R achel Swenson and Vince Rodriguez agreed to meet me at my office. It was a little after eight p.m. Neither was entirely sure why they were there. But they both showed up and that was enough for now.
“What is it that couldn’t wait?” Rodriguez said.
“Take a look for yourself.”
I threw the Sheehan’s Masters had given me across the desk. Rodriguez took a look at the book while Rachel read Taylor’s note. It had been two days, and no one had heard a thing from Dan Masters or Janet Woods.
“The binding’s been sliced open.” The detective ran his hand along the book’s spine.
“You noticed that.”
Rodriguez slanted his face up and across the room. “What did you take out of there?”
I couldn’t tell them about that. Not yet, anyway. Still, I needed their help, which made matters difficult.
“Rachel, I need to ask you a favor. Actually, I’m going to need favors from both of you.”
Rachel passed Taylor’s note across to the detective, along with a look that told me it might be a long hard swim upstream.
“What do you need?” she said.
“You remember the prints I told you about? The ones I was going to compare to the break-in at my flat?”
Rachel nodded. I pulled out a sheet of paper and slipped it across my desk.
“The detective here ran them for me.”
Rachel ignored the report. “Just tell me what it says, Michael.”
“The partial has only six points of identification. All six matched a print on the set I sent over.”
Rodriguez grunted from his hard-backed chair in the corner.
“I told you it doesn’t matter,” Rachel said. “The match means nothing. You need at least nine points for it to hold up in court.”
I lifted a hand.
“Hear me out,” I said. “Two weeks ago a man walked into the Chicago Historical Society. Asked a volunteer named Teen for a look at their Sheehan’s first edition.”
“How many people ask to see that book?” Rodriguez said.
“Exactly. Anyway, the volunteer is a nice lady. Do-gooder from the North Shore. Tells me this man was dangerous looking. Didn’t think much of it at the time. Then I realized how the phrase translates out of white-upper-middle-class American speak.”
“And dangerous looking means?” Rachel said.
“Black. I went back and double-checked with our volunteer. The guy was black and big.”
“Let me guess,” Rachel said. “Our suspect on the print happens to be black.”
“And he has a history of breaking and entering. Not to mention violent assault.”
“I assume you showed his photo to your volunteer friend?” Rodriguez said.
“Along with six others. Took her all of five seconds to pick him out.”
I threw a picture across the desk. It was a news photo from Mitchell Kincaid’s rally. Behind Kincaid and to his left was his head of security, an angry young man named James Bratton. Big and black-and the man who shot Rachel Swenson with a rubber bullet in the middle of the night.
“I saw Bratton on the news,” I said. “At the Kincaid rally last week. Didn’t register at first. Then it did. It was ten years ago. I was still a uniform. Arrested him for B and E and assault. He used a crowbar to crank open the first-floor window of an old lady’s home on the West Side. Punched her once or twice and took some costume jewelry and cash. Less than a hundred bucks. He pled out and took six months. Records were sealed because he was only seventeen.”
Rachel lifted an eyebrow and picked up the photo. “A juvie?”
“I told him already,” Rodriguez said. “None of this is admissible. Especially not if his reporter pal lifted juvie prints out of the system.”
I kept my eyes on Rachel, who kept her eyes on the photo. Then she looked up and spoke.
“Michael isn’t thinking about the criminal end of this. Are you, Michael?”
“Are you?” I said.
“If Mitchell Kincaid’s security chief broke into your apartment and shot me, his boss’s political career is over before it ever got started. Is that what you think happened?”
I nodded, trying to fit as much regret into the gesture as humanly possible. “I think Bratton was after evidence that would have implicated the mayor’s ancestor in a land grab that turned into the Chicago Fire. Johnny Woods was after the same thing. If Bratton got it, I imagine he would have leaked it to the press at the right time.”
Rachel shot the picture across my desk with a flick of her fingernail.
“I don’t believe it.”
“I do,” I said.
“You realize what this would do to Kincaid’s campaign?”
“It would ruin him.”
“Is that the goal here?” Rachel was leaning forward in her seat now, palms rubbing a shine across the wooden armrests.
“No.”
“What is it you want, Michael?”
“I want you to approach Kincaid,” I said. “Ask him to meet with me.”
“Why?”
“Couple of reasons. First, you can do it privately. Discreetly. Second, I don’t think Kincaid knew what his staff was up to.”
“He didn’t.”
“For now, let’s say I agree. That’s why you approach him. Show him what I’ve got. Ask him to sit down with me.”
“What are you going to do?” Rachel said. “Help him write his withdrawal speech?”
Rodriguez jumped in. “And what am I supposed to do? Break-in aside, Bratton might be our guy on the Bryant murder.”
“He isn’t.”
“You don’t know that.”
I picked up the Sheehan’s again. Here is where the trust came in. Either it would work, or I’d have to let it go and hope for the best. Where Chicago politics was concerned, that was usually a loser’s bet.
“There’s more to this than either of you know,” I said. “Just give me another day or two. Let this thing play out, and we might be able to save Mitchell Kincaid’s career.” I glanced over at Rodriguez. “And catch our killer.”
Rachel waited for the detective, who lifted his shoulders.
“I can play along, Your Honor. How about you?”
Rachel took another look at the Sheehan’s and then back at me. “What was in the book, Michael?”
“Set it up with Kincaid,” I said. “You’ll find out then.”