Days of Rage: A Smokey Dalton Novel (28 page)

I shook my head.
“Waiting until he killed her so that he could be brought to justice isn’t good either.”

“I can’t stop people from killing other people,” Minton said. “I can help prove that they’ve done it, and maybe stop a future crime.
And that’s all I can do.”

“That’s enough for you?” I asked.

He glanced at me, his eyebrows raised slightly.
“Solving old crimes for a white woman?
That’s enough for you?”

“Touché,” I said.

We pulled onto the Queen Anne’s block.

“She’s doing good works,” I said of Laura, not wanting Minton to back out of this. “Like I told you—”

“I know what you told me.
I investigated it as best I could, and I agree.
But I also hear she’s someone special to you.
And she’s high
-
profile.
So I don’t get your argument on the Soto case.”

“You should if you think about it.” I pulled the van into the back and shut off the ignition.
“Laura’s been high
-
profile for a long time.
Because she’s white, she gets invited to luncheons for her fame.
The Soto brothers were high
-
profile for
—
what? Three months?
And for their efforts, they got gunned down.”

“Fred’s been high
-
profile longer than that,” Minton said sullenly.

“And he’s been arrested—”

“For stealing ice cream. They called it a felony, and he didn’t do nothing.
He wasn’t even there.”

“—and his offices have repeatedly been broken into, and his friends have been killed.
Do you have a family, Tim?”

“My folks,” he said.

“A wife? Kids?”

He shook his head.

“Then you’re free to act on this stuff.
Me, I gotta pick and choose.
Because if the cops gun me down, my little boy’s got no one.
And if the cops want to get to me without killing me, guess who’ll they’ll go after?
I don’t want to see my son on your table.”

Minton sighed.
“It’s just that everyone says you’re the best, man.
Everyone.”

“Maybe I am.
But I
can’t help on this one.
I can recommend a few folks.
But that’s all I can do.”

“Fred won’t trust just anyone.”

“That’s smart,” I said.

“Maybe we’ll just look into it ourselves,” Minton said.
The “we” and the “our” unnerved me a little.

“You’re a Panther?” I asked.

“I don’t wear the leather or carry the guns,” Minton said. “But I believe in Fred.
I’m gonna help at the
F
ree
C
linic when I can. I have enough pre-med to do some basic first-aid.
He’s right about community first.”

“Family first,” I said.
“Community second.”

He grabbed the door handle.
“You know, Mr. Grimshaw, for all your talk of family and non-violence, your body says something different.”

I glanced at him, surprised.

He touched his left cheek with one finger.
“That scar you have right here? It’s fresh, less than a year old.
It came from a knife, and it was sewn up by a professional.
Family men, they’d find a way to cover it up.
You wear it like a badge.
It says, ‘Don’t fuck with me because I’m mean enough to survive anything.’”

He saw me a little too clearly.
I needed to push him away.

“So don’t fuck with
me then
,” I said, and opened the van door.

TWENTY-EIGHT

The tension between me and Minton increased as we walked into that awful house.
He took a sniff of the foul air as we stepped into the back entry, and said,
“Someone died here not too long ago.
I thought these were old bodies.”

“The manager died here in September and didn’t get found for a while,” I said. “That’s why we’re here in the first place.”

He nodded, waited for me to open the door at the top of the steps, then followed me down.
Halfway to the basement he muttered, “This’s creepy as shit.”

I’d felt that way from the beginning, but I didn’t say anything.
He’d have to work in here same as I did, same as LeDoux was doing.

We went through the open cabinet doors into the hidden room.
Minton was looking around like a kid at his first visit to a carnival’s haunted house, almost as if he expected someone to jump out of the shadows at any moment.

LeDoux was inside the first section we’d found.
He was crouched over one small corner, a pair of tweezers in his gloved hands.
“It’s about time,” he said.

“Christ on a stick.” Minton was staring at everything, eyes wide.
“What’d you think happened here?”

“I don’t know, but I certainly don’t appreciate the language,” LeDoux said primly.

Minton shot me a can-you-believe-this-guy? look.
I ignored it, and swept a hand toward LeDoux.

“The first body we found was in here.
The rest are in those opened areas.”

“And there’s probably more behind them,” LeDoux said.
“This
i
s a big room, and we’ve only scratched the surface.”

Minton winced.

“You done?” I asked LeDoux.

“Yeah,” he said, coming out, a flashlight in one hand, an evidence bag in the other.
He must have put the tweezers in the pocket of his coveralls.
“It’s all yours, Mr.—?”

“Minton.” Minton extended a hand.
“Sorry about the language.
Grimshaw told me there were
some
long
-
dead
folks here, but he didn’t explain much more.
I wasn’t prepared.”

LeDoux looked at his hand, and I prayed that he’d take it.
The last thing I needed was a fight between my acting coroner and my acting criminalist.

“I don’t think anyone could be prepared,” LeDoux said after a moment, and then shook Minton’s hand.
“Something awful happened here, and the worst of it is, I don’t think it happened all at once.”

Minton nodded in just the same way LeDoux did when I made a statement before he’d had a chance to examine the evidence.

“Body’s in there?” Minton asked, then didn’t wait for an answer.

He slipped inside the hole that we made, careful not to touch anything.
He had to duck to avoid hitting his head on the lower bricked
-
up ceiling.
He crouched near the skeletons, poking one of the skulls with his fingers.

“You guys move anything?” he asked.

“Not around the bodies,” LeDoux said. “I’ve taken some bits of fabric, paper, and small hairs from the area near your feet.
I also took many items from around the opening, and some scrapings off the walls.”

“Fingerprints?” Minton asked, but he sounded distracted.

“In the mortar, etched forever in time,” LeDoux said.
“That’s the fortunate part.
The unfortunate part is taking fingerprints off such rough brick.
I only got partials.”

“Hmmm.”
Minton clearly wasn’t listening any longer.
He was crouched over the bodies, touching them gently.
“I’m going to need my camera, Grimshaw.”

“I took photographs,” LeDoux said.

“Department of Redundancy Department,” Minton said. “Grimshaw here hired me to be thorough. That includes pictures.
No offense.”

“None taken.” In fact, LeDoux looked happy that Minton wanted to take his own photographs.
These two shared an attention to detail that made me feel as if I was careless.

I went back to the van, grabbed a bag of Minton’s equipment, and slung it over my shoulder. The rain had lessened a little, but it was cold, and I was getting tired of moving around in it.
The shoulders and back of my coverall were already soaked, and some of the water had worked its way through to my shirt.

If this kept up, by the end of the day I’d be drenched.

I went back inside, handed Minton his camera, and moved out of the way.
LeDoux watched for a few minutes, then turned his attention to the next section that we’d opened.

“What can I do?” I asked, hating to be idle.

“Nothing for a while,” Minton said. “There are at least three bodies here.
I’m going to have to do some preliminary work before I can move them.”

“I’m sure this isn’t the only thing taking your attention,” LeDoux said to me.
“I can help Mr. — Minton, is it? — until it’s time to load the van.
Then we’ll need you.”

I probably could have examined the files in Hanley’s apartment, but I didn’t want to, not until LeDoux had gone over the entire area.
Or at least, that was my rationalization.
I knew, deep down, I didn’t want to spend my day in that stink.

“Everything I have is off-premise,” I said.
“When should I be back?”

“How many others are there?” Minton asked.

“We’re not sure.
But you have eight different areas to examine at the moment,” LeDoux said.

“Jesus,” Minton said, and then he looked over his shoulder.
“You’re just going to have to put up with the language.
I’ve never had a scene like this before.”

“None of us have, son,” LeDoux said softly.

I glanced at him.
Minton gave me a shaky smile, and then shrugged his shoulders.

“How about four, five, maybe six hours,” Minton said. “I’d like to finish today.
I have a lot to do at the Poehler’s tomorrow, not counting the extra work this’s going to be.”

“I’ll be back in five,” I said, figuring that would give me enough time to load the van, transport these two, and pick up Jimmy.

Then I fled the basement.

By now, Laura should’ve gotten some of that information on Hanley.
I also wanted to investigate his death a bit closer.

And to do all those things, I needed my phone.

I headed home,
even though I knew I’d pick up the tail once again.

TWENTY-NINE

I pulled over and took off my coveralls halfway home, throwing them and the painter’s cap into the back of the van.
Then I drove to the apartment, noting with no surprise the black sedan parked halfway down the street.

I almost saluted the driver, but thought the better of it.
I’d spent the morning convincing him I was an average Joe going about my day.
I didn’t want to blow that image by letting him know I’d spotted the tail.

The apartment was excessively warm.
The landlord had turned on the heat, probably inspired by the rain.
I sighed in irritation.
The radiators had never worked properly in this apartment, and throughout the winter I usually had to have a window open.
I didn’t want to do that on such a stormy day, but I knew I had no choice.

I opened the window in the living room, made myself a corn
ed
beef sandwich, and ate the first bite in full view of the street, just so that the tail could guess why I’d come home.

Then I went into my office and started to make calls.

First, I called Laura.
Her secretary put me through immediately, which had become unusual.

Laura sounded harried.
But she had managed some of the investigating I’d asked for.
Apparently she’d done it on Sunday, while Jim and I watched the game.

“I’ve a packet of materials for you,” she said. “I’ve double-sealed it, marked it confidential, and left it with Judith.”

Judith was her secretary.

I opened my mouth to protest leaving documents for this investigation with someone else, then realized it was already too late.

“I would give them to you myself,” Laura said, “but I’m still working with the
M
odel
C
ities people.
It’s a mess, Smokey.”

It seemed like everything was.

“Can you remember off the top of your head the date that the manager was found?” I was being deliberately vague.

“You started, what? September
twenty-second
or so?”