Lincoln Perry 02 - Sorrow's Anthem (27 page)

Coming out from under the bridge was a gamble, but this was
the time to take it. I braced my hand against the rough edges of the
stone wall that bordered the bank, then pulled my body upright. I
slid my right hand under Joe’s arm and pulled him toward me,
clearing him from the water and dropping him on the muddy bank.
Now I had a good vantage point to see across the river, but the
gunmen were gone. A crackling, rushing noise from the trees told
me someone was on the move. I squinted and peered through the
rain. One of them was running away from the bridge, stumbling
through the trees. I couldn’t see the other. Maybe they’d both fled.
The ranger was out of his vehicle now, trudging across the
bridge toward us. His head was down, his full-brimmed hat shedding
rain. Water splashed with each step he took. I looked away
from him and scanned the opposite bank again, searching for the
shooter who hadn’t been running away. I didn’t see him. The rain
fell harder, stinging my face, rivulets of water running into my
mouth as I took gasping breaths. Fighting the current and Joe’s
clumsy bulk had taken a toll.
The ranger was close now, halfway across the bridge. He was
searching the water and talking into a radio. By now he’d seen the
wrecked cars and found them empty. But had he heard the gunfire
before he’d arrived? It had been so loud, I couldn’t imagine him not hearing it, though if he had heard it and had made the decision to
walk out in the open like this, he was either a courageous son of a
bitch or a damn fool.

Closer still he came, and now I could see that he held a gun in
his right hand, down against his leg. He’d heard the shots, all right.
And he was no fool, either, just brave. He hadn’t waited for
backup, because he’d known someone might be in the river. Maybe
close to dying.

I waited until he came to our end of the bridge before I stood up
and shouted.

“Hey! We need help down here!”
I waved my hands, but even so it took him a few seconds to locate
the source of the shouting. All my back muscles were tight,
braced for a shot that might come from the opposite bank. When
the ranger saw us, he moved forward at a jog, around the edge of
the bridge and down to the stone wall that shored up the bank. I
left Joe and struggled around the wall and up the muddy slope, trying
to get high enough to talk to the ranger. That was when I saw
the gunman who hadn’t fled through the trees.
He’d taken off his ski mask and climbed back onto the bridge.
He was running up it now, closing fast. His footsteps slapped
loudly off the wet concrete. The ranger turned at the sound of his
approach and raised his gun.
“Stop! Put your hands in the air and get on the ground!”
The man kept coming, but he lifted one arm. Something glistened
in his hand, and then I saw that it was a badge.
“Cleveland Police Department!” he shouted in response. “Relax,
I’m a cop. Now stand down.”
It was Jack Padgett, and in the hand that didn’t have the badge
was a gun.
The ranger lowered his weapon slightly, his shoulders relaxing.
“Don’t listen to him!” I shouted. The ranger turned his head a
fraction to the left, looked at my face. “He shot my partner,” I said.
“He’s going to kill us.”
The ranger’s eyes snapped back to Padgett, who was still running
toward him.
“Get on the ground!” the ranger yelled. “Now!”
“Cleveland Police!” Padgett said again, still running.
“I don’t give a shit. Get. . . on . . . the . , . ground!”
Padgett kept running. The ranger’s eyes slipped back to us, took
in Joe’s ashen face, my desperation. I dropped back down from the
bank, knelt over Joe, and reached around for my gun. My fingers
found the holster, empty. I’d lost the Glock in the river.
Padgett was ten yards away. The gun was still in his hand.
“Shoot him!” I screamed at the ranger.
“Cleveland Police!” Padgett yelled for the third time. The hand
with the gun was coming up, the barrel moving toward the ranger.
I reached inside Joe’s jacket, hoping his gun was still in the
shoulder holster, but even as I did it, I knew it was too late. We
were dead. The ranger wouldn’t shoot a cop, and Padgett was going
to kill us all.

The ranger shot Padgett.
He fired once and caught him in the thigh. Padgett’s right leg
spun away from his body, and he hit the pavement in a whirling
tumble, banging against one of the iron bridge supports. For a moment
he stayed down. Then he rolled over onto his shoulder and
lifted his gun, aiming at the ranger. The ranger fired again. Padgett
dropped and stayed down.
The ranger keyed his radio microphone and shouted into it,
“Shots fired on the bridge at Rocky River. Repeat, shots fired, need
backup immediately, and paramedics.” Then he turned to us. He
dropped to his knees and stretched out his arms. Rain cascaded off
the brim of his wide hat.
“Let’s get him up here,” he said.
It wasn’t easy. A sheer wall of at least ten feet was in front of me,
and I couldn’t shove Joe up to the ranger against that. Instead we
had to move upstream, into the thickets and small trees that lined
the riverbank. The ranger fought down through the brush until he
reached me, then hooked his hands under Joe’s arms and lifted him
clear, dragged him back up the hill and set him on the grass. I
clambered up the bank after them, using small trees for handholds,
thorns tearing at my skin. My entire body was shaking. Sirens were
wailing somewhere up above the valley, playing sorrow’s anthem,
this time for my partner.
The ranger left us there, walked back to the bridge, and crossed
to Padgett. He knelt beside him and stayed there for a while. Then
he returned to stand in front of me. His wet face was drawn and
grave.

“Mister,” he said, “I hope you’re an honest man. Because I believe
I just killed a police officer.”

CHAPTER
27

The hospital room was cool and dark. I sat on the tile floor with
my back against the door. I’d been here for a while now. At least
ten minutes had passed since I’d told the cops I needed to go to the
bathroom, when all I’d really needed was to get away from them,
from the lights, from the world. I’d needed to close my eyes. It was
a small thing, closing your eyes. But I needed it badly.
I’d made a few random turns through corridors that smelled of
pungent cleansers until I found an empty room. Joe was in the
building, somewhere. I couldn’t see him, though. He was still in
surgery. Eight hours of it now.
I wondered how long they could keep him in surgery. At what
point did they just give up? Eight hours seemed like a lot of it. I
wondered who the surgeon was, how steady his hands were, how
much experience he had with gunshot wounds. I wondered if Joe
was already dead.
If I’d gotten him killed.
I slid my heels back so my knees were raised, crossed my arms
over my knees, and rested my forehead on my arms. Kept my eyes
closed. He hadn’t wanted to get involved. Not even at the beginning.
I’d gone out to his house in the middle of the night, sat in his
living room, and pressured him into helping me. He’d hesitated,
and not because he was worried about his own safety, or about lost
money on the paying cases, or about the media attention surrounding
Ed’s death. He’d hesitated because he knew that I was on a
fool’s mission. Because in the end, what could I accomplish? I
could alter a dead friend’s legacy. But was that enough? The answer
wasn’t as resounding in my mind tonight as it had been all week.
Eight hours Joe had been on the table. They would have parts of
him opened up, blood running down his skin, tubes inserted into
his nose, wires fastened to his flesh, computers monitoring his life,
if indeed he still had life.
Ed Gradduk was my demon, not Joe’s. If anyone was going to be
hurt trying to help a dead man, it needed to be me.
Voices in the hall. Someone inquiring about me. A nurse saying
she hadn’t seen me. I kept the door shut until I heard the man
thanking the nurse, and then his voice registered. It was Cal
Richards. I’d seen nothing but cops for hours now, but not
Richards. I’d been wondering when he’d show up.
I slid sideways far enough to clear myself from the door, then
reached up for the handle and pulled the door open.
“Richards.”

He was halfway down the hall when I spoke, and at the sound
of his name he turned and looked one way, then the other, seeing
nothing. I stuck my hand into the hall and waved it at him. He saw
me and walked down to my room. When he stepped inside, he
turned on the lights. I winced against the harsh brightness, and he
flicked them back off. He closed the door softly. A chair was at the
foot of the empty bed. He slid it across the floor and sat down.
“You okay?” he said.
I looked at him, but in the dark room I saw nothing of his face,
just an outline.

“He’s still in surgery,” I said.
“Yeah.” I couldn’t see his mouth move when he talked, and his
voice seemed to float out of the blackness, soft and strong. “I’ve
asked about him. First thing I did when I got here, in fact, was talk
to the doctors.”
“And?”

“It’s a bad one. Two gunshot wounds.”
“I know that, Richards. I was there. What else, though? Nobody
around here will give me details.”
“I’m not a doctor, Perry. I can’t tell you what’s happening in
there.”
I leaned my head back against the wall and shut my eyes again.
“What can you tell me, Richards?”
“I can tell you that Jack Padgett’s not dead yet, but he’s also in no
condition to talk. I can tell you that the car he drove was stolen,
and I can tell you that we don’t know who the second shooter was.”
“Have you found Corbett?”
“No.”
I shook my head. “That son of a bitch matters. Corbett’s the guy
who makes everything go, Richards.”
“You seem a lot more convinced of that than you were two
days ago.”
“He matters to everybody,” I said. “Living and dead. Mattered
to Sentalar, Ed, Rabold. To Padgett and Cancerno. You’ve got to
find him, Richards.”
“We’re going to.” He shifted in his seat and I saw his silhouette
lean forward. “But first you’ve got to tell me what you did that
made it all escalate so damn fast, Perry. What you did that made a
cop decide it was worth the risk to try and take you out. You have
to have an idea about that.”
1 we got one.
“I need to hear it.”
“Okay,” I said. “It starts with Mike Gajovich.”
Richards let his breath out in a long, low exhalation. “Yeah.”
“You’re already there, huh?”
“Started that way this morning,” he said.
“In Berea?”
“Uh-huh. While I was looking into Sentalar, I learned she wasn’t
the first choice for director of the Neighborhood Alliance. A Berea
city councilman was. He took the job, then backed out. Seems
Mike Gajovich was pretty heavily involved in the whole project.
Seems this guy from Berea was guaranteed a job on Mike’s staff
when he became mayor. Guaranteed the job if he’d look the other
way on some funding issues with Cancerno’s contracting company
and the Neighborhood Alliance. Guy had long ties to Gajovich,
and I’m sure he’s a crooked bastard, but he was wise enough not to
like that setup and he backed out. The way things are shaping up,
it looks like Cancerno’s kicking back a lot of the cash from that organization
to Gajovich, funding his campaign, most likely.”
I wanted to care. I wanted to ask for the details, try to tie it all
back to the puzzle pieces I’d spent a week assembling, make it fit,
make it neat. I couldn’t, though. I couldn’t find it in me to give a
damn about any of it anymore. Not with Joe stretched out on some
cold steel table, scalpels and forceps being used on his body.
“You gonna tell me how you got to Gajovich?” Richards said.
“His brother’s going to be involved, too,” I said instead of answering
his question. “Dean and Mason are probably already on it.
His brother’s the commander of District Two. Rabold and Padgett’s
boss.”
“That did come up,” Richards said.
“Have you brought Cancerno in yet?”
“Looking for him. Missing in action, for now.”
“Him and Corbett,” I said. “Wonderful.”
“I’m going to need you to tell me what you know in some detail.
But not now.”

I was already shaking my head. “You’re right, not now. I’m done
talking to cops for the night, Richards. I’m done until someone lets
me see Joe.”

He was quiet for a minute. “I wanted to come earlier. Soon as I
heard. But with all this shit going down, the prosecutor involved
now, I spent the whole afternoon meeting with the brass.”
“It’s fine.”

He looked up. “I’m just trying to tell you,” he said, “that it matters
to me, too.”
I nodded. “All right, Cal. I understand.”

Twenty minutes later, Richards was gone, off to consult with his
superiors yet again. I didn’t envy his job. The department would already
be sweating the damage control of Padgett’s shooting by the
MetroParks ranger. Adding it to a day in which they’d learned one
of their own commanders and the county prosecutor were likely
tied to major corruption had probably sent them into cardiac arrest.

Let them see it through, I thought. Let them deal with Cancerno,
and find Corbett, and fire Gajovich or impeach him or
whatever the hell it was you did with a prosecutor. It didn’t matter
anymore. Ed Gradduk was dead, and my partner was headed
that way.
With Cal Richards gone, I sat alone on a vinyl chair in a waiting
room for something like the urology department at MetroHealth.
The doctors and nurses in this ward were long gone, and it was basically
empty. They’d wanted to keep me out of sight, though. The
media was swarming, and they all wanted me. The cops had wanted
me to go to the police station; the MetroHealth administrators had
simply wanted me to get out of their building. I’d refused.
“Lincoln!”
I turned my head to see Amy rounding the corner of the hallway,
walking fast, her face pale. She crossed the room and knelt in front
of me, rested her hands on my knees, and looked hard at my face.
“Is he okay?” she said.
“I don’t know.”
“What happened? I didn’t find out till about two hours ago,
when my editor called to see if I could get in touch with you for a
quote. I didn’t even know what he was talking about. It took me
forever to figure out where you were.”
She slid into the chair beside me, and I told her what I could tell
her. What she most wanted to know—Joe’s status—I could not
provide.