“Ma’am?”
“I have a drinking problem. It’s a disease.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“I want my lawyer.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
We were all waiting for the legal eagle to show up when Masters shouldered his way into the room and sat down at the desk.
“Sorry for the wait.”
“That’s okay,” I said. “I forgot how much fun this can be.”
“Yeah.”
“This your desk?”
“I have an office now.”
I hadn’t seen Masters in six months and he didn’t look any better for it. His face was the color of paste. His eyes were rimmed in red and full of water. His hand shook a bit as he moved some papers around, and he might have smelled of gin. Of course, that last bit could have wafted over from Miss Krispy Kreme next door, but I didn’t think so.
“Anyone notice you sitting in here?” Masters talked in an undertone and swung his head around the bull pen. I swung around with him and shrugged.
“Don’t know.”
“No one came up and said hello.”
“Don’t think so.”
“Okay. Let’s go.”
I followed Masters down a thin hallway to a solitary door with a sign on it that read room no. 1.
“Step in here.”
I walked into a small room with a wooden table and a row of blue chairs on one side. There was a TV and VCR in one corner and a dry-erase board in the other. The TV was turned off and the board had been wiped clean. Masters dropped a brown file folder on the table and sat in one of the chairs.
“Sit down, Kelly.”
I sat.
“You talk to the press about the body on Hudson?”
“Would we be sitting here if I had?”
Masters nodded at the brown folder on the table between us.
“This is the working file. Tell me what you know and you get a look-provided you keep your mouth shut. Offer up the usual happy horseshit and the conversation ends. Right now. I go to the county and file charges. Tampering with a crime scene. Obstruction of justice.”
“They’ll never stick.”
Masters shrugged. “Maybe not. But you’ll never get inside this file. And you want to get inside this file.”
I looked at the brown file. Then I looked up at the detective. We weren’t friends, but we weren’t enemies. We trusted each other implicitly, except for the times when one of us didn’t. Like I said, Catullus. Right now, Masters’ face was split in half with a nasty sort of grin. Not a good sign.
“You don’t know what I’m talking about, do you, Kelly? How did you wind up at the house on Hudson yesterday? Let’s start with that and we’ll make it up from there.”
Masters was right. I did want to get inside the file. I had no idea why, but that didn’t make me want it any less.
“There are some things I can tell you,” I said. “Some things we just have to leave alone.”
Masters leaned back in his chair and slipped his feet onto the table. “I’m listening.”
“I was tailing someone for a client. The person I followed was in the house for less than a minute. No way he, or she, could have been the killer.”
“Because they weren’t in the house long enough?”
“Exactly.”
“He, or she, could have killed this guy earlier and just been returning when you picked him, or her, up.”
I shook my head.
“I saw this person’s face when they left the house. Scared. Shook. Didn’t expect to find that body inside.”
Masters dropped his feet off the table, scratched the side of his jaw, and pulled a copy of a police report out of the file.
“Start with this. I’ll be right back.”
He left the room, undoubtedly to talk to whoever was watching me on the closed-circuit camera secreted in the wall paneling to my right. I had read about a half page of the report when Masters came back into the room. He wasn’t alone.
“Hello, Kelly.”
Vince Rodriguez was wearing a soft brown Italian suit with a striped shirt and olive-green tie. He had a gold watch on one wrist and carried a second file folder under his arm. This one was thick with paper. He dropped it on the table and took a chair to my right.
“Detective Rodriguez,” I said, and gave him my best profile. “Tell me. Is this really my good side?”
“Shut up, Kelly.”
That was Masters. He slumped back in his chair, poured some coffee from a thermos, and offered me nothing. I had tasted cop coffee before so that wasn’t a problem.
“Taken a look at the autopsy report?” Rodriguez said, and began to unpack the file on the table in front of him.
“Not yet. Why don’t you give me the highlights?”
“Water found in the lungs. Appears Bryant might have drowned somehow.”
“So the sand in his mouth was postmortem?”
Rodriguez nodded. “Probably staged by the killer. Why, we have no clue. Now, tell me this, Kelly. What do you know about the Chicago Fire?”
“The Chicago Fire?”
“That’s right.”
Rodriguez flipped open a manila folder tabbed history and began to read.
“Started on the night of October eighth, 1871. Burned for two days. Destroyed most of the city, more than seventeen thousand buildings.”
I looked over at Masters, who offered the slightest of shrugs. Rodriguez kept talking.
“The fire started at 137 East DeKoven Street, current home of the Chicago Fire Academy. In 1871, it was the home of one Catherine O’Leary. The fire is believed to have started in her barn. The theory for years was that a cow kicked over a lantern and the whole thing just got out of control. Now, however, people aren’t so sure.”
“You mean the cow wasn’t good for it?” I said.
This time it was Rodriguez who looked toward Masters. The veteran cop cracked his knuckles and grunted.
“Told you,” Masters said. “Guy knows nothing. And if he knows something, it’s still nothing.”
The detective was right. I didn’t know much about 1871. Still, I could fake it with the best of them.
“The house on Hudson predates the fire,” I said. “You think there’s a connection.”
Rodriguez grinned thinly and held out his hand. Masters reached into his pocket and pulled out a couple of twenties. Rodriguez pocketed the cash.
“I told him you’d see it. Straight off.”
“Doesn’t mean it’s anything,” I said.
“But you see it,” Rodriguez said. “Just like we did. There were only a dozen or so buildings that survived the fire of 1871. A hundred-plus years later, we have a body turning up in one of them. A guy, by the way, who happened to be an expert on the fire.”
“Coincidence?” I said.
Rodriguez shook his head and pulled a single sheet of paper from the murder file.
