“Yes, Mr. Mayor?”
“Stick it up her ass for me, will ya?” The mayor’s voice cracked at the seams with sudden laughter, before bursting over into some sort of demented fucking chuckle. I cut the connection and headed back into the bar.
“The mayor sends his best.”
“Does he?” Lawson said.
“Yeah, he’s a real prince of a guy.”
“He’s disgusting.”
“Well, there’s that, too.”
“He gave you the old pep talk, right? Make sure you nail the FBI broad, all that crap.”
“We really need to talk about this?”
“You’re right. No sexist pig is going to ruin our celebration.” Lawson raised her glass. “Here’s to Kelly. Taking care of the bad guys.”
I shook my head. “My gun hasn’t been fired, Lawson. You know that. So, what exactly did I shoot him with?”
She shrugged. “Don’t know. But if you didn’t shoot him, who did?”
“Exactly my point. If it wasn’t one of your agents, it had to be a third party.”
“And you’re thinking of the accomplice?”
“Yes, I am.”
“The accomplice no one believes exists.”
“Is that what they’re saying now?”
Lawson leaned forward and tapped the back of my hand. “That’s what they’ve always been saying. Listen, putting this guy down is no big deal. He killed four people and critically injured another. And that was just on the Drive today. Between you and me, it’s a blessing.”
“I didn’t shoot him, Lawson.”
She leaned back and sighed. “Don’t fuck up my case. It’s all nice and neat. Wrapped up and put to bed.”
“Not if there’s an accomplice out there.”
“There isn’t.”
“Then how did this guy get his head blown off?”
“You want to hear a theory?” she said.
“Love to.”
“You shot him, then dumped the weapon in the lake. Why, I’m not sure. Well, no, I am sure. He wasn’t an immediate threat to you and he was clearly going to be apprehended, so there was no way you could justify pulling the trigger legally.”
“So I used a second weapon and then got rid of it.”
“Gives you deniability when we have this conversation. Even a little insurance.”
“And kills someone you and the mayor both wanted dead.”
“Myself, the mayor. Everyone from here to Washington. For Chrissakes, Kelly, we talked about this.”
“You talked about it, but it didn’t happen that way. The trajectory of the bullet and angle of the wound will confirm it.”
“Assuming any of those tests are done.” Lawson nibbled at a pretzel and waited for me to see the light. Reality is relative, meaning it happened whatever way the Bureau says it happened.
“We’ll be at the mayor’s press conference tonight,” she said, “then issue a statement tomorrow, confirming the dead guy was our shooter. He was killed by an unidentified law enforcement agent as he resisted arrest.”
“You don’t believe that,” I said.
“I believe someone wants this to end, and that’s fine with me. An accomplice turns up down the line, I’ve moved on and it’s some other guy’s problem.”
“Look out for number one. Right, Lawson?”
“You were a cop in this town. You know how it works.”
I lifted the pint to my lips and drained it. The cold beer felt good at the back of my throat and I rattled the empty glass on the table between us.
“You want another one?” I said.
She shook her head. “No. I had two last night.”
“And?”
“Three drinks a week. That’s the limit.” She tugged a crumpled pack of cigarettes from her pocket and lit one up.
“Bartender’s not gonna like that,” I said.
Lawson slipped her shield onto the table. “I’m not a drunk, Kelly.”
“I didn’t say you were.”
She blew smoke in a cool, blue stream over my head. “I don’t even have a problem with it.”
“Okay.”
“Fuck you.”
The bartender got a nudge from a patron. I could see him starting over to us. Then he caught a glimpse of the badge and retreated back behind the taps.
“Why don’t you just tell me your story?” I said.
“What story?”
I spread my hands out, palms up.
Lawson let a smile slip. “Cops all have stories. Right?”
“I know I do,” I said. “Hold on while I get a beer.”
I went up to the front. The six people in the place now had an idea who we were and why we were in the area. I could feel their eyes on me as I waited for my pint. Finally, an old-timer at the elbow of the bar spoke up.
“You involved in that stuff down by the lake?”
His voice was full of smoke and whiskey. A doctor might call it a walking advertisement for emphysema. I found it comfortable.
“I was,” I said.
The old-timer coughed up some phlegm and rapped his knuckles on wood. Then he sank into his drink. I had the bartender back him with a second and carried my pint to the table.
“The locals love us,” I said.
Lawson glanced toward the taps. “Oh yeah?”
“Yeah.” I took a sip on my fresh pint. “Now you gonna tell me your story?”
“It’s nothing too spectacular.” Lawson stared at whatever was left in the bottom of her glass as she spoke. “Been an agent for almost fifteen years. Divorced the last five. It was mostly my fault. I let the job eat me up, and Kevin got sick of being in a relationship by himself. Packed up one day and left. Took our little girl with him.”
“He has custody?”
“The relationship was my fault, but the divorce was all him. At the time of the separation, Kevin knew I was heavy into one investigation and had two others in trial. I was putting in twelve-hour days and spending my nights working out the details for what we were going to do tomorrow.”
“And you were drinking?”
Her eyes crept up to mine. “You know how it is. Strategy sessions over dinner, head to the bar afterward. You’re working the whole time, but, yeah, there were a lot of late nights. Thing is, Kevin hired a PI to tail me.”
I whistled. Lawson nodded.
“No kidding. He got me on tape at some places on Rush. Pulled the bar tabs. Stuff like that. His attorney sent me the whole package one night. Told me it was all going into a custody motion. They’d paint me as a drunk, whether I was or not.”
“And you caved?”
“No choice. That kind of thing gets into a public hearing and the Bureau’s done with you. Especially a woman. So I gave him what he wanted.”
“How about your girl?”
“Her name’s Melanie.” Lawson’s face puckered around the edges. She wanted that second drink now, but there was nothing for it. “I saw her once a month for the first couple of years. Then Kevin got remarried. They had their own child. Now I don’t see her so much anymore. Sad thing is, I mind it less and less.”
“I’m not sure I believe that.”
Lawson tapped her fingers lightly on the table. “Thanks.”
I took another sip of beer. “You ever wonder if it’s worth it?”
“You ever wonder that when you carried a shield?”
I shook my head.
“Of course you didn’t. Nobody ever does. The job is the job and always will be. Thing is to make sure you got your bases covered.” Lawson shrugged. “I left myself vulnerable. I paid the price.”
“And you don’t plan on making that mistake again?”
Her eyes flashed for a moment, then went gray. She shook her head and rolled her empty glass between her palms.
“Do me a favor,” I said.
“What?”
“Keep the door open. Just for a day or two.”
Lawson looked up. “Why?”
“Yo
u said you thought there might be some other reason a killer would draw me into this case. Some other connection.”
“I’m listening.”
So I told her about the CTA crash at Lake and Wabash. Same spot on the L tracks, thirty years earlier to the day.
“Coincidence, Michael. And how does it tie into you?”
“I was on the train when it derailed.”
Surprise flickered across her face. “You must have been just a kid.”
“Nine years old. So you see, there’s more ‘coincidence’ here than just a date on a calendar.”
“I still don’t see it.” Lawson worried the edge of a bar napkin between her fingers. “I understand what you’re saying, but I just don’t see it.”
“Let my guy finish taking a look.”
“Herbert?”
“Hubert. Hubert Russell. Give him a day or two. If nothing turns up, you close the case and head on to bigger and better things.”
“When are you meeting with him?”
“Tomorrow.”
“You, Hubert, and Rodriguez, right?”
“Probably.”
“What’s up with Rodriguez, anyway?”
“What do you mean?”
“Never mind.” Lawson pushed back from the table. “Thanks for listening, Michael.”
“Like you said, we all have a story.”
“I have to head downtown. Go home and get some sleep. You look like you need it.”
“How about my angle?”
“I’ll give you a day. If there’s nothing there, you sign off on your statement and we all move on.”
She left without another word. I looked over at the old-timer, still sitting at the elbow. He shrugged. I climbed up on the stool next to him and bought us each a shot of Wild Turkey. The old-timer told me Lawson was a fine-looking woman. I told him she probably was, but I had something finer. And I wasn’t talking just about looks. The old-timer asked me what I was doing then, sitting there with him, drinking. I thought that was a good question and left the bar, feeling a little better about things and intent on tracking down my girl.
CHAPTER 29
I found Rachel inside an examining room at Northwestern Memorial. She was lying on a gurney and staring up at the ceiling while another woman shone a light in her eyes.
“They’re green and they’re gorgeous,” I said.
The woman snapped off her light and was about to call security when the judge intervened.
“Ignore him,” Rachel said. “He’s my boyfriend.”
Trumpets didn’t exactly sound as the last sentence rolled off her tongue, and I thought I might have been better served muttering non sequiturs with the old-timer at the bar.
“Family and friends are not allowed back here,” the woman with the light said. I glanced at her name tag: JAIME SINGER, ATTENDING PHYSICIAN.
“Sorry,” I said. “How long do you think she’ll be?”
The apology seemed to buy me some rope. Jaime even smiled as Rachel sat up.
“Actually, we’re just about done.” The doc turned to her patient. “Your X-rays show no damage and it doesn’t look like you sustained any sort of concussion. The cut on your head isn’t deep enough for stitches, so we’ll just stick with the butterflies. You still have a headache?”
Rachel shrugged. “It’s getting better.”
Jaime took out a pad of paper and began to scribble. “I’m going to give you something for the pain. Then maybe Lancelot here can give you a ride home.”
Jaime and Rachel looked at me and laughed. I didn’t get it, but that didn’t seem to matter. Then Jaime was gone. And we were alone.
“You okay?” I said.
“A little sore, a little light-headed, but I’m fine. What are you doing down here?”
I shrugged. “Came to get you.”
She sighed and held out her arms. I pulled her close.
“What happened at the lakefront?” she said.
“We can talk about it later.”
Rachel nodded into my shoulder.
“I’m sorry, Rach.”
She looked up. “For what?”
“This. What we talked about this morning. Everything.”
She shook her head. “This wasn’t what I was talking about. What happened to me today could have happened to anyone. In fact, it did happen to a whole bunch of other people. Except much worse. And none of them even knew you.”
She was right, but that didn’t touch the hollow inside, the fear that flared every time I saw the emptiness in Katherine Lawson’s eyes and wondered when it might again be mine. I folded my arms around Rachel, trying to capture what lay between us, trying to keep it safe.
“I love you, Rach.”
She drew me down and kissed me hard. “You better, pal. Now take me home. Hospitals give me the creeps.”
We filled her prescription at the hospital pharmacy and caught a cab north. On the drive home, she tucked the top of her head against my cheek and immediately fell asleep. I sat quietly, listening to the cabbie talk on his cell and watching the headlights drift past.
CHAPTER 30
Nelson sat in a jet-black Chevy, engine idling, watching the front door to the graystone. He’d dumped the rifle he used to kill Robles in Lake Michigan. Then he’d slipped onto Lake Shore Drive, where he’d mingled with the bewildered, the bloody, and the freshly dead before disappearing into the neighborhood.
Now he pulled a long knife from a towel on his lap. His mind cast back to the day Robles told him about the black case and the lightbulbs. His dead friend had taken them because it was 1998 and it was just that easy. The army was giving him the shove, why not make them sweat a little? Robles didn’t know exactly what the bulbs contained, just that he’d been given the job of guarding them, four hours a day, for three months inside a bioweapons lab at Maryland’s Fort Detrick. That was enough for Nelson. He took the case from his friend. Then he did some digging, and turned up “Terror 2000.”
Issued in 1998, the Pentagon’s classified report outlined potential terrorist threats to the United States. Prominent among them was something called the “subway scenario”: an attack involving the introduction of lightbulbs filled with weaponized anthrax into a major urban subway system.
The Pentagon was so concerned about such an attack, it authorized the lab at Fort Detrick to conduct experiments on its feasibility. The testing went on for five years, from 1993 through ’97. According to “Terror 2000,” some scientists loaded their lightbulbs with anthrax that had been genetically modified to be harmless. Others, however, insisted on the real thing for their tests. Nelson wasn’t sure which brand of bulb his friend had lifted from the lab. He was rooting for the latter, but didn’t really give a fuck. The lightbulbs were in place. When they fell, they fell. And Chicago would learn to live with the consequences.
Meanwhile, there were choices to be made and smaller, more personal bits of pain to inflict. A green and white Checker pulled up to the graystone. There were two people in the back, but only one got out. It was Kelly’s judge. She had a bandage on her head and kept her gaze to the ground as she disappeared into her building. Nelson waited for the cab to pull away. Then he slipped the knife under his jacket, eased out of the car, and walked toward her front door.
CHAPTER 31
I directed the cab north. Rachel had invited me to stay at her place, but I knew the day would hit hard once she got inside. So I told her to sleep in and call me tomorrow. I needed some sleep myself. And my dog could use some dinner. Or maybe it was the other way around. Either way, a nightcap seemed like it might make everything go down a whole lot easier.
I slipped in the door of the Hidden Shamrock at a little before nine, pushed past a knot of people, and headed to the back room. There was a scattering of patrons at some tables and four or five more lounging on soft couches arranged around a fireplace that looked like a living room. I skipped all of that and headed for the bar. If I’m going to drink, I want to sit on a straight-backed chair with
a row of heads on either side. If I want to sit on a soft couch, I go home. That’s where soft couches belong.
A bartender I didn’t recognize floated over and skidded a beer mat my way. “What will it be there, partner?”
He was an Irishman. That much I knew straight off. His hair was spiked blond with silver tips. He had a lightning bolt tattooed on his hand and danced a bit in his shoes as he stood.
“Give me a Booker’s neat,” I said.
“Booker’s neat, over.” He turned, grabbed a glass, and spun back to the bar. “So what’s shaking there, sir? Out for a little, you know?”
Large blue eyes rimmed in red rolled to the left, toward a couple of women perched at the end of the bar.
“I know those two. Mama.” He gave out a hoo-haw like Al Pacino in Scent of a Woman, dropped some whiskey into the glass, and pushed it my way. “If you want to be getting the ride, there’s the ticket, boyo.”
I took a sip and watched myself age in a bar mirror. The Irishman, apparently, required no response and kept talking.
“Name’s Des. The right honorable Desmond Walsh.”
I passed along my vitals.
“They’re all talking about that shit this afternoon,” Des said, lifting a foot and planting it alongside the speed rack.
“Lake Shore Drive?”
He nodded. “Couple of firemen came in. Told us it was an awful fucking wreck.”
I sat some more with my drink.
“Heard they killed the cunt,” Des said.
“Really?”
“Coppers blew the fucker’s head off. Too good for him, you ask me.”
“How do you know they got him?”
Des nodded toward a bank of TVs showing the Bulls game. “Mayor’s gonna be on tonight. Give us the old play-by-play.”
“Thank God for Mayor Wilson, hey?”
“Thank God for them coppers. That boy was never gonna see the inside of a cell. Not in this town.”
A waitress beckoned and Des wiggled his way back down the bar. The Irishman was right. Chicago wanted some blood spilled and they didn’t want to wait. Wilson understood that. So did Lawson. So did the media. They’d give people their dog-and-pony show and a head to stick on a pike. If I didn’t want to partake, that was fine. But the show would go on.
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