The Third Rail (19 page)

I peeled the photo off the door, turned the knob, and walked inside. The retired cop was sitting at his kitchen table, a shotgun pointed at my chest.

"You surprised?" he said.

I looked at the photo again. It was the police graduation shot for James Nelson Doherty. He was smiling, proud and happy to be commissioned a police officer in the year of our Lord 1982.

"A smart friend of mine sent me this today," I said.

"Figured it out, huh?"

"You didn't become a cop until '82. Two years after the crash."

"So I couldn't have been a uniform up on the platform when those cars derailed. That's exactly right. Drop the gun."

Doherty had a red binder with black block lettering on the table, along with a hard black case. He had a Mac on the floor by his feet and flipped it around with his boot so I could get a look. Rachel was on-screen, blindfolded and handcuffed to a chair. There was a shotgun five feet away, locked into a shooting stand and pointed at her head. I laid my gun on the ground.

"Where is she, Jim?"

"I assume you went to Cabrini. That was clever. I'll give your woman that. But let's not waste the little time we have with loose ends."

"That include your dead neighbors next door?"

"They were very old and they died together. You have no idea what a blessing that is."

"Yeah, I envy them."

"Shut up, Michael. And sit down."

I did.

"You got it figured out yet?" Doherty said. "Or you want me to fill in the blanks?"

I held up the photo. "You were on the train."

"HELP."

I turned to the sound, coming from the doorway of the crippled CTA car. James Doherty moved his face into the broken light. His skin was the color of wet cement, his eyes, blue marbles that rolled around in his skull before settling on me
.

Five feet below him, the woman with the green scarf and soft smile had been thrown against the car's back door. The accordion metal had crushed the woman's legs, and her pelvis was pinned under a twist of steel. Even that would have been okay until I saw the second piece lodged just beneath the ribs. It was the broken-off end of a girder that had split the door on impact. The girder was dark green and rusted, slick with blood, and slid in and out of her side each time she took a breath, which wasn't often enough. The woman with the soft face was dying. Even to a kid, that much was more than clear
.

* * *

"I DIDN'T RECOGNIZE YOU
until I saw the photo," I said.

"Sometimes life takes its pound of flesh to the bone." Doherty croaked out a laugh, and I could see the fine strands of insanity tangled up in it. "But I recognized you, Kelly. Minute you walked into the district as a rook. Same mayonnaise face you had as a kid. Still looking for his daddy."

I CRAWLED TOWARD DOHERTY
,
and we pulled at the hot, rusted metal. He mumbled and prayed as we worked. Then he kissed the woman's face and tried to keep her awake. After about a minute or so, she still hadn't moved. I heard a sound from the back of the car. A CTA conductor's hat floated above us. Below it, my father's red eyes
.

"Please," I said
.

Something like pity flicked across his face and I thought he might try to save her. Then the pegs were reset. My old man grabbed me by the neck and threw me toward the back of the car and the open connecting door. I hit an edge, slumped across the threshold, and felt the night on my face. I looked up at the L tracks looming above me, a couple of firemen's hats peeking over the side
.

"Get out the fucking door," my old man bellowed and tried to follow me to safety
.

Doherty reached out and grabbed for his leg. My old man put a boot in Doherty's face and slammed him into the side of the car. For a moment, there was nothing but a silent tremor that rippled through my fingers. Then the train lurched, this time badly. Quiet moans became screams. Steel groaned and rivets popped. A seam of metal split the length
of the car. The woman with the soft face moaned once as something pierced her anew. Doherty reached, but his fingers were greased with blood, and she slipped away. Then she was gone, leaving nothing behind but a cold wind, chasing Jim Doherty's screams through a gaping hole to the blank pavement below
.

"HE KILLED HER,"
Doherty said.

I shook my head. "She would have died whether she fell or not. The doctors told us that."

"You mean the doctors paid for by your city. He was a coward. He killed her. You both did."

I felt Doherty's eyes, crawling across my soul, finding the dark crevices where guilt fed on a child's doubt, and a woman's pain echoed. I shook my head free, but the man with the shotgun had seen enough to smile.

I WAS DRAGGED UP
to the tracks in a fireman's sling. My father, right behind me. I took one look down into the street, but she was already covered with a sheet. They tried to talk me into an ambulance, but I twisted away, ran from the elevated, then walked twenty blocks home. That night, my old man drank a pint and a half of Ten High bourbon. He called me into the kitchen sometime after midnight and asked me what I saw on the train. I told him nothing. He beat me with his fists, asking the same question with every blow. I kept saying nothing because I didn't know what answer would be better. But there was no right answer. And there was no beating that was going to hurt worse than knowing what my father was. And knowing that every time he looked at me
,
he'd see his own cowardice reflected there. And hate me for it
.

"IF I'D FOUND HIM
, I'd have killed him." Doherty tilted forward in his chair, tipping the twin barrels of the shotgun a touch closer. "And maybe that would have been enough. Maybe helped both of us."

"Who was she, Jim?"

"Her name was Claire."

"Your wife?"

"Engaged."

I shifted in my chair, edging closer to my gun on the floor. "My dad's dead. I did what I could that night. You know that. So did the cops. So did the doctors."

The shotgun wavered and I could see pools of blood in his eyes, the firemen's tight features as they lifted her body off the street. Then the hard anger returned, grinding everything else to dust, wiping Jim Doherty's mind to black.

"Too late for that, Michael." He tightened his grip on the gun and let his eye wander to the image on his laptop. "I'm gonna have mine and that's just the way it is."

In his left hand, Doherty clutched a small box. He held it up for me to see. "Looks like a TV remote, doesn't it?" He nodded again toward the laptop. "It's wired to that shotgun you see there. I push the button, and the judge gets her skull air-conditioned."

"I can't bring Claire back. Nobody can."

My gun was a foot or so to my right. I inched it closer with my boot.

"Don't." Doherty pushed back from the table and kicked my piece across the room. I could feel the shotgun lift my
chin, watched his finger tremble on the edge of the remote. Then he moved back to his seat. I needed to play for time.

"Tell me about Robles," I said.

"What about him?"

"Why shoot him?"

Doherty relaxed a fraction, seemed to relish the question. "I studied the classics. Not like you, but we all took a little bit back in the day."

"The
Iliad
?
"

He nodded. "I told Robles about the choice Achilles once faced. Live a long, ordinary life, or die young and famous."

"Let me guess," I said. "Lake Shore Drive was Robles' day in the sun."

"Achilles chose glory and an early grave. Robles did the same. It was his fate and he embraced it."

"Guys like you love to talk about fate and destiny. Especially when your own neck's not on the line."

"You don't think I'll pay the price?"

"I don't. Do us all a favor and prove me wrong."

Doherty lifted the heavy gun again. "Not yet. Not until it's finished."

"Does that include the church?"

"It's more than that, Michael. Far more." Doherty's voice softened, stirring again the dark memories that bound us together. His eyes traveled from the image of Rachel to the red binder that sat on the table between us. "But you're right to think about the priests. Because that's where it all started."

The first bullet pinned the ex-cop's final words in his throat. He blinked once and tried to swallow. Three more rounds punched across his chest. Then Doherty fell back over his chair. Dead.

K
atherine Lawson climbed out of the darkness of the basement and nudged Doherty with the toe of her shoe. "Cocksucker."

Satisfied he was dead, Lawson lowered the gun to her side. "You all right?"

I was staring at the killer's laptop and the remote that had fallen from his fingers. The feed from wherever he kept Rachel had been cut. The image, gone.

"I'm fine," I said.

"Rachel's safe," Lawson said, stopping me with her hand as I reached for my cell. "Rodriguez told me to tell you Chubby came through."

I pointed to the laptop. "What about the video?"

"He said he'd explain it all later." She sat down at the table. "Now, why don't you give me your end of this before we call in?"

I TOLD HER
about the flash drive. Then I showed her the picture of James Doherty, circa 1982.

"There wasn't a lot of time," I said. "Doherty was expecting me to head to the South Side alone. I figured you guys could still look for Rachel while I kept this guy busy."

"Bullshit. You didn't trust the feds to handle it. But you had Rodriguez bring me in to cover your ass."

"It wasn't a matter of trust."

"Not only a matter of trust, Kelly. You wanted this part to yourself." She gestured to Doherty's body.

"You think I wanted to kill him?" I said.

"Once you had Rachel secure, absolutely."

"Just like I shot the first one at the lake."

"If you weren't going to shoot him, why all the secrecy? And if you were going that route, you didn't want anyone around to come back at you on it."

I nodded to the pistol she still held loosely in a gloved hand. "Looks like you took care of that."

Lawson shook her head. "No sir. You shot Mr. Doherty." She knelt down and pressed the gun's grip into the dead man's right hand. Then she held it out to me. "You wrestled the gun away from him and shot him in the struggle. That's the only way it can go down. You're the hero. I came along afterward to applaud."

"How did you get here?"

"Drove down on my own after Rodriguez filled me in. Figured you could use a little 'unofficial' backup."

"Seems like you didn't trust me very much, either?"

"I don't like being cut out."

"And now you want me to take the weight for this?"

"How it's gotta be."

I stood up. Katherine held out an arm.

"We okay with the story?"

"You want me to be the shooter, fine. Let's go."

* * *

"WHERE IS SHE?"
I was sitting in an FBI car, talking to Rodriguez on the phone.

"They took her to Northwestern. He had her stashed in a storage unit on Division. One of Chubby's buddies tipped us. He remembered seeing Rachel and recognized Doherty's picture."

"How bad is it?" My tongue felt thick in my mouth, all the words ill-fitting.

"She's in rough shape, Michael. Physically and mentally."

I thought about that for a moment, then forced it to the back of my mind.

"Did he have anyone watching her?"

"She was heavily sedated, and he had a couple of shotguns rigged to the door. Otherwise, I think he just depended on no one being able to trace her."

"How did you manage the video feed he had set up?"

"We did some quick surveillance before the team went in, saw the layout, and came up with a plan. The team shot their own footage of Rachel. About a minute's worth. Then we looped it and hacked into the feed Doherty was receiving before they grabbed her. That's what you were looking at. It was a risk, but the bad guy had his hands full with you and never noticed."

Doherty's face floated before me, one hand holding a shotgun, the other gripping his red binder. "He wanted me to watch someone I loved die. Just like he did."

"Fuck him, Kelly. He's dead and Rachel's not. That's what counts."

"How about the church?"

"We think we got a handle on the thing at Holy Name. I'll fill you in when you get back."

I looked through the front windshield. Federal agents had arrived in full force and were starting to process the scene. Katherine was standing in a spill of light, talking to a couple of forensic types. Under her arm, she carried Doherty's binder.

"Listen, Rodriguez, I need to talk to Hubert."

There was a pause down the line. "Actually, I'm not sure where he is," the detective said. "Feds were supposed to pick him up."

Lawson began to walk away from me, toward an evidence van. I cracked open the car door just as she ducked inside.

"Let me call you back, Vince."

I punched in Hubert's number, but got his voice mail. I called a second time and began to walk to the van. Still no answer. I found Lawson in the backseat, tagging items from inside the house.

"Hubert Russell?" I said, my heart suddenly popping in the hollow of my throat.

Lawson widened her eyes and tapped her pen against a clipboard. "What about him?"

"Where is he?"

T
hey had already cut Hubert down by the time we got there. I stood on the sidewalk and watched as they carried him out of his building in a coroner's bag. His memory played across the inside of my skull. I reached out, wanting to feel the weight. But he walked away from my touch and took his spot in the gallery of dead faces, waiting, apparently, to witness my grief.