Michael Harvey - The Third Rail

“Hubert Russel?” I said, my heart suddenly popping in the hol ow of my throat.

Lawson widened her eyes and tapped her pen against a clipboard. “What about him?”

“Where is he?”

They had already cut Hubert down by the time we got there. I stood on the sidewalk and watched as they carried him out of his building in a coroner’s bag. His memory played across the inside of my skul. I reached out, wanting to feel the weight. But he walked away from my touch and took his spot in the gal ery of dead faces, waiting, apparently, to witness my grief.

“I’m sorry, Michael.” Lawson stood at my shoulder, her words tight in my ear. “I don’t know what happened to the team I sent in.”

“It wasn’t you.” I stepped back from the ambulance and took a seat on the curb. “I was the one who waited. I was the one who decided he wasn’t a target. And I was wrong.”

“I’m sorry.” Lawson crouched down and seemed to lose her train of thought, if not her composure, for a moment. “We were too late and I’m sorry.”

I felt her hand on mine, her face shining white in the night.

“Michael Kel y.”

I looked up. A middle-aged black woman was standing over me, removing a pair of latex gloves. Marge Connel y spent her life in the company of death, her features ful of the hard grace necessary to the job. I had known her for more than a decade and seen the look before. This time I was on the receiving end.

“Hi, Marge.” I stood up, Lawson with me. “This is Katherine Lawson, from the Bureau. Marge Connel y, Cook County ME.”

The two women shook hands.

“You two involved in this?” Marge said.

“Hubert was a friend of mine,” I said.

Marge raised her eyes a fraction and looked to the FBI agent, waiting for more.

“We might have an interest in the case,” Lawson said.

“This wasn’t a suicide,” I said.

“Who claimed it was?” Marge opened the back door to the ambulance. The black body bag rested inside.

“What did you find?” Lawson said.

“Off the record? Death by asphyxiation. He was hung by a length of rope from his ceiling fan. How he got there?” Marge shrugged. “Just don’t know right now. Young man, though. And that’s an awful shame.”

I moved closer to the bag. Marge slid down the zipper without a word. I took a last look, but my friend was gone, his features already cast by death’s heavy hand.

“I should have something tomorrow,” Marge said and closed up the bag. Lawson nodded and thanked her. Marge climbed into the front of the ambulance. Then Lawson and I watched as they took Hubert Russel to the morgue.

Katherine Lawson sank into her seat and watched the wooden ties of the tracks flash beneath the window. The Blue Line train picked up speed as it left the station and leaned into a curve. Lawson laid her head against the glass, al owing the car’s motion to carry her back. The first image she saw was Hubert Russel, neck stretched, spinning slowly over his desk. Then came Kel y, eyes like open coffins, holding her hand as the lid slammed shut on his friend and dirt thumped al around.

Lawson started and opened her eyes. Her train was pul ing into the station at UIC-Halsted. It was just midafternoon, and the car was thankful y empty, save for a woman with tired eyes who was heading to work in her Target uniform. Lawson slipped off her black gloves and flexed her fingers. Then she laid the gloves in her lap and folded her hands over them. They were diving under the city now, into the subway, barreling toward the Loop. She looked out the window, at the banks of lights clipping past as they raced along the tunnel. The papers Lawson had copied were in her bag. She pul ed them out and read through the material once again. Then she felt the key in her pocket. It opened the CTA access door near Clinton, the spot where they had found Maria Jackson’s body a week ago. Lawson checked her watch. Her meeting was set for five. Plenty of time. She stood up, put on her gloves and pul ed them tight. The woman in the Target uniform smiled as the train glided to a halt. Lawson smiled back. Then the doors slid open, and she stepped onto the dim platform.

Lawson scraped her shoes through the dirt, looking up at layers of dust floating above her in various levels of light. Jackson’s body had been discovered less than a mile from where she was walking, but that wasn’t the federal agent’s concern. Her eyes fol owed a string of lights, running along the subway tracks and into the darkness. This wasn’t the sealed fluorescent lighting she’d seen on her ride into the city. These were lightbulbs, old-school, just as she remembered from the Jackson crime scene. And that bothered her.

Somewhere, a rumble vol eyed and echoed. Lawson instinctively stepped back and touched the grip on her gun. She could feel the vibration through her feet, hear it in the steel. The rumble grew until the train seemed like it was right on top of her. Then she saw it through a gap, a leap of fury and light, three tracks over, blowing around the corner and down the tunnel. Lawson cast her eyes overhead and watched the bulbs sway, throwing shadows on the wal s around her. Then the train was past. The bulbs continued to rock in a subtle, declining arc, and soon the only sound was again the shuffle of her feet.

Lawson walked for another ten minutes, then turned back toward the door she’d come in. She’d spend the rest of her day thinking about the subway, the lightbulbs, and her meeting, al of which was good-mostly, because it kept her from thinking about the rest.

I remembered the smell of burned wax and perfume, a door opening and cool air sucking me down a dark hallway. I stepped into a narrow room with a single overhead light and a plain wooden table. The suit motioned me to sit. He passed some paper across the table. I signed. He read what I signed and nodded. Then he left the room and returned with a vessel made of plain black stone and sealed with white wax. I pulled the vessel toward me. It felt cold and heavy in my hands. I could smell the crush of dead leaves and saw a pair of thin, bloodless lips, set in a cruel line and stitched together with dead man’s silk. A shovel turned over in my mind, and the world went black. I looked up. The suit grinned and offered me the stubs of his teeth, sunken into yellow, swollen gums. I pushed the vessel back across the table and left. Voices chased me down the hall. I could feel their eyes as I grasped the handle on the front door and nearly took it off its spindle. Then I was outside again, into the sun’s blister, the blast furnace of South Central L.A., the storefront undertaker on his stoop, yelling now, telling me I needed to come back. There were more bills to pay. More credit cards to run. I shucked my coat over my shoulder and hit it. Walked along Florence Avenue for the better part of the day, feet melting into the pavement, sun bursting inside my head. I sat on a bench at a bus stop and closed my eyes. A couple of locals hit me up for money, but I shrugged them off. Buses came, buses went. Their exhaust fused with the heat and settled into a sludge that I breathed. Finally, the sun went down and a blessed cool came into the valley of the city. I opened my eyes to headlights from the traffic and the sun dissolving orange against a blue-black sky. I took a cab to LAX. The early flights to Chicago were booked, so I caught the redeye. I leaned back in my seat as the plane lifted off beneath me, thinking I had left my father behind. How wrong I was. MY EYES SNAPPED OPEN to a ceiling fan cutting lazy strokes through the late afternoon sun. My heart thundered in my chest, and my mouth felt parched.