Authors: Keith Gilman
“Good morning, Sergeant,” Lou said.
Lou smiled and placed the gun down gently on the hood of his car. She didn’t return the favor. The large black hole of her gun still glared ominously in his direction.
“Keep your hands where I can see them and move away from the car. Have the ladies do the same.”
Lou obeyed the order. He liked the sound of her voice. It was strong but relaxed, not overboard. He saw something behind her uniform and badge, an intelligence, a manner of speaking, someone he could reason with. He’d been opposed, initially, to hiring women cops, thought of them as a liability. Her nametag read “Stepkowski,” and he’d have made an exception for her.
He guessed it was too soon to mention Mitch. He played along and waited for her to get tired of posing with the forty-caliber. The third degree would start any minute. He was in no mood to answer questions and she didn’t look ready to hear any cheap alibis.
“I’d like to identify myself, Sergeant. My name is Lou Klein. I’m a retired Philly cop, on a private case.”
“A private detective?”
“Not really.”
“Then, what exactly are you, Mr. Klein? I suppose you have some identification.”
He reached slowly into his jacket pocket and produced a black billfold. He flipped it open, showed her a license, and an expired Philadelphia Police ID card, with his mug shot in the corner, a face that belonged on a photo line-up—no shave, sleepy eyes and a haircut that hadn’t changed in twenty years, that seventies guy with a badge. She only needed a short glance to see it.
Lou put the wallet back in his pocket and she holstered her gun.
“What the hell is going on here anyway and I don’t want to hear your life’s story.”
“That’s Inspector Ray Boland. He’s been electrocuted. I wouldn’t go near him. The juice is still on.”
She eyed the crash scene knowingly, the live wires snaking over the top of the car into a thin, dark puddle. “He should have known better.”
“That’s what I thought.”
“What’s your part in it?”
“I used to work for Kevin Mitchell at the Nineteenth Precinct. He can probably explain it better than I can.”
The searing flames suddenly broke through the roof. They watched fire lick the morning sky. They were powerless in the face of the immense heat. The Philadelphia Fire Department rolled in with a fleet of ladder trucks. Firemen in heavy jackets and helmets began hooking up hoses and running line as fast as they could. Their efforts would be in vain. The spray from the hose hit the building like cold water on a hot frying pan. It sizzled and steam rose in a plume of gray smoke. They raised their
ladders into the air and forced water through the windows, and down into the gaping roof.
The electric company arrived and cut the wires, allowing the ambulance crew to attend to Ray Boland. They loaded him onto a stretcher and hauled him away. A fireman with a hose in his hand approached the smoldering police car and forced water under the hood. It hissed like air escaping from a balloon. The smoke subsided, leaving a hunk of twisted metal, a modern sculpture, leaking water like a broken fountain on the court house steps.
Mitch arrived, true to form in a white shirt, black leather jacket, and clean pants with a blue stripe down the side. He looked around, surveying the damage. He didn’t look happy.
“This is a disaster area, Lou.”
“They started it.”
“And you finished it.”
“They took Maggie, Mitch. I took her back.”
“Are y’all even now?”
“You’ll have to ask my employer. She’s over there, near my car. I believe she might have one more errand for me to run.”
“Why don’t you let us handle it from here, get out while you still can. This was never your problem. Your friend is dead. His daughter is one of those kids bent on self-destruction. You can’t help her. She’s in too deep to ever get out. We both know that.”
“Stay close to the phone. I’ll call if I need you.”
“Be careful, Lou. Hey, you want us to take Maggie off your hands for a while? Sergeant Stepkowski here will take good care of her.”
“That’s not a bad idea. Thanks, Mitch.”
“One more thing, Lou. It may not be the best time to tell you but I figured you’d want to know. We had our three-hundredth homicide last night, a guy I think you used to know. Charlie Melvyn. He was shot right in front of his shop. I’m sorry, Lou.”
“What happened?”
“There were a group of kids hanging around in front of his shop—they couldn’t have been much more than fourteen years old. He goes outside to chase them and sees a car slowing down and then a gun coming out the window. He stepped in front of them, Lou, shielded them with his body. They owe him their lives.”
“You get the shooter?”
“Not yet. Those boys knew who was in that car but they’re not talking. Nobody’s talking to the police anymore, Lou. We’re the enemy. It doesn’t make any sense.”
“Nothing makes sense anymore, Mitch.”
Lou closed his eyes and pictured Charlie, his reflection in the gleaming mirror, the lights of the barber shop shutting down for the last time. He wondered if anyone had cleaned the bloodstains from the sidewalk in front of Charlie Melvyn’s barber shop. Charlie had a son in California, but from what Charlie had said, he wasn’t the street-cleaning type.
Montgomery County was about
twenty-five miles north on the interstate, a densely wooded area, with scattered housing developments and large stretches of farmland. Lou and Sarah drove the first few miles to Fenwick House in silence. Acres of dried, bleached corn stalks withered on both sides of them in the cold sun. Once off the interstate, they drove for miles on winding country roads and didn’t see another car. Dark clouds swallowed the sun in front of them like a great black glove, a hand that covered the face of the earth. A speeding car could go off the road and go unnoticed for days, passengers trapped or dead. There were still a couple of family-owned dairy farms left. The black and white cows littered the landscape, seemed to graze contentedly all day, their jaws grinding away at the sands of time—like the trembling lips of old men, moving as if they knew some secret, some warning, but were afraid to speak it.
There was an abandoned industrial park up there somewhere, Lou remembered, a cluster of concrete buildings, like a cemetery at the top of a rolling hill. About the only thing left in
those hills was a nuclear power plant that provided free electricity to the local population. The businesses had taken off years before, after dumping their poison into the ground, killing every living thing that swam in the creeks and flew in the air. Some people stayed, families that were born and raised there. They had nowhere else to go. They cursed the day they’d set foot in those plants, took jobs that put money in their pocket but took them away from the land they’d worked and loved, the land that had originally given them life. The ground had become polluted and all they could do now was send their sons and daughters away to find new places to live, to put down roots in new healthy soil.
Light snow rushed at Lou’s windshield, swirling white flakes like dust from an exploding star in a black sky. The road was still dry but the grass had turned white, a sparkling blanket of white covering the wet ground. Wherever the headlights reached was framed in white. Snowflakes danced before his eyes, their hypnotic power combining with the vibration from the rotating tires, lulling his mind into a daze. It was an hour drive and there was no letup. He fought against the cold wind to keep the car on the road, counting the miles.
Beyond the snow-covered hills bordering the narrow road, Lou could see only trees, acres of gray forest, stripped entirely of leaves by the scathing wind approaching from the north. They raced headlong into it and felt sometimes as if they were being carried along by it. It was more than a force of nature. It had a personality. It could be violent, enduring and vindictive. Every living thing huddled to the ground for protection, braced against that howling wind, fighting for survival every day, Lou thought, the way he had for most of his life. It was only the birds that were smart enough to know when to leave, jump on a plane and fly south, to warmer climates, to a tropical sun, a chlorinated swimming pool, a place where his fingers wouldn’t
get numb taking in the mail. This one final time, he swore, and the ride would be over. He’d take Mitch’s advice, go on vacation, get away for a while, maybe for good.
“If there’s anything you haven’t told me, Sarah, now would be a good time.”
“There’s nothing left to tell, Lou. I’m just surprised you still want to help.”
“You know, even if we manage to collect your daughter, Mitch is going to arrest her.”
“Arrest her?”
“Don’t pretend to be naïve, Sarah. Richie Mazzino was shot with a forty-caliber Glock, the same gun the Philadelphia police use. Wayne Tinferd was handcuffed to the steering wheel of a burning car with police issue handcuffs. They both worked for Vince, doing various dirty deeds, such as an occasional murder, dispensing with dead bodies, like the corpse of a policeman who allegedly committed suicide because he needed more money than his meager salary could provide, because his wife had her eyes on a lot of dirty money and a crook who seemed to have an abundant supply of it. But that’s not the real tragedy. Sam Blackwell started looking like a stranger to his daughter, who ended up so confused and so angry, it was only a matter of time before she found her father’s gun and went out looking for revenge, looking to kill somebody, preferably the people responsible for her father’s death. Payback is a bitch, Sarah. I shouldn’t have to spell that out for you.”
“What about Tommy? How do you know he didn’t kill them? You already have him killing girls.”
“I don’t doubt he would have gotten around to killing them. I think Carol Ann beat him to the punch.”
“And you think she belongs in jail?”
“It doesn’t matter what I think.”
“I killed them, Lou. It was me.”
“Nice try. A mother willing to do anything to protect her child. If you think we can convince Mitch to go along with it.”
“Why is it so hard to believe? I had Sam’s gun. I knew what happened to him. They would have done the same thing to me.”
“It’s not me you have to convince. I believe anyone can be capable of murder. It depends on the reason and the emotional state of the person doing the killing. In your case, you had nothing to gain.”
“You paint a pretty cold and calculating picture of me, willing to kill for money but not for love.”
“I think you could be pushed to it, certainly for self-preservation. Otherwise, I think you’d have someone else do your killing for you.”
“This is all hypothetical. Right, Lou.”
“You tell me.”
The road quickly became caked with ice, two narrow paths just wide enough for his tires. He refused to reduce his speed. He felt the wind buffeting the car. His hands felt frozen to the wheel. He didn’t let up around the sharp bends in the road. Bare gray branches arched over the road. Dead trees clung to the ground, ready to fall. A deep trench paralleled the road, a trickle of water rolling over the flat stones at the bottom. The road climbed steadily uphill, into dense cloud cover, dusk descending upon them with blinding snow and wind like some plague cast down from above.
He narrowly missed a young doe springing across the roadway. He cut the wheel hard to the left, sending the car into a spin on the slippery road. It ended up with two tires in the ditch and Sarah Blackwell in his lap. He pushed the door open with his foot and crawled out with Sarah in tow.
They didn’t have far to walk. They found the turn for Fenwick House, the entrance marked with a sign half-hidden in the overgrown brush. The last leaves of fall clung desperately to the
stiffening branches, which finally and inevitably fell to the cold, damp ground.
An oily gravel drive cut into the hillside. The leaves and branches formed a canopy over the drive that obscured the dying light left in the day. They walked past a small pond. A thin layer of green algae coated the surface and steam rose lightly over it. Ferns flourished in the scant dirt between the rocks, fed by a constant supply of dirty water. The only sound was the crunch of Lou’s boots on the dead leaves. The landscape was rocky, crumbling stone carpeted in moss. They followed a long steep grade around a few blind turns. The night was descending around them, a curtain of darkness before a desolate, wooded stage.
Fenwick House appeared like a hidden castle, three-stories of sculptured stone surrounded by twenty-five acres of solitude and stone walls. A slate patio wrapped around it on two sides. The manicured lawn was wide as a fairway and the circular drive brought guests directly to the front door. Someone was standing on the patio. It was a woman, a gloomy light from two decorative lanterns framing her outline, her long brown hair, her shoulders in a dark robe hunched against the cold, smoke from her cigarette swirling in the wind.
Lou led Sarah along the tree line, using it to cover their approach as they circled to the back of the property. He pushed his way through the thick brush, lifting his feet out of the sticky ground, taking elongated strides. Brambles scratched his skin through his pant leg. They clung to the cotton fabric and pricked the tips of his fingers as he pried them off. They stepped onto the wide stone patio. Now the girl was gone.
A set of French doors led from the patio into an expansive dining room, almost entirely enclosed in glass with a view of the rolling hills, the threatening black clouds flying past, and a forlorn flower garden. He tried the handle. It turned and he went
in. A round silver decanter sat like a Buddha on a table covered with a white, coffee-stained tablecloth.
The dining room was empty, except for a broad-shouldered man in a white coat and matching chef’s hat. He was preparing a salad bar, pulling clear plastic wrap off dishes of sliced cucumbers, shredded carrots, and chickpeas, dropping them into a bed of crushed ice. Lou smiled unobtrusively as he sauntered past, thinking of a career of peeling potatoes and waiting for water to boil.
They continued down a long carpeted hallway, past a nurse’s station and an adjacent hallway with patient rooms on both sides. Sarah struggled to keep up. Her shoes caked in mud, her toes damp and freezing. The hallways and doors looked the same as they would in any hospital. The nurses hammered keyboards with their pointy fingers, lost in a sea of green on the computer screens in front of them. Women’s rooms were on one side and men’s were on the other. Lou opened a few doors, peering into dark empty rooms. They went from one woman’s room to another, lingering for a moment in the darkness and then, moving on. The doors were heavy steel and Lou had to lean hard against them. They opened smoothly and quietly, and closed under their own weight with enough force to snap off a finger.