Hard Evidence

Limping slightly, I walked over to the low wall at the end of the garage and looked over. The Cadillac lay on its side, steam rising up from the engine. After experiencing the speed that monster vehicle had mustered in such a short time, I figured I needed to consider buying one when I won the lottery someday. Nice wheels.

No one moved inside the SUV. If Mole Face and Biceps were still alive, they didn’t appear to be in any condition to climb out. Unfortunate for them, but lucky for me. Charlie would be proud. I had managed not to get myself moved to a new location.

A motorcycle’s engine echoed inside the parking garage, tearing upwards toward the top floor. I glanced around, suddenly desperate to disappear. I didn’t want to have to answer any questions, and I didn’t have any doubts as to who was riding the bike.

Sure enough, a few seconds later, Jack skidded to a stop. He yanked off his helmet, jumped off the bike and headed toward me, throwing the helmet over his shoulder. It hit the side of his bike and rolled a few feet away.

He ignored it, his face angry. “What the hell is going on?”

I shrugged. “Someone must have jumped the wall in a misguided attempt to avoid paying their parking fee.” I nodded toward the end wall. “He sailed right off the side.”

Jack walked over to view the mess below. He shot a suspicious glance in my direction. “Something tells me you’re involved. Wanna come clean?”

“The two gentlemen in the car thought they had my permission to take me for a ride. I disagreed.” I shrugged. “So, we parted company on unfriendly terms.”

“What did they want?”

“I’m not really sure. But they were under the impression that I had something they wanted. A key and a package of some sort.”

A few minutes later, the sound of a siren told us the police had arrived. They were crawling all over the SUV below in a matter of minutes.

“You’re going to have to make a statement.”

I shrugged again, ignoring the nagging pain in my shoulder. “Not my fault they took the short ride off the side of the parking garage. They shouldn’t have told me to drive while holding a gun on me.”

Jack shook his head. He wasn’t convinced I’d told him everything, but he wasn’t in the mood to argue about it right at the moment. “You’ll make your statement and then you’ll come with me. No way are you staying alone at Charlie’s.”

I bristled at his commanding, no-nonsense tone. Who the hell was he kidding? His place was not the safest place for me. Not when my traitorous body hummed like a well-oiled machine with every glance from those dark blue eyes of his. Nope, more like his apartment was the most dangerous place on the planet for me.

Before I could open my mouth to argue, he grabbed the extra helmet off the back of his bike and jammed it none too gently on my head. “Don’t be stubborn. Those men weren’t playing around. You need a safe place to stay. I’ll take you over to Pop’s place, we’ll pick up Sweetie Pie and then you can sleep at my place tonight. Tomorrow you can make whatever other arrangements you want.”

His fingers, warm and infinitely more sexy than my own, worked the straps of the helmet, brushing the soft skin at the underside of my chin.

I clenched my back teeth, my toes curling in the bottom of my boots. God, give me strength to ignore the tingle shooting up the center of my spine.

As hard as it was to admit it, I knew was right. I was tired. We could call a truce for tonight. We were both adults. No reason we couldn’t both handle staying in the same apartment for one night. We were strong. Responsible.

Ha! Who was I kidding. It wasn’t Jack I was worried about. I was the one who’d been living in Upstate New York, where every man seemed to live for his rifle, his snowmobile and Genesee Beer. A good woman was usually the last item on his list of life necessities. Right now, even O’Brien was looking too good to pass up, and that thought scared the hell out of me.

A SHORT TIME LATER, my statement having been given to the police, Jack and I were headed down Pine Street on the west side. Overflowing garbage cans lined the streets. One could only hope that the city sanitation department was headed in this direction tomorrow morning, or else the entire west side looked as though it might get buried under a mountain of Glad trash bags and empty pizza boxes.

Charlie’s apartment was in one of the old row houses that lined State Street, one of many elegant old homes that had slowly deteriorated into dilapidated ruins, propped up with plywood and cheap siding.

As financial times had gotten leaner, a lot of the original owners had divided their houses up into multiple dwellings, cramming as many people in as was humanly possible.

Charlie occupied a small one-bedroom apartment on the third floor of one such house. The owners were two elderly Polish ladies, sisters who had probably lived in the neighborhood since its creation. From the age of them, I figured they had both been born in the house.

Jack parked his bike at the curb, turned the front tire in and took off his helmet. He rested the helmet in front of him, balancing himself on two legs, his expression a bit horrified as he surveyed the garbage littered front yard.

I figured from his expression that this was his first visit to Pop’s new residence. A touch of resentment rumbled in the pit of my stomach, and that little voice in my head reminded me bitterly that it was all his fault Pop lived in such a dump.

I shut the voice off. He and I weren’t going to make it through the night if I had him roasting on a spit before midnight.

I hopped off and jammed my own helmet on the back of the bike. He followed suit and climbed the rickety steps onto the front porch. He glanced over one broad shoulder. “Are you coming? I don’t have a key, so we need yours to get in.”

I followed him into the front hall, the smell of frying sausages, sauerkraut and onions hit me hard and made my stomach rumble. Memories of dinner at the Orzinskis’ house swam into my consciousness—Claire standing over the stove, sautéing onions while Charlie read her sections of the evening paper.

I pushed the thought aside. Obviously the PowerBar earlier hadn’t been enough. Suddenly, I was starving.

A door to the right swung open and a short, squat woman with pure white hair and a bulldog face peered out. “Who are you?” she demanded.

Jack smiled that charming, one-sided dimpled grin of his. “Evenin’, ma’am. We’re here to pick up Charlie’s cat.”

The woman opened the door wider; her expression was suddenly a map of concern. “How is Charlie? Edith and I have been beside ourselves with worry about him. We were going to take a bus down to the hospital to see him, but money has been a little tight this month.”

“Who’s out there, Patty?” another voice called from inside the apartment.

“It’s some friends of Charlie’s here to pick up that insufferable beast of a cat of his. He’s still in the hospital. Gonna be there for a while longer, it seems.” She glanced at us for confirmation and Jack nodded.

There was the sound of something thumping on the floorboards of the hall and a tall, skinny woman with gray hair and a sour expression appeared. She leaned heavily on a thick cane. “You sure they’re legit? Awful lot of people claiming to be Charlie’s friends been popping out of the woodwork lately, asking to get into his apartment.”

Jack reached into his back pocket and pulled out his wallet, flipping it open to show his badge. “I’m with the Syracuse Fire Department. Charlie’s a real good friend of mine.” He nodded in my direction. “This is Killia—”

“Oh, we’ve met Killian,” the shorter sister said, smiling sweetly in my direction. “Sorry, dear, I didn’t recognize you in the dark hallway.”

She glanced up at the dim bulb. “We keep meaning to get stronger lighting out here, what with all the riffraff hanging around the neighborhood and stumbling into entryways without an invite. But somehow we always forget to tell Charlie to do that for us.”

She sighed. “Charlie’s been very good to us. He was always willing to do a few chores. Help us out when we needed something done.”

“Sounds like he won’t be helping us again any time soon,” Edith grumbled. She turned and thumped back down the hall of her apartment, mumbling under her breath.

The shorter sister smiled apologetically. “You’ll have to excuse Edith. She really does care about what happens to Charlie. She just isn’t the type to show her true feelings.”

I nodded but had a strong feeling that if Edith had the opportunity to get anywhere near Charlie’s bedside, she’d whack the soles of his feet with her cane and tell him to get his lazy ass out of bed. No doubt Charlie would be grateful she hadn’t scrounged up the extra money to take the bus down to the hospital.

Patty shot a quick glance over one shoulder and then shuffled her swollen, slippered feet out into the hall. She pulled the door shut after her. “Sorry for all the questions, but my sister is right. Lots of people been claiming to know Charlie lately. I never knew the man to have so many friends.”

“What did these friends say they wanted?” I asked.

Patty shrugged. “A few asked if he was home. A few of the recent ones wanted me to let them into the apartment.” She reached up and scratched her powder-white ear. “Personally, I can’t figure it out. Charlie doesn’t have two nickels to rub together. He doesn’t have much and I can’t say I can believe they stopped by to feed that ugly, disagreeable cat of his.”

“Did you recognize any of them as visiting here before?” I asked.

Patty’s bulldog forehead wrinkled even more. “Can’t remember anyone specific. One fellow had a bad case of pimples—in serious need of a good scrubbing. And his breath wasn’t any prettier than his face. Charlie might be poor, but he isn’t the type of man to let his personal hygiene go.”

The hair on the back of my neck ruffled. “Did you let him into the apartment?”

Indignation crossed Patty’s face. “Of course not! What kind of rooming house do you think we run around here?” She fluttered her stubby eyelashes in Jack’s direction. “Of course, if the request comes from one of Syracuse’s firemen, heroes that they all are, then that’s an entirely different story.”

I snorted at the description of Jack as a hero, and he shot me a look of exaggerated woundedness. I merely raised an eyebrow and frowned. He might be welcomed eye candy for a little old Polish lady on the west side, but he wasn’t fooling me. He sighed and turned back to Patty.

“Mind if Killian and I take a look around?”

“You go right ahead, sir. Just lock up when you’re all done.” Patty smiled and disappeared back into her apartment.

Jack and I took the worn stairs to the third floor. I could hear muted voices behind the walls of the other apartments we passed and the smell of dinner cooking.

My stomach rumbled loud enough for Jack to shoot me a quick glance. “Hungry?”

“A little.”

“We’ll grab some King David takeout on the way home.”

My heart squeezed with pain. Our favorite meal—Middle Eastern—hummus-and-fried-veggie patties on pita bread. We used to set up a picnic in the middle of the bed and chow down like two wild beasts and then roll over and make ourselves hungry all over again.

“I’m more of a hamburger and French fries type of gal, nowadays,” I said stiffly.

Jack shrugged. “McDonald’s it is, then.”

We reached the third floor and stopped.

Charlie’s apartment door yawned open on its hinges. Apparently whomever the Stanziki sisters had last refused entrance hadn’t accepted no for an answer. They’d simply kicked the flimsy door open and walked right in.

Jack and I stepped around the hanging door into utter chaos. If I’d judged Charlie’s place to be a hellhole earlier in the day, it now looked as though even Satan had deserted the place, but not before he’d had a major temper tantrum.

Every piece of furniture was smashed, slivers of wood and metal littering the threadbare carpet. The tiny twelve-inch black-and-white TV—where Charlie had gotten a real black-and-white TV was beyond me—was now screenless, shards of the glass spread across the carpet. The lamps lay broken on the two cheap end tables among ripped magazines and scraps of newspaper.

Through the archway into the tiny bedroom off the living room, I could see clothes, mostly worn jeans and stained T-shirts, hanging out of the thin plasterboard dresser.

The mattress, stained and sagging in the middle, was ripped up the center, the rusted springs and thin padding bubbling up between the tear like the guts of an eviscerated pancake. I swallowed hard.

Jack lifted his hand, pushed me back against the wall and started to shoulder his way past me. I shoved back, reaching inside my coat and drawing my gun.

“If you don’t mind, I’ll go first,” I said, brushing past him.

“Stay here,” I mouthed silently.

He frowned, none too pleased. When I stepped inside, he pulled up close on my heels. I was annoyed that he didn’t listen, but I didn’t take the time to argue. I didn’t want to warn anyone if they were still in the apartment.

I poked my head into the small kitchen to the right of the living room. Actually, it wasn’t a kitchen, but a pathetic notch in the wall that served as a cooking nook.

The few dishes that had been sitting in the sink earlier lay smashed on the counter, every cabinet open and the contents dumped. All the drawers were open, their contents dumped onto the narrow strip of cracked linoleum.

The door on the tiny apartment refrigerator stood open; food and beverages, mostly opened bottles of beer and a pitcher of orange juice, dripped down off the racks. The putrid smell of spoiling food, probably tuna fish meant for Sweetie Pie, filled the tiny area.

“Damn!”

I jumped. The expletive had come from the bedroom. Jack had taken off on his own. I turned and ran in Jack’s direction, a burn of anger at his stupidity eating at the lining of my stomach. He didn’t have a weapon and he could have put himself in a great deal of trouble.

As I rounded the corner to Charlie’s bedroom, I realized fairly quickly that someone other than Jack was the one in deep trouble. The kind of trouble you don’t ever get out of.

Chapter Three

In the center of the cramped bedroom, near the closet, sat a wooden, straight-backed chair. But it was what was tied to the chair that almost made me lose the PowerBar I’d scarfed down earlier that afternoon.

The guy didn’t fit the overall decor of Pop’s apartment. He was too uptown for that. His expensive three-piece suit looked as though it might cost in the range of a two years’ salary for me. Unfortunately, he’d bled out all over the front of the suit.

The multiple stab wounds to his neck and chest looked as if someone had taken their sweet time inflicting them. A puddle of congealed blood pooled at his feet.

I almost gagged, but I held on. I told myself I’d seen worse, and I had. Maybe not murders, but car wrecks in the steep Adirondack Mountains could produce some pretty horrific scenes.

Jack swore and I could see him shoot me a quick assessing glance. He was probably worried that I was going to take a header directly into the middle of the crime scene.

I clenched my teeth and swallowed hard. I nodded my head to let him know that I was okay. No way would I give him the satisfaction of falling apart. I was the cop on the scene, not him.

“Do you know him?” he asked.

I shook my head, going for the casual look. “You?”

“Nope.”

I stepped forward and pulled a rubber glove out of my back pocket. Pop always taught me that a cop was always prepared, on duty or off.

I donned the glove with a quick snap of rubber and then carefully lifted the man’s jacket to extract the victim’s wallet and flipped it open.

“His name is Craig Gibson.” I couldn’t keep a touch of surprise from filtering through my voice.

Jack gave me a sharp glance. “So you do know him?”

I nodded. “Kind of. Shawna said that Pop’s lawyer wanted to meet with me tomorrow. She said his name was Craig Gibson.”

“Guess your meeting won’t be going off as planned.”

I closed the wallet and slid it back into Gibson’s pocket.

Reaching into his pocket, Jack pulled out a cell phone and quickly punched in a number. “Yeah, my name is Jack O’Brien. I’m at 354 Pine St., third-floor apartment. Number 3A. Notify homicide they’ve just caught a new case. And tell ’em to bring the coroner.”

He rattled off a few other details as I backed out of the room. I retreated to the kitchen and leaned over the battered metal sink. Turning on the tap, I splashed cold water on my face.

I’d seen enough gruesome car accidents to typically handle the blood and gore without any real show of emotion, but for some reason seeing that guy tied up and tortured that way affected me more than I’d figured on.

When I came up for air, I found Jack standing next to me, regarding me with that familiar, quietly assessing look of his.

“You okay?” he asked.

A sharp retort hovered on the tip of my tongue to cover up how off-kilter I really felt, but I kept quiet because I knew he’d be able to see right through me. So I simply nodded.

“The locals aren’t really going to let you get involved in this case,” he said. “You wanna wait downstairs with the sisters until they want a statement?”

I thought about the current condition of my stomach and the combined smells of Ben-Gay, sausage and sauerkraut leaking out from beneath the Stanziki sisters’ apartment door. “I’m fine. Just got a little shaky there for a minute due to an empty stomach.”

He shrugged those broad shoulders. “Fine by me. Just don’t touch anything. Homicide gets a bit touchy when people fiddle around with their crime scene.”

“I’m not an idiot, Jack. We do have crime scenes up there in the wilds of northern New York.”

Before he could respond, I turned on my heel and marched out into the drafty hallway. I figured I’d spend some time poking around out there, see if Pop’s guests had left anything interesting.

The window at the end of the hall was open partway and a cold breeze touched the side of my face, sending a chill through me. The Stanziki sisters wouldn’t be too pleased to see that. Precious heat was slipping out beneath the window sash like water over a dam. But it might have been how the perp got into the apartment if there was a fire escape attached to the side of the old house.

I walked over to the window and bent down to take a look. An indignant screech greeted me. Careful not to touch the sill and mess up any fingerprints, I leaned out the window.

A huge beast sat hunched on the railing of the ancient fire escape. Yellow eyes glared accusingly into my own.

“Awww, Sweetie Pie,” I cooed. “We forgot all about you in the ruckus, didn’t we? What are you doing out there in the cold?”

He blinked and then let out another indignant yowl. Obviously, he was royally perturbed. But then, anyone who knew Sweetie Pie knew that was a permanent condition.

I leaned out farther and gathered his mangy, hairy body into my arms and pulled him inside. He latched on to my slick, nylon jacket with his claws, their sharpness shredding the nylon and letting loose a few feathers.

His oversize head, with its mangled, gnawed ears, bumped the bottom of my chin, and he nestled closer, shoving his head up against the hollow of my throat. His fur felt cold in my hands, his body heavy. I couldn’t help but wonder how long he’d been sitting out there waiting for someone to come home and rescue him.

I moved back to my position outside the front door of the apartment, stroking Sweetie Pie’s bulky body as a way of reassuring him that everything was okay. He was pretty tense, his fur standing on end, but after a few minutes I could feel him begin to relax.

I leaned up against the wall again, sliding down to sit on my heels. Some of Syracuse’s finest had arrived and they swaggered into the apartment, a thick wave of testosterone following them in. A few nodded in my direction, but most were focused on what was going on inside Pop’s place.

As I sat cooling my heels in the hall, I itched to get in there and get involved. But I knew police etiquette. I needed an invitation, and none of the guys in there seemed to recognize me. Not that I could expect them to; I’d been gone a long time.

As my tension rose, my hands tightened around Sweetie Pie’s plump body, and he gave me a quick nip on the tip of my thumb as a warning. I concentrated on taking slow calming breaths and slipped a hand beneath his collar to keep him from jumping down and taking off in a huff.

The soft leather of the collar caught my attention and I glanced down. An unexpected lump of hot emotion filled the back of my throat. It was a hand-tooled collar, with clever cat prints lovingly carved into the leather and painted black.

I knew without question that it had been one of Charlie’s creations, a favorite hobby of his—leatherwork. From a metal ring, a tiny pie charm hung off the collar and the name Sweetie Pie and Charlie’s address were engraved on the back.

I fingered the pie charm as if I could reach into Pop’s head and figure out what had happened in his apartment, but it was a useless gesture. Instead, I watched the drama inside the apartment unfold.

For years, I had dreamed—no, prayed—that the brothers on the force would ostracize Jack after his testimony against Pop. I had wanted them to shun his traitorous butt for what he’d done to Pop. And from the cool, studied nonchalant way they greeted him, it was pretty obvious my wish had come true.

Strangely enough, witnessing what I’d prayed for didn’t bring me any great pleasure. I actually found myself feeling sorry for the guy.

Growing up in a cop household had taught me well how important a cop’s fellow officers were, and when Pop had been convicted, I’d watched in dismay as his buddies ostracized him—cut him out of the brotherhood. Now Jack was getting a taste of how it felt, and something told me that he’d been feeling it for quite a while.

The detective in charge snapped a few questions at Jack and then turned in my direction. His smile was warm. Elliot Standish. I hadn’t seen him come in.

He walked over, his hand out in greeting. “Hello, Killian. It’s good to see you. I’m sorry you had to return on such a sad note.” He nodded his head in the direction of Pop’s bedroom. “Not to mention coming to your dad’s house and finding that mess.”

“Not a great homecoming, I agree,” I said, standing up and shaking his hand. Over his shoulder, I could see a touch of resentment flicker across Jack’s face. He hadn’t missed the fact that he’d been pushed aside.

Standish took my arm and lead me back into the apartment. “Give me a rundown of what you observed when you entered the apartment. Don’t leave anything out.”

He and I took a slow, methodical walk through the apartment for the next fifteen minutes, while Jack was left to cool his heels in the hall.

“Any feeling for why Gibson would be here in Charlie’s apartment?”

I shook my head. “I was going to meet the guy for the first time tomorrow. Apparently, he’s handling Pop’s affairs—his health proxy and his will.”

Standish’s right eyebrow, more weathered and gray than I remembered, took a leap upward. “Charlie had the money to hire Craig Gibson?”

“Apparently. You saying the guy charges more than Pop could afford?”

“Let me put it this way—he’s out of my league, your league and Charlie’s league all put together. He and his partner take on only the highest profile cases here in Syracuse and the surrounding areas. Usually, dealers with money to burn.”

I whistled softly through my teeth. “So the question is where would Pop, a guy who is essentially down to his last nickel, get the money to pay for a guy like Gibson? And what would Gibson be doing making a house call?”