“Well, stay healthy, my friend,” Alex said.
Edmond thanked him, and Alex headed upstairs as the security guards began to sweep through the building before it closed. He felt like he should have said something more to Edmond, but what was there to say? The man had outlived his doctor’s dire prediction by years; nothing Alex could add would change that reality. He did resolve to be more like Edmond, though. After all, his days were just as numbered. It would do him good not to think about it and just live his life.
A row of phone booths lined the wall by the front entrance to the building and Alex stopped to check in with Leslie. He still had some time before Jessica would be in, so he wanted to make sure he didn’t have anything else on his plate.
“Hey, boss,” Leslie said once they were connected. She sounded even more chipper than before if that was possible.
“What’s the good word?” he asked.
“Randall is coming in to town on Saturday and taking me dancing,” she said.
Alex laughed at that.
“Of course he is,” he said.
“He just called me,” she went on, ignoring Alex’s dig.
“Well call him back for me, will you? I want him to look up a property owner named Martha Gibbons.” He gave her the parcel number and she wrote it down.
“Do you need this tonight?”
Alex thought about that.
“No,” he said. “Tomorrow is soon enough. I just need to know if there’s anything unusual about her land.”
Leslie promised that she would, and Alex was about to hang up.
“Hey,” she said, trying to catch him.
“Yeah?”
“I talked with Hannah this afternoon, just checking up on her. She’s doing fine, by the way.”
“I never doubted you,” Alex said.
“She said that when Alex worked for the Coledale mine that the safety engineer broke his leg and was laid up for six months.”
Alarms went off in Alex’s head.
“Who did his job while he was laid up?”
“Hannah didn’t know, but I was thinking—”
“What if it was Leroy?” Alex finished her thought. “That would explain everything. Thanks, doll, you did great.”
“Remember that when it’s time for my Christmas bonus,” she teased.
Alex promised to remember and hung up.
“Lobby’s closing, Mister,” a flat-faced security guard said, waiting politely for him to finish.
Alex absently thanked the man and made his way outside. If Leroy had done the safety engineer’s job then he would know how to shore up a tunnel. That explained everything, the stolen tools and construction equipment, Leroy’s kidnapping, even why the finding rune couldn’t link to him. Wherever Leroy was, he was likely underground.
That had to be it.
“But how are they going to use those big drill bits?” Alex checked himself. “Sanderson was right, they’d need a big, noisy engine.”
He thought about it as he walked down the bock toward the crawler station. The target had to be a bank; no one else had anything valuable enough to make such a big job worthwhile. But all the banks were in the Middle and Inner rings, far too quiet for the noise of tunneling.
The crawler station was empty when Alex reached it. He must have just missed one. Trying to shake his mental gears loose, he walked down to a news stand and bought a copy of the Times. He and Iggy hadn’t had dinner together in a few days, so he was certain the old fox would want to discuss the news tonight.
As Alex handed a dime to the man at the stand, he caught sight of the screaming headline on the afternoon edition of The Midnight Sun.
Runewright Detective Cracks City Wide Theft Ring, Ghost Still at Large.
Alex scooped up the paper and began reading the story.
“Hey, Mac,” the newsman said. “This ain’t a library.”
“Sorry,” Alex said, dropping a nickel on the man’s counter.
According to the story, famous runewright detective, Alex Lockerby had been observed by reporters leading police on a wild trip through the city. At the end of the journey, he’d revealed a stash of stolen trucks hidden in an abandoned west side factory.
Alex felt sick to his stomach. Danny wasn’t likely to believe that Alex had given this story to the tabloids, but Detweiler was going to blow his top, and Callahan too. The way the story read, the department was a bunch of idiots who needed Alex to solve all their cases, literally leading them around by the nose. In the end, the writer wondered why Alex wasn’t on the ghost case and openly accused the police of putting the city at risk.
Alex flipped back to the front page and read the by-line. It was Billy Tasker, the same reporter who’d outed Alex’s involvement with the Watson killing case in the first place.
“What is it with this guy,” Alex growled, tucking the tabloid under his arm. The death of Paul Lundstrom was the lead story on the cover of the Times, but with far less salacious details than The Midnight Sun. Alex flipped the paper over and read the articles below the fold while he waited for the next crawler. There wasn’t much interesting, some tax bill the legislature was considering, and a political scandal in Washington D.C. A sidebar article mentioned a successful test of the first section of Andrew Barton’s elevated crawler line, which ran from Empire tower north and along Central Park West.
Alex nearly dropped the paper.
“Hey, buddy,” he yelled at the newsman. “Where’s there a phone around here?”
The man pointed to a bar on the corner of the next block and Alex ran the whole way.
“Get me Danny Pak,” he told the police operator once he reached the Central Office switchboard.
“I’m sorry,” the voice came back a moment later. “Detective Pak doesn’t answer.”
“Take a message for him, please.”
“Go ahead,” the voice said after a moment.
“Tell him to call Alex Lockerby at home as soon as he can. I need to know if one of the trucks he found today is from Barton Electric.”
The police operator said she would give him the message and hung up.
17
The Checkup
Alex wanted to go home and wait for Danny’s call, but he still had to go see Jessica. As much as he felt he was on to something, going home wouldn’t make Danny call any faster, and he definitely didn’t want his tremors coming back.
It was just after six when Alex walked up to the brick, two-story house with the alchemist sign in the yard. This time he didn’t bother with the front door, opening the gate to the back yard instead and following the paved path around to the back.
He peered in the long bank of windows next to the door and saw Jessica moving from table to table in the back of the dimly lit lab. She’d pick up a clipboard on one table, make adjustments to the equipment or add things to the various jars, then make notes and move on. The lab was mostly dark, with hanging lights over each table, and Jessica’s red hair would shine as she moved beneath them. Alex watched her for a few moments, then knocked on the glass. Jessica was so startled she nearly dropped the clipboard she was holding.
Alex took off his hat and waved at her as she made her way through the maze of tables to the mud room and the back door.
“You startled me,” she said, a little flushed.
“Sorry,” he said with a smile.
Jessica smiled back. She wore he work apron over a cream-colored dress, and she had her green scarf around her neck. Alex assumed she liked to accent the green of her eyes.
“Well, no harm done.” She held open the door so Alex could come in, then shut it behind him.
“I was disappointed that you didn’t come see me on Tuesday,” she said in a voice that implied that Alex should be sorry too.