He made a few calls and got a promise that the report was on its way. When he’d hung up, he lifted a newspaper off the desk and held it in the air. “You read Amy’s article yet?”
“No.”
I’d almost forgotten about Amy’s discovery, thanks to my preoccupation with Padgett and Rabold. Now I took the paper reluctantly. A glance at the front-page, above-the-fold headline was almost enough to make me put it down: MURDER SUSPECT WAS UNWANTED PRESENCE IN VICTIM’S LIFE.
I read the article, then folded it so the front page was hidden and stuffed it in the garbage can.
I couldn’t call it editorializing, because it wasn’t. All Amy had done was take her quotes and lay them out there: Gradduk allegedly had an unpleasant exchange with Sentalar at a bar; Gradduk apparently made numerous calls to her office and residence; Sentalar’s law partner, a guy named David Russo, said the dead woman had viewed Gradduk as a nuisance and seemed at times to be afraid of him. Amy had written what she’d been told, and I supposed the television news stations were cursing her for beating them on the story. That didn’t make it any easier for me to read.
“What do you think?” Joe said.
“I think it’s bullshit.”
“Has to be some fact to it, LP. Has to be.”
“Sure, there might be some fact to it, but without explanation or context the readers are going to take one look and make a snap judgment that Ed was some sort of stalker.”
Joe smiled wanly. “And that’s Amy’s fault?”
“I didn’t say it was her fault.”
“But you’re thinking it.”
I stood up and walked over to the fax machine, checked the display to make sure it was on. No sign of the incident report yet.
“You know she couldn’t have enjoyed writing it about your old friend,” he said. “But it’s her job.”
“She talk to you?”
“No. I’m just seeing your reaction and warning you to take a step back. You’re from a police and PI background, LP. You build an investigation one day at a time, then produce your result. Amy doesn’t have that luxury. When she has a productive day of investigation, she has to slam it into the next day’s paper, or she’s considered a professional failure.”
“But it makes him look—,” I began, and Joe interrupted with a snort.
“It makes him look bad? Makes him look like something he wasn’t? Spreads misconceptions, encourages unfounded gossip? No shit, Lincoln. Welcome to the world of the media. You’d think you’d never encountered it before.”
“I’ve encountered it.”
“Exactly. So think about that and then ask yourself if you’d be this mad if it hadn’t been Amy breaking the story.”
The fax machine ground to life then, sucking a blank page from the feed tray and pumping it through. I grabbed it as it came out and saw a Cleveland Police Department cover sheet. This would be the incident report.
It was seven pages long, and I ran it through the copier before I read it, so Joe and I could take a look simultaneously. The incident report had been written by Sergeant Jack Padgett the morning after Ed’s death. It began with the tip.
On the afternoon of August 12, at approximately 3:45 P.M., I received a phone call on my cell phone. The number is one I frequently distribute to witnesses, informants, and others who could be of assistance to police business. The caller identified himself as Jerome Huggins of the Liquor Locker on Train Avenue. Mr. Huggins asked me if I was familiar with a fire on Train Avenue. He said the fire had occurred the previous day. I told him that I knew about it. He then told me he believed his security camera had captured information that would be of value to the police. Mr. Huggins chose to call me because I had previously worked with him on a robbery that had occurred in his business a few years earlier. I told Mr. Huggins that I would stop by to look at his film.
Upon arriving at the Liquor Locker, I was shown to a small television monitor by Mr. Huggins. He then played the portion of tape that he found relevant. Some of this tape showed the fire, other segments showed a white male entering and leaving the vacant house shortly before the fire began. In one segment the man’s vehicle was visible. I asked Mr. Huggins if he thought the man in the tape was familiar, and he said he did. He identified the male as someone from the neighborhood. He suggested the man’s first name was Ed, but he could not recall the last name. I obtained the license plate number from a careful study of the tape. I then called in to dispatch and asked them to run the plate match. They informed me that the plate was registered to an Edward Gradduk. I then asked Mr. Huggins if he believed this individual could be the man he identified on the tape, and he told me that he believed that to be true. At this point myself and Officer Rabold took the surveillance tape to be entered as police evidence and went to locate the suspect, Edward Gradduk. At this point myself and Officer Rabold believed we had probable cause to suggest that Mr. Gradduk had trespassed on private property shortly before a criminal act of arson was committed at that property.
“‘A criminal act of arson,’ he says.” I looked at Joe, who just grunted and continued reading. I dropped my eyes back to the paper.
Dispatch informed me that Edward Gradduk’s home address was on Clark Avenue. Together with Officer Rabold, I proceeded to this address in order to determine if the suspect was home. His vehicle, a Ford sedan, was found to be in the driveway ofthe residence. Officer Rabold requested that he remain outside to watch the house in case Gradduk tried to leave from the back, and I approved. I myself entered the house with permission of an older white female who identified herselfas the mother of Edward Gradduk. We stood in the kitchen and waited for Edward Gradduk to come down the steps. He came down at his mother’s request and seemed immediately to resent me being in the house. I told him that I wanted to speak with him about a fire on Train Avenue and asked if he would be willing to come to the police station for questioning. At this point the mother grew hostile, shouting at me and insisting that I leave. Edward Gradduk told me he wanted to call an attorney. I said he could call an attorney to meet him at the police station but that I would be taking him into custody as a suspect in an arson and homicide investigation. It was at this point that Edward Gradduk struck me in the face with his right fist and exited the residence through the front door. Officer Rabold had been watching the rear of the property and did not see Edward Gradduk leave.
The report went on to describe the arrival of backup, the delegation of duties in the search for Gradduk, and the medical condition of Padgett, whose nose turned out not to be broken, just bloodied. There was a mention of their encounter with me, followed by a concise description of the “accidental” death of Ed Gradduk, which was described as “unavoidable contact during pursuit of a fleeing homicide suspect.”
I’d finished the report before Joe, so I flipped through the pages again until he’d read the last page and set it aside.
“The detail is a little sparse for an incident report that resulted in a suspect’s death,” he said. “But other than that, it doesn’t seem especially unusual.”
“Other than the tip.”
“I don’t see anything particularly odd about the tip. If Padgett knew this guy Huggins from a previous robbery case and from working in the neighborhood, it’s not surprising that he’d get the call. If there’s one breed of businessman who appreciates his local street cops, it’s the liquor store owners.”
“I still don’t like it.”
Joe shrugged. “I’m not telling you to like it. Just saying it isn’t enough to base such a serious charge on, and wondering what you’ve got planned from here.”
“I want to talk to Huggins, and I want to talk to Alberta Gradduk.”
Joe nodded, looking not too subtly at our stack of active case files.
“If you’re worried about the paying clients, I’ll work it alone. Dock me for a couple vacation days.”
He rolled his eyes and stood up. “There’s nothing on our plate that can’t hold a day. And no limit to t
he trouble you’ll get into if I leave you to go at this alone.”
PART TWO
OUT OF THE ASHES
CHAPTER 11
We were at a stoplight on Lorain, on the way to the Liquor Locker, when Joe asked me to explain what had really happened with Ed all those years earlier. I was sure he’d wanted me to volunteer it myself, but the truth was, I kept forgetting he didn’t know. I had few secrets from Joe.
It didn’t take me long to explain it, and that felt wrong, somehow. It seemed as if it should take hours, not minutes.
“So you and his girlfriend were trying to bail him out of a situation he wouldn’t bail himself out of,” Joe said when I was through.
“Yes.”
He grunted but didn’t say anything else, just stared out the window and watched the houses and storefronts go by.
“I should have been up front about it back then,” I said. “But I hardly knew you, and . . . well, it wasn’t something that was easy to tell.”
“And you’re still feeling guilty about it.”
“About not telling you?”
“No. About what you did to your friend.”
“I betrayed him, Joe.”
“Only to try to help him.”
“No.”
He turned his head, but I didn’t look at him.
“It wasn’t about his girl,” I said. “I didn’t want to be with Allison. But I can’t pretend I went with her idea for purely noble purposes, either.”
“So what else was there?”
“I wanted to be the hero.”
He was quiet for a moment, then said, “I see.”
“I wanted to help him, sure,” I said. “But I also wanted everyone to know that I’d been the one. Allison, Draper, Ed’s mother, everybody. I wanted to be the savior.”
“That’s not what you became.”
I laughed sadly. “No. People called me a lot of things when it went down, but none of those terms were mentioned.”
Joe was silent till we were on Train Avenue, then spoke without taking his eyes off the road.
“What you just said, LP . . . that’s every young cop’s story. That’s what they all want, at first—to be a hero. I’ve seen enough of them to know that’s the truth. And I’ve been there myself. Young cops want to be heroes.”
“And old cops?”
“Just want to understand,” he said. “Just want to know the truth, and then disappear again. Fade to black.”
Directly across from the Liquor Locker was a charred concrete foundation that was all that remained of the home where Anita Sentalar had died. Or at least where her body had burned. Joe pulled his Taurus up to the curb across from the liquor store and we both eyed the burn site. Little was left. It had burned, as Amy had said, real hot and real fast. Most of the crime-scene tape that had been used to rope the area off had been knocked down now by curious neighbors or kids. My window was down, and as Joe turned the motor off, I could almost imagine that the acrid smell of stale ashes and smoke was still in the air. A lazy wind blew between the old houses on either side of the ruin, whistling softly as it passed over the jagged concrete formations that remained.
“Hell of a strange place to dump a body,” Joe said, “whether he had access or not. It’s a crowded city street. Setting the place on fire discreetly wouldn’t have been easy.”
“The good news is, Ed wasn’t looking for a place to dump a body, and he didn’t burn the house, so that’s not an issue.”
“Sure.”
We got out of the car and walked across the street and into the liquor store, a place that felt as spacious as an airplane bathroom. There were three shelves filled with cheap booze and two coolers along the far wall that held cold beer. I saw four bottles of champagne on the end of one shelf, the most expensive a twenty-dollar bottle of Asti. A black guy with a fleshy face and several chins sat at the cash register and watched us look around. He had a toothpick stuck in the corner of his mouth.
“You looking for something in particular?” “Had a couple questions for you,” Joe said, stepping up to the register, but I stayed where I was, scanning the walls. There, in the back corner of the room, was one camera. It pointed toward the front of the store, at the door. I pivoted slightly and found another, mounted where it had a good view of the cash register. Now that I’d located both of the interior cameras, I followed their angles with my eyes and found what I’d expected—neither looked out across the street. I left the building while Joe introduced himself to the cashier, then stood on the sidewalk until I found the third camera, a little one pressed up under the eaves, angled so its lens pointed across the street, directly at the charred concrete blocks that had once been part of a house. The camera was black and clean, the bolts holding it in place firm and without rust.
I went back inside. Joe gave me a curious look and stopped talking. The black guy worked the toothpick over to the other side of his mouth and glared at me.
“Are you Jerome Huggins?” I said.
He nodded. “I am. There a reason you so interested in my security cameras?”
“Yes. You’re the guy who provided the tapes of the fire to the police, right?”
It was hot in the cramped little store, and beads of sweat stood out on Jerome Huggins’s bald head and ran along his jowls. A tiny fan sat beside the register, blowing warm air into his face.
“That’s right,” he said. “And as I was just asking your friend here, what the hell does that have to do with you?”
“We’re private investigators,” Joe said, reaching for his wallet.
Huggins waved him off. “I don’t give a shit what kind of badge ya’ll got, I don’t think I want to be talking to you. If you’re private investigators, who you working for?”
“Hell of a security system you’ve got in this place,” I said, waving my hand around the room. “Two interior cameras, one exterior. I’ve been in banks that had less coverage than that.”
“This ain’t Brecksville, boy,” Jerome Huggins said. “We got kids out there with big guns in their hands and small brains in their heads. Got to be prepared.”
“How long you had those cameras up?” I asked.
“Two years,” Huggins answered, chewing on the toothpick now with enough pressure to make his jaw muscles bulge.
I leaned on the counter, my face close to his, and smiled.
“Jerome,” I said, “you are full of shit.”
He wiped his sweaty jowls with one hand and spit the toothpick onto the floor at his feet.
“’Scuse me, boy?”
“Those cameras are almost brand-new, Jerome. I’d be willing to bet if we pull them down and have someone from the manufacturer come here and take a look, we’ll find out they were made in the last year. I’m guessing they haven’t been up for more than a month.”
Joe took a few steps to the side and stood peering up at one of the interior cameras, seeing what I already knew.
“I suggest,” Jerome Huggins said, “that you boys be getting the hell out of my store now.”
I shook my head. “Not yet, Jerome. Not till you tell us when those cameras went in and who told you to put them in.”
“Kiss . . . my . . . black . . . ass,” he said slowly, straightening up on his stool.
“You really buy those two years ago?” Joe said, voice casual.
Huggins looked at him with distaste but nodded.
“Where’d you get them?” Joe asked, still friendly.
Huggins’s chest rose as he took a deep breath. “From a catalog.”
“Any chance you’d have a receipt?” Joe said.
“Get out,” Huggins said. “Now.”
I put my palms on the counter and leaned in to him. “You’re a lying piece of shit, Jerome. Those cameras are new, and you put them up because somebody told you to do it. Isn’t that it?”
“I put them up because I like my security.” His hand dipped under the counter. “Same reason I keep this.” He brought out a small Smith & Wesson re
volver, wrapped his fat fingers around the stock, and rested it gently on the counter, pointed my way. “I think it’s time for you to go home.”
I stayed where I was and stared at him. I stared at him for a long time. Long enough for him to begin to concentrate on it, to focus on meeting my eyes. When it seemed he was properly absorbed with that, I swept my left hand across the counter and knocked the revolver out of his fingers with one sharp, swift motion. He came up off his stool and swung at me clumsily. I avoided the blow and reached across the counter to grab him by the throat. Joe swore and put his hands on my shoulders, pulling me back.
“Tell me if it was like I said, Jerome.” I tightened my grasp on his throat and he gagged, his eyes wide and white, his hands tugging at my fingers, trying to free himself.
“Get off him,” Joe said, his hand finding a pressure point between my neck and shoulder as he pulled me back. I released Jerome Huggins’s throat and stepped away from the counter. He stood still, rubbing his neck and breathing heavily.
“Yeah, you best get him off,” he said to Joe. “This boy here got crazy eyes, man. Crazy eyes. I see ’em come in here like that sometimes, ready to kill over something ain’t nobody else even understands. I see ’em. And you know what they get next? They get dead, my man. Dead.”
“Who told you to put the cameras up, Jerome?” I said. “You tell me that, and we’re gone.”
He shook his head. “You’re already gone, brother.”
I wanted to say more, but Joe was pushing me toward the door.
We went outside and across the street. Joe unlocked the car but didn’t get inside, choosing instead to lean on the hood and stare at me.
“The cameras are new, Joe,” I said. “They set Ed up.”
The wind came across the empty lot and blew his tie up in his face. He smoothed it down and kept staring at me, silent.
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