The Innocence Game (24 page)

“Shut up.” Coursey looked back at Z. “I thought they were both supposed to be out?”

“We went a little farther offshore than I intended. Just stick to your business.”

“Please.” I reached out. Z held the rifle in front of her with both hands.

“Don’t,” she said. “Not now.”

“I should put some more holes in him,” Coursey said, pointing to Jake’s side. “Make sure he goes right down.”

“That’s why we came out so far,” Z said. “So we wouldn’t have to worry about anything washing up.”

Jake groaned. The bottom of the boat was slick with his blood.

“I like to be sure,” Coursey said.

“Just put him over.”

Coursey sized Z up but decided not to take her on. Not today, anyway. He ripped the last bits of tape off Jake’s back. Then he dragged him over to the side of the boat. The wind blew Coursey’s hair back, revealing a bald pate covered with black freckles. He scooted Jake up to the gunwale. I heard my voice scream
No
, but Jake went over with barely a splash. His head slipped under the water and never resurfaced. Coursey turned to me.

“You got the rifle on him?”

“Go ahead.” Z spoke from behind the sight.

Coursey put his knife down and grabbed my shirt with both hands. “Come on, boy. Go easy now.”

I felt myself being lifted. Coursey grunted with the effort. A deadweight of shackles and flesh. From my left I heard a dry spit in the night. Z stumbled sideways, then fell. Coursey glanced back at his boss. I wrapped my arms around his waist and took us both over the side.

I held Coursey close and kicked as hard as I could for the bottom. It took the cop a few seconds to realize my strategy. Then he began to thrash and claw, but my chains had become his own. Panic was eating away at his oxygen, and he knew it. We dropped into the darkness, faces inches apart. A single bubble escaped from his lips. Followed by a small stream. He made one last pull for the surface. I held fast. Then he coughed. And all the demons poured in.

I held his body until he stopped moving. Then I let go and watched him drift away. I was alone now. Still shackled, still dropping. Sarah flashed through my mind. Salt on her skin. Warm sunshine on her face. I opened my mouth a crack and took a final, watery breath.

The throat is your last line of defense. The palace guard, if you will, when it comes to drowning. No matter how hard you want to die, the throat will seal itself off when it detects water. A desperate effort to protect the lungs. It’s not a lot of time, maybe another ten, twenty seconds before you’re fully unconscious and the throat relaxes. In my case, however, it was enough. The diver found me at a depth of fifty feet and shared air to the surface. Then I was back on the deck of the Whaler, retching black water and tasting the bile of Lake Michigan. Michael Kelly stood nearby, watching quietly, a rifle with a scope in gloved hands.

I coughed and spit for ten minutes. The diver found some keys and unshackled me. Then he injected me with something, wrapped me in a blanket, and gave me a cup of broth. I sat up against the same engine cowling I’d been chained to a half hour earlier. The weather was still pea soup. Kelly squatted down beside me.

“How you feeling?”

“A little swim, but I’m okay.” I smiled, but my hands were shaking. I reached up to touch my face and realized I was crying.

“Take it easy,” Kelly said. “You’re probably in a bit of shock.”

I wiped my nose and took a sip of broth. “What happened?”

Kelly looked to the front. On cue, the Whaler rocked, and the fog lifted a touch. I could see two pairs of feet lined up on the deck, heels facing toward me. Z’s green boots I recognized. The thick pair of black ones could only belong to Coursey.

“Both dead?” I said.

Kelly nodded. “I shot the woman. The divers got lucky and found the other one.”

“How?” I said.

“Rodriguez told me to follow you. I was worried they might be watching me, so it was a loose tail. By the time I got to the beach house, they were already here. I saw the boat at the dock and told Rodriguez to get a dive team ready.”

“What if they’d killed us in the house?”

“If I made a run at the house, chances are they would have killed you before I ever got there.”

“So you took a chance?”

“We got lucky with the fog and the wind. Allowed us to stay fairly close. Once they chopped their engines, a couple of divers went into the water. The woman had the rifle, so I had to wait for my shot.”

“Cut it kind of close.”

Kelly shrugged. Then I remembered Jake. Kelly must have read it in my face.

“We got your buddy. He was in the water less than a minute. They’re treating him on the other boat now.”

I heard the muffled beat of an engine. A police boat cut through the murk and pulled up alongside. Rodriguez stepped across onto the Whaler, and the police boat motored away.

“How is he?” Rodriguez said.

Kelly tipped his head my way. “Asking a lot of questions, so I guess that’s good.”

Rodriguez took a seat. Kelly wandered up to the bow. We were still drifting. Still not headed anywhere special.

“Jake’s gonna be fine,” Rodriguez said. “They gave him some blood on the boat and stabilized him.” He pointed off into the fog. “Taking him to the hospital now.”

“Thanks, Detective.”

“You’re welcome.” Rodriguez took out a pack of cigarettes and offered me one.

I shook my head. “Don’t smoke.”

“I don’t either. Still, some days…” Rodriguez lit up. Kelly walked back. Rodriguez handed over the cigarettes, and Kelly disappeared again. Rodriguez took a single drag and tossed the butt into the water. “We’ve got a fucked-up situation here, Ian.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Not your fault. Hell, without you, where would we be? Not your fault at all.”

The boat creaked as a wave passed beneath it.

“Why are we still out here?” I said. “Why aren’t we headed in?”

“Good question.” Rodriguez nodded toward the two sets of boots. “Guess we can start there.”

“Z and Coursey?”

“What do we do with them? If we bring them in, we have to explain who shot them. And why.”

“I can explain.”

“Explain what?”

“Kelly had no choice. If he didn’t shoot Z, I’d be dead. If…”

“I’m not talking about the details. That’s not the problem at all.”

“Then what is the problem?”

“The shed you guys cracked open. The cooler and those cabinets.”

“You got a look?”

“A quick one.” Rodriguez pulled out the black Moleskine notebook. “If we go public with what happened and give everyone the real reason why…”

“Then all the blackmail comes out. And a lot of people’s lives are destroyed.”

“That’s right. Now if everything we find in that shed is true, I might not have any problem with letting it all come out in the wash. A handful of politicians get ruined. Maybe more than a handful, but so what? Thing is, some of that stuff…most of it probably…was the product of a frame. Either contrived evidence like your pal James Harrison, or a setup…”

“Like the one they caught me up in with Sarah.”

“Something like that, yeah.” Rodriguez studied my face. I knew where the cop was headed. The Needle Squad’s blackmail ring might have started in Chicago, but now it reached all the way to Washington, into the highest levels of government. Anyone touched would be ruined. Whether they were guilty or innocent.

“What do we do?” I said.

“You three made it happen. You, Jake, and Sarah. Paid a pretty good price, too.”

“So?”

“So what do you want to do?”

“I can’t decide that, Detective.”

Rodriguez grinned. “Who said you were gonna decide anything? I just want to know what you’re thinking.”

I shook my head. “I don’t know.”

“Good,” Rodriguez said. “At your age, that’s probably the right answer. We’re gonna take you in and put you in a car. You’ll be back in Evanston in a couple of hours. After that, you forget everything you saw today. The house, the shed. This boat. There’ll be some questions, especially when the professor here doesn’t show up for class. But you forget everything. Okay?”

“Okay.”

Rodriguez searched my face. “Any questions, ask ’em now.”

“Did you find Sally Finn?”

“She’s in the beach house. Doesn’t know her own name.”

“There have to be more people involved in this.”

“Best we can tell, only Z and Coursey knew the entire operation. Everyone else on the payroll just got bits and pieces. Police, prosecutors, a couple of reporters. Lots of hookers. We’ll have a talk with them. Advise the cops and prosecutors to find a new line of work. Roll up the rest and keep ’em quiet.”

“You think that’ll work?”

“It’s been done before.”

“What are you going to do with them?” I gestured to the two pairs of boots on the deck.

“Let it go, son.”

“You’re going to drop me off, motor back here, and dump them in the lake.”

Rodriguez stared at me. Kelly had reappeared at his shoulder.

“I can handle it, Detective.”

“Fine. That’s exactly what we’re going to do.”

“Then let’s get on with it,” I said.

Rodriguez circled his hand over his head once. Behind me the diesel turned over and began to hum. Forty minutes later, I was standing on the dock of Sally Finn’s beach house, a cop close beside me. Rodriguez waved once as the Whaler slipped away from shore. Kelly stood beside him, staring at me. Then the boat was swallowed by the fog, and all I could hear was the beat of its engine.

In the end things went just about as Rodriguez said they would. Well, sort of.

Martin Coursey left a “note” for his two kids from a first, failed marriage. In it he told them he was leaving Chicago and wouldn’t be returning. He asked them to forgive him. And if they couldn’t forgive, at least forget.

As for Judy Zombrowski, what was left of her body washed up on the rocks along Lake Michigan’s shoreline, not far from where the wreckage of the
Lady Elgin
came to rest. Her death was announced to the university as a “tragic accident.” At Z’s request, her remains were buried next to Rosina Rolland’s in Calvary Cemetery. I was the only one who attended the ceremony. Along with Jake Havens.

Jake and I spent a lot of time together. He’d been in the hospital for a couple of weeks. The bullet hadn’t done any permanent damage, but he’d lost a lot of blood. Jake told anyone who asked that it was an emergency appendectomy. I thought it might be hard to fool his family, but they only visited once and seemed to buy it. Neither of us had heard from Sarah since the hospital. She’d withdrawn from school, and all her e-mail bounced back. I grieved in the best way I knew, but maybe that was how it had to be for now. Just me and Jake. After all, no one else knew the full story. Not like Jake and I did. Well, sort of.

We sat in my car, stalled at a red light, on the corner of Roscoe and Halsted. Chicago’s Boystown buzzed around us in a final burst of summer. Groups of men migrated across the street. Followed by even larger groups of women. People sat on curbs and stood on corners. Ahead of us a car doubled-parked as the driver rolled down his window and yelled into a club called Cocktail. A couple of men tumbled out of the place and jumped in the backseat. The stoplight flicked green, and we surged forward. Above us a guy leaned over a balcony and videotaped us with his iPhone.

I pulled into a 7-Eleven. A cop sat in the parking lot, sipping coffee and watching life in the side-view mirror. I slid into the space next to him. The cop backed up and left. Jake Havens looked over at me. He wasn’t happy.

“Seriously, Joyce. What are we doing here?”

“I told you. It has something to do with the Harrison case.”

“Yeah, and you told me it would all make sense once we got down here.”

“It will.”

“When?”

“Patience. You want something?”

He waved me away. I went into the store and came out with a couple of coffees. Jake took a sip. “You got any more sugar?”

I gave him a couple of packets and watched as he stirred one in. Jake had been out of the hospital for a month. The bullet had cost him twenty pounds and left him with a bloodless complexion. But Jake hadn’t lost his intensity. And he hadn’t lost his edge.

“How is it?” I said.

Jake took another sip of his coffee. “Getting better. So what’s the deal?”

I glanced in my rearview mirror. A bar called Chasen’s sat there. Its windows were swung open to the street, and the high stools were packed with patrons. Another cop car cruised past. No one in Chasen’s took any notice.

“I know who Skylar Wingate’s killer is.” I spoke softly, almost reluctantly. “He broke into my house a couple of months ago. I have a security camera in the basement. Got three minutes of him on tape.”

“The killer broke into your house?”

“Yes.”

“And you’ve got him on tape?”

“Yes.”

Jake studied me closely. “Fine. Let’s take a look.”

I shook my head.

“Why not?” Jake leaned forward and put his coffee in the holder between us. Best I could tell, he’d already drunk a quarter.

“You see that bar behind us?” I said.

He turned and looked.

“I’ve been up and down this strip for the last month, flashing this guy’s picture. Finally got a hit last week.”

“In there?”

“He’s been in there the last three weekends running. Looking for his next victim.”

“And why should I believe this guy’s our killer?”

“He is, Jake.”

“That’s it?”

“For now.”

“Fuck you, Joyce.”

We lapsed back into silence. Chatter from the street drifted through an open window.

“Have the cops seen your tape?” Jake said.

“I figured we should talk first.”

“You figured wrong. Call Rodriguez.”

I took out my phone and placed it on the dash.

Jake looked at it. “You don’t think I’ll call.”

“It’s your choice.”

“You’re not the one who took the bullet, Joyce. You think I want another?”

“That’s why it’s your choice.”

He picked up his coffee and took another sip. “What is it you want to do?”