The Chicago Way (9 page)

“How many apartments on each floor?” Rodriguez said.

“Three. No telling who’s home.”

“So he could be inside any of these units?”

“Yes, sir. Three floors’ worth.”

“Okay. First thing we do is sweep the entire building, from the top down. Look for any sign of forced entry. If not, then we go unit by unit. Knock on the door, ID yourself, and ask to come in.”

We walked to the top floor together. The uniforms stacked on the left side of the hallway, crept around the corner, and disappeared. Rodriguez and I slipped around the other corner, guns drawn. Twenty feet down a door was ajar, light spilling into the hall. Rodriguez cruised up close, quiet. No sign of forced entry. Rodriguez eased the door in, three inches, half a foot. Over his shoulder, I could see a piece of hallway. Beyond that, a living room.

The detective gave me a short nod, then moved, low and fast, across the threshold. I followed, breathing slow and scanning. To my left was a couch that folded out to a bed, a nineteen-inch TV tuned to Judge Judy, and a set of windows that looked out over Belmont. Rodriguez eased across the living room, down another hallway, and stopped. He motioned for me to stack behind him.

“Blood,” he whispered and pointed to a smear along a baseboard. Then he moved around the corner and into the kitchen. More slashes of blood crisscrossed the walls toward what looked like a pantry. That is where we found the old man. In the final crook, in the final cranny of his studio apartment. At the very end of his life.

The wallet in his pocket would tell us his name was William Conlan. He wore one of those old-fashioned sweaters with patches on the elbows and had a pair of reading glasses knocked askew but still on his face. William’s eyes were open, his lips were parted, and the fingers on his right hand pointed our way, seemed to beckon. In his neck he had a black-handled knife, plunged to the hilt. Blood was pooled on the floor and spreading rapidly around us. Rodriguez radioed for backup, slid to his knees, and felt for a pulse. Nothing.

Paramedics arrived and began to work on the body. I moved around the blood to get a better look at the knife. The handle was old and cracked. I walked into the kitchen and pulled open the drawers.

“What do you see?”

It was Rodriguez, hands and forearms stained crimson.

“You should have worn some gloves.”

Rodriguez turned on the faucet and washed the blood down the drain.

“I don’t worry about getting AIDS from eighty-year-old men. You find the knife?”

I showed him the drawer, full of odds and ends, including three black-handled knives identical to the one in the other room.

“Must have started out here,” I said.

“The assault victim says the guy had a knife in the alley,” Rodriguez said. “Why not use that one?”

I shrugged.

“Who knows? He grabs this one out of the old man’s hand and just hits him. Anyway, they struggle down the hallway a bit and into the pantry.”

“Guy can’t be too far away,” Rodriguez said and walked over to a small window at the back of the kitchen. It was open and looked out over a row of rooftops running south alongside the El tracks.

“What do you think?” he said.

“I think it’s worth a look.”

Rodriguez climbed through the window. I followed.

I stepped out the window and onto a fire escape. Night was dropping over the city, and the iron underneath us creaked in the breeze.

The roofs in Chicago are mostly flat and covered with either gray tar paper or hard black rubber. That is, unless the rooftop happens to be on the 3600 block of North Sheffield or the 1000 block of West Waveland. Then, of course, it is covered with bleachers, beer, and drunk baseball fans paying $200 a pop to watch the Cubs find new ways to lose baseball games. But I digress.

Rodriguez flicked on a flashlight and dropped his head over the side of the fire escape. The adjacent roof was slightly below us. The span across looked to be maybe five feet. Not a lot if you’re standing on terra firma. Quite a bit more when it’s three stories down to the blacktop.

“Looks doable,” the detective said. Seemed like more of a query than a statement.

I nodded and swung my leg out over the side. Before Rodriguez could stop me and especially before I could think too much, I braced myself against the railing and pushed off. I cleared the expanse easily. I also caught my foot on the stone parapet that guarded the adjacent building’s edge and ended up face-first on the deck. I heard a thump beside me and a light step moving away.

“Let’s go, Kelly. This guy isn’t waiting on us.”

I offered up the best curse I could think of and followed the detective’s flashlight. The roof was deserted except for a single air conditioner shut down for the coming winter. The only entrance was a metal door locked from the inside. Rodriguez played his light across the alley to the next building. The span across was at least thirty feet.

“Unless our suspect is Carl Lewis,” I said, “I’m guessing he took a pass.”

Rodriguez shined his light down to the pavement. Just in case our guy thought he could fly. No body crumpled in a heap below.

“Shit,” the detective muttered.

I pointed to the El tracks crouched alongside the building.

“What do you think?”

Rodriguez’s flashlight found a service ladder bolted to the side of the tracks and within arm’s length of the roof’s edge.

“Let’s go,” he said.

We swung up the ladder and onto the tracks for Chicago’s Brown Line. Rodriguez shined his light on a thick piece of metal running alongside the main set of tracks.

“Third rail, Kelly. Not good.”

The third rail powers Chicago’s El, offering six hundred volts of heavy-duty current and instant death to anyone who touches it. I gave the rail a wide berth.

“If he came up here, he probably headed south,” I said. “Away from the crime scene.”

Rodriguez nodded and we started out at a jog. The next El stop was Diversey, maybe a half mile distant. The flashlight gave us two or three feet worth of yellow space. Otherwise our vision was limited to ribbons of streetlight cutting across steel. I felt a vibration under my feet, then the rumble of a train, still in the distance. We stopped and listened.

“Which way is it headed?”

“Not sure,” Rodriguez said. “We should be all right if it’s on our side. Plenty of room for it to get by.”

I was glad he thought so but didn’t say anything. The rumble stopped. The train was probably picking up passengers. In the ensuing quiet, I heard a stumble, maybe a curse, then a footfall.

“He’s out there,” I said.

Rodriguez began to move forward again. Twenty yards later we made out the first outlines of a person, just a black smudge slipping along the far side of the tracks. In the distance the rumble began again and picked up steam.

“Can we catch him?” Rodriguez said.

I was a miler in high school. With a strong wind, on a good track, I can still clip off a six-minute mile. On train tracks, in the black of night, with six hundred volts humming two feet to my right, maybe not quite that fast.

“Give me the flash,” I said.

It was probably a quarter mile now to the next platform. I guessed our guy was maybe two hundred yards ahead. The only good news: I had a light and he didn’t. I settled into a run that was more of a lope. Behind me, the rumble had died again as the El train stopped at Belmont. I dodged a rat that scurried across the tracks and picked up my pace. I had a good sweat going now and could see a jumble of yellow up ahead. Diversey. I stopped just short of the platform, looked, and listened. The elevated was surrounded by taller buildings here, commercial stuff, cutting off any light from the street. There was no creeping, no scratching, no sound of movement. Then the rumble started up again. Much closer. I looked back as a flash of white came around a sudden corner. The 7:05 Brown Line express was right on time.

I sprinted the last twenty yards and scrambled up onto the platform. Ten people were passing the time in various stages of waiting. One couple made out on a bench in a corner. Three people had headphones on, eyes closed, tapping away to their internal rhythms. Two people read the Trib; one, the Sun-Times. Another typed away furiously on his BlackBerry, waited, laughed furiously to himself, and typed away some more. Finally, there was one woman, alone on an island, talking to herself, never waiting for a response. None of the ten struck me as a desperate killer. Even worse, none took the slightest notice of yours truly, emerging from the soup of a Chicago night with a gun in one hand and flashlight in the other.

Thirty seconds after I arrived, the train roared through the station without slowing an inch. Twenty seconds after that, Rodriguez climbed up from the depths.

“That was fun,” he said.

“Had to check it out.”

The detective nodded. “I’ll get some uniforms to ask this crowd what they saw.”

“Hell, he could have walked down those tracks bare-ass naked and no one in this crowd would have noticed.”

Rodriguez shrugged and walked away, radio in hand. I headed down to the street. The detective caught up with me on the sidewalk.

“I have to get back to Belmont and help process the body. They need someone to sit with the assault victim until Nicole’s team gets there. Can you help us out?”

“Sure.”

“Should only be about ten minutes. Don’t ask her anything. Don’t touch her. Just sit.”

“Where is she?”

“In a cruiser at the back of the alley. I already cleared you. Her name is Jennifer Cole. And Kelly…”

“Yeah?”

“She’s twelve.”

“Great.”

“Like I said, babysit. If she talks, just listen.”

We walked north on Sheffield Avenue. Rodriguez to an old man who had been knifed in his own home. Me to a twelve-year-old who had been attacked in her own city. I couldn’t figure out which was worse.

I found the cruiser right where it was supposed to be. Jennifer was sitting in the backseat. I sat up front. There was a layer of Plexiglas between us.

“Hi, Jennifer. My name is Michael.”

The girl was folded up in a blanket. I could see the silver and red of her school uniform underneath. She looked out the window, chin on knees, at the underbelly of the El. After a moment she shifted position, then answered.

“Hey.”

That was it. Just hey.

“I’m not a cop,” I said. “So you don’t have to answer a whole bunch of questions.”

She had light red hair, wide-spaced green eyes, and a sprinkling of freckles in between. She had bruises on her neck, her upper arms, and underneath her jaw. They were yellowed and looked like they might have come from a man’s grip. A man’s fist.

“If you’re not a cop, why are you here?”

“I used to be a cop. Now I’m a private investigator. Sometimes I help out.”

“Oh. Some guy attacked me.”

“I know, Jennifer.”

“That’s good.”

She laid her head down against the fold of her knees and sighed.

“They’re finding my parents right now. They’re going to be pissed.”

“I wouldn’t worry about that, Jennifer.”

“You don’t know. They’ll be pissed.”

“You’re twelve years old?”

She nodded.

“I was headed home from school.”

“But you took a detour?”

“I was going to take the El downtown. Walk over to the Apple store.”

“Cool store.”

“It’s open ’til nine. But that’s why they’ll be mad.”

“They won’t be mad.”

“You don’t know my dad.”

I thought about Rodriguez’s instructions. About not talking to the girl. Then I took another look at the girl. Then I forgot about Rodriguez’s instructions.

“Tell me about it,” I said.

“I don’t think so.”

Silence. Then she continued.

“He got me with the basketball.”

“The basketball?”

“I was walking across the alley, blocked off from the street by those.”

She pointed toward two large green dumpsters. Between us and the illusion of safety on Belmont.

“He came up out of nowhere. Dribbled the ball off his foot or his leg. Something like that. Right into the alley.”

I looked outside. A red, white, and blue ABA ball had rolled up against one of the iron girders that held up the El.

“You followed the ball,” I said.

“I took a step.”

“Anyone would. It’s instinct. He knew that.”

“You think so?” she said.

“Yeah, Jennifer. I think so.”

“He was behind, pushing me. With the knife. Put a hand over my mouth and started dragging me.”

I noticed a short set of stone steps cut into the side of the Belmont Arms. At the bottom of the steps was a wooden door. Looked like it had been kicked open a long time ago. My guess was that was where Jennifer Cole was supposed to wind up. Inside the cellar of the Belmont Arms, where assault would have ripened into rape and perhaps worse.

“How did you get away?”

“Scratched him. Bit him. He let go and I screamed. Then he ran.”

Jennifer’s voice was brittle to the point of dust. She showed me her teeth as if to prove she could bite. Then she started to cry. Quietly. Reluctantly. As if she needed permission. I waited. No idea what was next, what should be next.

“You get a look at him?”

She shook her head.

“I’m so fucking stupid.”

“It’s not your fault, Jennifer.”

I didn’t know how else to comfort the girl behind the Plexi. She was evidence, waiting to be processed. Another case waiting to be worked. A burst from the squad’s police radio kicked the conversation forward.

“I think your parents are here,” I said. “I’m going to go up and find out. But first I need to ask you one more question. The bruises on your neck and arms. You didn’t get them today, did you?”