Days of Rage: A Smokey Dalton Novel (14 page)

Unless, of course, the families had put them down here.

“And
then
we have another issue.” He stood, wiped his gloves on his coveralls and pulled the cap down on his forehead.

“It seems to me we have another number of issues.”

“You, Mr. McMillan
,
and Miss Hathaway, perhaps.
But only one concerns me as well.”

I waited.

“We’re going to have to look behind each different bit of brickwork.”

“You’re afraid
there’s
more bodies down here.”

His gaze met mine, his pale blue eyes already tired and red-rimmed.

“Isn’t that why you brought me here?” he asked me quietly.

“I didn’t bring you.
Drew did.”

LeDoux shrugged a single shoulder.
“But Mr. McMillan told me that a forensic examiner to remove the evidence was your idea.
You brought me here because you were afraid.”

“Afraid?” No one who had just met me had ever accused me of being afraid before.
Usually it took someone years to realize that I felt fear, just like everyone else. “Of what?”

“Don’t toy with me, Mr. Grimshaw,” LeDoux said. “You think this is some uncaught killer’s favorite burial ground.”

“I’m hoping it’s not,” I said.

LeDoux nodded, then crouched, pulling his camera up to his face.

“I hope so too,” he said as he got to work.
“Three corpses
are
certainly easier to deal with than a dozen.”

THIRTEEN

LeDoux’s meticulousness drove me crazy.
I thought I was a detail-oriented investigator, but compared to LeDoux, I was as sloppy and careless as Jimmy.

LeDoux photographed everything in that back room using only his flash and flashlight for illumination.
He then went over the light socket itself before allowing me to try a new bulb.
Once I put that in — and it worked (miraculously, I thought) — he photographed everything again, going through several rolls of film without focusing on the corpses at all.

Next he measured the entire area and drew his map, marking the measurements exactly.
He showed me how precise he wanted me to be, then sent me into the boiler room as if I were a little kid assigned my first important task in life.

I felt that way; I had no idea how all these measurements and maps could be important, but LeDoux said they were, so I followed instructions.

He finished first, of course.
He had a smaller area to cover.
Then he oversaw what I was doing for a few short minutes before asking me if I wanted to break for lunch.

We went outside.
The air was muggy, and it felt like thunderstorms loomed on the horizon. The low-hanging clouds confirmed that feeling.

We had agreed the night before to bring bag lunches, which we had left in the van.
I opened the van’s back doors, hoping the interior hadn’t gotten too hot for our lunches, and was relieved to find that it hadn’t.

I left the doors open, and we sat on the thin carpet, our legs dangling over the bumper, brushing on the gravel as we ate.

The hotel had prepared LeDoux’s lunch.
It was spectacular — a sandwich piled high with thinly sliced ham and cheese
,
celery and carrot sticks
,
an apple
,
and a thick piece of chocolate cake that looked almost perfect.
My peanut
butter
and
jelly looked like something Jimmy would hate, and out of pity (I think) LeDoux handed me the other half of his sandwich.
I shook my head, but did take some carrot sticks when he offered them, and a bite of that wonderful cake.

“This is a nightmarish scene,” he said as he wrapped up the plastic wrap the hotel had used for the vegetables.
He stuck it into the bag, then grabbed the apple, obviously saving it for last.
“You realize that, if my suspicions are correct, this might be too much for us.”

“Too much how?” I asked.

“I’ll need a place to store the evidence — somewhere cool enough and dark enough.
Your friend the —”

I waved a hand so that he didn’t say the word “coroner” or “mortician” or whichever version he was going to use.
I wanted us to be careful outside, just in case a neighbor eavesdropped through an open window.

“— your friend,” he said, understanding me, “will have to have a place to store his — um — things — as well.
And this might take a long time.
Longer than I have.
I have two testimonies scheduled this fall, with another pending.”

“We’re in no great hurry,”
I said. “At least, not at the moment.
Unless something you and I find will make us hurry.
So if you need to come back, I’m sure we can do that.”

He nodded, as if he expected me to say that.
“It’s the organization I’m most worried about.”

“I’ll see what we can do.”

“And the hotel,” he said.

I looked at him.

“That riot we observed last night was most unnerving.
I’m told by the hotel staff that these kids plan more such things all during this trial, so I should expect occasional lock-downs and warnings.
I looked in the phone book this morning; it seems most of the good hotels are either near Lincoln Park or downtown, and neither seems safe.
I was wondering if you or Miss Hathaway knew somewhere better, perhaps closer to this place.”

I shook my head.
“The hotels down here aren’t places you want to stay.”

He sighed.
“I’m not sure I want to stay anywhere in this city.”

“I’ll talk to Laura,” I said.
“She might have a few ideas.
After all, Sturdy does rent apartments. Would that work?”

“If I’m here for the duration, it might.”
He ate his apple slowly, lost in thought.

I put the rest of the food wrappings away, then glanced sideways at the neighborhood.
So far, no one seemed to be watching us, and nothing seemed amiss.

Still, my stomach was a knot of tension, and the food hadn’t helped.

“Do you mind if I ask you something?” he said.

“Go ahead.” I adjusted my cap.
It made my head itch.

“You and Miss Hathaway.
You seem quite…familiar with each other.”

I froze.
I didn’t know how this man would react to the truth — or even to a partial truth.
He seemed open-minded for a man his age, and had shown no real objection to working with me.
Yet some of the things he’d said the night before had grated on me.

“We’ve worked together for a long time,” I said.

“So you’ve become friendly,” he said.

“We’re friends.” My voice was tight, even to my own ears.

He put the apple core in his bag.
“That’s quite unusual, don’t you think?”

“A white woman and a black man becoming friends?” I asked
,
with too much edge in my tone.

“I was actually thinking of the head of a company and one of her employees.” He sounded bland, as if he hadn’t realized he could have offended me.

“I’m not an employee,” I said. “I work for myself.
I knew Laura before she took over Sturdy.”

“As a friend?” That bland tone again. I was beginning to become wary of it.

“As a customer.
She hired me for some personal work, and was satisfied with the job.”

“I see,” he said, even though he didn’t.

His brain was meticulous, and this didn’t fit.
So he would noodle it until he came up with an answer he liked.

“She met my son during that period,” I said.
“She adores him.”

“Ah,” LeDoux said, as if he’d discovered the secret of the universe.
Maybe he had.
That fit for him.
Women couldn’t help but like children.

My fist clenched, and I willed it open.
I was going to have to work with him for some time.
I couldn’t let his attitudes infect me the very first day.

But they had.
I couldn’t hold back the next question.
“Are you going to need an assistant for all of this ‘duration’?”

“You, you mean?”
He set his bag beside mine near the wheel well.

I shrugged. “That’s who you got.”

“I thought you were planning to go in whatever direction the evidence leads us.”

“If I can,” I said.

“Then you won’t be here all the time,” he said, as if I hadn’t figured that out.

“But what about having someone else here with you?” I asked, hoping he would say no.
I had no idea who I’d bring in if he did need someone.
Malcolm Reyner, who used to be the person I brought in to help me on cases, had been drafted.
If his timing was anything like mine had been when I went to Korea, he would be just finishing up Basic Training now, and would be shipped to Vietnam within the month.

“Most of this I can do alone,” LeDoux was saying.
“In the beginning here, I’ll need you — we need to bring down enough of that wall so that I can get
into the area where the — um —
you know — are.
And we’ll have to see the extent of what we’re looking at.
Once we know that, I suspect I’ll only need help at certain designated times, and I can let you know when that will be.”

“You’re still hoping that this is limited,” I said.

“Aren’t you?” he asked.

I nodded, feeling overwhelmed.
If that basement was a standard Queen Anne, it was huge.
And we were only looking at a small portion of it.

“You note that the basement windows are blocked,” LeDoux said, his voice lowered.

“I noticed that the first time I was here.
They are all the way around the house, except for the windows in the boiler room.”

He shook his head. “That’s not a good sign.”

“I know,” I said.

He sighed.
“I’ve come to scenes like this once or twice to double-check the police work.
I’ve never done a multiple on my own.”

“Is that what these are called?” I asked. “A multiple?”

He nodded.
“The more gruesome the find, the more clinical the description.”

I was silent for a moment.
A multiple.
Somehow that sounded worse to me.

“When should I bring in Minton?” I asked.

“He’s our third?” LeDoux asked.

I nodded.

“Tomorrow,” LeDoux said. “At the earliest.
I’ll be more concrete when we’re done for the evening.”

Tomorrow. We weren’t going to move those bodies until tomorrow — at the earliest.
Which meant that we had part of today and probably part of the next doing some meticulous thing that I was terrified of screwing up.

“So you won’t need me right away,” I said.

He studied me for a moment.
“Not for the walls.”

“Good,” I said. “I’d like to have a look at the rest of the house.”

“You haven’t done that yet?”

I shook my head.
“The boiler was running on a day like today.
So I went to the basement first.”

He raised his eyebrows slightly, as if imagining what that was like.
“I’m not sure if that was a lucky break or not.”

“Me either,” I said.

“I wonder what you’ll find upstairs,” he said.

“Empty apartments, I hope.”

He gave me a sideways glance, as if he thought I was being naïve.
“Rap on the walls.
Make sure they’re not hollow.”

“I plan to,” I said, even though I hoped I would find nothing.
No more hidden places, no more bodies.
No more potential for bodies.

“And measure things,” he said. “Sometimes the best hiding places are quite creatively concealed, particularly in buildings this old.”

I shuddered.
What an unpleasant way to spend my afternoon.

And it looked like my future might hold a dozen afternoons just like it.

FOURTEEN

I knew I should start my search in Mortimer Hanley’s apartment, but I also knew it would keep.
I was off
-
balance enough from the morning’s investigation and the lunch conversation.
I wanted to reassure myself that the gruesome work was limited to the basement.