The Third Rail (24 page)

"Michael, you found it."

"Sorry, I'm late. I got tied up."

I moved a little closer. Katherine Lawson was wearing a
black leather coat and kept her hands in her pockets. Behind her was a row of old lockers, most with their doors missing.

"What do you think of the place?" She withdrew a gloved hand and swung it around the tiny room. "Maria Jackson's body was found about a hundred yards down the tracks from where you came in. They found this little shed while they were working the scene."

"That's nice, Katherine. Why did you want to meet me here?"

I had wanted to set up my own meeting with the FBI agent and struggled with time and place. Then she'd called late last night and did the heavy lifting for me.

"You mean why not a drink like normal people?" Her laugh sounded flat and never reached her eyes. "There's a few things we need to talk about, Michael. A few things we need to take a look at."

Lawson pulled a sheaf of papers from her pocket. "You asked about Jim Doherty's red binder the other day. I copied some pages for you. Thought you might want to take a look."

I shook my head. "Had a long talk with the mayor. He convinced me the binder really wasn't worth my time."

"I'm sorry about that," she said. "I didn't realize Homeland Security would get involved. Otherwise, I never would have filed that report."

"You heard about their visit?"

"I got one, too. There's something about the Doherty thing that bothers me, Michael. Something I think we're missing."

"I know what you mean."

She held up her fistful of paper. "It has to do with the binder and the tracks near where Jackson's body was found. Let me show you, then you can take a pass if you want."

I sat down opposite her on the bench. "There's something else we should talk about first."

"What's that?" she said.

I took out my folder and placed it on top of the paperwork she had already spread out between us. She looked, but didn't touch.

"Does this have to do with Doherty?" she said.

"Open it up and take a look."

She flicked the edge of the file open. I kept talking.

"The top set of papers comes from 1978. Outlines the ownership structure for Transco and its holding company, CMT."

Her eyes shimmered in the jaundiced light. "The company you think caused the old train accident?"

"Yeah."

Lawson flipped through the documents and twisted her face into a smile. "Is this supposed to mean something to me?"

"I'm guessing you came across it when you worked the case on Father Mark. He was ripping off his parish, and someone made the mistake of giving you a look at the archdiocese's books."

"Everyone knows I worked that case, Michael."

"What they didn't know about was CMT Holding."

Lawson didn't say anything, but I could see the muscle in her jaw pumping like a piston.

"You know how much money the Chicago archdiocese takes in every year, Katherine? A little more than a billion dollars. Cash money. Tax-free. Not even an IRS form to file. Nice work if you can get it."

I waited, but Lawson just sat there, hands in her pockets, and listened.

"CMT was set up in the 1920s. It's a tangled trail, but a lawyer named Bernstein provided me with a map. The seed
money came from the archdiocese's coffers. A greedy cardinal's way to secretly invest in a little property, a few railroads. Make a little coin he didn't have to share with the parishioners. CMT got bigger over time. Cardinals and bishops got greedier with each passing generation. Created a web of related businesses, subsidiaries like Transco. Then 1980 happened. The crash at Lake and Wabash and eleven people dead. Blood the men in collars needed to get clean of. So they divested themselves of everything, dissolved CMT, and walked--no, ran--away and hid. Then you came along."

Finally, something had caught her interest, and Lawson stirred. "Excuse me?"

Among other things, the Honorable John J. Wilson keeps a man named Walter Sopak on his personal payroll. Sopak is what's known as a forensic accountant--a guy who knows how to hide your money and how to find out where someone else's is hidden. I've never met the man. Wilson made sure of that. But I pulled Sopak's report on Katherine Lawson from the folder.

"You make a little over a hundred thousand a year, Katherine. Your parents are dead. They left you a nice set of teeth and a pile of debt. Still ..." I tapped Sopak's report. "There's the condo in Sante Fe and a timeshare in Italy. Hidden pretty well, but there they are. And then there's the money that goes offshore and just disappears. Even the guy who put this report together wasn't sure he found it all, but he made a pretty good guess."

"Guess at what, Michael?"

"He figures you're good for maybe one to two million a year, minimum, from whoever keeps the church's secrets. Maybe seven to ten million total over the last five years."

"You're crazy," she said.

"Am I?"

"Either that or you need a long vacation."

I pulled out the unregistered .38 Rodriguez had given me to use on Doherty. "You got a gun, Katherine?"

She ran her eyes to the tracks behind me and back. "I have my service weapon, Michael." She showed me the Glock on her hip.

"Stand up, take it out, and put it on the ground."

She did.

"Now, what else do you have?"

"What the hell does that mean?"

"You want me to cuff you and run your pockets?"

She pulled a black-handled revolver out of her coat pocket and laid it on the ground beside the first.

"Why the second piece, Katherine? I'm thinking you might be worried about our talk the other day? Maybe take me for a walk down the tracks?"

"You've been under a lot of stress, Michael. Just put the gun down and we'll figure it out."

I pulled an envelope from my pocket. Inside it was a stack of photos. Ordered and marked. I laid them faceup on the bench.

"You know what that top picture is?"

She shook her head.

"It's a shot taken from one of the mayor's traffic cameras. Wilson likes to ticket people 24/7. Anyway, this one is set up a half block from Hubert Russell's building. Shot was taken the day he died. You see the black SUV there?"

She took a look at the shot, but didn't seem all that interested.

"That's your car, Katherine."

"Of course it is. I was back and forth processing that scene."

"Take a look at the time stamp. Four-twenty p.m., twenty minutes after Rodriguez talked to you on the phone and almost a half hour before the first agents got there. Agents you sent."

"This is bullshit, Michael. Put the fucking gun down."

"Flip over the next picture, Katherine."

"No."

"Flip it over," I said and felt the mist begin to rise behind my eyes. Maybe she felt it, too, because she turned up the next picture. It was one of Marge Connelly's autopsy photos.

"This is a shot of Hubert's wrist. Actually, it's the back of his left wrist. Remember the ME told us she found some marks that might have come from a set of cuffs? I took a closer look after you left and found something else."

I pointed with one hand, kept the gun steady in the other. "You see the round mark there? It's actually a bruise. Made at roughly the time of death. Flip over the next photo."

This time she did it without complaint.

"This is a blowup of the same shot," I said. "Now you can see the indentations in the skin. The ME thinks they were made by a ring. She figures someone was wrestling with Hubert, maybe trying to bind his wrists or slip on a set of cuffs."

I flipped over the last photo myself.

"The state has this computer program that can enhance these things even further." I pointed with the tip of the barrel. "Right here you can make out the
F
and a
B
pretty clearly. We checked the script. That's 'FBI,' Katherine, made by an Academy graduation ring. And you see this half circle here and the straight line beside it? Expert tells me that's a
K
and the beginning of an
M
. Initials, 'KML,' maybe? Katherine Marie Lawson?"

I looked down at her gloved hands, the FBI ring I knew she was wearing underneath.

"You want to tell it?" I said. "Or you want me to?"

Lawson raised her chin and didn't say a word.

"I don't know exactly how you found out about CMT and Transco, but you did," I said. "That was their mistake. Still, a couple of million a year was pocket change to keep you quiet, especially when laid up against criminal conspiracy and eleven charges of negligent homicide. Church doesn't need that kind of publicity. No matter how long ago it was."

"Don't underestimate the human capacity for greed, Michael."

"Fair enough. For a while, everything was sweet. You got your money and kept your mouth shut. Then James Doherty came along and started killing people. You saw the possible connection right away, but figured there was still no real danger, until I mentioned the old crash when we were at Four Farthings. That got things percolating. After that, you were keen to get a look at Hubert Russell's work, see where it was headed. When Hubert sent you his notes, you saw how good the kid was, how relentless he could be, how inevitable it was that Transco would be uncovered and the church exposed. Couldn't let that happen. Couldn't let the golden goose be killed. Could you, Katherine?"

"You're seriously unbalanced."

"So you killed Hubert instead. I don't know if anyone connected to the church was in on it. Or maybe you were just protecting an investment. Either way, you didn't plan it out the way you'd like. Didn't have time. When Rodriguez gave you Hubert's address and told you he was a possible target, you saw an opportunity. If Doherty had already killed Hubert, perfect. If not, you could take care of him and still try to pin it on
Doherty. So you hustled over to the kid's apartment yourself and found Hubert very much alive. He saw your badge and let you into the apartment without a second thought.

"Somewhere along the line you realized Doherty probably had to go as well. Before he could tell me what he knew about the church. Before he could convince me there was no way he killed my friend. You knew I was at Doherty's house, hunting him. So you headed down after you finished with Hubert. You got lucky, walked in on us, and shot Doherty where he sat."

"Is that it?" she said.

"One question. Why hang him?"

I could see the tumblers clicking behind her eyes, assessing the odds, figuring a way to play me. I could have told her not to waste her time.

"I'm guessing you only had your service weapon and couldn't use that." I shrugged. "If the Doherty angle fell through, there was always suicide. Hubert was young and vulnerable. As a fallback, it might have worked."

"You really think you can prove any of this?" she said.

"If whoever's been paying you talked, it wouldn't be a problem. But I'm thinking some people might look at the church as the bigger fish here. Decide to cut their deal with you." I raised my gun. "And I can't have that, Katherine."

I watched as reality sank in and the hard sheen cracked, then crumbled. Her features fell off her face, one by one, sucked backward into a hole punched by fear. Not of being poor. Nor of being alone. Simply of being dead. Dead and lying in the dirt and soot of Chicago's subway.

I read all of that in her face. And then she looked behind the gun. To the person holding it. And Katherine Lawson began to rally.

"You can't do it," she said, more to herself. "You couldn't
pull the trigger on Doherty. You couldn't pull the trigger on Robles. You can't do it now." And then she smiled. And that was a mistake.

I lowered the gun and shot her once in the thigh. The recoil echoed off the hard walls and the shell casing tittered as it bounced off the cement floor. Katherine staggered against the lockers, grabbed at the bench, and fell, scattering papers and pictures all around her. I stepped over and felt the vest under her coat.

"I thought you'd wear a vest. Figured it had to be a head shot."

She had both hands pressed to her leg and bit against the pain. Then she looked up and shook her head.

"You still don't have the stomach, Michael. You never did."

I pressed the gun to her temple and let her rethink things. Then I raised the butt and cracked her once along the side of the skull. She fell back against the wall, unconscious. I checked her pulse, then her leg. She'd live. I pulled out her cuffs and shackled her to a locker door. Then I pocketed her cell phone, collected the paperwork I'd brought on CMT, and left the subway.

Katherine Lawson could not have been more wrong. It was easy to pull the trigger. Too much so. The courage lay in putting the gun back in my pocket and walking away.

A
solitary figure stepped out of the black and walked along the tracks, a thin pistol in his right hand. There was no sound, save his own languid footsteps and the rats, scratching against the darkness. The man moved closer to the wall and stopped. He'd tracked the woman here, then waited. He'd heard the voices, but couldn't make out any words. Then, the gunshot. Maybe someone had done the man a favor. Now he'd find out.

Just ahead, he saw a shallow pool of white floating against the black. The man crept closer and clicked on his flashlight. She was crumpled in a corner, eyes closed, breathing even. Her left hand was cuffed to a locker, and she'd taken a bullet in the leg. The man crouched down to take a closer look. Flesh wound. Hardly this woman's biggest problem. He glanced at the scatter of paperwork on the floor, but didn't bother with any of it. He hadn't been told to read anything. Hadn't been told to collect anything. And the man did what he was told. He compared the woman's face with the picture they'd given him. Then he stood up, raised his pistol, and fired twice. Two tiny pops. Two small holes.

He checked the woman again. Satisfied, the man slipped the pistol into his coat and pulled the gray cashmere close around him. Then he turned and walked away, his left foot dragging behind him. The man hated rats and could feel them as he walked, staring out at him from the darkness.