The Innocence Game (3 page)

“Z just e-mailed me. She got the okay from the clerk’s office for tomorrow. It’s a Saturday, but I guess the county people are there in the morning. You guys have cars?”

We both nodded. Sarah slumped into the booth. Havens was back in control.

“Here’s what I’m thinking,” he said. “One of us takes the records center. Goes through all the paper files on Harrison and pulls out whatever’s relevant. The other two go to the evidence warehouse. See what’s there.”

“I’ll take the records center,” Sarah said.

I looked over at her. “Evidence warehouse sounds like more fun.”

“Picking through the bloody clothes of a dead little boy? No thanks.”

Havens shrugged. “Fine with me. I’ll e-mail the addresses to both of you. They open at nine. Z suggested we get there first thing. Joyce, why don’t I meet you there…”

Sarah’s head snapped to one side as Kyle Brennan slammed back into the booth beside her. He had both elbows on the table and his nose pressed close to her cheek. “Miss me?”

Sarah looked more embarrassed than alarmed and pushed at her ex’s forearm. He crowded in closer.

“Fuck these losers. Let’s get out of here. Head into the city.” Brennan put a hand on her shoulder. His other went under the table.

“Kyle, no.”

“Hey, asshole.” I made a move toward Brennan, not really sure what I hoped to accomplish once I got there. Fortunately, Havens beat me to it.

He dragged Brennan out of the booth and put him on his belly. It took all of three seconds. Brennan flopped like a fish at the bottom of a boat. Havens kept a knee in his spine and a forearm across the back of his neck. “You need to calm down.” Havens cinched his knee down a touch so the side of Brennan’s face pressed flat against the sticky barroom floor. There was a low hissing sound. That was Brennan, struggling to breathe.

“Hey, man. Let him up.” One of Brennan buddies stepped forward, but not too far.

“He’s fine,” Havens said. “Just taking a little time-out.”

Brennan grunted and flipped onto his side, swinging an elbow in the general direction of Havens’s jaw. Havens leaned back and looped one arm around Brennan’s neck, his Adam’s apple fixed firmly in the crook of Havens’s elbow. Havens flexed. Brennan’s eyes fluttered, then closed. His chest didn’t look like it was moving. The already quiet bar had turned into a morgue.

“Let him up,” I said. Havens glanced at me, then released his grip. Brennan’s pals rushed in. The football player hung limp in their arms.

“Sit him up straight,” Havens said. They did. Havens punched Brennan once in the back, between the shoulder blades. He coughed and his eyes flickered open.

“Get him out of here,” Havens said. No one had to be told twice. Havens slid back into the booth. I looked around for Sarah.

“She left,” Havens said. “Probably too embarrassed.”

I took a seat across from him. We were quiet for another minute.

“Where did you learn all that?” I said.

“All what?”

“Putting a guy out like that?”

Havens shrugged. There was a long scratch and fresh blood on his forearm, but he didn’t seem to notice.

“You lift weights?” I said.

“I used to long line tuna out of Chatham and Gloucester.”

“New England?”

“I fished full-time for three years. Worked Georges Banks a week, month, at a time. Slept on the boat. Snow, ice. All kinds of seas. Hauling heavy lines and nets.” Havens moved his hands to cup his pint. “Don’t need weights when you’re doing that.”

“Huh.”

We fell silent again. I could hear some talk at the bar, but everyone seemed to be giving us a wide berth. Havens began to pull papers out of his backpack. “You want to take a look at what I’ve got on the case?”

“Why not?”

He nodded like that was the only sensible answer. “I heard you’re one of the stars up here.”

“Up where?” I said.

Havens raised his chin. “Here.”

“I don’t have time for that stuff.”

“What stuff?”

“The Chicago-Northwestern stuff. Our school’s better. More rigorous. Academically pure. All that garbage.”

“You think that’s what goes on in Hyde Park?”

“It goes on in Evanston. And it’s what I’m hearing from you. Listen, I know you’re a smart guy. Now, I know you’re a badass, too. Good for you. Great for you. I probably couldn’t beat myself up. But I’m smart. Never been a problem. Sarah’s no dummy either.”

“You sure about that?”

“Positive. So why don’t we cut the bullshit and work together. You’re a goddamn lawyer on top of everything else. Let’s just get into the cases. Your case, Z’s case, any case. Pick one out and see what we can dig up.”

“Is Gold okay with that?” Havens said.

“I don’t know Sarah that well, but I think she’s a pretty straight shooter.”

“What does that mean?”

“Fucked if I know. Just thought it sounded good.”

Havens cracked a smile that seemed genuine enough and lifted his mostly empty glass. “You got a thing for her.”

“Hardly.”

“Been like that since when? Sophomore year?”

“Fuck you.”

Havens widened his eyes and opened his mouth to laugh. His teeth, of course, were white and straight. “Jesus Christ, Joyce. Lighten up.”

Jake Havens could kick the shit out of me in any one of a half-dozen ways, but I didn’t care. I never cared. And that had gotten me a nice ass kicking more times than I cared to count.

“Can’t blame you,” he continued. “We all got one, right? Maybe more than one. Besides, she’s pretty hot.”

“Yeah, Sarah’s hot.”

“But it’s her world and you’re just in it?”

“Something like that.”

“ ‘Something like that.’ Exactly like that. Welcome to the club, my friend. I’m gonna get another one. You?”

“Thanks.”

Havens headed to the bar.

“Hey,” I said.

Havens turned, empty pint glasses in both hands.

“You really think Harrison’s innocent?”

Havens slipped back into the booth. “Forget the letter. You saw the shirt. If that’s from the victim, it should be easy to prove. And if it
is
real…”

“Then it was sent by the killer.”

“Not necessarily.”

I tilted my head and frowned. “That’s what you told Z.”

“But that’s not the only possibility, is it? If that shirt was part of the state’s evidence, anyone with access could have sent me a piece. Cop, prosecutor, evidence tech.”

“A whistle-blower?”

“Could be. Someone sending us a message. Telling us this guy was framed.”

“Is that what you think?”

“I don’t think anything…until we see the evidence.”

“But why send the letter to you? Why not the
Trib
?
Sun-Times
? I mean, you’re a student in a seminar.”

“You don’t think I’ve been wondering that myself? Read the file.”

Havens went to get our drinks. I picked through newspaper clippings from the murder. At the bottom of the pile, I found the original police report filed on Skylar Wingate’s disappearance. Clipped to the back was a photo from the crime scene. A shallow hole in the ground, a small white body bag beside it. I ran a finger over the picture. Then I put it aside and began to read.

Skylar Wingate was last seen alive by his older brother, Bobby. He told police Skylar left St. Augustine Elementary School on the city’s Northwest Side around 3:45 p.m., and walked south on Lemont Avenue. Skylar was headed home, less than a mile away. Skylar’s mom thought her youngest was with his older brother all afternoon and didn’t become concerned until Bobby showed up, alone, at a little after six. Fifty of Chicago’s finest went door-to-door, searching the white-bread neighborhood on foot until well past midnight. Skylar was described as four foot two, weighing sixty-three pounds, wearing gray pants and a black-and-white-striped shirt. Havens had underlined the last fact with a pen.

Detectives questioned Skylar’s family and friends in the first few hours of the disappearance and came up with nothing. According to the
Trib
, it was three days later that a hiker found Skylar’s remains in the Cook County forest preserve a mile away. Animals had dug up the body. A preliminary autopsy showed the boy had been stabbed repeatedly, strangled, and drowned before he went in the ground. I stopped reading as Havens came back with a fresh round.

“Well?” he said.

“I skimmed the police report and a couple of articles.”

“You see the detail on the shirt?”

I nodded.

“This case was big at the time,” Havens said. “You remember it?”

“I was eight.”

“Doesn’t matter. White kid, Catholic school, nice neighborhood. A lot of pressure to make an arrest.” Havens glanced out the window and checked his watch. “Shit, I gotta run.”

“We just got our drinks.”

Havens drained half his pint in one go, gathered up his research, and stood. “See you tomorrow, Joyce. Do yourself a favor and forget about Gold. Make life a lot simpler for all of us.”

I watched him walk out the door and down Sherman. The bar was packed now, and a gaggle of women hovered close by, ready to pounce on the booth once I’d vacated. I took a sip of my beer, but my heart wasn’t in it. I smiled at the women as I got up and presented them with their prize. One of them even smiled back. The other three pushed past, calling for the waitress and settling in. I wandered out of Nevin’s and squinted against a harsh, slanting light. It was just past six, still a couple of hours before darkness dropped over Lake Michigan. I walked down the street, thinking about Jake Havens. A horn beeped once from under an overpass. Sarah Gold sat in the front seat of a black Audi. She hustled me over with a wave of her hand.

“Get in,” she said. I did so without a word.

“Put your head down,” she said and scrunched low in her seat. I did the same and heard a car cruise past. Sarah popped up and turned over the engine.

“What are we doing?” I said.

“Following him.” Sarah swung into traffic.

“Following who?”

She pointed to a silver Honda, three cars ahead of us. “Havens.”

“Why?” The plan struck me as wonderful, although I had no real idea why.

“He’s up to something,” Sarah said. “And he’s holding all the cards.”

“What cards?”

“Everything. He doles out information to us as he sees fit. Heck, he was ordering Zombrowski around today.”

“And we’re going to get what out of this?”

“The upper hand.” A smirk curled the corner of Sarah’s mouth.

“What’s so funny?”

“Nothing.” She swung a right onto Dempster Street. “You don’t think it’s a good idea to be following him?”

“I think it’s a fine idea.”

“You’re being sarcastic.”

“Actually, I’m not.”

“He doesn’t interest you at all?”

“Not the way he interests you.”

“What does that mean?”

“Nothing.”

She glanced across the car. “Sounded like something.”

I pointed at the flow of traffic ahead of us. “Where do you think he’s going?”

“Tell me what you meant.”

“When?”

“Just now.”

“He likes you, Sarah.”

“That’s what you think?”

“Yes, that’s what I think. Watch where you’re going.”

She moved her eyes back to the road. “He doesn’t like me. And he’s not my type anyway.”

“Maybe you’re just pissed because he beat up your boyfriend?”

“Kyle’s not my boyfriend. And he got what was coming to him.”

We drove a couple more blocks in silence. I didn’t know what else to say. Havens had a thing for Sarah. And no one was going to convince me otherwise. I mean, why the hell wouldn’t he? Why wouldn’t anyone? The fact that she couldn’t see it didn’t mean anything. I was walking proof of that.

“What are we going to do if he catches us?” I said.

“We’ll tell him the truth.”

“Which is what?”

“He’s creeping us out. And we want to know what’s up.”

“That’ll go over well.”

We pulled up to a light. Havens’s Honda sat two cars ahead. I wondered if Sarah had ever tailed anyone before. All in all, I thought she was doing a pretty good job. We took a left on McCormick Boulevard, before turning west on Devon.

“He’s headed to the forest preserve,” I said.

“The what?”

“The woods. He’s headed to the woods where they buried the kid.”

Sarah hadn’t taken a look at the police report, at least not enough to put it together. So I did it for her.

“Skylar Wingate. The kid James Harrison killed. They found him down here.”

A sign flashed past:
caldwell woods
. Up ahead, Havens’s blinker blinked.

“He’s going in a side entrance,” I said. “I think there’s a small parking lot there.”

“What should we do?”

“Take a right.” We pulled into a warren of residential streets and parked.

“Come on,” I said, “before we lose him.”

We jogged back across Caldwell Avenue and stopped just inside the entrance to the forest preserve. I heard a car door slam and waited another beat. Then we slipped forward. Havens was just making his way down one of the trails. We followed.

Sunlight washed down the dirt path and cut a filtered edge through the trees. Sarah had a bounce in her step. I didn’t.

“What should we say if he sees us?” she said.

“I told you. I don’t know. This whole thing was your idea.”

Havens had slipped around a bend in the trail, maybe thirty yards ahead.

“Do you think he’s taking us to the crime scene?” she said.

“Be a good bet. We should probably get off the trail.” I found a gap in the trees and stepped into the shade. It had rained the night before and the ground here was still damp. The fecund smell of soil mingled with rotting wood and the faint metallic tang of the river.

“You’ve been here before?” Sarah was pressed up close behind me, and I could feel the swell of her blouse, firm against my skin.

“Yeah, I’ve been here.”

“Why?”

“Good running trails. Sometimes, I take my bike down here. Now stay close and be quiet.” I moved quickly through the trees, my eyes adjusting to the thickening darkness. Sarah struggled to keep pace. I went in about a hundred yards and waited.