The Third Rail (25 page)

T
he call came at eight the next morning. I was up on Rachel's floor by eight-fifteen. Hazel was not there to greet me. Instead, it was a sad-eyed doctor named John Sokul. He slid a summary of Rachel's injuries in front of me.

"Just so you know what we've been dealing with, Mr. Kelly."

I scanned the sheet. A fractured skull, two cracked ribs, fractured collarbone, fingers, and cheek.

"As you know, there were two assailants," the doctor said. "According to Rachel, they hit her with a brick so she was at least partially unconscious during the attack. There was no sexual assault, but, of course, this was a brutal attack. We've kept her under mild sedation due to the extensive physical injuries, but also to ease the mental and emotional trauma she's suffered."

"And now?"

"And now she needs to reenter the world. Or at least start the process. She's been mostly withdrawn, which is not unusual. She answers our questions and takes all her medication, but she doesn't offer anything on her own. She doesn't
react well to most physical contact and typically will not allow any male member of our staff to touch her at all."

"What does she do all day?"

"Most of the time, she just sits in our common room and looks out the window. And she holds that dog you brought, Maggie. She holds that dog all day."

RACHEL WAS SITTING
with her back to the door, by a window overlooking the lake. She had a splint on one hand and the pup cradled in both arms. I approached quietly. She turned as I sat down beside her. One side of her face was swollen with bruises, and her left eye was still partially shut. There were stitches holding together her lower lip, and one cheek was covered by a bandage. Maggie wagged her tail and squirmed in Rachel's arms. She let the pup go, and I picked her up. The pup licked my face.

"She misses you."

"Yeah." I put the dog down. She scrambled across to Rachel, who gathered her up again.

"How you doing?" I said.

Rachel scratched the dog's ears and turned back to the lake. "My face hurts. I feel like I'm about a hundred and I got viciously attacked by some fucking animals. That doesn't include the quality time I spent with your friend Jim."

I reached out to touch her sleeve.

"Don't." I thought she might push me away, but she just hugged the pup, who buried her head under Rachel's arm.

"You know all the work I do with the Rape Volunteer Association?" she said.

The association was a support group for women who'd been assaulted. I'd met Rachel at its annual fund-raiser.

"Sure."

"I used to think I shared this special bond with the victims. Felt their pain just because I felt something. Truth is, I was clueless, smiling like an idiot, trying to comfort someone about something I knew absolutely nothing about."

"You think the women you helped feel that way?"

"If I were them, I would."

I shook my head and joined her in looking out the window. After ten minutes or so, Rachel sighed. I ran my fingertips across her hand. She dropped her head to my shoulder, and I slipped an arm around her. She felt thin and brittle. The pup yawned and wagged her tail slowly.

"I'm sorry, Rach."

"I know." Her face was wet and I brushed away a tear. She swore and dabbed at her face with the back of her sleeve. "Pretty bad when you're no longer aware you're crying."

"It'll get better, babe."

"Maybe, but it won't be the same."

We fell back into the chasm of silence. After a while, Rachel moved to a chair across from me and leaned forward.

"I don't know where anything goes from here," she said.

"We'll figure it out, Rach. Day at a time."

She held up a finger, close to my lips, but not touching. "Shh, Michael. Listen."

I fell quiet.

"It's not always about figuring," she said. "And it's not always about 'we.'"

I felt the cold touch my heart, the lovely bruise rising with her name on it, the ache I was already pretending wasn't there.

"That's all right," I said, smiling hard against the lie.

"No, it's not, Michael. But sometimes things happen. And sometimes there's no going back. The truth is, we just don't
fit in each other's lives. No matter how hard I try to convince myself otherwise."

I stared at a cracked tile on the floor. She tilted my chin up until my eyes met hers. Then she took my hand, kissed it and laid it against her cheek. That was when I felt her pity and knew it was real. And that was probably the worst thing of all.

We sat that way for another minute or so. Then the doctor stepped in from the corridor and gave me the sign to wrap it up.

"I think they're booting me out of here," I said. Rachel tried to stand and winced.

"Careful," I said.

"I know. Whole fucking thing's falling apart on me."

I smiled. She laughed, and that led to another spate of crying that finally subsided.

"Will you stop by again?" she said.

"That what you want?" My voice felt dry and tight.

"A visit would be nice, yes."

Maggie jumped up and crawled close. Rachel gathered the pup into her lap. "All right if I keep her for a while?"

"Sure."

Rachel traced a finger across the back of my hand. "Thanks for coming."

"Thanks for letting me in."

She nodded and seemed suddenly tired, suddenly adrift. I tried to keep her close, but she rolled away from me like the tide, leaving nothing between us but a bare beach, littered with the bones of a broken relationship.

I kissed her carefully and gave the pup's ears a scratch. Then I left. Rachel turned back to her view of the lake. Maggie's eyes followed me all the way to the door.

R
odriguez was sitting in a no-parking zone, sunglasses on, engine running. I slid into the passenger's side. "How'd it go?" he said.

"About what you'd expect."

The detective nodded and took a look in his rearview mirror. Then he wheeled away from the curb. "I've been up to see her a couple of times."

"Her nurse told me. Told me it was a big help."

"I know a little bit about this. From Nicole and everything."

"I remember."

Rodriguez sighed. "If you got a problem ..." He glanced across the car.

"It's okay, Vince. Anything you can do to make her better. I appreciate it."

We drove for a while in silence. Rodriguez turned on the radio, then snapped it off. "You okay to talk a little shop?"

I looked over. "Sure."

"Wilson called me in this morning."

"How is the mayor?"

"Happy as the proverbial pig in shit. He told me about your train crash. About Transco and CMT Holding."

"Probably figured I'd fill you in anyway. What do you think?"

"I think our mayor owns the cardinal, lock, stock, and altar boys."

"Nice to keep the mayor happy," I said. "By the way, what ever happened with Alvarez?"

Rita Alvarez had gotten her exclusive. Scooped both Chicago dailies on the scene inside Cabrini and was promised an "inside look" at the task force that hunted down and killed Jim Doherty.

"Funny you should ask." Rodriguez smiled lightly.

"Date tonight?"

"Dinner at the Chop House."

I leaned back in my seat and thought about my friend and the reporter. Maybe not such a bad thing.

Rodriguez hit his blinker, took a left, and pulled up to a red light at the corner of LaSalle and Chicago. "There was something else that came up."

A young woman was screaming at a young man at a bus stop. The man grabbed the woman's arm. She shook him off and stalked away.

"What's that?" I said.

The man started to follow the woman across Chicago Avenue and almost got hit by a bus. He stepped back onto the curb, then found a bench and lit a cigarette.

"Dispatch took an anonymous call last night. A woman shot down in the subway."

"Hadn't heard about that," I said.

"You won't. It was Katherine Lawson. They traced the call
to her cell phone. Found her body down by the tracks where Maria Jackson was found."

I felt my head snap around. "Her body?"

Rodriguez nodded and hit the gas as the light turned. "Shot three times with two different guns. A thirty-eight in the leg and a couple of twenty-two slugs to the head."

"Strange."

"Yeah. By the way, you still got that cold thirty-eight I gave you before Cabrini?"

I could feel the heavy gaze of the homicide cop walk its way across the car.

"Probably not," I said.

Rodriguez grunted and we drove a little more.

"When you talked to the mayor this morning," I said, "did he tell you about Lawson?"

The detective looked over again. "You mean how she was shaking down the church?"

I nodded.

"Yeah, he mentioned it. When did you turn up that part of it?"

"Just the last day or so. I would have told you, but ..." I shrugged.

"Some things I'm better off not knowing."

"Probably. You gonna pull her case?"

Rodriguez shook his head. "Feds usually handle it when one of their own dies."

"Which means what?"

"Lawson was dirty. If it was Chicago PD, the whole thing would get buried. My guess is the Bureau's no different. We're holding the evidence, but I'm betting it never gets touched."

"So we're done with that?"

"Looks that way." The detective tapped two fingers lightly against the steering wheel. "Where you headed?"

"Home."

"Good idea." Rodriguez turned up the radio and steered his car toward Lake Shore Drive. I didn't say another word.

I
woke to the quiet of midafternoon, thinking about Katherine Lawson. I'd left her alive in the subway. Then someone came along and decided to finish the job. I wondered who. Better yet, why.

I sat up on my couch and considered the fat canvas bag on my coffee table. I'd told the mayor's accountant, Walter Sopak, part of Lawson's story. The part about Lawson's little girl. Sopak and his laptop agreed to meet me at an all-night Mexican place called El Presidente on Wrightwood and Ashland. A couple bowls of chili and a chimichanga later, the accountant had cracked Lawson's computer and emptied one of her offshore bank accounts. The bag was stuffed with Sopak's good deeds--three-quarters of a million dollars the feds would never miss. I had an appointment with a trust officer at Chase set up for tomorrow morning. The account would be in the name of Melanie Lawson. She'd be informed of the money when she hit twenty and be able to access it a year later. The trust officer at Chase figured the account would be worth almost two million by then. I wasn't entirely convinced Chase would still be in business, never mind turning anyone a profit, but what was a guy to do. So we'd all take a chance.

I walked over to my desk and locked the money in a drawer. From a second drawer, I took out the whiskey, along with some pieces from the past. The first photo was a parting glass, my dad laid out in his only suit, waiting for them to fire up the funeral home's oven and send him into eternity. My old man's face had shrunk in death, collapsed into the empty shell that was his life. The red eyes I knew as a nine-year-old were thankfully sewn shut. The fists that broke my mom's jaw in five places were gone as well, replaced by a pair of pale hands clutching a set of rosary beads for all they were worth. I toasted the old man with a bit of Macallan. Good luck with that.

The second shot I pulled was of Hubert Russell, moments after they'd cut him down. The rope was still twisted around his neck, and there was a small tattoo, a yellow star, on the side of his throat. I remembered it from the first time I met him, minding his own business at the Cook County Bureau of Land Records, thinking his life was just beginning.

I turned Hubert's picture facedown and walked myself and my glass over to the front windows. The sparrow was back, hopping back and forth on its branch, eyeing me with a distinct measure of disdain. I cracked the closest window, and the bird took off. I opened it some more and felt the bleak fingers of a winter sun on my face. I breathed deep, let the cold air chill my lungs, and thought about Rachel, wondered if my phone would ever ring. Then I looked down the street. The black car was there, same spot as yesterday. I had run the tag, wasn't surprised when it came back to the archdiocese. They seemed to enjoy watching me watch them. Or maybe they had nothing better to do.

I didn't know if the city's holy men were involved in Hubert's death. Every instinct told me no. So I believed. Guess
that's why they call it faith. As for the blood on their hands from thirty years past, I'd leave that for Judgment Day and a higher authority. Until then, the men in collars would live under the thumb of Chicago's mayor. And that seemed purgatory enough for any man.

I shut the window and finished my drink. Then I found my coat and headed for the door. The weather had softened and the streets in my neighborhood were crowded, blessedly so. I walked up and down them until, finally, I disappeared into the forgiving crush.

T
he evidence room sits in the basement of Area 4 on Chicago's West Side. Tucked up high on a shelf, about halfway down the length of the room, is a cardboard box sealed with evidence tape. Inside it are a sheaf of pages, dried and crusted with blood, found in the subway under Katherine Lawson's body.

No one ever gave the pages a close read. Everyone, it seems, had a reason not to. The federal government was too arrogant. The city of Chicago, too complacent. And Michael Kelly, too angry.

If anyone had taken a look, they would have first discovered the material Lawson had copied from the "Terror 2000" binder Jim Doherty had with him when he died. A reading of the highlighted passages would have revealed Doherty's focus on what the Pentagon called the "subway scenario": the introduction of lightbulbs filled with weaponized anthrax into a major urban subway system.