I smiled. “It was sent to me. I’d like to figure out what it means. So, yes, the package stays between us.”
I pul ed out the cardboard cutout of the black train over yel ow. “This was in there along with the book and the map. I’m thinking it’s some sort of logo, but I can’t place it.”
Hubert picked up the cutout and studied it. “Mind if I hang on to this for a while?”
“So you’re stil interested?”
“I said I was.” Hubert kicked at the pile of documents I had stacked under the table. “Now, when are you going to tel me about al of this?”
I pul ed up the files I’d gotten from Jim Doherty. “You’re a smart kid.”
Hubert had his eyes fixed on the files. “Yeah, yeah. So what surprises do we have here?”
CHAPTER 21
I’d just opened one of the files when Rodriguez walked through Filter’s front door. I waved him over. “I told the detective to meet us here.”
Hubert shrugged. “Cool.”
Rodriguez slid into the booth beside Hubert. “What’s up, kid? Whoa, what happened to the face?”
I thought Hubert might just get up and leave. He smiled instead. “Hi, Detective. How are you?”
Rodriguez looked over to me and back to Hubert. Then he noticed the old files piled up at my elbow.
“What are those?”
Hubert began to type on his laptop. “That is Mr. Kel y’s backstory and the reason why we’re al here this morning. Would you like to listen now or do you need coffee first?”
Rodriguez got his coffee from the waitress, who wasn’t any nicer to him, badge and al. Then he turned his attention to me.
“None of this goes to the task force,” I said. “Not until we figure out if there’s anything worth looking at.”
Rodriguez waved a hand. I tipped open a file and kept talking.
“Thirty years ago, an L train crashed in the Loop. Four cars derailed and wound up in the street. Eleven people were kil ed.”
I threw a spray of old news clips onto the table. Rodriguez picked one up and began to read.
“The anniversary date was yesterday, February fourth,” I said. “The crash happened at the corner of Lake and Wabash, site of yesterday’s sniper shooting.”
Rodriguez looked up. “You been saving al this?”
“I got a pal, retired cop named Jim Doherty. You know him?”
Rodriguez shook his head.
“He was a rookie in ’80. Worked the tracks as they pul ed bodies out of the cars. Everyone has a case that stays with them. For Jim, this was it. Keeps in touch with the families. Remembers the anniversary. Al that stuff. We used to talk about the case when I was on the force.”
“Doesn’t make sense,” Rodriguez said. “Why would anyone start shooting up the L thirty years after the fact? And how does Southport fit? Most important, why put the bul ’s-eye on you?” The cop took a sip of his coffee. “Too many loose ends.”
“There’s more,” I said and pul ed out another news clipping. It was a shot of the Lake Street elevated, moments after the crash. Below lay a tangle of fire trucks, ambulances, and cops surrounding four derailed cars: one lying on its side on Lake Street; one crushing the roof of two parked cars; the other two dangling in that rarefied air, halfway between the tracks and street below.
“I never told Doherty about this.” I shrugged. “Not sure why, but I guess I never told anyone.”
“Told anyone what?” Rodriguez said.
I tapped my finger lightly on the faded photo. “I was in that one right there.”
THE TRAIN TOOK the curve and I felt it in my stomach. I’d never felt that before, not on this curve, and my nine-year-old brain told me something might be wrong. Wheels chattered high and tight against the steel tracks as the weight of the car fought to swing out over Lake Street. An old lady near the front fell into the aisle with a crack that might have been her wrist. She screamed and someone else screamed to echo her. A man moved to help the lady on the floor. I watched him grasp her upper arm and then they both looked up. I pulled my eyes up, too, just in time to watch us barrel into a second train sitting immobile at the very center of the curve.
The noise went on forever, a grinding and tearing of metal on metal. This was what a crash sounded like. From the inside out. I slammed into a steel post and rolled across the floor. I blinked away the blood and felt the rip in my forehead. It hurt to stand up, but I did and climbed back toward my seat. Most everyone else was still on the floor. I was sure they were hurt, but there was precious little room for thought as our train continued its climb up the back of the first. Then the noise stopped. Whispers of pain began to bleed through the shock. I looked back toward the thin man. He was out cold, a small gash near his temple and a smear of blood against the window. I grinned to myself. Even at nine, I knew a silver lining when I saw one. I stepped back into the aisle just as another surge of power ran through the train and up into the soles of my sneakers. Once, twice, five times in all, our train seemed to buck and actually accelerate into the train it had already mangled. Each time the accordion effect caused the car we were in to bend and flex. The fifth time was the charm. Our car popped off the tracks, pitched to the left, and fell over the side, toward the street twenty-five feet below.
“HUH.” Rodriguez looked at me and waited.
“I was just a kid,” I said. “There were a lot of people inside. A few of them died. Most of us got out okay.”
“You know anyone who was in the car with you?” Rodriguez said. “Anyone who might hold a grudge?”
I held up a finger. “I knew one person, but he’s dead.”
“You sure?” the detective said.
I nodded and half smiled. “It was my old man. He was a conductor on the car that night.”
I WOKE UP in darkness, staring down at a strip of white crosswalk painted across Lake Street and crosshatched by a tangle of girders. I tried to stand up and realized that wasn’t going to be easy. My feet were above my head, which was jammed into a corner near the rear door of the train. I pushed myself slowly away from the gash that had opened up in the floor and began to crawl up the aisle, toward the back of the car. Two seats away, the thin man was slumped forward now, his body silhouetted by a splash of light sifting down from the tracks. I crawled a little closer. His forehead was caved in, long nose split to the bone. There was a soup of blood and tissue pooled on the seat and his mouth creaked open at the jaw. I looked to the back of the car. There was no one there, just a connecting door standing open and an empty seat where my father had been sitting. I moved toward the door, looking for my own way out. Maybe I moved too fast because the car began to groan in the wind. I froze and the train settled again. I could hear sirens in the distance and then a voice, close by and behind me.
“Help.”
I SHRUGGED and took a sip of coffee. “They lifted me out of the car and put me in an ambulance. Never talked to my old man about any of it-that sounds strange, but you had to know my old man. Never saw anyone else from the train, none of the passengers, ever again.”
Rodriguez scratched his chin and picked through the old files. “And you’re thinking this is too much coincidence?”
“Once the kil er drew me into the case, yeah, that’s exactly what I thought.”
“But you have no actual connections to what happened yesterday? No one that’s alive, anyway?”
I glanced toward Hubert, who was watching closely. “That’s where the computer kid comes in. He’s going to develop a program that assumes I’m the target and analyzes the data accordingly.”
The detective looked up. “What in hel does that mean?”
“It means,” Hubert said, “that I take al the information in these files, plus al the current case information you can get me, and see if any of it ties into Mr. Kel y. Compare names, dates, cases he worked. Things like that.”
Rodriguez sighed. “Seems pretty thin.”
“It’s a hunch,” I said. “Nothing more.”
