Midsummer in Chicago. Shirts clinging to sweating backs and tempers flaring in the heat, the murder rate rising like mercury in the thermometer and every cop in the city muttering about active duty in Chiraq and how it was time to relocate to somewhere more peaceful, like Syria.
They were grumbling no less at District 21, though they hid it better than most, preferring to let off steam by gathering at their favorite haunts after hours for beers and therapy, shutting off their phones and appointing designated drivers and trouncing each other at darts and poker and pool. Others stole away for more personal pursuits in the air conditioned darkness, averse to talking shop, wanting only each other.
Such was the case that night for Sergeant Trudy Platt and her firefighter husband, and for Detective Kevin Atwater and the girl he had been seeing but kept on the down low, and for Detective Al Olinsky and the woman everyone knew he was seeing but studiously avoided mentioning to his estranged wife.
The room felt like an icebox, so cold Al covered them both with the sheet, happy for an excuse to pull Kasia closer. She mumbled something sleepily, and he laughed softly at her, both of them satisfied and quiet for the moment.
Kasia was still healing from the injuries she had sustained working a case just before spring, when they had first gotten together, and he no longer feared hurting her but still endured waves of protective anxiety that he suffered in silence, though she felt them anyhow. This thing between them had grown exponentially, deeper still for the way Kasia had taken Al's daughter Michelle into her heart. The affinity between the two of them had been immediate, as if they had always known each other and needed only to be reintroduced. There were moments of vicarious delight when Al caught the two of them unaware in the middle of some moment of daily life; Kasia braiding Michelle's hair before school, Kasia camping out in Michelle's room binge-watching Star Wars movies when Michelle had the flu.
Al dared to hope now that he could make it all permanent, and had quietly met with Kasia's brother Arie, who was a lawyer, to discuss the details of divorce proceedings. The papers were drawn up and hidden away in the trunk of Al's car. Soon.
He longed to give her the ring stashed in his safety deposit box. His grandmother's ring, a Russian emerald that he had already had sized for Kasia after enlisting her partner, Julian, to pilfer her desk for the ring she had reacquired after her house had been vandalized. Al was still trying to track down the thieves, and Platt, who had discovered the ring at a pawn shop on the South Side, had gotten no details about the would-be sellers and was strangely stoic about rescuing the ring for Kasia when Al pressed her about it.
It didn't matter at the moment. All that mattered was her, close and warm. How changed they both were from who they had been before their lives had collided so gloriously. Now they wondered daily how they had lived without each other for so long.
Whatever was going on with Voight could threaten it all. Hank's fierce inner compass had jammed Al up many times in the past, and he had never questioned it, never wavered. Until now. Now when he had so much more to lose. He had to brace himself for whatever was coming, maintain the balance. Kasia shifted uncomfortably next to him.
"Already working the new case in your head?" he asked almost soundlessly.
"Kinda. Wondering who he was. How old. Personal history, known enemies, where his grieving mother is. Last thing I want to be thinking of when I'm here with you."
"It's okay," he chided. "We all do it." She was one of the most dogged detectives he had ever known, and she had completely transformed the Cold Case department in the short time she had been there, bringing a passion and dedication to the work most shunned by the majority of cops. Voight would gladly poach Kasia for Intelligence if he thought he had any chance to sway her, but he knew there was none.
"Chosen a finalist yet?" whispered Al. Kasia had lost a team member during the Mercer case, a bitter betrayal, and Al felt for her.
"I know who I want, if I can talk him out of beach life. Chicago winters are a hard sell. He may not want to come back."
"Who?"
"Sean Roman."
"Kim's old partner?"
"Yeah. Kim has said a lot of good things about him. Said he's brash, and tough, and that he wasn't afraid to flip you some shit about the death of a previous partner. I figure anyone who can stand up to you has some balls. Not the warm and fuzzy type, which I need to balance out Julian, who's about as warm and fuzzy as they come."
"I wouldn't underestimate him. Julian. There's more there than meets the eye. He fronts a lot. Underneath is good police."
"Aww, he'd melt at that. I sent Roman an email."
"Gonna be awkward for Burgess if he comes back."
"Maybe, at first. She's moved on."
"I think he'd do well with Cold Case work. He's a thinker. Looks before he leaps."
"That's the impression Kim gave, too," Kasia murmured, kissing him tenderly, feeling him smile in the darkness against her lips. "Roman's working with his brother. He may not want to give that up."
"That, and 75 degrees at Christmas. Any other contenders?"
"Maggie Diehl from Major Crimes has expressed serious interest."
"But?"
"But there's this long shot. A retired Sergeant in NYC. Someone whose work I've admired and followed for a very long time. He's been working part-time as a security consultant at the UN, among other gigs, so he's not out of the game yet."
"Have you contacted him?"
"Yeah. He's seriously considering it. He'd be perfect. With a mind like his on my team, 21 could dominate Cold Case work in Chicago, no contest."
"You really want to smash the 24th's numbers, don't you? You're right on their tails already."
"I want 21 at the top in every department. It's family now. Are you gonna tell me what's going on with you? I know there's something dragging you. Besides...that. What is it?"
"I'll tell you as soon as I know." If I can.
Kasia sighed, burrowing closer to him. Whatever it was, it was a sure bet that Voight was involved somehow.
A moment later Al was snoring, and Kasia's eyes fluttered closed. She slipped easily into a dream.
Everything was black and white and old. She was pressed against the window inside of a train car, Al standing on the platform searching frantically for her. The train began lumbering forward, and Al ran alongside, his eyes searching the windows until he found her. She could see him mouthing something urgently, but the words were lost, and she saw his hat blown off in the wind before he blurred into tears and shrank in the distance. She struck the glass of the window futilely again and again, crying out his name.
Julian and Kasia stood before their mostly empty whiteboard, two open evidence boxes on the bullpen table.
"So, we have a pair of Levi's 501's, which haven't been popular in decades. 501's made after 2002 are produced overseas now. No way to tell where or when these were manufactured or sold; nothing left of the tag but a few strings, which means the guy lived in them. Rules out an office worker or corporate type. Same with the plaid shirt and bolo tie. This was a child of the seventies, or eighties."
"There's still enough tag on the shirt to track down something," Julian offered.
Kasia spread the shirt out on the table and took several pictures of it, then uploaded the images to Google.
"Are we sure this was a guy?" asked Julian.
Kasia held up the worn jeans next to her own. "The waist is too low for a woman. He was about the same height as me, though, so not a big man. Possibly still a teenager. He chewed tobacco. See the outline of the can on the back pocket? Someone who admired cowboys, or the rodeo."
"That explains the nasty teeth." They both stopped to gaze at the eyeless skull leering back at them from the table, smiling eternally. Kasia paged thoughtfully through the M.E.'s original report.
"Cause of death was major blunt force trauma. 13 broken bones." She winced slightly at this; her own recently broken ribs were still healing, and the memory of the constant ache was still fresh.
"Possibly beaten to death. Or hit by a car. Run over, maybe. Let's look for body shops near where he was found that have been in business for thirty years. Someone would have front-end damage after this kind if impact, unless they just ditched the car."
"What does Google say about the shirt? Any hits?"
Kasia glanced at her phone, forgotten in her hand. "The shirt was made and sold by Sears in the early eighties. Let's check into all Sears locations in a 50-mile radius from the location of the bones. If this guy was on foot, chances are he wasn't far from home."
Julian scribbled furiously, the marker squeaking against the board. Kasia peered intently at the skull.
"I'll take the skull over to District 33, they just got new facial reconstruction software. If we can get some solid images, we can start putting feelers out."
"How's Al?"
"He's great. Got something on his mind, though."
"You'll pry it out of him."
"How's Jackson?"
Julian sighed contentedly. "I really should thank Max Mercer, and you, or I never would have met Jacks. He's talking about opening up his own diner."
"C.I. romance is risky. Be careful."
"So is on the job romance, missy."
"Touché," snickered Kasia. She moved closer to the table, staring down into the box of bones. "I hope he died quickly. Those breaks are brutal. Look at this femur. Probably pierced the muscle and drove the bone out through his leg. Injuries are consistent with a possible fall. I'll have to determine how far someone would have to fall to be injured like this."
Julian grimaced. "Poor bastard. All those years waiting in a box."
"Plus all the years his bones lay undiscovered."
"Or hidden."
"Technology has advanced considerably. Let's use it to our advantage and get him some justice."
Michelle shuffled into the Keystone Academy cafeteria, heading for her usual spot, out of the way of the tables where the social hierarchy held court. Several new friends were already waiting for her, misfits like her, though they were all misfits here. Keystone was a continuation school for perpetual dropouts and drop-ins, the homeless and near-homeless and those hanging on by their fingernails in an effort not to fall through the proverbial cracks and be swallowed up by the system. Some were barely literate, others were exceptionally bright, and all had been dealt a shitty hand, which levelled the social playing field considerably.
It was that sense of equality that began to foster some hope in Michelle for the future. Her mother's mistakes did not have to become her legacy; she could chart her own course now. Become someone new. She had even registered here as Michelle Olinsky, and she felt a strange swell of pride whenever she was called by that name. It felt right somehow, as though some missing piece of her had been restored. She owed a lot of her growing confidence to her dad's girlfriend, who had become the ballast she and her dad hadn't known they so desperately needed.
"Hey," Simone beckoned as Michelle approached, carrying her lunch tray. Chicken a la King and apple crisp. She could easily eat two servings of both.
"Hey."
"So are you doing it today?"
"Yeah. After school."
"Good for you. Nervous?"
"Yeah. It's...weird."
"No time like the present. Does your dad know?"
"No. I want to do this on my own."
"I would too. I made you something, for luck." Simone held out a braided friendship bracelet. Michelle's heart-shaped face warmed, her eyes sparkling.
"It's so pretty. Thank you."
"Here. Hold out your arm. I'll tie it on for you."
The soft strips of buckskin and cool beads felt good against her wrist. She mumbled something thickly.
"Just be yourself," said Simone. "She can't help but love you for that. Or at least respect you. Right?"
Michelle nodded wordlessly ad began eating before the knot in her stomach could get any bigger. If this didn't go well, it wasn't going to be enjoyable when she tried to explain it to her dad and Kasia, though Kasia would probably take her side. Michelle felt a surge of affection for the woman who had so quickly become the bridge between her and her dad. Kasia had even taken Michelle to visit her mom in prison a couple of times, and fences were slowly being mended there. It was amazing how much one person could change things.
Michelle was quiet for the rest of lunch, comforted by the easy banter of her friends, her thoughts flitting back and forth between the math test coming up next period and a guy she was starting to like more than she should and taking the L to her destination after school and facing her dad and Kasia tonight at dinner. If this went really wrong, it could damage the tenuous sense of family the three of them were building. Michelle fervently hoped her dad would make it official by marrying Kasia, and she wasn't about to do anything that might fuck that up.
She envisioned a time in the future when she could come home to them both at Indigo for weekends from College, or the boxing circuit, or, as she had lately mused, the Army. The bell rang, and her daydreams would have to wait till later.
Voight hesitated a second longer than necessary, his hand resting on the door handle, Al in the passenger seat beside him as he had been so many times before over the years, as dependable as the beating of his own heart. Steady, sensible, loyal Al who had so many times paid for his loyalty without complaint or grudge. Now that loyalty was about to be tested again.
"What?" asked Al with the mere raising of one dark brow.
"Taitch is back in town," rasped Voight drily.
Al exhaled slowly, his gaze drifting, the toothpick he was chewing on splintering between his clenched teeth. He pulled out the pieces, tossing them out the window. "Woods know?" he asked curtly.
"Not yet."
Al grunted, a sound that said they would do what needed to be done to keep Woods in the dark, the kind of morse code shared only by two people who knew each other like they knew themselves.
Voight nodded. "C'mon Dawson's waiting on us."
"Yeah," drawled Al pensively. They exited the car with no more words, though many waited to be spoken, and both knew they would be when the time was right.