206 BONES

Ryan was right. Sleet had been pelting the windshield as we’d made our way to the CCME early that morning. The stuff was now coming down even harder. Temperatures hovered around freezing, and the sun hadn’t mustered the strength to penetrate the thick, cobalt clouds covering the sky. Semifrozen slush topped cars and mailboxes and lay along sidewalk borders and curbs. Harrison was coated with what looked like black ice.

“It has to be personal,” Ryan went on. “Someone you’ve opposed in some context.”

“That’s my thinking. An insider, in all likelihood in Quebec. Who else would be privy to the fact that I’d worked Rose Jurmain?”

“Did the case draw attention?”

“I vaguely remember a line or two in Le Journal when the remains were found. Or maybe following the ID. But that was nine months ago. Jurmain got his call just two weeks back.”

Anger began to blossom anew. I checked the dashboard clock. One forty. I changed the subject.

“What time is your flight?”

“Six thirty.”

“Are you hungry?”

“Starving.”

“Suggestions?”

“Your town. Your choice.”

“Right answer.”

“Where are we?” Ryan asked.

“Just west of downtown. In Chicago it’s called the Loop.”

“Why?”

“Something about the old el tracks forming a circle.”

“El?”

“Elevated CTA tracks.”

“CTA?”

“Come on, Ryan. You could figure that one out. Chicago Transit Authority. In this town, mass transit is part subway, part surface, part elevated. The whole enchilada is called the el, short for elevated.”

“You’re talking about commuter trains.”

“Here it’s never called the train, except by suburbanites or out-of-towners. To Chicagoans, the ‘train’ is Metra, which connects the Loop to the burbs.”

“What does this multifaceted marvel loop?”

“Do you see me carrying a sign on a stick?”

“Meaning?”

“I’m not a tour guide.”

“You said you knew this place like the back of your hand.”

I had said that. What I hadn’t said was that I’d moved from Chicago to Charlotte almost three decades earlier, and that my recall of detail might be hazy. But this one was a lollipop.

“The old el tracks run along Lake Street on the north, Wabash Avenue on the east, Van Buren Street on the south, and Wells Street on the west. Inside that loop is the city’s original central business district. But I think the nickname might predate the el. I think it actually came from a streetcar loop that existed in the late 1880s.”

“You’re making this stuff up.”

“You want a professional, take a Gray Line.”

“Do you know where you’re going?”

“Yes.”

To our left, a Blue Line el clicked along ground-level tracks in the center of the Eisenhower Expressway. Around it, lanes of cars lurched and braked in truculent rivers attempting to flow east and west.

“That place looks a bit past its shelf life.” Ryan indicated a Beaux Arts structure stretching for two blocks to our right.

“Cook County Hospital. I think it’s now called Stroger. And I think there’s a plan to tear it down. A lot of folks are opposed.”

“Doesn’t look that old on ER,” Ryan said.

“Really. Too much TV.”

“I turn it on for Charlie.”

“Our cockatiel likes dramas?”

“Actually, he prefers sitcoms. Digs the laugh tracks.”

Charlie was a Christmas surprise from Ryan. Part of the gift was that he kept the bird while I was away from Montreal. At first, I was skeptical. But the arrangement works and, despite his bawdy beak, the little avian has grown on me.

Ironic. Ryan dumped me, but my feathered pal stayed true.

“That part looks pretty good.”

I glanced to my right. “We’re beyond County now. That’s Rush Presbyterian.”

We were passing beneath a pedestrian bridge connecting the el to the Rush medical complex when el turisto struck again.

“Does that building get bigger from bottom to top?”

Without looking, I knew what Ryan was eyeing. “That’s UIC. University of Illinois-Chicago. Used to be called Circle Campus.”

“So what’s the funky building?”

“University Hall. Houses faculty and administrative offices. Tapers out twice, so the top is some twenty feet wider than the bottom.”

Ryan was craning forward to peer up through a wiper-cleared fan on the windshield.

“Brutalism,” I said. “Ditto for the campus.”

“That’s harsh.”

“The term was coined by an architect calling himself Le Corbusier-I forget his real name. Comes from the French beton brut, or ‘raw concrete.’ You should have picked up on that.”

Ryan’s face swiveled toward me. “What the hell kind of name is Brutalism? Why not call it Appallingism? Or Atrociousism? Or-”

“Complain to Le Corbusier.”

“Obviously the guy was not into marketing.”

“His invention, his choice.”

“Describe the style.”

I couldn’t tell if Ryan was genuinely interested, just bored, or testing me. Whatever. I pulled from an article I’d read about a zillion years earlier.

“Brutalism involves the use of repetitive angular geometries and gobs of unadorned poured concrete. It was big from the fifties into the seventies, then lost favor.”

“Gee. Why would that be?”

Ryan relaxed into his seat back. “Not bad, Brennan.”

“How do you know I didn’t make all that up?”

“Where are we going?”