The Heights

by Kate Birdsall

  “He was not injured, correct?”

  “Correct.”

  “What happened after that?”

  It all happened so fast. “I shot and killed George Arsalan.”

  “Where was he standing when this occurred?”

  “He was on the first landing from the ground.”

  “How many shots did you fire?”

  “You can’t possibly expect her to remember that,” Marutiak says.

  “It’s fine. I fired three shots, and all of them hit him in the chest. He dropped then fell to the ground from the landing.”

  “Before you shot, did you say anything to him?”

  “No, sir, I only had time to react.”

  “You did not confirm his identity?”

  “No, sir, I only had time to react. He was shooting at my partner.” I don’t regret it. He would have killed Goran.

  “And later, when his identity was confirmed, were you relieved?”

  “Is this on the record?” Marutiak asks.

  Briscoe rolls his eyes but shuts off the recording device. “Off the record.”

  “Of course I was relieved. He matched the description of the man we were looking for, and he exited through a window onto a fire escape.”

  “How did you know that, given that you were parking the car?”

  “I trust my partner.”

  “Did your partner vocalize at any time that he knew the man was Arsalan?”

  “No. Look, it was one of those scenarios that we talk about in training but hope never happens. I walked into an alleyway and saw a guy shooting a big gun at my partner. I did what I had to do.”

  He turns the recording back on. “Were there any civilians present?”

  I take a breath. “Yes. Behind me as I entered the alley, there was a woman with a child.”

  “And this witness has been identified and questioned, correct?”

  “I believe so, but you’d have to check with Internal Affairs.”

  He nods. “Do you, Detective Boyle, believe that you acted fairly?”

  “I do.” Not always but usually.

  He shuts the recorder off again. “That’s all I’ve got. Thanks for your time.” He stands and reaches for my hand again.

  Marutiak stands, and I follow. I take Briscoe’s hand and shake it, and he wishes me well on his way out the door.

  That was the weirdest six minutes of my life, and I feel numb.

  Marutiak shoves his notepad and pen back into his bag. “That went well.”

  “Uh-huh. Thanks.”

  “I didn’t do much, but the bill is in the mail.” He grins.

  “How do you know Julia?” I ask as we head out the door.

  He winks—winks—at me. “We have mutual friends. I have to run, but be in touch if you need anything. Okay?”

  I nod, and we part near the elevator. Briscoe gets on, and I head to my desk.

  Goran raises his eyebrows as I flip on my lamp. He moves his laptop to the side. “How’d it go?”

  “Fine.” I flounce into my chair and stare at the crime board. “What are you working on?”

  “This list you got from the Rec Room—where you should not have gone alone.” He gives me his dad look.

  “Don’t look at me like that. We had this conversation already.” I don’t mention the threatening phone call because I can’t deal with him being worried about me. If it’s important to the case, I’ll figure it out.

  He nods. “There are two people out of sixty-two with the initials E. M. on the member list.”

  “There are also the nameless plus-ones.”

  “Yeah, but we gotta start somewhere.”

  Roberts walks over, still in his Dracula teeth.

  “It’s gotta be hard to eat all day with those in,” Goran quips.

  “It’s hard to talk too.” He spits the teeth into his hand. “Joe Mattioli is indeed staying at the Renaissance. He has the presidential suite. My guess is that’s why Veronica Keaton is being a pain in the ass about the surveillance. We’re working on a warrant now.”

  “Once you get that, check to see if anyone is staying there with the initials E. M.”

  He nods and shoves the teeth back into his mouth.

  “You talk to Fishner today?” Goran asks.

  “No.” I look over at her office. The door is closed, and the light is off. “Where is she?”

  “She had a top-secret meeting with Carrothers.” He leans forward and lowers his voice. “This all stinks. It’s bad.”

  “We’d better solve this case, then. Tell me about E. M.”

  He slides his laptop in front of him and squints at the screen. “Well, there’s one guy, Eddie Montague, who lives on the East Side. Looks like he matches our suspect’s description—he’s a good-sized guy and has a motorcycle registered in his name.” Goran turns the laptop around and shows me Montague’s picture.

  I shake my head. “He’s African-American. Our guy is white and probably working alone.”

  He nods. “Yeah, and his record is clean. The other guy’s name is Elias Maxwell. Based on his social media, he’s a personal trainer at BodMachine. Similar build but no motorcycle. He drives a brand-new Camaro. Orange.”

  “Oh, so he’s that kind of douchebag.”

  He laughs. “He has a couple of priors. No felonies, but it looks like he pleaded to misdemeanor assault last year. Hold on.” He clicks a couple of times then looks excited. “He was charged with unlawful sexual conduct with a minor. I guess he had sex with a sixteen-year-old... And he’s thirty-two.”

  I make a face.

  “He pleaded it down to a misdemeanor-one.”

  “I wonder how he pulled that off. Huh.”

  “Judges are busy?”

  I smell Julia Becker’s good perfume and hear the clacking of her heels before I see her. She sidles up to Goran’s desk, carrying her briefcase. She’s wearing a well-tailored gray suit and a light-pink shirt today. “Hey,” she says in that deep alto of hers.

  Goran flicks his chin at her. “What’s up? Where’s your Halloween costume?”

  She chuckles. “Where’s yours? I’m here to get paperwork from Roberts on the Renaissance warrant.” She pushes a lock of copper-blond hair out of her face.

  I glance across the squad, where Roberts and Sims are huddled around Roberts’s computer.

  Becker looks at Goran then at me, and I watch something like sympathy come up behind her eyes. “Do you have a minute?”

  I stand and stretch. “Sure.”

  She leaves her briefcase in my chair, and we walk down the hall toward the vending machines. “Thanks for the tip on Marutiak,” I say. “He didn’t do shit, but it was nice to have someone on my side in there.”

  “He’s an asshole, but he’s a decent attorney. I’m glad it worked out for you.” She bats her eyes at me.

  I lean against the wall. “How do you know him?”

  “He relentlessly asked me out for about two years when I got the job in the prosecutor’s office.” She gives me a sly grin. “At some point, I indulged him, and we went on a date, at which point we both realized he wasn’t my type. He is fundamentally uninteresting, which I suspected and confirmed.”

  I raise an eyebrow.

  She maintains eye contact. “I’ve got to get to work on this warrant, but I wonder if you might swing by my office later. I have a couple of things to discuss with you.”

  “Well, I’m kind of in the middle—”

  “Liz, I’m only going to say this once. Watch your back.”

  I make a face. “Why?”

  “I’ll tell you more later, but the scuttlebutt is that Grimes is recruiting a posse.”

  I try not to laugh. “Did you just say ‘scuttlebutt’ in a sentence?”

  She rolls her eyes. “Just be careful, okay? No shenanigans. Keep Goran with you when you’re on the clock, and watch your back when you aren’t.”

  “Yeah, you said that on the voicemail.”

  “He threatened you.”
/>
  “I know.” I push off the wall, stubbornly avoiding telling her about the phone call, and we head down the hallway side by side. She gives me a little smile then walks past my desk and over to Roberts and Sims. “Give me the download,” she says to the two men.

  I turn off my lamp and grab my bag. “Let’s go talk to Elias Maxwell.”

  Goran follows suit. “Let’s.”

  Fishner catches us in the hallway and asks for an update. She looks tired, almost haggard.

  “Are you okay?” I ask before I can stop myself.

  She blinks at me. “I’m fine. Tell me what’s happening.”

  Goran clears his throat. “We have a lead on an Elias Maxwell. He’s a trainer at BodMachine—”

  I can’t stop myself from chuckling. They both stare at me.

  “We’re going to try to talk to him now,” he says.

  She nods. “Keep me posted. Regular briefing at three.”

  “Ask Roberts and Sims about the Renaissance angle,” I say. “I think Becker is getting them a warrant for the surveillance footage.”

  She nods then walks away.

  We take the stairs all the way down to the basement, where the car is parked. Goran shoves the door open and gestures for me to go first. “I’m driving today.”

  I toss him the keys. “What’s up with her?”

  We walk to the Charger.

  “No clue, other than she had to talk to that jerk Carrothers again today.”

  We get in.

  “Are you ever going to tell me the deal with him? What do you know that you’re holding out on?”

  He adjusts the mirrors. “He’s a dick. He’s a horrible, horrible dick.” He shoves the car into Drive. “He was part of the whole boys’ club way back when, and I heard him say things I would never repeat to you or to anyone. He’s why I don’t play softball anymore. Once I got partnered with you, my tolerance for that crap went out the window.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means that it’s easy to act like a sexist jerk when you’re surrounded by other sexist jerks. Best thing that ever happened to me was getting you as a partner and Fishner as a boss. You make me look at stuff differently. It makes me a better cop and a better dad.”

  “I’m flattered.” So Carrothers is just like a lot of cops. I almost feel bad for Goran. He could have ridden that privilege a long way, and instead he’s stuck with me. “You going trick-or-treating later with the girls?”

  He pulls out onto Ontario. “Yeah, if I can get out of here on time. Their costumes are adorable—Vera made them. Hannah is a purple princess, and Lily is a green dragon.”

  “Dragon costumes can’t be easy to make.”

  “Vera is a wizard with the sewing machine. She’s been working on that dragon costume for, like, a month.” He turns right onto Lakeside.

  “Well, let’s get this in the bag today, and you can go trick-or-treating.”

  He laughs. “I always steal all of their Almond Joy bars.”

  I make a face. “No kid likes Almond Joy. You’re following the script perfectly.”

  He makes a right into McDonald’s. “I’m gonna need coffee. You?”

  “Always.”

  I search for BodMachine in my phone’s map app while we’re waiting. “Think this is our guy?”

  “Could be. At this rate, probably not. But he could be.”

  “We need to find out if Heather Martin was a member of BodMachine.”

  “Should be easy enough to do.”

  The drive doesn’t take long—it’s only three minutes from the Justice Center. Goran and I continue to make small talk about Halloween, and for a moment, everything feels almost normal. As long as we aren’t talking about the boys’ club, Carrothers, Sims, Martina Lowell, Grimes, or weird phone calls, maybe everything is normal.

  CHAPTER 21

  BodMachine is next to the Hilton, in a newly renovated redbrick building that also contains an advertising agency, a jewelry store, a stationery store, a vegan restaurant, and an upscale cocktail bar. The city has been trying to class up downtown, which I guess is fine, although there’s been a lot of gentrification and displacement. This place used to be a hotel, and I wonder whether it’s haunted.

  I look down the block. “Walking distance to the Renaissance.”

  Goran nods and parks illegally on the street—one benefit of driving a police car—and we get out and meet on my side.

  He squints at the sky, which has darkened all of a sudden. “It’s gonna rain,” he says.

  I pull my blazer around me. “Or snow. It’s not Cleveland unless you’re trick-or-treating with your costume over your poofy coat.”

  He chuckles. “Too true. What’s the plan with this guy?”

  I move closer to the door, trying to get out of the wind. “Same script as Andersen. We start with basic questions and wait to reveal that we know about the Rec Room. If we start with Saturday night, we’re good.”

  A short bodybuilder type pushes through the door and almost runs into me as he jams a protein bar into his mouth. He doesn’t excuse himself. I roll my eyes.

  Goran lets me go through the door first. The interior is designed in the latest style, all industrial brick, exposed ducts, recessed lighting, poured concrete, and fake succulents in mason jars. A flat-screen TV with the building directory hangs on the wall across from the elevator. Beckoning to us at the end of the lobby is a set of frosted-glass-and-brushed-nickel doors with BodMachine and the gym’s logo, a machine icon behind the silhouette of male and female torsos flexing.

  People are lined up to get into the vegan restaurant. Maybe Cora would like it here. She’s been vegan for, what, six years now? I stop myself. “Think that place is any good?”

  “Is there steak? Pulled pork? Wings?”

  I laugh. “No.”

  “Then no, it’s not good.”

  We walk together, and I yank open the door to BodMachine.

  “Jeez,” Goran mutters as we enter. “Who thought to do everything in orange and red?”

  “They’re probably going for eighties retro,” I whisper out of the corner of my mouth. I glance at a banner hanging on the front desk. Power Up! First month free! Free juice bar! Start today! Loud dance music blares from speakers in the fitness room, which is behind a short glass block wall.

  A young man and a young woman are perched on high stools at the desk. The woman wears gray leggings and an orange shirt emblazoned with the logo and the word “trainer,” and the man, who is Asian, is all in black and gray.

  When they see us, the man stands and smiles. “Power up!” he says, flexing to match the logo. “Are you here for a membership?”

  I approach the counter. Goran stands behind me and looks around.

  “Not so much,” I reply. “We’re looking for Elias Maxwell. Is he here?”

  “He can’t train you unless you have a membership. We have a special right now. The first month is free!” He glances at the badge on my hip. “And if you work for the city, we waive the membership fee. That’s a savings of two hundred dollars.” His name tag, which is brushed nickel to match the rest of the accents in this place, tells me his name is Adam.

  I look back into the workout area, where a large man appears to struggle under the weight of a barbell. Next to him is a hugely muscular dude in an orange shirt. The woman smiles then leaves the area behind the desk. Goran makes an indiscernible sound.

  I put on my best fake grin. “That’s great, Adam, but we’re here to talk to Elias about another matter.”

  “Is that him back there?” Goran asks.

  Adam shrugs. “Eli called off again today, which sucked, because I had to call all of his clients again. Once people get started at BodMachine, they don’t want to take days off, and most of them haven’t worked out all week. I would die. You gotta power up!” His phone makes a whistling sound on the desk, and he grabs it and looks at it. He laughs then types something, completely ignoring us for a moment.

  Goran and I
exchange a glance. “Can people come and work out without a trainer?” I ask when he’s done.

  He shakes his head. “That’s not how it works here. This is a unique fitness experience.”

  I glance at a sweaty older woman who is moving at hyper speed on an elliptical machine. The woman in the orange shirt stands next to her, looking at her phone. “What did Eli say was wrong?”

  Adam looks confused. “Huh?”

  “When he called off. What reason did he give?”

  “Oh. Uh, I’m not sure.”

  I pull a picture of Heather Martin up on my phone and hold it out to him. “Have you seen this woman before?”

  He smiles. “Yeah, that’s Heather. Man, she goes hard. She’s shredded.”

  “How long has she worked out here?”

  “You know what’s weird? She hasn’t been here all week, and she’s a five-a-week client.” He looks puzzled.

  “Who’s her trainer?”

  “Eli.”

  The blood rushes to my head.

  “They’re great together. He really helps her get her aggression out. Wait.” It looks as though something clicks in his brain, and he drops the salesman act. “I haven’t been able to get ahold of her to tell her not to come in, but she hasn’t been here. Weird. I should probably get the manager.”

  “Yeah, that would be great.” It’s becoming more difficult for me to restrain my sarcasm.

  “I’ll be right back.” He steps away from the desk, and I turn to Goran, who is squinting around the space.

  “This place is awful,” he says.

  I mentally compare it to my own dingy gym, which has everything I need and none of the bullshit. I nod. “Pretty much. Question is, where is Elias Maxwell?”

  “Yeah, and did he kill her? If he did, why? It makes no sense. It must be connected to the sex thing.”

  “Not necessarily. In fact, I’d be surprised. Most BDSM is completely consensual and not at all likely to lead to homicide.”

  He gives me a look as though he’s grossed out.

  “Don’t look at me like that, and quit thinking in stereotypes. Don’t be that cop.”