CHAPTER 17

I returned to my office and slid the green polo into one of those secret hiding places they teach you in private-investigator school. Also known as my bottom left-hand drawer. Then I turned on the radio. ESPN was doing a hot-stove report on the Cubbies. Be still my heart.

I listened intently, pondering deep thoughts, such as what manner of men might pay Alfonso Soriano $136 million to play baseball and where, pray tell, I might get such a gig. Then I noticed a piece of paper slipped under my door. I walked over and picked it up. Eat-A-Pita was having a special on char-grilled shrimp pitas layered with onions and wasabi sauce. I turned off the hot stove and was about to head out when the phone rang. I didn’t recognize the number but picked up anyway.

“Kelly, it’s Vince Rodriguez.”

The detective’s voice seemed a little stretched. Whatever he needed to talk about, Rodriguez had given it some thought and was uneasy.

“You eat yet?” he said.

I told Rodriguez about the special at Eat-A-Pita. He seemed properly impressed.

“How about I meet you there,” he said. “Half hour.”

I FOUND RODRIGUEZ in a booth by the window. I figured the detective wanted one of two things. Help with a case. Or help with Nicole. I had barely sat down before I got my answer.

“You and Nicole,” Rodriguez said.

“Yeah.”

“Friends since you were kids.”

“Nicole told you all that, huh?”

“A little bit.”

“She grew up a couple houses down the street. Over on the West Side. I looked out for her growing up. Now I think she looks out for me.”

I took a cursory look at the menu and kept talking.

“Why the interest, Detective?”

I tried to keep the grin out of my voice. Across the table, the Unflappable One squirmed.

“She probably told you. We got a bit of a thing.”

“A thing?”

I took a sip of water and waited.

“You know how it is. On the job and stuff.”

A waitress drifted over. We both ordered the special. Rodriguez added an iced tea.

“If she likes you, don’t try to figure it out,” I said. “Just take it as a blessing. Pray she doesn’t wake up one day and change her mind. At least that’s what I’d do. Is that all you wanted to ask me, Detective?”

“Pretty much. I just wanted to see, you know.”

“Whether we were more than friends?”

“Yeah.”

I shrugged.

“Never have been. Just not like that.”

I thought Rodriguez would let it lie. I was wrong.

“Is there something else going on with her?”

“How so?” I said.

“I don’t know. Just seems like there’s some kind of hurt. When you were around the other night, it got a little easier. At least, it seemed that way.”

“How much does she mean to you, Detective?”

“You think I like making a fool of myself in front of an ex-cop I barely know?”

“You give it time. You let her figure it out. Let her figure you out.”

“I’m thinking maybe we shouldn’t work together. Maybe that would make it better.”

“Can’t answer that for you.”

Rodriguez emptied a packet of sugar into his tea and watched it dissolve.

“I’m not a guy who’s been married before,” he said. “No divorce or any of that stuff. You were a cop. You know what I mean.”

I did.

“Give it some time,” I said. “She’s worth it.”

Our orders came, and we ate in silence for a bit.

“Any progress on the rape?”

“Still waiting for Nicole’s lab work,” the detective said. “If she can get DNA off those bedsheets, we might be in business. By the way, what exactly makes you think this guy is a killer?”

I shrugged.

“Your victim says he had finished raping her. Done. But he continues with the knife play. Runs it along her ribs, tears up the side of her shirt. Small cuts to the throat. Why?”

Rodriguez waited.

“He was playing with her,” I said. “Like a cat plays with a mouse. See if he can get a rise out of her. A little more excitement. Guy like that, he’s building to something. A release.”

“He kills her,” Rodriguez said.

“That’s what the cat does with the mouse.”

Our waitress drifted over. Rodriguez took a refill on his tea.

“I asked around about you,” he said. “Heard you were pretty good with a case file.”

The detective was right. In 2003 Chicago had six hundred fresh homicides. I cleared twenty-five of them in eight months, working alone. The next guy had half that and he was working most of the time with a partner. I didn’t share any of that with Rodriguez. Still, it was nice someone downtown remembered.

“That was a while back,” I said.

“How are you with it?”

“If you mean do I see the faces at night, the answer is yes. But it gets better.”

Rodriguez picked at the last of his shrimp and pondered nightmares not yet born. I reflected on the dead that lived just underneath my eyelids.

“Why didn’t it happen with Miriam?” he said.

“If I had to guess, I’d say she got to him somehow. In a sense.”

“Not sure I buy that, Kelly.”

“I’m not saying he felt pity for her. No. Guys like that, they feel sorry for themselves. Something in the way she talked, what she said, how she acted. Triggered his self-pity.”

“And saved her life,” Rodriguez said.

“It’s a theory.”

“Yeah. Next girl might not be so lucky.”

Vince’s PDA buzzed. He flipped it open, read the message, and typed in a response. Then he was out of his seat, a few bills on the table, moving through the restaurant. I was on his shoulder.

“You got the gift, Kelly. We just got another possible sexual assault. Couple of blocks from here. In progress. You up for it?”

“You sure?”

“They tell me you used to be good. Why not? Just don’t shoot anybody unless they shoot first.”

We got in his car and peeled north on Clark. Rodriguez radioed Dispatch.

“This is Rodriguez. I’m two blocks east, heading to the eight-oh-seven in progress. Copy.”

Dispatch crackled back.

“Affirmative. Two squads on scene. Officers searching building for the suspect.”

We rolled up to a center-entrance Chicago three-flat, an older building called the Belmont Arms near the corner of Belmont and Sheffield.

Two uniforms, one short, one tall, stood at the entrance to an alley on the building’s east side. The shorter one stepped forward. Rodriguez flashed his badge just as the cop’s shoulder mic barked. He hit the MUTE button and took a quick look at the detective’s shield.

“Yes, sir, Detective. Attack occurred in the alley. Then the suspect ran into the building. We have two units inside. Hold on a second.”

The officer turned away, mumbled into his shoulder, then turned back.

“They’re on the first landing. If you want to go in, they’ll wait there.”

Rodriguez took a radio from the uniform and walked toward the building. The cop walked with us and kept talking.

“The suspect’s a white male, five feet nine, one hundred and seventy pounds, wearing a black bomber jacket and blue jeans. According to the victim, he covered his face up and is armed with a knife.”

Rodriguez drew his gun and entered the building. I followed. We climbed the stairs and found two cops waiting. The stairwell was dimly lit, the walls gray with streaks of dirty sunlight from a pair of windows cut high into the landing. The older of the two uniforms got us up to speed.

“The other team is securing the back exits. Hallways run in both directions from the top of the stairs.”

“How many apartments on each floor?” Rodriguez said.

“Three. No telling who’s home.”

“So he could be inside any of these units?”

“Yes, sir. Three floors’ worth.”

“Okay. First thing we do is sweep the entire building, from the top down. Look for any sign of forced entry. If not, then we go unit by unit. Knock on the door, ID yourself, and ask to come in.”

We walked to the top floor together. The uniforms stacked on the left side of the hallway, crept around the corner, and disappeared. Rodriguez and I slipped around the other corner, guns drawn. Twenty feet down a door was ajar, light spilling into the hall. Rodriguez cruised up close, quiet. No sign of forced entry. Rodriguez eased the door in, three inches, half a foot. Over his shoulder, I could see a piece of hallway. Beyond that, a living room.

The detective gave me a short nod, then moved, low and fast, across the threshold. I followed, breathing slow and scanning. To my left was a couch that folded out to a bed, a nineteen-inch TV tuned to Judge Judy, and a set of windows that looked out over Belmont. Rodriguez eased across the living room, down another hallway, and stopped. He motioned for me to stack behind him.

“Blood,” he whispered and pointed to a smear along a baseboard. Then he moved around the corner and into the kitchen. More slashes of blood crisscrossed the walls toward what looked like a pantry. That is where we found the old man. In the final crook, in the final cranny of his studio apartment. At the very end of his life.

The wallet in his pocket would tell us his name was William Conlan. He wore one of those old-fashioned sweaters with patches on the elbows and had a pair of reading glasses knocked askew but still on his face. William’s eyes were open, his lips were parted, and the fingers on his right hand pointed our way, seemed to beckon. In his neck he had a black-handled knife, plunged to the hilt. Blood was pooled on the floor and spreading rapidly around us. Rodriguez radioed for backup, slid to his knees, and felt for a pulse. Nothing.

Paramedics arrived and began to work on the body. I moved around the blood to get a better look at the knife. The handle was old and cracked. I walked into the kitchen and pulled open the drawers.

“What do you see?”

It was Rodriguez, hands and forearms stained crimson.

“You should have worn some gloves.”

Rodriguez turned on the faucet and washed the blood down the drain.

“I don’t worry about getting AIDS from eighty-year-old men. You find the knife?”

I showed him the drawer, full of odds and ends, including three black-handled knives identical to the one in the other room.

“Must have started out here,” I said.

“The assault victim says the guy had a knife in the alley,” Rodriguez said. “Why not use that one?”

I shrugged.

“Who knows? He grabs this one out of the old man’s hand and just hits him. Anyway, they struggle down the hallway a bit and into the pantry.”

“Guy can’t be too far away,” Rodriguez said and walked over to a small window at the back of the kitchen. It was open and looked out over a row of rooftops running south alongside the El tracks.

“What do you think?” he said.

“I think it’s worth a look.”

Rodriguez climbed through the window. I followed.