Joe got to his feet. “All right. Let’s see what Mr. Corbett has to say.”
The house was a small, one-story structure tucked on the back of a lot that was large for the neighborhood. Corbett had obviously used some of his trade skills on his home—a new carport and fresh paint and trim made the tiny house look nicer than its larger counterparts.
I parked in the driveway, which was empty.
“If the man’s home,” Joe said, “he’s home without a car.” The street parking in front of the house was also vacant.
“Let’s take a look, anyhow,” I said.
We got out of the car and walked up to the front door. The mailbox was an old-fashioned style that hung on the wall next to the door, and as we approached, I could see the lid was held open about two inches by the large stack of mail that had been jammed in the small container.
“Nobody’s taken the mail in for days,” I said.
“Three newspapers on the ground.” Joe pointed at the rolled-up papers that lay in front of the door.
I pulled the storm door open and rapped on the wooden front door with my knuckles. The sound was loud and hollow. I let the storm door swing shut and stepped back. We waited. Nobody came to the door, and no sound came from inside.
“There’s definitely no one home,” Joe said. He was gazing up the street.
“Let’s walk around back.”
We went to the right and stepped out of the sun and into the shade of the carport as we moved toward the backyard. Joe stopped and put his hand on my arm.
“Check out the side door.”
A door led into the house from the carport, and this one didn’t have a storm door protecting it. It was closed and looked solid enough to me. For a moment I couldn’t tell what had attracted Joe’s interest. Then I saw the heavy black scuff beside the knob.
“Looks like somebody kicked it,” he said, stepping closer. He bent beside the door and ran his fingers along the frame, then twisted the knob and pushed inward. The door was locked, but it gave a little and there was the sound of cracking wood. Joe grunted with approval and pointed.
When I leaned in beside him, I saw a split in the doorframe. It was yielding a bit to Joe’s pressure. A few jagged splinters still protruded from the frame, indicating the damage was recent. There was no dead bolt on the door, just a simple but fairly new spring lock.
“Whoever kicked this door open assumed it’d be easy because there wasn’t a dead bolt,” Joe said, releasing the knob. “The lock was stronger than they thought, though. They kicked it harder, and it opened, but it split the frame.”
“Kick it open,” I said. I was suddenly sure we would find Mitch Corbett inside, but in no condition to talk.
Joe frowned. “Are you crazy?”
I answered by lifting my own foot and driving my heel into the center of the door. The crack in the frame widened with a tearing sound and the door swung open. It hit the wall and bounced back toward us. Joe put out his palm to stop it from swinging shut. He stared at me.
“This is not the way I like to do things, Lincoln.”
“Sorry, but I’ve got a bad feeling about this one.”
I stepped past him and into the house. The side door led into a small kitchen that smelled of lemon Pledge. It was clean and tidy, no dishes stacked on the counter, no bag of chips open on the table. No body on the floor.
Joe had stepped into the house behind me, his complaints ceasing for the moment. Together we moved out of the kitchen and into the adjacent living room. A few issues of Sports Illustrated were on the coffee table, and an empty beer can was on the floor beside the couch. I picked the can up and studied its top. It was bone-dry, the contents not recently consumed.
I replaced the can as Joe walked past me, down the narrow hall that led out of this room. I trailed. He opened a closed door and stepped into what turned out to be a laundry room. There was nothing inside but a washer-dryer combination, water heater, a few mops and brooms, and a cat’s litter box. We moved out of that room and continued down the hall, past an empty bathroom and on to another closed door on the right. Joe and I hadn’t spoken since entering the house, and now he opened this door without a word and held it while I walked into a small spare bedroom furnished with a ragged couch and a thrift-shop-quality desk. We left that room and went on to the last room in the little house, this door closed, too.
This was the main bedroom, and it, too, held nothing other than the expected. A small desk was in the corner of the room, and I pulled a few of the drawers open, but found nothing more interesting than a videotape for the continuing-education programs at Cuyahoga Community College.
“Satisfied?” Joe said. “No corpses, no signed confessions of setting up Ed Gradduk.”
“Also no Mitch Corbett,” I said. “And somebody broke into this house not long ago.”
“Could have been him, Lincoln. Have you ever locked yourself out of your apartment?”
“It wasn’t him. And you don’t think so, either.”
“I want to get out of this house,” he said. “Your door-kicking approach to investigation leaves something to be desired.”
We walked back out the way we’d come in and closed the carport door behind us. It still locked, but even a slight bit of pressure would pop it open now. Good thing the owner was a carpenter.
Joe spotted the tail before I did, which was embarrassing because I was driving and should have been paying more attention to the mirrors than him.
“Check out the black Jeep Cherokee behind us,” he said when I was at a red light. I shifted my eyes to the mirror and found the vehicle in question. Its windshield was tinted but I could make out two occupants in the front seat, both male.
“Yeah?”
“It was parked up the street from Corbett’s house,” he said. “Maybe five houses down and across the street. Right where I’d put it if I was watching the place.”
“And it pulled out when we did?”
“Uh-huh.”
The light went green and I pulled away. The Cherokee stayed with us, lingering a few cars back but always pulling closer when we neared an intersection, so there was little chance of losing us at a red light. It’s the way you drive when you’re working one-car surveillance.
“Well, hell,” I said.
Joe grunted.
“I’m growing curious,” I said. “You?”
“We could lose them easily enough,” he said. “But that wouldn’t tell us anything.”
“Exactly. So what’s our move?”
He scratched the side of his head and sighed. “I suppose I’ll shadow the shadowers.”
“Tough to do when you’re in my car.”
“Take me to the office and pull in at the curb. Make it look like you’re dropping me off. I’ll go back in the parking lot and get my car. Then you swing around the block. When you pull out, I’ll fall in line behind them.”
It took us five minutes to get back to the office, and the Cherokee was still with us. When I pulled up to the curb in front of the building, the Cherokee slid into a street parking spot about a hundred feet back.
Joe gave me more instructions. “I’m going to stand on the sidewalk and talk to you for a bit, make it look more casual, like we’re oblivious to them.”
“Okay.”
I sat with the engine idling while he stood beside the truck, leaning in the door with his hand on the roof.
“I’ll stay here until traffic thickens up,” he said. “That way you’ll have to wait to pull back into the street and it won’t look like you’re just killing time.”