The Innocence Game

by Michael Harvey

  “She’ll recover,” Rodriguez said.

  “And why are you convinced I didn’t attack her?”

  “Who says I’m convinced of that?”

  “So you think I raped her?”

  “We don’t,” Z said.

  “All due respect, you’re not the one with the badge.”

  The restaurant was empty, just us and the waitress. The traffic outside the open door was suddenly loud in the street and a radio played Spanish music somewhere.

  “My guess is you were in the wrong place at the wrong time,” Rodriguez said. “And you still might be.”

  “What does that mean?”

  Rodriguez threw a few dollars on the table. “Your professor’s heading back to Evanston. You’re gonna need to lay low until we can get a handle on a few things.”

  “Lay low?”

  “We’ll find somewhere safe.” Rodriguez climbed to his feet. “Come on. Let’s get out of here.”

  As we left, I looked back through the window. The waitress was sitting in our booth, munching on some chips under the hard light and drinking whatever was left of Rodriguez’s horchata.

  37

  “This is somewhere safe?” I said.

  We were walking down a short, stained hallway toward a metal door—the business end of the Cook County Morgue.

  “There’s someone I want you to talk to,” Rodriguez said. “And I want to keep it between us.”

  More games. At this point I didn’t care. The morgue was a step up from spending the night in a cell with Randall and his pals. Rodriguez hit a few buttons on a keypad and the door opened into a long gray room that looked like an industrial garage. I expected some sort of smell, but all I got was the faintest taste of chemicals on my tongue and a chill that soaked to the bone. Large overhead fixtures cast blue light on three examining tables. Each was made of stainless steel, with a narrow trough running around all four sides and feeding into a drain. There was a large block on one end of the table, presumably to hold the head of the corpse, and a sink at the other. Two of the tables were empty. The third had a body under a white sheet. Sam Moncata stood off to one side of the room, staring at a picture on a light board. He switched off the board as we came in.

  “Vince, how are you?” Moncata shook hands with Rodriguez, then turned to me. “I didn’t think we’d see each other so soon.”

  “Me neither,” I said.

  Moncata showed us into a small break room, just off the main autopsy area but still within sight of the body. There was a table covered with paperwork, some chairs, a coffeemaker, and a row of vending machines. Moncata gestured for us to sit and looked expectantly at Rodriguez.

  “I thought you might walk him through it, Sam.”

  “Fair enough.” Moncata brought his fingertips together and turned his full attention to me. “You’re probably wondering why the detective brought you here? In the middle of the night, no less?”

  “Among other things.”

  “The last time we spoke, I told you I was busy with an active case.” Moncata pointed at Rodriguez. “It’s the detective’s investigation. A young boy found in a cave inside the Cook County forest preserve.”

  “I know a little bit about it,” I said.

  “The detective told me. Your business card being found near the scene. That’s not my concern.” Moncata paused for a moment. “We’ve got another victim on the table out there. Male. Thirteen years old. Pulled out of the water six hours ago. About two miles from the first body.” Another pause. Whatever Moncata was getting at, he was finding it difficult. “Maybe we should go back into the examining room for a moment?”

  We shuffled into the next room and stopped in front of the autopsy table. I looked down at the covered corpse. The boy’s arm peeked out from under the sheet. I could just make out an L and a U tattooed in green spider scrawl across the inside of his wrist. I thought Moncata was going to pull the sheet and give me the full cook’s tour. Instead, he walked over to the light board and turned it on. “Over here, Ian. There’s something I want you to see.”

  I moved closer. Rodriguez was on my shoulder, watching both of us. Moncata had two photos on the board. Tight shots of dead flesh.

  “Do you know what you’re looking at?” he said.

  “I’m guessing some kind of autopsy shots?”

  “These are bite marks.” Moncata pointed with a pencil to first one photo, then the other. “This one is from the boy we found in the cave. This is from the one on the table. Now, come over here.”

  Moncata led me to a small workstation and a computer. He clicked on the Cook County logo, then a desktop file. The two bite-mark photos appeared on-screen. Moncata hit a few more keys, and one image lifted, then laid itself over the other. “This is some of the bite-mark software I was telling you about the last time we talked. As you can see, when we sharpen these up and compare them, the bite patterns are nearly identical.”

  I glanced at Rodriguez, who pushed my attention back to the scientist’s presentation.

  “You and your friend brought me two more bite marks the other day,” Moncata said. “The files were roughly fifteen years old.” Moncata pulled up the photos we’d given him, fiddled a bit, and then layered them, one after the other, over the first two. Again, the match was nearly perfect.

  “I was also able to get a photo of the bite mark found on Skylar Wingate.” Moncata glanced at me for a reaction, then pulled up a final shot and laid it over the first four. “Voilà.”

  “Are you saying all these marks were made by the same person?” I said.

  “That’s what the evidence is saying, son.”

  I turned to Rodriguez, who was continuing to study me.

  “What do you think?” he finally said.

  “I have no idea.”

  “What’s your first impression?”

  “It doesn’t seem possible.”

  “Why?”

  “Skylar Wingate was killed fourteen years ago. Where’s this guy been?”

  Moncata took that as his cue to shut down the computer. We went back into the break room and took our seats again.

  “You’re right,” Rodriguez said. “None of this makes sense. But remember what I told you about facts. We go where they take us. And right now this is where we’re at.”

  “How good is the science?” I said. “I mean, the bite marks?”

  Rodriguez raised an eyebrow. “Sam?”

  “It’s not DNA,” Moncata said. “But it’s not garbage either. There are some discrepancies, but the overall similarity is very strong in at least four of the five cases. It would be hard to imagine those bites not coming from the same person.”

  “We can’t afford to ignore it,” Rodriguez said. “Right now, I have to assume there’s at least a fair chance that whoever this guy is, he killed those boys years ago and, for some reason has gone active again.”

  I shook my head. “Maybe you’re right, but I still don’t understand why I’m here.”

  “Sam told me he gave you and Havens some background on the Needle Squad.”

  “He told us a little bit.”

  “You think the Squad framed James Harrison? And the other two you’ve been looking at?”

  “We can’t prove a thing.”

  A soft smile touched Rodriguez’s lips. “Sam?”

  Moncata cleared some space on the table and unrolled a white sheet of paper. It was a graph with different-colored lines and numbers running across the top and bottom.

  “After you and your pal left the other day, I had our lab do some testing on the blood swatch from Harrison’s jeans,” Moncata said. “We ran what we call a gas chromatography–mass spectrometry test. Got some interesting results.” Moncata pointed to a green line spiking in several places on the chart. “See this, here and here? It tells us that the blood on the jeans, the victim’s blood, was loaded with citric acid.”

  I stared at the jagged lines and shrugged. “What does that mean?”

  “Citric acid doesn�
��t occur naturally in human blood, Ian. At least not in these amounts.”

  “So how did it get there?”

  “Citric acid is a preservative. It’s often used to preserve blood samples taken at autopsies.”

  “Someone took this blood from a test tube,” Rodriguez said. “Most likely one of Skylar Wingate’s autopsy samples.”

  “And they planted it on James Harrison’s jeans,” I said.

  “That’s what they’re worried about,” Rodriguez said. “That you might get hold of a swatch. And someone like Sam would be smart enough, and curious enough, to run the right test.”

  Despite everything else, I couldn’t help but enjoy the moment. We’d done something. Actually proved something. When no one believed we could.

  “What about the other two cases?” I said. “Scranton and Allen?”

  Moncata spread his hands. “Bring me some evidence to test.”

  I looked at Rodriguez. “There’s more to this than just Harrison.”

  “I agree.”

  “You do?”

  “Let’s talk about your arrest today.”

  I felt a slow, cold rumble in my stomach. “Okay.”

  “Did the detectives mention any sort of DNA evidence?”

  “Detective Coursey did, yeah.”

  Rodriguez glanced at Moncata, who dug into his files again. “Remember this?” The scientist laid down the chain of custody report from 1998 for Harrison’s jeans.

  “Sure,” I said. The slow rumble had become a hot churn.

  “Look at the officer’s signature.”

  Marty Coursey’s name was scrawled across the bottom of the page.

  “Coursey was one of the rank-and-file uniforms on the Needle Squad,” Moncata said. “Laid the groundwork for a lot of scientific testimony that came in. A real prick, as I recall.”

  “I can vouch for that,” I said.

  “So it was Coursey who told you they had DNA?” Rodriguez said. I nodded.

  “Did he say it was yours?”

  “He seemed pretty sure.”

  Rodriguez glanced again at Moncata. Neither man seemed surprised.

  “I didn’t rape Sarah, Detective. I went by the house. I guess I was jealous or something. I don’t really know. But I didn’t go in. And I didn’t rape her.” The words came out in a rush. As if once spoken, they’d somehow wipe the slate clean.

  “I believe you,” Rodriguez said. “Not that it’s gonna matter.”

  “What does that mean?”

  Rodriguez pulled out a photo and held it facedown in front of him. “I need you to ID someone, Ian.”

  “Okay.”

  He slid the photo across and turned it over. I took one look. Then my late-night taco feast came up all over Sam Moncata’s table.

  38

  They cleaned me up. Then they cleaned up the table. Moncata thought the whole thing was pretty funny. Even bragged to Rodriguez he’d seen it coming. I lay down on a small couch they had tucked against a wall. Sam got me a Sprite out of one of the vending machines. Rodriguez pulled his chair close and told me to sit up. I did. He showed me the picture of the girl again. Carefully this time.

  “Her name’s Theresa Marrero.”

  “I know her name,” I said. “Her first name, anyway.”

  “She’s a big-time snitch. Do anything, say anything a cop wants if it means she gets her deal. And she’s good at it.”

  “How did you know about her?”

  “You mean how did I know about her and you? I didn’t.”

  “Then how?”

  “Actually, Z put it together. When she heard about your arrest, she suggested I pull a month’s worth of booking sheets for Coursey. Theresa was the third name we pulled. Coursey popped her for felony possession three weeks ago. Yesterday he told the prosecutor he didn’t think the case was gonna go anywhere and got the charges dropped. We grabbed the jacket on Marrero and found out she’d been hired at the Street Ministry. James Harrison’s old stomping grounds.”

  “And you figured I’d met her there?”

  “I showed you the picture. You told me the rest.”

  I took another sip of Sprite and watched the can shake.

  “What happened?” Rodriguez said.

  Moncata had stopped cleaning. The detective waited patiently.

  “I met her at the Street Ministry,” I said. “Ran into her again at a bar in Evanston two nights ago. Maybe it was three since I don’t really know what day it is.”

  “The Fourth of July?” Rodriguez said.

  I nodded. “We went back to my place.”

  “Did you use a condom?” Moncata said. He’d found a plastic pitcher somewhere and was filling it with water.

  “To be honest, I don’t remember.”

  Moncata put the pitcher on the table, along with a couple of glasses. “How many drinks did you have, Ian?”

  “Three beers. Maybe four. Some tequila later on.”

  “And you don’t remember a thing?” Rodriguez said.

  “She might have dropped something in his drink,” Moncata said and turned back to me. “She had sex with you, son. Used a condom and harvested the semen. Then she gave it to Coursey.”

  “They figured they’d wait until the time was right and set you up for something,” Rodriguez said. “You gave them their chance by hanging around Sarah Gold’s house at two in the morning.”

  “Can they do that?” I said. “I mean, would it work?”

  “If Coursey has your semen,” Moncata said, “he could theoretically ‘find’ it anytime he wanted. On any piece of evidence. It would certainly be enough to get you arrested.”

  “Which means,” Rodriguez said, “that Coursey owns you. At least for the time being.”

  “Then why hasn’t he charged me?”

  Rodriguez scratched an ear and shrugged. “Probably because he knows I pulled the booking sheets on Marrero. And he’s thinking I might be able to blow it all up. Besides, Coursey doesn’t necessarily need you in a cell right now. Just worried you might be.”

  “Wait a minute,” I said. “If they set me up to take the fall …”

  Rodriguez saw the dark light flick on in my eyes and nodded. “That’s right, Ian. If they framed you with Marrero, they also broke into Sarah’s apartment and assaulted her. Either Coursey himself. Or one of his cronies.”

  “It was Coursey,” Moncata said. “Fucking guy would love that.”

  “They take care of you and Sarah with one move,” Rodriguez said. “And your little seminar is cooked.”

  I knew it was true. And knew we were caught. Myself and Sarah. In a web I’d constructed for the two of us. Moncata must have read it on my face.

  “You won’t go down for this,” the scientist said. “If they did decide to prosecute, there are things we could do to attack the forensics.”

  “I can’t go to prison,” I said.

  “It would only be until you make bail.” Moncata gestured toward Rodriguez. “And the detective here could get you protective custody.”

  “You don’t understand.” Then I told them about Brian Hines. And how he had James Harrison and the other two killed inside. Rodriguez wrote down Hines’s name in a small black book.

  “Hines is dead,” I said. “But I’m sure they have others who can do the job.”

  “You’re not going to jail,” Rodriguez said. “Not even for a night. Sam?”

  Moncata stood and stretched. “Time for an old man to get some sleep.” He patted me on the shoulder and shook my hand. “I’m sure we’ll be seeing each other again.”

  I watched him leave and wondered if that wasn’t my last friend in the room. “Where’s he going?”

  “There’s a guy I want you to meet,” Rodriguez said. “He’s not with the police. And sometimes he pushes things a little bit. But he’s a guy I’d trust with my life.”

  “Why can’t Sam meet him?”

  “For right now it’s better if it just stays between us. No Sam. No Z. All right?”

>   “Do I have a choice?”

  “Not really.”

  I was alone for a few minutes, just me and the corpse cooling on the slab a few feet away. Then the door opened and Rodriguez was back with his friend.

  “Ian, I’d like you to meet Michael Kelly.”

  He was a shade under six feet. About a hundred and eighty pounds. Irish, with curly black hair, and blue eyes—scarred at the edges, but still cool and smooth in the center. He wore jeans and a loose gray T-shirt. His shoulders were wide, and he had the hands and arms of a boxer. There was a gun clipped to his hip.

  “Hello, Ian.”

  “Hi …”

  “Call me Kelly.”

  “Hi, Kelly.”

  “You okay with all of this?” His voice was softer than he looked, with a trace of Galway in it.

  “I’m not sure I have a choice,” I said.

  Kelly seemed amused by the answer but didn’t respond. He took a seat, clasped his hands behind his head, and kicked a pair of New Balance 902s onto Sam Moncata’s recently polished table. Rodriguez waited for his friend to settle in, then turned back to me.

  “Here’s the plan, Ian. I have to work the two fresh murders for the next day or so. Sam’s gonna run the bite-mark evidence with the feds, and we have a couple of local things I need to check out. Meanwhile, Kelly’s going to stash you somewhere. The idea is if Coursey can’t find you, he can’t arrest you. I’ll have someone pick up Havens as well.”

  “What about the cover-up?” I said. “We’ve got the citric acid on Harrison. We can do something with that.”

  “Let me deal with the hot homicides first,” Rodriguez said. “Sam’s got the Harrison evidence under lock and key. We’ll play that card when the time is right.”

  “So Jake and I just hide?” I said.

  Rodriguez looked at Kelly, who didn’t seem to know how to blink, then back to me.

  “What is it?” I said.

  “We need to talk about Jake,” Rodriguez said.

  “What about him?”

  Rodriguez leaned forward, hands loose, elbows resting on his knees. “How much do you know about him?”

  “How much do I need to know?”

  Kelly kicked his feet off the table and poured a glass of water from the pitcher Moncata had left out. Rodriguez kept talking.