Blunt Impact Page 6

  Somewhere in the middle of her fourth sentence he had prodded his mind to overcome the suddenly vexing problem of coherent speech. ‘Things will be a lot simpler if she was good and drunk. Misadventure, and the county and the construction company will be off the hook. Any family members will take accident over suicide and hold off suing either group.’

  That little wrinkle came back. He should have just stayed dumb.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘That sounds cold. Mostly I would just hate to think a healthy young woman would want to die this much.’

  She said, ‘I hate to think of making this fall sober. But that’s always a toss-up.’

  ‘What is?’

  ‘Is it better to die with your eyes closed, or open?’

  ‘Better not to die at all,’ Bauer said. ‘I think we should take a look at her car.’

  Shit, he thought. There really had been a girl? It hadn’t been an angel or a demon who looked right up into his face; not a figment of his imagination, but a real child.

  Who had now become a real problem.

  TEN

  Theresa had offered to accompany Frank on his winding trip down twenty-three flights of enclosed concrete steps, but he waved her off; she had her camera and the crime scene kit to carry. And so she wound up with her feet back on solid ground in record time, making conversation with the project manager, that rather unfortunate-looking prosecutor, and the talkative ironworker named Jack.

  ‘We all park on the grass here – that’s her Camry, two over from that beat-up blue pickup. That’s mine. Some idiot busted out my window last week, that’s why the cardboard is in it, but I’m going to get that fixed. We’re allowed to park there ’cause it’s part of the site, and using a lot down here would take half our pay, seems like.’

  Theresa scanned the haphazard rows perched on the lawn of the south-eastern quadrant of the Mall – now a sea of fairly firm mud with only the occasional stubborn blade of new grass clinging to its trampled life. The statue and its water jets called The Fountain of Eternal Life stood only two hundred feet away and had provided no such benefit for Samantha Zebrowski. Future inmates granted windows would have a terrific view. Starting with the public library to the south and pivoting north, they could see the sweeping mall and, beyond it, the Marriott Hotel (tallest building in the city), a sliver of the Justice Center, and then the convention complex and the blue expanse of Lake Erie.

  ‘There’s only about twenty cars here,’ Theresa said. ‘How many people—’

  Novosek rubbed his left forearm again. ‘Fifty-seven at the moment. Close to a hundred and thirty when we get into the later stages, drywall, tile.’

  ‘How many are women? Of the current fifty-seven.’

  ‘Three,’ he said; defensively, as if waiting for her to make something of it. ‘Including Sam.’

  ‘I think we should talk to the other two women. Maybe she would have told them things she didn’t share with the men.’

  ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘Sure. They didn’t work together, though. Thompson is an ironworker and Missy Green is a pipefitter. They might have gone out after hours, but I never noticed them in a huddle here. She worked mostly with the other finishers and concrete workers.’

  ‘Most of the guys take the bus or the rapid, or have their wives drop them,’ Jack went on as if there hadn’t been a digression.

  ‘What about after work? Any favorite hang-outs?’ Theresa asked him.

  Pleased, as she expected, at this show of interest, he named two or three bars within walking distance. ‘But we’re not big drinkers. I know it sort of goes with the persona, but when you’ve been hauling beams or hanging pipe for eight hours you don’t have a lot of energy left over for raising hell. Most guys just want to go home, take a shower, eat more than their body weight in food and put their feet up. Fridays they might feel like partying but on a Monday night there’d be no one there except your hardcore alcoholics.’ The watery eyes widened when he noticed the other three people gazing at him. ‘Not that we have any of those.’

  Prosecutor Bauer glanced at a gaping concrete path that disappeared into the depths of the muddy earth. ‘You’re going to have underground parking?’

  Novosek looked at him, winced, then said: ‘The old building had the underground lots. No point wasting a perfectly good excavation and, like Jack said, city parking is a bitch. It will also have an enclosed sally port for secure prisoner transfer.’

  A burly kid with blond hair approached Novosek with what looked like a phone book wedged under his arm. ‘The slump test was OK.’

  ‘Go ahead, then.’ This didn’t seem to please the project manager much, though, and the guy didn’t move until Novosek looked at him again. ‘Go ahead, pour it. And put the book back. Oh great, there they are.’

  Theresa followed his gaze. Three people, armed with signs and a cooler, stood on the tree lawn between the sidewalk and Rockwell. A fourth person joined them, pointing to the construction site and the cop cars in particular. ‘Who are they?’ Theresa asked.

  ‘Protestors.’

  ‘Oh, I read about that. The school administration building was a historic landmark, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Was it,’ Novosek said with feeling. ‘The old protesters are still fighting about it, petitions, council meetings. The place is gone, rubble, and they’re still bending the mayor’s ear. It was a Walker and Weeks building, like the rest of the group around here – the convention center, the Federal Reserve, the library. All Beaux-Arts.’ He gestured as he talked, waving a hand at each of the graceful stone structures which encircled them. ‘What? I build things for a living. You think I don’t know architecture?’

  ‘No, no,’ Theresa assured him. ‘I just can’t believe they would tear down a Walker and Weeks building.’

  ‘It is kind of a pity, but the building needed too many repairs and the county needed a new jail. They already owned the land, so money trumped history.’

  ‘Not for the first time,’ Ian Bauer murmured.

  ‘But those aren’t them,’ Novosek said before he slumped to a stack of concrete blocks and pulled out a small box. ‘Those are the new ones. Cigarette?’

  ‘No, thank you,’ Theresa said. ‘What do you mean, new?’

  He sighed again. She got the feeling the man needed a vacation, or at least forty-eight straight hours of sleep. ‘Just how I got to thinking of them. The old ones protest our disrespect of the past. The new protestors think we have no respect for the present. This jail has a new design. I mean, new, as in never having been done in the history of the world.’

  ‘You’re using some new building technology—?’

  ‘No, no. Nothing radical about the actual structure, it’s just steel and concrete like anything else. I mean, some eggheads got together and decided that what causes the chronic failure in the rehabilitation of prison inmates is other inmates, and that the most danger to any inmate comes from other inmates. Fighting, shivving, rapes, settling scores left over from the outside – if they’re kept away from each other, that kind of stuff can’t happen. So they’re physically safer when isolated. Then the reason that rehabilitation falls short is that the mopes don’t learn skills for a constructive life, they learn skills to become better criminals. The same habits, the same gangs, the same occupations just transfer from outside to inside and back again. The only way to get them to build up enough of their own identity to be able to break away from all that is to give them a vacuum in which they finally have the freedom to think for themselves. I.e., isolation again. I’m quoting, understand. Nobody asked my opinion on the relative merits of social reform programs. I’m just building the building.’

  Theresa studied the group, which had now grown to six, spanning race, gender and age from a white-haired grandmotherly type to two men, one black, one white, who looked as if they could work as bouncers or perhaps extras on The Wire. Plus a person shaped like a tall barrel with hair to his (her?) waist. All were united in the evil stares they sent in her direction. ‘So the desig
ners think the perfect prison is one where each prisoner is kept in solitary confinement for the duration of their sentence?’

  ‘As I said, I’m just building the building. The cells will be set up with two sections: a bedroom and a small exercise area. How they’re going to exercise without equipment, I don’t know. Supposedly they’re trying to design an indestructible treadmill as we speak.’

  ‘Complete isolation,’ Ian Bauer mused aloud.

  ‘Complete physical isolation. They’ll be able to hear each other and will be able to talk all they want. But never physical. Food will be delivered. Books, supplies, and temporary and highly monitored laptops will be brought to the cells. They’ll actually have more personal space than ever before but no common space. No cafeteria, no library, no prayer meetings. No exercise yard, which should reduce the number of murders to a fraction right there.’

  ‘Like a kennel,’ Theresa said, picturing where she had once had to leave Harry for a brief stay. ‘No wonder they’re protesting. The concrete block cell with a remotely operated door to an outside area. Shoving in dinner through a slot in the door.’

  ‘Exactly like a kennel. The blacks say the man has been trying to get them back in chains since 1865. The Hispanics say they’re treated like dogs everywhere in America and apparently that includes prisons. The whites say it’s barbaric to deny any human simple human interaction. I say maybe it’s more barbaric to toss a guy into a pit of snarling hyenas, but there’s no capital letters at the end of my name. I’m just building the building.’

  Theresa ran one thumbnail along her teeth. ‘So this patch of land was not a happy place even before Samantha’s death.’

  Chris Novosek puffed. ‘You could say that.’

  ‘These protests ever get violent?’

  ‘Not yet. They have to stay off the property and they do. They have to stay off the mall green proper and they do. They put their vitriol in writing and direct it to the prison commission and the city exec.’

  ‘Never a run in with one of your guys?’

  ‘Nope, got to say that for them. They don’t accumulate until after we’ve started and they disperse before we leave for the day. They concentrate on office workers and yuppies who come to eat their lunch on the mall. They’re not stupid, they know enough not to pick a fight with a guy who spends all day lifting very heavy things, and they know no one here is going to sign a petition that might put them out of work, not in this economy. But it won’t be long. They’re growing in numbers and starting to shout insults now and there.’ He didn’t sound bitter toward the protesters, he didn’t even sound particularly unhappy. But then a shadow crossed his face and he said, ‘You think maybe they came in here to kick up their efforts and ran into Sam? Maybe she got caught in the middle?’

  ‘I don’t know. But I’m sure Frank will want to check it out.’

  The man in question reappeared, red-faced and having shed the jacket. He panted: ‘Car is registered in her name. Chief says we don’t need a warrant.’

  Theresa put an arm around him. ‘It’s over here. No matter what we find, you are not making that climb again today.’

  ‘You’re telling me.’

  She rubbed his back. ‘Maybe you need to start running again, cuz.’

  ‘Too hard on the knees. I think I need to start drinking again.’

  ‘You stopped?’ The group made their uneven way towards the parked cars. Bauer glanced back at them with a frown. He probably thought them unprofessional, but Theresa had dropped caring what other people thought on her fortieth birthday and had never looked back.

  Jack led them to the Camry, opening the passenger door with a toss of his shaggy hair. Theresa ruined this gallant flourish when she asked him to please not touch it. She might want to fingerprint the surface.

  Theresa felt torn about the car. If Samantha had come to the building with a boyfriend and that person had then pushed her off the floor, he might have left hairs and fibers behind him in the vehicle which could be picked up with adhesive tape and analyzed. If Samantha had jumped or fallen, then the vehicle and everything in it (excepting a suicide note) became irrelevant. Towing the car to the coroner’s office created an expenditure she would have to justify, but impounding it, or worse yet leaving it to be picked up by family members, would eliminate its current integrity.

  A thorough search, she decided, dusting the doors and rear-view mirror and then a quick taping of the seats and floors should cover all her bases. She could pick up any loose hairs or fibers and then let the vehicle go, because what she didn’t see was blood. No drops on the dirty gray upholstery, no signs of a struggle. Nothing broken or, aside from the collection of stained McDonald’s coffee cups littering all four floor mats, out of place. Neatness, apparently, did not count for much in Samantha Zebrowski’s life, to judge from the interior of her unlocked Camry. Neither did safe driving practices – she had two outstanding speeding tickets and five parking violations, which Frank detailed for them as his breathing slowly returned to normal.

  On the rear passenger side floorboard, tucked under a reusable shopping bag, Theresa found an oversized purse in shiny black vinyl, with large silver-colored rings and clasps. It held a department store of mascara, lip gloss, scratch-off lottery tickets, about fifteen bucks in crumpled bills and loose change, four condoms, two pay stubs and a phone number written in pencil on a scrap of paper. It had been torn from a menu, apparently, since the reverse side read ‘—wich with tomato on rye, $7.95.’ She read the number to Frank but slipped the paper into an envelope to process later for fingerprints.

  ‘She had a passenger,’ Ian Bauer said. ‘Or else the purse would be on the passenger seat, wouldn’t it?’

  Theresa shook her head. ‘She had it tucked underneath the shopping bag. That suggests to me that she didn’t want to carry it but didn’t want to leave it in plain sight and give any passing thieves a reason to break her window.’

  ‘And then leaves the doors unlocked?’

  ‘Doesn’t make sense,’ she agreed. ‘So perhaps she was distracted with a passenger.’

  ‘And if you’re about to kill yourself, why worry about your purse at all?’

  She grinned. ‘You have to understand the long-standing, long-suffering, deeply ingrained relationship between a woman and her purse.’

  Bauer flushed as if she had spoken of thong underwear, and Frank said, ‘That number comes back to city hall.’

  Theresa stopped grinning and blinked at him. ‘What? What department?’

  ‘Switchboard. She could have been trying to talk to the mayor or pay her water bill or ask about one of those parking tickets.’

  Novosek had been watching them work with a reluctant but dutiful gaze. He wasn’t responsible for Samantha Zebrowski’s life, Theresa knew, yet he seemed to feel obligated to observe the processes of her death. Such things came with being the boss. He had sent the hovering Jack back to the steel beams as work resumed in every area except the concrete pad and the twenty-third floor.

  Theresa shut the door, and she and Frank discussed the release of the vehicle for a moment or two. Frank would come by the coroner’s office to get the car keys, which they assumed were in Samantha’s pockets. Then he and Angela would go the extra mile and drive the car to the family rather than make Betty Zebrowski pay to have her dead child’s vehicle towed.

  ‘You can’t get it out of here now?’ Novosek had been about as cooperative as possible, but Frank could tell the shock had begun to fade as more practical matters seeped back in, such as how much of the day had been wasted and how that might affect all future stages of construction.

  ‘No keys,’ Frank said. ‘Plus, we don’t have either permission or probable cause to remove it. Why?’

  ‘It’s just . . .’ The project manager, as large and tough as he looked, squirmed like a schoolboy. ‘When somebody dies on the job, it freaks everyone out. It’s probably the same at your place – if a cop gets shot, don’t you all get jumpy? I’ve got to get that blood off
that pad, and her car sitting here where everyone can see it—’

  ‘I understand,’ Frank said. ‘I’ll do what I can but it’s still going to be a day at least.’

  ‘Yeah, I got it,’ Chris Novosek said. ‘It’s just that here, jumpy can get people hurt.’

  ELEVEN

  Angela returned. As she and Frank headed up the stairwell she said that the county child advocate had arrived and talked to Betty Zebrowski about funeral arrangements and also about living arrangements, which would not be changing. Mrs Zebrowski could handle shopping, cooking and cleaning for the household. The only thing she couldn’t do was climb the steps to the second floor.

  The child advocate had also spoken to Ghost about death and stages of grief.

  ‘How’d she take it?’

  ‘As well as can be expected. She seems like a pretty sensible kid, almost too sensible . . . I don’t know, as she was listening to the caseworker – at times she’d zone out or start to cry, but other times she’d just stare at the woman and I could swear she was thinking to herself, “Yada yada yada.”’

  Frank tried to control his panting, but by the fifth floor it had grown difficult. ‘So you think she might be right about a man pushing her mother over the edge?’

  ‘I don’t know. She didn’t say anything more about it. Still, how does Samantha, her daughter and a killer all wind up here at the same time? If she’s meeting a man, why bring her daughter?’

  ‘Wanted her to meet the new daddy?’

  ‘In the middle of the night?’ She didn’t even breathe heavy when she said it, damn her, but at last they could stop. Samantha’s two fellow finishers were working on the sixth floor, and Frank wanted to talk to them before time, thought or regret could affect their stories.

  The guys weren’t hard to pick out. They were the only two humans in the vast empty space. One held a long piece of equipment that resembled a lawn edger, and the other carried a simple trowel, but it didn’t appear that a lot of work was getting done. Conversation broke off as the cops approached.