The Third Rail mk-3

by Michael Harvey

  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 smal 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 skul 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.

  “Tel 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 al took a little bit back in the day.”

  “The Iliad?”

  He nodded. “I told Robles about the choice Achil es 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.”

  “Achil es 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. Especial y when your own neck’s not on the line.”

  “You don’t think I’l pay the price?”

  “I don’t. Do us al 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 al started.”

  The first bul et pinned the ex-cop’s final words in his throat. He blinked once and tried to swal ow. Three more rounds punched across his chest. Then Doherty fel back over his chair. Dead.

  CHAPTER 45

  Katherine 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 al right?”

  I was staring at the kil er’s laptop and the remote that had fal en 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 cel. “Rodriguez told me to tel you Chubby came through.”

  I pointed to the laptop. “What about the video?”

  “He said he’d explain it al later.” She sat down at the table. “Now, why don’t you give me your end of this before we cal 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 stil look for Rachel while I kept this guy busy.”

  “Bul shit. 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, Kel y. You wanted this part to yourself.” She gestured to Doherty’s body.

  “You think I wanted to kil 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 al 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 stil 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 fil ed 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, al the words il — fitting.

  “She’s in rough shape, Michael. Physical y and mental y.”

  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 surveil ance 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 ful 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, Kel y. 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’l fil you in when you get back.”

  I looked through the front windshield. Federal agents had arrived in ful force and were starting to process the scene. Katherine was standing in a spil 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. “Actual y, 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 cal you back, Vince.”

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

  “Hubert Russel?” I said, my heart suddenly popping in the hol ow of my throat.

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

  “Where is he?”

  CHAPTER 46

  They 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 skul. I reached out, wanting to feel the weight. But he walked away from my to
uch and took his spot in the gal ery of dead faces, waiting, apparently, to witness my grief.

  “I’m sorry, Michael.” Lawson stood at my shoulder, her words tight in my ear. “I don’t know what happened to the team I sent in.”

  “It wasn’t you.” I stepped back from the ambulance and took a seat on the curb. “I was the one who waited. I was the one who decided he wasn’t a target. And I was wrong.”

  “I’m sorry.” Lawson crouched down and seemed to lose her train of thought, if not her composure, for a moment. “We were too late and I’m sorry.”

  I felt her hand on mine, her face shining white in the night.

  “Michael Kel y.”

  I looked up. A middle-aged black woman was standing over me, removing a pair of latex gloves. Marge Connel y spent her life in the company of death, her features ful of the hard grace necessary to the job. I had known her for more than a decade and seen the look before. This time I was on the receiving end.

  “Hi, Marge.” I stood up, Lawson with me. “This is Katherine Lawson, from the Bureau. Marge Connel y, Cook County ME.”

  The two women shook hands.

  “You two involved in this?” Marge said.

  “Hubert was a friend of mine,” I said.

  Marge raised her eyes a fraction and looked to the FBI agent, waiting for more.

  “We might have an interest in the case,” Lawson said.

  “This wasn’t a suicide,” I said.

  “Who claimed it was?” Marge opened the back door to the ambulance. The black body bag rested inside.

  “What did you find?” Lawson said.

  “Off the record? Death by asphyxiation. He was hung by a length of rope from his ceiling fan. How he got there?” Marge shrugged. “Just don’t know right now. Young man, though. And that’s an awful shame.”

  I moved closer to the bag. Marge slid down the zipper without a word. I took a last look, but my friend was gone, his features already cast by death’s heavy hand.

  “I should have something tomorrow,” Marge said and closed up the bag. Lawson nodded and thanked her. Marge climbed into the front of the ambulance. Then Lawson and I watched as they took Hubert Russel to the morgue.

  THE BLUE LINE

  CHAPTER 47

  Katherine Lawson sank into her seat and watched the wooden ties of the tracks flash beneath the window. The Blue Line train picked up speed as it left the station and leaned into a curve. Lawson laid her head against the glass, al owing the car’s motion to carry her back. The first image she saw was Hubert Russel, neck stretched, spinning slowly over his desk. Then came Kel y, eyes like open coffins, holding her hand as the lid slammed shut on his friend and dirt thumped al around.

  Lawson started and opened her eyes. Her train was pul ing into the station at UIC-Halsted. It was just midafternoon, and the car was thankful y empty, save for a woman with tired eyes who was heading to work in her Target uniform. Lawson slipped off her black gloves and flexed her fingers. Then she laid the gloves in her lap and folded her hands over them. They were diving under the city now, into the subway, barreling toward the Loop. She looked out the window, at the banks of lights clipping past as they raced along the tunnel. The papers Lawson had copied were in her bag. She pul ed them out and read through the material once again. Then she felt the key in her pocket. It opened the CTA access door near Clinton, the spot where they had found Maria Jackson’s body a week ago. Lawson checked her watch. Her meeting was set for five. Plenty of time. She stood up, put on her gloves and pul ed them tight. The woman in the Target uniform smiled as the train glided to a halt. Lawson smiled back. Then the doors slid open, and she stepped onto the dim platform.

  Lawson scraped her shoes through the dirt, looking up at layers of dust floating above her in various levels of light. Jackson’s body had been discovered less than a mile from where she was walking, but that wasn’t the federal agent’s concern. Her eyes fol owed a string of lights, running along the subway tracks and into the darkness. This wasn’t the sealed fluorescent lighting she’d seen on her ride into the city. These were lightbulbs, old-school, just as she remembered from the Jackson crime scene. And that bothered her.

  Somewhere, a rumble vol eyed and echoed. Lawson instinctively stepped back and touched the grip on her gun. She could feel the vibration through her feet, hear it in the steel. The rumble grew until the train seemed like it was right on top of her. Then she saw it through a gap, a leap of fury and light, three tracks over, blowing around the corner and down the tunnel. Lawson cast her eyes overhead and watched the bulbs sway, throwing shadows on the wal s around her. Then the train was past. The bulbs continued to rock in a subtle, declining arc, and soon the only sound was again the shuffle of her feet.

  Lawson walked for another ten minutes, then turned back toward the door she’d come in. She’d spend the rest of her day thinking about the subway, the lightbulbs, and her meeting, al of which was good-mostly, because it kept her from thinking about the rest.

  CHAPTER 48

  I remembered the smell of burned wax and perfume, a door opening and cool air sucking me down a dark hallway. I stepped into a narrow room with a single overhead light and a plain wooden table. The suit motioned me to sit. He passed some paper across the table. I signed. He read what I signed and nodded. Then he left the room and returned with a vessel made of plain black stone and sealed with white wax. I pulled the vessel toward me. It felt cold and heavy in my hands. I could smell the crush of dead leaves and saw a pair of thin, bloodless lips, set in a cruel line and stitched together with dead man’s silk. A shovel turned over in my mind, and the world went black. I looked up. The suit grinned and offered me the stubs of his teeth, sunken into yellow, swollen gums. I pushed the vessel back across the table and left. Voices chased me down the hall. I could feel their eyes as I grasped the handle on the front door and nearly took it off its spindle. Then I was outside again, into the sun’s blister, the blast furnace of South Central L.A., the storefront undertaker on his stoop, yelling now, telling me I needed to come back. There were more bills to pay. More credit cards to run. I shucked my coat over my shoulder and hit it. Walked along Florence Avenue for the better part of the day, feet melting into the pavement, sun bursting inside my head. I sat on a bench at a bus stop and closed my eyes. A couple of locals hit me up for money, but I shrugged them off. Buses came, buses went. Their exhaust fused with the heat and settled into a sludge that I breathed. Finally, the sun went down and a blessed cool came into the valley of the city. I opened my eyes to headlights from the traffic and the sun dissolving orange against a blue-black sky. I took a cab to LAX. The early flights to Chicago were booked, so I caught the redeye. I leaned back in my seat as the plane lifted off beneath me, thinking I had left my father behind. How wrong I was. MY EYES SNAPPED OPEN to a ceiling fan cutting lazy strokes through the late afternoon sun. My heart thundered in my chest, and my mouth felt parched.

  The phone rang. I checked cal er ID, lifted the phone, and dropped it back onto its cradle. Then I went into the kitchen and found the Macal an. Or what was left of it. The phone rang again. This time I picked up.

  “What the fuck are you doing?” Rodriguez said.

  I looked at the water glass of scotch in front of me. “Getting drunk. How about you?”

  “No one’s heard from you for a day and a half.”

  Actual y, that wasn’t true. Four days ago, I watched as they put Hubert Russel in a hole I’d dug for him. I spent the next three days at Northwestern Memorial. They let me in to see Rachel once. She cried until I left.

  “What do you want, Rodriguez?”

  “How is she?”

  “Nothing’s changed.”

  “You gonna try and see her again?”

  “They said they’d cal.”

  “You want to get a drink?”

  “I’l let you know if I run out.”

  Rodriguez grunted and hung up. I found an old pack of cigarettes and lit one up. The pup didn’t like that and went back
into the bedroom. From the bottom drawer of my desk I pul ed out a folder tabbed L.A. and opened it. On top was a police shot of my father, cold and stiff in a one-room SRO in South Central. Underneath, more of the same.

  I turned the picture facedown and picked up the phone. She answered on the first ring.

  “Yes, Michael.”

  “Anything new?”

  “From an hour ago? No, Michael, nothing’s new.”

  The woman’s name was Hazel Wisdom. She worked the day shift on Rachel’s floor. My contact at night was a nurse named Marilyn Bunck.

  “Did she eat lunch?” I said.

  “I don’t know, Michael, but I’m betting yes.”

  “Did the doctors see her?”

  “I told you. They see her every day.”

  “Did she talk to them?”

  “I wasn’t there when they examined her, but I know she’s getting stronger. It’s just going to take a while.”

  “Meanwhile, I need to keep my distance.”

  “It’s not distance. It’s space. Just a little space so she can heal.”

  “Doing nothing doesn’t work for me, Hazel.”

  “Real y? I hadn’t noticed.”

  “Don’t blow things out of proportion.”

  “You hung around here for three days, living on coffee and Snickers bars, sleeping on the floor when you weren’t staring at her door and haunting every nurse and doctor that came in and out of her room.”

  “Until your hospital booted me out.”

  “It wasn’t helping her, and that’s what’s important. Listen, if I could make it happen for you, I would. We al would. But it’s just not the way these things work. You’re in the business, Michael. You know.”

  She was right. I’d sat with plenty of them: fathers and husbands, boyfriends and brothers-victims once removed. Most would nod and gasp for air, hands clenching and unclenching, faces moving in broken pieces, lips mouthing questions for which there was never a good enough answer. And now I was one of them, asking a nurse to play God, wishing I could turn tomorrow into yesterday, wishing I could make Rachel whole. Hazel’s voice brought me back to the moment.