The Chicago Way (29 page)

I found my way over to the concession stand, stepped inside, and ordered a red-hot drug through the garden. The Packer fans stood nearby, eating a double order of cheese fries. Each.

“So is Favre all done?” I said.

They smiled and started in. I listened and nodded. In the distance I could hear sirens. That would be Rodriguez, followed probably by Masters. They’d get here soon enough.

I t was the day before Thanksgiving. The city was quiet. The holiday season beckoned.

I picked up Rodriguez downtown. We headed west on Madison. It had been more than a week since we last spoke. He had a lot to take care of. I had even more to avoid.

“Getting any better?” I said.

The media storm was finally settling. Dateline and 60 Minutes had taken their shots, done their profiles. As had The New York Times, Newsweek, CNN, and the BBC.

Most of the coverage centered on Grime, Pollard, and Bennett Davis. Some of it focused on two sisters from Kansas and a third they needed to avenge. Time magazine ran a piece on the hidden costs of sexual assault. I actually read that one.

None of the coverage mentioned me. For that, I had Rodriguez and Masters to thank.

“Only two media requests this morning,” Rodriguez said. “This afternoon I’m on live with Australia. They love Grime Down Under. By the way, your buddy Masters says to go fuck yourself.”

“Tell him I said hello back.”

“Yeah. Eventually we’re going to have to get a statement from you. Probably take a couple of days.”

“After the holidays?”

“Sure. By the way, she asked to see you.”

Diane Lindsay had been in custody for nine days and tried to kill herself three times. The first was in a holding area after she discovered her sister had shot herself. Used a shard of Plexiglas to open up one of her wrists. Lost two pints of blood and took twenty-three stitches. The two times after that were in the hospital. Pills.

My brother had taught me all I needed to know. About prisons. About suicide. About how appealing death could sometimes seem.

“Think I’ll take a pass,” I said.

Rodriguez shifted in the seat beside me, pulled his gun off his belt, and laid it on the floor next to his feet.

“Probably a good idea. They got her pretty doped up. Pull in and let’s get coffee.”

We stopped at a Dunkin’ Donuts and loaded up. Back in the car, I continued west, back to my childhood. Rodriguez sipped at his coffee and did a little reminiscing of his own.

“Let me ask you something, Kelly.”

“Go for it.”

“What put you onto the sisters? I mean, why did you ever think of taking it back to Kansas?”

I shrugged. Like any cold case, the answer was in the evidence box. You just had to know where to look.

“All those people in the street file,” I said. “All dead. All, save Belmont, shot with a nine. Just didn’t seem right. Then I remembered that first morning Mary Beth showed up at my house. With a nine. Another coincidence.”

“That makes two.”

“Yes, indeed. I talked to a detective out of Phoenix. Guy named Reynolds. He ran down a hotel receipt for me. From 2002.”

“The year the ER nurse was shot?”

“A Ms. Remington, no first name, paid cash for her room, two miles and one day removed from the Gleason murder. That’s when I knew I had to go to Kansas.”

“How about Diane?”

“Didn’t see that coming,” I said. “Not even a bit.”

We let it sit for a minute. Listened to my tires rumble over Chicago asphalt.

“Funniest thing about the whole case,” I said. “Diane gave me the street file. Gave me the lead that hung her and her sister.”

“Stupid,” Rodriguez said.

I nodded and thought maybe not. Maybe it was the sort of ending she needed.

We drove west on Grand, took a right on Central, drove a bit farther, and parked. Most of the neighborhood was gone, replaced by strip malls and weeds. The rail yards, however, were still there. As were the train tracks beyond.

“This where you grew up?” Rodriguez said.

“About a mile east of here. This is the spot, though.”

We walked around to the back of the car and popped the trunk.

“By the way,” Rodriguez said, “your boy Grime is a little nervous these days.”

“How so?”

“Seems the protection money that kept him alive has dried up.”

“It came from Bennett?”

“Probably. The boys at Menard make it sixty-forty Grime never sees the needle. Side bets are coming in on how he gets it. I got ten down on a shank to the stomach.”

Rodriguez smiled, the one you earn from all the nights of closing eyelids and zipping up body bags. From calling parents and listening to the pain.

“Anyway, that piece of shit is done,” Rodriguez said. He pulled a shovel out of the trunk and handed it to me.

“Been meaning to ask you something,” I said.

“Go ahead.”

I leaned on my shovel. Rodriguez gave me a look as he pulled out the other spade.

“Think you would have done it?” I said.

“Done what?”

“Pollard.”

“Taken him out?”

“That’s it.”

The detective slammed the trunk shut and put his foot up on a fender.

“Don’t know, Kelly. I mean, I would have liked to, but things never really got that far.”

“Bullshit.”

“Excuse me?”

“Bullshit. The night in the industrial park. You could have done it. You thought about it. Thought about it hard.”

“You think so?”

“Yeah, but I knew you wouldn’t pull the plug. Not in your nature.”

I moved off the car, stepped over a chain strung across the road, and started to walk across the rail yards. Rodriguez was a beat behind.

“Nicole told me a little bit about this,” he said. “How you’re always talking about people’s nature, their way of being. She said you got it from Cicero or something.”

“Changing the subject, Detective.”

“Maybe I am. Maybe I’m not. You’re right. I thought about it. Came close.”

I looked over.

“But you stopped,” I said.

“There’s a line there, you know. Once you step across…”

“You live with it.”

“Guess I couldn’t do that. Still, there’s a part of me that wanted it, still wants it. Still thinks about it.”

“That’s okay,” I said.

“My nature?”

“Yeah.”

The detective shrugged and took a look around.

“You know where we are here?”

I thought back to that day twenty-one years ago. Fourteen years old, standing in the swamp. Seeing Nicole. Watching her rape. My first look at a live sexual act. Feeling the first hint of darkness. Surrendering to it.

“Some things have changed,” I said. “But I got an idea.”

I headed out across some old tracks and through the back of the yards, to an alley I had cruised three times in the past week. Best I could figure, this was the front end of the old swamp. Twenty yards behind it was the south end of the tracks. I remembered those. In between sat a depressed bit of ground, littered with beer bottles, condoms, and a couple of bums sleeping it off. The back end of the swamp. The end where Nicole was assaulted, where I might very well have killed a man.

“You realize we aren’t too likely to find anything,” Rodriguez said.

I hefted my shovel, picked out a spot, and started to dig.

“I know,” I said.

“But you have to try.”

“I guess so.”

“Let me ask you something,” Rodriguez said. “What if we do find something?”

I stopped. There wasn’t much of a hole yet, but I could feel the pulse in my temple, the first flush of blood through my arms and shoulders. It was work. It made me feel better.

“We call Homicide,” I said.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

Rodriguez put a foot to his shovel and turned over a layer of dirt that was more like dust. A fragment of ancient text ran through my head:

It was Aristotle’s take on friendship:

“One soul living in two bodies.”

I dug into the hard ground again and waited for the sweat. Either way, my friend Nicole and I would get our answers. Either way, it was going to be okay.