‘What the hell are you doing here?’ Venus Johnson asked Kelson on the street in front of the house. Kelson, Rodman, and Emma Almonte stood facing a black FBI truck, their hands cuffed behind their backs. FBI agents and CPD officers poured in and out of the house.
‘You think it’s Victor Almonte,’ Kelson said. ‘It isn’t.’
Rodman told Emma Almonte, ‘Get a lawyer. The cops’ll hear what they want. They’ll twist it. I’ve been there.’
Her eyes were steely. ‘I have nothing to hide.’
Venus Johnson faced Kelson. ‘What fucked-up logic convinced you that coming here made sense? You used to be a cop – Malinowski says a pretty good one. You know better than to step into shit this deep.’
Kelson looked at her. ‘How did Victor Almonte even end up at the Rogers Park Library?’
‘Took the damned El, I’m guessing.’
Rodman said to Emma Almonte, ‘Get a lawyer. The cops break everything. They break whole families.’
Kelson turned from Venus Johnson. ‘They broke DeMarcus’s. He used to have a brother.’
‘My family’s already broken,’ Emma Almonte said.
Venus Johnson put a hand on the back of Kelson’s neck. ‘I’m talking to you.’
Rodman glared at her. ‘You don’t want to do that.’ His voice was gentle. Nothing else about him was.
She took her hand off. ‘If you screwed up this investigation, I swear to God I’ll—’
‘None of that either,’ Rodman said.
Emma Almonte smiled at Rodman and said to Johnson, ‘I don’t know him, but getting him mad seems like a bad idea.’
Kelson said to her, ‘I like you.’
Venus Johnson eyed each of them, one after the other. ‘Goddammit,’ she said – then she turned to another cop and, gesturing at them, said, ‘Separate cars. Downtown.’
FBI Special Agent Cynthia Poole visited Kelson in the interview room at the Harrison Street Police Station. She wore a charcoal-gray pantsuit with a white blouse and had tied her brown hair in a neat ponytail. She wore thick-framed glasses.
‘Christ, what a cliché,’ Kelson said. His hands were chained to a metal loop on a metal table.
‘Excuse me?’ She sat down across from him.
‘Let me guess. Your dad was a cop. You grew up idolizing him, but he said no daughter of his would go into law enforcement. So you one-upped him by going FBI. You played sports in high school. Softball? Volleyball? In college, you studied criminal justice and minored in something useful – Spanish – no, chemistry, since they put you on a bomb investigation. You met your boyfriend at Quantico. Or your girlfriend. Girlfriend, right?’
‘Has anyone told you to shut the fuck up?’
‘Happens all the time. See, I took a bullet in my head, and I can’t help—’
‘I read your file,’ she said.
‘Then don’t be too hard on me.’
‘Don’t make excuses for being an asshole,’ she said. ‘Why were you at Victor Almonte’s house?’
‘Emma Almonte’s house,’ Kelson said, ‘where Victor was living. Same reason as you. Since leaving the department—’
‘Getting fired,’ she said.
He stared at her, speechless for a moment.
‘Keep your facts straight,’ she said.
‘Since getting kicked out on disability,’ he said, ‘I’ve worked as a private investigator. One of my friends asked me to look into this after his nephew—’
‘The nephew being James “Neto” LeCoeur,’ she said.
‘That’s the one. I told Venus Johnson about him. He’s—’
‘A juvie hacker who grew up into an adult screwball – unemployed for the past eight months after a series of short-term programming jobs which left almost all of the clients unsatisfied and some of their companies in disarray.’
‘That’s more than I knew.’
‘Civil lawsuit pending from Vanguard Machines, where Neto rearranged the accounts payable system – without permission or authorization.’
‘So you can read a report.’
‘Why are you being a jerk?’
‘Nancy – she’s my ex – says it comes naturally. But I think it’s because you cuffed me and dragged me downtown, and now you’re treating me like a punk.’
‘We could treat you worse. We’ve got cause.’
‘Because I’ll bet you found a load of bomb-making materials between Victor Almonte’s two pairs of underwear? Maybe a couple kilos of C-4 in one of his socks? And that sister of his, you’d better watch out – she’s got international terrorist connections coming out of her—’
‘Enough.’
Someone knocked on the door, the door swung open, and a man came in. His brown street shoes were clean but worn, his slacks unpressed, his blue button-up shirt the same. He carried a manila folder. A tag hanging from a lanyard around his neck identified him as FBI Special Agent David Jenkins.
‘He knows how to dress,’ Kelson said. ‘But you …’
The woman agent gestured at Kelson’s face and said to the new man, ‘See that scar on his forehead? He got shot in the brain when he worked on the narcotics squad.’
Jenkins eyed the scar. ‘Cool.’
‘It turned him into an asshole,’ she said.
‘I’m just open about my thoughts,’ Kelson said. ‘I’ve got what the doctors call disinhibition.’
‘I see,’ Jenkins said, and he took a third chair. He opened the manila folder, ignored the sheets of paper clipped together, and pulled two photographs from an envelope. He set the photographs on the table so the faces looked at Kelson. One was of Sue Ellen. She stood outside Nancy’s house smiling at the photographer – maybe Nancy. The other was of Nancy. Dressed in dentist scrubs, she stared at the photographer as if thinking of yanking the photographer’s incisors.
Kelson caught his breath. ‘Which is to say, you’re threatening me. That was quick. Where’d you get the pictures?’
‘Your old supervisors had them here. Probably got them from your ex. I guess you’ve been in trouble before? Something that made your coworkers want to know what your family looked like if bad stuff happened to them.’
‘And now I want my lawyer.’
‘We’re showing you the pictures so you know what’s at stake,’ Jenkins said. ‘No threat. But it could’ve been them at the library. It could’ve been anyone. Your old boss says you mean well. But meaning well differs from doing well. You need to stay out of our way.’ He picked up the photos of Sue Ellen and Nancy and gazed at them. ‘Because next time it could be them.’
‘No threat?’ Kelson said.
‘No threat.’
‘I want my lawyer,’ Kelson said. ‘His name is Ed Davies.’
Jenkins put the photos in the envelope and put the envelope in the folder. ‘You can go.’
‘I can?’
‘Why would we want to spend more time with an asshole?’ Cynthia Poole said.
‘How about my friend, DeMarcus Rodman?’
‘We released him ten minutes ago,’ Jenkins said. ‘He’s waiting for you outside.’
‘Emma Almonte?’
‘Let us worry about her.’
‘She’s innocent.’
Jenkins smiled as if Kelson was in over his head. The two agents left then, and Venus Johnson came in with a key for Kelson’s cuffs.
‘Nice people,’ Kelson said, ‘if you like that kind of people.’
Johnson released his left wrist.
Kelson said, ‘The kind who twist your testicles and say, Glad to meet you. Let’s be friends.’
Johnson released his right wrist.
Kelson said, ‘Don’t ever let them touch a picture of Sue Ellen or Nancy again.’
‘For a weak guy, you talk tough,’ she said. ‘It’s kind of cute.’ She opened the interview room door to let him go.
Rodman was waiting for him on the sidewalk outside the station. The smell of car fumes and burning wood hung in the cool air. The big man looked at him hard. ‘You all right?’
‘Sure,’ Kelson said. ‘You?’
Rodman tipped his head in a nod. ‘Fuckers.’
‘They mean well,’ Kelson said.
‘Sure they do.’
Kelson pulled out his phone and dialed his lawyer. ‘You need to find someone for me.’
‘I thought that was your job,’ Davies said.
‘She’s in the system. Emma Almonte.’
‘The bomber’s sister?’
‘He didn’t do it.’
‘The news says—’
‘Turn off the news, and listen to me. The FBI has her. Maybe at a CPD station, maybe someplace of their own. She’s done nothing.’
‘You sure about that?’
‘Do I ever lie?’
‘That’s not what I asked.’
‘You know what they’ll do if they convince themselves. She won’t have a chance.’
‘I’ll make some calls, and if no one will tell, I’ll file a habeas corpus. But, you know, if they really want to hold her …’
‘Yeah, I know.’