Lincoln Perry 02 - Sorrow's Anthem (15 page)

For a moment it was quiet, and then Cancerno said, “Well, is
that it?”
“I guess so,” I said. “We appreciate your time, though. And we’ll
be talking to this Warren Barry.”
“Ward Barry. And don’t tell him I gave you his name. Last thing
I need on my hands now is somebody else that’s pissed off at me
over Gradduk.”
He stood, then turned back to the table. “You have any luck
finding Corbett?”
“Not yet,” I said.
“But you tried?”
“Yes.”
He nodded. “Well, you find him, you can tell him I tore up his
paycheck today. He ever wants to go back to work, it’ll be for
somebody else.”
Joe and I got up, too, and headed for the door. I turned, expecting
Draper would have followed us, but I saw he was still hunched
in the booth, the whiskey glass in his hand.
“Thanks again, Scott,” I said.
“Huh? Oh, right. No sweat, dude.” He nodded at me, then stood
up and walked out with us. I pushed open the heavy front door and
stepped into the heat, the sun glaring off the cracked sidewalk,
shimmering on the street. Draper stepped out behind us and let
the door swing shut. He squinted down the avenue.
“Interesting,” he said, “that the house that burned down here
was connected to the one up on Train.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Interesting.”
“It was a scene out here, I’ll tell you that,” he said. “All the trucks
going by, people wandering up the street, looking to see what the
hell was going down. I could see the smoke, even from here.”
“That’s a serious fire.”
He nodded. “First fire I’d seen since the one when we were kids.
Remember that one? We were standing with your old man.”
I hesitated, thinking, then placed it. “Right, the pawnshop fire.
Shit, that’s a long time ago.”
“We were still in elementary school. I remember we were coming
back from the rec center, walking with your dad. He’d come up
to walk back with us because it was at night. When we came out,
all the sirens were going.”
Draper looked at me and grinned. “Sorrow’s anthem, right?”
“What?”
“That was what your dad called it, the sound all those sirens
made.”
I laughed. “Damn, Scott, you’re reaching back for that one.”
“Well, I remember it. Because it made sense, you know? You had
the ambulance, the fire engine, the police cars. All those sirens
have a little different sound to them, and blended together like
that, it’s like some sort of crazy song. Sorrow’s anthem, your dad
called it. Yeah, I remember that night.”
I did, too, now that I stopped to think about it, and it made me
sad. I’d stood on the street with Ed, Draper, and my father. Only
two of us were still alive. I could remember the tense electricity

that seemed to go up and down the avenue that night, the fire at
the pawnshop going strong, sirens all around us. It made sense that
my dad noticed the sirens, of course, and that he had a name for
the sound. He spent his career in an ambulance.
“There was another fire that summer, too,” Draper said, rubbing
his bald head with the palm of his hand. “Hell, maybe two?”
“Yes. There were a couple, you’re right. And they were arsons.
Everybody was worried about them. But it gave people something
to talk about other than . . .”
“Other than what?” Joe said when I stopped talking. He and
Draper were watching me with curious looks.
“Other than Ed’s family,” I said slowly.
Draper frowned, then nodded. “Shit, that’s right. That was the
same summer Norm killed himself.”
Joe and I were looking hard at each other.
“Gradduk’s dad killed himself the same summer that a bunch of
fires went up around this neighborhood?” he said.

“Yeah.”
“And now the son’s dead, and there are more fires,” Joe said.
The dull tingle I’d been feeling at the base of my skull from the
Glenlivet seemed to be spreading. Draper was quiet, watching us.
“You have any idea how that old arson case turned out?” Joe
asked.
I shook my head. “Nope. But all of the sudden I’m awfully damn
curious.”

CHAPTER
15

Joe wanted to call Amy, have her run a search through the paper’s
computer archives for the old fires. I discouraged him from that by
saying I didn’t think the computer database went back that far, but
in reality I just didn’t feel comfortable calling her for a favor. We
hadn’t spoken since she’d stormed out of my apartment the previous
night, and I wasn’t inclined to ask for her help right now, especially
when we could handle it ourselves.
“So what’s the alternative?” Joe asked.

I sighed. “I guess we’ll do what a couple of tough-guy Pis like us
should never have to do.”
“What’s that?”
“Go to the library.”

Trust a librarian to do in twenty seconds what an investigator
might take hours to accomplish. I’d hardly begun to explain what
we were interested in before the librarian, a tall, gray-haired
woman, was clicking away on her computer.
“We’ve got something called the Cleveland News Index,” she
said. “You can actually access this from the Internet; you didn’t
need to come all the way down here.”
“Oh,” I said, feeling like a moron.
“The news index has citation information from the local newspaper
as well as three local newsmagazines. It goes back more than
twenty years. Now you said you were looking for information on
arson fires on Clark Avenue?”
“At least one was on Clark,” I said. “But there were two others in
the same summer.”
“I’ll just do a keyword search for 'arson’ and 'Clark Avenue’ and
see what we get.”
I told her the year the fires had happened, and she ran the
search. A few seconds later she smiled and turned the monitor to
face us. There were fifty records, and the screen showed us the titles
of the articles and the dates and sources. I scanned through
the first page and shook my head. She clicked the mouse and sent
us to the second page of results. This time I saw what I wanted: Pawnshop destroyed in arson fire. I asked her to print that record,
and then I kept reading. Six entries below that was another of interest: Third west side fire in two weeks raising neighborhood concern
and police interest.
The librarian printed both records, then took us to a microfilm
machine. She found the appropriate canisters of film in their storage
area, brought them out, and loaded the machine.
“You want me to print copies of the stories for you, or would you
prefer just to read them on the viewer?” she asked.
“Print them, please.”
She did, then handed us three pages, and returned to her desk.
Joe and I stood in the center of the room and read through the
articles together. The first was brief, detailing the timing of the
fire on Clark Avenue and saying that while no one had been injured,
the pawnshop was a total loss. The next article was much
more interesting. It connected the fire on Clark to earlier fires—
one on Fulton Road and another on Detroit. Three fires in three
weeks, the article said, all to properties owned by one man, Terry
Solich. The reporter said Solich had declined an interview request
and also mentioned that Solich had previously been
charged with possession of stolen goods, although the case was dropped.
“You ever heard of this guy?” Joe asked.
I shook my head and started to respond, then stopped when my
eyes caught on another name, further down in the story: While fire
investigators are sure the blazes are the result of arson, neither they nor
police would reveal whether there were any suspects. Det. Matthew
Conrad of the Cleveland Police Department said he has worked closely
with fire investigator Andrew Maribelli on the case.
“Conrad’s dead,” Joe said.
“You sure?”
“I was at the funeral.”
“Damn. Do you know the fire investigator?”
He shook his head. “Nope. But I think it’s time we made his
acquaintance.”

We called the fire department switchboard first, because nearly
two decades had passed, and it was entirely possible Maribelli no
longer worked with the department. We were in luck, though—at
least at first. Maribelli was still with the department. He just wasn’t
interested in talking with us.
“I got to be honest,” he told me when my phone call had been
routed through to him, “I don’t feel too comfortable talking to you
guys when there’s an active police investigation.”
“The fires happened almost twenty years ago,” I said. “How active
can the investigation be?”
“Police department requested my old files about six hours ago.
So it feels pretty damn active to me. Now what’s your interest, exactly?”
“Who
requested them?” I said, ignoring his question to ask another
of my own. “Was it a detective named Cal Richards?”
“Nope. It was an officer named . . .” There was a pause while he
thought about it or looked for his notes. “Larry Rabold.”
“Larry Rabold requested your old file,” I said, and Joe’s eyebrows
lifted when he heard. “And you still had it? After seventeen years?”
“I keep my notes on any major case that we don’t close. And we
never closed that one. I told this Officer Rabold what I could remember
about things, and then I dug out my old notes and made
copies for him.”
“No arrests were made in the case?”
“Listen, like I said, I’m not going to talk to you guys when I
don’t know who the hell you are and the cops are suddenly looking
into this thing again. I’m not trying to be a bastard about it, but
I’m also not going to change my mind.”
“No problem.”
I hung up and looked at Joe. “He doesn’t want to have anything
to do with us. Reason is that he believes there’s a renewed police
interest. Rabold interviewed him and asked for copies of the old case file this morning.”
Joe slipped his sunglasses on and nodded. “When I did my
background check on Rabold today, I got his shift information.
He’s supposed to be off-duty today, but he’s out working on a
seventeen-year-old arson case? Hardworking sons of bitches, him
and Padgett.”
“If it’s his day off, he might be at home. Maybe we could drop
by, see if he’s around.”
I said it casually, as if I were suggesting we stop off for a beer on
the way home.
Joe frowned, considering it. “We’d be tipping our hand a little
early, maybe. Showing our interest.”
“I’m betting Jerome Huggins informed these guys of our interest
hours ago.”
He hesitated only briefly. “All right. I guess it’s time to ante up,
anyhow. No matter what his response is, it should tell us something.”

Larry Rabold’s home was on the stretch of West Boulevard that
ran between Clifton and Edgewater Park—a historic neighborhood,
and damn high rent. The house was a large Victorian, and
through the yard you could see the bright blue sky and swath of
water from the lake. A wraparound porch offered nice views, and
as we walked up the sidewalk toward the house, I could see a boat
with a bright multicolored sail out on the water.
“How many cops you know have a porch with a lake view?” I
said as we turned up the driveway.
“Counting this guy, the total is one,” Joe said. “Although I’m beginning
to hesitate to call him a cop.”
A two-car garage was set behind Rabold’s house, and a black
Honda Civic was parked outside it, another vehicle partially visible
through the open garage door. We walked up a cobblestone path
lined with a nice flowerbed. The front door had a fancy brass fitting
in its center, with a protruding key. Joe reached out and turned
the key, and a bell rang somewhere in the house. The key probably
cost fifty bucks more than a button. Class.
“Hell of a place,” I said, thinking about the big price tag and the
small mortgage and the wife that worked as a library aide.
Joe didn’t say anything. No one came to the door. He reached
out and turned the brass key again, the bell grinding away as he did
it. This time, when the bell died off, another sound replaced it. A
high, shrill wail. It went on and on. Joe looked at me, brow furrowed,
eyes concerned.
“What the hell is that?”
The wail picked up in pitch, a sustained cry of anguish. I
stepped forward and twisted the knob. Locked.
“He’s got a kid,” Joe said. “Maybe she’s throwing a tantrum or
something.”
Even as he said it, the sound changed, the wail becoming a soft
shriek, then disappearing into a series of rapid, choked sobs. An
electric chill rode down my backbone at the sound, all my muscles
going rigid. There is someplace deep in the brain that recognizes
the emotion behind a human noise, spreads it to the listener, and
the emotion I was now feeling was terror.
“What the hell’s going on?” Joe said for a second time, but I was
walking away from him, moving around the side of the house.
There’d been a car in the driveway, and whoever drove it in probably
hadn’t walked all the way around to the front door. There’d be a
side entrance.
There was one, just a few steps away from the Honda. The knob
turned this time, and the door opened. I stepped inside with Joe
behind me, found myself standing in a narrow room with a coat
rack on one wall and a few pairs of shoes on the floor. The room
smelled of fresh bread and incense or candles, something with a
vanilla scent.
“Hello?” I called. “Is everyone all right?”
That was when everything that had been restrained in the wailing
noise broke loose, and it became a scream. The sort of scream
that dances through nightmares and horror movies and hopefully
never touches your real life.
I ran toward the doorway, my hand creeping back toward my
spine before I remembered that I was unarmed. The narrow coatroom
emptied into a fancy kitchen with a granite-topped island
and brand-new appliances. As I shoved around the island and
moved toward the screaming, I noticed a block of knives on the
counter and paused long enough to grab one. It was a simple
kitchen knife with about a six-inch blade, but I felt better with it in
hand. Whatever had provoked that scream couldn’t be good.
Out of the kitchen and into the living room, with Joe behind
me. The scream reached a hysterical level, a pitch that made me
want to cover my ears and run in the opposite direction. Maybe
that was the idea. I stood in the middle of the living room with Joe
and looked around. The scream was here with us, but I couldn’t see
anyone. It seemed to be coming from the couch, but the couch was
empty.
I stepped over to the big blue couch, grabbed one end with my
free hand, and tugged it away from the wall.
A young blond girl, maybe fifteen, was cowering behind the
couch. She was wearing shorts and a T-shirt, her knees pulled up
to her chest, protecting her. Her face was paler than the cream
colored wall behind her head, and her eyes were like nothing I’d
ever seen before, not even in my days as a narcotics detective when
I’d been face-to-face with people in the throes of drug-induced
convulsions and fits. Her eyes held nothing but terror, and I was so
frozen by them that I didn’t even realize she was fixated on the
knife in my hand until Joe took it away from me and threw it
across the room.
“Stop,” he said to the girl.
I don’t know how he did it with just one softly spoken word, but
she stopped. The girl went silent and stared at us, her chest heaving,
and only then did I notice the blood on her shoes.
It was fresh, still sticky, but only on the ends of her shoes, as if
she’d dipped her toes into it, like someone testing the temperature
of water in a swimming pool. Joe saw it, too.
“Where is he?” he asked, understanding something that I hadn’t
begun to consider yet.
She didn’t speak—couldn’t speak, probably—but she lifted a
shaking hand and extended her index finger, pointed it at the floor.
“Basement,” Joe said, and stepped away. I went with him.
There was an open door at the other side of the living room, beside
a staircase that led up to the second level. Once we were
closer, we could see carpeted steps leading down. I noticed a few
tacky crimson smears on the carpet. She’d come up this way.
Joe went down first. I followed, wishing he hadn’t taken the
knife from me. My heart was thumping, my hands clenched into
fists, my muscles tense. We reached the bottom of the steps and
came out in a finished basement room with another couch and
television, a bookshelf on the wall. Everything looked normal. Joe
was still looking in that direction when I turned right and went
around the wall.
There was a pool table there, and a dead man beneath it. The
body was slumped on the floor, the legs exposed and the torso
shoved under the table. Blood was pooled around the body, more
of it on the wall behind the pool table, along with bits of flesh and
tissue, splattered remnants of a large-caliber gunshot blast.
I opened my mouth to say something to Joe, but he was already
beside me, inhaling a long, sharp breath between his teeth.
“The girl,” I said. “Get back upstairs. Get an ambulance down
here, a doctor or therapist or someone to help her.”
He turned and went up the stairs, his footsteps loud, the wall
beside me trembling as he hurried back up to the living room.
I moved forward.
The blood was still wet in the center of the pool, sticky at the
edges. It had puddled against the man’s legs, and a coppery smell
was heavy near the body. I dropped to one knee beside his legs,
and as I did, the smell came up stronger, overwhelming me, and I
gagged. I leaned forward, lifting a hand to my mouth as I choked,
thick bile rising in my throat. I fought it down, closed my eyes,
and covered my mouth and nose. I was not a homicide detective,
and while I’d seen bodies before, I hadn’t seen so many that my
brain and my body were trained not to react. I took a few seconds
with my eyes closed, concentrating on a slow, shallow breaths, and
then I felt ready. I opened my eyes and leaned under the pool
table.
It was Larry Rabold. Three-quarters of his face was visible, but
the upper left corner, beginning above his cheekbone and
extending to his eye and temple, was gone. Blown away. A bloody mess of
pulp left in its place, no skin or bone visible.
He’d been shot once in the face, a close-range shot with a high
caliber gun. I’d seen small-caliber gunshot wounds before, and this
was not one of them. The close range was obvious both from the
extent of damage and from a speckling of tiny hemorrhages on
his cheek and jawline. That’s called stippling or tattooing, and it’s
the result of burned powder and fragments driven into the skin.
You don’t get those marks when the gun is held far away from the
victim.
When I could finally bring myself to look away from his face, I
realized he’d been shot twice more. There were large holes torn
through his torso, one in the chest just above the heart, another in
the stomach. Blood still leaked out of the chest wound, and a part
of his insides, some thin black organ, ran through the mess. I felt
the rise of vomit again, but then I realized the black strand I was
looking at wasn’t part of his body, at all. It was a wire.
I leaned forward, the desire to understand what I was looking at
overriding the nausea, and then I noticed that half of Rabold’s
shirt had been pulled free from his pants. He’d had it tucked in,
but the right side was free.
There was a ballpoint pen in my pocket. I took it out and
reached out to Rabold’s body, gingerly slipped the tip of the pen
between his shirt collar and his neck, and pulled it back. The collar
slid away from his neck only an inch or so, but it was enough.
Clipped to the inside of Rabold’s collar was a seed microphone—
an extremely tiny, extremely sensitive microphone that is used for
covert recording. Son of a bitch.
I moved the pen away and let Rabold’s collar fall back in place,
then rocked onto my heels and thought about it. A seed microphone
like that could be outfitted with a wireless transmitter that
sends the conversations to an off-site recorder, but those units
were sophisticated, rare, and damn expensive. Far more common