Lou Mason Mystery - 02 - The Last Witness (20 page)

Mason made his way to the alley that ran behind the barbershop, looking for a back door or a window, knowing that he had to be faster than the cops if he tripped the motion detector again. Clinging to the shadows in the alley, he hoped that Shirley Parker hadn’t already taken Cullan’s files out the back door, sticking him with a great case of he said, she said.

The possibility left Mason with a thin sweat and a twisted gut by the time he reached the rear of the barbershop. Sweeping the flashlight across the wall, he heaved a deep breath mixed with relief and frustration when he discovered there was no rear door or rear window on the first floor. There was, however, a second-story window next to a fire escape with a ladder that ended well beyond his reach.

There was a Dumpster in the alley a few yards away. Mason shoved it across the uneven pavement until it was beneath the ladder. Climbing on top, he reached for the ladder, finding himself still a foot shy of the bottom rung. He stuffed the flashlight and the hammer into his belt and backed up to the edge of the Dumpster. Measuring the short step to the wall, he took a running step and launched himself at the ladder.

The cold iron froze against Mason’s hands as he held on to the bottom rung, gaining purchase with his feet against the brick wall. He pulled himself up, his breath coming in sharp gasps, until his feet found the bottom rung. A moment later he was on the catwalk beneath the window, certain that he was about to be caught in a cross fire of searchlights while some cop demanded that he throw down his hammer before they opened up on him.

The window was locked or nailed shut. He shined his flashlight through the glass and could make out the top of the stairs. He hoped the motion detector was at the bottom and not at the top.

He pulled off his sweater, using it to muffle the hammer, broke the window, and climbed inside, broken glass crunching under his shoes, assuming that he had set off the motion detector. He had no more than a couple of minutes to grab the files, get out, and make up an alibi.

He left the light in Pendergast’s office off, feeling less exposed in the darkness. The flashlight beam glanced off something shiny in the center of the floor that Mason didn’t remember seeing a few hours earlier. Dropping to one knee, he picked up a white, quarter-sized campaign button with the words
Truman for Senator
in blue. Tom Pendergast had been Harry Truman’s political godfather.

He aimed his flashlight at the walk-in closet, certain that someone had dropped the button on the floor while removing other more current political souvenirs. He traced the flashlight beam up to the lock he had broken, when he was flattened by a blast that shattered the panel door, opened the floor like an earthquake, and dropped him into the barbershop.

He slammed into the outstretched barber chair, bounced off onto the floor, and crawled beneath the chair while fire and debris rained from overhead. The explosion was loud enough to scramble the eggs at the Egg House Diner, but Mason was deafened by the blast before his brain could register the sound. Though he was stunned, he understood how life turned on such small moments as bending down to pick up a button. Had he been standing, the panel door would have cut him in two when it blew out from the wall.

Mason ran his hands over his scalp and face, checking for wounds too fresh to hurt, finding a trickle of blood from a cut above one ear. He pulled off his shirt to cover his mouth and nose against the acrid smoke that had enveloped him.

The initial wave of debris had settled into fiery heaps feeding flames racing up the walls. He staggered to his feet, giving a quick and futile pull to the steel bars covering the barbershop window. The glass had blown out into the street and the cold air tasted sweet even as it fueled the fire.

Cars stopped on Main Street, and passersby stood in front of the People’s Savings & Loan Building, pointing and screaming at him to get out in voices that he imagined more than heard. He agreed with their advice even if he couldn’t find a way to take it.

The flames were engulfing the outer walls of the building. Mason glanced up through the hole in the floor above and saw that the fire had eaten through the roof, obliterating the stars with billowing smoke. He could feel his clothes heating up as if they were about to ignite.

Gagging into his shirt, he made his way to the front door, cursing Shirley Parker and the bar that she had locked into place like a coffin nail. Any thought of escaping out the window the way he had come in vanished with the stairs that were crackling like seasoned kindling as the fire roared down on him.

Ducking to stay as close to the ground as possible, he stumbled down the hallway to the basement door. Covering the door handle with his shirt, he pulled the door open, yanked it closed behind him, and bolted down the stairs, grateful for the pocket of cool air in the basement. He leaned against the rough cement wall and slid down to the floor, gasping and wondering how long it would take the fire to burn through the first floor and bury him.

His question was answered a moment later. The stairs to the second floor collapsed into the basement, carrying the fire with them.

Mason jumped to his feet, looking around at blank walls that now glowed with a deadly orange like one of Dante’s chambers. Smoke rolled across the ceiling, shrinking the basement. In the far corner, he saw a half-open chest-high door and raced over to it.

Shirley Parker lay on the floor, propping the door open. Mason knelt alongside her, feeling for a pulse in her neck and wrist. Her eyes were open, unseeing and untroubled by the smoke. A dark stain above her left breast was still damp with blood. Mason now understood Norma Hawkins’s certainty that Jack Cullan had been shot.

The door led to a tunnel. Ducking inside and crouching under the low ceiling, Mason felt his way, counting his steps to gauge the distance. Fifty paces later, the tunnel ended against a locked door. Bracing his arms against the walls of the narrow shaft, Mason kicked at the door until its hinges surrendered, letting him into another basement.

He took a few deep breaths and went back into the tunnel, bent over and trotting until he reached Shirley’s body. The heat and smoke from the fire rolled through the tunnel. Mason hoped the flames wouldn’t follow. He pulled Shirley’s body back to the other basement, closing her eyes and laying her down against the floor. There was no peace in her soft features.

The basement was filled with framed and unframed paintings, stacked against the walls. There were two stairways, one that led to the first floor and another that led to a door with a small window in its center. Mason trudged up the second stairway and opened the door into the alley behind the barbershop. It took him a moment to realize that the tunnel had passed beneath the alley.

He saw firemen running up the alley carrying a hose. A fire engine blocked the entrance to the alley, its red and white lights cascading across the pavement. Two paramedics raced toward him from the south end of the alley, waving and calling to him. Reaching him, one put her arms around him to hold him up while another peered into his eyes.

“Hey, buddy!” one of the paramedics mouthed. “Are you all right?”

“Yeah,” wondering whether the paramedic could hear him if he couldn’t hear the paramedic. “There’s a woman’s body down there,” he added, not certain whether he was whispering or shouting.

He opened the door and pointed down the stairs. The paramedic who had been holding him up led him toward an ambulance while her partner went back for Shirley Parker.

The police had blocked off traffic on Main Street except for emergency vehicles. The spectators who’d been first in line in front of the People’s Savings & Loan Building had been herded a safe distance away. Two fire department pumper trucks were pouring heavy streams of water into the burned-out shell that had been Pendergast’s office. Local television stations had dispatched live crews to the scene. Cops, firefighters, reporters, and rescuers did their dance.

No one noticed Mason and his paramedic escort when they first emerged from the alley and made their way to an ambulance parked half a block south of the barbershop. By the time the paramedic had persuaded Mason to get inside the ambulance so she could examine him, he’d been picked up on the media’s radar. Reporters clustered around the ambulance, jostling for an angle. Rachel Firestone squeezed through and sat down next to him. The paramedic started to order her to get out, but Mason said she could stay.

His hearing was gradually coming back, first a dull roar of unfiltered noise, then a steady ringing like a flatlined heart monitor, and then voices.

“I let you out of my sight for five minutes and you get into trouble!” Rachel told him. “Look at you. You’re a mess!”

“I forget. Are you my big sister or little sister?”

“I’m just a sister, and you’re still a mess. What in the hell happened?”

Before he could answer, Carl Zimmerman waded through the throng of reporters, trailed by a uniformed cop and the police department’s director of media relations, who politely but firmly ordered the reporters back behind the police line.

“You too, Miss Firestone,” Zimmerman told her. “You’ll get your shot at him if there’s anything left worth having, but we get to go first.”

“Detective, do I look the kind of girl who’d settle for sloppy seconds?”

Zimmerman didn’t let his cop face slip. “I wouldn’t know.”

Rachel gave Mason a peck on his ash-stained cheek. “Save something for me.”

Zimmerman glared at Mason. “You are one dumb-assed motherfucker, you know that? I don’t know whether to arrest you or just throw you back into that fire and save Harry Ryman the trouble of kicking your tail into next week.”

“You hold him down and I’ll kick him,” Harry said as he joined his partner.

Mason looked at both men and then at the paramedic. “Am I in any shape to have my ass kicked?” he asked her.

“In your condition, you probably won’t even notice. I get the impression that you deserve it, but don’t call me when they’re finished. I’m not interested in repeat business.” Turning to the detectives, she added, “He’ll be black and blue and shitting soot for a week, but he’s all yours.”

Mason climbed out of the ambulance as Harry and Zimmerman each took him by an arm.

“Am I under arrest?”

Harry answered. “Not until we figure out all the things to charge you with. Let’s get a cup of coffee first.”

Mason groaned as they led him to the Egg House Diner. “Too bad this place didn’t blow up.”

The waiter gave Mason his I’m-not-surprised look as they slid into a booth, Mason on one side facing Harry and Zimmerman. The homeless woman was back at the counter and giggled into her coffee cup as she exchanged a wink with the waiter.

Mason caught his reflection in the window. His face was camouflaged with soot; his hair was spiked with blood. He was draped in a thin blanket the paramedic had given him, his pants blackened and torn. He understood the homeless woman’s laughter. She looked better than he did. He wondered if she would offer to buy him dinner.

The waiter brought them three glasses of water. “Turkey sandwich?” he asked Mason.

“Two coffees, black,” Harry said. “What do you want Lou?”

“Nothing. I’ve had enough.”

“Why didn’t you wait for me, like I told you?” Zimmerman asked.

Mason had an answer that was good enough for him, though he doubted it would satisfy Harry and Zimmerman.

“Cullan’s files were the key to his murder. If I couldn’t get my hands on them, I couldn’t prove you guys were wrong about Blues. Ortiz hung up on me when I asked him to get a search warrant. The two of you were fighting crime. I was afraid someone would get to them before you were finished, so I went after them myself. Turned out I was right. Someone blew them up or stole them and made it look like they were blown up.”

“You better rethink that bullshit when the judge asks you to show remorse,” Zimmerman said.

“For what? Breaking and entering?”

“That’s chump change,” Zimmerman said. “I suppose you’re going to tell us that Shirley Parker invited you down into that basement so you could pop her?”

Mason looked at Harry, not believing what he was hearing. “Get real. You can’t possibly think I shot Shirley Parker.”

“Who said she was shot?” Zimmerman asked him, enjoying the role reversal from Mason’s cross-examination.

“Good for you, Carl. I had that coming. Maybe the killer just threw the bullet at her.”

Harry interrupted. “Lou, this is serious. Officer Toland reported that he caught you inside that building earlier tonight but that Shirley Parker refused to press charges. He says that you threatened her. Carl tells you to sit tight, which for you is not possible. You and Shirley are the only ones inside that building when it blows up, and you are the only one who comes out alive. Only Shirley is shot to death, not blown up. How does all that look to you?”

“It looks like head-up-your-ass police work that is a lot easier than figuring out what really happened. Like figuring out who blew up the damn building, who knew about the tunnel to get the files out before they blew up the building, and who would kill Shirley Parker to make sure nobody found out what was in those files.”

“You’d been sitting on that building all day,” Zimmerman said. “You could have found the tunnel, found the files, and been caught again by Shirley Parker. Only this time she wasn’t going to let you off, so you killed her.”

“You left out that I also decided to blow my ass up along with the building to hide the evidence of my crime. Harry, if you guys are really looking at me for this, take me downtown, book me, and let’s go see a judge. I’ll crucify you in court and the media will pick at what’s left.”

Harry said, “You keep up this cowboy shit, and you won’t leave us any choice. Same as Bluestone.”