Days of Rage: A Smokey Dalton Novel (16 page)

The second floor provided more interest.
The apartments there were empty as well, and, for two of them, just as dust-covered.
These apartments were one-bedrooms with kitchens and their own bathrooms, some of them
shoehorned
into a very small space.
Had there been no other problems in the building, I would have recommended these for cleaning and immediate rental.

The most interesting apartment — at least on this floor — was the one directly visible at the top of the stairs, the one with all the deadbolts
. It
still smelled of Pine
-S
ol and Lemon Pledge.

This apartment sparkled.
The floor had no carpet: someone had lovingly restored the hardwood floor.
The windows looked new too, and the walls were freshly painted.
A built-in bookshelf was the source of the Pledge smell.
Its wood shelves looked as lovely as the floor.

I went in and explored, just like I had in the others.
The main living area had an archway to the left which, as I went through it, surprised me.
The windows curved outward, with a little built-in window seat below each one.
This was part of the tower.
I turned, saw a narrow staircase leading up, and followed it.

The
stairs
opened onto a tower room, completely round, and completely detached from the third floor.
Windows surrounded me, giving me a 360-degree view of the neighborhood.
The room itself was spectacular, and the only one in the entire building so far that made me feel even slightly comfortable.

If I hadn’t discovered the horrors in the basement, I would have told Laura that she had a prime piece of property here. I would have wondered at the gardening tools on the third floor, and worried slightly over the gun parts and bullets, but they wouldn’t have seemed sinister, not like they did now.

How many other crime scenes had I dismissed
in
other buildings I’d inspected, thinking them abandoned storage areas or forgotten equipment?

Probably quite a few.

I left the tower room, and went down the stairs into the main part of the apartment.
To the right of the main door, two more rooms opened up — one holding a kitchen and, off it, a bathroom
, t
he other a small dark bedroom with only one window.

These rooms told me nothing, except that the high level of cleanliness continued here as well. Had someone recently moved out and cleaned the place to perfection before Hanley died? Or did this cleanliness have a more sinister motivation, one that would hide the destruction that murder often gives to a building
?

I shuddered again, decided this was yet another problem for LeDoux, and left the apartment.
I didn’t lock the deadbolts. Instead, I made sure the door latch worked so that we could get inside easier.

The staircase down to the entry seemed darker than it had before.
As I reached the first floor, I saw that the glass panels beside the main door had grown dark.
Either a storm was coming or it was later in the afternoon than I thought.

I glanced at the watch Jimmy had bought me for my birthday and saw that it was nearly four o’clock. It was my turn to pick up Jimmy and the Grimshaw children from their after
-
school classes.
Their teacher had made it clear at the beginning of the year she would stay in that old church no later than five o’clock.

I didn’t have time to go through the downstairs apartments.
Still, I took a few minutes to unlock them and peer inside, just to see if this building had squatters.

Both first
-
floor apartments were empty.
The living rooms in each were covered in dust.
No one had been inside in a long, long time.

I closed the apartment doors, then let myself out the front.
A few of the cars that had littered the street were gone now, and one unfamiliar car had parked near the corner.
I hurried around the building as drops of rain dotted my coveralls.

I would save Hanley’s apartment for the following day.

As I hurried down the basement stairs, I checked my watch again.
Barely enough time to drop off LeDoux and pick up Jim.
But I would make it, if we hurried.

I found LeDoux dusting the cabinet for prints.
He insisted on finishing, claiming he only had one more to go, even though I stressed the time urgency.
It took him five minutes to dust the print, photograph it
,
and then use a piece of tape to remove it.
He taped the print to a slide, then put the whole thing in his evidence bag, marked Cabinet Boiler Room 1.

“Now?” I asked.

He stood, wiped his hands on his coveralls, which were finally looking as dirty as they needed to, and handed me a torn sheet of paper.

“Here’s the make and model of this cabinet,” he said.
“It’s fairly recent, judging by the label itself.
I think you should start there.”

I bristled at his suggestion, but said nothing.
We wouldn’t be working together long.
If this continued, I’d have to speak up, but for now I had to keep LeDoux happy.

I nodded, folded the note, and clipped it to my board.
The cabinet wasn’t a priority, yet.
Those apartments were.
I’d make certain I had my flashlight in the morning, when I’d start in that third
-
floor bathroom.

We left.
I made certain both doors into the house were locked tight. I also locked the basement door for good measure.
As we drove back downtown, LeDoux pulled off his coveralls and tossed his painters
’
cap on top of them.
At my instruction, he bundled them into a ball and tossed them at his feet.

Maybe by the end of the week they’d look like as used as most painters’ clothing.

I took back
roads as long as I could, but eventually we ended up on Michigan Avenue, waiting in traffic.
I had factored that into my timing; still, I found myself tapping the steering wheel impatiently.

LeDoux shook his head slightly, as if he couldn’t understand me.
I wasn’t sure I understood him either.

“You find anything in the house?” he asked, much later than I expected him to.

“No one’s living there.
It looks like someone recently moved out of number three.”

“How recent?”

“Within the last few months,” I said. “I’ll know more tomorrow.”

He nodded and kept staring out the window at the other cars, trapped like we were between the tall buildings and Grant Park.
Police lights reflected off passing cars.
I glanced in their direction, saw a squad car parked on one of the paths as if it were blocking someone’s way.

My fingers tightened on the steering wheel.
The park looked different than it had in the morning — more litter, a lot of paper, a few ripped signs.

I glanced ahead, made sure the way to the hotel was clear, and concentrated on getting us there.

“What’s that?” LeDoux asked, tilting his head toward the park.

We were past the police car now, nearer to the Logan statue and the site of the main police riot during the Democratic National Convention, the horrendous one, the one the entire nation saw on television.

A reporter stood near the fountain, a camera crew trained on him, an equipment truck blocking part of Michigan Avenue.
The camera lights made it seem almost like nighttime, even though the sun wasn’t due to set for another two hours.

“That protest must not have gone well this morning,” I said.

“Another one?” he asked.

“We’re going to be treated to four days of them,” I said. “And that’s if these Weatherpeople do what they promise.”

“You don’t think they will.”

“I think they’ll do whatever they believe they need to do.”

He shifted in his seat.
“I want to stay somewhere else.”

“I’ll talk to Laura,” I said.

“How about I call Miss Hathaway?” He sounded as if he didn’t believe I could handle something that simple.

Or maybe I was overreacting.
I turned left on Balboa, made myself concentrate on driving.
This time, instead of going to the Hilton’s lot, I pulled up behind the Blackstone Hotel.

“I’ll pick you up in the morning,” I said. “Same time, same place.”

“See you then.” He got out of the van as if he couldn’t wait to be shed of me.
He hurried along the sidewalk, looking both ways like he expected an attack.

I sighed and kept driving down Balboa to State.
The traffic wasn’t quite as bad here, and as I got away from downtown, the traffic got lighter.

I turned on the radio and turned the dial until I found news. The newscaster played tape from the morning rally.

Apparently the group that held the rally in the park was all female, all a part of the Weatherm
e
n.
I heard snippets of a woman’s speech — something about the martyrdom of Che Gu
e
v
a
ra in Bolivia two years ago, and comparing that with the sacrifices of the Chicago Eight now on trial.
The woman called for violence, to remind the “pigs” of the pain they’d caused, and then her voice faded out to be replaced with chanting and the sound of nightsticks against gloves.

The entire thing sounded awful, but the reporter who covered it claimed the marchers were just scared little girls who didn’t know what to do when faced with a police line.

That speech didn’t sound like something a scared little girl would say, but what did I know? I didn’t understand any of this.

By the time I reached the church, I had turned the radio back to WVON, letting Ruth Brown’s sultry voice and racy lyrics ease my frayed soul.

The kids poured out of the church, Jimmy first with his best friend, Keith Grimshaw
,
beside him.
Jonathan Grimshaw, the oldest at fifteen, held the hands of his sisters Mikie and Norene.
Lacey brought up the rear, wiping the makeup off her face with a Kleenex as if she thought I didn’t see her.

“You’re late,” Jimmy said as he pulled open the back door.

“I’ve got five minutes according to my very nice watch,” I said.

“Mrs. Armitage was fretting,” Keith said, sounding more like his mother than the eleven-year-old imp he usually was.

The boys crawled in, followed by Jonathan and the girls.

“Tell Lacey she’s sitting up front,” I said.

“Forget it!” Lacey was thirteen going on trouble.

“Up front or you’re walking, Lace,” I said, making a threat I knew I couldn’t live up to.

She sighed so theatrically I could hear her over the engine and Ike Turner.
Then she stomped around the van, pulled open the passenger door, and glared at the coveralls on the floorboards.

“What’s that?” she asked
,
as if it were a live thing.

“Just some clothes,” I said. “Throw them in
the
back if they bother you.”

She wrinkled her nose, shoved at the clothes with her high-heeled foot, then got in.
As she pulled the door closed she said to me, “You look weird.”

“I’ve been working.”

“You don’t usually dress like that.”

“I will be for the next week or two,” I said. “You missed a beauty mark on your left cheek.”

Her hand came up before she realized what she’d done.
Then she looked at me as I started the drive home.

“You’re not going to tell my dad, are you, Uncle Bill?”

“That you’ve decided to ignore his wishes? Why would I do that, Lace?”

She rolled her eyes at my sarcasm.
“You don’t understand.”

“Surprisingly, I do,” I said.
“You just don’t know the kind of men who go after little girls like you.”

“I’m not little.” She was right; she wasn’t little any more.
Her body had filled out.

I sighed, wondering how deep to get into this.
“Has your mom talked to you?”

Her cheeks flushed redder than any rouge could ever make them.
“Uncle Bill,” she breathed.

“About boys and girls,” I added, realizing she was thinking of the other mother-daughter talk.

“I know all I need to know.”

I bit my lower lip, then leaned back just a little. Behind me, Norene was holding court, telling everyone about the importance of second grade.
Mikie was trying to stop her by reminding her that everyone else had gone through second grade.