The Innocence Game (25 page)

“Find the guy who killed Skylar Wingate.”

“You sound pretty sure of yourself.”

“I am.”

He shook his head and stared straight ahead. I turned up the radio.

He turned it off.

“What will we do with him? Once we have him?”

“You know the answer to that. You’ve always known.” I put the car into gear and pulled out of the lot. We circled the block and eased into a shallow alley that dead-ended at a dark and deserted laundromat. From the alley, we had a direct view of Chasen’s.

“You’re wrong,” Jake said.

“About what?”

“I don’t want to hurt this guy. Or whatever you have planned. I never did.”

I picked up my phone. “Then make the call.”

Across the street, a man stood in the gutter, hawking a
Streetwise
in front of the bar. On the other side of Halsted, a bum wearing a Cubs hat crouched at a bus stop and watched the crowds drift by. A cop at the corner talked to a skinny black kid.

“I know what’s going on.” Jake’s voice carried the burden of confidence, which told me he knew nothing. Or at least not everything he thought.

“What’s going on, Jake?”

“You really want to hear it?”

I half turned in my seat. “Maybe I’d better.”

He licked his lips. It was the first time I’d ever seen Jake Havens nervous. And I knew what he was going to say next. “It started with the cord used to strangle Wingate. The one we saw in the photos.”

“What about it?” I said.

“It looked like something you’d find in a school. At least it seemed that way to me. So I went back to Wingate’s grammar school and took a hard look at the staff. I got hold of some old payroll records and put together a list of names.”

“Sounds like a lot of work.”

“I came across a janitor named Edward Cooper. Left the school six months after Skylar was killed. Skipped town altogether a year and a half after that. I was able to trace Cooper to Nevada. He raped a boy out there and was sentenced to twenty-five years in prison. They released him seven months ago.”

“You got a description of Cooper?”

“There’s more.”

I nodded. Jake Havens was number one in his class at the University of Chicago. Of course, there was more.

“This guy had a family in Chicago back in the day. Wife and two boys. Twins.”

I glanced over. Jake’s eyes were wide and shiny. “Let me guess,” I said. “The mom’s maiden name was Joyce. And she named her twins Ian and Matthew.”

“You’ve known all along.”

“Edward Cooper was my stepfather. He lived with us until I was ten. And, yes, he killed those kids. The three back in the day and the two now. That’s why we’re here tonight.”

“I don’t understand.” The words came out thick and slow. Jake looked down at his coffee and back up at me. I took the cup from his hands and cranked back his seat. He tried to remain upright, but failed miserably.

“I couldn’t take a chance on you, Jake. You’re just too goddamn smart.” I threw the car keys on the floor. “When you wake up, drive yourself back to Evanston. Go straight to bed ’cuz you’re gonna have a mean headache. I’m sorry about that. And I’m sorry about the rest.”

Jake’s lips moved, but no words came out. I put my hand on his shoulder and waited until his eyes had closed. Then I took the remains of his coffee and dumped it in the gutter. I locked the car and left my classmate, unconscious, in the alley.

Half a block down Roscoe, I had a van parked in an empty lot. I found it and checked to make sure I had everything I needed. Then I walked back up toward the lights of Halsted. From the darkness of the side street, I studied the intersection. The cop was still on the corner. The man selling
Streetwise
across from him. The bum in the Cubs hat at the bus stop. And all the rest, sitting and drinking, enjoying their night. I felt the edge of the knife tucked into the belt of my pants, cold against my belly. Then I walked toward the lights.

I watched him hunt for an hour. His genius was preparation and patience. My job was to stay close yet remain invisible. To my surprise, I was pretty good at it. Like stepfather, I guessed, like stepson.

I took him in the very heart of the night. The bars were letting out. Sidewalks swollen with people. He was intent on his prey. A young boy, maybe thirteen, alone, wearing a black T-shirt, black jeans, and featuring spiky blue hair. He’d been watching the boy, on and off, for the better part of an hour. Now the boy was heading toward an alley, probably for a smoke or a piss. My stepfather started to follow. We bumped shoulders as he passed, knocking him off stride and into an empty doorway. I moved with him, finding the flesh in his thigh and pressing the needle home. His hand gripped my wrist, but it was too late. I got one look at the rim of yellow in his eyes, maybe a flicker of recognition. Then the eyes fluttered shut, and he slumped against me. I picked up his Cubs hat and helped him down the street, telling anyone who asked he was drunk. No one cared about a bum. Least of all, the cops. Less than a minute later, I had him in the back of the van, strapped down, mouth taped, hands and feet cuffed. I wanted to look at him, but there was no time. And my heart was suddenly popping in my throat. So I climbed into the front of the van, turned over the engine, and headed back to Evanston. It was so much easier than I ever could have imagined. The beast conjured far worse than the one slain.

“What do you remember about this place?” I said.

He blinked and tried to move. The strap across his forehead forced him to look at me.

“You remember that?” I pointed to a square hole cut into the floor. His eyes flicked down and back up.

“You’re in the basement. Your old basement.”

There was contempt in his gaze. Or maybe it was just boredom. I gripped the black handle and cranked a notch on the rope that held his right leg fast. The tendons in his leg pulled tight.

“I got new ropes, but it’s the same winch and pulley. Oiled them up. Same table, too.” I rapped my knuckles against it. Then I flicked at the flex-cuffs that pinned his hands and left leg to the wood. “I could have hooked you up all around, but you know that.”

I reached for the handle and cracked another notch. My stepfather bit at the gag in his mouth. His right leg twisted outward at the knee and ankle.

“You’re probably enjoying this,” I said. The cords in his neck swelled as he struggled to lift his head off the table.

“You want to talk?” I made a move to remove his gag, then pulled back. “Fuck you.”

I took it up two more notches and was rewarded with a heavy grunt through the gag.

“That’s four notches. I remember because that was when Matthew screamed. I screamed with him. You turned up the radio. Then you cranked it five more times.”

I put my hand on the handle. Edward Cooper’s mind was already broken. Why not a leg? I leaned into the job. A voice whispered from across the room. At first I thought it was my own. The pathetic ghost of a boy. Watching his twin being murdered. And wondering why it wasn’t him. Then Sarah Gold stepped out of the shadows. And saved my life.

She stood there, arms wrapped around her waist, cupping her elbows like she was holding the pieces of herself together.

“Go away, Sarah.”

“If you’re going to do this, you’ll do it with me watching.”

“You think I won’t?”

“I was there tonight, Ian. In Boystown.”

My hand slipped off the handle. The pressure eased back a notch. “Why?”

“Jake thought we had things under control. I agreed with him. Turns out we were both wrong.”

“No kidding.”

“Jake’s fine. In case you were wondering.”

“It was just a sedative. I wouldn’t hurt him.”

“I believe you.” Sarah edged closer. For the first time I noticed a yellow envelope clutched in her hand.

“What’s that?”

“X-rays. From Matthew.”

A small sigh escaped from my lips and I stumbled back from the table.

“It was Jake’s idea,” she said. “He pulled your brother’s old school records. That led us to the hospital reports. A broken wrist. Three ribs. A cracked sternum. Two days ago, Detective Rodriguez got a court order to exhume your brother’s body.”

I sagged to the floor and felt the cold run of bricks against my spine. Sarah’s voice cut through the black smoke of time and memory.

“Matthew’s body was swollen when they pulled him out of the lake. No one ever bothered to check his legs. Why would they when everyone thought he’d drowned?”

I pulled out the X-rays and held them in my lap. Splintered pieces of bone. The whites of Matthew’s eyes. High, thin screams.

“I remember when the first leg went,” I said. Sarah made a small sound in her throat. “My stepfather acted like he’d broken his favorite toy. And there was no putting it back together. So he broke the other one.” I snapped my fingers. “Just like that.

“He kept a small launch in a slip down at the lake. Rolled Matthew up in a carpet and hauled him out in that. Then he threw him overboard and watched him drown.” I slipped the X-rays back into their sleeve and gave Sarah a wintry grin. “You wonder what I was doing tonight? I was hunting him. Before he hurt anyone else.”

She was close now. Close enough that I could smell her skin. Feel her breath on my face. I took out my mother’s letter and placed it on top of Matthew’s X-rays. “My mom left me this when she passed.”

Sarah unfolded the letter and ran her eyes over it. I kept talking.

“She made sure I knew Cooper was getting out of jail. Told me I needed to do something. She hadn’t done a damn thing to protect her kids, but now I needed to do something.”

Sarah glanced up from her reading, but I waved her on.

“She told me about Skylar Wingate and the others. About the hole in the cellar where Cooper kept his trophies. Rings. Wallets. Clippings of hair. The piece of Skylar’s shirt.”

“So it was you who sent the shirt to Jake?”

“Z’s seminar had access to the old case files. I thought if I got you all interested, we might stumble on a lead, something that might help me find him.”

“Instead, we found the Needle Squad.”

“I never meant for you to get hurt, Sarah. You or Jake.”

She flinched once, then folded up the letter and returned it to its envelope. “What about tonight?”

“What about it?”

“What did you have planned?”

I took a long, cool breath and glanced across the room, at the man strapped to the table. “I wanted to kill him. Until there wasn’t any killing left.”

“It’s wrong, Ian.”

“You don’t know what I know. You don’t hear what I hear.”

“He’ll pay for what he did in a court of law.”

“And you think that’s enough?”

“It has to be. Otherwise, he’s already won.”

There was a pause, then a footfall. Michael Kelly stepped into a pool of pale yellow light. I turned back to Sarah. “Your guardian angel?”

Her fingers grazed my cheek. “Something like that.”

I climbed to my feet and walked toward my stepfather. His eyes tracked mine. Christened me a coward. Once a coward, always one. I brushed past the table and headed for the stairs, Kelly at my side. As we walked, his hand fell over the black handle and cracked it hard, cranking the pulleys tight, and snapping Edward Cooper’s tibia just below the knee. I heard the high-pitched keen through the gag. Kelly gripped my arm with his other hand and kept me moving toward the stairs. When we got to the top, he pushed me through the door and closed it behind me.

My stepfather got his day in court. Six life sentences, to be served consecutively, with no chance of parole. He’d die in a hundred-year-old maximum-security prison, a half hour from the Illinois-Missouri state line. I saw him for what I hoped was the last time at his sentencing. He kept his head down for most of the hearing and declined to speak. When it was finished, he stood, right leg in a soft splint, and waited for the deputies to hook him up. As they worked on his chains, he took a look around the courtroom. I wanted to walk away, but stayed where I was. He saw me, moved past, then came back. His face was shrunken and pitted; his hair slicked back to a dull sheen. He mouthed some words, but I couldn’t make them out. Then he held out his shackles. I took a look at the thick hands, wrists, arms, then up into the eyes that had terrified me as a child. I wanted to see a monster, but all I saw was an old man. I wanted to feel anger, but all I felt was sadness. Maybe Sarah was right. Maybe I was done.

I met her at Mustard’s Last Stand. We ordered a basket of fries and sat outside.

“How was it?” she said.

“It was. He got his time and now he’s gone.”

“Are you glad you went?”

“I guess so. It feels like something. A passage, maybe, of some sort.”

“Things will get better.”

“I know.”

Sarah’s hand found mine, and our fingers wove themselves together. “You want to talk about it?”

“Not really. Not today.” A breeze passed between us, and we both felt the chill. I glanced at my watch. “What time’s your flight?”

“Three hours.”

“I’ve never been out there,” I said, “but I bet you’ll like it.”

“Berkeley’s got a great program in communications. And San Francisco’s close.”

“Yeah.”

She tipped her head and caught my eyes. “What is it?”

“Nothing.”

“Ian?”

“I’m gonna miss you.” The words felt naked, vulnerable.

“You’ll visit.”

“It won’t be the same.”

“And that’s a bad thing?” She smiled. I laughed. And life moved a little. But not very far.

“I’ll be back in December,” she said.

“Mistake.”

“We already talked about this. And I’ve decided.”

When Marty Coursey broke into Sarah’s apartment, he had an accomplice. Another cop who made the mistake of leaving a clean thumbprint on a mirror in Sarah’s bedroom. Rodriguez told her they could take care of the guy. Make it hurt without him ever seeing the inside of a courtroom. But Sarah wanted her own day in court. And wasn’t going to be deterred.

“Do you know why, Ian?”

“You know I don’t.”

“Because I believe in the system. I believe in working within the system. Even if it’s imperfect. Even if the bad guy sometimes goes free. That’s why I want this man charged. And I want a jury to hear the evidence against him.”