“Emergency Services have been working the river all day, but they haven’t found the baby yet. The suspect’s in custody.”
“Was he mental or something?” Battaglia asked.
Saylor nodded. “I think so. Vietnam Vet.”
Thomas Chisolm blanched. “He was a vet?”
“Yeah, I think that was what the report said.”
“What was his name?”
Saylor glanced down at his notes. “His name was Kevin Yeager.”
“Son of a bitch,” Chisolm muttered. Then, to Saylor, he said, “I just booked him into jail a day or two ago. He was down at the State Theater hassling the mother.”
“What’d you book him for?”
“Theft.”
Saylor raised an eyebrow.
“He didn’t pay before he went into the theater,” Chisolm explained. “It’s the only crime I had.”
Saylor nodded in understanding.
“And he’s out already,” Chisolm said, shaking his head in disbelief.
“That, ladies and gentlemen,” Officer James Kahn said, “is your criminal justice system at work.”
And this time, Saylor didn’t give him a dirty look.
2308 hours
“Baker-122?” chirped the police radio.
Connor O’Sullivan looked over at Battaglia. The dark-haired officer sat with his chin on his chest, dozing.
“You going to get that?” Sully asked.
Without opening his eyes, Battaglia’s hand snaked out and grabbed the mike. He brought it to his lips.
“Twenty-two,” he said.
“Fire is on scene with a vehicle fire near T.J. Meenach bridge, requesting police respond.”
“Great,” Battaglia said. “Traffic control for the hose patrol.”
He copied the call and replaced the mike without opening his eyes. Sully shook his head in mock disgust.
“This is the nineties, you know,” he told Battaglia. “Cops aren’t supposed to sleep away the graveyard shift anymore.”
“I’m not sleeping,” Battaglia said.
“How do you figure that?”
“I’m not sleeping,” Battaglia said, “because of all the Irish chatter in this car. Now, wake me up a block before we get there.”
“Och aye, yer a useless feck, ain’tch ye?” Sully asked, but Battaglia was already breathing the even breaths of a light sleeper. He shook his head again, this time in wonder. He didn’t know how his partner was able to catnap like he did. He himself slept like a ton of bricks and couldn’t take a nap if his life depended on it. If he knew he had to get up in an hour or two, he couldn’t even fall asleep in the first place. But Battaglia could drop off at a moment’s notice.
Sully swept down Alberta and crossed Northwest Boulevard. He approached the T.J. Meenach Bridge, which spanned the Looking Glass River at a place where it was low and wide. The rotating red lights of the fire trucks down below the bridge on Pettit Drive danced and winked in the darkness. Sully turned off before he reached the bridge itself.
The cool, wet air from the river flowed through his open window. He nudged Battaglia as he pulled to a stop behind the fire truck. His partner woke up immediately and exited the car without preamble.
A stocky Fire Lieutenant approached them, his hair tousled from sleep. “Evening, gents,” he said.
Sully and Battaglia both nodded to him.
“What’s up?” Sully asked.
The Fire Lieutenant pointed at the charred hulk just off the roadway. “It’s definitely an arson job,” he told them. “Even with all the water we dumped on it, you can still smell the gasoline.”
Sully and Battaglia stared at him, waiting. If it was an arson, the Fire Department had investigators for that. It wasn’t a police matter.
“It’s burned pretty good,” the Lieutenant continued. “I don’t know if there will be any evidence, other than for the arson itself.”
“What other evidence are you looking for?” Sully asked.
The Fire Lieutenant shook his head. “Not us. You guys.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Dispatch didn’t tell you?”
Sully shook his head. So did Battaglia.
The Fire Lieutenant shrugged it off. “It doesn’t matter.” He pointed at the charred hulk. “Anyway, I don’t know what color it was, but that definitely used to be a van.”
Sully and Battaglia exchanged glances, then looked back at the Fire Lieutenant.
“You guys are looking for blue vans, right? For that little girl?”
SIXTEEN
Thursday, March 16, 1995
Day Shift
0531 hours
Kopriva lost himself in her eyes. He felt her pulling him closer and deeper in every way she could-with her arms around his back, her heels behind his calves, her thighs against his hips. But it was her eyes that pulled him in the most.
He lowered his face to hers and kissed her. The warmth of her lips and tongue washed over him.
The light of early morning spilled through the window, filling the room with a dream-like quality.
A small moan escaped her lips and her motions became more urgent.
He matched her urgency. He felt the crescendo build slowly until it had reached its peak, first hers, then his and then they both sank into quiet stillness.
Finally, he spoke. “I can stay, if you want.”
She didn’t answer right away.
“I have plenty of vacation left,” he said.
Still, she didn’t answer. She touched the hair on his chest lightly with her fingertips.
He respected her silence and lay still with her. He wondered again if she’d heard what he said to her before she drifted off to sleep the night before.
Finally, she said, “I think I’d like to spend some time alone today. Just to work things out in my head.”
“Whatever you need,” Kopriva said. “Take as much time as you want.”
“I don’t have to go back to work until tomorrow night.”
“If you’re ready.”
Katie shrugged against his shoulder. “I’ll be ready. I just need some time alone.”
0541 hours
Neal Grady had been taking his walks along Ohio Avenue for at least fifteen years. He lived in West Central and the way the dirt road looped in a giant half-circle made it the perfect route for a walk. His wife, Betty, used to walk it with him every morning until she passed on three years ago. Now it was just he and his Labrador Buck that made the trek every morning.
When he started his walk this morning, he was in a nostalgic mood. For him, being nostalgic wasn’t a good thing. He didn’t tend to remember happy things. Or rather, when he did remember them, what usually came to mind next was how much better those times were than now. And that was depressing.
His sister, Ellen, was a diagnosed manic-depressive and sometimes he wondered if it ran in the family.
This morning he took little joy in the view of the valley below or the Looking Glass River that flowed there. Instead, he focused on how there were two new houses going up along the dirt road at about the center of his walk. There’d been at least five houses that went in the year before. Before long, Neal Grady feared, his entire route would be lined with houses.
At least the houses were clumped together, he thought to himself as he strode sullenly past.
“Buck!” he called the Labrador away from the front yard of the newest house that was being lived in. He wondered how they felt about having more neighbors.
Things were better in the old days, he thought. When the only house on Ohio was the one that the city provided for the dam worker. It was quieter then.
Buck barked and bounded ahead of him and past the final house. Neal Grady increased his pace temporarily to get past the goddamn metropolis that was springing up along his walk route. He banged his walking stick on the dusty road as he tramped past.
That’s what was next, he figured. They’d pave the road. Or worse yet, tar and oil it. Forget the fact that ninety percent of the road still ran along empty fields and was just fine as a dirt road. Those new people were bound to complain to the city and those pansies down at City Hall would give in and oil the road.