Michael Harvey - The Third Rail

“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.”

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 distinct 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.