“Your alley,” Booth said. “That’s the one next to the Biograph?”
“Naw. I got a place a couple of blocks down… but I was headed that way when I saw the guy get out of the car.”
Booth leaned forward. “Did you see the car?”
“Sure did.”
“Did you see what kind?”
“Oh yeah. You bet.”
“What kind, Pete?
“Blue.”
Brennan felt Booth tense next to her and she spent the next several seconds concentrating very hard on the label of her beer.
With the expression of a nearsighted person trying unsuccessfully to thread a needle, Booth asked, “You, uh, wouldn’t know the make of car?”
Pete shook his head. “Last car I owned was a 1968 Dodge. Somehow, I haven’t kept up.”
Booth nodded his surrender. “And you didn’t get the plate number.”
It was a statement, not a question.
“Nope.” Pete took a deeper drink from his beer. “He was weird, this guy. Which is why I noticed him.”
When somebody like Pete found somebody else “weird,” that was worth a listen.
“Weird how?” Booth asked, perking up. “Dressed like crap, this guy.”
“Define ‘dressed like crap.’ ”
Pete thought for a second, munched a chip.
“Dressed like me — dirty face like me, too… only he got out of a big new-lookin’ car. That’s weird to me. Isn’t that weird to you?”
“Oh yeah,” Booth said. “Was that on this block?”
“No… more like — east of Halsted over on Orchard… in front of some of them row houses? Guy parked in that residential neighborhood, probably ’cause nobody was around. He was lucky.”
“Lucky?”
“Findin’ a parkin’ spot. Anyway, I was just cuttin’ through, on my way back to my alley, like I said… and this guy gets out of the car lookin’ homeless as hell, then he opens the trunk and yanks out this garbage bag. He tosses it over his shoulder like fuckin’ Santa, and off he goes.”
“Which way?”
“To the corner, then west on Fullerton to Lincoln, and up to the alley. And me? I followed him the whole way.”
“Why did you follow him?”
“Are you kiddin’?” Pete snorted, and chewed a chip. “He had a trash bag!.. And a nice car. If he was dumping something that he had to take blocks from the car, that meant he didn’t want nobody to find it. And if he didn’t want nobody to find it, maybe he was Santa, and Christmas come early for Pete this year.”
Brennan looked at Pete in a new light. He definitely wasn’t homeless because he was a mental case.
Gently she asked, “Pete, why is a smart fella like you on the street?”
Pete shrugged. “Havin’ lots of stuff never brought me anything but pain — I decided to cut my losses and carry a lighter load.”
She wasn’t sure she knew what he meant, and she was about to ask something else when Booth cut in.
“What did ‘Santa’ look like?”
“I told ya! A homeless-lookin’ dude!”
“Be specific, Pete. Sing for your supper.”
Pete thought and chewed another chip; salsa dotted his beard now. “Shorter than me, stooped over a little, like he was old… but not so much right away, he sort of got that way as he carried the bag. Like maybe it was gettin’ to him? Dude wore sunglasses, too — like a homeless guy could afford expensive sunglasses!”
Booth tilted his head. “How do you know they were expensive sunglasses?”
“I dunno. Just looked like it to me. I mean, the ones that get thrown out that I can salvage are usually cheapies that got left behind or expensive ones that got busted.”
“You didn’t get a good look at his face?”
“Just that he had it all smeared with dirt. He was white, if that’s where you’re goin’.”
“Any distinguishing marks? Anything at all?”
Pete shook his head and finished his beer, milking every drop.
Then he posed a question to Brennan: “You sure I can’t have that other beer now? I mean, I been talkin’ like crazy for you people, and it’ll go swell with my meal.”
“Sure,” Brennan said.
Booth accepted this, and waved the waitress over and ordered Pete’s second Tecate.
Then the FBI man asked Lieutenant Greene, “Can you get someone over to run the scene on Orchard?”
“After we finish eating,” Greene said, “I’ll take Pete over there, and he can show me where the guy parked the car.”
“I’ll do that,” Pete said, bargaining some more, “if you promise me a ride back to my alley.”
Greene nodded, and even smiled a little.
“You guys are the nicest cops I run into in a long time,” Pete said. To Brennan he said, “And you’re the foxiest.”
Booth grinned and so did Brennan, flushing a little, saying, “Thanks, Pete.”
Their food arrived and they mostly ate in silence — if Pete’s enthusiastic style of putting food away could accurately be described as silent….
When the meal was winding down, Brennan turned to Booth. “What do you make of the note?”
Booth glanced at Pete, whose full attention was devoted to his large combination plate. Like Brennan, the FBI agent clearly didn’t consider talking in front of Pete much of a risk.
“Two different signatures?” he asked. “The ‘clock’ is running? Male victims in the neighborhood? I think the note writer is just screwing with us, typing anything that comes into his head.”
“A few gay bars in the neighborhood,” Greene pointed out.
“That’s just it,” Booth said, warming to the topic. “He’ll get us to go off on some wild-goose chase while he laughs his ass off at us.”
Greene thought for a moment. “Like he’s been laughing at us cops, you mean?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You didn’t have to — the bastard’s note did. He’s supposedly been active for how long?”
Brennan said, “One of the bones might be as much as forty years old… but we don’t know for sure yet.”
Greene scowled, waved that off. “Forty years and we didn’t tip to him? And catch him? That’s bullshit.”
“One thing isn’t bullshit,” Booth said. “This guy’s got access to skeletons, and some of them are old. We find out where he’s getting them, maybe we find him.”
Greene sighed. “We’ll do what we can.”
After Booth paid the check, they went outside into the cool, clear night.
Greene and Pete headed for the cop’s car, and Booth — who had found a place to park his Crown Vic before they went to dinner — headed off in the opposite direction, Brennan hustling to keep up.
“Hey!” she yelled. “Where’s the fire?”
He stopped and smiled. “Just walking off dinner… and some frustration.”
They continued up the well-lit street.
As they walked north on Lincoln Avenue, Chicago blues poured out of several bars, dance music out of others; and a few of the shops still had their lights on. They passed a club called Centre Stage, which, according to the marquee, tonight featured entertainment by a group of cross-dressing singers called Cher and the Cher-alikes.
“He could be stalking gay men, at that,” Brennan said, but not pushing it.
Booth gave a one-shouldered shrug. “He wouldn’t be the first… but forty years? Only way he could not’ve got on the local PD’s radar is if he struck only very, very occasionally over all those years.”
“I suppose.”
“Greene’s probably right — that’s a long time to go without getting noticed, much less caught.”