“Right.”
“I still don’t see how her death connects up.”
“I’m not sure it does,” I said.
“But you want to make sure?”
“Something like that.”
There was a pause over the line. Heavy. Then Reynolds made a decision.
“It looked like a break-in at first. Front door forced. Evidence of a scuffle in the living room. Problem is, there was nothing missing. Jewelry and cash upstairs, untouched.”
“Rape?”
“Nothing.”
I could hear some shuffling over the phone as Reynolds searched for the file.
“Then there were the autopsy photos,” the detective said. “Something we never released to the media. Gleason was tied up before she was shot. Struggled with it. Significant bruising on the arms and wrists.”
“Sounds like an execution to me.”
“Exactly. Now you show up with her name in an old case file. I think to myself, maybe this is the connection. Maybe this is where she got herself dead.”
“Maybe we’re chasing the same ghosts.”
“Could be. I tell you what, Kelly. Why don’t we exchange files. You get yourself access to Carol’s homicide book and I get a look at your street file. See if something clicks.”
I agreed. Reynolds promised to copy the Gleason file and FedEx it to me.
“Probably take a week or so, the way they move around here,” the Phoenix detective said.
“I’ll get you a copy of my stuff by week’s end,” I said.
“Fair enough, Kelly. Let me know if you turn up anything.”
I clicked off with Reynolds, circled Carol Gleason’s name on my list, and punched up Masters’ cell.
“Yeah.”
“It’s Kelly again.”
“I knew that.”
“How was the morgue?”
“Hopping. Gibbons’ landlady sends her best.”
“How’d she die?” I said.
“None of your fucking business.”
I waited. Sometimes, that’s all it takes.
“Massive electrical shock,” Masters said.
“Accidental?”
“She was Tasered. ME says the device must have been rigged, delivered double the normal dose. At least a hundred thousand volts. Blew out her heart.”
I swallowed and took a quick read on the old pulse. A hundred thousand volts and still ticking.
“Kelly, you there?”
“You know a cop named Tony Salvucci?”
The detective’s voice came back. This time with an edge.
“I knew him. Killed in a shooting a couple years back. What of it?”
“He’s tied in to the Remington rape.”
I could hear the hum of traffic over the line and then the blast of a truck’s air horn.
“How so?”
“He took the report from Gibbons. Handled the paperwork.”
“How did you turn up his name?”
I knew that was coming but just moved on through.
“Look, Masters, I don’t know how this all fits but that doesn’t mean it won’t. I’d like to get a look at the file on Salvucci’s death.”
“Cop shooting? Never going to happen.”
I figured that and had a backup request ready.
“How about the file on Remington? Everything you have.”
“What do you know about cold cases?” Masters said.
“I watch the blonde on CBS.”
A bit of a wheeze came blowing through the line. It seemed an effort, but Masters didn’t disconnect.
“We got something now called a cold case squad. They specialize in clearing old crimes. Use a lot of DNA and all that happy horseshit.”
“Impressed, huh?”
“Who knows. You ever watch Bill Kurtis on A amp;E.”
“The guy with the voice?” I said.
“Chicago guy. Good buddy of the mayor. Anyway, he has a show. Not the one with the blonde. These guys do real cases.”
“Cold Case Files.”
“You watched it?”
“I saw it once,” I said.
“Lays out these old investigations, all the forensics.”
“Real-life CSI.”
“Whatever. Anyway, Kurtis buttonholes the mayor with this stuff. How cops across the country are clearing these old files and Chicago is doing squat. Now we got a cold case squad. They have all these old files stacked away somewhere.”
“So I go talk to them about Remington?” I said.
“Don’t bother. I ran the case number after we talked this morning. The cold squad doesn’t have the file.”
“Should they?”
“Yeah, they should probably have something. Which leads me to wonder how you can pull names out of a file that the Chicago PD says doesn’t exist.”
I knew Masters wanted to help. I also knew I needed someone on my side.
“I have a street file on this case.”
“You took it from the landlady’s house.”
“Mulberry FedExed it to me. Got here this morning. Just before you did. Got the receipt to prove it.”
“Maybe. But you were still at the house.”
I wondered how he knew. With a veteran cop like Masters, sometimes it’s just a feeling.
“Okay, I was there. Didn’t touch a thing. Just called it in.”
Nothing.
“Want to see the file?” I said.
More nothing. Then, something.
“You know Mr. Beef down in River North?”
I didn’t know a man in Chicago worth knowing who didn’t know of “The Great Beef” on Orleans Street.
“Tomorrow afternoon, twelve-thirty,” the detective said. “Bring the file or don’t bother coming at all.”
Masters hung up. I leafed through the old file again, looking for something worth a person’s life and not finding it. Then I thought about the polo shirt I’d pulled from Goshen’s warehouse. I picked up the phone and made a final call.
After I hung up, the guilt held on. For just a bit. Then it dissipated. Like it always did. The friend was an old one. Too old not to help. And I knew it.
CHAPTER 26
T he State of Illinois Forensic Science Center is located in the 1900 block of West Roosevelt Road, a mile or so from where O’Leary’s cow kicked over the lantern that burned down a city. I got there at just after six o’clock. The lab was large and empty. Nicole sat at her workstation.
“Let’s see it, Michael.”
I put the street file on her desk. She turned her nose up. I wasn’t sure if it was at me, the file, or both. Then she slipped on a pair of latex gloves and began to turn pages.
“You didn’t pull the file from this woman’s house?”
“She sent it to me.”
“Gibbons’ landlady?”
“Yes.”
“And now she’s dead?”
“Electrocuted.”
“An accident?”
I shook my head.
“Not likely. By the way, the DA’s giving me a clean bill of health on Gibbons.”
“Just like Bennett promised.”
“He’s rarely wrong,” I said.
“I’ll be happy for you tomorrow,” Nicole said. “What do you want today?”
I plucked a one-page hospital report from the file and handed it to her.
“This is from the ER nurse in ’97. Says my client was taken straight to surgery after admission.”
“Elaine Remington?”
“Yeah. I called the hospital but they won’t give me any more information.”
“This was almost ten years ago. They might not have anything on her. Even if they did, I’m not sure it would be a lot of help.”
“How about a rape kit?”
“If the hospital did one, it would be with the police.”
“That’s what I’m hoping.”
Nicole closed the file and pushed it across the table.
“Get rid of that. I never saw it.”
I pushed the file back into the fold of my jacket and waited. Nicole sighed and walked to a window.
“How much do you really know about rape, Michael?”
“That’s the second time I’ve been asked that in as many days.”
Nicole offered a thin look at her reflection in a contoured pane of glass. Then she turned back my way.
“I don’t mean the act itself. What I’m talking about is perhaps worse. In the lab we call it the politics of rape. Can be a tricky thing. Not like murder. I mean, in a murder the victim is dead. There’s that certainty. Rape- not so much.”
She walked across the room, held her ID against a scanner, and opened a large gray door.
“Come on.”
We entered a walk-in cooler filled with rows of steel shelving stacked to the ceiling with evidence kits.
“These are Cook County’s old rapes.”
“How many do you have?”
“There are almost seven hundred kits in this room. All of them contain semen or some other bodily fluid that needs DNA testing.”
I whistled.
“That’s nothing,” Nicole said. “On the South Side, we have an old slaughterhouse converted into cold storage. Probably another thousand kits stored there.”
“All waiting to be tested?” I said.
“Hard to say. A lot of the evidence is old and degraded. Not much left to test. Still, we get hits.”
“How many?”
“I’ve tested about a hundred kits myself and gotten ten cold hits.”
“Convictions?”
“In eight of the ten. Even better, three of the offenders were eventually linked to other assaults. One of the guys raped twenty women. Killed two of them.”
Nicole led me out of the evidence locker and slammed the door shut.
“Problem is, there’s only one of me.”
“And thousands of kits.”
“You got it. Plus, each test costs money. At least five thousand a pop for STR-DNA testing. And that’s where it gets complicated.”
“You have to decide who gets tested and who doesn’t.”
“Actually, the DA decides.”
“Who gets buried?” I said.
“Who do you think?”
“I’m gonna guess you’re not testing a lot of kits from ladies of the evening.”
“Hookers don’t get raped, didn’t you know that? And if you’re black? Well, the next priority request I get for a black woman’s kit to be tested will be the first.”
“I have a reporter you need to talk to.”
“Diane Lindsay? Not as easy as that, Michael. Not if I want to stay in the game.”
“Think about it.”
“Let’s talk about your girl. She’s not a hooker, and, good for her, she’s white. Problem is, she’s a nobody. A very cold case everyone has forgotten about.”
Nicole sat down at a computer terminal and typed in Elaine’s information.
“Let me see what I’ve got. May take a minute.”
I sat down at an adjacent workstation and picked through a stack of rape kits, still sealed and waiting to be processed. Each bore the name of the victim and date of the attack. After the victims’ names were a series of dates and letters, circled and initialed. I asked Nicole a question but already knew the answer.
“The D stands for deceased,” Nicole said. “The A means there was a violent assault attached to the crime. I told my boss I thought all sexual assaults were violent.”
“And you were wrong?”
“Date rape. The girl who drinks too much at the party. They go to the bottom of the pile as far as testing is concerned. We call it the ‘she asked for it’ syndrome.”
Nicole looked up from her terminal and then continued typing.
“I got your girl. It appears all her physical evidence, including a rape kit, was destroyed in 2004.”
I felt the padded envelope in my pocket. Inside it, a woman’s shirt covered in blood. For the moment, I figured it was better to play dumb. Besides, I was very good at it.
“Why would they do that?”
“Statute of limitations had run. Technically, the DA could still prosecute if they got a DNA match. In cases where there is no identified suspect, however, the evidence usually gets destroyed.”
“Doesn’t make much sense, does it?”
“Not these days. I can extract DNA from a sample that’s fifty years old.”
My friend shrugged.
“Like I said, you don’t really understand rape until you understand the politics around it.”
“But you can run tests on evidence that old?”
“I just said that, Michael. What is it you need?”
“Maybe a little DNA testing. Just between friends.”
“Are we talking about this woman here?”
I nodded, slid the envelope out and across the desk. Nicole looked at it but didn’t touch.
“So you do have something.”
“Evidence warehouse. No name, no case number, and conveniently misplaced.”
Nicole slid on a second pair of gloves, picked up the envelope, and examined the seal.
“You cut this open?”
“Couple of days ago. Prior to that it was dated and initialed. Those are Gibbons’ initials, by the way.”
“And the date?”
“The day Elaine Remington was attacked. Nine years ago.”
She pulled at the open end of the envelope, shook out the shirt and played her fingers through the knife holes.
“How many times was this woman stabbed?”
“Not sure, but I make it to be about fifteen.”
“And you say she survived?”
“Sort of. She drinks seven shots of whiskey a day. But she’s pretty good at it.”
“Girl has got some major problems.”
“Probably. Right now she’s a client, and this is her best shot at getting some answers.”
Nicole put the shirt back in its envelope but didn’t seal it.
“Follow me.”
We walked through another set of doors, down a white corridor, and into yet another white lab.
“This is our prep area for DNA extraction. First thing I need to do is examine the garment and figure out what kinds of tests to run.”
“You all right with this?” I said.
Nicole stretched the shirt onto an examining table and handed me a pair of goggles.
“Let’s try not to talk about it. Put these on.”
She pulled a wand from a holster bolted to the examining table and flicked off the overhead lights.
“This is an ultraviolet laser. We use it to search for bodily fluids the human eye cannot see.”