C ook County’s evidence warehouse sits at the corner of Twenty-third and Rockwell on the city’s South Side. A pile of red and white bricks, surrounded by barbed wire and flat, vacant pavement, the warehouse holds the bones of Chicago’s crimes. Eight stories high and chock-full.
Ray Goshen was six feet two and had to run around in the shower to get wet. His shoulders were as wide as my fist, and his neck didn’t support his head, which tended to tilt to the left- although sometimes, when he got angry, I swore it tilted right. Whichever way he tilted, I always felt myself looking sideways at Ray and never really able to get a handle on what he was saying. Not that the head should matter. Tilted or not, the words all come out the same. Or so one would think. Anyway, in the world of Chicago evidence, Ray Goshen held the keys to the kingdom. He met me at the door, head leaning right and, true to form, not a happy man.
“What you doing down here, Kelly?”
“Hey, Ray, nice to see you, too.”
“Last time you were here was not a good thing.”
Last time I was here was almost a year ago. I’d gotten a tip on some home movies a killer named Alan Lake had covertly made from his jail cell in Stateville prison. He and his buddies smoking some weed and just having a hell of a good time. A client asked me if I couldn’t track the tapes down. Goshen let me take a look through some of the evidence in the warehouse, and I found Lake’s wallet. In it was a phone number. Twenty-three years later and it still worked. Someone still answered. She was Alan Lake’s half sister. She had a copy of the tape in question and was more than willing to barter. A few dollars later, I had the tapes. A week after that, my client put them on the ten o’clock news. I didn’t know about that part of the bargain. If I had, I’m not sure it would have made a difference. It did to Ray.
“They traced it back here, you know,” Goshen said.
I knew that but pretended I didn’t.
“Asked all kinds of questions. Nearly lost my job.”
I knew that, too. Fact is, I’d watched the whole thing. From a distance. Fortunately, my client had a conscience, at least when pushed. They all tended to when pushed. She made a call and Ray Goshen kept his job. Otherwise, my client would have lost hers. That’s what I told her, anyway. Goshen had just chalked it up to his good luck, which was fair enough.
“You owe me nothing, Ray. I know that.”
“Fucking Kelly. This is about Gibbons, right?”
I nodded. Goshen knew Gibbons, worked the evidence locker at Gibbons’ old district.
“I didn’t kill him, Ray.”
“No shit, Kelly. That doesn’t mean you won’t go to jail for it.”
“Not likely.”
Ray gave me a look like he half didn’t believe me. I half didn’t believe myself. Still, Goshen could never resist playing God with his evidence. Besides, he loved the gore. I knew that and counted on it.
“What do you want?” he said.
“It’s an old file,” I said. “Maybe it ties in. Probably not.”
“You got a case number?”
“No. I got the name of the victim and a date.”
I shoved a piece of paper in front of Goshen, who clicked his flashlight on it and then tilted the beam up.
“Rape or murder?”
Goshen’s smile was missing a few parts. Coupled with the flashlight it was like talking to a human jack-o’-lantern. One with a broken neck. Still, he was the man with the keys. Keeper of the kingdom.
“Rape,” I said.
Goshen scratched his private parts and started to laugh.
“How old was she?”
“Nineteen, twenty, maybe.”
That tickled him even further.
“Come on.”
We walked through the first floor, past rows of shelving stretching thirty feet to the ceiling, jammed with the various and sundry. Knives and pliers, machetes and cudgels. Two-by-fours and bedposts, metal shanks and flex cuffs. Toilet-seat covers, window frames, lengths of rope, twine, piano wire, and bedsheets. The tools of murder, rape, and plain old mayhem, some of them sealed in plastic, some jammed into cardboard boxes, others just lying about with a tag and a piece of illegible scrawl attached thereto.
Goshen turned a corner and found his way to a small office. I could see the light inside. Beside the office was a black metal door. Goshen fished out a key and fit it into the door’s lock.
“Bit of history in here, Kelly.”
Goshen opened the door and clicked on a light. The room looked like it used to be a supply closet. Now it was filled up with brown boxes on one side and a row of wooden shelves on the other. I took a step inside and sneezed. Everything was covered in dust.
“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