The Third Rail (2 page)

Halter created space as he spoke, fluttering, like an old and desiccated moth, to whatever sliver of flame lay underneath that magic sheet. Robles let him drift, fitting a six-inch hunting knife to his hand and feeling a familiar hole at the back of his throat. Wet work, Nelson called it. Robles took a calming breath. Wet work it would be.

"Reason I ask," Halter said, "I have a lot of expertise. Connections in the area."

"You do?"

"Sure." The manager began to turn back toward Robles, eager to strike his bargain. Eager to discover what lay hidden. Eager for his piece.

The manager made it, maybe, halfway. Robles grabbed him under the chin and stretched his neck. The cut was clean. Halter collapsed in a rush of air, the wound making a sucking sound like he was trying to breathe through his throat. Robles stepped back. The manager slipped the rest of the way to the floor and lay there, wet, red, and shivering. A soft moan followed and a roll of eyes across the room.

"Shit." Robles took another step back. Halter was bleeding hard, the body in spasm, but well on its way to dead. Robles used the sheet to cover him over. Within a minute or so, the shivering had stopped and the white cotton ran crimson. Robles wiped his blade clean on the sheet and took a quick inventory. He had a smear of blood on his pants and some on
his shoes. He cleaned them as best he could. Then he wiped down the doorknob and door. It would have to do.

Robles checked his watch. The whole thing had taken less than five minutes. Not a problem. He slipped his gloves back on, picked up the rifle, and headed back to the windows. He arranged the floor pad again and sat, weapon cradled in his lap. Then he closed his eyes and waited for his pulse to slow. After a minute or so, he opened his eyes, took a deep breath and exhaled. He felt good again, back in the moment. Robles raised the middle shade and reseated the rifle so the barrel was sticking three inches outside the window. He'd been half expecting something like Halter and was glad it was over. Now he fixed his eye again to the scope, scanned the tracks, and waited.

It wasn't more than twenty seconds before a silver L train chugged around the curve and stopped, waiting for a signal to enter the State/Lake station. Robles took half a breath and curled his finger around the trigger. The scope found a middle-aged woman, pale skin and dishwater for eyes, talking on her cell phone and looking at the street below. Next window down was a white kid, greedy mouth and greasy fingers, whole-hogging from a bag of fast food. Robles moved up to the front of the train and lensed the driver, thick-featured and black, staring straight ahead at nothing but two more decades of riding the rails. For any of the three, a pull of the trigger might even be a blessing. God bless America.

The train jolted and started to move again, just slow enough so it was perfect. Robles ran his rifle down the length of the first car, then the second. The process was a real mind fuck. The selection process, who lived and who died. Then the rifle stopped. She was tucked in, toward the back of the second car. Maybe two windows from the back. He sharpened his sights
and tracked her as she floated by. A young woman, Latino, with dark hair and cinnamon skin, head bent at a delicate angle, reading something, probably a book she held in her lap. She glowed in the scope, a bloom of light forming around the curve of her skull and playing across the highlights of her features. She looked up, right at him, and he saw a flash of white teeth. Perfect.

He squeezed down on the shutter in his mind, captured the perfect image, even as he squeezed back on the trigger. The pull was clean, sharp, precise. He fired once to make sure the glass shattered, worked the bolt action, and fired again, a second later. Just in case there was anything left alive behind the glass. He didn't see the woman's head explode. Didn't have time. Five seconds after firing, the rifle was tucked back in from the window, shade drawn tight. Thirty seconds later, the weapon was packed away. Then, he was out of the apartment and down the hallway. Robles exited by a basement door into an alley and slipped the rifle case into a Dumpster. He walked to the other end of the alley and stepped into the flow of people on Wacker. At the Merchandise Mart he caught the last Brown Line train before they suspended service for the day.

On his way out of the Loop, Robles could see the conga dance of flashing lights from cop cars, ambulances, and fire engines, fighting their way to help a woman for whom there was no such thing. From his perch atop the elevated, he could just make out a couple of cameramen checking their gear and the first mast being raised from a television live truck. For the third time that day, Robles smiled. Then he settled back into his seat and looked out over the rooftops as his train clattered north.

I
had just finished giving my statement when a silver Crown Vic rolled up and Vince Rodriguez got out.

"Heard your name on the scanner. Figured there were maybe a couple hundred Michael Kellys in Chicago. Still ..."

"Here I am."

"Here you are. You done with them?" Rodriguez nodded toward the half dozen uniforms and forensics working both alleys off Cornelia.

"Yeah. I told 'em they won't find much. Footprints. That's about it."

The detective took a few steps down the alley and found a seat on the back steps of a three-flat. He'd been in Homicide now for almost four years and carried the weight in his shoulders, the dry sorrow in his face. I sat down beside him.

"So tell me," he said.

"What do you want to know?"

"I assume you didn't get a look at the guy."

I shook my head. "I was waiting for the train. It was crowded, thirty, maybe forty people. I heard the pop, saw the lady fall, and took off after him."

"Him?"

"Yeah, it was a him. Black overcoat, black knit hat. Maybe five-ten, medium build. Followed him down Cornelia."

"And you saw him run down here?"

"I saw the back of his coat. Came down the alley and tracked the footprints."

Rodriguez frowned. "How long had it been snowing?"

I shrugged. "Less than ten minutes."

"And his were the only prints?"

I nodded.

"This all in your statement?"

"Yeah."

"Okay, go ahead."

"So I follow the prints, around the corner to the second alley."

"And?"

"And they continue. One set of prints headed straight east. So I take off after them. He jumps me about halfway down. Came out from behind a Dumpster."

"So the prints continue on." Rodriguez walked two fingers across the space between us. "But this guy somehow doesn't?"

"That's right. He's got a ski mask on now and we wrestle a little. Fucker is strong, by the way. Then he pulls out a gun. Black, looked like a forty-caliber."

"Big boy. Did he say anything?"

"Told me to relax."

"That's it?"

"Asked me if I wanted to be a hero."

Rodriguez chuckled. "He doesn't know you too well, does he? I could have told him you live for that hero shit."

"Funny motherfucker you are."

"Then what?"

"Then he pulls back on the trigger. Slow, like he's thinking about it."

"Must have been a nice moment."

"Yeah, well, he stops. Lifts up the gun and just pops me with the butt. I woke up looking up at the snow falling on my face."

"And that's it?"

"That's it. How's the woman?"

"You saw the gun. How do you think?"

"Dead."

"Oh, yeah. Quite a mess over there, and I'm not just talking about our victim."

"The passengers?"

Rodriguez nodded. "This ain't the West Side, Kelly. These people got jobs, money, families."

"West Side don't have families, huh?"

"You know what I mean. These people count. They ain't used to this. Hell, I already got three camera crews set up on Southport. Now let me ask you something about this alley ..."

Rodriguez's cell beeped. He flipped it open, held up a finger, and walked away. An EMT came over and asked me if I wanted a couple of Advil for my head. I declined.

"You want, we can take you down to Cook County," she said.

"No, thanks," I said. "I like breathing air just fine."

Rodriguez snapped his phone shut and made his way over. "Shit."

"What is it?"

The detective rubbed a hand over his face and looked around for an answer.

"What is it, Rodriguez?"

"We got another one."

"Another what?"

"Another shooting on the L. Goddamnit. Listen, I have to go down there. You gave your statement, right?"

"Yeah."

"All right. Stay on your cell and I'll call you. There's something about this alley we need to figure out."

"Why don't I come with?"

"Why don't you fuck off, Kelly. I'll give you a call."

Then Rodriguez was gone. I wandered back to the medic and her aspirin.

"You know what," I said, "maybe I am getting a little bit of a headache."

"Let me get you those Advil."

We both walked over to the ambulance. She climbed into the back, shuffled through her kit, and came up with a handful of pills. I sat in the front, switched on her scanner, and came up with an address for the second shooting.

"Here you go, Mr. Kelly."

I downed the pills she gave me and scribbled the address on the envelope they came in.

"Thanks," I said. "Feeling better already."

She smiled. I walked a block and a half and hailed a cab. All things considered, the L didn't seem like such a great idea today.

I
slouched against a rusted girder Nelson Algren would have been proud of, about a block from the corner of Lake and Wabash. I could see the train up on the tracks, a forensic team working on the hole where a window used to be. There was a traffic jam of cop cars and firemen below, mingling with an avalanche of media. Already most of the details had hit the radio. The local folks might not be geniuses, but it didn't take a genius to connect Southport to the Loop and come up with one hell of a story. On the cab ride down, I listened as a jock named Jake Hartford took calls, opinions on everything from who the serial killer might be to why the city had already dropped the ball. All of this delivered in the highest decibel, the black-and-white shrieks of daytime talk, opinion delivered without any obvious facts or apparent need for them. Up on the tracks, I could see the smudgy outline of Rodriguez, talking to another detective and looking down at the mob on the street. I couldn't see Rodriguez sweat, but I could feel it. After a minute, he took a call. Now I couldn't hear him swear, but I could feel that even more. He snapped the phone shut and searched the rafters of the elevated
for some guidance. Then he walked back to the first detective, whispered in his ear, and headed down to the street. I headed that way as well. We met in front of Gold Coast Dogs, with about a dozen reporters and a half dozen cameras between us.

"Detective, do you have any leads on either of the shootings?" The question came from a breathless blonde Channel 10 had hired about a month and a half ago. She probably hailed from somewhere in North Dakota and had never ridden an L train in her life. Still, she was easy to look at. In local news, that counted for a lot.

"We're working both crimes scenes, collecting evidence, taking statements. We should know a lot more once that process is completed."

Rodriguez's cop voice was in full throat, deep and measured. He never made eye contact with the horde. Just looked beyond the cameras, probably wondering why he ever got out of bed in the morning.

"Detective Rodriguez, are you working both cases together or are these separate investigations?"

That was John Donovan, Chicago's senior crime reporter. He was the lead dog, and the rest of the pack knew it. So did Rodriguez.

"We have separate teams working each case. There will, however, be some overlap."

"Meaning you, or some other detective, will be working both cases?" Donovan said.

Rodriguez nodded. "Probably."

"Which means you suspect the two shootings are connected?" Donovan said.

"We don't know what to suspect at this point," Rodriguez
said, voice rising as the media began to write their own story. "There are significant differences in these two crime scenes. Given the circumstances of the shootings, however, we'll certainly be looking into any possible connections."

"Have you got any concrete evidence the two are connected?"

That was from an olive-skinned woman with a notebook and pencil, standing at the back of the crowd, just in front of me. She was slight, maybe thirty years old, with glasses that had slipped halfway down her nose and a look of intelligence you don't often see in a gathering of the media.

"No, we don't have anything specific that connects the two," Rodriguez said. "But, as I indicated, we're in the early stages."

Several reporters jumped in, yelling questions, one over the other. It was Donovan who broke through the maelstrom.

"Detective, does Chicago have a spree killer loose in its public transportation system?"

Rodriguez paused, eyes searching, then resting on me. I could see a small, sad smile flicker at the corner of his mouth. Then he looked at Donovan and offered up the sound bite everyone was waiting on.

"John, I'll be honest. At this stage, we don't know what we're dealing with. Rest assured, however, the entire weight of the Chicago Police Department will be brought to bear on these cases, and we will get some answers."

"When?" Donovan said.

"Soon, John. Sooner rather than later. That much, I can promise you."

With that, Rodriguez ended the press conference. Several people continued to yell questions, but the detective waved
them off. After a few minutes, the crowd began to dissolve. The print reporters went back to reporting. The TV folks shot pictures and put on makeup.

RODRIGUEZ DRIFTED ACROSS
Wabash and met me at the corner of Randolph.