“See the boxes,” Goshen said.
I did.
“See the shelves.”
I did.
“This is Grime. Not all of it, mind you. We have three other rooms for that boy. But this is some good stuff.”
Goshen pulled out a stack of Girl Scout magazines once owned by John William Grime, Chicago’s very own street mime and serial killer. They looked like normal magazines, except all the Girl Scouts were naked.
“Found cartons of this stuff inside his house. Sick fuck.”
The warehouse man fingered one of the magazines, put it back down and picked up a plastic evidence bag. Inside it was a girl’s school ring.
“See this? Suzanne Carson’s ring. They found this in the attic. You remember Carson?”
I remembered Carson. Anyone who knew anything about Chicago crime would. She was Grime’s last victim. The Girl Next Door. The case that led police to the house on Hutchinson and the fifteen bodies buried underneath. Through the plastic evidence bag, Goshen played his hands across the ring.
“You come in here a lot, Ray?”
For a moment there was a touch of hunger about his lips and eyes. Then Goshen subsided and dropped Suzanne’s ring.
“My job is to keep this stuff straight. Let’s go.”
We locked up Grime’s broom closet and walked next door. Goshen’s office was small and jammed with more boxes of evidence. In one corner was a shipping cart full of handguns and rifles.
“They’re getting melted next week,” Goshen said. As if the guns needed an explanation. Which they didn’t.
The office walls were covered with a brand of grit only true despair can create. The only decoration was a pinup calendar from August 1983. The girl on the calendar looked like she was about thirteen, and she was naked. Not coquettishly naked. Disturbingly naked.
“You like her?” Goshen said. He was behind me now, chin nearly on my shoulder.
“She’s a little young, Ray.”
He shrugged, moved back around the desk, and sat down.
“Have a seat.”
From a drawer, Goshen produced an enormous green book with a red binding. He opened it and began to turn the pages, slowly and with care.
“Your girl. How old did you say she was?”
“About twenty.”
“Raped, you say?”
“I did.”
Goshen stopped turning pages.
“Did she fight?”
“Is she in the book, Ray?”
Goshen looked at me like I should be happy I wasn’t stuffed underneath Grime’s house and left there for a good while.
“How the fuck do I know? Let me take a look.”
He returned to the ledger.
“You get a lot of people coming in here?” I said.
“Sure,” Goshen said. “People like police officers. You know, the guys who actually belong here.”
I snuck a look at the pages as Goshen turned. The entries were all handwritten. The first page I saw was dated January 1, 1934. Goshen stopped turning again.
“Yeah, yeah, I know. Fucking ancient. But you know what? Handwriting makes people think about what they put in. And besides, it’s pretty damn hard to disguise your scrawl, in case you ever tried. So we say, fuck the computers. Let everyone write it all out. We just keep adding pages to the ledger. And there it is.”
Goshen was flipping pages now. Each was large and took two hands to turn.
“Is this the only copy?” I said.
“Fucking pessimist. Yeah, it’s the only copy and been the only copy for most of the last century. Fucking pessimists.”
He stopped the turning.
“Here we go. The crime happened in 1997, right?”
“Right.”
“We search by file number. Page by page. Here. This covers 1980 through the nineties.”
Goshen unclipped the ledger and split up the hundred or so pages cataloging two decades of Chicago crime.
“Don’t fuck these up,” he said.
“I got it.”
Fifteen minutes later Goshen found an entry.
“Goddamn it, Kelly.”
“Yeah?”
“Elaine Remington, December twenty-fourth, 1997?”
“Yeah.”
“Next time come in with a goddamn case number. I ran a search for this evidence just the other day.”
“For who?”
Goshen slammed the ledger closed, blew his nose into a barrel under his desk, and crossed one knee over the other.
“Couple of pukes from the DA’s office.”
“Shit.”
“Yeah.” Goshen smiled. “Thing is, I hate the DA even more than your sorry ass.”
“Lucky for me.”
“Got that right. Told the two of them everything was numbered; go ahead and search the place.”
“How long did they last?”
“First guy. About an hour. Second guy was a go-getter. Went the full day. Never made it off the first floor.”
“Think he ever got close?”
“I know he didn’t. The first floor only carries cases through 1975.'
“Didn’t tell that to the DA’s men, huh?”
Goshen gave me the blank gaze of a city bureaucrat, willing to stand there until I figured it out for myself. Or at least until quitting time.
“You have a map of this place?” I said.
Goshen tapped his forehead.
“Right here. But you have to ask the right question. Let’s go.”
The elevator was a birdcage job with one of those old cranks you have to hold down until you get to your floor. Goshen turned it on with a skeleton-looking key, and we started up. The warehouse man kept his eyes fixed on the crank. Not because he didn’t know how to work it, but because his alternative was to look at me. Didn’t exactly make me feel warm inside. Still, we were moving.
“Fifth floor,” Goshen said. “Nineteen ninety through ’99.”
He cracked the elevator door and we walked out. Rows of iron shelving stretched upward and ran off into the darkness. Bits of light from what might have been bulbs filtered down from the rafters. Useless except as a reminder to go back downstairs and get a flashlight. Fortunately, Goshen was ahead of the game. He jumped into a forklift and pulled a flash from his pocket.
“Let’s go,” he said, and powered up the lift. I got in and we drove.
“Kind of a big place, this fifth floor, Ray.”
“Lot of sick fucks, Kelly. Lot of sick fucks. This is it. The late nineties.”
