“You know I’m right,” I said. “You saw the cameras, and you heard Huggins, and you know what it means.”
“I’ll tell you what else I saw. I saw you lose control, Lincoln. Fast.”
“You call that losing control? Please. That was pretty damn restrained. If I’d lost control, I would have broken every bottle of booze in that asshole’s store and then put him through the window.”
“Macho,” Joe said. “Cool.”
“Go to hell.”
For a minute he was quiet. Then he said, “You know what I would’ve put in my report if we were still on the force? I would’ve written that my partner needed to be removed from the case because of an excessive emotional involvement. I would’ve written that your judgment could not be trusted on this case, that you were a liability to yourself and everyone around you.”
I put my hands on the car roof and leaned against it, meeting his eyes.
“We aren’t on the force anymore, Joe.” “That doesn’t mean you can do that,” he said, pointing across the street at the Liquor Locker.
“These bastards set my friend up for a murder, and then they killed him!” I said, my voice tight and loud, my hands pressed hard against the car. “Don’t tell me what I can and cannot do. I’m here to settle the damn score, okay? And if I’ve got to settle it by kicking in doors and slapping a piece of shit like Jerome back there around, that’s what I’m going to do. You don’t like it, then get the hell out of here and go home. I’ll finish this alone.”
“You think this is the way to go about it? You’re even shouting at me now. There’s a way to investigate—”
“They set my friend up for a murder and then they killed him!” I screamed it this time and punched the roof of his car. “You want to talk about protocol and manners? Are you kidding me?”
Joe stood up straight, every muscle rigid, his eyes flat and small. He did not speak.
“I don’t need to hear about what you’d write in your damn report if we were still on the force,” I said, my voice softer now. “We’re not there anymore, and this isn’t a case somebody dropped on my desk. This is the best friend I ever had, Joe, and he’s dead. Don’t tell me to treat it like it’s another day at the job. It’s not.”
He took a deep breath, moved his eyes to the street, but stayed silent.
“You want to go home, go home,” I said. “I’m going to see Alberta Gradduk.”
He stayed where he was. I turned and walked away from him, east down Train. It would be a long walk to Ed’s old house, but I had plenty of fuel to burn.
I’d gone maybe three blocks when Joe pulled up beside me and stopped, the motor idling. I looked in at him. He didn’t turn to face me, just kept his eyes on the street while he popped the door locks open and waited for me to get inside.
Her face had taken on a grayish cast that reminded me of the Cuyahoga on a cold March morning. Her eyes were rimmed with red lines and her breath was stale with cigarette smoke and bourbon. I stood on the steps and stared at her, tried to remember her as she’d once been, an attractive woman who rarely drank and didn’t smoke. It wasn’t easy.
“I told you,” Alberta Gradduk said, “to go away. I didn’t want to see you back here. Why won’t you leave us alone?”
“It’s not ‘us,’ anymore, Mrs. Gradduk,” I said. “Your son is dead. And I don’t give a damn what you think of me, or where you want me to go, or how much you want to be left alone. I’m here to find out what really happened to Ed, and I’m not leaving.”
For a moment I was sure she’d slam the door in my face again, but she didn’t. Instead she turned away from the door and walked back into the house on unsteady legs. She left the door standing open, though, and Joe and I followed her inside.
Stepping over the threshold and into the house was like walking into a museum, a place designed to freeze the past and preserve memories. I remembered every turn and doorway and room so well I could have navigated the house blindfolded, though I hadn’t been inside in fifteen years.
Joe and I sat on a dirty couch with our backs to the street while Alberta took an armchair across from us. She shuffled with a pack of cigarettes and an empty glass on the coffee table for a bit but didn’t do anything with either.
“It’s been a long time since I was in this house,” I said. I’d been obnoxious and commanding out on the steps, trying to get in the door, but I didn’t really want this conversation to be contentious. If I could somehow convince Alberta Gradduk to talk with me as the old family friend I still felt I was, it would be a much better scenario. “Ed had clearly been doing some work on the place.”
“How’s what we did in our home any business of yours?” Alberta snapped.
“You like being back in the house, then?” I said, ignoring her comment.
She rolled an unlit cigarette between her fingers. “I hate this house.”
“You didn’t want Ed to buy it?”
“Ed didn’t care what I thought of that.” She looked up at me and glared. “Why are you bothering me with all this? You think asking questions about this stupid old house is going to help anything? They’re burying my son in three days, you know. Burying him.” She rolled her eyes over to Joe. “What are you staring at?”
He smiled the smile of a patient priest in a confessional, passing no judgment. “Just listening, ma’am.”
“This is my partner,” I said. “His name’s Joe Pritchard. He was a police detective for a long time. I thought he could help us here.”
She looked at Joe contemptuously. “I hate the police, mister. Every one of you.”
He looked at me as if to say nice icebreaker, but didn’t speak.
“Ed got set up,” I said, leaning forward, bracing my elbows on my knees. “I’m sure of that, Mrs. Gradduk. I want to prove it to everyone else, though.”
“Like anybody cares.” She waved her bony hands at me in disgust. She was in the same dress she’d been wearing when I’d come to the house two days earlier.
“We don’t want to bother you, ma’am,” Joe said. “We’re really just hoping to help. Could you tell us what happened when the police came to arrest your son?”
She set the cigarette back on the table and scowled at it. “Marched in here like he owned the place, that’s what he did. Didn’t knock, just opened the door and walked right in.”
I raised my eyebrows. “The cop didn’t knock? Are you sure?”
“Of course I’m sure, I was sitting right in this room. I had the paper out, but I couldn’t tell you exactly what I was reading in it. I heard him come up on the steps and I put the paper down, thinking I’d have to go to the door when he knocked. But before I could even get out of my chair, he was inside.”
“What did he say?” Joe asked.
“Not a damn thing at first. Just looked at me all surprised, like he hadn’t imagined finding me in my own house. I asked just what the hell he thought he was doing. He asked what I was doing here. What I was doing here, like I didn’t belong and he did. That’s when Ed came in.”
“Where had Ed been till then?” I asked. I could remember sitting on the floor in this room with Ed, watching television. When we were in third grade, he’d had a model train that ran around the floor, and we used to run the track under the couch and pin its skirt up so the trains could go through our makeshift tunnel. Beside me was the door that led out to the front porch, where we used to sit in the evenings and listen to Norm Gradduk’s stories, watch him play solitaire and drink Stroh’s beer.
“I don’t know, I didn’t follow him from room to room,” Alberta said, her voice high and whiny, like a child’s.
“So what happened when Ed saw the police officer?” Joe said.
“When Ed came in, he pointed the gun at him and told him to get his hands in the air.”
Joe and I exchanged a glance. “Ed had a gun?” Joe asked.
Alberta was disgusted. “No.”
“But you said he pointed a gun . . .”
“Tha
t’s right. Pointed it at Ed.”
“The cop had a gun out?” I asked.
“That’s right.”
“He had a gun out when he came into the house?” Joe said.
“That’s right.”
We looked at one another again. An unannounced entrance, with gun drawn. This was certainly not the situation that had been presented in Jack Padgett’s incident report.
“What happened then?” Joe said.
“He told me to go upstairs and leave them alone. He said he needed to be alone with Ed. I yelled at him and told him to leave. He told me to go upstairs, but Ed told me to stay where I was. They kept shouting, and then Ed hit him in the face. Hit him hard. He hit him and I yelled and then Ed opened the door and ran.”
“Did it seem like Ed knew the cop?” I said.
Her eyelids went up slowly, as if it took a concentrated effort.
“You know,” Alberta Gradduk said, “you’re just like your father.”
“Excuse me?”
“Just like him,” she said, and I could tell that it was no compliment.
“What does my father have to do with this?”
She stared at me unpleasantly. “People have their own problems. They should be allowed to deal with them privately. I never liked meddlers.”
“I’m not meddling, Mrs. Gradduk; I’m trying to clear your son’s name. I’d like to think you’d support that attempt.”
“I want you to leave.”
“You haven’t answered all my questions yet.”
“And I’m not going to!” She shouted this time, her eyes wide and angry, a spray of spit following her words. “I don’t want you here. I don’t want you to come back. Just go away and leave us alone. We’ll be fine without you and your judgment.”
I started to open my mouth to tell her I wasn’t judging anyone, but then I saw it was going to be wasted effort, and I shook my head and stood up. Joe followed suit.
“That’s right, get out,” Alberta Gradduk said, her voice back to its natural state, that weak, raspy whisper.
“We’re going,” I said, pulling open the front door. “You have a good day, Mrs. Gradduk. I’m sorry about Ed.”
We were back at the car when I turned to Joe.
“He came in without knocking or identifying himself, gun drawn,” I said. “Seemed surprised and bothered to find the mother there. Once Ed showed up, Padgett told Alberta to leave them alone in the room. Ed told her not to.”
Joe was silent.
“They came to kill him,” I said. “Padgett didn’t expect Ed’s mother to be there. She threw him. Her presence saved his life, at least right then. Ed saw the situation for what it was, and he ran.”
Joe’s face was empty, his eyes hard. I knew I had him now, though. Joe came from a family of cops, and he’d devoted most of his life to being the best cop in the city. If there was one thing he could not stomach, it was the idea of a corrupt police officer.
“You ready to ride with me yet?” I said.
His smile was cold as he held up his car keys. “Hell,” he said. “I’m driving.”
CHAPTER 12
Our timing was bad. If we’d been five minutes later getting back to the office, we would have missed Cal Richards. Instead, we pulled into the parking lot just as he was climbing into his car, ready to leave. When he saw us, he got back out and leaned against the trunk of the unmarked Taurus, a smile on his face.
“Gentlemen. How fortunate that you’ve returned. I didn’t want to miss you.”
“What’s up?” Joe said.
“You mind if we go up to your office?” Richards said, stepping away from his car. “Hot as a bastard out here.”
We went in the building and up the steps, Richards walking silently behind us. Joe unlocked the office door and we went inside. Richards sat down across from us and cleared his throat dramatically.
“So, I’ve been out of your office for less than a day and already I’ve got a complaint about your behavior.”
“From?” I said.
“Jerome Huggins. I talked with the man less than an hour ago. He told me a couple of white-boy private eyes were down this morning, giving him grief. Said the old guy of the duo was cool enough, but the young guy was, well, maybe a little headstrong. Jerome didn’t seem to think fondly of him.”
“A lot of PIs in this town,” I said. “Could be anybody.”
Richards rolled his eyes. “Let’s not waste time on the bullshit, okay? I didn’t come down here to bust your balls over this, Perry. I’d be justified in doing that, but I don’t want to. I know you’re investigating your friend’s past, and I got no problem with that. I just want to have some idea of where I can expect you to be turning up.”
“What were you doing at the liquor store?” I countered.
He ran a hand over his bristle-short hair. “Wanted to verify some things with Jerome, is all.”
I grinned. “You lie, Detective.”
“Pardon?”
“You’re too good not to have a problem with the cameras at that place,” I said.
Richards sat expressionless for a minute, until Joe began to laugh softly.
“You confused him, LP. Called him a liar in the same breath as you complimented him. Man doesn’t know what to do now.”
Richards allowed a small smile. “Weighing my options, for sure. And I’m going to play along, Perry, and acknowledge that, yes, I am way too good not to have a problem with those cameras.”
“Any idea who told Jerome to put them up?”
He shook his head. “Not yet. Jerome’s sticking hard and fast to this tale that they’ve been up for years. One look tells you that’s horseshit, but I’m not ready to put him in the box and sweat him yet. Just curious, is all. Jerome’ll be there when I need him.”
“I see.”
“What about you?” he said. “Any idea who’s at the other end of Jerome’s puppet strings?”
I gazed across the room at Joe, who met my look with flat eyes. After a moment’s hesitation, I decided to trust Cal Richards.
“I think your cops set him up. And then I think they killed him. Intentionally.”
Cal let out a long, slow breath. “You want to run that by me again?”
I told him about the discrepancies in the incident report and Alberta Gradduk’s account of the botched arrest, and I told him about Padgett and Rabold watching Mitch Corbett’s house.
Richards didn’t like it. Not a bit.
“Those guys are longtime cops, Perry. Maybe not the best on the force, but they’ve been around. That’s a bold-ass suggestion you just made, implicating them in a conspiracy. In murder.”
“They set him up, Richards. They set him up and they took him down. Ed was innocent.”
He sighed. “Look, Perry, I’m going to give you this because I think you deserve to know. Think you need to know. I exercised a search warrant on Gradduk’s house and on his vehicle. You know what I found? Trunk of his car was filled with bottles of a chemical accelerant and a couple hundred feet of industrial fuse. More of the same in his basement. Also in the basement were two homemade timing devices, designed to run about fifteen minutes before touching off the fuse. Just right for the fire on Train Avenue.”
I was shaking my head even before he was done. “They weren’t his, Richards. Someone planted that shit. Hell, Padgett and Rabold had ample opportunity.”
“I’ve also got a guy who will testify to selling Gradduk the fuse cord. He recognized him from the picture and will swear to it in court.”
“No,” I said again.
He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, and looked hard at me. “I’ll tell you what else I’ve got—a coroner’s report on the victim. Sentalar was burned pretty badly, but not so badly that you can’t tell that she didn’t die from the fire. She had a bullet in her, first, one right in the center of her forehead. Medical examiners can tell me without a doubt that it was a thirty-two-caliber round. Only one gun is registered to Ed Gradduk, Perry. Al
so a thirty-two. Now missing.”
I shook my head but didn’t speak. Joe said, “Can they get a specific ballistics match on the bullet?”
“No. Bullet blew out the back side of her skull. If we had it, we might get a precise match, but the fire took care of that. It was in the rubble somewhere, and the fire department guys didn’t locate it. Not that I blame them for that.”
“He got set up,” I said. “Ed got set up, Richards.”
Richards nodded. “He got set up. But not framed for a murder. He killed that girl, Perry. But I think he got set up in having his picture taken while he was doing it. And I want to know why.”
“But Padgett and Rabold—”
“Are a couple of good ol’ boy cops looking for a hot collar,” he said. “That’s all they are. Believe me, I’ll take a good look at this guy, Corbett, and I’ll burn those two good for working a surveillance on him without letting me know. But in the end, I think they’re just looking to make headlines. If they’re guilty of anything, it’s holding out on a tip. I bet they were given some real detail about this, but they don’t want to pass it off because it’ll go to me and they’ll miss the glory.”
I got out of my chair and walked to the window, stood with my back to him, my hands clenched at my sides.
“I know he was your friend,” Richards said. “But he killed her. I’m almost sure of it.”
I didn’t answer. He sat there for a while, then said good-bye to Joe and left. When the door closed behind him, it was quiet. I stayed at the window. Joe let a few minutes pass before he broke the silence.
“All right, LP. It’s not what you wanted to hear him say. But that doesn’t mean the work we did in the morning was for nothing. Let’s get back to that now, get focused.”
I turned away from the window, still angry. “He’s convinced Ed killed her, Joe. He just shrugged off everything we gave him on those cops.”
“He didn’t shrug it off. He’s a good detective. Maybe as good as you. He’ll take what we gave him and blend it with what he’s got, and he’ll keep moving. Hell, did you expect him to leap in the air and click his heels at the idea Gradduk was set up by two of his own cops? Come on.”
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