The Chicago Way (23 page)

Diane laid the note flat on my table and leaned in close.

“You can look as close as you want,” I said. “It doesn’t say any more than what it says.”

Diane continued to study the note as she talked.

“So he gives you this after he talks to you and after he returns to his cell?”

“Yes.”

“Which means he had some time to think about what you said and maybe decided to play ball.”

“Could be,” I said. “Or he might have been interested from the start and needed to get back to his cell to get the date. Or he might just be a fucking lunatic with nothing better to do on death row than run me around for shits and giggles.”

Diane punched in September 9, 1998, and looked up from the computer.

“Maybe,” she said. “Let’s see what we get.”

The first article she pulled up celebrated Mark McGwire hitting number sixty-two against the Cubs. The picture was a closeup of McGwire and Sammy Sosa in a bear hug. They both looked huge. They both looked happy. Neither condition would last.

“What a difference eight years makes,” I said.

Diane closed up the file and moved on without a word. We began to go through clips. Political turmoil for Mayor Wilson. Noise problems at O’Hare. Roger Ebert’s insightful commentary on There’s Something About Mary.

“Maybe Grime wants us to channel Cameron Diaz,” I suggested.

“Fuck off, Kelly. What are we missing?”

She clicked on another article, a few inches of column print from page twenty-three.

“Hold on a second,” I said. “This looks interesting.”

The headline read: MAN ARRESTED; HOLDS HOSTAGE IN BASEMENT. The body of the text described how police followed up on a tip. Found a young girl tied up and held prisoner for a day and a half in a Chicago basement. The house belonged to a man named Daniel Pollard. Police arrested him and were considering charges.

“You think this is it?” Diane said.

“I think Grime attacked young women. I think he tied them up, and I think he buried them in his basement. Where was the girl found?”

“Fifty-two fifteen West Warner. That’s on the Northwest Side.”

“Dump it into MapQuest.”

Diane was already on it. A map of Chicago streets jumped up on the screen. Warner dead-ended into thirty-six acres of open space called Portage Park.

“Less than a mile from Grime’s old house,” I said.

Diane flipped opened her cell and began to dial.

“Hang on a minute. That name looks…John, hi, it’s Diane. Yeah, listen. I’m doing some research on the Grime case. I know, a long time ago.”

Diane scratched out the name John Donovan on a piece of paper and showed it to me. I thought about making a fresh pot of coffee but settled for instant and plugged in the kettle. Diane continued to talk.

“So anyway, I came across the name Daniel Pollard. That sound familiar to you? Really?”

Diane raised an eyebrow and started to take notes. The water began to boil, and I washed out a couple of mugs.

“I had a feeling he was connected,” said Diane. “Is this all in the court transcript? Really?”

More notes. I tried to read over her shoulder, but it was in some sort of reporter shorthand. Instead I put a cup of coffee at Diane’s elbow and settled back with mine. Diane’s foot tapped out a steady rhythm on the floor. Her pen flowed across the page. The reporter was excited. I printed out the photo Rodriguez had e-mailed me of Grime’s prosecution team and took out a magnifying glass. Five minutes later I was still looking at the photo when Diane finished up with Donovan.

“Yeah, John. Thanks. No, it’s just some background right now. But really helpful. I’ll let you know if I decide to do anything. Thanks again, John.”

She flipped the phone shut and leaned forward.

“Goddamn, I’m good.”

“If you do say so yourself.”

“The name Daniel Pollard. I thought I saw it somewhere before.”

“And?”

“It was in an old magazine piece about Grime.”

Now I leaned forward.

“How so?”

“You remember Grime wound up changing his plea to insanity just before the trial started.”

“Yeah. Didn’t work out too well for him.”

“Right. Because of the plea, most of the testimony at trial focused on his mental state and not so much on what actually happened inside the house. There was, however, some pretrial stuff. Before the plea was changed.”

“Pollard was part of that?” I said.

“Apparently. There was one kid, a minor, who gave a sealed deposition. He supposedly testified about seeing some of the missing girls around Grime’s house. I guess he was pretty specific.”

“And you think this kid was Pollard?”

“In this magazine article I read, they interviewed some of the local kids who knew Grime. Pollard was one of them.”

“What does Donovan say?”

“He said Pollard was the kid everyone felt had given the statement. He was seventeen at the time.”

“Would the deposition still be sealed?”

“Oh, yeah. There’s another thing. Donovan says the rumor was that the DA’s office at the time had cut a deal with the kid.”

“A deal?”

“Full immunity for his testimony.”

“Immunity from what?”

“Don’t know. Like I said, it was only a rumor. At the time the press was so fixated on Grime the whole thing just sort of got buried. No pun intended.”

I pulled up the Sun-Times article on Pollard and scanned it quickly.

“What do you want to bet this case was never filed,” I said.

“I can find out tomorrow,” Diane replied. “What we need now is a current address.”

“I know a guy at the DMV,” I said. “If Pollard drives in Illinois, we’ll get his address. Come on. I’ll make the call in the car.”

“Where are we headed?”

I pointed to the Sun-Times article.

“Grime fed us an address as well as a name. Let’s go back out to the old neighborhood and see what’s around.”

T here was yellow police tape around a hole where Grime’s house used to sit. A couple of college kids stood nearby, taking pictures of each other in front of the site with their cell phones. Brave bastards. Probably going to download it to all their buddies back at the dorm.

“Not much left,” Diane said.

“Just the memories. Let’s drive over to Pollard’s house.”

It was less than a mile, maybe a ten-minute walk. A Chicago bungalow, two stories of brick, slotted into a row of the same. Working-class digs built when the city called its mayor Boss and never tried to hide it. I parked a half block down the street and turned off the car.

“Hang on here,” I said. Diane didn’t respond.

I pulled out a flashlight and walked up to the house. It was still early evening, and lights were just coming on up and down the block. Fifty-two fifteen West Warner, however, felt empty, its blinds drawn tight. There was a single buzzer with no name and a glass door that looked into an interior foyer. I took a chance and leaned on the bell. No answer.

I flicked my flashlight across the foyer but couldn’t make out a name on the mailbox inside. Then my light caught a scattering of mail spread across the floor. Good old Chicago post office. Sometimes letters make it into the box. Sometimes they don’t. Two were addressed to “Occupant.” The third wasn’t. I could make out only the first two letters of the last name: PO. Daniel Pollard, it appeared, had never moved from the house in Grime’s neighborhood. I took a walk around back and found an alley leading to a small yard, cemented over, and a wooden garage, empty. I flicked off my flash and returned to the car.

“I think he still lives here.”

“Ten years later?”

“Apparently. Must like the neighborhood. Anyway, he gets his mail here. That’s good enough for me.”

“What’re you going to do?”

I was about to respond when a green Pontiac appeared in my rearview mirror. I had my lights off and sat quiet as the car pulled into the driveway of 5215 and disappeared into the back.

“That him?” Diane said.

“You should really think about being a detective.”

“Funny guy.”

After a minute or so, lights came on inside the house. I started up the car, drove down the block, and around the corner to the nearest bus stop.

“All right, Diane, this is where we part company.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, really. I’m going to follow this guy for a while and might need to get out of the car. It’s a lot easier when I’m by myself.”

“I know how to make myself scarce, Kelly.”

I reached over and popped open the passenger door.

“No time to argue, Diane. The longer I stay here, the longer the house remains uncovered. If he gets in his car and drives off, well…”

I shrugged my shoulders and waited. Diane didn’t like it but didn’t have much choice. She got out of the car without a word.

“See ya,” I said.

Diane slammed the door and headed to the bus stop. I slugged the car into drive and headed back to the house on Warner.

I t was two more hours before I got my first look at Daniel Pollard. He poked his head out the front door at just past nine-thirty. Under the flicker of a Chicago streetlamp, Pollard looked smaller than I expected. He winced at the wind as he turned the corner on his house and shrank into the night. A moment later, I heard a garage door creak open. The Pontiac pulled out and cruised past me.

I gave him a half block’s worth of room and followed. He stopped at a Jack in the Box, went through the drive-in, and ate alone in the parking lot. An hour after that we were cruising Main Line Road, a nasty stretch of pavement in a town on the edge of Chicago called Calumet City. As a cop, I had worked the area for prostitutes. Not to arrest them. Just for information.

On the street hookers represented the bottom of the food chain, usually desperate for cash and willing to sell whatever they knew. Three out of five girls on the corner were HIV-positive, the majority dead, one way or another, within a year or two of hitting the stroll. You might think that would deter prospective johns. You would be wrong. I asked a customer once, a doctor and father of five, if he was concerned about HIV.

“Oral sex only,” he said. “Besides, I have these.”

He smiled and pulled a bunch of condoms out of his pocket. I made sure they called the doc’s wife when they booked him.

Pollard stopped at a convenience store. I pulled over and waited. A woman walked out in front of my car and opened up her coat. She was naked underneath. Subtlety was never a major selling point in Cal City. She was still standing there when Pollard exited the store. I pulled around her and followed the Pontiac. He was driving slow enough to get a look at the action, but Pollard wasn’t shopping for a woman. At least not yet.

He moved out of the strip and cruised into a darker, more industrial neighborhood. The cars were less frequent here, and I slipped farther back. After a couple of miles Pollard pulled into what looked like a mostly empty trucking yard. I switched off my lights and followed. Two hundred yards in, I could still see his headlights bouncing along the road in front of me. Then the lights seemed to slow and steady. I stopped my car and slipped out.

Two minutes later I was creeping along the side of an abandoned flatbed, and snuck a look around the corner. Pollard’s car sat in the middle of a dirt path, still running, doors open, lights illuminating a large blue dumpster. Best I could tell, the car was empty. I was about to move forward for a closer look when a head poked out of the dumpster. It was Pollard, clutching a pillowcase stuffed full of what I suspected was someone else’s garbage. He climbed to the lip of the dumpster and, after some hesitation, jumped to the ground. Then he scuttled back to his car, unloaded whatever was in the bag into his backseat, and returned to the dumpster. Climbing up the side looked difficult, but Pollard managed and dove headfirst into the depths. I sat back for a moment, thought about going home, then thought better of it. Instead I lit a cigarette and waited.

Pollard dove the dumpster and then three more like it. At one point I snuck close and took a quick look inside his car. I saw what I expected to see. Three plastic bags, one burst at the seams and spilling out old clothes; a spool of gray wire; a rusted-out car battery; broken pieces of old toys; a bent street sign that read KEDZIE AVENUE. And that was just half of the backseat.

It was pushing two-thirty before my friend had gotten his fill of other people’s garbage. Pollard cruised the stroll one more time before calling it a night. The Pontiac seemed to linger over the girls a bit longer this time around but ultimately moved on. Pollard was back at the house on Warner by a little after three in the morning.

I was tired and wanted to go home. There was one thing, however, that needed to be checked out. I left Pollard tucked away in bed and headed back to Cal City.

She was half-hidden in an alley, nothing but the glow of a cigarette marking her presence. I waited a beat. She moved into the street. Now she was slightly more than a silhouette. Tight, firm, cut against the night. She wore blue jeans and a short black leather coat. Like any working girl she carried nothing save a small black purse. Inside would be money, smokes, and her stash of condoms. I never would have given her a second look except for the blond hair, not a cheap dye job but the real thing. She wasn’t there the first time Pollard cruised by. On the return trip he’d given her a good look. I thought she might have motioned his way, but Pollard didn’t bite. Now she stared again. This time, my way. I pulled the car around and rolled down a window.

“Hey.”

She seemed unsure, for just a moment. Then Elaine Remington ground the burner under her heel and swiveled over.

“My very private investigator. Stalking your own clients now?”