I took them both through my experience in the house and my talk with Dean and Mason, doing most of the talking with my eyes squeezed shut. The light seemed to exacerbate the headache.
“So you honestly have no idea who pulled you out of that fire?” Joe said.
“The same person who started the fire. So when I do figure out this guy’s identity, I’ll be torn between wanting to thank him and wanting to shoot him.”
“No guesses?” Amy said.
I opened my eyes again. I’d thought about it some on the drive home, but I hadn’t come up with anything substantial. Just possibilities that could be far, far from the truth.
“Mitch Corbett?” I said. “The guy’s missing, and he’s tied to Sentalar and these houses. But then there’s Padgett, conveniently turning up at the scene of one of the fires, just like Larry Rabold did seventeen years ago. Only problem is, I have trouble imagining either pausing to help me out.”
“Right.” She was sitting close to me, and although I’d closed my eyes again, I was very aware of her, distracted by the faint smell of perfume. I haven’t had much luck sustaining relationships with women, and a long time ago I’d decided that to preserve my friendship with Amy, I needed to keep it a friendship. I assumed that she felt the same way, because, while there was an abnormal amount of flirting in our relationship, she’d never instigated anything beyond that. At times the arrangement seems less than ideal to me, though, and for some reason this had become one of them. The good news was that if such thoughts were passing through my mind at all right now, the burns and the knock on the head hadn’t damaged anything too critical.
We kept talking for a while, but Amy asked most of the questions. Joe was quiet, and I knew why. He was worried about what Mason and Dean had told me, about their suggestion that Cancerno’s network of corruption went deep and was going to be worth protecting to those involved. In Larry Rabold’s basement, Joe and I had likely seen an example of that protection, and I had a feeling he was thinking about that a lot. If I hadn’t been so damn exhausted, maybe I would have had the energy to be worried, too.
Eventually, I threw them out. I needed sleep in a way I hadn’t needed sleep often before. When they were gone, I stripped off my clothes and lay down on the bed, lights off. Tired as I was, the stench of smoke that was still attached to me, trapped in my hair and soaked into my skin, was too distracting. I got up and went into the bathroom, turned the water up as hot as I could stand it, and stepped inside.
There are plenty of problems with my building, the type of problems that are common in any structure that’s stood for nearly six decades, but poor water pressure isn’t one of them. The water hammered at me, and the power of it felt good, even against my burns and the swollen tissue on my head. I closed my eyes and tried to let the water pound away the mental grime, too. I didn’t want to think anymore. Not tonight. I didn’t want to see visions of Ed Gradduk’s body, or Larry Rabold’s, or burning houses. I didn’t want to think about what it all meant, how it all fit. I didn’t want to think about a son of a bitch named Mitch Corbett who could probably make sense of a lot of it for me if I could just find him.
It was then, in this moment of attempting to think not at all, that I began to understand something. I stood there under the water and tried to tell myself that I was wrong, that the idea was the product of fatigue and one hell of a crack on the head. I couldn’t do it, though. It made too much sense.
I stood there until the water heater kicked into higher gear and what had been a tolerable temperature became closer to scalding. Then I shut the water off, wrapped a towel around me, and walked back to the bedroom to get dressed again. Sleep would wait. I needed a computer.
The avenue was quiet as I walked down to the office, the wind gentle and warm. My hair was still wet from the shower, and I spent most of the walk telling myself that I really needed to invest in a home computer.
I went upstairs, unlocked the office, and turned on my computer. I left the lights off and stood at the window while the computer booted up, watching the cars pass. The building felt lonely at this hour. Hell, the city did. Most people were home in bed with their families, or they were working night shifts surrounded by coworkers. One of these days I was going to have to get a normal life.
To cut the silence, I turned on the little television on the filing cabinet. It was tuned to one of the local news stations, and they were rerunning the news from eleven, which had focused on the outbreak of fires. A young male reporter was standing outside the burned house on Erin Avenue. Little was left but wreckage. A total loss, he told us. Fortunately, it had been vacant, as had all the other houses burned in a “wildfire of arson.” I didn’t think the term “wildfire” really applied to arson, but then I’m not a professional journalist.
The computer was finally ready to go. While the reporter told us that there had been no arrests made in the case and the police had yet to announce whether there were any suspects, I logged on to the Internet. I went to the Cuyahoga County Web site and searched it until I found what I wanted—a biography page on Mike Gajovich. It told me Gajovich had begun his career as a deputy prosecutor, then been promoted to chief assistant prosecutor, and gave the dates of service in those positions. He’d been chief assistant prosecutor seventeen years earlier. That settled, I left his bio page and found the bio for the current chief assistant prosecutor. Beneath the bio was a description of duties. Three sentences into it, I found what I wanted: Among other responsibilities, the chief assistant prosecutor reviews all Cleveland Police Department internal affairs matters, including possible criminal conduct and the use of deadly force.
Joe answered on the third ring, but his voice was gruff, choked with sleep.
“It’s me,” I said, and then got into it without wasting time on any apologies for the late call. “Dean told me there’s someone big involved with the police. Most of the guys they’ve tied to it are bottom-feeders, street cops and patrol officers. But he said every indication is that it goes higher than that.”
“I’ve got a bad feeling you have an idea,” Joe said after a pause.
“Mike Gajovich.”
This time the pause was even longer.
“Gajovich isn’t a cop, LP. You said Dean indicated it was someone higher up within the department.”
“You telling me Gajovich doesn’t have any sway within the department? Come on, Joe. You know better. The guy’s one of the top law enforcement presences in this city, and he’s popular with everybody at the department after that stink he raised last year when the mayor cut staff.”
“And you think he’s a player in this because he sent your friend home? Because he came at you a little cold when we talked to him?”
“Gajovich has been with the prosecutor’s office for a long time, Joe. He started with them as a deputy prosecutor, worked his way up the ladder. Seventeen years ago, when my father made the complaint about Padgett, Gajovich was chief assistant prosecutor. According to the county’s Web site, the chief assistant prosecutor reviews all internal affairs matters, criminal conduct, and use of deadly force. Remember how Amos explained that the complaint was serious enough that they bumped it right to the lawyers? I think this is what he meant.”
I heard a grunt and a rustling, probably as he sat up in bed.
“So you think Gajovich went to talk to Alberta Gradduk, and then, what, discouraged her from making a complaint?” he said.
“Could be. All I know right now is it looks like he went to see Alberta, the complaint never developed into a case, and Gajovich is sweating Ed’s death and all the circumstances around it years later.”