Blunt Impact (21 page)

She used a chip to dig out the last of her cheese. ‘No, go on. As I said, I don’t usually have anything to do with witnesses in general, certainly not very young ones.’

Sincerely interested or just being nice? He opted for sincere, given how seriously she took her job. ‘This girl is old enough to know truth from a lie, but she’s been traumatized. It will be difficult finding out exactly what she saw without leading her. If she has bonded with you then you may be the one person who shouldn’t question her.’

‘Because she’ll tell me whatever she thinks I want to hear.’

‘Quite possibly. We have child victim assistance counselors at the office who usually take the lead with questioning kids thirteen and under. They can – um, Theresa?’

‘What?’

‘Isn’t that her?’ She turned to look behind her and they both sat in shock for a moment as Ghost Zebrowski climbed up on a bar stool and handed a piece of paper to the bemused bartender. He wiped one beefy hand on his pants before accepting it, lips parting in surprise at either the request or the requester.

Without another word Theresa stood up. So of course Ian Bauer followed.

She slid on to the stool next to the child, put a gentle hand on her back and asked what she was doing there. The girl’s face lit up when she saw Theresa. ‘I’m retracing my mother’s last steps. This man says he saw her here.’

‘Ghost, where have you been? The whole city’s looking for you. Your grandmother is worried sick.’

The girl could not have looked more surprised if Theresa had produced a live rabbit. ‘Why?’

The man behind the bar with his single earring and indie-rock T-shirt two sizes too small had already lost patience with this particular set of patrons. ‘Look, does she belong to you? We don’t really allow unaccompanied minors in here.’

Theresa identified herself and Ian silently flashed his Justice Center I.D. Not that it really meant much, but it calmed the man enough for him to confirm that yes, Samantha had been a familiar face in the restaurant.

‘When did you—’ Theresa began.

‘What about him?’ Ghost demanded, holding out another photo. ‘Have you seen him?’

Glance, negative shake of the head.

‘Are you sure?’ the little girl persisted, standing on the stool in a way that apparently worried Theresa.

‘He said no, Ghost. Please get down, you’re going to fall.’

‘I’m not going to fall!’

‘Can you get her out of here?’ the bartender asked of Theresa, or Ian, or whoever might be most likely to accomplish the removal of this suddenly very noisy small child.

‘Ghost, you really can’t be questioning—’

‘Yes I can!’

Ian stepped up. ‘Why don’t you come join us in our booth, Ghost, and we can—’

The girl took one look at him, nearly eye-level from her pedestal. Then she leapt to the ground, landing on the linoleum hard enough for him to feel the vibration through his feet, and darted out the front door before the stunned bartender could even set down the photograph of her mother.

‘I’m sorry,’ Ian said to Theresa. ‘I have that effect on children.’

F
rank and Angela surveyed the eleven rather plain stories of the National Terminal apartment building, then, as one, turned to the patrol officer.

‘You said follow him.’ He shrugged. ‘I followed. He walked. And walked. Tried someone on his cell phone who didn’t pick up. Walked some more. From the site he went down to Public Square and kept going. He went down the hill, down to the Flats, which I don’t need to tell you guys is a ghost town these days, right? Do you know how hard it is to tail a guy when there isn’t another person on the entire street? Luckily for me he never turned around. He didn’t know I was there, he didn’t know
he
was there, because he walked around in circles. Back up the hill at the other end of the Flats, wandered over to Lakeside, started to head toward the Square again, somehow wound up here. Went inside.’

A Waterfront Line rapid transit train rattled up the track behind them, its station still looking shiny and new years after the rails had been added, back when the Flats would teem with hundreds of people every weekend. Exactly why did that stop? Frank wondered. Did we all grow up, or did we simply run out of money?

He heard the rumble of a train, or perhaps it was thunder.

‘I already checked,’ the officer went on. ‘He lives here, the building manager says. Fourth floor. It’s his official address. So my nature hike wasn’t so much necessary, I’m thinking, but ain’t all’s well that ends well?’

‘Good job,’ Angela said.

‘Thanks ever so much. Kudos mean the world to me, but lunch means even more and mine is two hours overdue. You need anything more from yours truly or can I get out of here before the heavens open?’

‘Nope. We can take it from here.’

The officer began the three-block hike back to his patrol car, failing to keep ‘I should think so,’ completely under his breath.

Frank turned to Angela, who of course still looked fantastic despite the fact that their lunch hour had also not arrived, and they had barely swilled a coffee, taken a potty break or sat down since the discovery of Kyle Cielac’s body. Her hair needed brushing and her skin had grown a bit shiny, but she glowed with the thrill of the hunt.

‘Shall we pay Mr Grisham a visit at his humble abode?’

He grinned, getting into the spirit himself. ‘We shall.’

They bypassed the building manager and went directly to the apartment. No sound until they knocked, then the steady thump of two feet and a dimming behind the peephole. Then a long pause while Todd Grisham debated his options: a) refuse to open the door, or b) pretend he wasn’t home.

He opted for c). They heard a rattle of keys as he undid the bolt and opened up.

Angela greeted him in her most calming voice and asked if they could talk about what had happened that morning. Todd, red-eyed, apparently debated a few more options before saying, ‘Sure,’ and held the door as far as it would go. The two detectives sidled past him, heading for the living room, grayly bright, ahead.

And as soon as they entered that room, Todd Grisham pulled his key from the deadbolt, sped out the door and shut it behind him. As Frank touched the knob, he heard an unsettling
click
.

Todd had locked the deadbolt from the outside – and it was keyed on both sides with no simple latch to turn. A cute tiled hook rack helpfully labeled ‘keys’ hung on the wall, empty. Todd had taken them all with him, efficiently imprisoning both detectives.

Frank roared out a curse and banged on the door. Then he pulled out his gun.

His partner shouted, ‘No! You don’t know who’s in the hall.’

She was right, of course. With his luck he’d drill some toddler or a granny who chose that moment to stroll by.

Once they cleared the apartment, the partners spent the next few frantic moments ripping apart every kitchen drawer until Angela found a rusty set behind the potato peelers. She muttered, ‘
Pleasepleaseplease
,’ in a whisper as she fit one in and turned.

Frank thought,
I should remember this moment
, the closest he’d ever seen her to discombobulated. Of course he also found himself locked into a pleasant family dwelling like a squirrel in a Haveaheart trap so perhaps this would not be a memory worth keeping after all.

Nothing. She slid in the other key and the tumblers moved.

They spilled into the hallway, leaving the pleasant family dwelling ransacked and unsecured, and headed for the red glowing Exit sign. Todd would not have waited for the elevator, and as they entered the stairwell Frank could swear he heard the guy’s panicked footsteps clattering downward, too many floors below them. But he couldn’t be sure.

It had been a number of years since he’d been in a foot race, and he hadn’t missed it a bit.

Frank hadn’t passed any slowly closing doors to other levels, so they had to keep going and assume he would head for the ground floor, assume he would try to get outside. Frank reached level one with Angela on his heels. The stairs continued downward but, guessing that Todd didn’t have a car, Frank plunged through the exit door.

It led to a small concrete landing overlooking an outdoor parking lot, through which Todd Grisham now sped. He dodged cars and their grassy medians, heading east. Frank and Angela went down opposite ends of the landing but reached the pavement at the same time, and pursued. Neither of them shouted Todd’s name, or told him he should stop, or that they were the police. He knew all that already. He obviously didn’t care.

Todd exited the parking lot and sped across West Ninth Street, producing a screech of brakes and a shouted curse. Frank seconded the sentiment as his lungs began to ache. Todd continued up the branch of Lakeside in front of the Marshall apartments.

Frank and his partner looked both ways before pursuing across West Ninth. Catching up to a guy when they knew where he lived was not worth getting creamed by a delivery truck.

The humidity of the impending storm felt like a weight across his shoulders. Frank had already sweat through his shirt and his legs were getting heavy. But besides his dislike for them, what else had not changed about a foot race was the fact that catching the suspect remained secondary to beating your partner to him. That Frank happened to be attracted to his partner did not affect this dynamic in the slightest and only made it worse. Frank would sprawl across a sidewalk on Lakeside dead of a heart attack before he’d let Angela Sanchez pass him up.

Unfortunately it might come to that.

He had a comfortable three-foot lead when they followed Todd into an alley behind the Marshall that would come out by the Blind Pig sports bar – except that recent street renovations closed off the alley with a chain-link fence. And that Todd Grisham was already dropping himself down the other side of said fence.

Frank had only enough breath to mutter, ‘Ridiculous,’ before charging the fence. But West Sixth had a spate of traffic along it and Todd also didn’t want to get creamed by a truck, delivery or otherwise. So as he perched on the curb, Angela took the opportunity to ask him just what the hell he thought he was doing, pleasing Frank by panting as she did so.

‘Where are you going, Todd? Why are you running away from us?’

He ignored them.

Frank gave it a shot – anything to keep from having to scale a chain-link fence. ‘We can protect you, Todd. We can keep you safe.’

The young man turned with an eerily genuine smile. ‘You’d think so, wouldn’t you?’

Then he kept running.

Frank threw himself at the chain links, scrabbling for a toehold.

He took a moment to consider how Kyle’s death affected him. He certainly hadn’t meant for that to happen – he had thought only of Samantha – but after examining the incident from all angles he concluded that the concrete worker’s untimely demise did not change his focus on Sam and her angel/demon child. No one would connect him to Kyle’s murder. Theresa had just demonstrated an inability to connect anyone. He had accidentally stumbled on a perfect way to murder, and only felt sorry that he couldn’t tell anyone.

Of
course
he couldn’t tell anyone. That would be silly.

Besides, who would he tell? Who else would appreciate such an accomplishment? Other than himself. And maybe Theresa.

But Theresa’s focus was catching people who killed, not encouraging them to do it.

Yes, but she still might find the technique interesting, or fascinating. Those who have never picked up a brush still enjoy a great painting. And she had a professional interest, after all.

And she’d obviously gotten attached to that angel/demon child . . . spinning the both of them right back to him.

He decided not to worry about Kyle’s death. All that mattered now were the female satellites whirling around him – the dead Sam, her daughter Ghost, and Theresa.

S
everal blocks away, Frank’s cousin had also involved herself in a foot race.

Theresa had burst out of the Tavern’s door and caught only the merest flicker of Ghost’s brown hair as she turned the corner into the alley known as Theresa’s Court. She pounded up the sidewalk, grateful that she worked in Reeboks instead of heels.

Ghost did not slow but ran as if the shadow man himself were chasing her, through a parking lot and in between two huge buildings, heading for East Ninth. Theresa called her name, but if the child heard it she gave no sign.

Theresa ran, her feet slapping against the concrete. In twenty steps she gained perhaps three feet of the gap between them and decided she needed to work out more. She didn’t know if Ian had followed and was not going to risk a look back to find out. She shouted again. Again, no response.

The girl reached the end of the alley, turned to the right, and disappeared.

Theresa piled on the speed, pricks of sweat beginning under her armpits and between her breasts, and avoided colliding with a nicely dressed black lady heading into the CVS store. Ghost passed St John’s Cathedral and approached Superior Avenue, thrusting herself into the intersection without pause. Theresa’s heart seized, choking off the breath she desperately needed.

‘Ghost! STOP!’

What was
wrong
with the kid?

But the light had been with her and she made it to the other side without mishap. It changed just as Theresa reached the intersection and she lost precious seconds looking both ways before crossing against it. She no longer wanted to know why Ghost had been questioning the Tavern bartender. She simply wanted to stop the kid before she got hit by a car.

Happily for the sake of her cardiac health, Ghost suddenly darted to the right and disappeared between two buildings. Theresa followed, pounding up the four short steps and through the brick arch to the small, pretty Key Bank patio. Ghost had already passed up the tables and chairs available for summer use by the local office workers.

Theresa gained another few steps but mentally paused when Ghost made a sharp left. This kid knew downtown Cleveland better than a veteran cab driver. She might disappear into some cubbyhole at any moment and stay there until after dark, and Ghost wandering around here after dark was what Theresa feared the most. The winos might be harmless. The shadow man was not.