“It’s not meant to be easy,” Ellery replied with a frown. “Otherwise anyone could just climb up there.”
“Ah,” Reed said, holding up one finger. “Precisely. Physically, this offender is not just anyone, at least that’s how he sees it. He’s quite acrobatic. He picks his targets partly out of opportunity and partly as a personal challenge. It probably helps to keep the victims off guard as well, because ground-floor dwellers are liable to be more cautious with their doors and windows.”
“Hey!” Someone shouted at them, and Ellery and Reed turned in the direction of the voice. A young African-American man had materialized at the back of the parking lot, and he was walking toward them in a confrontational manner. Ellery judged him to be about twenty-two years old. He was wearing baggy jeans and a sweatshirt that bore the fading image of Tupac Shakur. “Somethin’ I can help you with?” he demanded in a tone that was the opposite of helpful.
“Just looking around,” Reed replied.
“Yeah? This is private property.” He looked from Reed to Ellery, and his eyes narrowed a bit. “Hey, wait a second. I know you. You’re that killer cop.”
“Ellery Hathaway,” she supplied evenly. “And you are?”
“A concerned citizen who doesn’t want no trigger-happy cops on my property.”
“You’re the owner?” Reed asked, and the young man scowled.
“I live here. I got rights.”
Reed withdrew his FBI identification and showed it to their new friend. “Let’s try the introductions again,” he said. “I’m Reed Markham. Your name is…?”
“Markus,” the man said reluctantly. “Markus Evans.”
“Mr. Evans, do you know anything about the reports of a prowler on the fire escape last year?”
“Prowler? You mean that dude who was peeping in our windows? Yeah, I seen him. He seen me, too, when I chased his ass clear down the street.”
“You saw him? Did you get a good look?” Reed asked.
Markus shrugged one skinny shoulder. “It was dark, right? I ain’t got night-vision goggles. All I know is that Carla started screaming, and I was standing around the corner, having a smoke. I came running to see what she was hollering for, and I seen him coming down the fire escape. Big dude. Dressed in all black, with a ski mask on in late September. He was clearly bad news. So yeah, I chased him. He was a fast mofo, let me tell you.” He looked Reed up and down skeptically. “I don’t get it. What’s the FBI want with some lame-ass peeper?”
“Maybe he was out to do more than peeping,” Reed replied.
Markus glanced toward the fire escape and beat his left palm with his right fist. “Yeah? He’d better not try it, or we could fix him up real good.”
“Was there anything else you noticed about him?” Ellery asked him. “Seeing as how you’re a concerned citizen.”
“He was about my height,” Markus said, indicating the top of his head, which would put the peeper about six feet tall. “Bigger, though, kinda meaty-like.”
“Skin color?”
Markus scoffed at her. “I told you he was wearing a ski mask.”
“What about his hands? Did you see his hands?”
Markus appeared to think about this. “Man, all I got was a quick look. He was bookin’, you know what I’m saying? I think he had gloves on.” His eyes widened at a new thought. “He had a watch or a bracelet or something that caught the light. It showed when he had his hands raised up like this when he was climbing down, and his sleeves came up. The thing was gold or silver or some shit, shining all the way around his wrist. I remember thinking he might’ve lifted it from some other apartment, creeping through their windows.”
“A watch,” Ellery repeated, less than thrilled with this additional non-identifying information.
“Or a bracelet,” Markus said defensively. “It was thick-like. Expensive looking.”
“Right hand or left hand?” Ellery asked him.
Markus thought for a moment. “Right. It was the right hand. Look, I’d love to stand out here with you all day talking sicko creepers, but I ain’t seen nothing else and my balls are freezing off.”
Reed pulled out a business card. “You see him or anyone else suspicious hanging around the place again, call 911. Then call me.”
“I see him again up there, and you can bring the body bags with you.”
“Just call the police,” Reed said mildly. “Let them handle it.”
Markus hunched his shoulders. “Yeah? You call and give them this address, and just wait to see how long ’til they show up. He’d have raped and killed the whole damn building, and then thrown himself a parade, if I’d waited on those fat donut dunkers. I see that guy climbing up there again, I’m taking him out. He won’t be your problem no more.”
* * *
Back in the truck, Ellery idled with the heat on. It was mild for December but the damp air held the remnants of snow and her fingers had turned to ice. She held them over the vents and looked at Reed. “You think that was our guy he chased off from here?” she asked.
“Ski mask, and a tall building that required some athletic ability to master,” Reed replied. “It’s certainly a possibility. Either way, I’d say Carla Watkins was lucky to escape unharmed that night.”
“If it wasn’t him, that means there are two of them.”
“If only it were just two,” Reed said, shuffling through his notes. He pushed his wire-rimmed glasses up the bridge of his nose. “I think as a next step, I’d like to talk to Wendy Mendoza, if you believe she’d be willing to meet with me.”
“I’m sure she would. She said she’d do anything to get this guy.” Ellery considered. “There’s a group meeting today at five, and we don’t have to meet Manganelli until eight. You could swing by after the meeting to talk to Wendy.”
“Sounds good. What do you want to do in the meantime?”
Ellery put the truck into gear. “There’s a sandwich place we can go for lunch,” she said, “and after that, there’s one other crime scene I want to see.”
They ate lunch on opposite sides of an expansive booth, downing thick deli sandwiches that required two hands to hold them. Ellery watched Reed raising the roast beef roll to his mouth and remembered the last time she’d seen him, when his hands had been swathed in bandages. Reed caught her staring and moved to brush any traces of lunch from his fingers. “Did I get something on me?” he asked as he groped for a napkin.
“No, sorry. I was just thinking—your hands, they’re completely healed. You can’t even tell what happened.”
Reed put down the napkin and held out his hands between them, palms up. “It turned out to be just a bunch of small cuts. Nothing that leaves any scars.”
As usual, the word “scars” made Ellery drop her own hands into her lap, although Reed had seen the marks on her wrists plenty by now. “I’m glad,” she said finally. “I’m glad you got away clean.”
They both knew this was another lie; she had shot a man, and Reed had covered it up. He rested his hands on the table a moment, his fingers inching forward as though he might reach for her. She held her breath and he stopped.
“I was happy when you called,” he confessed in a low voice. “I’ve been wondering how you were doing.”
“I’m fine,” she said, raising her chin, daring him to deny it. He’d rescued her twice now, and she certainly didn’t want him to think she was fishing for a third round. “How—how are you? How’s your daughter?”
“Tula’s wonderful.” He smiled such a delighted, unself-conscious grin that it hit Ellery right between the ribs. Her own father had left when Ellery was ten, and that was the start of all the trouble to follow. She had a few nice memories, times when he’d hoisted her high on his shoulders while they’d walked through the city or when he took her and Danny down to the lake to swim, but these images were hazy and far away and she no longer trusted them. Reed was still smiling as he talked about his daughter. “Her current ambition is to be a race car driver–princess whe
n she grows up, but I think she’s much more likely to follow her mother into journalism. After she visits, my house is covered in bits of scrap paper documenting everything that happened from a six-year-old’s point of view. The quality of the snacks figures heavily into the narrative.”
Ellery forced herself to return his smile. “She sounds like a great kid.”
Reed hesitated, seeming unsure about whether he should say more. “McGreevy’s retiring this year,” he said finally. “I may take his position so that I can travel less and see more of Tula.”
“You’d be the boss?”
“In a sense. Why? Do you not think I’m cut out for the role?”
“Who would do your job?”
He shifted in his seat, looking uncomfortable. “The FBI has many talented behavioral analysts. I’m hardly the only one qualified for the job.”
Ellery was quiet, thinking of the hundreds of law enforcement personnel who had turned out to look for her fourteen years ago. “Yes,” she agreed at length. “But you’re the one who found me.”
* * *
They had eaten a late lunch, and traffic poked along slowly back through the city, so the gray sky was already deepening toward night when they arrived at Ellery’s destination. “You forget how blasted early the sun sets up here in the wintertime,” Reed said as he eyed the rolling clouds overhead. “It’s the middle of the afternoon.”
“You get used to it,” Ellery said distractedly. She was scanning the row of buildings in front of her. “I guess that’s the one.”
“One what?” Reed asked as they stood in a pile of dirty slush.
“That sporting goods store and that Mexican takeout joint used to be Gallagher Furniture. This is where the fire was.” Watching Reed in action all morning had shown her the importance of walking the scene of the crime, but the original building had been razed after the fire. Most of the surrounding shops had turned over in the intervening twenty-six years. She wasn’t actually sure what she was supposed to be looking for after all this time. She closed her eyes briefly and tried to imagine it—the acrid smell of the wood smoke as the furniture went up in flames, the loud wailing of the fire engines bearing down on the scene. Ellery turned her head to look down the street as if in search of them.
“What happened to the place after the fire?” Reed asked her.
“Insurance paid out—a few million if I recall the story correctly. The Gallaghers didn’t need to reopen a new store.”
“Hmm,” Reed observed. “Interesting.”
“But it’s not like it could have been arson for profit,” Ellery continued. “Not with the little boy there.”
“You’re right, it wouldn’t make sense. Business owners looking to cash in usually hire a torch man, not send their wife and kid downtown with a can of gasoline.” The air had grown drier and colder as the day wore on, and he rubbed his hands together to warm them. “So what are you hoping to find here? You think that drifter is still hanging out on the street somewhere?”
“No.” She looked around again. “It’s just something’s been bothering me…”
They both heard it then, a siren in the distance. It was a police car, not a fire engine, and Ellery turned to watch as it wove through the traffic and then disappeared out of sight.
“This is a one-way street,” she said suddenly.
“Like over half the streets of this godforsaken city,” Reed concurred.
“Lucky Sevens is over that way,” she continued, pointing as though Reed had not said anything. “Dorchester is to the south. Kevin Powell said he was on his way home from the bar, heading back to Dorchester, when he saw the flames. This street doesn’t go toward Dorchester—in fact, it points away from it, toward the harbor. He’d have no reason to be on it.”
Reed froze and the implication of what she was saying hung in the air between them. “Maybe,” he said carefully, “maybe he got lost.”
“A Boston firefighter? It’s his job to know the streets. Besides, the papers said he grew up here. He had to know his way home.”
“He’d been drinking…”
Ellery opened her mouth to protest further and then shut it again. She was suddenly cold. “Let’s get out of here.”
They climbed back into her truck, and she pointed it in the direction of MGH, where the group meeting would be starting soon. In the close confines of the cab, a heavy silence descended over them. Ellery felt her heart beating inside her throat, a sick feeling roiling in her stomach. Myra would be at the meeting, and Ellery wasn’t sure how to face her with this new guilty knowledge.
“It doesn’t prove anything,” Reed offered at last. “Witness stories don’t always make sense. People leave out important details, get the times wrong, all sorts of narrative missteps. That doesn’t mean the sequence of events that night didn’t occur roughly the way Powell claims they did.”
“Right. Of course.” She waited a moment. “But that’s a thing, right? People who set fires on purpose so that they can be the hero?”
“Yes, it does happen,” Reed allowed after a beat. “You’d need a lot more evidence than what you’ve got even to raise the suspicion, though. Right now, you have a tipsy fireman who maybe took a wrong turn down a dark street and ended up a city hero.”
“He’s the fire commissioner.” She glanced at him. “I guess he must have been really into his work.”
“Or really successful at it.”
More silence. “I wish I could talk to him,” Ellery said.
“Ellery…”
“Like you said, maybe it all makes sense. Maybe there’s something in the story he left out that explains everything.”
“It’s not your case. It’s not anyone’s case! This was all investigated by dozens of seasoned professionals years ago.”
“Like McGreevy. That’s what you said, right? He was on the case.”
“In some capacity, yes.”
“Then maybe he could get us in to see Powell.”
“Us? I have a plane to catch tomorrow at noon.”
She spotted a parking space that was just opening up and swooped in to grab it. Reed clutched the side of the truck as she threw him off balance. “You’re not curious? Those seasoned professionals you mentioned wanted this case closed real badly—maybe badly enough that they didn’t look too hard at Powell’s story.”
Reed pressed himself against the car door, as far away from her as possible. “You’re suggesting I telephone my boss and float the theory that the FBI may have botched a high-profile arson investigation, and then, because that’s going to go over so well, I should follow it up with a request to check up on his work? That’s what you’re asking for?”
Ellery blinked. “Is that a no?”
“That’s career suicide, is what it is.”
Ellery slumped in her seat, her hands loose on the wheel. She had torched her own career so thoroughly, she might never get it back. It wasn’t fair to ask Reed to do the same thing, not when they barely had anything to go on. “Sorry,” she said. “You’re right.”
Reed let out a lengthy sigh. “I’ll make the call,” he said. “Just … give me a little time to try to get the wording down.”
Ellery grinned. Reed’s father, she knew, was a politician. Surely Reed could craft a winning speech. “No hurry,” she replied as she opened her door. “It’s only been twenty-six years.”
* * *
The survivors group met in the same room as last time, and most people had already assembled by the time Ellery hurried in at five past. There was no time to grab the terrible coffee, but she need not have worried, because Miles waved her over with a smile. “I brought you a hot chocolate,” he said, handing it to her. “Figured you might like the taste of this a little better.”
“Oh, thanks,” she said, feeling touched and awkward. She was treating these people like research subjects and here he was extending a bit of human kindness. She felt her face grow warm as she accepted the paper cup. “This was really nice of you.”
“Yeah. I, uh … last time, I meant to say—I’m really sorry about what happened to your wife.”
“Thanks. She was a special lady. She didn’t deserve this, not that anyone does.” He paused and pushed up his glasses with one finger. “After it happened, I couldn’t think about what happened without being so angry, so furious I felt like I could kill that guy with my bare hands for what he did.”
“I don’t blame you.”
“But it’s hard, carrying that anger around. It’s so heavy you can’t get out of bed some days.” He sighed. “I realized when I started coming here that I didn’t want to be angry every time I thought about Tetia. I wanted to think of her and be happy, because we were happy.”
“Is it working?” Ellery asked doubtfully.
“A lil’ bit,” he said with a smile. “A lil’ bit every day. What about you? You think you’ll talk today?”
She shrugged one shoulder. “What’s to say? Everyone here already knows my story. The newspapers printed every detail. There’s been at least two movies by now. What the hell can I really add at this point?”
Miles looked thoughtful. “I’d say … forget about the papers. The papers don’t own your story. Hollywood doesn’t own it, either. It belongs to you, and you’re the only one who can tell it.”
Ellery didn’t get a chance to answer this because Dr. Sunny asked them all to take their seats. Ellery looked around the group but did not see Wendy. This was going to be a problem since Reed wanted to talk to her. Dr. Sunny started out with some follow-up from the last meeting, asking Miles if he had worked out a plan for the one-year anniversary of his wife’s death. Miles said he was taking the day off from teaching and that his brother was coming up from New York to spend the day. He detailed a few plans they had to honor Letitia’s memory, but Ellery tuned him out. She watched the door, hoping that Wendy would walk through it.
No Mercy--A Mystery Page 6