Read Online The Chicago Way by Michael Harvey - Free Book Online

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