Unknown Means (8 page)

A large doorless structure sat in the center of the roof, separate from the stairway booth. “What’s that?”

“Elevator machine room,” Gerard said.

A wall ran around the perimeter of the roof, but it stood only

calf-high, not high enough to prevent anyone from falling—no doubt why they kept the door securely locked. She looked down on the dizzying panorama of freighters along the Cuyahoga riverbank for a few minutes, then got back to work. The cops, she knew, had been up here as well, but she wanted to see for herself. Crisscrossing the roof garnered no clues save for a Snickers wrapper and an empty Marlboro box, both of which she collected. The few cigarette butts present looked as if they’d been there since the turn of the millennium. The next roof over belonged to a warehouse; the two buildings were the same height but separated by an alley. The killer could have moved from one to the other if he were an Olympic long-jump medal holder, and extremely brave. On the other side ran the full expanse of St. Clair Avenue.

Her Nextel began to speak. “Where are you? Are you there?”

She pulled it off her belt, cursing Medical Examiner Stone for having thrust the modern convenience on his staff. “I’m here.”

“Where have you been?” Tony complained. “I’ve been calling.”

“Inside a concrete stairwell.”

“Where are you now?”

“On a roof, fifteen stories up.”

“Don’t fall off.”

“Good thing you said something, I never would have thought of that. What’s up?”

“Do we have more proteinase K?”

“I don’t know. What are you doing?”

“I’m doing the DNA analysis.” The electronic transmission couldn’t remove the stiffness from his voice. “What do you think I’m doing? Since you’re too damn busy, of course. And where’s the positive control? The 9477A?”

She told him what she could and hung up with a sigh. The most high-profile cases since last fall, and Tony had to do the DNA. No wonder he sounded harried. She felt pretty harried herself.

“Are you done?” Gerard called after ten minutes. He hadn’t

moved from just outside the door. Perhaps he didn’t care for heights or great views.

“No. Can we go in there?” She pointed at the boxy room.

He shrugged, turned, and held the roof door for her. She followed him down half a flight of concrete steps, across the landing, and up to a door labeled “Machine Room—Authorized Personnel Only.” He opened the door with a key. The well-lit, roomy area held an elevator, several large machines, and one man. A flight of stairs led to a sort of loft, where a huge, complicated piece of what looked like hundred-year-old iron with a wheel on one side jerked into motion as she watched. She jumped a foot.

“Jack, this woman’s from the police,” Gerard said.

“I didn’t do it,” the other man said and laughed, holding out his wrists as if held by invisible handcuffs.

Evelyn didn’t bother to correct his assumption that she was an officer, but inwardly she groaned. Like she hadn’t heard that one before.

The machinery made enough noise to drown out a low-flying plane. A four-foot-square steel box on her left revealed rows of switches, which clicked on and off. Next to that stood a computer-monitor stand, almost like a self-check kiosk at the airport. But the thing in the loft dominated the room.

“That’s the motor,” the elevator repairman said, following her gaze. He wore his sandy hair in a shaggy seventies cut and held a blackened tool in his hands. Embroidered patches on his green shirt read “E-tech” on one side and “Jack” on the other. “It’s turning the cable. The motor for the freight elevator is there.”

She glanced at a twin of the loft machine standing off to her right, quiet and unmoving, then looked back at the one she’d first seen. “Is that very old?” A dumb question, but she wouldn’t have been surprised if the engine dated back to the turn of the last century, to a time before cost dictated quality, when things were built to last.

“The motor? No. I think this place was built in the mid-eighties.”

“And it winds up the rope? And that pulls up the elevator?”

He grinned. “No, the cable is looped over the top of the driver—the wheel. On the other side is the counterweight. When the elevator goes up, the counterweight goes down. Here, I’ll show you. You’re here about that murder, huh? And that girl in the garage?”

He did something at the computer kiosk. Then, using a rodlike key in a tiny hole at the top of the elevator doors, he opened the door, revealing the moving cables. She had to force herself to go within five feet of it. Heavy machinery terrified her, always had, and she had no idea why. As a child, she had turned her face away from the exposed areas of amusement park rides to pretend they weren’t there. She still opened a car hood with trepidation, sure that doing so involved great physical risk.

The two men waited while she thought, listening to the hum of the metal gears. The top of the elevator appeared at the floor level, and the motor stopped. The room grew quieter. She inched forward.

There were only two ways into Grace Markham’s apartment—the fire door and the elevator.

The top of the elevator was surprisingly crowded, with more machinery she didn’t want to see. A heavy beam held the car like the handle on a bucket, and the main cable—actually a bundle of six cables—attached to its middle. Three buttons on the center beam were labeled Up, Down, and Stop. A squarish, flat shape seemed to glow at its edges, and she realized what it must be. “There’s a hatch in the elevator roof, right?”

“Yep. And before you ask, no.”

“No what?”

“No, someone couldn’t have climbed out of the elevator through the hatch and waited for Grace Markham to stop at her floor. The hatch doesn’t open from the inside. That’s only in movies. Besides, he’d run the risk that someone else would call it first and he’d be riding up and down the shaft on the car top.”

Evelyn tried to picture standing on top of a moving piston in a

dark shaft, and then tried not to. “What if he lived above her? If she stopped at her floor, could he have opened the doors to the shaft on his floor and gotten into the elevator and then into her apartment?”

“No. Besides, a seventy-five-year-old widow lives above the Markhams.”

“Well, any floor. Could he climb down the ladder—”

“There is no ladder in an elevator shaft. That’s another only-in-the-movies thing. And the hall doors won’t open if the elevator isn’t there, no matter what. It’s a safety feature.”

“But you can open it.”

“Well, yeah—but only on the top floor and the bottom floor.”

He pointed to the round keyhole at the top of the door. “Every building is like that. So who killed the woman? You don’t think the husband did it?”

“We don’t know. But thanks for the help—and Erie Realty hired you?”

“Yep.”

She wondered why Justin hadn’t listed him as an employee. As if reading her mind, Gerard spoke up. “He’s only here on Tuesdays.”

“Sometimes not even then, depending on what else is going on.

I might be here tomorrow too, if I can’t get this software patch to work.”

Evelyn perked up. “Is something wrong with the elevator? Like stopping at the wrong floors?”

He seemed almost sorry to have to shoot down another one of her theories. “It tends to run with the doors open on car top inspection. It’s got nothing to do with stopping at floors. I already told those two detectives all this just an hour or two ago.”

“Sorry. Actually, I came up here to collect oil samples.” She pulled a small packet from her bag.

“Oil?”

She broke a sterile swab out of its packaging. “Grease, whatever.”

“From the elevator?”

“And the dead-bolt locks, and the Markhams’ exercise equipment—any source of oil in the building.”

Behind her, Gerard’s sigh could be heard over the clacking.

“Our tax dollars at work.”

“Be my guest.” The elevator repairman stepped to the side, holding the door firmly open.

She moved gingerly forward. Every inch of the car top seemed covered with oil, or dirt, or some sort of heavy black coating. She extended the swab toward a mechanism at the closest edge.

“That’s the door operator,” Jack told her, not that she really wanted to know.

She slid the swab into its microtube with trembling hands.

“Anything else?”

She gave up the brave front and held out a fresh swab. “Can you reach that hatch with this?”

“Sure.” He slid a screwdriver into the door as a stop and stepped into the darkness. “Just anywhere on the hatch?”

“Around the edges.”

He returned with a blackened swab. “There you go. You really think he was fooling around in the shaft? Sheesh, that’s all I need, to come in and find someone flattened on top of the car.”

She tucked the labeled swabs away in her kit. “He got into Grace Markham’s apartment somehow. He avoided the camera in the garage. He’s someone who knows this building like the back of his hand.”

“Like us,” Gerard said. “More like me, since I’m here all week long. I think I’d better get a lawyer.”

Evelyn didn’t know what to say. Usually cops interviewed potential witnesses. She stuck with dead people and inanimate objects for a reason.

Luckily, her Nextel beeped. She hit the green phone button.

“Mom? I’m going . . . project . . . Steve.”

“Angel, you’re breaking up. I’ll call you right back.” Evelyn

clipped the phone to her belt. “Sorry about that. My daughter. She must be home from school already. The high school has— Oh, crap.”

“What?” Jack asked, wiping his hands on a rag, though they didn’t seem dirty.

“It’s Meet the Teachers at the high school today. That’s why she’s out early.” She looked at her watch. “Well, I’m going to stand up Mrs. Evans—again. The woman is going to think I don’t exist and report Angel to Children and Families as an orphan.”

Jack grinned again. “Nothing like squirming around in those little desks while every teacher in the school tells you why you’re a lousy parent. My son raised so much hell that, by the time I showed up, they wanted to give me a detention.”

Evelyn laughed. Gerard sighed.

“One more thing. Could anyone—tenants or staff—take the elevator from one floor to another floor without going to the lobby first?”

“Nope.”

He seemed as sure of that as he had been of everything else.

“Can you tell how many trips went to Grace Markham’s apartment that day?”

“Nope.”

She gestured at the computer. “That information isn’t recorded?”

“Not unless we’re doing some kind of traffic study or something, but otherwise, no. Sorry.” He opened the door of a large, white rectangle, nearly the size of a refrigerator. Behind it sat what seemed like a mile of wires, running in short loops from one small bar to another. She recognized the kind of green electronic panel found in computers, sticking out from between them. “This is the controller. To override the automatic system and make the elevator go to a certain floor, you’d have to jump out the circuits manually.”

“Could someone get in at the lobby and come up here?”

“It’s coded, like the floors. Only me, Gerard, and Frank have the code.”

“See?” Gerard said. “We’re going to wind up screwed, mark my words. You think one of these rich guys will go down for this? I’m calling my lawyer.”

Virtually anyone could have attacked Marissa. Suspects in Grace Markham’s murder included Gerard, Jack, and Frank, who had means of entry—at least to the elevator shaft and controls—and opportunity but no apparent motive; William Markham, who had means and motive but no apparent opportunity; and some unknown person with apparent motive and opportunity but no means of entry.

Even if he could get to the roof, he still wouldn’t have a way to get into Grace Markham’s penthouse without the code. Evelyn wondered if the young couple had made their elevator code an easy number, like their address or their wedding date, because it was beginning to look as if either the killer had guessed it or Grace Markham had invited him in.

C H A P T E R

7

SHE FOUND RAFE JOHNSON IN HIS OFFICE, A FORMER

supply closet outfitted with an overwhelming number of computers, monitors, TVs, VCRs, and one lone laptop, all connected to one another by yards of cable. It made her claustrophobic. “Hey, Rafe.”

The video analyst didn’t turn. “Figured you’d be by.”

“Got the tape from evidence lockup?”

“You left a big, obnoxious note on my door, didn’t you?” For that of a very young, slight man, his voice struck notes like a string bass. He paused to tilt his head back and slide a long candy string into his mouth. “Despite a public education, I can read.”

“Thanks.” She squeezed past a protruding Magnavox and perched carefully on a stool that had once had four legs. A vintage Chicago CD played softly in the corner. “You’re the best. What are you eating? I smell cherry.”

“I ain’t touching that one with a ten-foot pole. It’s Twizzlers Pull-n-Peel, and no, you can’t have none. Now listen up.” The TV in front of him displayed the familiar grainy image of the La Riviere parking garage. “I’ve gone over the two hours before Marissa drives in. At least it’s not multiplexed, none of that jumping between fifteen cameras per second crap, so I still have some feeling left in my retinas.”

“You can feel your retinas? That don’t sound right, son.”

“I’m glad you’re so funny this morning. Just a bucket o’ joy.

Problem is, there’s no one. No one comes in, no one leaves. Don’t no one in this building ever go nowhere?”

“It was late, on a weeknight. These are rich people.”

“If I was rich, I’d go everywhere. Weeknight, weekend. The desk clerk ran out once to get himself some dinner. Nothing else.”