The Chicago Way (21 page)

“Getting there.”

I pulled out Nicole’s report.

“Nicole was running the profile through the state’s DNA databank on the morning she was killed.”

Diane put down her beer and picked up the report.

“Nicole worked on this?”

“Yeah. This is where it gets tricky.”

Diane flipped through the pages, searching for a clue, finding nothing but science.

“You’d have a better shot with Plato,” I said.

“Funny guy. Where’s the tricky?”

“I’ll tell you, but it’s got some news value.”

“How much news value?”

“That’s for you to decide. What I need is for you to hold the story. Not forever. Just until I tell you.”

“You changing our deal?”

“No. This is part of the deal. You just need to trust me.”

Diane put the report down and offered up a measured sigh.

“And you need to trust me. Fill me in and I’ll hold up my end.”

I took a final look around and jumped.

“Last year the state’s crime lab found a second source of semen in the Grime murders.”

Diane pulled out a notebook and started writing. That made me nervous, but I continued.

“They decided it was a coincidence,” I said.

“ ‘They’ being the DA?”

I nodded.

“It makes sense,” I said. “A lot of Grime’s victims were prostitutes, so you might expect to find other sources of semen. Problem is, the same DNA profile was found on two different victims.”

“Big coincidence.”

“That’s not the end of it. That profile is also a match to the one pulled off my client’s shirt.”

“Elaine’s shirt?”

“Yeah.”

“So whoever raped your client is tied in to the Grime murders.”

“You should be writing headlines,” I said.

“Wow.”

I wasn’t ready to tell Diane about Grime’s own semen showing up at a crime scene while the killer himself sat on death row. The reporter had more than enough to chew on.

“You know Gerald O’Leary made headlines with Grime,” Diane said.

“So I’ve heard.”

“Have you talked to Bennett Davis about this?”

“No,” I said. “A little too close to home. For right now, we do Bennett a favor and leave him out.”

“Fine.”

“There’s another thing,” I said. “When they checked Nicole’s lab, everything she was working on was gone. The shirt, her reports, everything. I got the match off a set of backup files she kept.”

“So you think her murder was tied in to this, too?”

“I do.”

Diane’s eyes touched mine and steadied.

“It’s not your fault,” she said.

“How do you figure?”

“You couldn’t have known.”

“That’s right. I couldn’t have known, didn’t know a goddamn thing, which is why I should have left her out.”

“She was a big girl, Kelly. She knew what she wanted to do in life. At that moment in time, she wanted to help you.”

I didn’t buy any of that and told Diane as much. Instead of backing off, she drew us in deeper.

“I know a little bit about Nicole. Maybe a little bit more than you think.”

I felt a pulse beat at my temple.

“What do you mean?” I said.

“I mean she told me about her rape.”

“Let me ask you something. Did you get it on tape?”

“She was twelve years old, Kelly. She needed to talk about it to someone.”

“Did you get it on tape?”

“Yes.”

“Fucking great. Play it back at one of your luncheons. Make for a fun afternoon.”

I broke away and reached for my bottle of beer. Diane brushed her fingers against the back of my hand and lingered.

“She also told me about you, Michael. Off camera.”

I pulled away again, tried to shrug off the topic. A woman once told me that was my way with the big things. Move around it. Pretend it doesn’t exist, and it will go away. Some topics, however, just don’t seem to cooperate.

“What did she tell you?” I said.

My voice sounded thin and strange. The voice of someone I was neither familiar, nor entirely comfortable with.

“She talked about the rail yards, about a man. Showed up in your neighborhood one day. A white man, big, with shoulders.”

Diane’s words jump-started the images that slept somewhere inside. The movie reel danced, flickered, and began to turn. Silent all these years, the man was back, grinning at the boy, now grown. Mocking the passage of time. As if that had changed anything.

“The rail yards are at Grand and Central,” I said.

Inside the boy was still kicking and screaming. But I moved forward. No real choice in the matter.

“In the middle of my old neighborhood. Some older kids had boosted a Good Humor truck and dumped it there. Free ice cream, you know. Nirvana for a pedophile. Anyway, that’s where he took her.”

I shook my head, but the movie continued to play.

“The back of his skull was shaved. Heavy forehead, pale white skin, small eyes like black raisins. Face was pitted, covered on one side with a birthmark. Sounds scary, huh?”

Diane nodded.

“Thing was, he had a bag full of string licorice. Remember that stuff? I loved the red kind. So did Nicole. That was how he took her, I think. Trolled around the ice-cream truck and then used the licorice.”

“You found them?”

“I was a couple of years older. Fourteen, maybe. I guess I knew the basics of sex, but I had never seen it. Didn’t think it would be like that.”

“It isn’t, Michael.”

“At the end of the rail yards is a place we used to call ‘the swamp.’ Pretty much what it was. Ran right under the tracks. He had her sitting on a rock, head down, his hand in her hair, forcing her mouth onto him. I remember seeing him turn first toward me, then her face followed. She was crying, but there was a freight train rolling overhead so there was no sound. Well, there was plenty of sound, just nothing from her.”

I took a pull on the beer, but it had no taste. The movie played, the train rolled. No sound but plenty of pictures. Diane inched closer, knees touching mine, took up both my hands, and held them close. I didn’t pull away anymore.

“I wasn’t a big kid,” I continued, “but I was probably the toughest in a tough neighborhood. Wouldn’t have mattered. The guy was huge, would have killed me. Still, when I saw him, saw Nicole, the world went black. It used to happen when I was a kid. Things would get fuzzy, sort of a hot mist. Then just black. After that, it was like I was outside myself. Watching. Waiting to see what might happen.

“I guess I got lucky, grabbed at an old piece of board. Had a big old nail on the end. Caught him with it just above the temple. Man fell like a wall of bricks. Knees first, chest, then his head. With a slap on the ground. I was on top of him. Actually, both of us were. Me and Nicole. Beat him until we couldn’t lift our arms.”

I finished off the beer. The buzzer rang at the front door. Diane got up, paid the pizza guy, and set out plates. Then she sat down, took my hands in hers again, and waited.

“I think he was dead,” I said. “Pretty sure. I think the nail did it. It was early spring, a Friday afternoon after school, and we left him there. I remember his tongue just peeking out between his lips. Ran like hell. Left him in the swamp. Goddamn freight train was still running overhead.”

I picked up a piece of pizza and took a bite. Tasted like nothing, too.

“What about after?” Diane said.

“There was no after,” I said. “That night we had a huge rainstorm. Mudslides, flooding. Monsoon-type shit.”

I stopped for a moment and felt the rain again, black and cold, dropping straight down from the sky, hammering on the roof, tearing at my bedroom window. I stayed in there, alone, thinking someone, somewhere was angry. And I wondered at whom.

“We couldn’t even get near the swamp for a week and a half,” I said. “When we did, Nicole and I, the water was still and deep. The entire ledge where we left him was washed out. If he was still there, he was under a lot of water and a lot of mud. If he was alive…well, neither one of us ever saw him again.”

“So you really don’t know?”

“If I killed him? I always figured I did. Unless and until I see that face again, that’s how I look at it.”

I shrugged.

“Some people can kill. Others can’t. I found out early on that I belong in the first group. I’m okay with that.”

“How about Nicole?”

I shook my head.

“Hard to say. The years went by. We’d talk about it every now and then. But we mostly left it alone. Seemed easier that way.”

“Usually is. And now?”

“Now I need to talk to John Grime.”

“You think he has an answer for you?”

“Depends on what the question is. Right now, I think it’s worth a try.”

Diane urged me softly to my feet. I let her. She led me into the bedroom, closed the blinds, and put my world on hold. We didn’t have sex. Instead, we made love. For the first time. When we were done, I thought the tears were mine. Until I realized they were hers.

I llinois executes its killers inside a grim pile of brick just outside Chicago called Stateville prison. Death row itself, however, is located four hundred miles away, inside an even grimmer pile of brick called Menard. I flew into St. Louis, hired a car, and drove back across the state line. Diane knew the warden down at Menard and made the first phone call. He had no problem with my request to visit Grime, but only if the killer indicated, in writing, he wanted to see me. According to the warden, Grime had not taken a visitor who wasn’t an attorney in more than five years. Still, I scratched out a note, sealed it up, and sent it down to the prison. A week later my phone rang. Grime gave the okay. So here I was.

“Empty your pockets into the tray.”

The voice bled through a wooden speaker on the wall. A plastic tray was shoved through a metal slot set in a piece of opaque Plexi. I dumped my pockets into the tray and slid it back through. A few minutes later the disembodied voice returned.

“Pass through for shakedown.”

A lock turned to my left, and a door opened. I walked into a larger room with three correctional officers: two females and one male, sitting in three cubicles and not smiling. One of the females pointed to a door on my right.

“In there. Take your pants off and wait.”

I walked into the room and waited. Kept my pants on. After a few minutes, a correctional officer with a shaved bullet for a head muscled through. He didn’t have rubber gloves on, and I felt immediately better.

“You’re supposed to have your pants off.”

“And why would that be?”

Bullet-head smiled.

“Mostly we do it just to see if people will comply. Gets boring out here. Let me just pat you down and we can go in.”

Five minutes later I was in a small holding room, a visitor’s badge clipped to my chest, waiting.

All prisons are basically the same. Some more so than others. Especially if they are old. Menard had housed more than a hundred years’ worth of human suffering. Anguish and fear, sweat, piss, and bedsprings sharpened into steel shanks. Empty shower stalls and guards who couldn’t hear the screams. Gang rape and prison bedsheets fashioned into a noose for a convenient suicide.

I heard the shuffle of footsteps and muffled voices. The turn of a key in one lock, then another. Finally, the footsteps were outside and a door opened. Bullet-head came in first. He had two officers with him. Each carried a pump-action shotgun. Bullet-head did the talking.

“All right, Kelly. Here’s the deal. The prisoner is in a cell across the hall. He is cuffed, hands and feet, with a belly chain. If you want, we can take off the handcuffs.”

I nodded. Bullet-head mumbled into a walkie-talkie clipped to his shoulder.

“Okay,” he continued. “You can shake his hand if you want but that’s it. No other physical contact. If you want to give him anything, give it to me now and I’ll clear it with the warden.”

“I got nothing for him.”

“Good. Just talk and keep your distance. Everything will be fine.”

I nodded again.

“He’s got cigarettes and a bottle of water in there. He brought down a shitload of paperwork and some of his paintings. Any idea about that?”

“No.”

“If you don’t mind me asking, what’s this all about?”

“You going to be in there while we talk?”

“My two friends here will be on either side of the prisoner. I’ll be right behind you.”

“Then you’ll hear it all anyway.”

“Fair enough. Don’t make a scene and get him riled up, or my orders are to cut off the interview. Got it?”

“Got it.”

“Good. Let’s go.”

They were still taking the cuffs off as I came in. Grime was sitting in a folding metal chair, at a table stacked with material from a decade’s worth of appeals. More files lay on the floor at his feet. One of the guards unraveled the belly chain and stepped away.

“See this?”

Grime pulled a thick brown binder off the table. It had orange, green, and yellow tabs running down its side.

“This is information I pulled on all the victims. Private investigators I paid for. Good money to find out what they could about all these kids.”

Grime pulled open a tab to reveal the face of a young girl. I didn’t catch the name, but she was smiling.

“Complete workups on all of them, who they were, who they knew, how they got to Chicago. Most of these kids weren’t saints, you know.”

Grime dropped the binder to the floor and looked at me full on for the first time. He was like any other old guy gone to seed, except worse. Around sixty-five, white hair slicked back in a bad John Dillinger and thinning, with a serious case of dandruff. His skin was the color of wet gravel and his face hung off his cheekbones. His eyes were shoehorned into swollen pockets of flesh, and his mouth dripped down toward his chin. A decade on death row had not been good to Grime. Then again, it wasn’t supposed to be.