Lincoln Perry 02 - Sorrow's Anthem (23 page)

CHAPTER
22

They drove me back to my truck, past an inordinate number of
patrol cars still cruising the streets of the neighborhood. If there’d
been more fires, we didn’t see any sign of them. None of us spoke
much on the ride, although I had to give directions to my truck.
When they pulled in behind it, Mason gave me my gun back,
which he’d apparently claimed after they’d found me on the pavement.
I climbed out of the car, and Dean put down his window.
“Cell number’s written on the back,” he said, offering a card.
“You get into trouble, give me a call. But I’m hoping that isn’t going
to happen. I’m hoping you believed enough of what I said back
there to just go home and sit the rest of this one out.”
I took his card and put it in my pocket. “If I thought you guys
honestly gave a damn about clearing Ed Gradduk, maybe I would,
Dean.”
I walked away from them, unlocked my truck, and climbed inside.
I was suddenly so exhausted that I wanted to just lean the seat
back and go to sleep, not even make the drive home. I’d left my cell
phone in the truck, and when I picked it up, I saw I had more than
a dozen missed calls. Joe, Amy, Joe, Amy, Joe, Amy, Amy, Joe. I
stopped scrolling through them when the phone vibrated in my
hand, another call coming in. Amy. I answered it as I put the key in
the ignition and brought the engine to life.
“Where in the hell have you been?” she said, the words drawn
out and spoken between clenched teeth.
“Detained.”
“I was going to send the cops after you, but Joe told me to wait.
He said to give you another hour.”
“I knew he had confidence in me.”
“Actually, he suggested you were probably already in custody.
Was he right?”
“No. But pretty close, I suppose. I’m going home now.”
“We’ll both meet you there,” she said, and hung up.

“Easy, Ace.” I gritted my teeth as Amy pressed a sponge soaked in
ice water against my head. The water leaked through my hair and
trickled down the side of my face.
“Sorry. I’m trying to be gentle, but that’s not easy with the lump
you’ve got up here, Lincoln. It’s about the size and texture of a
Twinkie.”
That description didn’t make me feel any better. I was back in
my apartment, on the couch, with Joe sitting across from me, and
Amy insisting on tending to my battered skull. The dull ache that
had been there all through my talk with Dean and Mason had become
an incessant throbbing. I’d taken a handful of ibuprofen, but
I had a feeling it wasn’t going to do the job.
Amy took the sponge away, grimaced, then held it out for me to
see. There was a coppery smear across its surface. I’d already
washed off the long cuts and abrasions on my arms and hands, but
I couldn’t see the head injury well enough to deal with it.
“A cut?” I asked.
“Looks like it’s just scraped up. Nothing too deep.”
“Great.”
She set the sponge aside and then handed me a plastic bag filled
with ice, guided my hand to the lump at the crown of my skull.
Her fingers were cold from the sponge.
“So tell me again,” Joe said, “who hit you in the head?”
“A building.”
He smiled. “You really ran . . .”
“Right into it,” I said. “Yes. Headfirst.”
His smile widened. Joe is not a strong one for sympathy. At least
not for people who run headfirst into buildings.
I took them both through my experience in the house and my
talk with Dean and Mason, doing most of the talking with my
eyes squeezed shut. The light seemed to exacerbate the headache.
“So you honestly have no idea who pulled you out of that fire?”
Joe said.
“The same person who started the fire. So when I do figure out
this guy’s identity, I’ll be torn between wanting to thank him and
wanting to shoot him.”
“No guesses?” Amy said.
I opened my eyes again. I’d thought about it some on the drive
home, but I hadn’t come up with anything substantial. Just possibilities
that could be far, far from the truth.
“Mitch Corbett?” I said. “The guy’s missing, and he’s tied to
Sentalar and these houses. But then there’s Padgett, conveniently
turning up at the scene of one of the fires, just like Larry Rabold
did seventeen years ago. Only problem is, I have trouble imagining
either pausing to help me out.”
“Right.” She was sitting close to me, and although I’d closed my
eyes again, I was very aware of her, distracted by the faint smell of
perfume. I haven’t had much luck sustaining relationships with
women, and a long time ago I’d decided that to preserve my
friendship with Amy, I needed to keep it a friendship. I assumed
that she felt the same way, because, while there was an abnormal
amount of flirting in our relationship, she’d never instigated anything
beyond that. At times the arrangement seems less than ideal
to me, though, and for some reason this had become one of them.
The good news was that if such thoughts were passing through my
mind at all right now, the burns and the knock on the head hadn’t
damaged anything too critical.
We kept talking for a while, but Amy asked most of the questions.
Joe was quiet, and I knew why. He was worried about what
Mason and Dean had told me, about their suggestion that Cancerno’s
network of corruption went deep and was going to be
worth protecting to those involved. In Larry Rabold’s basement,
Joe and I had likely seen an example of that protection, and I had
a feeling he was thinking about that a lot. If I hadn’t been so damn
exhausted, maybe I would have had the energy to be worried, too.
Eventually, I threw them out. I needed sleep in a way I hadn’t
needed sleep often before. When they were gone, I stripped off my
clothes and lay down on the bed, lights off. Tired as I was, the
stench of smoke that was still attached to me, trapped in my hair
and soaked into my skin, was too distracting. I got up and went
into the bathroom, turned the water up as hot as I could stand it,
and stepped inside.
There are plenty of problems with my building, the type of
problems that are common in any structure that’s stood for nearly
six decades, but poor water pressure isn’t one of them. The water
hammered at me, and the power of it felt good, even against my
burns and the swollen tissue on my head. I closed my eyes and
tried to let the water pound away the mental grime, too. I didn’t
want to think anymore. Not tonight. I didn’t want to see visions of
Ed Gradduk’s body, or Larry Rabold’s, or burning houses. I didn’t
want to think about what it all meant, how it all fit. I didn’t want to
think about a son of a bitch named Mitch Corbett who could
probably make sense of a lot of it for me if I could just find him.
It was then, in this moment of attempting to think not at all,
that I began to understand something. I stood there under the water
and tried to tell myself that I was wrong, that the idea was the
product of fatigue and one hell of a crack on the head. I couldn’t
do it, though. It made too much sense.
I stood there until the water heater kicked into higher gear and
what had been a tolerable temperature became closer to scalding.
Then I shut the water off, wrapped a towel around me, and walked
back to the bedroom to get dressed again. Sleep would wait. I
needed a computer.

The avenue was quiet as I walked down to the office, the wind
gentle and warm. My hair was still wet from the shower, and I
spent most of the walk telling myself that I really needed to invest
in a home computer.
I went upstairs, unlocked the office, and turned on my computer.
I left the lights off and stood at the window while the computer
booted up, watching the cars pass. The building felt lonely
at this hour. Hell, the city did. Most people were home in bed
with their families, or they were working night shifts surrounded
by coworkers. One of these days I was going to have to get a normal
life.
To cut the silence, I turned on the little television on the filing
cabinet. It was tuned to one of the local news stations, and they
were rerunning the news from eleven, which had focused on the
outbreak of fires. A young male reporter was standing outside the
burned house on Erin Avenue. Little was left but wreckage. A total
loss, he told us. Fortunately, it had been vacant, as had all the
other houses burned in a “wildfire of arson.” I didn’t think the term
“wildfire” really applied to arson, but then I’m not a professional
journalist.
The computer was finally ready to go. While the reporter told us
that there had been no arrests made in the case and the police had
yet to announce whether there were any suspects, I logged on to
the Internet. I went to the Cuyahoga County Web site and
searched it until I found what I wanted—a biography page on
Mike Gajovich. It told me Gajovich had begun his career as a
deputy prosecutor, then been promoted to chief assistant prosecutor,
and gave the dates of service in those positions. He’d been
chief assistant prosecutor seventeen years earlier. That settled, I
left his bio page and found the bio for the current chief assistant
prosecutor. Beneath the bio was a description of duties. Three sentences
into it, I found what I wanted: Among other responsibilities,
the chief assistant prosecutor reviews all Cleveland Police Department
internal affairs matters, including possible criminal conduct and the use
of deadly force.

Joe answered on the third ring, but his voice was gruff, choked
with sleep.
“It’s me,” I said, and then got into it without wasting time on
any apologies for the late call. “Dean told me there’s someone big
involved with the police. Most of the guys they’ve tied to it are
bottom-feeders, street cops and patrol officers. But he said every
indication is that it goes higher than that.”
“I’ve got a bad feeling you have an idea,” Joe said after a pause.
“Mike Gajovich.”

This time the pause was even longer.
“Gajovich isn’t a cop, LP. You said Dean indicated it was someone
higher up within the department.”
“You telling me Gajovich doesn’t have any sway within the department?
Come on, Joe. You know better. The guy’s one of the
top law enforcement presences in this city, and he’s popular with
everybody at the department after that stink he raised last year
when the mayor cut staff.”
“And you think he’s a player in this because he sent your friend
home? Because he came at you a little cold when we talked to him?”
“Gajovich has been with the prosecutor’s office for a long time,
Joe. He started with them as a deputy prosecutor, worked his way
up the ladder. Seventeen years ago, when my father made the complaint
about Padgett, Gajovich was chief assistant prosecutor.
According
to the county’s Web site, the chief assistant prosecutor reviews
all internal affairs matters, criminal conduct, and use of
deadly force. Remember how Amos explained that the complaint
was serious enough that they bumped it right to the lawyers? I
think this is what he meant.”
I heard a grunt and a rustling, probably as he sat up in bed.
“So you think Gajovich went to talk to Alberta Gradduk, and
then, what, discouraged her from making a complaint?” he said.
“Could be. All I know right now is it looks like he went to see
Alberta, the complaint never developed into a case, and Gajovich is
sweating Ed’s death and all the circumstances around it years
later.”
He sighed. “We’ve got to confirm it first, LP.”
“Yeah. That’s what the morning will be for. We’ll go see Alberta
first thing.”
“Would look pretty bad for a mayoral candidate,” Joe said, “if a
harassment cover-up was exposed.”
“Be the type of thing that would keep you awake nights,” I
agreed.
“Gajovich’s brother has been with the department for years.”
“I know.”
“Do you know what he does, though?”
“Administrative, right?”
“He’s a commander.”
“Okay.”
“He’s the commander of District Two.”
District Two. Clark-Fulton.
There was a period of silence. The lights were still off, but the
computer monitor filled the office with a soft blue glow. Outside, a
car blew its horn at the intersection, maybe at some drunk running
the red light, or somebody so tired they’d sat through the change to
green.
“If either Gajovich really is tied to Cancerno …” Joe let the
sentence die.

“Yeah,” I said, and it was enough. We both understood the rest.
It wasn’t the type of thing you wanted to put into words at this
hour of the night, anyhow. Not if you had any hope of finding
sleep.

CHAPTER
23

There was no car in Alberta Gradduk’s driveway, but there hadn’t
been on any of our previous visits, either. Whatever Ed drove had
been impounded by the police, and maybe Alberta didn’t have a
car. I wondered if she even had a driver’s license, or if some medical
issue prevented her from being on the road. After seeing her
with her bourbon earlier in the week, that was more of a hope than
a passing thought.
She was home, as I’d assumed she would be this early in the
morning, and her face had an ugly expression as she pushed the
blinds aside and peered through the window after Joe knocked on
the front door.
“You’ve been told twice,” she said. “Go away. Please, just go
away.”
“Mrs. Gradduk,” I said, “you’ve got to understand that I am trying
to help.”
“Go away,” she repeated, then let the blinds swing back in place
and stepped away from the window.
I raised my voice. “I know about the cop that came to arrest Ed,
Mrs. Gradduk. I know that my father made a complaint to the police
about him years ago.”
She came back to the door, opened it, and stood before me with
naked hatred in her eyes.
“You don’t know anything. Not a thing.” Her eyes were still
sunken and her skin was still tinged gray, but she’d changed
clothes, at least.
“We know you had some problems with Sergeant Padgett,” Joe
said. “And we need you to talk about that. We think it’s important.”
“You know I had problems with him?” she said, spitting the word
back at him. “That’s what you’ve been told?”
“Am I wrong?”
She was holding on to the doorknob as if she needed the support
to remain on her feet. “Problems with him,” she repeated. “Yes.
Yes, I had problems with him, if that’s the word you want to use.”
“Explain it to us, Mrs. Gradduk,” I said, taking a step toward
the door. “We didn’t come here to upset you. We just want to understand.”
“No,
you don’t.”
“Can we come inside?”
“You don’t want to understand,” she said, but she moved aside
and let us in. We went back into the living room, and I saw a cluster
of fresh glasses on the coffee table, all of them empty, a half
full bottle of bourbon on the floor beside the couch.
She sat down on the couch and shoved the bottle to the side. I
took a chair across from her and leaned forward, my elbows braced
against my knees. Joe sat beside me.
“Please tell us about Padgett,” I said. “What happened with him?”
The ceiling fan turned overhead, the blades shedding dust. I
waited for her.
“I was the one who suffered,” she said. “I was the victim?
“I know,” I said.
“Norm just felt sorry for himself.”
“What do you mean?” Joe said.
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Mrs. Gradduk …” I tried to make my voice as soothing and
sympathetic as I could without sacrificing a tone of command, the
voice I’d used as a cop dealing with hysterical accident victims or
witnesses to brutal violence.
She looked back at the empty glasses. “I won’t talk about it. Not