Let It Burn Page 6

  “A few reasons put together,” I said. “Just call it that. Keeping my promise was the best reason of all.”

  She looked over her wineglass at me, like she wasn’t quite buying it.

  “I spent a few hours driving around today,” I said. “I couldn’t believe it.”

  “I know. It’s not like I spend a lot of time in the neighborhoods, but…”

  “Why are they all leaving, Janet? It’s turning into a ghost town.”

  “Well, I’ve worked on more than a few corruption cases,” she said. “Not that Detroit is the only city where it happens, but you’d be amazed. We seem to have elevated it to an art form.”

  “But that can’t be the only reason.”

  “The city is broke, Alex. I mean, absolutely flat-out busted. They can’t even keep all the streetlights on anymore. They can’t run the buses. They want everybody to pick up and move closer together, basically cut the size of the city in half.”

  “And do what with the rest?”

  “Hell if I know. Urban farming? Just let it go wild? Some of the city’s half wild already.”

  “Yeah, I heard about the bears living in the abandoned buildings.”

  “I think that’s just an urban legend.”

  “Oh, really? It seemed like such a good deal for the bears.”

  “Just the fact that it sounds almost believable,” she said. “That we’d really have that many empty buildings and so much open space…”

  “I can’t believe how many burnt-out houses I saw today. That’s one thing we always had to deal with. But then they’d come through the next week and knock them all down. Sometimes even rebuild.”

  “They don’t need people to set fires anymore,” she said, looking out the window, like she could take it all in from where we were sitting. “The city is burning itself down.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “In the summertime, when it’s dry … Sometimes the power lines will come down and start fires. There was one day a couple of years ago, you couldn’t even walk down the street without choking on it. There were hundreds of houses burning down all at once.”

  “All right, we have to stop talking like this,” I said. “There must be something good going on around here.”

  “The Tigers have a nice new stadium.”

  “Oh, don’t get me started on that. I don’t care how beautiful Comerica Park is…”

  “It’s not Tiger Stadium. I know. I grew up here, too, remember?”

  We drank a toast to Tiger Stadium. Then to the old Olympia Stadium, the redbrick building where Gordie Howe and the Red Wings once played. We toasted the Bob-Lo Boat that took kids down the Detroit River. We toasted Vernors Ginger Ale, back when it was as strong as rocket fuel. We toasted Greenfield Village and the automobile shows that would bring classic cars and hot rods from all over the world coming back home to the Motor City, to cruise up and down the streets all day long and into the night, while thousands of people gathered along the sidewalks and parking lots to barbecue and drink beer and argue about which cars were the best.

  We had our dinner. We eventually got around to talking about our past relationships. It turned out we were both married once, something else I didn’t know about her. We started getting closer to the present, and to the unspoken question about what might still happen between the two of us. Even that very night.

  “You live really far away,” she said as we had our dessert. “You’re aware of that, right?”

  “Yes, I am.”

  “It would be next to impossible to do much else besides what we’re doing right now.”

  “If we both stay where we are, yes.”

  “This is nice, though. I’m glad you came down.”

  “I’m glad, too.”

  “But tell me the truth,” she said, looking me in the eye. “Why are you really here?”

  I had the same two or three answers I’d already given her. I didn’t have the one single answer that would really satisfy both of us.

  In the end, after we battled over the bill and finally ended up splitting it, we got up and walked outside and into the night. We didn’t go into the casino. We just walked down the sidewalk, back to the People Mover. Back to her car and to my truck. She hugged me and gave me a quick kiss. Nobody said a word about us spending the night together, and I have to believe that maybe we were both a little relieved that it never came up. I promised her that I’d see her again soon.

  She hesitated as she opened her car door. “Are you sure you’re not thinking about moving back down here? Somewhere we could see each other more than once or twice a year?”

  “Well,” I said, “let’s just say I now have one more good reason to do that.”

  She came back to me and gave me another kiss.

  “You’re damned right you do.”

  Then she got in her car and she drove home.

  I stood there under the streetlight for a while. Then I got in my truck and drove down Michigan Avenue. A police car cut in front of me, lights and siren going, and for one second my old instincts told me to follow the car so I could help out. It was these same streets, after all. For eight years I had done this.

  I turned off into a parking lot next to the first bar I saw. It was just a concrete box, as far away from the Glasgow Inn as you could imagine, but it was all I needed that night. I sat at the bar with a double Scotch and looked at my own face in the mirror.

  You will always be alone, I told myself. That’s just the way it is.

  When I finally left that place, I knew it had been too long a day, with a little bit too much to drink, for a five-hour drive back home. I’d thrown a toothbrush and a few things into a bag, not making any kind of plan, just being ready for whatever happened. I drove a few blocks down to the little motel on Michigan Avenue where once upon a time you could open the drapes and look down the street at the gray walls of the stadium. The stadium was gone now, as I kept proving to myself every time I drove by it that day, still surprising myself every time. But the little motel was still there and now I suppose it was officially the most forlorn place in the world, with no special view from your window to set it apart.

  I checked in for one night. I lay on the bed for exactly two minutes, listening to another police car’s siren in the distance. Then I got back up and went out to the truck. There was no way I’d be able to sleep.

  I got in the truck and drove around the city. One more time, just to see it again. What it had become.

  I went to the train station. Of course I did. I parked in the same place, got out, and walked down the same sidewalk, stood on the same piece of cracked pavement and looked up at all of the broken windows. How unnatural for there to be no lights on inside at all, not one single light in an eighteen-floor building.

  Something horrible happened here, I thought, and I never really got the time to process it. I never understood it or made my peace with it, because just a month later, in that very same summer, something else happened that obliterated my entire life.

  So now that I was here again, standing in this very spot where that first thing happened … It was like I finally had the chance to make some sense of it, all these years later.

  I was feeling that hum again. Louder this time.

  Something is not right. That’s the thing that came to me. Something is not adding up for me. Not then. Not now. Not ever.

  This is why you came all the way down here, Alex. This thing that you knew deep down but could only start to put words to when you got the chance to stand here in the dark, in this exact moment.

  This is why you’re here.

  CHAPTER SIX

  The first thing that hit me was the smell of urine mixed with sweat mixed with a dead animal or two mixed with God knows what else. It should have just been the musty stale air of a place locked up tight, but obviously someone had found the way in and a few others had followed.

  It was a small vestibule in this empty corner of the train station, with a half-dozen stairs
littered with cigarette butts and trash, leading up to an old waiting room. There, the big arched windows looked out over the tracks. The glass was streaked with grime, and as I turned to look around at the rest of the room, I saw all of the chairs pushed together, covered with sheets. There was an elaborate chandelier hanging from the ceiling, ringed with cobwebs. There was enough daylight coming through the windows that I could see halfway into the room, but then it all turned to darkness.

  “Anybody in here?”

  I took my gun out, because that’s what a cop does when he doesn’t know who might be waiting and watching.

  “It’s okay if you are. I’m just looking around. If there’s anybody here, you can come out.”

  I felt a low rumbling then. In the floor, coming up through my bones. Then the sound. A train was coming. I looked out the window and watched it go by. A freight train. It wasn’t stopping here at the station for any of the few passengers that were waiting. It was going southeast, toward the long tunnel that ran under the river, to Canada.

  I took the flashlight off my belt and turned it on. In the dark side of the room, it showed more furniture covered with sheets. Nothing moved.

  My radio squawked, startling the hell out of me. “Alex, what are you doing in there?” My partner.

  “Just taking a quick look. I don’t see anybody in here right now. Doesn’t mean they’re not hiding.”

  I shined my flashlight on the dusty floor. I could see my own fresh footprints. Then just a few feet away, was that another set? I crouched down low to the floor and directed the light at an angle. Athletic shoes, a little smaller than mine. There seemed to be one set of the same prints going into the room, another set going back out. That made sense. Somebody came in here and then left. That somebody was probably the kid I tried to chase down.

  The incoming tracks led to another staircase. As I went closer, I had a perfect angle to see the various footprints on the treads. There were many different pairs of shoes going up and down these stairs. Some recently. Some not so recently. For a part of the station that was supposedly closed to the public, this was a surprisingly popular destination.

  The perfect place for a drug deal, I thought. The perfect place to shoot up or smoke. Or the perfect place to meet up with one of the young male hustlers who hang out across the street in the park.

  I started up the steps. Stone, maybe even marble, back when buildings were made to last a thousand years. I came to the landing, made the turn, went all the way up to the next level. I was standing on a balcony overlooking the waiting room. The windows cast oblong rectangles of light across the tiled floor. I went to the railing and looked down. Then I turned.

  It took me a moment to process what I was looking at. In the corner. Right behind me. I saw the blood first, so dark in the shadows it was like a black void. The body was half sitting, half lying against the wall, the neck at an unnatural angle.

  It was a woman. Her eyes were open. She was staring right at me from the other side of death.

  I remembered how to breathe. I remembered how to speak as I keyed the radio on my shoulder.

  “Code three, code three,” I said. “This is Unit Forty-one at Michigan Central Station. I have a one-eight-seven here. All nearby units respond.”

  A moment of crackling radio silence. Then a voice.

  “Where are you, Forty-one?”

  “Around the back of the building. One female victim. Suspect as previously reported, a young black male, last seen proceeding east on Bagley Street. Repeat, young black male, proceeding east on Bagley Street. Jeans, gray shirt, black Oakland Raiders baseball hat.”

  “Wait, this is the same suspect as before? Your call from a few minutes ago?”

  “Affirmative. Same suspect.”

  I could just imagine the confusion I was causing, how many partners were turning to look at each other, shaking their heads, but I didn’t have time to worry about it. I was already moving away from the body, back down those stairs, staying to the very edge to preserve the footprints. I went back out the same door I had come in, into the sunlight. Franklin was waiting there on the tracks.

  “She’s on the second-floor balcony,” I said. “Stay here and show them where the door is. I’m going to go find my suspect.”

  “Alex, wait! He’s long gone by now!”

  “Yeah, probably,” I said over my shoulder, “but I’m the only one who saw his face.”

  It was a purely instinctive reaction, to get back to that car, to get behind the wheel, crank that engine, take off out of that parking lot and onto the streets. He had been right there in front of me. I had just missed catching him, and then, when he was standing on the other side of that fence, I had looked right into his eyes. I had my gun drawn. I had aimed it right at his chest, then at the center of his back as he turned to run away. I could have shot him down right then.

  No, don’t go there, I told myself. There’ll be plenty of time to second-guess yourself later.

  I heard the sirens as I pulled out onto the street. I circled the station and hit Bagley Street. How many minutes had passed since he’d come up from the tracks?

  Too many. He could have covered a lot of ground by now. But I needed to give this a shot.

  I tried to put myself in his shoes. Running down this street, a long straightaway. I’m thinking I switch streets as soon as possible. Next intersection is Vermont. To the right is back to the tracks, so left.

  I took the turn. I was heading north now. But now I was heading back close to the station, so another jog to the right, onto Marantette. Dead end at Rosa Parks, jog left, but stay off this main road, so jog right again.

  Now I was in Corktown, the old Irish neighborhood. It felt like a mistake now, as I gunned it down Church Street, lights flashing, siren off, residents out on their porches, watching me go by. A young black man wouldn’t run down this street if he had others to choose from. I slowed down as I came up to Trumbull.

  Then I saw him. Or at least I thought I did. A young man running. The right size, the right jeans and gray shirt. No black hat, but then losing the hat would be the smart play. He was heading north, moving fast. I made the left on Trumbull and tried to keep my eye on him as I came to Michigan Avenue.

  Then I stopped dead at the police barricade.

  The Tigers game had ended. All of the people filing out of the stadium clogged the streets. I picked up my transmitter.

  “Suspect heading north on Trumbull, just past the stadium. Jeans, gray shirt, no black hat now. All units in the area, please respond.”

  The officers working the intersection spotted me and did their best to hold off the crowds for a moment. The barricade was moved and I made my way through. But now I had lost sight of him.

  “Okay,” I said out loud, “you see me coming after you. So do me a favor and try something stupid. Make a break for it. And if you’re gonna turn off this street, go right.”

  I knew that would be a dead end for him no matter which street he took. Everything ended when it came up to the Lodge Freeway.

  But now that I was north of the stadium, I was starting to hit the traffic. Everybody walking back to their cars, many of them parked in lots up and down this street. I still had my lights flashing, but when the streets are full enough, there’s just nowhere for the cars to pull over.

  I picked up my transmitter again. “I’ve lost touch with the suspect, last seen heading north on Trumbull. Any luck out there?”

  An agonizing silence, as I hoped against hope that he was already being arrested by another unit. I pictured the handcuffs slapped on his wrists, a hand on his head as he was put into the back of the squad car.

  Answer me, damn it. Somebody out there. Say something.

  “Negative so far,” I finally heard someone say. “No sight of him.”

  The cars were lining up to get off the street and onto the freeway. I pulled my car over and got out, locking it and leaving the lights flashing. There were thousands of people on the sidewalk, walking awa
y from the stadium. I started running through them, looking down every side street. Until finally, there, up ahead, a young man’s face looking back, then turning away.

  I keyed my shoulder radio. “I’m on foot now, in pursuit of suspect. Still on Trumbull, passing over I-75. I need a unit on the other side to intercept. Repeat, I need a unit on the north end of the street as it crosses over I-75.”

  We’ll catch you, I thought. As long as the unit gets there in time, you’ll have nowhere to turn.

  I kept pushing my way through the crowds as the street and the sidewalk took the long span over the freeway, cars zooming by beneath us. I didn’t see him, but I knew he had to be there in front of me.

  “Come on,” I said out loud, panting as I ran. “Somebody get to the other end so we can head him off.”

  That’s all I was thinking about. That’s probably all I could think about and still stay functional. I couldn’t let my mind go back to that scene in the train station. I kept moving, kept watching for my suspect, and kept hoping we’d catch him so that at least one thing in the world would make sense tonight.

  Halfway over the bridge now, which seemed to go on forever. Police lights ahead of me, finally flashing on the other side. Two cars, then three. Blocking off Trumbull now, not just the cars but a great mass of people backed up on the sidewalk going north. I ran between the cars, and as I finally got close to the other side I saw a figure assuming the position against the side of a squad car. Jeans, gray shirt, legs kicked out, hands on the hood. An officer on either side, going through the guy’s pockets. Something being taken out and put on the hood. The handcuffs being slapped on and the young man put in the back of the car. Just as I had hoped would happen.

  I slowed down to a walk, tried to catch my breath. The scene in the station already coming back to me, fighting its way back into my head now that the chase was over. The process would begin now. The booking, the arraignment, the visit from the public defender. It would take weeks to get to the end of it. Maybe months. But it wouldn’t change what had happened. It wouldn’t undo the violence or bring back a woman who didn’t deserve to be left for dead in the dusty corner of an abandoned balcony.