Every Kind of Wicked. Lisa Black
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could see a mugger taking the cash and credit cards but, assuming the guy had one, why the driver’s license? “Maybe the mugger resembles the dead boy enough to keep the DL in case he needed it to use the credit card, or cards?”
Jack said, “Risky. We could check surveillance videos wherever the cards have been used in the past, say, twelve hours . . . of course that’s if we knew the guy’s name.”
“Maybe that’s why he took the driver’s license.”
Riley said, “Your average mugger isn’t that smart. Trust me on that.”
She did. “So our killer is either really smart or really dumb.”
“Or this guy didn’t carry any identification,” Jack said.
Maggie shivered. She couldn’t stop thinking about her last visit to the Erie Street Cemetery. She had first entered Jack Renner’s orbit that day, eight months and a lifetime ago. The gravesites had been dampened with spring grass and the body of a young girl. Trafficked, abused, murdered, and disposed of.
Jack hadn’t killed the girl, of course. But a day later he killed the man who’d killed her. Maggie had discovered that and done nothing about it. Then Maggie had made her own violent decision and her life had not been the same since.
No one—besides Jack, of course—knew that. But not even he knew that she still woke up every morning wondering how long she could carry this burden before she broke under the weight, told someone—anyone—the truth, and created an opening for both her and Jack at the nearest jail. She had not spoken to anyone about this perfect storm of threat and guilt. Not her friends, not her only sibling, not the assigned department-ordered psychologist. Not even Jack.
Not yet, anyway.
She studied his face, wondering if any of these thoughts churned in his head, whether he made the connection between their first case together and this one. Wondering if they had come full circle, wondering if her period of crazy had ended, if she might be ready to go back to being the person she’d been before.
The uniformed patrol officer interrupted her thoughts. He hadn’t seen anything of any interest in either garbage can, at least not on the surface. “What’s on top don’t look fresh, either . . . I doubt this place gets a lot of traffic in the winter. I mean, you can check, but if you ask me, your weapon isn’t buried in there.”
“Duly noted,” Jack said. “Thank you.”
“No problem. At least I’m not in the middle of a cluster in some apartment building with psycho moms threatening to beat my ass, like, say, my shift yesterday. Much rather be out here with my nose going numb and—hey, you know who this is?”
The two cops and Maggie gave the young cop their full attention. Riley said, “What? You know our victim?”
“No, not him. Whose grave he’s lying on.”
Disappointed, Maggie tried to read the large stone looming up from the snow, but the elements of too many years had worn down the surface. Then she noticed, for the first time, that the slab the victim sprawled across had broken and slightly separated, with grass springing up in the cracks as if they were flagstones. “Somebody famous?” she asked, to be polite, since the two detectives showed no interest.
“Chief Joc-O-sot.”
She squinted. Indeed, the raised letters of the broken slab spelled that out in a line above the victim’s head.
“He was an Indian chief in the Black Hawk War.”
Now Riley did show some interest. “What the hell was the Black Hawk War?”
“I have no idea, but it sounds cool, don’t it? He wasn’t actually from Cleveland. He came here with some friend of his and became sort of a media darling. Queen Victoria had his portrait painted when he visited her in England.” Now that all three of his companions stared at him, he explained, “My kid had to do a history report on this cemetery.”
“Ah,” Maggie said.
He spoke more quickly, recognizing short attention spans when he found them. “Supposedly he haunts this area. The trip to England aggravated an old wound, and he was trying to get to his old home to be buried with his tribe, but only made it back to Cleveland before dying. So his spirit doesn’t really want to be here. Supposedly.”
“I doubt a ghost gutted this guy,” Riley said.
“Doesn’t have to be the Indian,” the cop mused aloud. “This cemetery used to be a lot bigger, but when downtown real estate needed to expand, they moved a bunch of graves. Might have ticked off a lot of spirits. Like in Poltergeist.”
Riley argued, “No, in the movie they built over the graves. Here, as long as they actually moved them it should be cool.”
“Tell that to the ghosts.”
“If you guys are finished discussing the supernatural,” Jack said, “I see the ME is here.”
The Medical Examiner’s Office investigator, a middle-aged man with very dark skin and zero body fat, prodded the body but discovered no new insights. Maggie helped him turn the now-stiff corpse over, but the back pockets were as empty as the front. No phone, no further items, no ID. The jacket similarly held nothing of interest.
“The body snatchers are going to be a while,” he told them. “They’re stuck at a four-car pileup at Dead Man’s Curve.”
“Bunch of fatalities?” Riley asked.
“No, but traffic’s backed up for two miles and they’re looking for an exit.”
Riley groaned as if this inefficiency were a personal affront and turned to Jack. “Why don’t you see if CSU can tell us anything about that swipe card? I’ll stand here and freeze my toes to Popsicles and hear more about Chief Jackspit.”
“Joc-O-sot,” the patrol officer corrected.
“I’ll go with you,” Maggie said.
Both cops stared at her.
She said, “Cleveland State’s a sprawling campus. It takes a half hour of wandering around to find anything if you’re not familiar with it. It’s only two blocks away.” They didn’t seem convinced, but she added firmly, “Let’s go,” and began to walk.
After fifteen or twenty feet, Jack glanced back to make sure they were out of earshot, “What was all that about?”
Maggie said, “We need to talk.”
Chapter 2
They exited the cemetery at the west end, across from the baseball stadium, now as frigid and vacated as the gravesites, and did a U-turn onto the short, brick-paved Erie Court. Conscious of their coworkers on the other side of the stone wall, they kept their voices low.
“What’s up?” Jack asked. He didn’t worry that Riley would find their tête-à-tête suspicious; he and Maggie had let everyone believe they were sleeping together. They weren’t, of course, but it provided a handy explanation for these occasional conferences. And Maggie had thought it might discourage the interest of her ex-husband, another homicide detective named—
“Rick.”
“He hassling you?” Rick Gardiner wasn’t the most even-tempered guy.
“No, but I think he’s planning to hassle you.”
They emerged onto East 14th. She turned left and he followed.
“He stopped by to see me this morning, supposedly to pick up a fingerprint report on a case of his, which of course he didn’t need because we always send copies over to your unit as soon as they’re ready. Then he told me a funny story about one of those phone scammers calling and pretending to be his grandson needing money for bail—”
“He has a grandson?”