Let It Burn Page 15

  “You’re flattering me now. But go ahead.”

  “When I was telling you what happened at the train station, when I was chasing Darryl King down the tracks, you stopped me and you asked me a question. Do you remember what it was?”

  He thought about it for a few seconds.

  “I asked you,” he said, “why the young man threw away the bracelet and not the knife.”

  “Right. Which is exactly the same question I asked Detective Bateman, when he told me the story.”

  “What was his answer?”

  “His answer was the kid threw away the knife later, after he got home. Or he just wasn’t thinking straight at the moment. Or whatever. It really doesn’t matter, because the whole question is just one of those things that gets in the way of us seeing the situation clearly.”

  He nodded his head slowly. “Okay…”

  “So that’s what I realized last night. I was asking that question when I should have been asking something else.”

  He raised his eyebrows, waiting for it.

  “Why throw away anything?” I said. “What good does it do?”

  “It’s incriminating. It’s a natural reaction to throw it away. When you were chasing somebody with drugs, you must have seen—”

  “Them throw away bags of crack. Yes, I saw that all the time. We’d go pick it up after the arrest, and inevitably they’d say, ‘Oh, no, Officer, that’s not mine. I don’t know where that came from.’”

  “So it’s the same idea here,” he said. “The kid had the bracelet, so while you were chasing him he threw it away.”

  “Exactly. Now you’ve got it.”

  “Got what? We’re back where we started, aren’t we?”

  “No,” I said. “Now we’re somewhere else. Look…”

  I noticed that he had his cell phone clipped to his belt, so I reached over and grabbed it from him.

  “I just took your cell phone,” I said. “It’s much nicer than mine, after all. It probably even works up here sometimes. So now I’m going to leave before I get caught, right?”

  “Yeah?”

  “But wait, here comes a cop, so I’m going to throw it away.”

  I tossed it onto the table.

  “It wasn’t me, Officer. I have no idea how that cell phone got on that table.”

  He looked at the phone, then at me.

  “Now let’s say I just killed you,” I said. “And I happened to take your cell phone while I was at it. Here comes that cop. What am I going to do? If I’m still carrying around the freaking murder weapon, do you think I’m even thinking about the stupid cell phone at that point?”

  “No,” he said, grabbing his phone from the table. “No, you’re not.”

  “Darryl King threw away that bracelet because he had just committed the crime of taking it, so when I was chasing him he naturally threw it away. He was disassociating himself from the crime. Which I realize sounds like something you would say. Maybe you’re rubbing off on me.”

  “If you look at it as a simple robbery, you mean…”

  “Then it all makes sense, yes. He does exactly what you’d expect him to do.”

  “So he doesn’t throw away the knife…”

  “Because he doesn’t have a knife.”

  Leon sat back on the couch and thought about this. I could tell he was really working it over. He started to say something, stopped himself. Started again, then stopped.

  “But it is possible…”

  “If you make up that story in your head, you can make him throw away the bracelet and keep the knife, yes. I suppose in some cases, somewhere, it’s actually happened that way. People do things that don’t make any sense.”

  “But in this case…”

  “In this case, I think he found a dead body. She wasn’t dead for long, because we know from the forensics that she was killed right around that same time. But he goes up there and he sees the bracelet and he takes it. Because at that point, why not? Then he leaves, and I show up and start chasing him.”

  “So he throws it away,” Leon said, still thinking it over. “‘Not me. I didn’t do it. I didn’t take this from that dead woman up there…’”

  I just sat there and watched him as he seemed to reenact the whole scene in his head.

  “Damn,” he finally said, “that feels right. It really does.”

  “I’m glad to hear you say that.”

  “It’s completely unprovable, of course. Just one of those things you know in your gut. But now you try to put that up against the fact that he confessed…”

  “We go back to that, yeah. Why he would just roll over and give up.”

  “Instead of swearing up and down that he didn’t kill her.”

  “Well, he’s getting out soon,” I said. “Maybe I can ask him.”

  Leon looked at me. “You’re really thinking of doing that?”

  “I might. I don’t know. It’ll probably bug me forever if I don’t.”

  “That’ll be one interesting conversation,” he said. “But wait a minute. Hold the phone…”

  “What is it?”

  “Alex, if this Darryl King of yours didn’t kill that woman…”

  “Then someone else did,” I said. “I realize that.”

  “I would think that would keep me up at night, just as much as the thought of sending the wrong man to prison.”

  “Well, thanks. Tonight I’m sure it will.”

  “Seriously, what are you going to do about this? Somebody killed her and just walked away.”

  I didn’t have an answer for that. Leon didn’t have an answer, either. Not a real answer. I thanked him for listening to me. Then I let him get back to work.

  When I was outside again, I found myself walking through the iron gate to Locks Park. Another freighter was coming through the locks. People were standing around watching it, but it barely registered for me. I was too busy thinking about that dead woman left on that balcony in that train station, and a murderer with no face and no name, who never paid the price for his crime.

  *

  My honeymooners were gone from the last cabin, so I spent a couple of hours closing that up. Vinnie came by for a few minutes, then left for his shift at the casino. The sun went down, and it started to get cold. The wind was blowing hard by the time I got to the Glasgow Inn. It was just me and Jackie and a few stragglers wandering in on their way up to the Shipwreck Museum. Jackie could tell something was bothering me. He put a cold Canadian on the table next to my chair and left me alone.

  I knew Leon was right about not being able to sleep, no matter how tired I was. But when I got back to my cabin, I gave it a try anyway. It was midnight and I was just starting to doze off when I heard a loud knock on my door.

  I got up and opened it. It was Leon.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I had to come over. This can’t wait.”

  “Leon, what is it? What the hell’s going on?”

  I invited him in. He sat down at my table. He had a folder of papers with him. As he opened it I saw notes and copies of news items.

  “I kept thinking about what you told me today,” he said. “I’ve been on the Internet, looking up some stuff.”

  “Like what?” I sat down next to him.

  “I got thinking,” he said, shuffling through his papers, “that a murder like this is just so brutal … So extreme…”

  “Yes?”

  “Here’s one,” he said, holding up a printout from a newspaper Web site. “Just read it.”

  I took it from him. From the Cleveland Plain Dealer, an interview with the chief of police. The man was talking about an unsolved murder in his city. A woman who had been stabbed seventeen times in a hotel stairwell.

  I checked the date. Five years after the murder of Elana Paige.

  “I know every murder doesn’t get solved, and stabbings aren’t that uncommon. But look at these, too.”

  He handed me two more news items. One from the Chicago Sun-Times, another follow-up on a case
that was still unsolved six months after it happened. A woman stabbed to death in a parking structure next to a mall, just outside Chicago. Then the other one, from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Yet another unsolved case. Yet another woman stabbed multiple times. This time left outside, in a park overlooking Lake Michigan.

  So Cleveland five years after Elana Paige, then Chicago four years after that. Then Milwaukee three years later. Each one of these crimes represented by a single sheet of paper on my table, here in this small cabin hundreds of miles away from any of these crimes, and yet I knew all too well what lay behind the simple facts recited in the news stories. The terrible last moments of an innocent person’s life. Then families torn apart by grief.

  “It’s possible there are more,” Leon said. “These are just the obvious ones I found in five minutes.”

  “This doesn’t have to be the same person,” I said, spreading the pages back out on the table. “Or if it was for these murders, it doesn’t necessarily have to include Elana Paige.”

  “It doesn’t have to, no. But what does your gut tell you right now?”

  “I’m tired of my gut telling me things,” I said. “It’s not always right, you know.”

  “Sure, maybe it’s wrong this time. Maybe there’s no connection. Hell, if Darryl King really did kill Elana Paige, then you know there’s no connection. Because he was in prison when these other murders were committed.”

  “That’s right,” I said, honestly trying to convince myself. Outside, I could hear the cold wind still blowing, driving the last day of summer into oblivion.

  “So what are you going to do?” he said.

  “I’m going to try to sleep a few hours,” I said, knowing it probably wouldn’t happen. I was already starting to feel sick to my stomach. “Then first thing tomorrow morning, I’m going to call the one person who might have some answers.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  I put the car in park. I sat there watching the woman hanging up the shirts and pants and dresses on the clothesline. It was a good day for letting the late-afternoon sun dry your clothes.

  “How do we play this?” Franklin said. “Should I call it in?”

  “In a minute,” I said. “Let’s just make sure we’ve got something here.”

  I turned the car off and got out. Franklin followed me as I walked over to the woman by the laundry basket. She was an attractive woman, maybe pushing forty but obviously not letting it slow her down. She moved with a brisk economy, like a woman who worked hard every day. She probably didn’t have much choice, not with a house and a family that needed food and clean clothes.

  She stopped hanging another shirt when she spotted us walking across her yard. It was mostly weeds and crabgrass, but somebody was obviously keeping it all mowed.

  “Can I help you?” she said.

  “Sorry to bother you, ma’am. We’re just taking one more trip through this neighborhood. I’m sure someone else was here before?”

  “Looking for someone who killed that white woman.” Here’s where she could have added her own comment about how black men get shot down every single day and nobody canvasses her neighborhood for them, but she didn’t.

  “Yes, ma’am.” Just as I was thinking about what to say next, the back door opened. A young man stepped out of the house. The hair, the high cheekbones. For one tenth of a second my brain was already sending a signal to my right hand, to reach for my service revolver. But then the spell was broken as I put everything else together. This kid was a couple of years younger. Twenty pounds lighter. He didn’t have the muscular swagger of the kid I chased down the railroad tracks. Not even close. This was the kid who got his lunch money taken at recess, not the kid doing the taking.

  “What’s going on, Mom?” the kid asked.

  “It’s nothing, Tremont. These police officers are just making the rounds again. Like they did the other day.”

  The kid named Tremont gave me a shy look and a quick nod of his head.

  “How are you?” Franklin said. “You like being out of school for the summer?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Don’t know a kid who doesn’t,” the woman said.

  How to ask this next question, I thought, without giving myself away …

  “Looks like a lot of mowing you gotta do here,” I said to her, nodding at her backyard. It wasn’t real grass, but every square foot was mowed down to something that looked neat and trim anyway. “You got anybody else living here who can help you out?”

  “It’s just me and my two kids these past few years now. Please don’t even ask about their daddy, because I try not to use profanity if I don’t have to.”

  “Oh, two kids?” I tried to keep my voice even. No big deal, just passing time here. You’ve got two kids, do tell.

  That’s when the back door opened again. A little girl came out. She was ten years old, maybe eleven.

  “That’s Naima,” the woman said. “Why they need to spend half the day inside watching television, on a nice day like this…”

  The girl came over and started picking through the clothes in the basket. She didn’t so much as look in my direction.

  “Well,” I said, already feeling deflated, “okay, a boy and a girl. It looks like you’ve got your hands full here.”

  “No complaints, Officer. We’re doing just fine. God provides and we are thankful.”

  I looked around at what she was thankful for. The house seemed to be in decent shape, but I could see water damage around the top-floor windows. It needed new siding, too. I spotted the lawn mower beneath the one large tree at the back of the property. There was no shed to store it in, so it was rusted out and I couldn’t even imagine it starting, let alone cutting through all of these weeds. Next to that was a weight bench that had probably once belonged to the father, before he ran off. On the other side of the tree a swing hung haphazardly from a thick branch. Not a tire, but a plank of wood tilting a few degrees past level. Tremont jumped up onto it and began to swing back and forth slowly.

  Something. There was something in that scene.

  Wait a minute. Wait one goddamned minute …

  “All right,” I said. “Again, sorry to bother you. We’ll let you finish up with your laundry.”

  “No bother at all,” she said. “You gentlemen have a good rest of the day.”

  “Thank you,” Franklin said. “It was very nice to meet all of you.”

  We went back to the patrol car.

  “That obviously wasn’t the kid you were looking for,” Franklin said as he sat down beside me. “I’m glad we didn’t call it in. Get everybody out here, make us look like fools.”

  I picked up the radio and hit the transmitter. “This is Unit Forty-one. Is Detective Bateman still in the precinct?”

  A few seconds of radio silence, with my partner looking at me, waiting for an explanation.

  “Affirmative, Forty-one. Detective Bateman is at his desk.”

  “Ask him to wait for me,” I said. “We’ll be there in a few minutes.”

  “Okay,” Franklin said when I put the transmitter back, “are you planning on telling me what the hell is going on at some point?”

  “That woman was lying. I’m trying not to take it personally, because I’m sure she thinks she’s doing the right thing.”

  “How do you know she’s lying?”

  “You saw that weight bench in the backyard?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you think our little friend Tremont pumps a lot of iron?”

  “I’m guessing it would kill him if he tried.”

  “So who uses those weights?”

  “The father,” he said. “He didn’t take it all with him. So—”

  “So yeah, that’s what I thought, too. Then I noticed something.”

  “What?”

  “There were weight plates stacked on the ground.”

  “Yeah? You got a weight bench, you’re gonna have plates.”

  “Did you also notice how well-mowed th
at backyard was?”

  “I did,” he said. “Are you approaching the point here, or are we gonna keep playing ‘I Spy’?”

  “If the weightlifter in your family left, would you still keep picking up the plates, mowing under them, and then putting them back on the ground? Every time you mowed? For years?”

  He thought about it for a moment.

  “Of course not,” he said. “I’d leave them stacked on the bench.”

  “There you go. Meaning that there’s someone else living at that house. Somebody who keeps himself in shape.”

  He sat there looking at me as I drove back to the precinct.

  “Hot damn, Alex,” he finally said. “Just when I thought you took too many foul balls off your mask.”

  *

  The mother’s name was Jamilah King. The son named Tremont was in the public school system. So was the daughter, Naima.

  So was the other son, at least until recently. He was two years older than Tremont. His name was Darryl. He hadn’t been in school since turning sixteen. He didn’t have a driver’s license. There was no employment record for Darryl King, or any other public record at all, but then that wasn’t unusual for a young black male in Detroit, where it’s so easy to just disappear into the streets.

  Detective Bateman looked at the name on the high school transcript, the last official documentation of his existence before he dropped out.

  “Darryl King,” he said. “Pleased to meet you, young man. I’d like to introduce you to our SWAT team.”

  “I don’t think that’s the right play,” I said. “It’s possible that this kid is inside that house right now, but it’s just as possible he’s somewhere else. If there’s a record for him at that address, it wouldn’t be smart to be there.”

  “Look at this transcript and tell me this kid is smart.”

  “You know there’s more than one brand of smart, Detective. He’s done a great job of staying off the radar, and obviously he has his mother working hard to keep it that way. You try to flush him out now and he might disappear for good.”

  “So what do we do? Watch the house? Wait him out?”