Blunt Impact (26 page)

‘Nope,’ Frank Patrick said. ‘Or at least, not as far as we’re concerned. We just need you. We don’t care what your men do.’

Novosek couldn’t stifle a groan. ‘What
now
?’

‘We’re here to arrest you for the murders of Kyle Cielac and Samantha Zebrowski.’

‘
What
?’

‘You have the right to remain silent. You have the right to an attorney to be with you—’

‘Didn’t we already go through this once today?’

‘This is different,’ Angela told him.

‘
How
?’

‘This time we have evidence.’

Damon and Boonie watched the two cops lead off their boss. Their
official
boss.

‘The man has troubles,’ Boonie said. ‘Poor man.’

‘Lucky us,’ Damon added, gazing at the stacks of copper pipe, which shone like gold in the slanting afternoon light.

Theresa snatched up the phone, punched the blinking red light. ‘Ghost?’

‘Uh, no. This is Scott. I am not yet a ghost, at least not that I know of.’

The secretary had said it was someone about the Zebrowski case. Theresa swallowed her disappointment and said, ‘Yes, Mr Crain. How can I help you?’

Apparently she hadn’t swallowed enough. ‘For starters you could sound a little less annoyed to hear my voice.’

‘I don’t have a lot of time to spend on a vandal who fancies himself a social activist. What do you want?’

A pause, as if he were swallowing one or two emotions himself. ‘I want to talk to you. As a scientist, you should make yourself completely aware of what our government is planning to do inside that new building, and when you do, I’m sure you’ll see that we—’

‘As a scientist, I should be doing my job, which is to find out how and why two people died.’

‘Well,’ he said, ‘I could tell you something about that, too.’

‘Sure. Go ahead.’

‘In person. Can we meet?’

‘No. I’m busy and I’m a witness in your case. If you have knowledge relating to the recent murders you should contact the investigating officers.’ She reeled off this party line but had a hard time feeling it. Despite herself, she began to feel the intrigue of Scott Crain and his ominous hints.

‘Those investigating officers are the same jackbooted Nazis who arrested me, so forgive me if I’d rather talk to you.’

This made a certain amount of sense. Better he talk to her than no one at all. ‘OK, I see your point. So go ahead.’

‘Come outside. I’m standing by your car.’

‘You leave my—’

Click
.

He had hung up.

‘W
hat evidence?’ Novosek asked for the fifth time.

Frank dropped into the steel chair in the newly painted room, feeling only a twinge of the weariness catching up with him. Mostly he felt the twin surges of adrenalin as when a horse sees the barn and when the fox corners the rabbit. Victory was within reach. All he had to do now was pull it in.

Similes. His cousin had mentioned something about that, when she’d called.

‘Do you know why there’s so much corruption in the construction trades, Novosek?’ Angela began.

Frank sat back and listened. They had figured letting a female take the lead would throw Novosek off even more. Besides, her silky voice made everything sound more dangerous, somehow. Threatening.

Enticing.

Ready to provide something he hadn’t known he was seeking.

Concentrate, dude.

She hadn’t waited for an answer. ‘Because it’s so easy. There are so many different aspects of a project, especially this size. Design. Concrete. Piping. Air-conditioning. Personnel. Supplies.’

‘Yeah?’ Novosek interrupted. The suspense was getting to him.

‘Each and every one of those aspects can be pilfered, kickbacks made for using this supplier instead of that one, and the costs can go up in the months it takes from breaking ground to cutting the ribbon. You can double the price of a box of bolts, because really, who in the county is going to go double-check the price on a box of bolts? How much could it be, a buck? Except that buck is multiplied by two thousand boxes. It adds up. It always has. It always will.’

‘I haven’t stolen a penny from this job. I don’t do that.’ The burst of a nail gun up the hall served as an exclamation point.

‘I want to believe that, Chris. And I do – in one respect. We checked your financials. You’re drawing your salary from the job’s operating costs, that’s it. At least on paper, you have no unexplained deposits, no offshore bank accounts, no recent homes or cars or boats purchased in your name, or your wife’s name, or your kids’ names.’

His scowl deepened until it left deep creases in his face. ‘You leave my family out of this.’

‘However, also on paper, you have three employees named Stan Johnson, Tyler Rodriguez, and Slyman Stears. One is an ironworker, one a pipefitter, one an electrician.’

The scowl flattened out. ‘Yeah?’

‘The thing is, they seem to exist
only
on paper. None of the workers at your site have ever met them. Their addresses are fake, their phone numbers are fake, their socials belong to a professional golfer in Phoenix, a schoolteacher in Moline and I forget who else. Almost as if someone made them up.’

Novosek’s expression got even blanker.

‘But they make good money, probably better than the teacher. I don’t know about the golfer. Nice salaries that are paid to these men out of the general operating fund, which exists from draws made from the county coffers earmarked for this project. Yes, the men don’t seem to exist, but their salaries are real enough. Real checks cashed at real banks. What do you think we’re going to see when we check the real security footage of these real banks? I’m guessing we’re going to see a real person, because tellers generally don’t wait on phantoms.’

Novosek said nothing.

‘We’ve got cops at all three banks pulling the video now,’ Angela said. ‘Like I said, it’s not surprising. Large projects just make it so damn easy to steal. It’s the nature of the beast—’

‘I didn’t steal nothing!’ Novosek leaned forward and slapped his hands on the table, sending a small flurry of dust motes into the air – the renovations left every surface on the floor covered in drywall powder. Then he stopped, looking as if he were literally biting his tongue. Angela let the silence drag on.

Finally Novosek said, ‘Have you seen my contract with the county on this project?’

Neither detective answered.

He sighed. ‘The market crashed. The economy tanked. Real estate, I’m sure I’m not telling you nothin’ you don’t already know, was the hardest hit. No one had money to build, they didn’t have money to renovate, they didn’t even have money to continue building what they’d already started. I had to lay off. Then I had to lay off more. I had only been in business for myself for seven years and already I thought I’d have to take my kid out of private school—’

‘Things are tough all over,’ Angela said in a firm tone Frank hoped she would never have to use on him. ‘Is that when you decided to rob your next project?’

‘That was when I got desperate enough to make a deal with the devil.’ Novosek abandoned the tough-guy slouch to rub both his temples. ‘I don’t know who the new county exec hired to oversee building contracts, but he got his money’s worth because the guy made the most of a buyer’s market. The job doesn’t come in on time, I pay a penalty – which essentially means I knock something off the price. I don’t use enough minority owned businesses, I pay a penalty. I don’t use suppliers within the county as long as their prices are within five percent of any out-of-county competitors, I pay a penalty. The price of raw materials goes up less than ten percent, I eat it, or I pay a penalty. I go over budget, I pay a penalty. They could nickel-and-dime me into getting the damn building for free if they really try, and they’ll really try. But what the hell was I going to do? I could take the job or I could close up shop.’

‘Sounds pretty stressful,’ Angela said, without the slightest shred of sympathy in her voice. ‘So you suppose that justifies pocketing the salaries of three fake employees?’

‘Yes. Because I didn’t pocket that money. The job did.’

‘Pardon me?’

‘That money makes up the shortfalls. Because sometimes the cost of raw materials
does
go up. Sometimes rain or a holiday or a water-main break does delay the work. Because sometimes I do have to pay five percent more than I should have to in order to use an in-county supplier. Sometimes the guys screw something up and it costs time and materials to fix it. Sometimes things go wrong. That’s called
life
.’

‘So you’re somehow conning money out of the county for the ultimate good of the county?’

‘For the good of me and my guys, who are just trying to make an honest day’s wage for an honest day’s work without getting strangled by some bullshit fine print.’

Angela did not look convinced, though Frank knew she actually liked the guy. She was a sucker for a working-class hero, which only made what he had to do next more uncomfortable. ‘A real Robin Hood, that’s you. But whether it’s stealing or simply good money management, that’s between you and your God and your county auditors. Because my partner and I aren’t here to talk about embezzlement. We’re here to talk about murder.’

The passion Novosek had shown while explaining his management style faded abruptly. The dust motes settled down. ‘What about it?’

‘We know about the concrete. We know Kyle knew too. Is that why you killed him?’

Novosek’s jaw actually loosened and hung open for a moment or two. ‘You . . . What . . .? You got to be kidding me. You think I killed Kyle Cielac over the minority-owned-business clause? What the hell would he have to do with that? What—’

Angela recovered faster than Frank. ‘No, Mr Novosek, we’re not here about business clauses. We’re here because we think you killed Kyle Cielac to keep him from telling state investigators how you, your concrete supplier Decker and Stroud, and Inspector Kobelski conspired to replace the required concrete with a substandard mix and pocket the difference in the cost. That’s what we think.’

Chris Novosek continued to gape at them.

Then he said, slowly and clearly: ‘What the hell are you talking about?’

D
amon and Boonie gave Jack a friendly nod as they left the site. Best to have someone to remember that they had left along with everyone else, nothing suspicious, everyone hustling to get gone before the clouds really opened up, but they couldn’t be sure the ironworker would even recall them. Every guy on the site seemed frustrated, frazzled and worried. Two deaths in two days. Come to work, get sent home, come back to work, sent home again. They’d no sooner start a section before some cop came and chased them out and were no longer in the mindset to use the time off as a mini-vacation; the time off represented lost wages and a backlog of tasks that would make the next day even more hectic. Not to mention someone seemed to be out to get them: home-grown terrorists, fanatical civil rights activists, or just some particularly pissed-off ghost. Or worse, maybe one of them. Each man on the job no longer wished to turn his back on the same guys he’d been hauling I-beams, eating lunch or laying pipe with for the past few months.

For Damon and Boonie, however, things seemed to get better every minute. A white guy now sat in a holding cell instead of them. They appeared to be two honest laborers, victims of a string of bad luck. And the fears of their co-workers would keep each of them far away from the site once the sun went down, leaving them all the time and freedom necessary to relieve their beleaguered boss of his pile of expensive copper pipe. It hadn’t been their purpose in this undercover assignment, but, as the boss explained, a smart man always has one eye out for opportunity. And the boss was a smart man.

They walked away from the site without looking back, heading for Tower City where they could get a bite to eat, rest a while, and wait for the sun to go down.

‘Get off my hood.’

Scott Crain twisted his face up to illustrate what he thought of her desire to preserve a ’95 Ford Tempo as if it were an Italian sports car, but he slid off the fender obediently enough. ‘Who’s this?’

‘This is my bodyguard,’ she said of her co-worker Don, who stood at her shoulder. ‘What, some guy I don’t know with a documented history of violence tells me to meet him in the parking lot, you think I’m going to come alone?’

Truth be told, Don was a bit slender for protection work, but then so was Scott Crain. And Don had three inches on him, easy.

‘Hurry up,’ she added, glancing at the third-floor windows. She had given the secretary desperate and pleading instructions that if Ghost called back, she was to open the pane and shriek. ‘I’m expecting a phone call.’

Crain continued to glare at Don, who, despite his generally peaceable attitude, hovered just in front of her in a convincingly intimidating manner. He even went so far as to say, ‘She’s not going anywhere without me,’ which she thought was taking the role a bit far but she liked it. So she added to Crain: ‘Don is our DNA analyst.’

Receiving another scientist to preach to didn’t placate the man as much as she expected, but finally he shrugged and consented to speak his piece. ‘Those Nazis didn’t believe that I had actually spoken to Sam, the woman who died. But I did, and she did agree with us that the jail design is barbaric. She needed the money – she’s supporting her mom – so she couldn’t afford to quit on principle. But she was going to get us a copy of the blueprints. We should be able to get a set through a public records request but the planning department won’t give them up. “Security reasons,” they tell us. The prints are kept in the manager’s office but often they get sloppy and leave copies at the various stations. It depends on what stage the work is at.’

‘And did she? Get you the plans?’

‘No, but I thought maybe that’s what she was doing when she died. She was looking for a copy of the blueprints, and somebody caught her. Maybe the project manager. I can’t imagine one of those no-neck construction types giving a crap if she had the plans or not.’