The Third Rail (15 page)

"Greedy fuckers. Must have busted through the lock on the door."

He ran a hand across her flanks, much like he'd size up a dog at the pound, checking to see what was broken.

"Beat you up pretty good, huh?" He spit on the tiled floor and uncuffed her from the pipe. Then he moved to a corner of the room.

Rachel pulled the torn pieces of her clothing together and took inventory of the rest. The boy had hit her a glancing blow, knocking her silly, but not completely out. Her cheek felt crushed, her left eye didn't work very well, and the bones in her jaw rubbed together where they shouldn't. She tried to flex her left hand and realized she also had a couple of broken fingers. Then she glanced over at her would-be rapists, one with his jeans still partially undone. Just kids. Fuck that. If God ever gave her the chance and the man who sat in the corner ever gave her his knife, she'd kill them all over again.

"You okay?"

His voice was rough, but welcome. She nodded and tried to stand up. The room around her tipped and tilted. She dropped to the floor and emptied her stomach against the wall.

"Take your time." The man was inspecting a long, black rifle and spoke without looking at her.

She wiped gingerly at the blood on her face and realized she was crying. Then she huddled back near the radiator. The man was talking to her, but his voice seemed far away.

"You understand what I'm saying?" The man was close now. She shook her head.

"No matter." He crouched down and shackled her again to the pipe. Then he left the room and returned, carrying a video camera and a tripod.

"Got a schedule to keep, Rachel, so don't fuck with me."

She watched him set up the tripod and mount the camera. He knew her name and had let her see his face, which meant
he was going to kill her, or expected to die himself. Or both. She tried to process that as he pulled the shade off a window, uncuffed her from the pipe and dragged her to a chair in the middle of the room. A thread of light wound its way into the apartment and, for the first time, she was able to get a larger sense of where she was. The door to the room she was in stood to her right. Behind her was a wall, with a huge hole in it, leading to a second room that dead-ended into a second wall. She had seen the holes before. Cops called them honeycombs, tunnels dug out by gangs and used to link apartments in CHA high-rises. There weren't that many public housing high-rises left standing in the city, and they were mostly abandoned. If that's where she was, there'd be no one close enough to hear her.

"We have to make a recording," the man said and moved the camera between her and the window. He shoved a piece of paper in front of her. "This is what you have to say. Play any games and you wind up like your pals over there. Do it right and you might get out of this room alive. Course a lot of that depends on your boyfriend."

For the first time she saw some emotion, a dance of light across pale blue eyes, then gone. The man turned his back on her and began to fiddle with the camera again. She looked at the watch on her wrist like it belonged to someone else. She was further amazed to discover it was still working and read 7:00 a.m. On cue, a church bell tolled out the hours. A lonesome siren picked up the note, its cry waxing and waning in the streets below. Over the man's shoulder, she could see Chicago's skyline sketched in subtle morning shades. And then she knew exactly where she was. It had to be.

"I think I'm going to be sick again," Rachel said, testing her jaw and finding she could talk.

The man turned back toward her. "Don't be," he said.

The siren was clearer now, harder and cold as it moved closer.

"If you want to do this, then hurry up," she said and hung her head low.

"Okay, we're ready." The man moved behind the camera. "Remember, say what's on the paper. Nothing else."

The red light flared just as the church bell was finishing, the siren moving in and out, looking for trouble in some other part of the neighborhood. Rachel put her hands on either side of her swollen face and rubbed her good eye gently. Then she looked into the camera. The man waited. Rachel gave it five more good seconds before she cast her gaze down and began to read from the paper.

R
ita Alvarez stood as we came in. The reporter shook hands with both of us, smiling brightly, but focusing mostly on the detective. Rodriguez answered the unasked question.

"This is Michael Kelly. He's a private investigator, attached to the task force. If it's all right with you, he's going to sit in."

Alvarez nodded. I didn't know the name, but I recognized the face. She'd been one of the media throng at the CTA shooting in the Loop. I'd thought she looked smart back then. Now I'd get to see if I was right.

"I know who Mr. Kelly is," Alvarez said. "And yes, by all means, I think it would be good for him to be here."

The three of us sat. We were in a small room used by cops to question suspects and potential witnesses. In Chicago, the questioning often continued until the latter became the former, so it all seemed to make sense. Alvarez had brought a slim buff-colored folder with her. She laid it down on the table and folded her hands over it as she spoke.

"Thanks for seeing me on such short notice. And so early in the morning."

Rodriguez didn't respond. Like any good cop looking to extract information, he'd let Alvarez do most of the talking.

"As I indicated on the phone, I have some matters I'd like to discuss in connection with the recent sniper shootings." The reporter dropped her eyes briefly to her folder, found nothing there, and looked back up. "I've come across some information that may be relevant to your case. I'm happy to share it with you before we go ahead and publish. In fact, I'd prefer to. But I'd like to get some assurances."

Alvarez waited. Rodriguez waited. I watched. Finally, Rodriguez spoke. "We're not in the business of giving assurances, Ms. Alvarez."

"Rita."

"Rita. I can get someone from County in here if you want. But if this is relevant evidence, I'd suggest--"

"Save it, Detective."

I smiled to myself. I liked Rita.

"If you don't want to talk, off the record, I leave and go with what I have. Then you can call in the state's attorney, subpoena me, or whatever else you want. But the information will be public ..."

I shuffled my feet and shifted in my chair. Alvarez turned on cue.

"And we may not want that?" I said.

Alvarez let the question hang, then moved her attention back to the detective.

"What sort of assurances are we talking about?" Rodriguez said.

"I want an exclusive on this story. Inside the task force. Access to the key players. Any breaks in the investigation before the competition, and a full, exclusive debrief after the case is put to bed."

"The case is already closed," Rodriguez said.

"Maybe you should take a look at what I have before you go too far with that."

That brought a grimace from the detective and a reluctant nod of the head. "Let's see what you got."

Alvarez pulled a single sheet of paper out of her folder and slid it, facedown, across the table. Rodriguez left the item untouched for the moment.

"How many people know about whatever it is we have here?" the detective said.

"Myself and my managing editor know about the letter's contents. This is a copy. I have the original in a safe place, including the envelope it came in." Alvarez shrugged. "It showed up sometime yesterday. We learned about it last night. There's no stamp, no postmark, and we're not exactly sure how it was delivered. We used gloves once we realized what we had. Still, you're gonna get my prints and probably prints from the mailroom. At least."

Rodriguez turned over the page. It was just a few lines, printed in block letters.

"I checked my notes and the wires," Alvarez said. "You guys never offered details on the weapons in any of the shootings. If this is all wrong, just tell me, and I'll write it off as a prank."

Rodriguez looked up from the letter. "What's 'another one' mean?"

Alvarez pulled out two more pieces of paper and pushed them over. "These came along with the letter."

The first page was a street map of the area near Clinton and Congress. The second was a duplicate of the subway map that had been left on my doorstep. The spot where Maria Jackson's body was found was marked with an
X
and the word
BODY
scrawled beside it in the same blue Magic Marker.

"Looks to me like a section of the subway," Alvarez said. "I'm sure the CTA can tell you exactly where to look."

The reporter read our faces and tried hard to keep the smile out of her voice. "Unless, of course, you guys already know everything I'm telling you."

Rodriguez pushed the pages over to me and leaned back in his chair. "Son of a bitch."

Now the reporter grinned for real. "I knew it."

Rodriguez tipped forward again. "We have our deal, Rita. Don't fuck with me on it."

"I came to you, Rodriguez."

"Yeah, well, don't get so fucking excited. Makes me nervous. Yes, the details on the weapons are correct."

"And the maps?"

The words came grudgingly. But they came. "We pulled a body from this location in the past twenty-four hours."

"Which means ...," Alvarez said.

"This guy has an accomplice," I said. "He's alive and he's not gonna just go away."

Rodriguez pulled the pages back over and took another look.

"The cardinals' hats and the city. Think he's talking about the archdiocese?"

I shrugged. "Probably."

"What about this last thing?" Rodriguez glanced at the reporter. "NBC?"

"We were thinking the NBC tower," Alvarez said.

Rodriguez nodded. "Targeting the TV station, maybe?"

"Could be something else," I said and moved over to a computer terminal in the corner.

Rodriguez and Alvarez looked over my shoulder as I Googled "NBC THREAT ACRONYM." It showed up as shorthand slang coined by the Department of Defense. NBC: nuclear, biological, and chemical. As in weapons.

Alvarez let loose a low whistle. "That works, too."

"I'm thinking we better get Lawson on the line," Rodriguez said. He picked up the phone, then put it down.

"What about her?" He pointed to Alvarez, who suddenly didn't seem so essential. The reporter pulled a Baggie from her purse. Inside it was an envelope and more sheets of paper.

"Let me guess, the originals?" Rodriguez said.

Alvarez nodded. "Might be able to get some prints. Maybe DNA off the seal."

"Gonna keep yourself relevant, huh, Rita? What else you got?"

"I'd like to think we're past that point, Detective."

Rodriguez was getting squeezed a little. Part of me thought he didn't half mind.

"Tell you what, we're gonna honor our deal. But for right now, we have to keep you somewhere close. Just not right here."

"The feds won't let me sit in?" she said.

"If we approach them about it this morning," Rodriguez said, "not a chance. Thing is, you're just gonna have to trust me."

"And what if I don't?"

"Then I put a set of cuffs on you and throw you in a room anyway."

"Fuck you, Detective." Alvarez pushed up from her chair, picking up her folder and the Baggie with the originals.

"Sit down, Rita."

Alvarez thought about it and sat. The detective pushed in a little closer. "I'm in this city for the long run. So are you. I'm also a straight shooter. You wouldn't be here otherwise. Work with me on this and you won't be sorry."

Alvarez glanced over, but knew better than to think she'd find anything in my face.

"I want a room with a phone."

Rodriguez shook his head. "No phone, Rita. No Internet. No e-mail. Not until we figure out what we're looking at."

"I want an update every hour. And I need to be able to file something for tomorrow."

The detective gave a short nod.

"Don't screw me, Rodriguez."

"I won't, Rita. Promise."

Then the reporter stormed out of the room and into solitary confinement. Sure, she caved. But she did it with a little bit of grit. In Chicago, that counted for a lot.

"WHERE'S THE REPORTER?"
Katherine Lawson was floating on a computer screen in a sea of cyberblue. We had filled her in on Rita Alvarez and scanned a copy of the letter and maps to her desktop.

"We have her on ice," Rodriguez said.

"What about the letter itself?"

"The original's right here." Rodriguez held up the Baggie.
"Looks like it was hand-delivered to the paper, but no one seems to have gotten a look at the guy."

"Wonderful," Lawson said. "Forensics is coming over to pick up the originals. And we're going to need to talk to the archdiocese."

"So you think this is real?" Rodriguez said.

Lawson rubbed the heel of her palm into her forehead. "I don't know what to think, except that we're all gonna look like a bunch of assholes if this thing blows up."

She was thinking about the press conference last night--the case they had already taken credit for solving.

"I'm gonna need to talk to the mayor," Lawson said. "Maybe get him on the phone with the church."

"This morning?" Rodriguez said.

"Sooner, the better. Meanwhile, I need to take a minute here with Kelly."

Lawson waited until the door closed behind Rodriguez before speaking. "I'm sorry, Michael."

"For what?"

"Mouthing off in the bar last night. Bragging about a case I thought I could bury."

"Forget about it."

"I don't think so. It seems like you've had a better grasp of things every step of the way. How is that?"