That Darkness

by Lisa Black

  He walked around back, over crumbled concrete and weeds that had been dead for three years. A flimsy fence gated the rear patch of grass, and over the top of it he could see five graying heads bent in concentration around a card table. After listening to the conversation for a moment Jack determined that they were trying to play pinochle with an odd number of players, and it was not going well.

  “That’s not trump.” A skeletal man in an oversize flannel shirt pointed at his neighbor’s discard.

  The other player scratched his cropped beard, his skin almost as black as his T-shirt. “It’s not supposed to be.”

  “Then what the hell are you doing? No one leads with a nine.”

  “Mebbe I do.”

  A third tossed out his card. At an age where most people lost more weight than they cared to, he still had plenty of it on his body. His expression could be guessed only from the rearrangement of the wrinkles in his face. He wore a green khaki jacket with a US Marines insignia on the sleeve.

  “Not your turn,” the first man said.

  “I got tired of waiting for you.”

  A fourth, a coffee-skinned man with a lazy eye and a sharp voice, noticed Jack. “Who’re you?”

  He gave them the story about doing spot checks for the Social Security Administration. “Are any of you Michael Everson?”

  “Me,” the large man said.

  “Paul Zane?”

  “He’s inside,” the skinny one said. “He’s not a morning person”—apparently a well-established joke, because they all laughed.

  “Mitchell Williams?”

  “Who wants to know?” The skinny one again.

  Jack went through the names associated with the address. Of nine checks, five of the recipients were currently seated in the backyard. This was not, again, an official group home or assisted living facility. Just a group of ex-military men who happened to share expenses. They had all been Marines, except for Mitchell. He had been in the Army, “but we let him stay anyway.” More habitual laughter.

  “That all you want to know?” Mitchell asked.

  “Yep. Have a good day, gentlemen.”

  They seemed a trifle disappointed to lose their new audience so quickly, and Jack retreated among mutterings about government employees with nothing better to do being a major cause of the trouble in the country today.

  Jack couldn’t agree more.

  He made a quick stop at a dollar store and then went back to the Johnson Court building and let himself into the room. With a new, miniature brush-and-dustpan set he wiped off the table and swept a good portion of the floor, depositing the sweepings into a Ziploc bag. If Maggie Gardiner wanted trace evidence, he would give her trace evidence.

  Then he moved on to his next stop.

  The house at East 40th had seen better days, certainly. It needed paint even more desperately than Miss Ellie’s, and the windows had neither screens nor curtains. The porch sagged alarmingly under Jack’s weight and he found himself choosing his steps with care. The glass in the door shook when he rapped on it. No one answered. No shadows moved through the interior, as far as he could tell through the small, dirty panes. Ironic, considering that this had once been one of the most expensive homes in the city, a jewel in the crown that was Millionaire’s Row.

  The stone structure had once belonged to John D. Rockefeller. Jack found history interesting and had read the background on the address, provided by the infallible Wikipedia. In the mid to late 1800s when Americans knew Cleveland as the most sophisticated city west of New York, Euclid Avenue had been home to at least fourteen millionaires. Rockefeller had come to the city at age fifteen, opened his first oil refinery in Kingsbury Run (which would find national fame during the Great Depression as the dumping ground of the Torso Killer, America’s version of Jack the Ripper). Founding Standard Oil in 1870 gave Rockefeller the means to build his mansion, alongside men who had made fortunes in iron, coal, telegraphs, and politics. Back when the whole country was booming with nearly more growth than it could handle. Back when, at Christmastime, rich and poor alike would unite in the utterly unorganized sleigh races up and down Euclid’s snowy path. Back when a million dollars was a lot of money, Jack thought, and slapped at a mosquito.

  Jack escaped the towering columns of the square front porch and tried the going-around-back trick, but with less helpful results this time. None of the home’s twelve residents sat in the rear playing pinochle or any other game. The grass hadn’t been cut since the snow melted and no vehicles were stored in the lean-to that passed for a garage. He did find a plaque that said the home had been named for Rockefeller’s wife, Laura Celestia Spelman Rockefeller, who had been instrumental in founding the still-excellent Spelman College in Atlanta to provide higher education to Southern black women.

  Jack knocked on the back door. No response. The kitchen, from what he could see through a high glass window in the door, had a few scattered dishes on the counter but no other signs of life. There was nothing on the porch except a loose board, a broken milk crate, and the remains of a rat that had recently lost a fight with something larger than itself. Jack took a moment to inspect the deceased, and hoped it created the faint odor that seemed to hover in the air.

  Then he knocked loud.

  No response.

  He returned to the curb and examined the mailbox. In contrast to the home the brown plastic contraption appeared in perfect condition, its dome only slightly oxidized from the sunlight, the door opening easily, address numbers clearly visible on each side. Someone didn’t care if the house fell down, but wanted to be sure the postman could make his deliveries. Jack glanced around, opened the door, and shuffled through the junk mail that yellowed inside. Then he returned to his car. This address, he did not cross off his list. It had all Maria Stein’s requirements. His blood raced. Perhaps he had found her.

  One more stop before he went back to the station, this one from a different list. The third address of Maggie Gardiner’s led to a six-story apartment building right on Lakeshore Boulevard. It might have been full of luxury lofts where beautiful people spent lots of time in their vast marble bathrooms, brought back doggie bags from cutting-edge restaurants, and watched the sun set over the lake from their balcony (set far to the left, of course, since the lakeshore faced Canada)—if the developers hadn’t gone belly up shortly after Lehman Brothers did. It had been sold and resold a few times since then but no one had either finished or completely given up on the place yet. Plans were moving forward . . . just very, very slowly. Something like the Johnson Court structure.

  The parking lot had room for fifty cars and he did not see a single one. Move five hundred feet to the west and he would find a yacht club, a historic WWII submarine/museum and the entrance to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, but right at that spot he might as well be on the surface of the moon.

  He pulled behind the place, hidden from the street by the fenced-off Dumpster area and an overgrown shrubbery. Only one boat bobbed in the spring waves, too far away to take much notice of him unless its occupants were peering through a telescope instead of looking for fish. The wind felt like showing its muscle and shoved him hard as he got out of the car, his accoutrements in hand.

  He walked the ten feet to the rocky edge of the land, avoiding the unpredictable spray of the small waves crashing up as they came to an end a few feet below him. He waited for the water to calm his mind. Water had soothed human beings for centuries, its blue expanse, its ancient weight, but today it had no effect on his roiling mood. It helped him in another way, however. He pulled Viktor’s apartment key out of his pocket and flung it as far as he could. It twinkled in the sunlight, turning and pitching in the air until it plunged into a whitecap and disappeared.

  There. At least he had done one intelligent thing today.

  Then he retrieved some driving gloves from under his seat and the small box of tools he kept in the trunk. Three concrete steps led to the rear entrance. Of course he couldn’t be lucky enough to find it open.


  The door that kept him out had been quickly weathered by the sea air, though it had a sturdy lock. With regret he pulled on the driving gloves and picked up a paver from the cute path that had once been intended to lead to a cute dock where residents could have cute parties. He broke the pane nearest the doorknob, hoping that the industrial-sized deadbolt above the latch would not be keyed.

  It wasn’t. He turned it, slapped the push bar, and went inside. No one appeared. No garbage littered the hallway, nothing to indicate the presence of squatters. Jack passed the first door, went to the second, and didn’t bother going farther. He kicked the door as close to the knob as he could aim, and it opened so easily that he realized it must not have been locked. Why bother to lock an empty apartment?

  And it was empty. Decent looking drywall, countertops, a few cabinets, no flooring other than paint-spattered plywood. Windows that had never been cleaned after installation. It smelled of dust and, faintly, mildew, but nothing else.

  Perfect.

  Except this was the part he hadn’t quite thought through.

  Chapter 24

  Friday, 1:36 p.m.

  “Your brother called,” Carol said when Maggie returned from lunch. “And there’s no baby yet.”

  Maggie took the slip, “I didn’t even know Alex was pregnant.”

  “Oh, very funny. I mean Denny’s wife is still not sure if she’s actually in labor or not. Whereas your brother said he lost his cell phone, and therefore your cell’s number which had been stored in his, and nothing else is new, and to call when you have a moment.”

  “Not too surprising. Alex goes through three cell phones per year, at least.”

  “Artistic temperament?”

  “Complete lack of attention to detail.”

  “Unlike his sister,” Carol grumbled, “who can’t let anything slide. How late were you here last night? And where have you been this morning? I had to drink all the coffee myself. Gave me the shakes.”

  “I got Patty to clear my way to collect samples this afternoon. I want to hit at least one of the three places that got asbestos removal permits but never closed them out. I figure if the job had been completed, the stuff wouldn’t be on Brian Johnson’s shoes.”

  “Unless they did a really crappy job.”

  “True. But it’s a place to start. Plus two are being done by the same company. I don’t know what that could have to do with anything, though. I doubt drug dealers are expanding into asbestos removal.”

  “Diversification is the key to survival in the modern business world,” Carol said piously.

  “I think it’s more likely that someone who works in asbestos removal is tipping off a pal to where there might be a handy, unoccupied space to use for business meetings.”

  “I like the idea of corporate drug dealers bet—no, wait, I don’t.”

  “Then I reviewed my photos of Viktor—Severin—the guy from the bridge. The human trafficker. He had a mark on his back, and—”

  “Turn around, looks like you have company.”

  Maggie looked up to see Jack Renner hesitating in the doorway, glancing around as if he expected to see dissected animals and grinning skulls.

  And the mark looked like handcuffs, she thought to herself . Like the same pattern of half-circles I just saw on Patty Wildwood’s arm, one solid, one with a slight inner edge where the plain curved bar fits inside.

  Like the pair every cop carries.

  She said, “Where’s Riley?”

  “He’s interviewing Masiero’s landlady.”

  “Oh.” She hesitated long enough for both Jack Renner and Carol to stare at her oddly, then turned to grab the supplies she’d already assembled. She told Carol to keep her posted on the baby pool, and left the lab.

  They rode the elevator down in silence. No doubt Jack would attribute her reticence to the awkward dinner they’d shared, and not to her sudden concern over why both Kevlar and an impression from handcuffs would be found on a man who had not even been in police custody. Of course people in violent trades had also discovered the beauty of body armor and she wouldn’t put it past someone like Viktor to use handcuffs on his victims, but he had hardly been driving his own body around and with all the injuries on that poor battered girl’s body, ligature marks had not been—

  “Where to?” Jack asked as they reached the parking garage. It was, as parking garages always were, dimly lit and oppressive. She stayed by the lit elevator to hold up her list and point out the first address she wanted to hit, a set of condos at the corner of Chester and 30th.

  Jack glanced at the paper and did a bit of a double take.

  “Something wrong?” Maggie asked.

  “It’s just . . . it’s not the first on the list.”

  “Yes?” She didn’t feel inclined to give him any explanations, since he didn’t seem particularly good at them himself.

  He studied her for a moment, brown eyes questioning and a little hard. She tried not to flinch. What was it about this man? Sometimes he seemed appealingly hapless, and other times he seemed—

  Dangerous.

  The door to the elevator slid shut, leaving them in gloom.

  Jack reached to his back pocket and pulled out a set of keys. “Let’s go.”

  Three minutes later they emerged onto the street, but that didn’t make her feel any more comfortable. The interior of the Grand Marquis seemed every bit as airless as the garage and the elevator had.

  The dash did not have the built-in platform for a laptop, and the vehicle did not have the extra lighting or the mesh cage between the front and back seats. “Is this your personal car?”

  “No, I got it from the pool. Riley took our assigned to the landlady’s.” He sounded unhappy about it. Men and their cars.

  It seemed odd that even a pool car wouldn’t have the extra lighting and a siren, but perhaps it had been used for undercover work. Nothing gave a cop away faster than a large round searchlight mounted on the driver’s side door.

  He waited exactly two traffic lights before saying, “I am sorry about bailing last night.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Maggie said, by which she meant, of course, worry about it.

  “I thought I saw my—my neighbor’s daughter. She disappeared three months ago, and he’s been beside himself.”

  “Oh.” Maggie turned to look at him from the passenger seat. “Was it her?”

  “No. It took me two blocks to catch up with her, but no, it wasn’t.”

  “That’s too bad.”

  “I came back, but you had gone.”

  Not unless it took you an awfully long time to walk four blocks, Maggie thought, remembering her heavy dessert. Jack Renner, it seemed, was a liar.

  So he had an issue with women. Not her problem, but it certainly made for an awkward working relationship. She cracked the window, but still felt as if she couldn’t draw a deep breath until they reached their first address and she got out of the car into the crisp spring air.

  The condominium units had, unexpectedly, been completed, the asbestos removed and the fixtures updated. A coat of paint and new carpeting and voilà, all but two of the units were currently rented. The building manager had no idea why the asbestos permit had not been closed out but felt certain all the other ones had. He was quite sure that all necessary inspections had been completed and passed. Quite certain. He told them so at least four times.

  And the renovations had not included granite countertops. But they had put in molded forms similar to Corian, equally durable and attractive and they did have two units still available if they were interested or knew anyone who might be interested in affordable but trendy downtown living—

  She gave Jack the next address, a building on Lakeshore Boulevard, and though she watched carefully he didn’t bat an eye this time.

  Sun glinted off the waves as she got out of the car, and she couldn’t resist taking a few minutes to see how close she could get to the water. The wind kicked it up a little but she put up wit
h the spray to watch the lake swirl around the rocks lining the shore.

  “The guy’s here,” Jack called from the lot behind her, sounding impatient. He had stayed by the car.

  The owner’s representative who had arrived to let them in promptly found a broken pane of glass in the rear door. Distressed at the damage, he tried to use his large set of keys to open the door for them but Maggie wouldn’t let him touch it.

  Wind off the lake bit through her Windbreaker as she brushed black powder around the knob and doorframe. She didn’t expect much—any fingerprints on the door wouldn’t last long exposed to the sometimes-brutal lake weather—and found nothing except smears and water drops. Nothing on the inside of the door, either, though it and the hallway carpeting seemed fairly clean for an area that should have been water-soaked on a regular basis for who knew how long.

  The representative led the way into the building and promptly discovered another broken door, putting his pudgy, moist hands all over it before Maggie could shoo him away. Then Jack shooed Maggie, rather more gently, to the rear before entering the room, gun not exactly drawn but with his hand on its butt. The studio apartment had only a bathroom and a closet; both were promptly checked and “cleared” and then she could enter.

  At first the room seemed bare, with nothing but dirty windows, fresh cabinets, and no flooring. The counters were the standard laminate, not granite. Upon closer inspection she found two dead cockroaches and some mouse droppings. The windows were intact, no signs that they had been recently opened or tampered with. Jack wandered about, apparently bored—cops and their attention span, and in truth there wasn’t much to look at. The building representative stayed in the doorway, in case armed gang members might suddenly materialize from the baseboards.

  Maggie walked a quick grid, trying to determine why someone would break into this room in particular. As a meeting place it had the advantage of privacy, but would be cold in the winter and dark after nightfall. Then, somewhat near the center of the room, she found two small holes in the plywood flooring. About an inch apart, they were too large for a sunken nail and too small for a knot or some such thing . . . she crouched to study them more closely.