Michael Harvey - The Third Rail

“It’s a dump, Mr. Kel y. But it’s al I can afford right now.” I settled on the edge of a kitchen chair. Hubert sat at his desk. A wooden fan hung from the ceiling. Between the two of us there was hardly room to take a breath.

“You read the letter I sent over?” I said.

Hubert nodded. “I might have something for you.”

I pul ed a little closer. Hubert had a monitor hooked up to his laptop. Beside the monitor was a bottle of pil s. Pain medicine for the kid’s face. I watched as Hubert began to open up documents.

“After you cal ed, I started pul ing emergency room admissions across the city. Then I ran that data through a program that sorts the information and looks for certain patterns. Actual y there are twenty-seven different filters in this program-”

I cut in. “Hubert, we might have some shit going on here.”

“Yeah, yeah. What did I find, right? Okay, in the past twelve hours there have been sixteen people admitted to ERs in the city, complaining of scorched red skin, blisters, and”-Hubert checked his computer-“weeping sores. Conditions range from serious but stable to critical.”

“So what?”

“So this program also matches symptoms to the signatures of different types of potential threats. These patients, al of them, seem to fit the pattern of an emerging chemical weapons attack. Specifical y, a mustard-based agent.”

“Mustard gas?”

“Some version of that, yes. Then I expanded the parameters to twenty-four hours’ worth of ER admissions. Picked up four more cases.”

I stared at the data on the screen. “How sure are you about this?”

“I’ve had your letter less than an hour, Mr. Kel y.”

“So you’re guessing?”

“It’s a little more than that.”

“Print me out the patient list,” I said.

Hubert hit a key, and a printer somewhere began to hum.

“What do you think?” Hubert said.

“What do I think? I think we might be fucked.”

I picked up my cel and punched in Rodriguez’s number. Hubert, however, wasn’t done.

“I got a little more, Mr. Kel y.”

I disconnected. “Go ahead.”

“I pul ed background on the twenty victims. Started with the hospital admittance forms and dug from there. Focused on any religious affiliations.”

More lines of meaningless text and numbers flashed up on the screen. Hubert highlighted a line of data. “Eighteen of the twenty identified themselves as Catholic. Half of them are registered in Holy Name’s parish.”

A tingle ran down the back of my neck. “Where are the rest registered?”

Hubert waved a hand around the room. “Al over. Stil, it’s interesting.”

“The ones that aren’t registered at Holy Name-where do they work?”

Hubert hit a few keys, and the information reshaped itself on his screen. “Eight of them work in the Loop or River North area. Here you go.”

Hubert flashed up a map with Holy Name Cathedral at its center and smal flags for each person’s workplace. The longest distance was eight blocks.

“They could have walked there from work,” I said, “which means seventeen of twenty have a possible connection to the cathedral.”

Hubert nodded. “Looks like it.”

I picked up my cel again and punched in the detective’s number. Rodriguez picked up on the first ring.

“Yeah.”

“It’s me. What’s going on?”

“Lawson and the mayor have been on the phone with the cardinal. Archdiocese wants us to sit on it until we have something solid.”

“Not too worried about their parishioners, I take it?”

“It’s cal ed damage control, Kel y.”

“Yeah, wel, I got something that might get things moving.”

“What’s that?”

“Hubert’s gonna send you some data. Shows a pattern of hospital admissions over the past day or so. Bottom line is, we have twenty cases of what might be mustard agent exposure. Seventeen with connections to Holy Name Cathedral.”

“What sort of connections?”

“The sort that makes me think you got a hot spot, Detective.”

“Holy Name, huh?”

“It fits, Vince. Remember the letter referred to the cardinals’ hats? Holy Name has the hats of Chicago’s dead cardinals hanging from the ceiling.”

There was silence, then a sigh. “Fuck me. Send over the data, and I’l get a team down there. Hold on.” Rodriguez paused, then came back on the line. “Lawson wants everything the kid’s got sent to her computer. And she means everything, Kel y.”

Hubert tapped me on the shoulder and flipped his monitor around so I could see the screen of text he had pul ed up. I nodded and continued talking to the detective.

“Not a problem. Just one more favor to ask.” Then I told him what I needed.

“Why don’t we let the feds handle that?” Rodriguez said.

“Because I’m concerned the feds wil rol over and play dead.”

“And you’re going to go in there and bust bal s.”

“I’m going to go in there and explain the situation. Then I’m going to get the information I need.”

Rodriguez didn’t like it, but final y agreed to make the cal. “Just don’t piss this guy off.”

“Why would I do that?”

“Yeah, right. Head down that way and I’l cal you back.”

I hung up. The text Hubert had accessed stil glowed on his screen. It was a newspaper article. Page 3 from yesterday’s Trib. The headline read: CHICAGO ARCHDIOCESE SETTLES SEX CASES FOR $12.3 MILLION.

Hubert watched as I read, then offered up one word. “Motive.”

“Maybe.” I slipped my cel back in my pocket and picked up my coat. “I gotta go. Send everything you have to Lawson’s computer. Include whatever you found on the old train crash. Then just hang tight.” I looked around the flat. “You okay here?”

Hubert nodded. “I’m good.”

“You’re a little better than good, Hubert. You sniffed out what might be a chemical weapons attack against the city and gave us our best lead on this guy.”

“Guess that was pretty cool, huh?”

“Bet your ass. Keep it up. We’re getting close to something. I’l cal you in a couple of hours.”

And then I left the kid, alone in his apartment, tapping away at a mountain of information, fishing for a shark in little more than a rowboat.

It’s cal ed the House of 19 Chimneys. I thought about trying to count them, but didn’t want to besmirch the romance of the place with anything as ordinary as fact. Instead, I got out of my car and walked a complicated path to the cardinal’s doorstep on North State Parkway. It had taken a couple of hours, but Rodriguez final y angled me the invite-not entirely surprising given the church’s desperate need to put a lid on whatever was brewing inside their whitewashed wal s. I was about to lift a heavy brass knocker when my cel phone buzzed. I stepped back to the sidewalk. It was Rodriguez again.

“You in yet?”

“On the precipice.”

“We just ran some field tests at Holy Name.”

“That was quick.”

“Our guys kept things quiet and went in as a cleaning crew. Got a preliminary positive for some sort of mustard agent. Fucker spiked the holy water.

”

I wasn’t surprised, but stil felt a chil. Strange days, indeed.

“Does the archdiocese know?” I said.

“Not yet. Lawson’s got the cisterns sealed off and wants to run some more tests first, so keep it to yourself.”

“Fine.”

“You real y think our guy’s an abuse victim?”

I looked up at the residence, swore I saw a curtain twitch, and, for just a moment, was back on the South Side. “I think it’s worth a conversation.”

“Guess it can’t hurt.”

“What about the press?” I said.