35
At home, I slept for five hours and woke to the ringing of my cell phone; I was needed to come in and help with the matter of Hugh Hennessy’s untimely death by fire. I went downtown and gave a lengthy statement, explaining my involvement with the Hennessys and describing the events of the night before.
I learned a few details, too. What Colm had told me last night had been correct, if sketchy: Donal had been smoking in the basement. Under sensitive questioning by a veteran fire investigator, the youngest Hennessy explained that he couldn’t sleep and had gotten up in the night to sneak one of his oldest brother’s cigarettes. He had seen Aidan smoking when upset about Colm’s blowup at the dinner table, and thought that cigarettes must help in times of stress. While hidden in the basement, Donal heard movement upstairs and thought someone was looking for him. In his haste, he threw his half-finished cigarette into a trash can and slipped back upstairs. He hadn’t realized the danger of what he’d done, nor that the basement was filled with flammable materials: old furniture, a foam mattress. The fire investigator told me that he was only surprised the old wooden house hadn’t gone up faster than it did.
After giving my statement, I ran into Marlinchen, who hugged me like a long-lost sister in the hallway. Campion was there as well, having heard the news on WCCO. Later that evening, one of the fire department officials let me ride with him out to the Hennessy property. There I found my car covered in soot, but otherwise driveable. I hosed it down as an interim measure, and drove it directly to a car wash.
It was only as I was falling asleep that night that I realized I’d forgotten to bring Cicero the money I owed him.
The next day, around noon, I drove to the towers. On the 26th floor, I stepped out of the elevator and into a scene I’d been a part of too often.
Soleil was standing in the hall, leaning against the wall, her face a mask of grief. She was crying openly outside Cicero ’s apartment. Nearby, at the door to Cicero ’s apartment, a young uniformed officer was standing guard, trying to look impervious to the shock and dismay around him. From inside the apartment, a radio crackled. And I felt a fine tremor begin in my legs. The last time I’d felt that sensation was in the county morgue, where I’d gone to view a body a forensic assistant told me might be my husband.
I wished I didn’t know the things I knew, wished that like a civilian I could kid myself that a scene like this could signal a burglary or a simple assault. But it didn’t. It didn’t mean anything less than a homicide. I could have turned around and walked away, gone someplace private to internalize it. But I didn’t.
No one questioned my presence there. The neighbors knew me as Cicero ’s girlfriend; and the cops on the scene knew me as a Sheriff’s detective. The uniformed officer outside the open door had me sign in on the scene log, and then I went inside.
It seemed wrong for there to be so much activity in Cicero’s apartment, which I’d associated with ambient light, quiet, order, and Cicero’s form, low to the ground but kinetic in its stillness. Now, every light in the place blazed, and able-bodied people moved around, looking out of proportion to the surroundings, their movements too quick, seeming random.
The apartment had been torn up. The chest holding Cicero ’s medical instruments and supplies had been overturned, and notes from the filing cabinet were strewn on the floor. The wheelchair lay tipped forward in the middle of the living room. Nearby were some streaks and droplets of dried blood on the short, hard carpeting, as if someone had shaken a paintbrush.
The first of the technicians, a man named Malik, was starting a sketch that would eventually capture the layout of the apartment, as well as the position of every relevant object and bloodstain. The other tech, a full-bodied, red-haired woman I hadn’t met, was making notes. The detective was standing off to the side. It was Hadley.
He’d been my last boyfriend, pre-Shiloh. He’d worked closely with Shiloh, when they’d been on the interagency Narcotics task force, and I’d once raided a meth lab near Anoka with both of them. A black man, Hadley wasn’t particularly tall, but he had quick reflexes that I remembered from games of one-on-one. His hair was shorter now than in his undercover-Narcotics days; it was a look more suitable to his new role as a Homicide detective.
His dark eyes took me in, and he lifted his chin in acknowledgment. He could do no more while talking on his cell phone.
“When the techs are through… Yeah, I don’t know,” he said. He shifted his weight, and light flashed off the.40 he carried in a shoulder holster. “Good, okay.” With that, he disconnected the call.
“Pribek,” he said. “The county sent you?”
“What happened here?”
“Victim’s name is Cicero Ruiz,” Hadley said, ignoring my failure to answer his question. “Looks like a robbery-murder. Neighbor says he was doing some kind of cash business from the apartment.”
I warned you, I thought. I warned you.
Hadley nodded toward the door, where Soleil was out of sight. “The same neighbor called us this morning,” he said. “She saw the print outside the door.”
On my way in, I’d missed the sight of half a reddish shoe print, where someone had tracked blood on the way out.
“She got a bad feeling about it, so when he didn’t answer her knock, she called us,” Hadley finished.
“Have you interviewed her at length?” I asked.
“Not yet. That’s why she’s in the hall, waiting,” Hadley said. He took out his notebook but didn’t open it. “The rest of the neighbors say they didn’t see anything.” He indicated the medical instruments on the floor. “It looks like the guy was a doctor, but that can’t be right; not in a building like this.”
“He was a doctor,” I said. Cicero was beyond needing my promise of silence now. “Prewitt asked me to track him down. He was practicing out of his apartment.”
“He saw patients here?” Hadley said.
I nodded. “That’s what we were hearing. I was supposed to get evidence for an arrest.”
“Well, we’re a little too late for that,” Hadley said.
I swallowed against the solidifying muscle in my throat.
“Sarah?” Hadley said.
Homicide detectives, more than most police, have to rely on an article of faith: that victims of crime can be helped even after they’re dead. I’m not sure I ever fully believed that. But now a voice in my mind said, Do your job. And at the moment, I didn’t question it. I swallowed a second time, and then I could function again. “What do you know?” I asked.
“Not much,” Hadley said. “It looks like there might have been two people involved,” Hadley said. “I’ll let the technicians decide that, based on the shoe prints and any fingerprints they find. Like I said, robbery is the probable motive.” He rubbed the bridge of his nose. “I don’t know how much money the doc was making, but I don’t think he gave it up easy.”
“He was beaten?” I asked.
“Oh yeah,” Hadley confirmed. “I saw the body. He was worked over. Let me show you.” Hadley moved down the hall, waving me after him.
In Cicero ’s sanctuary, the photos on the low dresser were undisturbed, but the drawers had been taken out and overturned, like those of the filing cabinet. On the floor, at the foot of the bed, the carpet had been stained dark red in an irregular area around three feet in diameter.
“He died in here,” Hadley said. “I think Doc knew his attackers. At least, he let them in. There’s no sign the front door was forced. They make a surprise attack in the front room, get him down and out of the chair. He fights enough that there’s some blood out there. Then they drag him into the bedroom. This is where the serious beating took place.” Hadley pointed at the blood spatters on the wall. “See that? That’s a lot of blunt force. Either it was personal animosity, or, more likely, he wasn’t giving his visitors what they came for.”