The Crown Victoria driver had been pushing it, trying to get in front of Ed and block his path across the avenue. When Ed fell, the driver didn’t slow immediately, his reaction time poor. When he finally did register what had happened, he locked up the brakes, but far too late. The car rode the skid into and over Ed Gradduk.
I stood on the curb and screamed something that was supposed to make sense but came out like the howl of a wounded animal, and then I ran into the street, too. Ed’s body lay under the car, and the stupid son of a bitch in the driver’s seat put it in reverse and backed up, rolling the front wheels over Ed once more. I screamed again, and then the car was in park and the cops were clambering out it, shouting at me to keep back. I ignored them and ran toward Ed, reached under the car for him.
I had my hands on Ed’s shoulders when the cop who’d been driving grabbed me and tried to pull me back, shouting at me to get out of the way. I spun and put my right fist into his stomach without thinking about it, then crawled back under the car while he doubled over. Ed’s body was only partially covered by the front end of the Crown Vic, and as I tugged him free, I knew he was dead—blood was flowing from his nose, mouth, and even his ears, the flesh ripped and scraped, bits of the skull stark and white against the blood and torn skin. I got only a glance before the second cop wrapped his arm around my throat and pulled me back, pushing the barrel of his gun in my ear.
There was more shouting then, but I don’t remember what was said. Some of it was directed at me, some of it was from me. The cops were shoving me away, and I was screaming in their faces. The middle-aged woman who’d been driving the van from the opposite direction got out of her vehicle, took one look at Ed, dropped to her knees, and vomited in the street. More cars had gathered now, and people were standing on the curb, watching the scene. One of them was moving forward, and I turned away from the cops in time to see Scott Draper just before he threw a punch at my head.
“You shoved him!” he screamed. “You shoved him!”
“He ran,” I shouted back, and he swung at me again as the cops tried to get in our way. “I tried to stop him, you stupid bastard.”
He was still trying to get at me. I grabbed him by the shoulders and knocked him backward onto the pavement. I would have gotten a punch in if the cop who’d been driving the Crown Vic hadn’t caught my wrist. He slammed me onto the ground next to Draper. That’s where I remained while they put the handcuffs on—facedown on the street, my right cheek against the road, my left eye watching a trickle of Ed Gradduk’s blood work its way toward me, cutting a determined path over the pavement as if its last mission were to touch my flesh.
CHAPTER 4
They let me go home around midnight. Charges of interference and obstruction had been threatened but I had not been booked. The cop who’d been in the passenger seat, a guy named Larry Rabold, lightened up once he learned who I was, but his partner, the one who had stopped me on the sidewalk, was not so fraternal. His name was Jack Padgett, and he didn’t show any desire to let bygones be bygones once he found out I had been a cop. They talked to me for about an hour, asking all about Ed, particularly what information might have been exchanged in our brief conversation. They seemed unconvinced by my claim that I hadn’t spoken to him in years.
“Why the hell did you come running down to his house as soon as you heard the news, then?” Padgett had asked. It was a good question, one I’d already failed to answer earlier in the night, and I still hadn’t come up with anything satisfactory. They’d both been intrigued by my description of how things had gone down with Ed and me a few years back, and I knew they’d check it out and see if they could find anything to indicate I’d had contact with the man since then. They would come up empty, though.
Once I was kicked loose, I called a cab to take me back to my truck. Clark Avenue was dark and quiet save for a few stragglers on the sidewalk and one woman waiting for a bus. I stood at the curb and stared up the street to where my oldest friend had died a few hours earlier. They’d hosed the blood off the pavement, and the night heat had already baked it dry.
I climbed inside the truck and started the engine, sat there listening to the traffic noise, and wondering if I’d be able to drive without seeing visions of Ed running into the street. I took a look at the clock. It was time to go home and go to bed.
I drove to my partner’s house.
Joe Pritchard lives on Chatfield, maybe three minutes from the office. He was in the neighborhood long before I arrived, and it was through him that I learned of the gym I own when it went up for sale. Recently dismissed from the police force and with no real career plans, I’d purchased the gym and moved into the building. Joe’s retirement a few years later had led me into the PI trade.
His house is a brick A-frame that is common in the neighborhood, two blended triangles with a chimney rising along the front wall. I once heard that the houses were all products of Sears Roebuck kits that became popular as the neighborhood expanded following World War II, but I don’t know if there’s any truth to that. The neighborhood around Chatfield has been maintained better than most, although the majority of parents send their children to private schools rather than enrolling them in the public system. That was the case when I was growing up, too, but my father couldn’t afford it—and had no desire to send me to one of the private schools even if he could. If I couldn’t make it in a public high school, he often said, how the hell was I going to make it as a cop? Even then, it was what I told everyone I was going to do, and my father was right—four years at West Tech were invaluable to that career acclimation.
Joe’s house is the shining star of a nice block, with a perfectly manicured lawn, gleaming windows, and a cobblestone path between the house and the sidewalk. Quite the homemaker, our Joe. Most of the backyard and a stretch between the driveway and the house are filled with beautiful flower gardens, heavy on the impatiens. There’s a garage behind the house, stocked with rakes and hoes and potting soil and fertilizer, and if you want to find Joe on a Saturday or Sunday afternoon, you need only look in the yard or in the garage. When we’d worked the narcotics beat together, it hadn’t been that way. Joe’s wife, Ruth, tended to the flowers and yard as if they were her reason for living, but Joe never did much more than shovel the driveway, and then only in the heaviest snows. It was winter when Ruth died, and when spring broke the next year, Joe hated the idea of seeing her flower gardens fail to appear in the fashion to which the neighbors had become accustomed. Now I think he spends more time on them than Ruth ever did.
He met me at the door with a wary look, but it was clear he’d still been awake, which I’d expected. Joe is late to bed and early to rise and always alert despite that. There are some qualities you don’t leave behind after thirty years of police work. Poor sleeping patterns are among them.
“It’s after midnight,” he said, closing the front door and following me into the living room, “and you wouldn’t show up here at that time just for small talk. So that makes me think this is case-related, and that troubles me. Why? Because the only cases on our plate are small-time, and you wouldn’t need to discuss them at this hour. So I’m guessing you’ve decided to involve yourself in whatever shit went down with your convict buddy.”
Took him maybe ten seconds to reason that out.