Blunt Impact

by Lisa Black

  ‘Distinctly.’ Angela sat next to him at the metal table, hands folded over a Manila file in front of her. ‘When did you lose it, Mr Novosek?’

  ‘If I knew that I probably wouldn’t have lost it. All I can tell you is that at some point I looked down and it wasn’t there, and I didn’t have time to retrace my steps. I had too many other things to deal with.’

  Frank said, ‘Oh, we know. We were there, picking the pieces of Samantha Zebrowski up off a concrete slab.’

  Novosek blanched, but only by a shade or two. Either he was getting used to the memory or self-preservation now crowded out any feelings of regret.

  A loud noise blasted in the hallway outside, stopped, and blasted again; probably a nail gun or sander. The county had finally decided to spend a few bucks on fixing the holes in the walls and getting some new paint and the department had been torn up for months. Frank had gotten used to skirting the equipment but now it annoyed him; he didn’t want the bustle to make Novosek feel at home.

  So he said: ‘You don’t like having to let girls do a man’s job, do you?’

  ‘Oh, please.’

  ‘Don’t like when these uppity females throw equal rights in your face, just so they can take a job away from a guy who really needs it?’

  ‘That’s completely untrue.’ Novosek said this calmly but with a clipped manner that belied the anger lurking within him. ‘I have always treated the women who work for me exactly like the men. I don’t care who it is, what they’ve got in their pants, what color their skin is, what church they go to. If they do their work right, they’re OK by me.’

  ‘That’s very nice,’ Angela said. ‘That’s exactly what you should say. Unfortunately that’s not exactly what you do, because three times women have sued you for failing to prevent a hostile work environment. One said –’ Angela opened the Manila file and made them wait while she located a particular phrase – ‘that she was groped and manhandled by three co-workers while on your job.’

  ‘That’s true.’

  The detectives blinked. ‘True?’

  ‘Yes. She was, and I fired the guys. Two were just jerks, but one had a record that Personnel didn’t catch, so she’s suing everyone from the building owner on down. Just because I got caught in that net doesn’t mean it was my fault. I put a stop to it as soon as she told me. I never harassed Sam and I would have taken steps if she had told me one of my guys had.’

  ‘What about the other two cases? One said—’

  ‘I know what they said,’ he interrupted, his face growing red. ‘You know how many women I’ve had work for me over the years? The last time I had to go to court I looked it up. Thirty-five. Thirty-three of them were good workers who did a good job, reliable, pretty tough. Two were lazy bitches who saw an opportunity to cash in. In both cases they worked a week or two and next thing I know I get a subpoena. They never made a complaint to me or to the guys they worked with. Their stories are invented out of whole cloth but you know what? You can’t find a judge who will simply say, you’re making this up. Because it sounds so believable, doesn’t it? Women in a man’s environment, the men will get hostile. Everyone knows construction workers are a bunch of pigs anyway. So no matter how many times they don’t prove their case, it keeps getting shuffled to another court. And I keep getting subpoenas.’

  He sounded pretty convincing, Frank had to admit as plumes of powdered plaster wafted under the door. And it could be the gospel truth. Unfortunately his innocence in sexual harassment cases said absolutely nothing about his innocence of murder. ‘Speaking of subpoenas . . . our excellent secondary team canvassed your employees yesterday. You probably saw them. They spoke to each and every person who works at your job site.’

  ‘I hope you cops will be so talkative when the county exec asks me why the new jail is behind schedule. He takes the completion date as gospel. I wouldn’t be surprised if he killed Sam himself just so he could take back five thousand dollars a day from what he owes me.’

  ‘That’s not funny,’ Angela pointed out.

  ‘No,’ he said, his voice as firm as the beams in his building. ‘It isn’t.’

  ‘They interviewed each person, at their homes if need be –’ Frank went on as if the other two hadn’t spoken – ‘except for three. Guys named Johnson, Rodriguez, and Stears. One is an ironworker, one a pipefitter, one an electrician.’

  ‘Uh-huh,’ Novosek said.

  ‘They couldn’t find them. Johnson, Rodriguez and Stears did not have a correct address, phone, or social security number.’

  ‘Hmmph,’ was Novosek’s only comment.

  ‘Do you have any explanation for that?’

  ‘Only that I am building a building, not a security detail for the President. Guys show up and turn a wrench, that’s all I know. I can’t do a background investigation of each one, which is how I got that sexual predator on my crew. I give them a form and they fill it out. I’m not going to follow them home to verify their address.’

  A long protest for some missing HR information. ‘Sam and Kyle both worked in cement.’

  Chris Novosek seemed to examine this statement from all angles before agreeing. ‘Concrete, yeah.’

  ‘Weird that both dead people at your site worked at the same job, isn’t it?’

  ‘It’s weird that they’re dead at all.’

  ‘How many concrete people do you have?’

  ‘Seven, including Sam, Kyle and Todd. But they’re the only finishers.’

  ‘Can you think of any reason Sam would have had asbestos and silica on her clothing when she died?’

  ‘Huh? No. Well, silica, yes – that’s used as a strengthener in the cement, so that’s around, at least. But there’s no asbestos at my site. It’s not used in anything any more – obviously.’

  ‘Could it have been left over from the previous building?’ Angela asked softly, in what Frank thought of as her sweet voice.

  Novosek didn’t think at all about that one. ‘I don’t see how. Most of it was removed before demolition. It’s impossible to get it all out, yes, but the entire building was razed and carted away. I can’t see how there could be enough around for Sam to have gotten it on her clothes.’ A glimmer of faint hope came into his eyes. ‘She must have been somewhere else first. She was somewhere else that night.’

  Frank dashed it. ‘I’m sure she was a couple of someplace elses. But she died at your site.’

  Novosek’s shoulders slumped.

  Frank ping-ponged the subject matter again. ‘Kyle Cielac and Todd Grisham.’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘They gay?’

  Novosek snorted loud enough to echo in the small room. ‘No.’

  ‘You sure? Todd seemed awfully broken up this morning. They don’t hit on Sam. They don’t seem to have girlfriends.’

  ‘Todd had a girlfriend. They broke up a couple weeks ago.’

  Angela said, still being soft: ‘Yesterday you couldn’t possibly know the personal details of your workers’ lives. Today you know when a concrete finisher dumped his girl.’

  ‘She dumped him,’ Novosek explained. ‘Right after Todd gave her a check to pay for breast implants as a six-month anniversary present. The minute that check cleared, he got a Dear John text and now she’s shaking her new boobs at some other guy. Believe me, the entire site heard that story.’

  ‘OK. What about Kyle?’

  He stopped laughing and shrugged his shoulders. ‘Kyle liked Sam.’

  ‘You just said—’

  ‘I said nobody harassed Sam, and they certainly didn’t. Kyle probably told you he never asked her out, and he probably hadn’t. Because he liked her. The serious kind of like. I caught him looking at her one day, and that told me everything I needed to know.’

  Angela raised one eyebrow. ‘From a look?’

  ‘The look. The look a guy gives a woman when he’s so crazy hot in love with her that he can’t talk about it, so he looks confused and tongue-tied and soft and a little awed to have finally found what
he’s been searching for, this woman that’s going to fill the empty space in his heart, and over it all is this sad sort of aura because the poor dumb mope is one-hundred percent certain that he hasn’t got a chance, because that girl is way too good for him and always will be.’ He looked at Frank, suddenly. ‘You know what it is.’

  Frank gulped.

  At least Angela didn’t notice. She asked why Kyle hadn’t simply asked Sam out, then. They were both single.

  ‘They worked together. Makes things awkward if she says no, possibly makes things even more awkward if she says yes. Maybe he wanted to wait until the job was over. Guys like that, they’ve always got a million reasons to stay miserable instead of getting off their ass and taking a chance.’

  Another gaze at Frank.

  Just as the cop wished Novosek would keep his keen insight into the male psyche to himself, the man pressed his advantage. ‘Can I go now?’

  Angela picked up her file, tapped its bottom on the table in time with the hammering in the next room. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Is my site cleared? Can I get the guys back to work now?’

  ‘That’s a lot of blood to clean up,’ Angela said. ‘Biohazard, you know.’

  Novosek scowled. ‘It’s going to be a jail. I’m sure that won’t be the last blood spilled there.’

  The two partners sat for a moment without speaking after he left. Frank pondered ways to monitor the looks on his own face without constant reference to a pocket mirror as Angela said, ‘Maybe we’re back to a love triangle. Todd’s a free man, turns his attentions to Sam. Kyle’s tongue is hanging out for her. One of them meets her after hours and things don’t go well. The other figures it out, demands a private meeting on neutral ground.’

  ‘Kyle winds up in the elevator pit.’

  ‘Because Todd took revenge on Kyle for killing Sam? Because Kyle tried to take revenge for Todd killing Sam, or Kyle had to be shut up because he knew? Neither of them killed her but Todd made the accusation, so Kyle attacked and Todd defended himself?’

  ‘Only problem is, we had already decided that Todd is our least likely suspect, based on his reaction this morning.’

  Angela sighed.

  So Frank went back to the project manager and his missing ID badge. Yes, a lot of debris found its way into the elevator pit, but still – an ID badge. And Chris Novosek wouldn’t win any awards for his ability to lie. When he was on certain ground, his court cases, the presence of asbestos, he spoke quickly and confidently. But he was much less convincing on the murders of Samantha Zebrowski and Kyle Cielac.

  A young black cop with round glasses, a tattoo and two Manila files came in, dropped the files on the table between the two partners then turned to leave.

  ‘Jeff,’ Frank said.

  ‘It’s the financials on your two vics. There’s seven cases ahead of you, but you all asked so prettily I moved you to the front of the line. Plus it’s a county property, so I can’t say it was all out of the goodness of my big heart—’

  ‘No, I was going to ask – what’s that on your neck? The tattoo?’

  The kid brightened. ‘It’s Shelly. My laptop.’

  Frank peered. Sure enough, the squarish ink looked like a computer. ‘You not only gave your laptop a name, you had it tattooed on your neck?’

  ‘Best girl I’ve ever had,’ Jeff said, solemn as a judge, and left.

  ‘I hear you,’ Frank muttered.

  ‘Wait until Shelly crashes and fries her motherboard,’ Angela said, paging through one of the files. ‘Then he’ll be in here with gauze wrapped around his jugular. Look at this.’

  Frank leaned over, trying hard to see the piece of paper without getting close enough to smell her shampoo, or perfume or deodorant or whatever it was.

  ‘Kyle had direct deposit.’

  ‘Good planning. It’s very handy.’

  ‘Paid every two weeks, roughly the same amounts. Except there’s extra deposits. Six hundred dollars, once a month for the past two months.’

  ‘Second job?’

  ‘Could be. What about Sam?’

  He scanned the sheets in the other folder. ‘Nothing. Just her paycheck and credit-card bill payments. She lived with her mom, so no rent, no utilities.’ They read in silence for a few minutes. Then Frank said, ‘Wait. Last month she had a deposit – five hundred dollars even. Cash. Not her paycheck.’

  ‘That the only one?’

  ‘Yeah. A hundred bucks less than Kyle . . . If it were going to become a monthly thing, she would have been receiving more next week.’

  ‘Could be anything,’ Angela pointed out. ‘She could have sold something, pawned a piece of jewelry.’

  ‘Then why let it sit in her bank account?’

  ‘Saving up for something?’

  ‘Maybe. You know who else I’d like to check out?’

  ‘Todd Grisham?’

  ‘Yep. And Chris Novosek.’

  ‘We’re going to have to be nice to Jeff.’

  ‘Maybe we should bring some flowers for Shelly,’ Frank suggested, and refused to acknowledge the flush of pleasure it gave him when his partner chuckled.

  Unfortunately, his phone rang and spoiled the mood.

  And what he heard when he answered really spoiled it.

  ‘What?’ Angela asked, watching his face.

  He put one hand over the receiver. ‘It’s Mrs Zebrowski. Ghost is missing. She called upstairs to her this morning, got nothing, finally had a neighbor come over to go up and check. The kid’s gone.’

  TWENTY-THREE

  ‘Idon’t think you’re supposed to be doing that.’

  Theresa looked up. Her helpful guide from the previous day, Jack, stood on the other side of the elevator shaft, hard hat slipping to one side as he cocked his head at her. The sky behind him glowed a malevolent gray, and a hint of thunder rumbled in from the lake.

  Theresa sat with her feet dangling over the edge, ninety feet up, stunned for a moment into paralysis by Frank’s phone call. Where could the child be? Frank assured her that he had a BOLO – Be On the LookOut – out so that every patrol officer in the city had Ghost at the top of their to-do list, but that didn’t comfort her. What did comfort her, and then only very slightly, were two facts: one, that Ghost admittedly made a habit of touring the city unescorted, and two, that surely Kyle’s death and Samantha’s occurred in some sort of tandem and, as far as she knew, Kyle and Ghost had no connection whatsoever. That helped her swallow her panic long enough to finish her current job and let the officers do theirs. For the moment.

  ‘I’m not supposed to do a lot of things,’ she told the ironworker.

  ‘I could’ve guessed that. I mean, no work in the pit without a safety harness.’ He carried a short steel beam perched on his shoulder like a bag of dog food, but when he tossed it down the resulting boom made her realize it had to weigh as much as a fully grown man.

  She glanced at the pit, which she really hadn’t wanted to do since the bottom of it currently sat nine stories below her, where a white-suited private cleaner bleached down the stain from Kyle Cielac’s blood. The distance made her head swim and she sat back on to the relative safety of the open concrete floor. ‘That’s probably a good plan.’

  ‘Yeah, OSHA thinks so. Probably because eighty-three construction workers died last year in falls. What are you doing?’

  ‘Same thing as with Sam. Trying to figure out what floor Kyle Cielac fell from.’ Several of the upper floors had girders across the pit, separating the three elevators into distinct channels. The odds were good that Kyle would have struck at least one or two on his way down. If he were lucky it would have knocked him unconscious, unable to picture the rebar at the bottom of the pit as he plunged helplessly toward it.

  The ironworker also watched the crime scene clean-up staff. ‘They’re lucky it’s not a foot deep in crumpled pop cans. Guys love to throw stuff down the elevator pit.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Human nature. You know the first thing a guy will do
– provided there aren’t too many females around – when he finds himself high atop a deep hole?’

  ‘Do I want to?’

  ‘Spit. Or pick up a rock and drop it down. Why do you think people throw coins into wells? It’s not to make a wish, it’s just to watch them fall. Human nature.’

  ‘Oh. Well, onward and upward.’

  ‘I’ll go with you.’ Jack strolled across the beam as unthinkingly as a gymnast, except that gymnasts weren’t ninety feet above the ground with only punji sticks for a mat.

  Her heart beat faster just to watch him. ‘But – hey – what about the eighty-three construction workers?’

  ‘They’re not me,’ he said, grinning. ‘Relax, I do this all the time. If I start to slip I’ll just grab the beam. It’s not like I’m over the –’ at the last moment he must have remembered Sam, and the smile faded from his face – ‘edge. Getting anywhere? I mean with who the killer is? I have a theory about Sam. I think she may have come here to get the forms.’

  ‘Forms?’

  ‘The temporary forms for the flooring pours. They keep the concrete contained as it’s poured so it doesn’t spread out too fast, keeps the drying steady. They’re made of aluminum so they’re easy to move. All I’m saying is we seem to keep getting more shipments of those.’

  ‘You think Sam was stealing them?’ She lowered her voice as they entered the stairwell.

  ‘No, I’m saying it’s a theory.’

  ‘And brought her daughter along to help carry?’ Though it would explain the lateness of the hour.

  ‘It’s not really stealing. They have to be thrown out after they get too caked up, so technically they’re garbage. You used to be able to make a lot of money in garbage from a site, back in the day.’ He pulled a pack of gum out of his torn jeans and chewed thoughtfully.

  ‘Really? Like how?’

  A few more chews and he produced an example. ‘My dad knew an elevator man who had to do a mod – a modernization – in an existing building, so on every floor they had to install doors around the elevator to keep the tenants from trying to use them. Four months later he had a storage shed in his backyard – made entirely out of doors. I’m telling you, I’m just waiting for the lab floor here to put in the counters – I could really use some leftover countering for my kitchen remodel. A renovation I did once, really old building, all the old escalator motors were taken out, and a buddy of mine made a couple hundred a week selling them for scrap. The company didn’t care – the company was happy that they didn’t have to pay someone to haul it away.’ His expression faded. ‘Things are different now, though.’