The Good Boy (23 page)

“Come on, Sleepy Face,” Joel says, “while everybody else is on the move.”

Butchie stretches his front and then back legs, shakes off his dreams from head to tail, and heels up.

Across from the park, Sulzer Library sits behind thin-trunked trees spaced along the empty sidewalk—empty being the reason it’s nowhere to leave Butch. Joel does a quick recon and finds the next busiest place after the park: the coffeehouse up the street.

“Trust me,” he tells the dog on the way.

Outside, a wrought-iron fence is plugged into the pavement around a handful of umbrellaed tables for two. Floor-to-ceiling windows run along the storefront, and inside a line of adults waits, their backs to the street, all eyes on the menu board. If he ties Butchie here, most anybody coming or going will figure he’s just a regular dog who couldn’t possibly belong to that police officer on the front page, but to someone who’s waiting for a latte inside. And nobody will stop to pet him—not because he’s unfriendly, but because there’s something about caffeine: it gets people in a rush.

Joel ties Butchie’s leash to the fence, tells him,
“Bleib,”
and hightails it back toward the library. He doesn’t look back this time, either, even though he wants to. Real bad.

At the entrance, Joel waits by the nearest book drop until an older man in a panama pulls a book bag over his shoulder and reaches for the door. Joel follows right behind, close enough to be related, which is a good thing because just inside the security gates, two women sit behind the checkout desk waiting to welcome them.

“Good morning,” says one after the other, an echo of enthusiasm. They both wear brown blazers, cornrows, and smiles like sunshine.

“Good morning,” the man says, lifting his hat from his gray-haired head.

“Morning,” Joel barely says and waits as the man turns left. As soon as he’s no longer in sight of the desk, Joel offers a perfunctory wave and says, “I’ll be in here, Grandpa,” and heads for the kids’ section to the right.

He passes by the printers and walks the long row of computer monitors. He wishes he could pull up a map online and print it out; it would be the fastest way. But using a computer means logging in with his library card and that would be an obvious marker in a trail of evidence, especially since his dad says one of the easiest ways to catch a criminal is to catch up with his technology.

Good thing Joel’s mom taught him how to find information the old-fashioned way; if anybody should figure out he was here, at least they won’t know where he’s going.

At the far side of the room, two little kids are messing around with a puzzle that has handles on its pieces, each one squealing about it, no regard for the silence policy. Behind them, a ponytailed woman wearing gym clothes keeps one eye on the kids and the other on her phone as she pecks at it with her pointer finger. She looks exhausted, but not like she’s had the chance to break a sweat; apparently she doesn’t have the energy to notice Joel, either.

Joel sits at the last computer in the row, one of two where he can search the library database freely. He clicks on the white box that says
ENTER
KEYWORDS
 … and types “Chicago map.” From there he gets seventy-five matches. He scrolls past restaurant surveys and mafia books until he finds something called
The Rand McNally Chicago and Cook County Streetfinder,
clicks on the title, and writes down the call number on a piece of scrap paper. He finds two more like this: one the
Chicago City Guide
and another with a map on its cover, called simply
Chicago.
He writes those down, too.

Then he realizes that all the call numbers are listed in Adult Reference. Upstairs, where the adults read adult things. Upstairs, where he’s only ever been once, looking for his mom. Upstairs: where kids don’t go.

Joel’s hands are in fists as he climbs the blue steps, up one flight, then another. At the top, huge windows reach up to the high ceiling on one side, a balcony on the other; in the center, stacks of books stand tall between huge purple columns. A clock big enough for its own tower hangs over a workstation, every second a huge stride.

“May I help you, young man?” asks someone behind him. Joel’s posture goes proper; he feels like the whole world heard the question.

He turns to see a sandy-haired man with a pen clipped to the neck of his sweater who’s up from his seat at a reference desk. He smiles, but it seems like the second part to his question. His front teeth are crossed and pretty soon his arms are, too.

“Do you need help?” he asks.

“That’s okay,” Joel says, holding up his scrap of paper. “I know where to go.” Both these statements are untrue, but the answer he’d have to make up would be much easier to screw up. He makes a beeline for the stacks at the other end of the room and hopes that the F-500 aisle is there.

Thankfully, the F section is halfway down the lane; he disappears into the stacks. He runs his fingers along the book spines, his eyes along the numbers. He finds his first title on the top shelf: a heavy, spiral-bound directory—the Rand McNally guide. He tucks it under his arm and moves on.

The second title, the city guide, is nowhere to be found. Joel rechecks his numbers and re-rechecks the place where the book should be, but it’s not there. He checks one more time to be sure and then crosses the lane, the giant clock reminding him it’s ticking.

The third book,
Chicago,
is there all right, and it has a colorful, detailed map that folds out from the inside cover. The problem is, it’s from 1982, and with all the construction that goes on in the city on a daily basis, Joel’s pretty sure things have changed. Nineteen eighty-two? That’s back when his dad was a kid. Joel can’t imagine that at all.

He shelves the book and takes the Rand McNally guide to the farthest set of windows. There, wooden tables are set for researching and reading. He chooses one of the thronelike chairs, its back well over his head, takes off his backpack, and opens the directory.

And immediately realizes it isn’t going to be easy to find 26th and California. The maps only feature small corners of neighborhoods with no apparent order. In the back, the street index lists at least thirty California Avenues. The first one references a map of 87th Street; the second is in a town he’s never heard of, called Mundelein. He selects a California Avenue at random and comes up with a map of 21st Street—so close to the courthouse—but the pages before and after do not show 26th Street.

He’s flipping through the maps one by one when the librarian from the reference desk closes in.

“Did you find what you were looking for?”

Joel looks up at him, lets Rand McNally do the talking.

“Do you have a parent with you? You need adult supervision to sit here.”

“My dad is parking the car.”

“Perhaps you can wait for him downstairs?”

“Can I bring this book?”

“You
may.
”

Joel scoots off the seat, pulls on his pack and tucks the book back under his arm while the librarian waits, probably to escort him.

“I know where to go,” Joel says, “I have a map, see?”

“Fair enough,” the librarian says, though it isn’t, really, because all Joel needed was a little time to figure out his route. Still, the librarian lets him go, and he shouldn’t have, because as soon as Joel gets back downstairs he disappears down an empty aisle in the kids’ section, tears the security strip out of the directory, jams it into his backpack, and ducks out the door to get Butchie.

15

God, Pete hates hospitals.

He bypassed the emergency room when he arrived—parked in the visitors’ lot, went around the side to the ambulance entrance and straight through to security—but even there he felt helpless, knowing that at least one trauma patient in the next room would be at the tail end of his golden hour, that precious little window of time when the doctors have done everything they can and still he lives or he doesn’t.

Joel was all he could think about and he couldn’t think about Joel. Not there.

The guy at security told him Aaron Northcutt was still in surgery, so Pete went up to the nurses’ station and left his number with a nurse he called Madame to go along with her butterfly-theme scrubs. She only raised one eyebrow, no smile, so he wasn’t sure if she got the joke, but she said she’d call when Aaron woke up. She also told him a detective was already talking to Brett and Colleen Northcutt, and she was nice enough to point out Brett and Colleen. She didn’t need to point out Step Lyons.

Pete was surprised McHugh sent Step for the interview; it was clear from the Northcutts’ body language that the dick was leaving a real bad taste in their mouths. No surprise, if you know Step. His name’s spelled Stephen, pronounced like
even,
but he’s been Step since he recruited. The nickname was sealed on his hiring application; either he didn’t fill out the scantron right or the computer missed the last letters of his name. Ever since, he’s been big on details, which makes him a real pleasure since victims have trouble remembering a thing the same way twice.

At first it seemed to Pete that Colleen was the one who had been shot, the doubling over and the tears. Brett must have been pretty familiar with her behavior or else he was in shock, because he didn’t seem to notice when she collapsed in a waiting-room chair; he just went on answering Step’s questions in earnest. But then something turned, and Colleen got up and had something to say, and then Step was the one on defense, Brett taking over the inquiry.

Pete skipped saying hello and made a note to prepare for resistance when he returned.

After that he went back up to the old neighborhood for a street-by-street search. Just in case Joel was feeling sentimental. The sun was just making its appearance. The old house looked exactly the same, except for everything that was different. While he drove around he talked to Butch despite the dog’s absence—it was habit—but when he started to see things that weren’t there, peripheral ghosts, he knew he had to take a break. He drove back past their new place and opted for the Golden Nugget on Lawrence for a seat, a paper, some eggs. He lost his appetite and took a cup of coffee to go when he saw himself on the front page.

In the parking lot, he sat and watched the Ravenswood trains across the way, one running suits to Loop jobs, the other running north, maybe nannies going to the nice houses up there in the nice suburbs.

At about eight o’clock Nurse Madame calls, whose actual name turns out to be Madeline, which was probably why she looked at him funny when he made the joke. He heads back to the hospital as the rest of the city starts waking up.

When he gets there this time, he parks the squad right on Wellington Avenue, steers clear of the ER, and takes an elevator back up to the SICU waiting room. The doors open on a healthcare debate, this one started by a patient who is trying to sign himself out, drip bag in tow. He’s keeping his voice down with Madeline but it’s clear his insurance doesn’t cover preexisting conditions, and that he thinks a third heart attack falls into that category. Madeline looks like she’s already tried to reason with him, and keeps checking over her shoulder, in security’s direction. Colleen sits alone behind them looking at the floor; maybe because the man’s gown is open in the back.

Pete cuts in between Colleen and the guy’s bare ass and says, “Mrs. Northcutt? I’m Officer Pete Murphy.”

“We already spoke to a detective,” she says, raising a slack, thin-boned hand to meet his. Her eyes never make it past his badge.

“I understand Aaron is out of surgery,” he says. “Did everything go okay?”

“He’s got a tube in his chest and he’s puffed up like he’ll pop. The doctor is in there now trying to manage something called subcutaneous emphysema. Would you call that okay?”

Pete gets out of the way for two security guys who’ve come to end the Blue Cross/Blue Shield debate. “None of this is okay,” Pete says. “That’s why I’m here. Is Aaron awake?”

“Oh he’s awake, and terrified. Says it feels like he’s got rice crispies in his skin.”

“I’d like to ask him some questions, when the doctor is through.”

“I thought the other detective—Lyons?—he said he was coming back.”

“My apologies: he will be.”

As security gurneys the troubled patient, Colleen looks at Pete; her flat smile could go either way.

He says, “Lyons isn’t known for his sensitive side.”

“My husband wanted to kill him.”

“Is your husband here?”

“He’s in the corridor. On the phone. It’s the only place he can get a signal.”

Pete sits down, leaving a seat between them. She adjusts her boatneck sweater and toe-tips her ballet slippers—a pair much like McKenna has, though from the ankles up, this woman’s body suggests more than a day or two of dance class. Her skin is perfect, save for where it’s tagged by dark moles: she is young. She must have been a very young mother.

“I have a teenager,” Pete says. “A girl. Fourteen years old.”

Colleen thinks about that and says, “You also have an agenda.”

She pulls one leg up underneath the other, turning toward him. “Look. I know you guys have a job to do, but you can’t discount the emotions involved. Aaron was still in surgery when Lyons came and told us about Zack. The boys are friends.”

“Actually, we have to discount the emotions involved. We can’t charge Zack based on how your son feels about him.”

“I know. I guess I know. There’s got to be culpability somewhere. But is it on Zack? That I don’t know. He has no home life, no guidance. Some parents say he’s a bad kid; I say he doesn’t know where he fits. Is that his parents’ fault? Sure. But Zack’s the one who keeps making bad decisions. Seeking attention from the wrong crowd. Aaron’s tried to help him—I’ve even tried to help him. Last year, I bailed him out so that he wouldn’t miss finals. Does that mean I’m responsible? Maybe I am.” She pulls her leg up now, forehead against her knee, and shuts her eyes.

Pete says, “It was an accident, Mrs. Northcutt. You aren’t to blame and to be honest, I’m not sure Zack is, either. That’s why we need to find out if Aaron tells the same story Zack did.”