I chewed on that as we hauled another load over to Nef’s place,“we” being the handicap taxi driver helping pack stuff and carry stuff andholding doors open and all. Yeah, the meter kept ticking away the whole time,but that’s way above and beyond the call of duty. I tipped him big.
And that evening, when he hauled my ass back to my apartmentbuilding for the shower and shave bit before delivering me to the hospital foranother night in the recliner, we found the street blocked and flashing redlights and blue lights in the darkness and general chaos. I hoisted myself outof the taxi, crutched forward, flashed my badge a couple of times to get pastthe cordon, and found somebody with a bit of authority and information, anassistant fire chief again like up in Podunk Hollow but not an asshole thistime.
Firebombing. Sandy’s apartment.
The sprinkler system had squashed the fires before they couldspread, limiting them to spot damage in four rooms plus water soaking throughto the units just below. The fire crew was cleaning up now. I swung someweight, God knows I have enough, and got inside. They had the building powerback on and the elevator working. It hauled me up to Sandy’s floor and Ichecked her place out, stink of char and gasoline and wet plaster and soddenwool. The broken lock on the door was notthe kind of damage you get from fire axes.
They’d set the fire to destroy evidence of the burglary. Ithad been a professional search job, place thoroughly tossed and they’d foundthe couple of hide-outs I knew about, one set into the bedroom baseboard andthe other a lift-out tile under her refrigerator.
I knew what they’d been looking for. They hadn’t found itbecause it wasn’t there to be found. That relic. The one Cash hadn’t askedabout, because she knew she didn’t want to know.
Killing Sandy should have ended the case. It hadn’t. I’d beendumb again. There wasn’t any way in hell that Sandy’s brother could have swunga pro job like this. Had to be his backers. Or, maybe worse, whoever had beenchasing the relic over in the Caucasus or Balkans. Whichever, they were stillout there.
XXV
Cash was still pissed at me because I hadn’t used her asbait after her cruiser got blown to shreds. Hell, I couldn’t blame her much.She’d ended up watching a live grenade pin-balling off the end of her bedanyway, without any gain from it. And even with less lethal sports, she neverwas a spectator-type. She needed to be part of the action.
So she finally harassed the doctors to an exhausted truce,they loaded her into a wheelchair and had her sign her mountain of dischargepaperwork left-handed, and we moved the whole twenty-mule-train of baggage tomy apartment rather than to hers. That way Sandy’s brother and his shadowpuppeteers would know where to find us. Or whoever. If I’d had Whoever’saddress, I would have sent him an engraved invitation.
And we waited.
At that point, we didn’t have a damned thing we could take tocourt. No crimes we could hang on anybody except me. Sandy was dead. She hadbeen my only way to link her brother to the murders. The official investigationbegan and ended with Kratz, a ghost. The relic didn’t even exist. So we waited.
At least one of us stayed in that apartment every hour of theday. I went out to get food, that handicap taxi again. Another state trooper,big dark handsome woman, Mediterranean look rather than black, hauled her tocheckups at the medical center — after all, gimping along on crutches, I wasn’tin any condition to push a wheelchair, and the doctors didn’t want her on herfeet. I hiked to my office a couple of mornings a week, checking the answeringmachine and doing some cautious third-hand scouting on just where Sandy hadfinagled the plastique she’d used onour cars, the grenade she’d tossed into Cash’s room.
Those last two items ended up with courts-martial for a sergeant-majorand supply sergeant in the National Guard and administrative reprimands andresigned commissions for the C.O. and X.O. of the unit. No mention of us showedup in either case, just some severe differences between paper and actualinventory in the unit equipment and supplies.
But that came later, tying up loose ends. We waited, we didthings, we waited some more. Sandy’s ashes sat in an urn in one corner of myliving room, reminding me of my sins. I did notgo anywhere near the place I’d hidden the relic. I’ve learned to trust thatcreepy feeling on the back of my neck, and it told me that someone out therewas watching me. Someone very skilled and very patient, because I never sawhim. Or them.
December crept in, spitting snow mixed with the rains, grayfog rolling up the river from the bay and hauling a load of seasonal depressionwith it. The doctors cut my cast off and substituted a walking cast for thefull-leg version. I still couldn’t scratch all the itches. Cash started rehabon her right arm and the remains of her hand, with a smaller cast on her foot.She thought she might be pregnant. She told me, I quote, “If I’m gonna betrapped behind a fucking desk for a year, I damn well intend to have somethingto show for it.”
I think she hoped too much to check.
I roasted up a leg of lamb with garlic, added saffron rice andmore of those Lincoln peas fresh-frozen from the spring market, and threw afeast in celebration. Hell, if it turned out she’d been optimistic withoutcause, we could have another. Good food is an excuse in itself, and Cash hadstarted to take notes. If I couldn’t teach her magic, gourmet cooking made areasonable close second.
We slept in separate rooms — not worried about scandal, Cashwas immune to that and if she didn’t care, I didn’t care. It wasn’t the problemwith psychic noise I’d had with Sandy, either. It boiled down to a strategicdecision — the way my apartment was laid out, one end had two bedrooms andbath, central living-kitchen-dining with the entry, then the other end asitting room or office or guest bedroom
