The Chicago Way (8 page)

“Fucking pessimist. Yeah, it’s the only copy and been the only copy for most of the last century. Fucking pessimists.”

He stopped the turning.

“Here we go. The crime happened in 1997, right?”

“Right.”

“We search by file number. Page by page. Here. This covers 1980 through the nineties.”

Goshen unclipped the ledger and split up the hundred or so pages cataloging two decades of Chicago crime.

“Don’t fuck these up,” he said.

“I got it.”

Fifteen minutes later Goshen found an entry.

“Goddamn it, Kelly.”

“Yeah?”

“Elaine Remington, December twenty-fourth, 1997?”

“Yeah.”

“Next time come in with a goddamn case number. I ran a search for this evidence just the other day.”

“For who?”

Goshen slammed the ledger closed, blew his nose into a barrel under his desk, and crossed one knee over the other.

“Couple of pukes from the DA’s office.”

“Shit.”

“Yeah.” Goshen smiled. “Thing is, I hate the DA even more than your sorry ass.”

“Lucky for me.”

“Got that right. Told the two of them everything was numbered; go ahead and search the place.”

“How long did they last?”

“First guy. About an hour. Second guy was a go-getter. Went the full day. Never made it off the first floor.”

“Think he ever got close?”

“I know he didn’t. The first floor only carries cases through

“Didn’t tell that to the DA’s men, huh?”

Goshen gave me the blank gaze of a city bureaucrat, willing to stand there until I figured it out for myself. Or at least until quitting time.

“You have a map of this place?” I said.

Goshen tapped his forehead.

“Right here. But you have to ask the right question. Let’s go.”

The elevator was a birdcage job with one of those old cranks you have to hold down until you get to your floor. Goshen turned it on with a skeleton-looking key, and we started up. The warehouse man kept his eyes fixed on the crank. Not because he didn’t know how to work it, but because his alternative was to look at me. Didn’t exactly make me feel warm inside. Still, we were moving.

“Fifth floor,” Goshen said. “Nineteen ninety through ’99.”

He cracked the elevator door and we walked out. Rows of iron shelving stretched upward and ran off into the darkness. Bits of light from what might have been bulbs filtered down from the rafters. Useless except as a reminder to go back downstairs and get a flashlight. Fortunately, Goshen was ahead of the game. He jumped into a forklift and pulled a flash from his pocket.

“Let’s go,” he said, and powered up the lift. I got in and we drove.

“Kind of a big place, this fifth floor, Ray.”

“Lot of sick fucks, Kelly. Lot of sick fucks. This is it. The late nineties.”

Goshen played a light over lumps of black, coffin boxes of evidence covered in dust. Forgotten by everyone. Cataloged by Ray.

“Here, put these on.”

Goshen handed me a set of latex gloves and a white breather. I started at one end of an aisle. He started at the other. The work was slow, box by box. Pull one off the shelf, open it up, and pick through the pieces of old crimes.

Some of the material was strictly forensic: small plastic bags of hair, blood smears, or nails clipped off a corpse.

Then there was the echo of what was once a life.

In one box, coloring books, the pictures half finished, a child’s name in crayon, smeared with blood.

In another, a CD of Pearl Jam’s Ten, AMANDA scrawled on the cover with a flower. Underneath the CD, a calendar from 1996. Filled with dates that never mattered. People never met. A life never lived and now forgotten.

Two hours into the process, I picked up a small box with 12/24/97 scrawled across the side. My heart tightened for two reasons. That was the day of Elaine Remington’s attack. Even better, the signature on the box belonged to John Gibbons.

Goshen was around the corner working on another aisle. I sliced open the box and found a single manila envelope inside. It appeared to be intact, with Gibbons’ initials and the date written across the red evidence seal. I sliced through the seal and slid out a single item, a green women’s polo gashed in several places and crusted with blood, now the color of rust. I felt a presence at my elbow.

“What you got?” Goshen said.

I showed him the evidence box.

“The date is right and it’s got Gibbons’ name,” I said. “But there’s no case number.”

Goshen picked up the envelope and turned it over. His fingers were thin, nails long and ragged.

“Nothing on the envelope, either.” The warehouse man winked. “Almost like someone wanted it to be lost.”

“I’m thinking this is the shirt my victim was wearing.”

“I’m thinking you might be half-ass right for once. Let’s go back to the office.”

We sat down with two cans of Old Style and the shirt between us. It was almost winter in Chicago but mid-July in Goshen’s cubbyhole. A fan chugged away in one corner. Goshen popped open his beer and pushed half the can past an impossibly large Adam’s apple, never taking his eyes off the shirt. And never touching it.

“Officially,” he said, “this piece of evidence doesn’t really exist. No case number, no log-in report, no other identifying marks.”

Goshen craned his neck, rolled his eyes, and pushed at the shirt with a pencil.

“I got to go out and clean up that fucking mess you made out there. When I come back, I have a lot of work to do. I don’t want you here, and I don’t want any more distractions lying around. You got it?”

I got it.

“You really don’t like the DA, do you?” I said.

Goshen gave me a look of pure nothing and left. Like any good civil servant, he cherished institutional hatred, nurtured the otherwise forgotten slight, and polished a grudge like it was gold. Whatever the DA’s office had done to Goshen, it wasn’t good for them. For me, however, it was a different story entirely. I picked up the shirt carefully, folded it into its envelope, and slipped out of the warehouse. As quickly and as quietly as I could.

I returned to my office and slid the green polo into one of those secret hiding places they teach you in private-investigator school. Also known as my bottom left-hand drawer. Then I turned on the radio. ESPN was doing a hot-stove report on the Cubbies. Be still my heart.

I listened intently, pondering deep thoughts, such as what manner of men might pay Alfonso Soriano $136 million to play baseball and where, pray tell, I might get such a gig. Then I noticed a piece of paper slipped under my door. I walked over and picked it up. Eat-A-Pita was having a special on char-grilled shrimp pitas layered with onions and wasabi sauce. I turned off the hot stove and was about to head out when the phone rang. I didn’t recognize the number but picked up anyway.

“Kelly, it’s Vince Rodriguez.”

The detective’s voice seemed a little stretched. Whatever he needed to talk about, Rodriguez had given it some thought and was uneasy.

“You eat yet?” he said.

I told Rodriguez about the special at Eat-A-Pita. He seemed properly impressed.

“How about I meet you there,” he said. “Half hour.”

I FOUND RODRIGUEZ in a booth by the window. I figured the detective wanted one of two things. Help with a case. Or help with Nicole. I had barely sat down before I got my answer.

“You and Nicole,” Rodriguez said.

“Yeah.”

“Friends since you were kids.”

“Nicole told you all that, huh?”

“A little bit.”

“She grew up a couple houses down the street. Over on the West Side. I looked out for her growing up. Now I think she looks out for me.”

I took a cursory look at the menu and kept talking.

“Why the interest, Detective?”

I tried to keep the grin out of my voice. Across the table, the Unflappable One squirmed.

“She probably told you. We got a bit of a thing.”

“A thing?”

I took a sip of water and waited.

“You know how it is. On the job and stuff.”

A waitress drifted over. We both ordered the special. Rodriguez added an iced tea.

“If she likes you, don’t try to figure it out,” I said. “Just take it as a blessing. Pray she doesn’t wake up one day and change her mind. At least that’s what I’d do. Is that all you wanted to ask me, Detective?”

“Pretty much. I just wanted to see, you know.”

“Whether we were more than friends?”

“Yeah.”

I shrugged.

“Never have been. Just not like that.”

I thought Rodriguez would let it lie. I was wrong.

“Is there something else going on with her?”

“How so?” I said.

“I don’t know. Just seems like there’s some kind of hurt. When you were around the other night, it got a little easier. At least, it seemed that way.”

“How much does she mean to you, Detective?”

“You think I like making a fool of myself in front of an ex-cop I barely know?”

“You give it time. You let her figure it out. Let her figure you out.”

“I’m thinking maybe we shouldn’t work together. Maybe that would make it better.”

“Can’t answer that for you.”

Rodriguez emptied a packet of sugar into his tea and watched it dissolve.

“I’m not a guy who’s been married before,” he said. “No divorce or any of that stuff. You were a cop. You know what I mean.”

I did.

“Give it some time,” I said. “She’s worth it.”

Our orders came, and we ate in silence for a bit.

“Any progress on the rape?”

“Still waiting for Nicole’s lab work,” the detective said. “If she can get DNA off those bedsheets, we might be in business. By the way, what exactly makes you think this guy is a killer?”

I shrugged.

“Your victim says he had finished raping her. Done. But he continues with the knife play. Runs it along her ribs, tears up the side of her shirt. Small cuts to the throat. Why?”

Rodriguez waited.

“He was playing with her,” I said. “Like a cat plays with a mouse. See if he can get a rise out of her. A little more excitement. Guy like that, he’s building to something. A release.”

“He kills her,” Rodriguez said.

“That’s what the cat does with the mouse.”

Our waitress drifted over. Rodriguez took a refill on his tea.

“I asked around about you,” he said. “Heard you were pretty good with a case file.”

The detective was right. In 2003 Chicago had six hundred fresh homicides. I cleared twenty-five of them in eight months, working alone. The next guy had half that and he was working most of the time with a partner. I didn’t share any of that with Rodriguez. Still, it was nice someone downtown remembered.

“That was a while back,” I said.

“How are you with it?”

“If you mean do I see the faces at night, the answer is yes. But it gets better.”

Rodriguez picked at the last of his shrimp and pondered nightmares not yet born. I reflected on the dead that lived just underneath my eyelids.

“Why didn’t it happen with Miriam?” he said.

“If I had to guess, I’d say she got to him somehow. In a sense.”

“Not sure I buy that, Kelly.”

“I’m not saying he felt pity for her. No. Guys like that, they feel sorry for themselves. Something in the way she talked, what she said, how she acted. Triggered his self-pity.”

“And saved her life,” Rodriguez said.

“It’s a theory.”

“Yeah. Next girl might not be so lucky.”

Vince’s PDA buzzed. He flipped it open, read the message, and typed in a response. Then he was out of his seat, a few bills on the table, moving through the restaurant. I was on his shoulder.

“You got the gift, Kelly. We just got another possible sexual assault. Couple of blocks from here. In progress. You up for it?”

“You sure?”

“They tell me you used to be good. Why not? Just don’t shoot anybody unless they shoot first.”

We got in his car and peeled north on Clark. Rodriguez radioed Dispatch.

“This is Rodriguez. I’m two blocks east, heading to the eight-oh-seven in progress. Copy.”

Dispatch crackled back.

“Affirmative. Two squads on scene. Officers searching building for the suspect.”

We rolled up to a center-entrance Chicago three-flat, an older building called the Belmont Arms near the corner of Belmont and Sheffield.

Two uniforms, one short, one tall, stood at the entrance to an alley on the building’s east side. The shorter one stepped forward. Rodriguez flashed his badge just as the cop’s shoulder mic barked. He hit the MUTE button and took a quick look at the detective’s shield.

“Yes, sir, Detective. Attack occurred in the alley. Then the suspect ran into the building. We have two units inside. Hold on a second.”

The officer turned away, mumbled into his shoulder, then turned back.

“They’re on the first landing. If you want to go in, they’ll wait there.”

Rodriguez took a radio from the uniform and walked toward the building. The cop walked with us and kept talking.

“The suspect’s a white male, five feet nine, one hundred and seventy pounds, wearing a black bomber jacket and blue jeans. According to the victim, he covered his face up and is armed with a knife.”

Rodriguez drew his gun and entered the building. I followed. We climbed the stairs and found two cops waiting. The stairwell was dimly lit, the walls gray with streaks of dirty sunlight from a pair of windows cut high into the landing. The older of the two uniforms got us up to speed.

“The other team is securing the back exits. Hallways run in both directions from the top of the stairs.”