The Third Rail Read online

  I did. The mayor walked behind me and executed a pretty impressive pat down.

  “Don’t think you’re anything special. These days I check my wife for a wire before we get into bed at night.”

  “Nice life.”

  “Yeah, sit down.” I did. Wilson leaned forward and let his jaw hang open so I could see his back teeth. “I need you to work this case for me. Under the radar. No official ties to the city.”

  “Just you and me?”

  “And Rodriguez. He’ll be my eyes and ears with the feds, who, for my money, are gonna get nothing done with their task force.”

  “You don’t feel good about the Bureau?”

  Wilson waved a cold hand in my face. “Fuck them. Bunch of pencil pushers sitting around in meetings trying to figure out the quickest way to get their ass back to Washington. Meanwhile, this guy is out popping people. My people. In my city. Our city, for Chrissakes.”

  “I know.”

  “So get on it. If you got an angle to play, go ahead and play it. You don’t want to tell me your connection to all of this, fine. I’ll provide cover for you. Rodriguez will provide whatever information the task force digs up.”

  “What do you mean by ‘cover,’ Your Honor?”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “I’d like to hear it.”

  Wilson leaned in farther, his voice crawling across the table on its belly. “You want to hear it, Kelly? Fine. Find this guy. Guys. Whatever. Put a bag over his head and drop him down a fucking hole. No arrest. No trial. No questions asked.”

  “You can’t find a cop to do that for you?”

  “This isn’t a Chicago operation.”

  “And task forces can get complicated.”

  “That’s right. Let me ask you a question. Can you find this guy?”

  “Maybe.”

  “You have an angle, you cocksucker.”

  “Maybe.”

  “And the feds are fucking useless, right?”

  I shrugged. “I wouldn’t say that. The feds are gonna use their methods, like they always do. Sometimes they work …”

  “And usually they don’t. If you don’t want to drop someone down a hole, that’s not a problem. Just get a line on him and we’re good. I’d offer your badge back, but you’re too much of an asshole to accept it, right?”

  “Right.”

  “Okay, then. We’ll figure out something else for you. Just find this guy. Now get out of here so I can order dinner.”

  Sometimes the less said, the better. Every instinct told me this was one of those times. So I left the mayor and his offer floating in the Grecian darkness.

  CHAPTER 11

  Rodriguez was waiting in the car outside Santorini. “How’d it go?” he said and turned over the engine. “How do you think?”

  “So what are you going to do?”

  “I’m gonna work it. You already knew that. So did Wilson.”

  Rodriguez pulled into a line of early evening headlights streaming north on Halsted. “Let me guess, on your own terms?”

  I shrugged. “What are the feds focusing on?”

  “About what you’d expect. Physical evidence, witness statements. They’re developing an offender profile, gonna run all their data through NCIC, VICAP, and every other database they can think of.”

  “What about the rifle?”

  “Preliminary from Ballistics established it as the sniper kill. No prints. They’re running a trace right now.”

  “And the apartment?”

  “Should have some information in the morning. By the way, the morning should be a lot of fun. City’s putting uniforms on all the CTA platforms. Plainclothes on board the buses.”

  “That’s a lot of manpower.”

  “It gets better. The Bureau wants to put its own teams up on the rooftops. From Evanston to Ninety-fifth. North, south, east, and west. Along every mile of L track.”

  “Snipers?”

  “Whole nine yards. Balaclava, painted faces, rifles with scopes, all that crap.”

  “Maybe they’ll just scare the shit out of these guys.”

  “Or the half million people who use the L every day. Wilson didn’t like it. Said he wasn’t going to turn his city into some unholy fucking vision of Baghdad.”

  “He’ll be changing his tune if another body turns up,” I said.

  Rodriguez grunted. We slipped across the tip of Goose Island, clattered over Clybourn Avenue, and took a left onto Lincoln.

  “What’s the story with Lawson?” I said.

  Rodriguez chuckled. “Thought you might get to that. They call her Sister Katherine.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “You remember Father Mark?”

  “Doesn’t ring a bell.”

  “Father Mark was the pastor at St. Cecilia’s over on the Southwest Side. Took the parish for a little more than a million dollars over five years.”

  “Heartwarming.”

  “Yeah, he was shorting the collection money, using parish credit cards, everything. Lawson was the one who got onto him. Spent six months hip deep in church records looking for loose cash. Turns out this guy had a second home in California and three Beemers. When Lawson grabbed him, he was planning to sell the rectory and buy himself a boat.”

  “That’s her big score?”

  “That’s what she’s known for.”

  “She a climber?” I said.

  “Depends on who you talk to. Some say she’s always wanted to be a player in Washington. Just never made the cut.”

  “And the rest?”

  “One agent who’s been around awhile told me the exact opposite. Says the woman is right where she wants to be. Says she’s got big-time pull downtown, but no one is sure with whom or why.” Rodriguez glanced across the car. “Bottom line, this guy says: ‘Don’t fuck with Katherine. She’ll ruin your week.’”

  “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  Rodriguez flicked his turn signal, took a right onto Southport Avenue, and pulled to the corner at Eddy.

  “Tomorrow?” I said and reached for the door handle.

  “Hang on.” Rodriguez killed the engine. My hand slipped off the handle, and I pushed back in my seat.

  “What is it?”

  “You tell me,” Rodriguez said.

  I tried to hide behind a smile that was too quick for its own good. My friend the detective was having none of it.

  “Been two months since you went out to L.A. Haven’t seen you. Talked to you. Nobody’s seen you, except Rachel.”

  “People get busy.”

  “Yeah, well, that’s fine. But I still need to know you’re okay for this.”

  “You think L.A.’s gonna keep me from the job?”

  “I’m not saying that.”

  “Then what are you saying.” I felt the screws tighten in my voice, the pressure build behind my eyes.

  “Your father passed. You went out to L.A. to pick up his ashes and came back empty-handed.”

  “For a guy who doesn’t know much, you’re pretty well informed.”

  “Losing your dad can be rough, Kelly.”

  “Yeah, he was a real fucking prize.”

  “I lost mine when I was fourteen.”

  I’d known Rodriguez for four years, but didn’t know that. Never thought to ask.

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” I said and looked across the car. The detective’s face was rutted by memory and his voice grew large in the small space between us.

  “He worked the swing shift at U.S. Steel. One night he was coming out of the plant. Had the key in the car door when a squad car hit the corner on two wheels, chasing a kid in a hot box. The kid’s car bounced my dad off the side of a Buick. Cracked his head open.

  “By the time I got to the ER, the docs had done what they could, which wasn’t much. He couldn’t talk ’cuz of the tubes, and that was probably just about right. But he took my hand and we sat there, waiting. Didn’t take too long, either. Eyes filled up with that look. Fucking head went
over. And just that quick, my old man was gone.”

  Rodriguez snapped his fingers, a dry sound, and shrugged.

  “Who wants to cry at fourteen, right? But, goddamn, if I didn’t sit down on the floor of that hospital and do exactly that. I didn’t know my dad. Never got a good word out of him, or even a kick in the ass. But he was my dad. And I cried. And it was the right thing to do.”

  Rodriguez was finished then, and we both listened to the weather. There was a storm boiling over the lake, and the wind was rising around us.

  “I’m okay for the job,” I said and hunted for the hint of desperation in my voice.

  Rodriguez nodded. “I believe you. But it’s still gonna come. Sooner or later. Just because it’s your dad. And that’s how that is. Now get the fuck out of here and get some sleep.”

  I slipped out of the detective’s car and watched it roll into the night. Then I walked down Eddy to Lakewood. My building was painted in strips of hard streetlight. The hawk was rattling garbage cans in an alley and banging a wooden sign against the side of a tavern. I bundled myself into a doorway and considered calling it a day. I was tired and wanted nothing more than to crawl into an early bed. Lately, however, there’d been no percentage in sleep.

  MY CAR WAS parked a half block from Wrigley Field. The Friendly Confines were dark, save for a red neon scrawl atop the main gate, touting regular season tickets, a bargain at a hundred bucks a pop. I turned the car around and drove west. At a stop sign, I pulled out my cell and punched in a number.

  “Mr. Kelly?”

  “You ever say hello, Hubert?”

  “Hello, Mr. Kelly.”

  “Call me Michael.”

  “I’d prefer Mr. Kelly, if that’s all right.”

  “How you doing?”

  “Okay.”

  “You still with the county?”

  I had met Hubert Russell at the Cook County Bureau of Land Records. He helped me with some library research on the Chicago fire. Then the twenty-something cyberhacker went virtual to help me catch a killer.

  “Nah, I left there a few months ago.”

  “’Cuz of me?”

  “Heck, no. I told you. I wanted out of there, so I left.”

  “Good. Listen, you got a couple of minutes to talk?”

  “Right now?”

  “Tomorrow morning.”

  “Have anything to do with all the stuff going down today?”

  “How’d you guess?”

  There was a pause. “Where do you want to meet?”

  “How about Filter over on Milwaukee? Maybe early? Eight a.m.?”

  “See you there.”

  “And Hubert?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Bring your laptop.”

  “No kidding.”

  “And all the toys.”

  Hubert Russell laughed. Maybe at me. Maybe not. Then he hung up. I flipped my cell phone shut and steered my car through the night, toward the highway and the sainted Irish of Chicago’s South Side.

  CHAPTER 12

  Nelson closed the red binder he’d been reading from, stood up, and looked out at a million-dollar view of Chicago’s skyline. He had found the place by accident—a white ghost of a building on the edge of an orgy of gentrification, the last remnants of the city’s Cabrini-Green housing complex, patiently awaiting Mayor Wilson’s wrecking ball. The high-rise still had heat, still had electricity, and was forgotten by everyone, save the rats. It was perfect for their time frame. Nelson just had to make sure Robles was careful. So far, so good.

  A floorboard creaked, and Nelson turned. His shooter was slouched in the doorway.

  “Cable?” Nelson nodded toward the silent TV set up in the corner.

  Robles smiled and glided across the room. “Relax, old man. We ain’t paying.” Robles reached down and turned up the volume. CNN was still carrying wall-to-wall coverage of the shootings. The banner headline read: KILLER ON THE CTA.

  “This is so fucking wild.” Robles squatted on the floor and stared at the screen. A picture of a young Latino girl flashed up. The caption pegged her as a sniper victim. The girl was smiling. The talking head said her name was Theresa Pasillas. She was a senior at Whitney Young High School and had just been accepted at Stanford. Now she was dead. Already they were laying out the black and marching through the streets of Pilsen, the city’s largest Latino neighborhood. Nelson turned down the volume on the set.

  “Tell me about today,” he said.

  “Turn it up and we both can learn about it.”

  Nelson turned the set off altogether. They had spoken once by phone after the second shooting, but Robles hadn’t offered up a lot of detail.

  “You didn’t tell me about the building manager,” Nelson said.

  “What about him?”

  “The news said he was found inside the apartment.”

  Robles took a sip from a bottle of water. “Dude came in, started sniffing around. I took him with the knife.”

  “No anger?”

  The smile moved easily across Robles’ face. “Knife went in and the old bastard dropped.”

  “What about Kelly?”

  “What about him? I already told you. He tracked your footprints down the alley. I put the gun on him.”

  “And?”

  “And what? Didn’t seem to bother him much.” Robles pulled out a long knife and pointed it at a locked door on the other side of the room. “She still here?”

  “She’s here.”

  “Can I have her?”

  “What did I tell you?”

  “You said I could have her.”

  “Later.”

  Robles drew himself up into a sulk. “I could take her anytime I want.”

  “I know, but you won’t.”

  Robles flicked a wrist and buried his knife a half inch into the wall. He’d done his first killing for his country—as a Ranger with the Eighty-second Airborne in Mogadishu. Upon his return to the States his taste for blood only deepened, and trouble began to tick. The military knew something was wrong, which would have been okay if they could have turned it to their advantage. But they couldn’t. So they hit him with a general discharge. After that, he wandered up and down both coasts. Hunting, Robles liked to call it. By his own count, he’d killed maybe a half dozen women before coming to Chicago. Taken a few kids along the way, as well. Nelson put a stop to all that. He replaced common lust with calculated bloodshed and succeeded where the army had failed, harnessing the violence, molding Robles to suit his purposes. The ex-Ranger was a dangerous, if mostly willing, pupil. And even brought his teacher a very special gift.

  “You still got the case I gave you?” Robles said.

  “Never mind about the case.”

  “But you still got it.” Robles’ gaze found the cover of the binder Nelson had been reading. It was a classified Pentagon report titled “Terror 2000.” Robles reached for it, face lit from within. “What’re you thinking about, old man?”

  Nelson pulled the binder away. “That’s not your concern.”

  “Who’s the one done the killing here?” Robles’ eyes challenged, and Nelson could feel the anger simmering between them. His mind edged toward the gun in his pocket. Not now. Not yet.

  “We don’t have time for this,” Nelson said.

  “Tell me about the binder.”

  “No.”

  “It has to do with the case I gave you. With the lightbulbs.”

  “It’s complicated.”

  “Fuck complicated.” Robles pulled his knife from the wall. The blade flashed between them, and Nelson drifted his hand toward the gun.

  “You gonna use that thing, you better make it count,” Nelson said.

  Robles looked at the knife like he’d never seen it before, then shrugged. “I get it, old man.”

  “Maybe you do.”

  “Dying’s not a problem.” Robles spun the knife in his hands and sank it into the wall a second time. “Just don’t let me see it coming.”

  “That’s
it?”

  Robles pointed at the locked door. “And let me do what I want with the girl.”

  “Actually, that’s the other thing I wanted to talk about.”

  The two men walked over to a window covered in sheer plastic and looked down at what remained of Cabrini-Green’s once-notorious nightlife. In a breezeway, a solitary figure huddled against a stiffening wind, waiting for someone to drive up and buy his drugs. Half a block down, a woman stamped her feet against the cold and smoked a cigarette while a second walked small circles under a streetlight. After a while the men moved away from the window and made their plans. Then Nelson left. Robles smoked his own cigarette down and looked up at a starless sky. When he was finished, he got a length of rope, some tape, and his knife. He went over to the locked door and opened it with the key. The girl screamed, but only for a minute. After that Robles had all the time in the world. Or at least until Nelson returned.

  CHAPTER 13

  Evergreen Park never changes. Row after row, block after block, the brick bungalows march on, each a story and a half high, each featuring a Post-it-size backyard, each identical to the next save for the number on the front that tells the mailman where to leave what. I parked at the corner of Albany and Ninety-fourth and walked a half block until I found the house I was looking for. The shades were pulled tight, and there was no answer when I rang the bell. I took out a card and slipped it under the door.

  I was almost back to my car when the curtain I’d been waiting for twitched next door. It’s the way things work on the Irish South Side—from the cars people drive to the newspapers they tuck under their arms; the cut of their clothes and the length of their hair; the shape of their faces, and, of course, the color of their skin. All of it is filtered through the curtain that covers over the South Sider’s front window. Tells people everything they need to know before they ever open their door and bid the stranger a cautious hello.

  I walked toward the house with the nervous curtain and hoped I’d passed muster. The door cracked its seal even as I reached for the buzzer. I could smell mothballs and peppermint. A small pink face peeked out and a pair of bright blue eyes blinked.

  “Hi,” I said. “I’m looking for your neighbor, Jim Doherty.”