Raw Bone (9 page)

Then he heard the sirens screaming across Main Street and he went in to get Martha out of the bath. He didn’t want her to miss the action.

“Did you see which direction he went?” Vertesi asked.

“Yeah, he crossed over to Cumerland, right down there.” He pointed to the corner.

MacNeice and Vertesi left the building, pulling up their collars against the rain, which was now whipping in gusts like horizontal needles.

MacNeice glanced at the corner. “Let’s take a walk down Cumerland.”

“Why don’t I get the car?”

“We’re not going far.”

Directly behind the apartment building was a narrow strip of grass that ended at a chain-link fence bordering the rail line that skirted the mountain. On the other side of the rail line was an old one-storey red brick building edged so close to the tracks, there was no fence at all. Behind that building was a feral clump of trees and shabby undergrowth. As he walked along the tracks, MacNeice studied the gravel and stone on either side, avoiding the puddles, looking for any shoe prints or cart tracks that had survived the rain.

“You think the buggy man’s our man and he dumped the buggy here?”

“Here … or the other side of Cumerland. The buggy was a disguise, and he didn’t need it after the park.”

They stepped into the clump of trees. There was plenty of garbage and plastic bags tangled in the groundcover, or hanging like overripe fruit on bare branches—but there was no abandoned shopping cart. MacNeice turned around and started walking back in the direction of Cumerland Street. Soaked to the skin and more concerned about pneumonia than crime busting,
Vertesi trailed behind.

“If he went this way, he couldn’t be seen from the apartments above.” MacNeice gestured toward Goode’s building. Most people don’t study homeless people closely, and avert their eyes when they act out. It’s one of the reasons the homeless stay homeless.

Crossing Cumerland, they walked the rail line south behind an old brick factory that had been repurposed into offices. The loading docks facing the rail line hadn’t been used in twenty years. Everything likely arrived at this place by FedEx. Fifty feet along, the dirt path beside the line curved off to the right as the tracks eased left. A few yards farther, MacNeice spotted a cart shoved roughly into the bushes. He put his latex gloves on and grabbed the handle, pulling the cart back onto the path. The bags Goode described were still in the buggy.

“What the hell? How did you know it would be here?” Vertesi said, as he gathered his coat about him and squatted to check the front right wheel. The weld had failed and the wheel was hanging off to the side.

“Our man needed some way to walk out of Gage Park. He knew the grenade explosion would bring people to their windows and porches. A guy that comes running out of that gate would be noticed. But who’d ever think a mentally challenged homeless guy was the bomber? More likely they’d think—if they thought anything about him at all—that he’d been scared off by the blast.” MacNeice studied the bags. “Judging by the weight of the cart, you’ll find those bags are filled with paper.”

MacNeice stepped back, looked along the track to where the path curved the other way. He didn’t believe the buggy man went any farther than he needed to. “That path crosses the next street to the west: that’s where he parked his car.” He pulled his point-and-shoot camera out of
the pocket of his coat and took several photographs of the cart. “We’ll get these processed and show them to Goode.”

Seeing how drenched Vertesi was from two hours of door-to-doors in the rain, he told him to retrieve the Chevy and wait inside the car for the forensics team to arrive. When the young man brought it rumbling in from Cumerland, spitting gravel as it left the asphalt, MacNeice guided him as close to the cart as possible and then walked away, slapping the roof as he passed.

Vertesi rolled down the window. “Where you going, sir?” Vertesi called. Whatever MacNeice said was lost in the rain as he disappeared in the direction of the park.

MacNeice headed for the north side of the band shell. Once he got there, he turned around and timed his walk back to the park entrance at the Cumerland intersection. Three minutes, plus or minus thirty seconds. If the buggy man waited to witness the explosion, Goode would have spotted him three minutes later. If he’d lingered, it might have been four or five. MacNeice crossed the street and stood looking up and down Gage Avenue, then glanced up to see Goode waving at him from his balcony.

“What do you think?” Goode called.

“How long after the blast did you see the buggy man come through the gate?”

“Oh … jeez.” Goode massaged the stubble on his chin while staring down Gage in the direction of the blast site. “It’s gotta be, I’m pretty sure, it’s gotta be like five minutes or so. Why?”

“Thank you, Mr. Goode. You’ve been very helpful. Stay dry.”

Goode laughed. “Look at me and look at you.”

MacNeice smiled at the man. His hair was plastered to his skull. Rain ran down his face and neck, under his scarf and was inching down his back. He could feel it ricocheting off his shoulders, hitting his chin. He waved at the man, then walked back to the Chevy. After he climbed in, he asked, “No one else saw what Goode saw?”

“No. Everyone else seemed to be watching the smoke coming from the explosion. Add to that the sound of emergency vehicles screaming along Main and up Gage … Nobody saw him.”

MacNeice wiped his face and smoothed his wet hair back. “Salty Conner and Bob Goode are the only ones who actually saw the explosion and the killer.”

The Chevy’s heater fan was maxed out, forcing Vertesi to raise his voice. “So the buggy man’s the wagon-puller.”

“I believe so. He was able to stick around to see it happen because he’d planned how to get away unnoticed.”

MacNeice’s cellphone rang. Aziz.

“Mac, Ryan’s found someone who could be the bombing victim. His name is David Crawford Nicholson. He’s a high school English teacher at Our Lady of Mercy, out past Kenilworth. He’s forty-seven and lives alone with his sixteen-year-old son, Dylan, who reported that his father hadn’t been home for two days. The school’s VP confirmed Nicholson hasn’t shown up for work, didn’t call in sick, and his car’s sitting in the school’s parking lot.”

Dylan Nicholson met Aziz and MacNeice at the door of his home on Tisdale Street South. At sixteen, he was already well over six feet tall, lanky and fit, sporting a curly mop of sandy hair. He was wearing a light grey Indiana sweatshirt, khaki cargo pants and well-worn Converse high-tops. Never certain about teen fashion, MacNeice nonetheless realized that the young man was out of step with his generation, which he found refreshing if only because it suggested a degree of independence.

“You said you guys were from Homicide?” Dylan appeared uncertain as to why they were there. Clearly he wasn’t ready to believe anything as horrible as that could have happened to his father.

Aziz said, reassuringly, “We’re detectives, Dylan, and we’re investigating where your dad might have gone.”

Dylan ushered them into a living room of nondescript furniture and comfortably worn brown carpeting. There were sports magazines, mostly basketball, on the heavy wooden coffee table, sharing space with neatly stacked hardcovers. On top, with several flagged pages, was volume one of Winston Churchill’s biography, and just below it was a new biography of Lyndon B. Johnson.

Original oil paintings hung on the walls—all landscapes of somewhere else. On the fireplace mantel were two MVP awards for basketball, two medals from the regional championships and, beside them, a photo of a player shot from behind, number nineteen,
dunking the ball over the heads of two defenders. He appeared to be floating, his legs relaxed, his free left arm hanging as if he felt no tension, uncertainty or concern. Given the hair fanning out from the player’s head, it had to be Dylan.

MacNeice walked over to the mantel to take a closer look. To the right of the image, almost hidden by the bodies rushing to the net, was the man in the missing persons photo, slightly overweight, barrel-chested and tall. What was left of his hair—mostly on the sides—was bushy and grey.

“That’s your dad in the background.”

“Yeah, he volunteered as an assistant coach,” Dylan said, “even though he’d never seen a basketball game till I started playing.”

“Looks like you had no problem making that shot,” MacNeice said.

Dylan shook his head, embarrassed. “Well … yeah, it was a good game.”

“You’re being modest, Dylan. Isn’t Mercy the best in the city?”

“Okay, yeah, we are.” He pushed his hair away from his eyes. “We’ve got a great bunch of guys.”

“I read the paper, Dylan. I’m told there are division team scouts coming up from the States and talk of a potential full scholarship for you. That must make your father proud.”

“Wow, you noticed that? Yeah, sure, he’s proud, but he’s told me not to get ahead of myself ’cause I have my senior season with the Panthers first.”

“Have you got a better photo of your dad you could give us?” Aziz asked.

Dylan told them that he had already given the police a photograph of his dad taken the previous summer in their backyard. His father had organized a barbecue for the team, hoping it
would become a pre-season tradition. He shoved his hands into the pouch of his sweatshirt and glanced at MacNeice. “This is totally not like Dad … I mean, he’s just a regular dad.”

“Where’s your mother, Dylan?” Aziz asked.

“She deserted us when I was four. Since then, we haven’t heard from her and we don’t know where she went.” The hurt of her leaving registered briefly on his face. “Dad had to be both parents for me, I guess.”

MacNeice was struck by his use of the word
deserted
. It was likely a word he’d been taught, one loaded with his father’s bitterness.

“Do you know of anyone …”—Aziz was struggling for words that wouldn’t alarm the boy further—“who might have had a dispute with, or grudge against, your father?”

Dylan shook his head. “As far as I know, he has no enemies. He loves teaching. Every day we discuss school on our way home … It’s like we’re both students at Mercy.” He smiled at the thought of it. “Dad has a wicked sense of humour. Even though he looks so nerdy, he isn’t.”

MacNeice heard the front door open, and turned to see a middle-aged woman closing her umbrella and leaning forward to get a view of the living room. Surprised to see two strangers, she put down a small paisley bag and stepped into the living room.

“This is my aunt Doris,” Dylan said. “These are police … I’m sorry, I’ve forgotten your names.” Dylan’s cheeks flushed red.

MacNeice offered his hand. “Detective Superintendent MacNeice, and this is Detective Inspector Fiza Aziz.”

“I’m Doris Nicholson. I’ve come to spend the night, if necessary. I just don’t know what’s happened. This is so utterly out of character for Dave.” She took her coat off and hung it on a hook in the entrance. Turning back to them, she said, “I’ve called the local hospitals …”
Noticing that Dylan’s head was down, Doris looked at both detectives and shook her head slowly.

Aziz asked her the same question she’d put to the boy.

Doris remained standing near the living room doorway. “He’s just a decent, hard-working man who’s had to manage everything since his wife left him twelve years ago.” The corners of her mouth tightened, then she asked Dylan if he would take her overnight bag upstairs. As soon as he was out of earshot, she whispered, “Jenny Grant, Dylan’s mom, was a sweet young thing, and certainly attractive, but I always thought she was a tramp.”

It was an ugly word, but neither of the detectives let their reaction show. Encouraged, Doris went on. “I have no idea where she got to, of course, or any details of why she left, but I know Jenny’s parents and brother still blames David for the breakup.” She adjusted her dress; Doris wasn’t done. “A woman that leaves a child, I mean, I find that despicable.”

“Do you have children?” MacNeice asked.

“No, I’ve never married.”

“To be clear, Ms. Nicholson,” MacNeice said, “it’s your belief that if your brother had any enemies, it would be Jennifer Grant’s family?”

“Yes … Well, I know they were very angry with David, so much so that he was forced to forbid them from seeing Dylan.” Her tone was thick with righteousness.

“Is there a photo of Jennifer Grant that we could borrow?” MacNeice asked.

Surprised, she said, “Why ever would you want one? She’s been gone for years.”

“Because it might also be something we can help with.”

“Well, I don’t know about that. David brought the police in back then and they couldn’t find her.” She shrugged. “Well, David and Jennifer’s wedding picture is on Dylan’s
dresser.” Hearing Dylan on the stairs, she turned to him and called, “They want to borrow your parents’ wedding picture. Will you fetch it?”

MacNeice winced at the tone of the request, and especially at the word
fetch
.

Dylan had come to the bottom of the stairs. “I’ll get it back, though?”

Aziz smiled reassuringly. “Absolutely, and without delay. Thank you, Dylan.”

The boy turned and headed back up the stairs.

“Doris, Detective Aziz and I will need to see your brother’s room.”

“I’ll take you up.”

“Actually, we need to do this alone. Just direct us to it.”

“I see. Well then, it’s the first door on the right, upstairs.”

The room suggested a man who might be an obsessive-compulsive. Everything was folded, organized, categorized. White, blue, checked and two Hawaiian shirts hung next to blue, brown and dark grey trousers. Three suits—blue, black, dark grey—all inexpensive two-button jobs. A rack of ties, stripes and solid colours in the palette of the wardrobe, hung on the inside of the closet door. If David Nicholson had left never expecting to return, his room would still be too tidy. Each drawer of underwear, socks—all black or brown—chinos and jeans, and sweaters were folded precisely. The sense of order struck MacNeice as more boarding school than army. On the dresser were framed photographs of Dylan, mostly happy summer snapshots covering his preteens. Dylan paused in the doorway as he was looking at them, then went back downstairs.