The Chicago Way (27 page)

“Name is Michael Kelly. I’m a detective. From Chicago.”

Something moved between us and the man inside the farmhouse flinched.

“My name is Sam Becker. I expect you know that.”

I nodded. He opened the door.

“Well, come on in.”

He walked back toward a solitary light, burning inside a lamp on a kitchen table. Beside the lamp were the remnants of a solitary breakfast. Strip steak with some eggs and coffee. Sam Becker cleared away the half-eaten meal, and I took a seat.

“Coffee?”

He poured me a cup and gave himself a refill. Becker motioned to the living room. I followed as he settled himself in a leather chair. I took the couch. There wasn’t much between us but a low table. The walls were bare here. Much like the kitchen. In the corner of a bookshelf I caught a wink of gold in a panel of light. The line of a picture frame. Becker followed my eye and took down the photo.

“If you’re from Chicago, I expect this is what you’re here about. Almost ten years now. Hell of a long time.”

He put the picture down and I picked it up. I figured the photo to be from a high school class picture. Sixteen, maybe seventeen. At any age she was blond and beautiful. At any age, however, she wasn’t the woman I knew as Elaine Remington.

“This is Elaine, Sam? The girl who was attacked?”

Becker’s face hardened around the eyes.

“She was murdered, mister. Attacked on the day before Christmas 1997. Died a few weeks later.”

I kept my gaze steady and didn’t wait to reply.

“I have to ask you something, Sam. Maybe it’s going to get me thrown out of here. And maybe you’ll want to take a shot at me. I respect that. But I got a job to do, and I’m going to have to ask. Did you ever see her body?”

“What the hell…”

I held out a hand.

“Let me explain. Most of the records in Chicago have disappeared. The ones we do have show a woman was attacked but not killed. I guess it’s unclear exactly what did happen to her. That’s why I’m asking.”

Sam got up and went to a china cabinet along a far wall. He returned with a brown file folder, a bit tattered and bound up with string. He opened it up, and out fell the pieces of a young life. First I saw a couple of newspaper clips on the attack. Local stuff that had slipped under the radar of my research. Then the police reports I had already seen. Finally a coroner’s report I had never seen. From a hospital in Chautaugua County, Kansas. Elaine Remington had died from multiple stab wounds to the chest and back. The date of death was three weeks after the attack. There was also a picture of the corpse. It was the girl in the photo, a Y-incision across her chest and down her belly.

“That’s how you find out she’s dead, Mr. Kelly. And that’s why you keep it around. Just in case you start to not remember. You open up the folder and there it is.”

I lit a cigarette and offered one to Becker. He accepted and we filled up our mugs. The file lay between us.

“Sam, I got a problem.”

Sam wasn’t dumb and had already figured that. So I told him about John Gibbons and the letter. I told him about my client, my own personal blonde named Elaine Remington. Then I told him about the nine millimeter that had killed, by my count, at least five people. Sam took it in and then stood up.

“Come with me.”

The farmer walked stiffly up the stairs, down a dark hallway, and into what was once a young girl’s bedroom. He pulled a yearbook off the shelf. The spine read SEDAN HIGH, CLASS OF ’94. Becker flipped through the book, back and forth, as if he were confused. I waited for him to settle. The farmer found the page he wanted and put the book down on the bed.

“That what you’re looking for?”

The girl was a cheerleader and president of the Theater Club. Voted “Most Likely to Be a Drama Queen,” she wanted most of all “to live among the lights.” The girl was smiling and easily the best-looking face on her page. The girl was my client. The woman I knew as Elaine Remington.

“Her real name is Mary Beth. Two years younger than Elaine.”

We were sitting on the bed now. The farmer and myself. The yearbook between us. I ran a finger across the picture. Sam told me the story.

“Remington was their mom’s maiden name. She was found dead at the bottom of a well. Face beat in with a hammer, but everyone said she just took a bad step. Mary Beth was ten when her mom died. Now that might sound bad to you, Mr. Kelly, but that was actually the best part of this girl’s life. When she turned twelve, her daddy took her. In the barn back there. Wanted to be the first one in. Before he rented her out to his friends, you see.”

Sam stopped for a moment. Then he started up again.

“Mary Beth ran away. Came to Oklahoma. I was a bachelor. Thought I was hard to find but damned if my niece didn’t track me down. Turns out her father came back for seconds one night. She was ready this time and fought like hell. He cut her with a knife. To this day she carries a scar right under her collarbone. Mary Beth returned the favor. Put a pitchfork through his neck. The old man bled out right there. Then Mary Beth patched herself up and ran to me.

“I fixed it with the sheriff and Mary Beth came back to Sedan. I came with her, did my best to be a father. Over time, I found out the old man had done the same thing to each of his girls when they turned twelve. Coming-of-age sort of thing.”

Now Sam unwrapped a sad grin and shifted in his seat.

“Truth be told, as a dad, I was a better uncle. Elaine couldn’t wait to cut loose. Can’t blame her. Not a lot of good memories. She took off right after high school. Got herself as far as Chicago. Then she got herself dead. Mary Beth followed suit. Sounds like you know a lot more about her than I do. The oldest is the only one who ever kept in touch. Nothing more than a Christmas card, but it means something when you get old.”

“The oldest?”

“Yeah, the third girl. First one to be taken by Daddy. She was the smartest. Probably the toughest. And that’s saying a bit. Put herself through a local college. Got her degree and got out of Sedan. Determined to overcome. Never asked for a goddamn thing.”

Becker pulled out another yearbook, this one from 1988.

“Here she is. Editor of the school newspaper.”

I took a look at the oldest of the three sisters. Five minutes later I was on the road, headed back to the airport, both high school yearbooks on the passenger seat next to me.

T he loneliness came again, just past three in the morning. I had pushed against it. All the way back from Kansas and into the night. But it came anyway. Loneliness and I were familiar, if not entirely comfortable, traveling companions. I knew its tricks, the ebb and flow. The pains that crept up on you during the day, the moments of memory that paid their respects only at night.

As I got older, I got stronger. Not immune. Just able to weather the storm. Let loneliness run its course, take its pound of flesh, and be gone. I knew there was an end. I knew because I had already walked it. Loneliness knew it, too. And that gave me all the advantage.

Still, sometimes, occasionally, even at age thirty-five, I felt the bite a bit more than I should, more than I ever thought I would again.

This was one of those nights. And the problem was, I didn’t know why. If it was Diane, I didn’t know it straight off. If it wasn’t Diane, then it was just a feeling without a target. And that was frightening. A mutation of the disease I had never encountered before. Perhaps one without a cure.

The phone rang on cue. I glanced at the caller ID. Wonderful invention that, sort of a dress rehearsal sometimes for life’s little sorrows. I let it ring again, pretended to fumble a bit with the receiver, then picked it up.

“Hello.”

She was quiet but awake. Like she had been sitting up somewhere. Maybe not with whiskey, but still awake.

“Sleeping, Michael?”

“Half and half,” I said.

I wondered where she was. Her bedroom. A cell phone. The lobby downstairs. Then I picked it up. Steel on steel. An El train going by my window and coming out of the phone. All at once.

“I guess my cover is blown,” she said.

“Where are you?”

“Three blocks from your house. A greasy spoon on Lincoln called the Golden Apple. You know it?”

I figured she wasn’t inviting herself up. I figured it was probably for the best.

“Yeah, I know it. Give me five.”

I threw on a pair of pants and a sweatshirt, grabbed my wallet, keys, and a Smith amp; Wesson revolver. After Kansas I was taking nothing for granted.

SHE WAS IN THE LAST BOOTH on the left. I ordered a coffee as I walked through the door. It was on the table by the time I got there. It was that kind of place.

“Where you been all day?” Diane said.

She was wearing jeans and a black sweater, with her hair pulled back, and eyeglasses with black frames. At first glance she seemed put together. Red lipstick, pale makeup. Flawless. When she smiled, however, I saw the first crack. A single line in her cheek, running up under her eye. After the first one, they became easy to spot. And just as hard to ignore.

“Just working some background,” I said and ducked my eyes toward the table. She had a cup of tea and a copy of Aeschylus’ Agamemnon lying flat by her elbow.

“The Agamemnon,” I said.

“Figured I’d give it a try.”

She said it with a pause. The testing kind, the kind you throw out in a relationship to see which way the wind is blowing. I tried to give nothing back, which, in and of itself, was probably everything.

“At three in the morning, that’s some interesting reading,” I said. “Part of a trilogy, you know.”

“So you told me. The Oresteia.”

“What’s your take?”

“I think it’s all about revenge,” she said. “How about you?”

I nodded and felt the blood thicken in my ears.

“Tisiphone, Megaera, and Alecto.”

“Who are they?”

“Names of the Furies. They show up at the end of the second play. Three sisters who hunt down any perceived wrongdoers. They torture and kill without mercy.”

Diane stirred her tea and took a tiny sip.

“Something wrong with that?” she said.

I picked up the Agamemnon and leafed through its pages.

“The Furies pursued their revenge through time. Through generations. Killed people with little or no connection to the crime. The Greeks portrayed them with snakes in their hair and blood dripping from their eyes. They were mad. All three of them.”

“But they were effective?”

“You think so?”

“Why not? Eye for an eye and all that stuff.”

I slid the Agamemnon back across the table.

“In the third play, the Furies are sated. They help to establish the Athenian court system. The blood feuds end, and the first court of law is established.”

“Maybe I’ll skip that part,” she said. “Sounds a little boring.”

“You like a good blood feud, huh?”

“Who doesn’t? Besides, it’s just a play.”

Diane slid Aeschylus off the table and into a bag by her side. Then she smiled.

“Enough ancient history. Tell me about your sleuthing today. Background on who? For what?”

I went on for the next half hour, giving her every detail of my day, none of it about Kansas, all of it a tissue of lies. Diane nodded, sipped her tea, ordered, then ate some chocolate cake. She smiled at the end and didn’t believe a word of it.

“Well, I better head home,” she said.

“Big day?”

“I tape an interview with Rodriguez in the morning. They arrest Bennett Davis and we get our exclusive tomorrow night. Your name is still out of all this, right?”

I nodded.

“By the way,” she said, “have you told your client about any of this?”

“Not yet.”

“Her face is going to be out there sooner or later, you know.”

“That’s what you figure?”

“It won’t come from my station. But absolutely, she’ll eventually be out there.”

I got up to go. Diane got up with me.

“I’ll see Elaine tomorrow and catch her up,” I said. “I also told Rodriguez I’d meet him at your newsroom after the interview. Tie up a few loose ends.”

“Sounds great. We should wrap around noon.”

She leaned in and kissed me. Red lips, long, strong, and hungry. Like she meant it. Or at least wanted to.

“Thanks for the story,” she whispered. “You saved me and I won’t forget it.”

Then she turned and walked out of the diner. I went home and opened up a copy of the Agamemnon, found the line where Clytemnestra lures her husband into the bath and waits as he is knifed to death.

I spoke the line aloud, rolling the syllables across my tongue as Aeschylus had intended. I wondered just how many Clytemnestras lurked in my life, where were the knives, and most important, who would wind up dead in whose tub.

T he next morning I woke up fast. I ran five miles along the lakefront, showered, dressed, and grabbed some coffee at Intelligentsia. By eleven I was headed downtown and on my cell.

“Yeah.”

Detective Masters was his usual effusive self.

“Vince Rodriguez is going to be on the news tonight,” I said. “Here’s what you need to know.”

I told him about Grime, Pollard, and Bennett Davis. I have always fancied myself something of a connoisseur when it came to the exotic curse. Masters, however, fashioned a string of expletives that would make a deaf man blush.

“You done?” I said.

“Yeah.”

“So Vince does his thing today. He arrests Davis and lays out the Grime angle. Tomorrow belongs to you.”

Then I told him about Kansas, how it fit together. It took a while. When I finished, there was nothing.

“Masters,” I said. “You there?”