My old man grabbed me by the neck and threw me toward the back of the car and the open connecting door. I hit an edge, slumped across the threshold, and felt the night on my face. I looked up at the L tracks looming above me, a couple of firemen’s hats peeking over the side.
“Get out the fucking door,” my old man bellowed and tried to follow me to safety.
Doherty reached out and grabbed for his leg. My old man put a boot in Doherty’s face and slammed him into the side of the car. For a moment, there was nothing but a silent tremor that rippled through my fingers. Then the train lurched, this time badly. Quiet moans became screams. Steel groaned and rivets popped. A seam of metal split the length of the car. The woman with the soft face moaned once as something pierced her anew. Doherty reached, but his fingers were greased with blood, and she slipped away. Then she was gone, leaving nothing behind but a cold wind, chasing Jim Doherty’s screams through a gaping hole to the blank pavement below.
“He killed her,” Doherty said.
I shook my head. “She would have died whether she fel or not. The doctors told us that.”
“You mean the doctors paid for by your city. He was a coward. He kil ed her. You both did.”
I felt Doherty’s eyes, crawling across my soul, finding the dark crevices where guilt fed on a child’s doubt, and a woman’s pain echoed. I shook my head free, but the man with the shotgun had seen enough to smile.
I was dragged up to the tracks in a fireman’s sling. My father, right behind me. I took one look down into the street, but she was already covered with a sheet. They tried to talk me into an ambulance, but I twisted away, ran from the elevated, then walked twenty blocks home. That night, my old man drank a pint and a half of Ten High bourbon. He called me into the kitchen sometime after midnight and asked me what I saw on the train. I told him nothing. He beat me with his fists, asking the same question with every blow. I kept saying nothing because I didn’t know what answer would be better. But there was no right answer. And there was no beating that was going to hurt worse than knowing what my father was. And knowing that every time he looked at me, he’d see his own cowardice reflected there. And hate me for it.
“If I’d found him, I’d have kil ed him.” Doherty tilted forward in his chair, tipping the twin barrels of the shotgun a touch closer. “And maybe that would have been enough. Maybe helped both of us.”
“Who was she, Jim?”
“Her name was Claire.”
“Your wife?”
“Engaged.”
I shifted in my chair, edging closer to my gun on the floor. “My dad’s dead. I did what I could that night. You know that. So did the cops. So did the doctors.”
The shotgun wavered and I could see pools of blood in his eyes, the firemen’s tight features as they lifted her body off the street. Then the hard anger returned, grinding everything else to dust, wiping Jim Doherty’s mind to black.
“Too late for that, Michael.” He tightened his grip on the gun and let his eye wander to the image on his laptop. “I’m gonna have mine and that’s just the way it is.”
In his left hand, Doherty clutched a smal box. He held it up for me to see. “Looks like a TV remote, doesn’t it?” He nodded again toward the laptop.
“It’s wired to that shotgun you see there. I push the button, and the judge gets her skul air- conditioned.”
“I can’t bring Claire back. Nobody can.”
My gun was a foot or so to my right. I inched it closer with my boot.
“Don’t.” Doherty pushed back from the table and kicked my piece across the room. I could feel the shotgun lift my chin, watched his finger tremble on the edge of the remote. Then he moved back to his seat. I needed to play for time.
“Tel me about Robles,” I said.
“What about him?”
“Why shoot him?”
Doherty relaxed a fraction, seemed to relish the question. “I studied the classics. Not like you, but we al took a little bit back in the day.”
“The Iliad?”
He nodded. “I told Robles about the choice Achil es once faced. Live a long, ordinary life, or die young and famous.”
“Let me guess,” I said. “Lake Shore Drive was Robles’ day in the sun.”
“Achil es chose glory and an early grave. Robles did the same. It was his fate and he embraced it.”
“Guys like you love to talk about fate and destiny. Especial y when your own neck’s not on the line.”
“You don’t think I’l pay the price?”
“I don’t. Do us al a favor and prove me wrong.”
Doherty lifted the heavy gun again. “Not yet. Not until it’s finished.”
“Does that include the church?”
“It’s more than that, Michael. Far more.” Doherty’s voice softened, stirring again the dark memories that bound us together. His eyes traveled from the image of Rachel to the red binder that sat on the table between us. “But you’re right to think about the priests. Because that’s where it al started.”
The first bul et pinned the ex-cop’s final words in his throat. He blinked once and tried to swal ow. Three more rounds punched across his chest. Then Doherty fel back over his chair. Dead.
CHAPTER 45
Katherine Lawson climbed out of the darkness of the basement and nudged Doherty with the toe of her shoe. “Cocksucker.”
Satisfied he was dead, Lawson lowered the gun to her side. “You al right?”
I was staring at the kil er’s laptop and the remote that had fal en from his fingers. The feed from wherever he kept Rachel had been cut. The image, gone.
“I’m fine,” I said.
“Rachel’s safe,” Lawson said, stopping me with her hand as I reached for my cel. “Rodriguez told me to tel you Chubby came through.”
I pointed to the laptop. “What about the video?”
“He said he’d explain it al later.” She sat down at the table. “Now, why don’t you give me your end of this before we cal in?”
I told her about the flash drive. Then I showed her the picture of James Doherty, circa 1982.
“There wasn’t a lot of time,” I said. “Doherty was expecting me to head to the South Side alone. I figured you guys could stil look for Rachel while I kept this guy busy.”
“Bul shit. You didn’t trust the feds to handle it. But you had Rodriguez bring me in to cover your ass.”
“It wasn’t a matter of trust.”
“Not only a matter of trust, Kel y. You wanted this part to yourself.” She gestured to Doherty’s body.
“You think I wanted to kil him?” I said.
“Once you had Rachel secure, absolutely.”
“Just like I shot the first one at the lake.”
“If you weren’t going to shoot him, why al the secrecy? And if you were going that route, you didn’t want anyone around to come back at you on it.”
I nodded to the pistol she stil held loosely in a gloved hand. “Looks like you took care of that.”
Lawson shook her head. “No sir. You shot Mr. Doherty.” She knelt down and pressed the gun’s grip into the dead man’s right hand. Then she held it out to me. “You wrestled the gun away from him and shot him in the
