“No, thanks.”
“You sure?”
“Oh, yeah,” he said. “I need the walk tonight.”
He left, and I went upstairs and took a long, hot shower, my muscles slowly loosening under the spray. I dried off and changed clothes. By then it was almost ten, well past dinnertime and closer to sleeping time for normal people. Since I clearly wasn’t normal, I thought I’d go ahead and eat breakfast for a very late dinner. I fixed an omelet but couldn’t find any appetite for it, ended up tossing it in the garbage, and drinking a glass of orange juice.
After a while, I took a bottle of Beck’s out of the refrigerator and went up on the roof. There’s a trapdoor with folding stairs in the ceiling just outside my apartment that provides access to the roof, and I’ve dragged a couple of lounge chairs and some potted plants up there. It’s a nice place to spend a summer evening.
I sat alone, listening to the traffic noise and sipping my beer and thinking about old friends and a terrified sixteen-year-old girl hiding behind a couch. When the beer was empty, I went back downstairs to get a fresh one. I stood at the door for a moment, hesitating, then grabbed the cordless phone as well and took it onto the roof with me. The connection had some static up there, but you could hear well enough for a conversation. I set the beer down unopened and dialed Amy’s number.
“Hey,” I said when she answered, “you asleep yet?”
As soon as she recognized my voice, she launched into me.
“You know, you’re a real jerk, Lincoln. I shouldn’t have walked away last night as easily as I did. The more I think about it, the more pissed off I get. I mean, I don’t walk into your office and tell you how to do your job, and that’s basically what you did to me last night. Yes, I realize Gradduk was your friend, but the moment I start changing my approach to reporting based upon friendships is the moment I sacrifice whatever professional integrity—”
“One of the cops that tried to arrest Ed was murdered today,” I said, interrupting. “I spent the whole day trying to prove he and his partner set Ed up, and then I found out he was dead. He was shot three times, in his basement. Joe and I found the body. His daughter had already seen it. She was hiding behind the couch upstairs. She couldn’t talk to us. Couldn’t get a word out.”
Silence, then: “You at home?”
“Uh-huh.”
“I’ll see you in ten.”
She hung up.
Fifteen minutes later gravel spun and tires squealed below me—Amy’s trademark entrance. I’d left the door to the steps unlocked, and now I heard it open and close, and then Amy was knocking at my apartment door.
“I’m up here,” I called down to her. The steps on the trapdoor creaked as she worked her way up, and then her head poked above the surface of the roof and she shot me a concerned look. I didn’t say anything. She marched across the roof, took the bottle of beer out of my hand, and downed a third of it, then gave it back to me.
“Okay,” she said. “What the hell happened?”
It took me a long time to tell it. It had been that sort of day. When I was through, she sat quietly and stared out at the night sky.
“I’m sorry, Lincoln,” she said after a while. “That’s an awful, awful thing to experience.”
“For the daughter.”
“And for you. Awful for you because you had to see both the body and the daughter. I bet it was almost harder to see her.”
“Yeah.”
“You heard any ideas on what happened?”
I shook my head. “Not yet. We gave our statements and they sent us home. I’m kind of surprised you hadn’t heard about it.”
“I left early today because I worked late last night.”
“Right.” I didn’t want to bring up her article. Somewhere between Larry Rabold’s living room and basement I’d lost my capacity to be angry over something like that.
She brought it up, though. “Look, Lincoln, I didn’t suggest Gradduk was some sort of perverted loser who killed the woman because she’d rejected him. I just put out what I knew—”
“And let the readers determine he was a perverted loser who killed the woman because she’d rejected him,” I finished, but there was no hostility or bitterness in my voice.
“I’m sorry if that’s how you feel,” Amy said softly.
“It’s okay, Ace. I didn’t like it. I still don’t. But you did your job, and you’d do the same thing again, and I guess it’s easier for me to take because I know that’s the case.”
“I think your day mellowed you out, Lincoln.”
“That’s one word for it.”
We sat together and watched a few courageous stars try to make themselves visible in a sky clouded with a city’s light pollution. Traffic hummed along the avenue beneath us. I finished the beer and wanted another, but didn’t get up.
“So Anita Sentalar knew Mitch Corbett,” Amy said. “And he’s been missing for a few days. A couple cops were looking for him, too. The same cops that killed Ed Gradduk and filled an incident report about it with lies. And now one of those cops is dead. Is that the gist?”
“Basically.”
She leaned back in the lounge chair and made a light clicking noise with her tongue. “What a mess.”
“That’s what Cal Richards said.”
“Well, he was right. What’s your plan now? I assume you haven’t decided to take up permanent residence on this roof.”
“Some nights, it doesn’t seem like that poor an idea. But I’ll probably come down eventually. And when I do, I’ll have to get back to work. Because we haven’t done anything yet. Generated a hell of a lot of questions today, and got damn few answers to go with them.”
“Where do you start?”
I raised my eyebrows and stared at the sky, wondering that myself.
“I suppose we’ll have to start with the fires,” I said. “I don’t know what connects fires that happened almost twenty years ago and fires that happened last week, but it seems something does. The only link we had is dead now, though.”
“Well, if you need any help, just ask.”
I started to thank her, then realized she could actually help. I reminded her about the house that had burned on Clark Avenue and explained again that it had belonged to the same group that owned the home on Train Avenue.
“I want to know more about the Neighborhood Alliance,” I said. “Run them through the paper’s archives and fax me any article that mentions them, would you?”
“Sure. And I’ll see if we ran a story about this fire on Clark.”
“Thanks, Amy.”
Her face was lost in shadows, but even so her eyes looked intense. “That’s pretty damn interesting, Lincoln. Two fires to these houses in one week, both of the homes vacant?”
“There’s more,” I said, remembering now details I’d left out the first time. “Mitch Corbett has a background in demolitions. He’s experienced with fuses and explosives, would have a good idea of how to go about setting a fire.”
“You think he killed Anita Sentalar?”
“Could be. But why the other fire?”
“Arson for profit?”
I shook my head. “These houses are old, broken-down homes in a low-rent neighborhood, Ace. Insurance claims on them wouldn’t be worth a damn.”
