“Can you see them?”
Rodriguez pointed to a row of rooftops. I saw them, smal mounds, at least one hunkered down at the corner of several buildings along the run of tracks.
“So they real y put them in?” I said.
“Yup. Federal snipers, covering selected stations and then scattered along the entire route. They’re not ful y deployed yet. But, of course, they started here.”
“Press is going to love this.” I glanced up and down the street. “By the way, where is the Fourth Estate?”
Rodriguez grinned. “Wilson did get his way there. Pushed the fuckers back two blocks and completely off Southport. A security perimeter. No pictures of any of this. No bul shit live shots, either.”
I shook my head. “They’l get their pictures and they’l take the city apart for trying to keep them out of it.”
Rodriguez turned away from the street. “Right now, no one real y cares. The mayor just wants to get through today with no more bodies.”
“And you think this is going to work?”
The detective shrugged. “Wil it prevent him from hitting us again? Maybe not. But if he hits here, he’s a dead man. That much, I can guarantee.”
“That’s nice to hear, Detective.” We both turned to find Katherine Lawson walking toward us, badge around her neck, face pale and pinched. “Kel y, you want to walk with me for a minute?”
Lawson kept moving toward an empty end of the L platform. I fel in step.
“You want to put a bul et in this guy?”
I glanced at Lawson, who kept her eyes straight ahead as she spoke.
“Good morning to you, too, Agent Lawson.”
“Answer the question, Kel y.”
“I’m guessing a lot of people would like that,” I said.
Lawson stopped walking and jammed her hands into her pockets.
“I know it’s your mayor’s preferred solution,” she said. “And I don’t think my boss would mind it very much, either. Problem is…”
“Problem is, I’m not a hired gun. Even if I was, you have no idea who this guy is, where he is, or what he’s going to try next. And, by the way, for my money we’re talking two people here.”
“Maybe. Rodriguez already knows this, but I wanted you to hear it from me.”
“What’s that?”
“Most of the team wants you cut out of this investigation altogether.”
“And then there’s the people who want to put a bul ’s-eye on my back and use me as bait.”
“There is that faction, but the prevailing sentiment seems to be that you’re a distraction. Someone this guy picked out to screw up our focus.”
“And?”
“And therefore you’re going to be discarded.”
“At least you didn’t snicker when you said it.”
“Don’t take it personal y. Wel, maybe you should take it personal y. For what it’s worth, I disagree with their assessment.”
“How so?”
“Sometimes the Bureau skews facts to fit their theory of a case.”
“And you think that’s what they’re doing here?”
“Could be. This guy went out of his way to put you in the game. My gut tel s me it’s not something we should ignore.”
“So how can I help?”
“The phone cal yesterday. You said he mentioned something about Homer.”
“You mean glory and suffering? Zero-sum game?”
“Yeah, what was that al about?”
“You real y want to know?”
“I asked.”
“He was talking about the Iliad and the ancient concept of honor. According to the Greeks, you only earned honor through action, by defeating your opponent. And your measure of honor was in equal measure to the amount of pain you inflicted.”
“Zero-sum game?” Lawson said.
“Exactly.”
“So this guy is going to extract as much pain as he can.”
“If we were in Greece in the eighth century B.C., yes, that’s exactly what he’d do.”
“Great. And I assume you have no idea how any of that connects up to what we’ve got going on here?”
“If it was that easy, I’d have spoken up yesterday.”
“Not sure I believe that.” Lawson leaned a hip against the railing and looked out over Chicago’s rooftops. A federal agent looked back at us through the scope of his weapon.
“People are going to go crazy when they see this,” she said.
“Yes, they are.”
“I dug a little dirt on you, talked to people who have actual y worked with you in the field.”
“And?”
“Some say you have good instincts. The rest say you’re just lucky. And those are your friends.”
“What do you say?”
“I say we need a little luck.” Lawson turned her back to the street and folded her arms across her chest. She kept her eyes fixed on the wooden planks of the L platform as she spoke. “It has to be low-key. You work the case as an unofficial consultant. Your contacts are Rodriguez and myself. Above al, you stay away from the main investigation.”
“I’m getting that warm, tingling feeling inside.”
“You want to do this or not?”
I wanted to tel her about the mayor, about how he had already locked me up as the city’s “official” unofficial consultant. But then I figured what the hel, double-dipping was practical y a birthright in Chicago.
“You want to pay my daily rate?” I said. “Or a flat fee?”
“Work it out with Rodriguez. If you turn up any leads…” Lawson stopped and looked over again. “I mean anything of significance, you report it to me. Immediately. And then we decide what to do together. Are we clear?”
“One more question. Why take the chance?”
“With you?”
I nodded. “My experience with agents from the Bureau is they like to play it by the book. Even when they don’t agree with their boss.”
“How many female agents have you worked with?”
“You’re the first.”
“Exactly. The Bureau is only slightly less misogynistic than the Catholic church. Women have to work twice as hard and be three times as smart just to stay afloat.”
“And they need to take chances?”
“After a while, you figure, ‘Why not?’ Especial y on the big ones. Now, what are you going to need?”
I held up a finger. “One thing.” I wrote down Hubert Russel ’s name and number. “I need to hire this guy. He’s a little unorthodox and not real y an investigator, but he understands computers and he understands stealth.”
Lawson looked at the name. “Should I meet him?”
“I don’t see why.”
“What does he do?”
“What do we have so far? A woman shot at close range with a forty-cal, a sniper shooting, and a knife attack. No real pattern, except they al involve the city and, one way or another, the CTA. What else?”
“The bad guy reaches out to you on the phone.”
“That’s right. So we know he’s got an ego. Big surprise. But where’s the focus? What’s the overal pattern?”
“Maybe there isn’t any,” Lawson said.
“Maybe not. My guy wil create a profile.”
“I got a team at Quantico doing that right now.”
“Not like Hubert wil. Look, it might not work, but I think it’s worth a shot.”
“When can you get him up and going?”
“He already is.”
“Thanks for talking to me first, asshole. Keep me informed.”
My new favorite federal agent turned away just as my cel phone buzzed. I reached for it and a half dozen police radios exploded with sound.
CHAPTER 24
It was 9:45 when Nelson sent his text message. Robles checked it and turned the phone off. The morning rush along Lake Shore Drive was stil in ful throat, a solid line of cars creeping south at twenty miles an hour. Robles had moved forward a bit so he was u
nder the overhang of a tree and scanned the line of cars with the zoom lens of his Nikon. Then he pul ed out a smal set of binoculars and gave the road a second look. Robles didn’t know exactly what he was searching for: a face, a gesture, a moment, something that would tel him who lived and who died. At 9:51 he stowed the camera back in his duffel and pul ed out a rifle with a scope. He was used to the weapon now and it felt good in his hands. Using the trees as cover, Robles ran over the rifle quickly. He had checked it before he left, but wanted to make sure. Then he loaded it and leaned it against a tree. From his bag, the shooter pul ed out a folding bipod and set it up with a clear view of the Drive. He threw a smal bean bag behind the bipod, dropped to the ground, and lay there for a minute or more, using his binoculars to review the sight lines a final time. At 9:55 Robles put his binoculars away and crawled back to where he’d left the rifle. He slung it over his shoulder and moved forward again to the shooting stand. Gently, he lifted the weapon onto the bipod and seated the rifle butt in the bean bag. The morning sun was glancing off the lake, partial y blinding the drivers headed south and providing even more cover. Stil, Nelson wanted no more than a minute’s worth of shooting time. Robles let out a slow, even breath and eased his eye to the scope.
The first face he saw was that of Jessica Morgan, twenty-three years old and driving a Ford Focus. Jessica was a single mom, working as a paralegal at a Loop law firm and taking classes at night to earn her col ege degree. Jessica would never know about the law degree she’d have earned from the University of Chicago, her subsequent clerkship with a federal judge, and, eventual y, her own seat on the Il inois Supreme Court. Instead, Jessica smiled in Robles’ scope and pul ed an invisible strand of hair back from her face. Then she got an education in execution. The round shattered her windshield, hit her steering wheel, and struck Jessica just under the chin, kil ing her instantly. Robles, however, never saw the fruits of his handiwork. The clock was running, and his rifle was searching.
Peter Rubenstein was two cars away, driving an almost new Cadil ac Sevil e. Peter was sixty-three years old and a widower. His wife, Marcy, had died a year and a half earlier when she fel down a flight of stairs in their home. Rubenstein wept at her funeral and sold their house within three months of putting “his Marcy” in the ground. Now he lived in a high-rise condo along the lake, courtesy of his dead wife’s insurance cash. Peter was whistling and enjoying a view of the morning sun shimmering off the water. He’d never know his insurance settlement had been flagged by state investigators. Never know about the order to exhume Marcy’s body and the subsequent report that would have established her death as a homicide, the result of several blows to the head “inconsistent with a fal down the stairs.” He’d never get to hear the charge of murder laid against his name or feel the cuffs as they slipped across his wrists. He’d never get to know any of that, but he would get to see “his Marcy” sooner than he expected. Robles’ second round hit Rubenstein in mid-whistle, just below the left eye, tearing off most of his head and making life miserable for the undertaker when Rubenstein’s family insisted on an open casket.
Robles’ third shot missed everything. His fourth punched through the chest and burst the heart of forty-seven-year-old Mitchel Case, a second-rate accountant who would never find out about the first-rate affair his wife was having, not to mention the malignant tumor percolating inside his skul. Case’s Corol a was traveling at twenty-eight miles an hour when he was struck. The car hit the divider, jumped it, and plowed into a van headed north. That driver, eighteen-year-old Malcolm Anderson, would never meet his daughter, Janine, because she’d never be born. The only passenger in the van, thirteen-year-old Randal Blake, would have his left leg crushed in the wreckage, undergo four hours of emergency surgery at Northwestern Memorial, and survive. Randal would consider himself one of the lucky ones from that day on the Drive. He’d never know about his four years as an Al — American guard at the University of Michigan or the Hal of Fame career he would have enjoyed with his hometown Bul s. Never know about the
$113 mil ion he’d have earned, the wife he’d have married and grown old with, or the five girls he’d have watched raise families of their own. Instead, Randal would walk for the rest of his life with a limp and a cane. He’d die alone, at the age of forty-six, from complications due to hepatitis C, the disease of a junkie, which is exactly what Randal would become.
Three cars behind Mitchel Case’s car, Robles’ final round creased the roof of a black 2009 Audi and caromed away harmlessly. Inside, the driver took no notice of the metal ic ping, not with the horror show unfolding in slow motion around her. Rachel Swenson locked her brakes and heard the crunch as she hit the car in front of her. A half beat later, she felt another car plow into her from behind. At the same time her air bag deployed, knocking her sil y and preventing her from being impaled on the steering wheel. Rachel put her hand to her face and slipped the rearview mirror over. There was a cut on her forehead, and she felt a little dizzy, but she was alive and stil conscious. A car had jackknifed over the divider and a young black boy was halfway out of a van and moaning. She leaned her shoulder against the driver’s-side door and popped it open. Then Rachel was up and out of the car. There was a smel of raw gasoline in the air. A few feet away, a man was screaming that he had cal ed the police. Rachel could already hear the sirens. She walked down the line of wrecked cars. In one she could see a man with most of his head missing and a young woman crouched nearby, vomiting. Rachel hadn’t spent time at a lot of crime scenes, but she’d seen enough to know the injury she was looking at was not the result of any car accident. The black boy near the van moaned again. Rachel climbed the divider and picked her way around the wreckage. She’d do what she could. As she walked, she felt her cel phone in her pocket. She pul ed it out, dialed, and waited for the other end to pick up. That was when she saw the lone figure, across three lanes of highway, packing up a duffel bag and disappearing into a stand of trees.
CHAPTER 25
Rodriguez hit the intersection of Belmont and Racine at fifty miles an hour and climbing. He had his lights and siren on and was typing into a computer built into a console between us. I had just hung up with Rachel and was scribbling down everything she’d told me. Rodriguez finished with his notes and looked over.
“What do you got?”
“She said he was dressed in a dark-colored jacket and maybe jogging pants. Holed up on a little rise of grass, just west of the Drive.”
Rodriguez was at sixty now, moving east on Belmont.
“And she thinks he’s the guy?”
“She says he was packing a black duffel and running.”
“Hold on.”
Rodriguez typed a few more lines into his computer. Then he came back to me.
“You al right with this?” he said.
Rachel told me she was okay. She sounded okay. And she let me talk to one of the people on the road with her who assured me she was more than okay. So I let her tel me about the man on the hil. Let her talk me into going after him.
“I’m fine. What are we doing?”
Rodriguez swung a hard right onto Inner Lake Shore Drive. Traffic was at a standstil. Rodriguez cut back west and picked his way south down Sheridan.
“We’re setting up a perimeter from Halsted Street east, along the lake from Addison to North Avenue. We’re getting some choppers up, and I got the description out there. If he didn’t jump in a car, we got a chance.”
“How many did he hit?”
Rodriguez shrugged. “Don’t know. But it doesn’t sound good.”
The detective smoked his tires taking a left off Sheridan and gunned it the wrong way down Diversey, to a dead end and a parking lot. It was less than five minutes since the last shot was fired. The lot had three cars in it. Al of them empty. Rodriguez and I pul ed our guns and moved to the soccer fields that lay just beyond.
“The area she described is just over the hil,” Rodriguez said. “I’m gonna go straight up. You circle around to the
south. If he’s stil on foot, there’s a chance he headed that way.”
Rodriguez was right. If our shooter had headed north or west, he’d have to navigate a half mile’s worth of open ground. To the south was the parking lot. Beyond it, cover in the form of winding paths, trees, and a series of underpasses.
“Put me on your net so some cop doesn’t shoot me,” I said.
Rodriguez nodded. “You’re on it. Just don’t change clothes on me. Here, take a radio.”
The detective threw me a handheld and headed toward the hil. I checked the volume on the two-way to make sure it was squelched and started jogging south along a running path that skirted Diversey Harbor and Lincoln Park Lagoon. Two minutes and a hundred yards later, a dog stood at the top of a smal rise, wagging his tail for no apparent reason. I knew a little about dogs. Very little. My pup, however, rarely wagged without a reason, usual y because she saw something or someone. I pushed up the incline.
“What do we got here, boy?” I scratched the dog behind the ears. He wagged his tail even harder. Ahead, the jogging path dipped to the left and ran underneath a bridge that spanned Ful erton Avenue. I crept toward the black hole under the bridge. The dog stayed where he was. Smart dog.
CHAPTER 26
Robles wore navy-blue running pants, a blue hooded sweatshirt, running gloves, and a hat. He kept a snub-nosed revolver tucked in one pocket of his sweatshirt and a set of keys in the other. Ful erton Avenue above him was quiet. A chopper beat somewhere in the distance. Robles was twenty yards beyond the bridge when he heard someone cal out to the dog. Time was running thin. Nelson had stressed he’d have about ten minutes from his last shot to get to where he needed to be. That was seven minutes ago. Robles could have run for it, but he didn’t. Instead he veered off the path, into the scrub alongside the lagoon, and waited. He heard the crunch of gravel, the slosh of water, and the rumble of a garbage can as its cover was removed. A head peeked out from underneath the bridge. Then, a hand and a gun. Robles fired twice. A body fel back into the darkness. Robles looked around. There was a lot of swirl, but it was al stil a mile or so north, focused on the tragedy and neglecting the periphery. Just as Nelson had predicted. Robles stood up, brushed the dirt off his pants, and began to jog again. Fifty yards later, he found the building he was looking for, fitted a key into a lock, and disappeared inside.
The Third Rail mk-3 Page 8