Petiak through a small window in the door, and I could see the rage in his face. He leveled the flamethrower at me and pumped it. Flames shot toward me, flattened on the steel door, and curled back. Black smoke clouded the window. The door wasn't sealed tight, and heat and smoke crept into the room.
I stepped back and looked out the large window facing the crusher. Dave and Rudy were off the stairs and on the ground, running to the salvage yard entrance. I couldn't see Petiak. He wasn't on the stairs. I went back to the door. Smoke was no longer seeping in. There was no more heat. I squinted through the sooty pane of glass. I didn't see Petiak. I went back to the window over the crusher and saw him.
He'd inadvertently set himself on fire, and in his confusion and horror he'd fallen off the catwalk into the crusher. I hit the red button and the crusher stopped. Not that it mattered. Petiak was clearly dead. And I suspected the crusher would have stopped before it compacted him. It was designed for cars, not maniacs.
I took a moment to get myself under control and then I looked for a phone again. I found the phone and called Morelli.
'I'm in the salvage yard,' I told him.
'I thought you were doing laundry,' he said.
'Just c-c-come get me, okay?'
'Where's the car?'
'Forget the car. Find some other way to get here.'
Then I called Ranger.
'Where the heck are you?' I asked him.
'I'm at RangeMan. What are you doing at your mothers?'
'I'm not at my mothers. I'm at the salvage yard.'
I glanced down. I was wearing Morelli's sweats. The pen was in my jeans pocket, and the jeans were getting washed. Good thing I was so dumb. If I'd thought I'd been kidnapped without the pen, I would have died of fright an hour ago.
'Babe,' Ranger said.
'You'll want to see this,' I told him.
I called Connie.
'I'm at your cousin Manny's salvage yard,' I told her. 'Where is everybody? The gate was locked and no one's here.'
'Manny's mother-in-law died. They had the funeral today. I didn't go. I only knew her in passing.'
'The short version is that Roland Petiak set himself on fire and fell into your cousin's squashing machine. I thought your cousin would want to know. And also, I'm looking for my Crown Vic. It's somewhere in the salvage yard.'
There was a stool in the control room where the operator sat when he was working the compactor. I sat on the stool and looked out the window, eager for someone to come rescue me. I didn't want to leave the safety of the little room until Morelli or Ranger was at my door. I avoided looking down into the squashing machine. I didn't want to see Roland Petiak.
I sat there for ten minutes and everyone arrived at once.
Morelli and Dickie, Ranger, Connie and Lula and Connie’s cousin Manny. And Joyce and Smullen's girlfriend. I couldn't remember her name.
I called Morelli s cell.
'I'm in the control room by the squasher machine,' I said. 'I'm not coming out until someone comes up here to get me.'
Everyone looked up at me, and I waved down to them and wiped my nose on my sleeve.
Morelli took the stairs two at a time and crossed the grate to get to me. I opened the door and almost collapsed. My teeth were chattering, and my legs were rubber.
'I was afraid I'd fall off the catwalk if I didn't have someone to hang on to,' I told Morelli.
Morelli wrapped an arm around me and peered into the compactor at what was left of Petiak. 'That's not good.'
'It’s Petiak.'
'Are you okay?'
'So far as I can tell.' And I went down on one knee. 'Whoops,' I said. 'Guess I'm a little wobbly.'
Ranger was on the catwalk too, and between Ranger and Morelli, they were able to get me down the stairs.
'What the heck's going on here?' Lula wanted to know when I set my feet on the ground. 'Nobody tells me anything.'
'Yeah,' Joyce said. 'What the heck's going on?'
Dickie was still in the hooded sweatshirt, standing to one side, oogling Joyce and Smullen's girlfriend. 'Hey Sex Monkey,' Dickie said to Joyce.
'Do you have it?' Joyce said.
'What?'
'You know…it.'
'Do you mean the forty million? Nope. Government's going to confiscate it.'
'You are such a turd,' Joyce said. 'I can't believe I wasted my time with you. How could you have lost that money?'
'It was all Stephanie s fault,' Dickie said.
'Asshole,' Joyce said. And she turned on her heel and stormed off, with Smullen's girlfriend matching her stride for stride.
Morelli called the dispatcher and reported the death and gave a description of Dave and Rudy.
'I forgot to take the pen,' I told Ranger.
'Sometimes it's better to be lucky than good,' Ranger said.
'You were right about the drugs and guns and money laundering,' I told Ranger. 'The law firm was stealing guns, trading them for drugs, and then selling the drugs. Then they billed the drug dealers for legal services and washed the money through a legitimate business… Dickie's law firm. Dickie found out, cleaned out the firm's bank account, and transferred the money to his own account. The key to Dickie's account was in the clock.'
'Aunt Tootsies clock?' Lula asked. 'What are the chances?'
'I forgot about the clock and left it in the Crown Vic's trunk. The Vic broke down, and it got towed here.'
'When was this?' Connie's cousin Manny asked.
'Last week. It was an old cop car with 'Pig Car' written on the side and it had a couple bullet holes in it and rodent fur on the inside,' I told him.
'I know just where that is,' Manny said. 'I remember it coming in. A couple SWAT guys, right?'
'Right.'
Ranger's cell phone buzzed, and he took a short call. 'I'm heading out,' he said to Morelli. 'She's on your watch. Next week she's mine.'
I was pretty sure he was kidding, but then, maybe not.
'Come on,' Manny said. 'I'll take you to the Vic.'
There were mountains of wheel covers and acres of scrap metal stacked together like lasagna in the salvage yard. We wound our way through a maze of cars in various stages of mutilation and finally Manny stopped at a seven-foot-tall block of multicolored metal and pointed about a third of the way up.
'See that burgundy layer? That's the Vic.'
It was twelve inches thick.
'Your Aunt Tootsies not gonna be happy about this,' Lula said.
We retraced our steps, and watched the emergency vehicles pour into the salvage yard. EMS trucks, fire trucks, cop cars. A couple uniforms secured the area around the compactor with tape and the medical examiner and a crime scene photographer climbed the stairs to the catwalk. Marty Gobel followed.
'This is going to take a while to sort out,' Morelli said to me. 'What would you like to do? I can have someone take you to your mother's or to my house.'
