The Third Rail (11 page)

Peter Rubenstein was two cars away, driving an almost new Cadillac Seville. Peter was sixty-three years old and a widower. His wife, Marcy, had died a year and a half earlier when she fell down a flight of stairs in their home. Rubenstein wept at her funeral and sold their house within three months of putting "his Marcy" in the ground. Now he lived in a high-rise condo along the lake, courtesy of his dead wife's insurance cash. Peter was whistling and enjoying a view of the morning sun shimmering off the water. He'd never know his insurance settlement had been flagged by state investigators.
Never know about the order to exhume Marcy's body and the subsequent report that would have established her death as a homicide, the result of several blows to the head "inconsistent with a fall down the stairs." He'd never get to hear the charge of murder laid against his name or feel the cuffs as they slipped across his wrists. He'd never get to know any of that, but he would get to see "his Marcy" sooner than he expected. Robles' second round hit Rubenstein in mid-whistle, just below the left eye, tearing off most of his head and making life miserable for the undertaker when Rubenstein's family insisted on an open casket.

Robles' third shot missed everything. His fourth punched through the chest and burst the heart of forty-seven-year-old Mitchell Case, a second-rate accountant who would never find out about the first-rate affair his wife was having, not to mention the malignant tumor percolating inside his skull. Case's Corolla was traveling at twenty-eight miles an hour when he was struck. The car hit the divider, jumped it, and plowed into a van headed north. That driver, eighteen-year-old Malcolm Anderson, would never meet his daughter, Janine, because she'd never be born. The only passenger in the van, thirteen-year-old Randall Blake, would have his left leg crushed in the wreckage, undergo four hours of emergency surgery at Northwestern Memorial, and survive. Randall would consider himself one of the lucky ones from that day on the Drive. He'd never know about his four years as an All-American guard at the University of Michigan or the Hall of Fame career he would have enjoyed with his hometown Bulls. Never know about the $113 million he'd have earned, the wife he'd have married and grown old with, or the five girls he'd have watched raise families of their own. Instead, Randall would walk for the rest of his life with a limp and a cane.
He'd die alone, at the age of forty-six, from complications due to hepatitis C, the disease of a junkie, which is exactly what Randall would become.

Three cars behind Mitchell Case's car, Robles' final round creased the roof of a black 2009 Audi and caromed away harmlessly. Inside, the driver took no notice of the metallic ping, not with the horror show unfolding in slow motion around her. Rachel Swenson locked her brakes and heard the crunch as she hit the car in front of her. A half beat later, she felt another car plow into her from behind. At the same time her air bag deployed, knocking her silly and preventing her from being impaled on the steering wheel. Rachel put her hand to her face and slipped the rearview mirror over. There was a cut on her forehead, and she felt a little dizzy, but she was alive and still conscious. A car had jackknifed over the divider and a young black boy was halfway out of a van and moaning. She leaned her shoulder against the driver's-side door and popped it open. Then Rachel was up and out of the car. There was a smell of raw gasoline in the air. A few feet away, a man was screaming that he had called the police. Rachel could already hear the sirens. She walked down the line of wrecked cars. In one she could see a man with most of his head missing and a young woman crouched nearby, vomiting. Rachel hadn't spent time at a lot of crime scenes, but she'd seen enough to know the injury she was looking at was not the result of any car accident. The black boy near the van moaned again. Rachel climbed the divider and picked her way around the wreckage. She'd do what she could. As she walked, she felt her cell phone in her pocket. She pulled it out, dialed, and waited for the other end to pick up. That was when she saw the lone figure, across three lanes of highway, packing up a duffel bag and disappearing into a stand of trees.

R
odriguez hit the intersection of Belmont and Racine at fifty miles an hour and climbing. He had his lights and siren on and was typing into a computer built into a console between us. I had just hung up with Rachel and was scribbling down everything she'd told me. Rodriguez finished with his notes and looked over.

"What do you got?"

"She said he was dressed in a dark-colored jacket and maybe jogging pants. Holed up on a little rise of grass, just west of the Drive."

Rodriguez was at sixty now, moving east on Belmont.

"And she thinks he's the guy?"

"She says he was packing a black duffel and running."

"Hold on."

Rodriguez typed a few more lines into his computer. Then he came back to me.

"You all right with this?" he said.

Rachel told me she was okay. She sounded okay. And she let me talk to one of the people on the road with her who assured me she was more than okay. So I let her tell me about the man on the hill. Let her talk me into going after him.

"I'm fine. What are we doing?"

Rodriguez swung a hard right onto Inner Lake Shore Drive. Traffic was at a standstill. Rodriguez cut back west and picked his way south down Sheridan.

"We're setting up a perimeter from Halsted Street east, along the lake from Addison to North Avenue. We're getting some choppers up, and I got the description out there. If he didn't jump in a car, we got a chance."

"How many did he hit?"

Rodriguez shrugged. "Don't know. But it doesn't sound good."

The detective smoked his tires taking a left off Sheridan and gunned it the wrong way down Diversey, to a dead end and a parking lot. It was less than five minutes since the last shot was fired. The lot had three cars in it. All of them empty. Rodriguez and I pulled our guns and moved to the soccer fields that lay just beyond.

"The area she described is just over the hill," Rodriguez said. "I'm gonna go straight up. You circle around to the south. If he's still on foot, there's a chance he headed that way."

Rodriguez was right. If our shooter had headed north or west, he'd have to navigate a half mile's worth of open ground. To the south was the parking lot. Beyond it, cover in the form of winding paths, trees, and a series of underpasses.

"Put me on your net so some cop doesn't shoot me," I said.

Rodriguez nodded. "You're on it. Just don't change clothes on me. Here, take a radio."

The detective threw me a handheld and headed toward the hill. I checked the volume on the two-way to make sure it was squelched and started jogging south along a running path that skirted Diversey Harbor and Lincoln Park Lagoon. Two minutes
and a hundred yards later, a dog stood at the top of a small rise, wagging his tail for no apparent reason. I knew a little about dogs. Very little. My pup, however, rarely wagged without a reason, usually because she saw something or someone. I pushed up the incline.

"What do we got here, boy?" I scratched the dog behind the ears. He wagged his tail even harder. Ahead, the jogging path dipped to the left and ran underneath a bridge that spanned Fullerton Avenue. I crept toward the black hole under the bridge. The dog stayed where he was. Smart dog.

R
obles wore navy-blue running pants, a blue hooded sweatshirt, running gloves, and a hat. He kept a snub-nosed revolver tucked in one pocket of his sweatshirt and a set of keys in the other. Fullerton Avenue above him was quiet. A chopper beat somewhere in the distance. Robles was twenty yards beyond the bridge when he heard someone call out to the dog. Time was running thin. Nelson had stressed he'd have about ten minutes from his last shot to get to where he needed to be. That was seven minutes ago. Robles could have run for it, but he didn't. Instead he veered off the path, into the scrub alongside the lagoon, and waited. He heard the crunch of gravel, the slosh of water, and the rumble of a garbage can as its cover was removed. A head peeked out from underneath the bridge. Then, a hand and a gun. Robles fired twice. A body fell back into the darkness. Robles looked around. There was a lot of swirl, but it was all still a mile or so north, focused on the tragedy and neglecting the periphery. Just as Nelson had predicted. Robles stood up, brushed the dirt off his pants, and began to jog again. Fifty yards later, he found the building he was looking for, fitted a key into a lock, and disappeared inside.

* * *

THE FIRST ROUND
scored the pavement a foot or so to my left. The second knocked me to the ground. I knew I was hit and saw my gun lying in a puddle of water a few feet from my head. I struggled to my feet and wedged myself between a steel girder and a trash can. My right arm wouldn't cooperate, so I reached for the gun with my left. Then I waited for the pain to settle. The air under the bridge was cold and damp. Water dripped down the walls and pooled in the broken cement at my feet. I slipped my hand under my vest. It came away red, but the wound didn't seem too bad. I gave it another ten seconds and crept out again. The running path was empty. Whoever had shot me was gone.

I moved down to the water's edge, slumped into the weeds, and looked out over the lagoon. A couple of ducks looked back. Then they flapped their wings and lifted into the air. Far above them another bird hovered. This one was a police chopper, scouring the shoreline. I waved, but it moved off. The water below was quiet, chunks of ice floating here and there. Around a soft bend in the shoreline, a single boat suddenly appeared, a kayak paddling out from the Lincoln Park Boat House, heading toward the lake. The kayaker wore a hat, gloves, and a dark sweatshirt. It seemed like an odd outfit, but then again, I had never kayaked through a Chicago winter. Didn't know anyone who had.

I inched back a little deeper in the scrub and watched some more. The kayaker was struggling with his stroke, unable to coordinate the lift and fall of the double-bladed paddle. After twenty yards or so, he smoothed out and began to move a little better. I stretched out on my stomach and lay flat on the ground. The man might have caught my movement, because
he stopped paddling and leaned forward. For a moment, I saw the short shape of a gun, outlined against the hard winter gray. Then it disappeared back in the bottom of the boat.

I held my nine in front of me with two hands. The blood flowed a little more freely down my side, but the pain had subsided, and my head was clearing. The kayak was moving again, from right to left, maybe fifty yards away. I knew I was at maximum range for my gun and squeezed down over the sight. The boat drifted closer and the shot got easier. I moved the gun from temple to jaw and then down over the mass of the kayaker's body. The mayor's face slipped across the edge of my vision. As did a federal agent, with a badge and a knowing smile. I tightened up another notch on the trigger. Then I exhaled and pushed back into the weeds.

My words tasted like dust, but I radioed in anyway and told Rodriguez about the boat. I could hear the rotor chop above me fade for a moment, then grow louder. They had drifted a bit north, but would arrive in plenty of time to cut off whoever our kayaker was. He continued his slow crawl across the lagoon. I pulled the gun up again and tracked him. Just for fun this time. The kayaker ducked and paddled, still a rough but steady stroke. His face turned once, as if he sensed something, and his profile flashed in a column of light. I lowered my gun. Then I heard a crack, and the kayaker's chest exploded in a cloud of tissue and red.

ROBLES HEARD A POP
and felt a tug at his throat. Then he was at the bottom of the kayak, staring up at the sky and choking on his own blood. Robles thought about the girl from last night. He'd enjoyed killing her. This morning on the Drive, even more. He thought about all the others, women
struggling against the darkness, children submitting, small graves in the woods. Those were his private treasures. His secrets. Today had been his glory.

Robles' mind emptied, and filled again with a summer day. He was a kid gone fishing. The sun gentled and the boat rocked as the man moved in the bow and then settled, cigarette in one hand, line in the other. Robles remembered the trout he'd caught that day, silver and pink against the roughed-out bottom of the boat. The man gripped the fish, belly down, and hit it twice with the rounded butt of a knife. Then he threw the trout into a rusty hold filled with water. Robles remembered looking into the well, seeing the black eyes peering out from under. Then the lid closed, and the eyes were gone. The man returned to his perch and fell asleep. The boy remained where he was, breathing softly and watching the water move around him.

Such were Robles' thoughts as he looked up at the sky, lungs swollen with blood, police chopper drifting, and then nothing.

I
'm fine," I said, for the fourth time in the last minute and a half. The inside of my mouth tasted like dry wool. I reached for a paper cup and felt the pull of an IV in my arm. The water slipped down my throat, but seemed to have no discernible effect.

"You realize how close you came to dying?"

Rachel was standing beside the ambulance, head bandaged, shoulders hunched, arms crossed. She had been in the middle of Lake Shore Drive, talking to Rodriguez, when I called over on the radio. Then came a report that I'd been hit. She hitched a ride in a squad car and bitched at the cops the whole way. At least, that's what they told me later.

"The bullet caught my vest," I said, showing her the four stitches in my side. "Nothing more than a scratch."

"It's a little more than that, Mr. Kelly." That was the EMT, not making things any easier, so I ignored her.

"How's your head?" I said.

Rachel touched the white bandage at her temple. "My head's fine."