. Very difficult. Very expensive. Barely understood.”
“So no DNA requests in either case?”
“That’s right. In the Scranton case, they nailed the guy with fibers that allegedly came from his car and his coat. Wayne Williams sort of thing. Guy from Atlanta.”
“I know who Wayne Williams is.”
“In the Allen case, it was blood typing.”
“What about witnesses?”
“No witnesses other than experts and cops. Public defenders in both trials.”
“And where are the guys that got convicted?”
“One got life. The other got the needle. I’d give you their names, but it doesn’t matter.”
“Like hell it doesn’t matter. We can talk to them. If we can establish their innocence and link them up with Wingate …”
“They were both killed in prison. After less than a year inside. My prof knew a guy from the Department of Corrections who was able to get me some details.”
Havens turned the laptop around so I could read his notes. An inmate named Michael Laramore was found in his cell, strangled with a length of packing wire. A second inmate, Jason Tyson, was discovered in the prison shop area at Stateville. He had five masonry nails through his forehead. With James Harrison, that made three convictions and three bodies.
“What the fuck?” I said.
“No shit. You got any coffee left?”
Havens and I walked into my kitchen. He insisted on making a fresh pot, so I showed him where everything was. Then I went back into the living room and picked through his work. It wasn’t hard to understand why Havens was number one at the University of Chicago Law School. While Sarah and I had cobbled together a dozen pages of half-remembered thoughts, our classmate had developed a plausible theory linking Wingate to two more murders, generated impressive backup, and summarized the salient points in a series of short memos. He came back into the living room with a hot cup of joe. I was leafing through the autopsy report on Billy Scranton. Underneath it was an initial police report. The Allen file contained a similar stash of documents.
“How’d you get all this case information?” I said.
“ViCAP allows you to access material from the actual murder file without making a direct request. Check this out.” Havens pulled out copies of two photos and put them side by side.
“What are these?” I said.
“Bite marks. Both of these kids were bitten during the attack.”
I stared at the pale bruised flesh. “Wingate’s autopsy said he might have been bitten.”
“I know.” Havens tossed the photos on top of the other documents.
“Should they have caught this pattern?” I said. “Back in the day, I mean.”
“Be kind of tough. These crimes were spread out over three years. And remember, the locals didn’t have access to ViCAP back then to sort it all out.”
“I guess,” I said.
Havens took a sip and made a face. “How old are these beans?”
“Forget about the beans. What should we do with all of this?”
“We can put in a request with the county for the physical evidence on these two. But I’m betting they sanitized them, just like Wingate.”
“Who’s ‘they’?”
“Whoever’s behind the cover-up.” Havens sat down at the table. “I’ve been thinking about this.”
I gestured to the stacks of information surrounding us. “I can tell.”
“We agree these three might have been the work of a single killer?”
“Agreed.”
“And whoever he is, he’s no longer active. Probably dead.”
“Fourteen years ago, I don’t know that he’s dead, but probably not active.”
“My point is this. Someone downtown framed these three guys and got away with it.”
“Do you even know anyone downtown, Havens? I mean one person? One name?”
“Fuck you. I say we see where this takes us.”
I looked down at the case files. The face of Billy Scranton looked back at me. Murdered at age thirteen.
“So we’re going to take a pass on finding out who actually killed these kids?”
“If something pops about the killer, we’ll go for it, of course. But for right now let’s focus on what we do know. Someone in Cook County was in the business of framing innocent men and putting them up on death row.”
“You tell Sarah about your theories?” I said.
“I gave her the basics.”
“What about Z?”
“What about her?”
“Will she buy any of it?”
“She might not have a choice.”
“What does that mean?”
Havens was about to respond when his laptop pinged with an e-mail. A few seconds later, my cell phone buzzed with a text. They were both from Z. It was Sunday morning, and she wanted us back in her classroom. Within the hour.
19
Sarah was waiting outside Fisk. She hugged both of us, giving me what felt like an extra squeeze and a wink. When it came to emotions, I was good at hiding them. Sarah Gold wasn’t going to be a problem. At least that’s what I told myself.
“You been here long?” Havens said.
“Five minutes.” Sarah took a sip of her coffee. “What does Z want?”
I shook my head. “It’s gotta be about the woods.”
“Damn.”
“Relax,” Havens said. “I’ve got a plan.”
We talked for ten minutes, then headed into class. Z raised her head as we filed in.
“Close the door, Mr. Joyce.”
I did. Z took off her glasses and stared me down as I found a seat.
“I called you in this morning because there’s something urgent we need to discuss.” Z kept her eyes fixed on yours truly as she spoke.
Havens cleared his throat. “What is it?”
Z pulled out a plastic bag and held it pinched between her fingers. Inside was a wrinkled business card. “Recognize this?”
“We can’t see it,” Havens said.
She laid the Baggie flat on her desk. I got up from my seat and walked to the front of the room. Sarah and Havens crowded close beside me. The business card was bent at the edges and smudged with dirt, but I could make out the print just fine. The Medill crest. My name. My cell phone number.
“Mr. Joyce?” Z played a hand along the sealed edge of the bag as she talked. There was an orange sticker on the bag. Her fingers prevented me from reading it.
“That’s my card,” I said.
“Any idea where it was found?”
“Looks like I might have dropped it somewhere.”
“Please sit down. All of you.”
She waited until we’d taken our seats. Then she walked to the back of the room and opened the door. A cop came in. He didn’t identify himself as a cop. He didn’t need to. He had the look. Long and lean. Dark. Cool without trying. The kind of look actors in cop movies strive for. And never quite achieve. Except, of course, for De Niro.
The cop took a seat, positioning himself where he could keep an eye on all of us. Z walked back behind her desk and remained standing as she spoke.
“This is Chicago detective Vince Rodriguez. He works with Homicide.” She let the last word rattle around the room for a couple of seconds before continuing. “He brought Mr. Joyce’s business card to my attention. Ian, we need to talk about this, but I thought I’d give you, Sarah, and you, Jake, the oppor
tunity to sit in or leave. As you see fit.”
Sarah shifted in her seat. Havens clasped his hands behind his head and stared a bullet at Z. Rodriguez took it all in without ever moving his eyes.
“I think we’re good where we are,” Havens finally said. “As long as it’s all right with Ian. And the detective.”
Rodriguez floated to his feet. I could see the gun on his hip. A detective’s star was clipped beside it.
“Ms. Zombrowski wanted you all here because she thinks you might be involved as a group. And this approach might save some time. I’m not sure, but we’ll see. Ian …” Rodriguez turned to me. His face was largely impassive, except his eyes, which were darkly lit and relentlessly patient. It wasn’t an easy face to talk to … especially when you were about to lie.
“Yes, sir?”
“The card. Do you remember losing it?”
“No, sir. I have a stack they gave us at the beginning of the quarter, so it would be tough.”
Rodriguez chewed on that brilliant morsel for a bit. “No idea where we might have found it?”
I shrugged and turned my palms up. Rodriguez looked to my two classmates. They didn’t offer much help. The detective sighed.
“Your card was found in Caldwell Woods.” His eyes caught mine at the mention of the woods. “You know where that is?”
Havens cleared his throat. “We know where the woods are, Detective.”
“Mister?”
“Havens. Jake Havens.”
“You know where the woods are?”
“We’ve all been there, sir. In the last few days.”
Z coughed. Rodriguez skewed his features into something resembling a question mark. Havens continued.
“A boy named Skylar Wingate was killed there years ago. I don’t know if Z, Ms. Zombrowski, told you …” Havens paused a moment, allowing Z and her betrayal of her class to twist in the wind. “We’re working on the case for this class. All three of us were in that part of the forest preserve. Two nights ago, around dusk. We found what we thought to be the boy’s grave site, looked around for a bit, and left. Probably got there just before seven and stayed about an hour and a half.”
Rodriguez was seated again. He’d taken out a notebook and was writing in it. For the first time, I noticed a small recorder, red light on, sitting on the table beside him. We waited until he finished. The detective looked up at Havens.
The Innocence Game Page 7
