by Lisa Black
‘Kyle Cielac.’
‘Yes,’ Frank and Novosek answered in unison.
He had stuffed the backpack into a dented garbage can teetering on the curb after searching it, tossing away Ghost’s pen, pencil and math homework. How the hell could it not be there? Where would a kid have – he didn’t even finish the thought. She could have put it anywhere. A locker at school – did kids that little have lockers? She’d had all night to hide it at home . . . When he had been eleven, he had a loose piece of baseboard, an old apple tree and a large flat piece of shale rock in the patchy woods behind their house to hide anything of value from his two tormenting brothers. So who knew how many hidey-holes this kid had. Maybe he should just not worry about it. The kid wouldn’t have any idea of its significance. How could she? He slumped against the bumper of his car.
But he hated to leave a job unfinished. Several years before he had been hired to build a small parking garage off the shoreway. Six months in, the market had crashed and the owner had drowned in his own debt. He still drove past the base of the garage, its upstretched beams rusting and pools of rainwater turning the concrete slick with algae, like one picks at a scab. When he started something, he wanted to finish it. Closure, or whatever. Even if the brain tells you it’s not necessary, the heart tells you it is.
He pushed off the bumper. Never leave a job unfinished.
‘He’s wearing Nikes,’ Theresa commented. ‘Not dressed for work.’
‘No,’ Novosek said.
‘So we have another employee inexplicably hanging around here after hours and winding up dead.’ She looked up. ‘Any clue as to how? What floor?’
‘No,’ Novosek said. ‘I made sure to get here first today. Kobelski arrived a few minutes after I did – we had a lot of concrete scheduled to pour today, to make up for yesterday.’
‘I have to test every truck of concrete that’s poured,’ Kobelski announced, ‘to make sure it’s within the correct parameters for the structure. Do you know how many trucks of concrete go into even one of these floors?’
‘I’ve got slightly more immediate questions at the moment,’ Frank said, showing admirable, and therefore suspect, restraint. Theresa and Angela both shot him a glance, but he went on. ‘How long were you here until you found the body?’
Novosek said, ‘About fifteen minutes, just as the guys began to arrive. I made them move back out, sent them home. No one went upstairs, including me.’
‘Good job,’ she said. The workers probably wouldn’t have gotten much done today anyway and it eliminated the problem of trying to keep them out of affected areas. Their project manager was getting good at managing a crime scene. Theresa wondered if he realized that he himself was a suspect.
Frank didn’t seem as appreciative. ‘I’m going to have to talk to them all.’
‘I know,’ Novosek said. ‘But I didn’t think you’d have to do it right away.’
‘Yet our state inspector is still here,’ Frank observed. Theresa had known the restraint wouldn’t last long.
‘I thought I might be able to help,’ the man said, without taking his gaze from Kyle’s body. His eyes seemed to drink it in, the glistening spikes, the scarlet blood. His voice made her think he should cut back on the cigarettes.
‘Help how?’ Frank pressed.
He finally turned his head, glaring, chest rising an inch. ‘I’ve been on the scene of a number of industrial accidents. This is hardly the first dead construction worker I’ve seen.’
Which didn’t answer the question, but Frank didn’t push it. Exaggerating one’s jurisdiction was one of the advantages of government work, after all.
Novosek distracted them with: ‘I know Kyle left with everyone else about four thirty yesterday. I saw him.’
‘Getting into his car, driving away?’
‘Walking toward Tower City. I think he takes the rapid. I’ve never seen him with a car. This place empties out fast at quitting time, and I made sure I was the last one out.’ He didn’t look at any of them as he spoke, only at the dead man. The moisture in his eyes ebbed, then flowed, then receded again.
Theresa got out her flashlight and examined the elevator pit. It sat approximately three feet below the ground level with no way of getting down to it except to jump, carefully. The bottom pad had gathered a uniform layer of construction dust which told her no one had walked around in it recently. Kyle’s killer had not gone to the body to make sure all life had departed, so she could do so without worrying about shoe prints. She began to photograph the pit and the ground floor around it, thoughts about this new death interrupted here and there by yet another round of possible explanations for her daughter’s sudden reticence.
Frank, joined by Angela, peppered Chris Novosek with questions to learn everything he knew about Kyle Cielac. Theresa listened as she worked, but none of it sounded particularly useful. Kyle had just been another worker, reliable, apparently competent, complained about no one and no one complained about him. Kobelski stood six feet away from anyone else, distancing himself while observing all, arms crossed as if he were the one in charge of the whole shebang. Theresa, camera cradled against her chest, slid into the pit.
She touched the man’s chest, prodded his arms. He felt as cold and stiff as a Popsicle and she guessed he had been dead for most of the night. The killer had not been lax by not double-checking his work; from the clean hands it seemed clear that Kyle had not moved after landing. He had not brought his free right hand – the left arm had been impaled just above the elbow – to his body to feel his grievous wounds. The spike through his head took out his brain instantly and mercifully, while the heart kept pumping on its own long enough to exsanguinate its host through the hole in the carotid. It was a ghoulish and unreasonable tableau, but if Chris Novosek thought this was bad, he had obviously never seen the results of a small-plane crash, a motorcycle versus car accident, or a person dead for a week in the middle of summer with no air conditioning.
Considering Samantha Zebrowski’s death, Theresa took a close look at Kyle Cielac’s hands and face. No apparent bruising or other injuries. The fingernails were neatly trimmed, the shirt buttoned, jeans tightly belted. There might be more stuff under the skin, but she would have to wait until the autopsy. Speaking of that, how on earth were they going to get the body off its pincushion without causing further, and significant, damage?
‘At least in here we’ll be shielded from the rain, when it comes,’ Frank said.
She looked up. The shaft continued in a hollow square straight up to the gray clouds. ‘Maybe not. And no idea where he came from, huh?’
‘Are you going to start talking about mass times acceleration due to gravity again?’
‘Nine point eight feet per second squared. If we knew force, we could solve for feet. Or –’ she stopped craning her neck – ‘we could just go look.’
‘I knew you’d get to that.’
But before they could gear up for another ascent, voices interrupted. Todd Grisham strode toward them with a uniformed patrol officer, each trying to keep just ahead of the other until they were nearly running. The officer finally called a halt to both of them at a distance of about twenty feet, throwing a beefy arm in front of the construction worker.
‘Is it Kyle?’ Todd demanded. ‘Is he dead?’
‘Guysaysheworkshere,’ the patrol officer said. ‘Needs to see the body. I said you—’
‘Let him in,’ Frank said.
‘Come here,’ Angela said, and without so much as a glance at each other they moved around the hole in perfect unison, in order to flank Todd Grisham as he moved forward to view the dead body of his friend and co-worker. Close enough to both watch his reaction and to grab him if he made a sudden move to either touch the body or run away. A signature move of her cousin; Theresa had seen him in action many a time before.
But Todd Grisham did not move, only stared at the dead man and his grisly position until he was nearly as pale as the corpse. It would have been comical, in
a cartoon: the wide eyes, the fallen-open mouth, the stammering pleas for information. But his trembling horror stayed all too real.
‘What happened?’
‘That’s what we’d like to know,’ Angela said gently. ‘When did you last see Kyle?’
She had to repeat the question three times before he could become self-aware enough to answer. ‘Yesterday. As we were leaving.’
‘And what time was that?’
‘About four thirty.’
With everyone’s attention on Todd, Theresa watched Chris Novosek as he heard this part of his testimony verified. His expression did not change and he said nothing, only watched his employee’s face as if everything – his life, the building project, the murders – depended upon it.
‘Where did he go?’
‘Dunno. Home, I guess.’
‘Where did you go?’
‘Home. What happened to him? What was he doing here?’
‘Were you home all night?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Can anyone verify that?’
‘I – dunno. My brother and my niece, I guess. What was he doing back here?’
‘We don’t know,’ Frank admitted, a touch of silk to his voice. ‘Would you have any idea what he might have been doing back here on the job, after hours?’
For the first time Todd tore his gaze from his dead friend and looked at his boss, in fact stared with a desperate and pleading intensity.
Theresa watched Chris Novosek as he gazed back. If his expression contained the ability to either comfort or threaten, she didn’t see it.
‘No,’ Todd said. Then he noticed Kobelski, standing to the side. His eyes grew even wider and what tiny bit of blood remained in his face evanesced.
‘Any idea who might have wanted to kill him?’ Frank asked. ‘Todd?’
‘No,’ Todd said. Except he continued to say it: ‘No, no, no, no, no,’ as he turned and broke at a fast walk for the exit. Three of the five other people called his name, to no avail.
‘Follow him,’ Frank said to the uniformed officer. ‘Don’t stop him, but I want to see what he does.’
‘But the scene—’ The officer made a circling motion with his hand that managed to state his concerns in one-half second: he was the contamination officer, responsible for admitting or restricting human beings from the crime scene in order to preserve its integrity, and how was he supposed to do that when he was following Todd Grisham to the nearest receptacle in which to upchuck or the bus station or his home in one of Cleveland’s many beautiful suburbs or God knows where?
‘I’ll take care of it,’ Frank snapped. ‘Just go. Consider him a suicide risk.’
The cop hustled.
‘Suicide?’ Novosek asked, with a what else could happen? tone to his voice.
‘It’s as good a reason as any to keep an eye on him,’ Angela explained. ‘And his reaction seemed a bit extreme.’
‘His friend is laying there with spikes through him! Isn’t that a bit extreme?’ The man turned away, finally, as if suddenly more disgusted by the investigators than the sight of the body. He walked twenty feet, slumped to a seat on a stack of cardboard boxes and put his face in his hands.
Kobelski didn’t move. He didn’t seem to want to miss even a second of taking in Kyle Cielac’s corpse, not a bolt of the camera flash, not a whiff of the uncertain smell of fresh death when the wind changed directions, not a glimmer of sunlight reflecting off the pool of blood. Theresa would get Frank to kick him out, state ID or no state ID. She might be accustomed to working with an audience, but he had begun to get on her nerves.
‘To everyone except ghouls like us,’ Frank muttered.
‘Both single, both denied even the temptation to ask Samantha Zebrowski out on a date,’ Theresa observed. ‘You think they’re gay?’
‘I think we’d better find out,’ he said.
‘Either way, that kid didn’t kill him. Or else he should be on a red carpet somewhere accepting an award.’
‘Agreed. But if they’re more than just fellow concrete finishers, then he might know what his buddy was doing here last night.’
Theresa nodded. ‘OK, two things. I don’t think he fell from twenty-three like Sam Zebrowski did.’
Angela raised an eyebrow. Frank said, ‘And you’re basing that on—?’
‘She hit hard enough to crack the slab. Kyle, on the other hand, doesn’t even reach the foundation. The bars don’t penetrate the back side of his skull or rib cage, just the more fleshy areas in the arm, stomach and thigh. If I could recall everything I learned in college I could probably calculate it out, but Physics 102 was a long time ago. I just don’t think he fell quite as far and that’s about as scientific as I can be about it. I’m sure we could find an accident reconstructionist somewhere who could help us.’
‘And the second thing?’
‘What cuts through rebar?’
TWENTY-TWO
The answer turned out to be a short Sawzall-type instrument, as grimy as a used hard hat but as intimidating as a bone saw. They ran three mesh straps around the body and suspended those from a small winch provided by the project manager, and then suited up a game body snatcher in a leather apron, heavy gloves and eye protection. He got a crash course in how to safely cut through the small iron bars without losing a finger and went to work. Novosek could have done it in a quarter of the time, but he resided firmly in the center of their suspect pool and could not be allowed that close to the body. If it were even possible – the man kept coming close to the pit, taking one glance at the manhandled corpse before turning and stalking a few feet away, then feeling somehow sheepish or weak or disloyal and turning back. He’d take a few steps, his face would flush an unbecoming shade of green, and he’d whirl
again. Theresa gave up watching him and instead kept the body snatcher’s electrical cord from snagging on the rebar.
Frank had finally gotten rid of Kobelski – Theresa didn’t know how but they’d had a short and apparently bitter conversation before Kobelski stalked off, throwing, ‘I won’t forget this!’ over his shoulder. Frank gave her a wink, magnificently unconcerned about the retributions of a state concrete inspector.
The fact that Kyle Cielac’s body had been so efficiently drained of its lifeblood made the job much less messy . . . which was not to say exactly un-messy. Finally the last pinion had been freed and the winch lifted the skewered corpse up and over to the gurney. They left the sawed-off pieces in him, of course, so that the pathologist doing the autopsy could see exactly what had occurred. The body snatcher heaved the tool up to the ground level floor and then heaved himself up as well, his feet scrambling for purchase. Theresa took a step toward him to help, stubbed her toe on one of the sticks and began to fall. Rebar spikes rose up toward her torso, her arms, her eyes—
‘Tess!’ she heard Frank shout.
She grabbed the two heading for her neck, all her weight suddenly depending on the grip she could maintain on two half-inch thick iron poles, one of which was slick with Kyle Cielac’s blood. The latex glove granted some traction and she managed to keep from impaling herself. Heart pounding hard enough to cause a roaring in her ears, she straightened. ‘That would have hurt.’
‘Get out of there,’ Angela demanded. ‘Here, I’ll give you a hand up.’
‘Wait.’ Theresa inched – very carefully – through the minefield of rebar spikes, crouching where she had enough room. The pool of Kyle Cielac’s accumulated blood had partially dried along the edges, hard and cracked like a dry river bed in places while still smooth and glossy red in the center. She stuck her fingers into this pool, methodically patting every inch of it. Chris Novosek watched her with an expression that said that even with the body gone he might still be sick at any moment, and Frank said, ‘Eww,’ about every fourth pat.
‘You’re not helping,’ she told him.
In the small lake of blood she found four pieces of gravel, five screws, and a crumpled up foil gum wrapper with a piece of chewed
gum inside. That she kept. The coating of blood might make it problematic to impossible for DNA analysis, but tooth-marks could be interesting as well. She also kept a crumpled Pepsi can and two Styrofoam cups with dried up coffee on the inside and a splash of blood on the outside. One had a distinct mouth print in deep coral colored lipstick. Theresa found that interesting.
Directly under where Kyle Cielac’s heart had been, she touched a flat square of plastic. She picked it up and let the blood drain off it.
‘Probably his ID card,’ Novosek said.
It had been in such a thick part of the puddle that the blood coating it had not dried, only clotted to a gel-like consistency that slid off easily enough, leaving a slick but sufficiently transparent coating behind. ‘No,’ she told him. ‘It’s yours.’
‘I lost it yesterday,’ Novosek told Frank and Angela. ‘Spent part of the afternoon looking for it.’
Frank had brought him to the Justice Center, only two blocks but a world away from his own environment. Away from the jackhammers and the ironworkers, it gave him a tiny taste of what jail might be like, in the form of an interrogation room. The blank walls, the suspicious stares, the knowledge that you are cut off from everyone you know and we really might be able to do anything we want to you without interference – at least, any interference that would arrive in time to help. We have you, man. What do you think of that? ‘You lost your ID card. Really. Because, as you may recall, we spent a lot of time together yesterday, and I distinctly remember it dangling from your chest pocket. Don’t you?’ he asked his partner.