by Lisa Black
‘Between the breakaway snapping and the pristine, fresh print, there’s no way I’m going to believe – and there’s no way a jury is going to believe – that you didn’t push Kyle Cielac down that hole. The only question left is why. Because of Sam, or because he knew about your one point six million in concrete?’
‘Why, Chris?’ Angela added softly.
And then they watched the man break.
‘Neither! I didn’t mean to push him! I just went back there to look at the pipes – there’s something funny about the guys doing it, and I can’t figure out what it is – and yes, to keep an eye on the place. I thought maybe the killer would come back, I thought maybe that protester would come back – I don’t know what I thought. But suddenly Kyle popped up in front of my flashlight, scared the crap out of me, and he starts talking about the concrete and how Kobelski switched out the whole book, that was how he did it, and how could I do something like that, risk lives just to make a few more bucks. He was hot and I – I had no friggin’ idea what he was talking about, only that I’ve had one problem after another on this job until I go home every night just wanting to shoot myself. I just wanted him to shut up – and I pushed him. I didn’t mean to hurt him, I just wanted him to remember that I am the boss.’ He dropped his face to his hands; a muffled sob escaped. ‘I had no idea the elevator pit was right there. It was darker than hell and I had nothing but a little flashlight. How could I have known?’
‘So he fell,’ Angela finished for him.
The project manager wiped away tears with two angry swipes. ‘I didn’t know what happened at first; it was as if the darkness just swept him away. He grabbed my badge, I stepped forward, waving around this light that’s practically no brighter than a candle, and then I saw the hole. I couldn’t see the bottom.’
‘Then what did you do?’
‘I went out to my car and drove away. Next thing I know I’m in the parking lot of my old high school – I have no idea why, I haven’t been there since I graduated, but I couldn’t go home, I could never have kept this from my wife. I finally snuck in about three, changed clothes, went and drank coffee at Denny’s and tried to figure out how to act when I got to the site that morning.’
‘OK,’ Frank said. Maybe he hadn’t mean to kill Kyle Cielac, or maybe he couldn’t admit that to himself. Not yet. Now to wrap up details before the lawyers descended. ‘Two questions. You said Kyle said Kobelski switched the book. What book?’
Novosek dried his eyes. ‘I didn’t know what he meant at the time, it just sounded like gibberish – but if you are serious about this concrete thing, then he must have meant the ASTM spec book.’
Give me a drug deal gone bad, Frank thought to himself, I am sick to death of people using terms I don’t understand. ‘What?’
‘The concrete is tested at the site before it’s poured. We have to do a slump test, where a sample from the truck is poured into a metal container—’
‘Yeah, I got that part.’
‘And the inspector, Kobelski, checks the slump diameter against the ASTM specs. They’re kept in a book near the main drafting table, south-west corner of the building.’
‘This book locked up?’ Angela asked.
‘No, it looks like a skinny, beat-up phone book. If someone took it we’d just get another one.’
‘That’s how he did it,’ Frank said. ‘He didn’t have to fake the test, because he’d already faked the regs. Can’t wait to tell Mr County Special Investigator about that one.’
Novosek swore, low but with feeling.
‘What’s the matter?’
‘Those bastards sold me crappy concrete! That building would have – is going to – cave in in a few years and whose reputation will be ruined? Mine, that’s who! If I get my hands around that little runt’s neck – I’m going to have to rip out the floors . . . hell, I might have to take it down to the dirt and start over – oh, shit!’
‘Time out, Chris, time out. I’m sure it’s very bad but it’s also no longer your problem, since you’ll be in jail for murder. But first, my second question – if you didn’t know about the concrete, why did you kill Samantha Zebrowski?’
Chris Novosek gazed at him, a man so pummeled by current events that he could barely spit out another word. Yet he managed to ask, in dazed, bewildered voice: ‘Sam? Why would I kill Sam?’
THIRTY-SEVEN
Theresa had identified the fingerprint and the powder on the shirt. She had tried to find a phone number for Ghost’s mother, without success. Eventually she would run out of reasons to stick around waiting for a little girl to call again and have to go home. She could tell the night receptionist and deskmen that, this time, it was OK to give out her cell phone number. But first she decided to take another look at the asbestos from Samantha Zebrowski’s shirt. Maybe she could help Frank sew up the case against Novosek even more tightly.
But first she tried Rachael again, hitting the speed dial almost absently. Asbestos fibers came in several varieties—
‘Hi, Mom!’
‘Hi . . . wow . . . you sound like you’re in a good mood.’
‘Well, yeah, I guess. I’m about ready for that history test, I know my dates and everything. Oh, and I’m going to Kia’s house this weekend, by the way. She says she’s got a pool and a cute brother, so how can I resist, right?’
‘Sounds like a plan.’
Her daughter chattered on, about the price of doing laundry, that they had tuna salad in the cafeteria, that she had gotten her period, that Sartre, in her opinion, had been vastly overrated, to the point that Theresa began to wonder if her daughter had begun to experiment with more than just hairstyles while at college. The thought made her deeply unhappy, but as she listened even more closely, she had to admit that Rachael sounded utterly sensible and utterly sober. She just sounded like, well, like Rachael.
‘—and then Jenna said – oh wait, Mom, I got a click. I’ll talk to you later, OK?’
Theresa said sure and love you and slowly snapped the phone shut. Maybe she had just been reading too much into the whole thing. Teenage girls were moody, everyone – but everyone – knew that. Some moods lasted longer than others. There would be other inexplicable phases and unexplained silences and that was just part of life. Rachael was a person. She had a right to her secrets. Just keep the door always open—
Period.
Since when did a girl sound so perfectly OK with getting her period, especially when she faced a weekend of swimming near a handsome boy?
Theresa tried not to follow that chain of thought to its logical conclusion and failed miserably.
When the girl had been worried she might not get it at all.
Theresa’s desk phone rang. She ignored it.
Secrets were inevitable. Life was inevitable. What mattered that her daughter was her daughter and she was relatively safe and relatively happy. And the lines of communication, though slightly clogged, were still open.
Right.
The desk phone rang again. She snatched it up and all but barked her name. The night receptionist said, ‘You still here?’
‘Since I just picked up the phone, I’d say that’s – yes, I’m here.’
‘Good. ’Cause there’s a girl in the lobby for you.’
Boonie unlocked the back of the van, feeling damp. He couldn’t tell if the rain had arrived in a thin mist or if the humidity made him sweat more than usual. Copper was not a lightweight metal and even narrow pipes got heavy when you carried enough of them. He and Damon had filled the van from side to side but they didn’t want to overload it until the rusted frame fell apart or until the sagging rear end attracted attention, so Boonie went to make a delivery and Damon remained behind to stage another load at the entrance to the parking area. They had plenty of time. As suspected, no one had returned to the site. Their co-workers were scared, and the cops – ‘I’m not complaining, mind,’ Damon had told Boonie ‘It’s just, two murders in two days here. You’d think they’d kind of want to keep
an eye on the place.’
‘They done,’ Boonie had panted. Inside the van, he’d grab one end of the pipes and slide them down to the floor between his feet, keeping the noise of the process to a minimum. The street lights, safety lights and full moon provided more than they needed to work. ‘Once they take their pictures and move the body and pick up their little things with little tweezers, once they take down that yellow tape, they’re done. They don’t come back. They go on to the next one.’ Sometimes you had to explain these things to Damon. Not a bad guy, but sometimes he just didn’t seem to know nothing about how the world worked. ‘Besides, nobody wants to be around a huge pile of metal spikes in the middle of a thunderstorm. No one’s gonna be out and about tonight at all.’
‘Like I said –’ Damon had also panted, to Boonie’s pleasure – ‘I ain’t complaining.’
Twenty minutes later Boonie moved the pipe a second time, wishing they could take them straight to the salvage yard instead of eventually having to move the entire load again. This wouldn’t have occurred to the boss, who sat on his lawn chair throne next to the open doorway. Or maybe it did.
The boss’s errand boy helped Boonie move the pipe; the second-in-command and the bodyguard flanked the lawn chair. No one said anything; nothing needed to be said. When the cargo van stood vacant once again, Boonie hopped in the driver’s seat and went back downtown, to commit more felony theft within sight of the Cleveland Police Department. The idea gave him a chuckle.
He parked the van next to the growing pile of copper pipe on the outside of the site fence. Cops doing a spot check might notice it, but with the gate shut they probably wouldn’t get out of the car to investigate. People were used to seeing stuff piled around a construction site and besides, like the boss said, every investment required some risk.
He shut off the van, unlocked the back door and slipped inside the gate. No way would he start loading that stuff by himself. Too noisy and his back was already hurting.
The place was crazy dark. The moon had gone behind a cloud, or one of the security lights had burnt out; he felt sure it had been light enough to see the debris chip piles, like the one he had just tripped over, when he left. And quiet; the most silent he had ever known the place to be. No movement, no wind, not even a car driving by outside the fence. Boonie felt a tiny frisson of – not fear, exactly, more like worry – brush over the back of his neck.
He stepped around the I-beams and up on to the foundation. He had to pick his way even more carefully there, feeling around with his feet before each step without letting on that he was doing so. He pictured Damon sitting at ease, eyes adjusted to the dark, watching him stumble around with his hands stretched out like he was blind or something. The idea made Boonie cut loose with a curse, adding, ‘Where you at?’
No response. The breeze picked up, carrying the scent of concrete dust and a faint, metallic odor that seemed both familiar and strange at once. Boonie reached the cache of copper pipe, accidentally kicking one free so that it rang out with a startled clap. He cursed again, and finally risked a quiet shout: ‘D! Where you at?’
No answer.
Maybe Damon had gone to take a leak. Maybe he’d walked over to Prospect to chat up some ladies. Maybe he’d gone to Michael Symon’s place on Fourth to have a steak, who the hell knew. Boonie moved off to his right, avoiding the more well-lit east side of the site. One thing was for sure: he was not loading that pipe by his own damn self. He would hunt up his partner first.
He stubbed his other toe on a gangbox and nearly fell over the slag crate, but made it back to the edge of the foundation, albeit on the south corner now. Still no sound.
Boonie stepped down the short embankment of gravel and sand and chunks of concrete, beginning to chafe at the waste of time. He wanted to get the next two loads done and get out of there, get some sleep before they had to come back the next morning. He looked forward to that, acting all innocent: ‘Man, the copper pipe got stolen? Shit!’ Of course with murders and the boss being arrested, maybe no one would even notice the pipe, which would be even funnier. The idea lifted his spirits until he plunged into the particularly dark valley between the I-beams and the crane and tripped over something.
He seemed to have both tripped and slipped at the same time, and just as this began to ruin his mood the rest of his mind put two and two together – a pliable object surrounded by a pool of liquid – and came up with horror.
‘Damon!’
Had to be him, the long shirt he always wore over his tee, the Ralph Lauren cologne he practically bathed in. The more Boonie patted and prodded, trying to revive his friend, the more the body crackled like a bag of broken chips and his own hands grew slick with blood. He tried to turn him over, but each limb and part moved on its own and he gave up. At the end he simply crouched, rocking on his feet in time to the wind’s keening wail. Once he realized the sound was coming from him, he shut up. He had to tell the boss. The boss would know what to do.
He got halfway back to the van before it occurred to him to look up.
THIRTY-EIGHT
‘She’s totally worn out,’ Theresa told Ian over the phone. ‘She’s soaking wet from the rain and I think she ran here – all the way from East Thirty-First. What is that, two, three miles?’
‘At least. What’s her mental state?’
‘Not much better. She’s nearly hysterical, keeps sobbing about the shadow man being her father and he hurt Nana. The guy was in her house, Ian.’
‘Her father? And what about Mrs Zebrowski?’
‘I called Dispatch, they’re sending an ambulance.’
‘Well, that’s best of course – just remember that in Ghost’s state, we have to take any statements with a healthy grain of salt. Have you heard back from Dispatch?’
‘Not yet. I only just called them, before I called you. I can’t get a hold of Frank – he’s in the middle of interrogating Chris Novosek. Otherwise I’d call him.’
‘Of course,’ he said with a sharper tone, then added, ‘At least she’s safe.’
‘No, Ian, she’s not. Because if Chris Novosek killed Sam and Kyle, then who attacked Ghost and her grandmother? Novosek has been under police observation all day and in custody for the past two hours.’
‘Maybe he has a partner?’ Ian mused aloud.
Theresa held the cell phone between shoulder and cheek as she rummaged in the trace evidence department closet for her emergency sweater, a fuzzy red cardigan. It smelled a bit like disinfectant but she wrapped it around the trembling child, now curled up in her desk chair. Ghost was too exhausted to eat, drink, or even talk. It had taken all her strength to reach the medical examiner’s office and what little reserve she had left she used to beg Theresa to send help to Nana. After that she’d collapsed into an unresponsive ball of trembling flesh.
‘I don’t know, Theresa,’ Ian Bauer said. ‘But keeping her safe is the top priority. After that we have to get a complete description from her. A composite sketch is probably all we need to break this whole case.’
‘Exactly.’ She sighed and moved out of earshot. ‘And we have to hurry. He knows she can identify him, which means he needs to kill her. He already killed two able-bodied adults, why would he stop at a child? Ian – can you get an artist? I don’t know who to call.’
‘OK, OK. Look – bring her here.’
‘Where?’
‘My apartment. The police department victim advocate areas are a disaster right now and all the noise and dust will make it impossible for an already traumatized child to concentrate. I will get the artist to come here – with luck Becky will be on call – and I can take Ghost’s statement. By the time we’re done with that, maybe your cousin will have gotten some more details out of Novosek and we can figure out where to go from there.’
‘That sounds like a plan.’
‘With luck the grandmother will go to a hospital instead of the morgue and we can take the girl there, have a doctor check her out at the same time. Ready for the add
ress?’
Theresa repeated it back to him, slid the phone into her purse and very gently pulled the nearly comatose girl to her feet. ‘Come on, Ghost. We’re going.’
Frank knew the crumbling feeling in his stomach was his case coming apart, showering his budding ulcers with shards of flying debris. ‘You’re trying to tell us you didn’t kill Samantha Zebrowski?’
‘Of course not! Why would I kill Sam? I didn’t even mean to kill Kyle!’
Angela said, ‘You expect us to believe that two different people killed two different victims on two consecutive days at the same location, in the same manner?’
‘I don’t know what you can believe or can not believe, but I never laid a finger on Sam. Why would I?’
‘That’s what we’ve been trying to figure out.’
Novosek spoke with great patience, ‘The night Sam died, I left work at the usual time. I even saw her heading to her car. I was home in time for Live on Five. I never left the house until I came to work the next morning.’
‘And who can verify that?’ Frank tried to put a sneer into it but the pains in his stomach made his voice squeak and ruined the effect. ‘Your wife?’
‘Yeah, my wife. And my neighbor, because I went out and helped him push his lawnmower into his garage when it quit on him at the tree lawn. The sun had just gone down. And my wife’s sister, who’s staying with us for the week. And her son, who’s sleeping on the couch in the living room without a word of complaint because he stays up all night watching pay-per-view because he knows I won’t get the bill until after he’s gone.’
‘Take the remote to bed with you,’ Angela said automatically. ‘So you’re telling us you killed Kyle but not Sam.’
‘For the fifteenth time,’ Novosek said through the fingers over his face, ‘I did not kill Sam. I did not push her. I did not see her. I was not there that night.’
‘You had no motive to kill Sam?’
‘None. I – I cared for Sam.’
‘Then why did you pay her off?’ She slapped two photocopies on to the surface in front of him. ‘You withdrew a thousand dollars from your paycheck in the middle of last month. My ex, he used to take the same amount out in cash every time he got paid. Walking-around money, he called it. For lunch, parking, a magazine, cigarettes. You do the same – five hundred dollars, every two weeks.’
