Michael Harvey - The Chicago Way

“ ‘Know thyself.’ Sounds simple, doesn’t it?”

“Not really,” I said.

“No. Not at all. I think I do love you, Kelly.”

“Please.”

“I almost told you last night. Almost told you everything.”

Now there was a shiver in her voice, and that spooked me more than anything.

“Almost,” I said. “I’m thinking you got lots of almosts for people. A lifetime full of them. Ultimately, however, there is just you. Nothing else.”

The smile she turned out was a lonely thing, one that asked for no quarter and offered precious little in the way of regret.

“I love my sisters, Kelly. I love both of them.”

I thought about Diane and her two sisters. Thought about their father and the day each girl turned twelve. Pieces of me ached for Diane. Maybe even a little for myself. Those were the pieces I had to ignore.

“How did it start?” I said.

“You know it all. It’s right here.”

She closed the yearbooks and pushed them back my way.

“It was June fourteenth, three years after Elaine was murdered. I was out of college, working as a reporter in Flint, Michigan. You remember I told you about Flint.”

She tried to touch my hand but I stayed put. Diane shrugged and kept talking.

“Mary Beth called from San Francisco, told me she had killed a man. Then she told me why. I flew out there. There really wasn’t much to do. Mary Beth had stalked him, met him at a bar, and gone back to a hotel room. She had shot him, made it look like a robbery, and walked away.”

“Just like that?”

“Just like that. She was giddy about the whole thing.”

“That was the first? The EMT?”

Diane nodded.

“Yes. She showed me her list of names.”

“All the people who dropped the ball on Elaine’s case?”

“Yes. All the people who didn’t do their job. All the people who could give a fuck about our sister cut up and left for dead by some animal.”

“And you covered for her?”

“I did what I had to do.”

Diane raised her chin and looked at me. Maybe she was practicing for a jury. I couldn’t be sure.

“Don’t judge me, Kelly. Don’t you fucking dare. Not after Nicole.”

In three words, I glimpsed the final threads of her deceit. Woven through the fabric of so many lives. In a moment, I saw it all and wanted none of it.

“You targeted me from the beginning,” I said. “You knew about me and Nicole, and you targeted me.”

“Your finest hour, Kelly. That man raped your friend and you took him down. At fourteen years old, that took some guts.”

“You figured I might be an easy touch for some vigilante justice,” I said. “You sent me the street file. Not Mulberry. You and Mary Beth.”

“Gibbons told Mary Beth you were the best detective he ever saw work. Gibbons was right. You were perfect, Kelly.”

“Yeah. Perfect. Easy to manipulate, probably blackmail if it ever came to that. After Mary Beth killed Gibbons, I’d be the guy to help you find Elaine’s rapist.”

“Gibbons was the hook,” Diane conceded. “Mary Beth wanted to kill him straight out, like the others. I knew we needed him. To get to you. So Mary Beth approached him as Elaine. He had only seen our sister once, when she was half-dead, and bought it straightaway. After that we just waited. Once Gibbons got you involved, Mary Beth gave him what he deserved.”

I nodded and thought about my old partner. He’d fall for the damsel in distress. Ten times out of ten.

“And my prints at Gibbons’ murder?”

“I slipped into your office a week before Mary Beth shot Gibbons. The door was open, Kelly. Not a good idea.”

“You took a slug from the jar on my desk.”

“I took a handful. Mary Beth dropped a casing at the scene. Just enough to get you tied in to the case a little deeper. Call it a backup plan.”

“And that night on the strip,” I said. “You put Mary Beth out there.”

“I called her after you dropped me off. Told her Pollard was probably our guy. She wanted to do some homework. Hunt him a little bit, I guess you’d say.”

Diane held her hands out, chin up.

“Bottom line, Kelly, it all worked. You took us to Pollard. If I could have shot him myself, I would have. Hell, for a while I thought Rodriguez was going to do it. As it is, you should feel damn good.”

For Diane Lindsay, life was as simple as that. Death, even easier.

“And now?” I said. “Where is she?”

Diane’s face stiffened into the look of a true believer. I got a bad feeling and wondered if I should have moved on Mary Beth sooner.

“She’s going to be arrested,” I said. “The gun matches up. The timeline will match up. It’s done. Masters already has the warrant. Where is she?”

Diane shifted her gaze, looked out the window as she spoke.

“She has one more to do.”

I grabbed her by the shoulder and pulled her around.

“Who?”

Diane closed her eyes and smiled.

“You know who’s left, Kelly. Don’t ruin it by pretending you don’t.”

On some level she might have even been right. Another thing I didn’t need to think about. I flipped open my phone and punched in Rodriguez.

“Grab Davis,” I said. “Now.”

The police took Diane Lindsay out of Channel 6 News in cuffs. Like wolves who eat their young, Diane’s camera crew and producers hovered around every moment of the arrest, capturing their former colleague’s humiliation for the late show. Maybe they’d get a raise.

I didn’t get a final word with Diane like they do in the movies. Didn’t really want one. Whatever there had been between us was gone. Left for dead in an ugly tangle, somewhere on the road from Kansas to Chicago. Instead, I got in my car and headed toward the Loop.

“Did she tell you where they were going?”

It was Rodriguez on the phone. He had crashed Davis’ office after my call and found nothing. The assistant DA had somehow slipped out of the County Building.

“She told me nothing,” I said. “Except Mary Beth was going to take him.”

“I’m surprised she didn’t shoot him on the spot.”

“Yeah.”

I was driving south on Michigan Avenue, crossed over the river, and into the Loop.

“I’m two minutes out,” I said. “Where are you?”

“We’re cordoning off three blocks all around and searching County, floor by floor.”

“I’ll be right there. Tell your guys to let me through.”

I hung up and cruised south past Randolph. I was about to turn right when I caught a flash of blond walking up the steps into Millennium Park. I knew that flash of blond, and I especially knew the soon-to-be-dead attorney walking close beside her.

I double-parked in front of the Cultural Center. A meter maid was yelling at me a half-block away. Then I pulled my gun, and she started yelling louder. I thought that was a good thing and crossed over Michigan into Millennium.

As I got to the top of the steps I saw Mary Beth. She was weaving her way through a sparse midday crowd, around the outdoor skating rink, and up toward a sculpture Chicagoans call the “Bean.” Its official name is Cloudgate, but it looks like a big aluminum bean and reflects everything around it in a 360-degree, sort of fish-eye effect. As I approached, a man and woman came out one side of the Bean. He wore overalls, a Carhartt jacket, and Packers hat. She wore a Green Bay jacket open to a sweatshirt that said FUCK WITH ME AND YOU FUCK THE WHOLE TRAILER PARK.

I waited until the Packer fans had safely made their way to a hot dog stand. Then I walked into the Bean, gun stuffed into my pocket. Mary Beth and Davis were standing to one side. I stood opposite them. In between us was the kindergarten class, twenty-five strong, from Presentation Grammar School. Mary Beth caught my eye in the reflection from the roof of the Bean. The fish-eye effect made it hard to judge exactly how far away she was. It seemed like miles. I was beginning to work my way through the kids when a hand tugged at my sleeve.