“Gentlemen. How fortunate that you’ve returned. I didn’t want to miss you.”
“What’s up?” Joe said.
“You mind if we go up to your office?” Richards said, stepping away from his car. “Hot as a bastard out here.”
We went in the building and up the steps, Richards walking silently behind us. Joe unlocked the office door and we went inside. Richards sat down across from us and cleared his throat dramatically.
“So, I’ve been out of your office for less than a day and already I’ve got a complaint about your behavior.”
“From?” I said.
“Jerome Huggins. I talked with the man less than an hour ago. He told me a couple of white-boy private eyes were down this morning, giving him grief. Said the old guy of the duo was cool enough, but the young guy was, well, maybe a little headstrong. Jerome didn’t seem to think fondly of him.”
“A lot of PIs in this town,” I said. “Could be anybody.”
Richards rolled his eyes. “Let’s not waste time on the bullshit, okay? I didn’t come down here to bust your balls over this, Perry. I’d be justified in doing that, but I don’t want to. I know you’re investigating your friend’s past, and I got no problem with that. I just want to have some idea of where I can expect you to be turning up.”
“What were you doing at the liquor store?” I countered.
He ran a hand over his bristle-short hair. “Wanted to verify some things with Jerome, is all.”
I grinned. “You lie, Detective.”
“Pardon?”
“You’re too good not to have a problem with the cameras at that place,” I said.
Richards sat expressionless for a minute, until Joe began to laugh softly.
“You confused him, LP. Called him a liar in the same breath as you complimented him. Man doesn’t know what to do now.”
Richards allowed a small smile. “Weighing my options, for sure. And I’m going to play along, Perry, and acknowledge that, yes, I am way too good not to have a problem with those cameras.”
“Any idea who told Jerome to put them up?”
He shook his head. “Not yet. Jerome’s sticking hard and fast to this tale that they’ve been up for years. One look tells you that’s horseshit, but I’m not ready to put him in the box and sweat him yet. Just curious, is all. Jerome’ll be there when I need him.”
“I see.”
“What about you?” he said. “Any idea who’s at the other end of Jerome’s puppet strings?”
I gazed across the room at Joe, who met my look with flat eyes. After a moment’s hesitation, I decided to trust Cal Richards.
“I think your cops set him up. And then I think they killed him. Intentionally.”
Cal let out a long, slow breath. “You want to run that by me again?”
I told him about the discrepancies in the incident report and Alberta Gradduk’s account of the botched arrest, and I told him about Padgett and Rabold watching Mitch Corbett’s house.
Richards didn’t like it. Not a bit.
“Those guys are longtime cops, Perry. Maybe not the best on the force, but they’ve been around. That’s a bold-ass suggestion you just made, implicating them in a conspiracy. In murder.”
“They set him up, Richards. They set him up and they took him down. Ed was innocent.”
He sighed. “Look, Perry, I’m going to give you this because I think you deserve to know. Think you need to know. I exercised a search warrant on Gradduk’s house and on his vehicle. You know what I found? Trunk of his car was filled with bottles of a chemical accelerant and a couple hundred feet of industrial fuse. More of the same in his basement. Also in the basement were two homemade timing devices, designed to run about fifteen minutes before touching off the fuse. Just right for the fire on Train Avenue.”
I was shaking my head even before he was done. “They weren’t his, Richards. Someone planted that shit. Hell, Padgett and Rabold had ample opportunity.”
“I’ve also got a guy who will testify to selling Gradduk the fuse cord. He recognized him from the picture and will swear to it in court.”
“No,” I said again.
He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, and looked hard at me. “I’ll tell you what else I’ve got—a coroner’s report on the victim. Sentalar was burned pretty badly, but not so badly that you can’t tell that she didn’t die from the fire. She had a bullet in her, first, one right in the center of her forehead. Medical examiners can tell me without a doubt that it was a thirty-two-caliber round. Only one gun is registered to Ed Gradduk, Perry. Also a thirty-two. Now missing.”
I shook my head but didn’t speak. Joe said, “Can they get a specific ballistics match on the bullet?”
“No. Bullet blew out the back side of her skull. If we had it, we might get a precise match, but the fire took care of that. It was in the rubble somewhere, and the fire department guys didn’t locate it. Not that I blame them for that.”
“He got set up,” I said. “Ed got set up, Richards.”
Richards nodded. “He got set up. But not framed for a murder. He killed that girl, Perry. But I think he got set up in having his picture taken while he was doing it. And I want to know why.”
“But Padgett and Rabold—”
“Are a couple of good ol’ boy cops looking for a hot collar,” he said. “That’s all they are. Believe me, I’ll take a good look at this guy, Corbett, and I’ll burn those two good for working a surveillance on him without letting me know. But in the end, I think they’re just looking to make headlines. If they’re guilty of anything, it’s holding out on a tip. I bet they were given some real detail about this, but they don’t want to pass it off because it’ll go to me and they’ll miss the glory.”
I got out of my chair and walked to the window, stood with my back to him, my hands clenched at my sides.
“I know he was your friend,” Richards said. “But he killed her. I’m almost sure of it.”
I didn’t answer. He sat there for a while, then said good-bye to Joe and left. When the door closed behind him, it was quiet. I stayed at the window. Joe let a few minutes pass before he broke the silence.
“All right, LP. It’s not what you wanted to hear him say. But that doesn’t mean the work we did in the morning was for nothing. Let’s get back to that now, get focused.”
I turned away from the window, still angry. “He’s convinced Ed killed her, Joe. He just shrugged off everything we gave him on those cops.”
“He didn’t shrug it off. He’s a good detective. Maybe as good as you. He’ll take what we gave him and blend it with what he’s got, and he’ll keep moving. Hell, did you expect him to leap in the air and click his heels at the idea Gradduk was set up by two of his own cops? Come on.”
I gave that a grudging nod and returned to my chair. “Okay. I hear you. So what’s our play then? Start with the cameras?”
He tugged at his tie and frowned. “I don’t think so. The best way to get the truth about them is probably to break Huggins down, and I think we can do that by connecting him to Padgett and Rabold. I’d rather start with a hard look at those two. I want to know where they’re from, how long they’ve been cops, what cases they’ve worked, who they drink with, who they sleep with. First things I want to look at when I’m investigating sleazy cops are their conduct evaluations.”
“Think we can get those?”
He allowed a rare cocky smile to slide across his face. “I can get the chief’s checkbook if I want it, LP.”
“Then make the call. But you’re forgetting about something.”