Blunt Impact (27 page)

Theresa considered this. It was as likely as any other explanation – provided Crain could be believed – but many more facts would be required first. Where in the building were the blueprints kept? Any on the twenty-third floor? And where did Kyle fit in? ‘Thank you. I’ll let my jackbooted Nazi cousin know about this and we’ll check it out.’

‘That’s it?’

‘What else would you like me to do?’

‘Have dinner with me.’ A crack of distant thunder emphasized the point, as if the man had a supernatural ability to his flair for the dramatic.

‘No. Thank you. I appreciate it, but—’

‘No,’ Don said, and put an arm around her shoulders as they walked away.

‘You’re good at this,’ she told him.

He glanced back as their unusual interviewee. ‘Guarding your body is something I take very seriously, girl, and don’t you forget it. When you leave for the day you have a deskman walk you out and you check your car first. That man has a look in his eyes that makes my arm hair get stiff.’

The work day had ended for most people, and for the shadow man as well. Without anything else to distract him he went back to the problem of the kid. He couldn’t believe he’d gotten past the dragon grandma, soft-sold the kid into coming along, then even though that went to hell and he had to drag her he’d
still
almost had her in the car . . . and then those gang-bangers next door had to interfere. They
shot
at him. Who the hell had invited them to the party? That’s what he got for hanging out in such a crappy neighborhood.

He’d shot back, thought for sure he’d hit one of them but the guy just stood there as if he was the one protected by destiny. Even as he jumped in his car and took off, the guy hadn’t budged, gun still extended.

A bit embarrassing, but otherwise he didn’t worry about it. They were unlikely to call the cops. People in their line of work didn’t call cops.

Then he’d sped up the street to where he lost sight of Ghost, but she’d darted into a maze of back yards mined with trees and bushes and old appliances and he didn’t dare leave his own vehicle, with the engine running and the doors open, long enough to go look for her. He’d circled and circled the streets to no avail. The angel/demon was now a drone somewhere in the hive of the city. She had nowhere to go, no grandma, and the afternoon had probably soured her on the daddy fantasy. The only person she knew, that he knew she knew, was that forensic bitch. But how would the kid find her?

A drone in the hive of the city. And the only thing that would draw her out was a really pretty flower.

And to draw out the forensic bitch?

A really pretty dead body.

He walked to his car, hoping the rain would hold off.

F
rank and Angela took turns laying out Novosek’s system for cheating the taxpayers of Cuyahoga County out of approximately one point six million dollars. The money is budgeted for a certain quality of concrete and paid to the supplier. The supplier supplies a lesser mix with cheaper materials. The inspector pretends that the cheaper mix is the more expensive mix, and the supplier kicks back their shares of the one point six million. Very nice, until six or ten years from now when the building falls in on itself. A lot of people then will have a lot of questions, but each of the three parties can point his finger at the other two, and nothing will be proven. ‘Just like the Big Dig,’ Frank finished up. ‘No one will go to jail. You’ll all just keep working. A few people might die, but it will be some scumbag criminal instead of an innocent mom on her way to the airport.’

‘You’re crazy,’ Novosek said, but the indignation seemed to sit on the surface with a whole lot of fast thinking going on behind it. ‘If you think I would ever put up something I thought might fall down, you’re crazy. I put two or three years of my life in to a project like this. You think I’d let that all be for nothing?’

‘You want something to drink? Maybe Gatorade?’

As Frank had hoped it would, this threw Novosek off so badly he couldn’t even keep up the indignation. ‘
What
?’

‘You like Gatorade, right? The powdered kind, maybe, that you can pour into a bottle of water, mix it up yourself. Handy.’

For a large man, Novosek could sit very still.

‘Know why it’s called that?’ Angela put in. ‘A Florida Gators coach asked a professor there at the university what to do about players getting so dehydrated during games.’

‘’Cause it’s so freakin’ hot down there,’ Frank explained.

‘So he invented this drink to replace the glucose and electrolytes the boys would lose while playing. Can’t stand the stuff myself. Except for fruit punch.’

‘Fruit punch is too girly,’ Frank said. ‘Chris here goes for the original lemon lime. You know how I know that – I mean, other than I saw you drinking it? Because you left a smear of powdered citric acid and potassium citrate on the back of Kyle Cielac’s shirt when you shoved him down that elevator shaft. Did you remember the rebar sticking up at the bottom? Or did you just think he’d make the same sickening every-bone-in-the-body-broken crunch like Sam Zebrowski?’

Novosek began to look as green as his favorite drink. But all he said was, ‘Lots of people drink Gatorade.’

‘They do,’ Angela said, nodding. ‘They do. But not everyone’s ID tag is found next to the victim—’

‘I told you, I lost that.’

‘—with the victim’s fingerprint on it.’

Now their suspect looked flat-out ready to puke.

He made one last attempt: ‘I told you, I lost it earlier in the day. Maybe Kyle found it—’

‘Lanyards,’ Frank interrupted.

‘Huh?’

‘They’re so popular now. I’m not crazy about them myself; I have the little retractable thingy that clips to my belt, see? Angela wears hers –’ his partner held up her ID tag, suspended around her neck by a dark blue strap labeled ‘Cleveland Police Department’ – ‘but she’s a girl so it looks OK on her. I noticed you and most of your employees wear them. County regulations, right?’

Novosek said nothing, but his gaze never left Frank’s face. He didn’t even seem to be breathing.

‘But they’re a safety hazard, really. The FOP protested when they were first proposed, but who the hell listens to unions any more, am I right? We work with guys all day long who don’t really like us, so what’s to keep them from using these handy little ID badge holders to choke the living shit out of us? So the manufacturer put in a breakaway. So if I do this –’ he reached out and jerked Angela’s lanyard from around her neck, eliciting an annoyed bleat from his partner – ‘the plastic ends come apart and her lovely neck is saved. It’s the same for your guys – way too many tools and cables and beams around that could catch that lanyard and do some serious harm. The lanyard we found in the pit – your lanyard – hadn’t dropped out of your pocket or worn through the strap. The breakaway had pulled apart, and I’m betting that happened when you pushed Kyle Cielac to his death. He scrabbled for something to hang on to, for something to save him from that abyss, and all he got was your ID badge. He grabbed for you, and you let him fall.’

Novosek’s eyes grew moist, but he scrabbled for a hold as well. ‘You can’t prove that.’

‘Pretty much, yeah. Because if you had lost that ID badge any other way, catching it on a tool or a box, you would have felt the jerk to your neck. It wouldn’t have been lost because you would have immediately realized that it had broken. And there wouldn’t be a pristine imprint of Kyle Cielac’s fingerprints on it.’

The moist eyes widened.

‘Kind of interesting, the interaction of fingerprints and blood. A fingerprint is a little raised impression of oil and sweat. That ID badge landed in the pit, and then Kyle Cielac landed on top of those rebar spikes and began to bleed.’

Chris Novosek blanched, apparently picturing this.

‘The blood flowed over this print, flooding the little valleys between these mountains of oil and sweat. And then, since it had an unrestrained area to spread out in, the blood kept going. The flood of red cells receded and the mountain ridges stuck out again, like Mount Ararat. You get sort of a reverse image of a bloody fingerprint, but still unique to Kyle Cielac’s thumb. Kind of cool, in its microscopic way. I only know all that, of course, because my cousin just explained it to me over the phone.’

Novosek shrugged himself back to life. ‘Cousin? That girl’s your cousin?’

‘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
?’

T
heresa 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.