Michael Harvey - The Third Rail

“If I’d found him, I’d have kil ed him.” Doherty tilted forward in his chair, tipping the twin barrels of the shotgun a touch closer. “And maybe that would have been enough. Maybe helped both of us.”

“Who was she, Jim?”

“Her name was Claire.”

“Your wife?”

“Engaged.”

I shifted in my chair, edging closer to my gun on the floor. “My dad’s dead. I did what I could that night. You know that. So did the cops. So did the doctors.”

The shotgun wavered and I could see pools of blood in his eyes, the firemen’s tight features as they lifted her body off the street. Then the hard anger returned, grinding everything else to dust, wiping Jim Doherty’s mind to black.

“Too late for that, Michael.” He tightened his grip on the gun and let his eye wander to the image on his laptop. “I’m gonna have mine and that’s just the way it is.”

In his left hand, Doherty clutched a smal box. He held it up for me to see. “Looks like a TV remote, doesn’t it?” He nodded again toward the laptop.

“It’s wired to that shotgun you see there. I push the button, and the judge gets her skul air-conditioned.”

“I can’t bring Claire back. Nobody can.”

My gun was a foot or so to my right. I inched it closer with my boot.

“Don’t.” Doherty pushed back from the table and kicked my piece across the room. I could feel the shotgun lift my chin, watched his finger tremble on the edge of the remote. Then he moved back to his seat. I needed to play for time.

“Tel me about Robles,” I said.

“What about him?”

“Why shoot him?”

Doherty relaxed a fraction, seemed to relish the question. “I studied the classics. Not like you, but we al took a little bit back in the day.”

“The Iliad?”

He nodded. “I told Robles about the choice Achil es once faced. Live a long, ordinary life, or die young and famous.”

“Let me guess,” I said. “Lake Shore Drive was Robles’ day in the sun.”

“Achil es chose glory and an early grave. Robles did the same. It was his fate and he embraced it.”

“Guys like you love to talk about fate and destiny. Especial y when your own neck’s not on the line.”

“You don’t think I’l pay the price?”

“I don’t. Do us al a favor and prove me wrong.”

Doherty lifted the heavy gun again. “Not yet. Not until it’s finished.”

“Does that include the church?”

“It’s more than that, Michael. Far more.” Doherty’s voice softened, stirring again the dark memories that bound us together. His eyes traveled from the image of Rachel to the red binder that sat on the table between us. “But you’re right to think about the priests. Because that’s where it al started.”

The first bul et pinned the ex-cop’s final words in his throat. He blinked once and tried to swal ow. Three more rounds punched across his chest. Then Doherty fel back over his chair. Dead.

Katherine Lawson climbed out of the darkness of the basement and nudged Doherty with the toe of her shoe. “Cocksucker.”

Satisfied he was dead, Lawson lowered the gun to her side. “You al right?”

I was staring at the kil er’s laptop and the remote that had fal en from his fingers. The feed from wherever he kept Rachel had been cut. The image, gone.

“I’m fine,” I said.

“Rachel’s safe,” Lawson said, stopping me with her hand as I reached for my cel. “Rodriguez told me to tel you Chubby came through.”

I pointed to the laptop. “What about the video?”

“He said he’d explain it al later.” She sat down at the table. “Now, why don’t you give me your end of this before we cal in?”

I told her about the flash drive. Then I showed her the picture of James Doherty, circa 1982.

“There wasn’t a lot of time,” I said. “Doherty was expecting me to head to the South Side alone. I figured you guys could stil look for Rachel while I kept this guy busy.”

“Bul shit. You didn’t trust the feds to handle it. But you had Rodriguez bring me in to cover your ass.”

“It wasn’t a matter of trust.”

“Not only a matter of trust, Kel y. You wanted this part to yourself.” She gestured to Doherty’s body.

“You think I wanted to kil him?” I said.

“Once you had Rachel secure, absolutely.”

“Just like I shot the first one at the lake.”

“If you weren’t going to shoot him, why al the secrecy? And if you were going that route, you didn’t want anyone around to come back at you on it.”

I nodded to the pistol she stil held loosely in a gloved hand. “Looks like you took care of that.”

Lawson shook her head. “No sir. You shot Mr. Doherty.” She knelt down and pressed the gun’s grip into the dead man’s right hand. Then she held it out to me. “You wrestled the gun away from him and shot him in the struggle. That’s the only way it can go down. You’re the hero. I came along afterward to applaud.”

“How did you get here?”

“Drove down on my own after Rodriguez fil ed me in. Figured you could use a little ‘unofficial’ backup.”

“Seems like you didn’t trust me very much, either?”

“I don’t like being cut out.”

“And now you want me to take the weight for this?”

“How it’s gotta be.”

I stood up. Katherine held out an arm.

“We okay with the story?”

“You want me to be the shooter, fine. Let’s go.”

“Where is she?” I was sitting in an FBI car, talking to Rodriguez on the phone.

“They took her to Northwestern. He had her stashed in a storage unit on Division. One of Chubby’s buddies tipped us. He remembered seeing Rachel and recognized Doherty’s picture.”

“How bad is it?” My tongue felt thick in my mouth, al the words il — fitting.

“She’s in rough shape, Michael. Physical y and mental y.”

I thought about that for a moment, then forced it to the back of my mind.

“Did he have anyone watching her?”

“She was heavily sedated, and he had a couple of shotguns rigged to the door. Otherwise, I think he just depended on no one being able to trace her.”

“How did you manage the video feed he had set up?”

“We did some quick surveil ance before the team went in, saw the layout, and came up with a plan. The team shot their own footage of Rachel. About a minute’s worth. Then we looped it and hacked into the feed Doherty was receiving before they grabbed her. That’s what you were looking at. It was a risk, but the bad guy had his hands ful with you and never noticed.”

Doherty’s face floated before me, one hand holding a shotgun, the other gripping his red binder. “He wanted me to watch someone I loved die. Just like he did.”

“Fuck him, Kel y. He’s dead and Rachel’s not. That’s what counts.”

“How about the church?”

“We think we got a handle on the thing at Holy Name. I’l fil you in when you get back.”

I looked through the front windshield. Federal agents had arrived in ful force and were starting to process the scene. Katherine was standing in a spil of light, talking to a couple of forensic types. Under her arm, she carried Doherty’s binder.

“Listen, Rodriguez, I need to talk to Hubert.”

There was a pause down the line. “Actual y, I’m not sure where he is,” the detective said. “Feds were supposed to pick him up.”

Lawson began to walk away from me, toward an evidence van. I cracked open the car door just as she ducked inside.

“Let me cal you back, Vince.”

I punched in Hubert’s number, but got his voice mail. I cal ed a second time and began to walk to the van. Stil no answer. I found Lawson in the backseat, tagging items from inside the house.