Lincoln Perry 02 - Sorrow's Anthem (12 page)

We were back at the car when I turned to Joe.
“He came in without knocking or identifying himself, gun
drawn,” I said. “Seemed surprised and bothered to find the mother
there. Once Ed showed up, Padgett told Alberta to leave them
alone in the room. Ed told her not to.”
Joe was silent.
“They came to kill him,” I said. “Padgett didn’t expect Ed’s
mother to be there. She threw him. Her presence saved his life, at
least right then. Ed saw the situation for what it was, and he ran.”
Joe’s face was empty, his eyes hard. I knew I had him now,
though. Joe came from a family of cops, and he’d devoted most of
his life to being the best cop in the city. If there was one thing he
could not stomach, it was the idea of a corrupt police officer.
“You ready to ride with me yet?” I said.
His smile was cold as he held up his car keys. “Hell,” he said.
“I’m driving.”

CHAPTER
12

Our timing was bad. If we’d been five minutes later getting back
to the office, we would have missed Cal Richards. Instead, we
pulled into the parking lot just as he was climbing into his car,
ready to leave. When he saw us, he got back out and leaned against
the trunk of the unmarked Taurus, a smile on his face.
“Gentlemen. How fortunate that you’ve returned. I didn’t want
to miss you.”
“What’s up?” Joe said.
“You mind if we go up to your office?” Richards said, stepping
away from his car. “Hot as a bastard out here.”
We went in the building and up the steps, Richards walking
silently behind us. Joe unlocked the office door and we went inside.
Richards sat down across from us and cleared his throat dramatically.
“So,
I’ve been out of your office for less than a day and already
I’ve got a complaint about your behavior.”
“From?” I said.
“Jerome Huggins. I talked with the man less than an hour ago.
He told me a couple of white-boy private eyes were down this
morning, giving him grief. Said the old guy of the duo was cool
enough, but the young guy was, well, maybe a little headstrong.
Jerome didn’t seem to think fondly of him.”
“A lot of Pis in this town,” I said. “Could be anybody.”
Richards rolled his eyes. “Let’s not waste time on the bullshit,
okay? I didn’t come down here to bust your balls over this, Perry
I’d be justified in doing that, but I don’t want to. I know you’re investigating
your friend’s past, and I got no problem with that. I
just want to have some idea of where I can expect you to be turning
up.”
“What were you doing at the liquor store?” I countered.
He ran a hand over his bristle-short hair. “Wanted to verify
some things with Jerome, is all.”
I grinned. “You lie, Detective.”
“Pardon?”
“You’re too good not to have a problem with the cameras at that
place,” I said.
Richards sat expressionless for a minute, until Joe began to laugh
softly.
“You confused him, LP. Called him a liar in the same breath as
you complimented him. Man doesn’t know what to do now.”
Richards allowed a small smile. “Weighing my options, for sure.
And I’m going to play along, Perry, and acknowledge that, yes, I
am way too good not to have a problem with those cameras.”
“Any idea who told Jerome to put them up?”
He shook his head. “Not yet. Jerome’s sticking hard and fast to
this tale that they’ve been up for years. One look tells you that’s
horseshit, but I’m not ready to put him in the box and sweat him
yet. Just curious, is all. Jerome’ll be there when I need him.”
“I see.
“What about you?” he said. “Any idea who’s at the other end of
Jerome’s puppet strings?”
I gazed across the room at Joe, who met my look with flat eyes.
After a moment’s hesitation, I decided to trust Cal Richards.
“I think your cops set him up. And then I think they killed him.
Intentionally.”
Cal let out a long, slow breath. “You want to run that by me
again?”
I told him about the discrepancies in the incident report and Alberta
Gradduk’s account of the botched arrest, and I told him
about Padgett and Rabold watching Mitch Corbett’s house.
Richards didn’t like it. Not a bit.
“Those guys are longtime cops, Perry. Maybe not the best on the
force, but they’ve been around. That’s a bold-ass suggestion you
just made, implicating them in a conspiracy. In murder.”
“They set him up, Richards. They set him up and they took him
down. Ed was innocent.”
He sighed. “Look, Perry, I’m going to give you this because I
think you deserve to know. Think you need to know. I exercised a
search warrant on Gradduk’s house and on his vehicle. You know
what I found? Trunk of his car was filled with bottles of a chemical
accelerant and a couple hundred feet of industrial fuse. More
of the same in his basement. Also in the basement were two homemade
timing devices, designed to run about fifteen minutes before
touching off the fuse. Just right for the fire on Train Avenue.”
I was shaking my head even before he was done. “They weren’t
his, Richards. Someone planted that shit. Hell, Padgett and
Rabold had ample opportunity.”
“I’ve also got a guy who will testify to selling Gradduk the fuse
cord. He recognized him from the picture and will swear to it in
court.”
“No,” I said again.
He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, and looked hard at me.
“I’ll tell you what else I’ve got—a coroner’s report on the victim. Sentalar
was burned pretty badly, but not so badly that you can’t tell that
she didn’t die from the fire. She had a bullet in her, first, one right in
the center of her forehead. Medical examiners can tell me without a
doubt that it was a thirty-two-caliber round. Only one gun is registered
to Ed Gradduk, Perry. Also a thirty-two. Now missing.”
I shook my head but didn’t speak. Joe said, “Can they get a specific
ballistics match on the bullet?”
“No. Bullet blew out the back side of her skull. If we had it, we
might get a precise match, but the fire took care of that. It was in
the rubble somewhere, and the fire department guys didn’t locate
it. Not that I blame them for that.”
“He got set up,” I said. “Ed got set up, Richards.”
Richards nodded. “He got set up. But not framed for a murder.
He killed that girl, Perry. But I think he got set up in having his
picture taken while he was doing it. And I want to know why.”
“But Padgett and Rabold—”
“Are a couple of good ol’ boy cops looking for a hot collar,” he
said. “That’s all they are. Believe me, I’ll take a good look at this
guy, Corbett, and I’ll burn those two good for working a surveillance
on him without letting me know. But in the end, I think
they’re just looking to make headlines. If they’re guilty of anything,
it’s holding out on a tip. I bet they were given some real detail
about this, but they don’t want to pass it off because it’ll go to
me and they’ll miss the glory.”
I got out of my chair and walked to the window, stood with my
back to him, my hands clenched at my sides.
“I know he was your friend,” Richards said. “But he killed her.
I’m almost sure of it.”
I didn’t answer. He sat there for a while, then said good-bye to
Joe and left. When the door closed behind him, it was quiet. I
stayed at the window. Joe let a few minutes pass before he broke
the silence.
“All right, LP. It’s not what you wanted to hear him say. But that
doesn’t mean the work we did in the morning was for nothing.
Let’s get back to that now, get focused.”
I turned away from the window, still angry. “He’s convinced Ed
killed her, Joe. He just shrugged off everything we gave him on
those cops.”
“He didn’t shrug it off. He’s a good detective. Maybe as good as
you. He’ll take what we gave him and blend it with what he’s got,
and he’ll keep moving. Hell, did you expect him to leap in the air
and click his heels at the idea Gradduk was set up by two of his
own cops? Come on.”
I gave that a grudging nod and returned to my chair. “Okay. I
hear you. So what’s our play then? Start with the cameras?”

He tugged at his tie and frowned. “I don’t think so. The best way
to get the truth about them is probably to break Huggins down,
and I think we can do that by connecting him to Padgett and
Rabold. I’d rather start with a hard look at those two. I want to
know where they’re from, how long they’ve been cops, what cases
they’ve worked, who they drink with, who they sleep with. First
things I want to look at when I’m investigating sleazy cops are
their conduct evaluations.”
“Think we can get those?”
He allowed a rare cocky smile to slide across his face. “I can get
the chief’s checkbook if I want it, LP.”
“Then make the call. But you’re forgetting about something.”
“Oh?”
“Mitch Corbett.”
He let his breath out loudly and nodded. “Shit, you’re right. I
had forgotten about him. If he’s important to Padgett, he needs to
be important to us.”
I told him what little I’d learned with my phone calls the previous
night.
“His brother wasn’t helpful,” I said, “nor was he fond of Mitch.
Could be the truth, or it could be a smokescreen he’s putting up
because his brother’s hiding out at his place.”
“All right,” Joe said. “Let’s do it like this: You work Corbett this
afternoon. Get everything you can. And I’ll do the background on
Padgett and Rabold.”

Family hadn’t proved particularly helpful in my quest for information
about Mitch Corbett, and I didn’t know any of his friends
other than the dead one. That left me with coworkers. Jimmy
Cancerno was Corbett’s boss, but he hadn’t appeared to be too interested
in cooperating the previous day. I decided I’d drive out to
Cancerno’s construction company anyhow, talk to whomever I
could find, and see where it led me. If Ed and Corbett had become
friends on the job, it stood to reason there had been a couple other
guys in the mix.
Pinnacle Properties, Cancerno’s contracting company, was located
on Pearl Road, just south of Riverside Cemetery. On the
other side of the interstate was MetroHealth, where my father
had worked as a paramedic for years. MetroHealth was home to
the city’s busiest emergency room, and that had provided a constant
sound track to the neighborhood when I was growing up.
As I drove, an ambulance siren was wailing a few blocks away,
and as soon as it faded, I could hear the thumping of helicopter
blades as a medical chopper headed north for the landing pad on
the roof of the hospital.
Pinnacle Properties was housed in a long prefabricated warehouse
that gleamed in the afternoon sun. A small office was built
into the front of the warehouse, and a half dozen cars were in the
parking lot. I got out of the truck and walked into the office.
A young, blond girl with a good smile was behind the only desk
inside. I told her I was looking for Mitch Corbett, just in case she
had more up-to-date information than I did.
“Hmm,” she said, “Mitch hasn’t been working this week. I don’t
know what that’s about. I can radio out to the site and see if he
showed up late today, though.”
“Tell you what, you tell me where those guys are and I’ll drive
out and have a word with them myself. If Mitch isn’t around, I can
always talk to …” I frowned, thoughtful, then pointed at her for
assistance, as if I’d drawn a momentary blank on the name.
“Jeff.”
“Right, Jeff.” I smiled at her. “I’ll talk to Jeff if Mitch isn’t
around. Where are they?”
She gave me an address on Erin Avenue. I thanked her, returned
to my truck, and drove north on Pearl until it became West
Twenty-fifth Street just past Clark Avenue. A left turn onto Erin
Avenue, and then I slowed down to look at the house numbers. I
found the one I needed without bothering to look at the address; a
Pinnacle Properties pickup truck was parked in front of the house.
The home itself was a narrow, two-story duplex that had seen better
days. A pile of trash and debris was at the curb, and a weather
beaten sign stuck in the weed-riddled front yard claimed the house as a
NEIGHBORHOOD
ALLIANCE
ACQUISITION
.
I parked across the street and walked over and up the driveway.
I could hear a stereo going inside, Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Gimme
Three Steps” playing just as I was on my way up the three front
steps of the house. Then the side door opened with a bang and a
thick guy with red hair and no shirt stepped outside, followed by a
Hispanic man with chiseled muscles. Each held bulging garbage
bags in their hands as they marched down the driveway. They
tossed them on top of the pile, and both bags promptly rolled off
and fell on the sidewalk, something inside one of them shattering.
The Hispanic guy turned around, indifferent, and spotted me
standing at the door. The redhead was replacing the fallen bags to
the top of the garbage heap.
“This is private property,” the Hispanic guy said. “You got a reason
to be up there?” His companion turned around at that and
gave me a curious glance.
I left the front door and walked down to the driveway to meet
them. “How’s it going? I’m looking for a Jeff?”
“You got him,” the redhead said. “Jeff Franklin.” He pulled off a
thick work glove and offered me his meaty hand. We shook, both
of us squinting against the sun that shone down uninhibited by
any trees. The Hispanic guy spat on the sidewalk and looked
bored.
“My name’s Lincoln Perry. I was hoping you could help me find
someone.”
“Yeah?”
“Mitch Corbett.”
Jeff Franklin gave me an interested look as he pulled a red bandanna
from his back pocket and wiped his face with it. His barrel
chest was soaked with sweat beneath a mat of curly red hair, and
his upper arms were all freckles.
“Mitch’s missing, I’m afraid,” he said. “Hasn’t been in for a few
days.”
“Is that unusual?”
He nodded. “Very. I’ve worked with him for more’n a year and I
can’t think of a single sick day he took. Man’s a hard worker.”
“What’re you, a cop?” the Hispanic guy asked, then spat on the
pavement again.
“No. Just someone who needs to talk to this man.” I nodded
pointedly at Jeff Franklin, making it clear that I had no interest in
the other guy, nor any desire for him to stick around. Before he
could object to that, Franklin handled it for me.
“Go on inside and help the rest of the guys, Ramone. We got a
lot to finish up today.”
Ramone shrugged and went back up the driveway, shoulders
slouched, swaggering. Jeff Franklin watched him and sighed, then
tucked the bandanna back in his pocket.
“Can I ask why you’re needing Mitch?”
There was something about Jeff Franklin that I liked. He carried
himself confidently but without pretense, and I had the sense
he would reciprocate straight talk with more of the same.
“I’m a private investigator. And I was a friend of Ed Gradduk’s
a long time ago.”