The Heights Read online

  Back at my desk, the first thing I discover is that Andersen was indicted for involuntary manslaughter a couple of years ago. Evidently, he got sloppy with a restoration job and forgot to reconnect a guy’s brake lines all the way. The guy ended up dying on the Ohio Turnpike when the car wouldn’t stop. It looks like Andersen pleaded it down to misdemeanor negligence, paid some fines, and avoided serving any time, thanks to Jeff O’Connor. I’m a little surprised Andersen’s still in business—and that anyone would take their car to him—but maybe it was an honest mistake.

  The Plain Dealer tells me that Andersen was a big-deal military guy, an explosives expert who won a medal for something he did in Iraq. That detail gives me a surge of adrenaline. I run my own BMV check: his last known home address is in Old Brooklyn. He turned forty-one last month. He’s six four, two ninety, so he’s big enough to match the larger footprint at the scene and probably strong enough to have killed Martin without an accomplice.

  I write it all down and click over to the Plain Dealer website. There he is, the object of a profile by Alexis Edwards, the best reporter the PD has. The piece ran just before the accident that killed one of his customers. In the photo, which is just over three years old, he has a shaved head and smiles with his mouth but not his eyes. He stands in front of a restored ’72 Nova. It’s a sweet car. All I really get from the piece is that he did two tours in Iraq and opened his own business when he got home. His passion for muscle cars and motorcycles came from his dad, who helped him restore his first car back in the day, or so he says.

  There is no social media for Anders Andersen beyond a Facebook page for Andersen Restoration. It features photos of him standing next to various cars with happy-looking people behind the wheels. There’s a whole photo album of work he’s done on motorcycles too. I get a little adrenaline rush when I see a picture that he posted last week of him next to an old Ducati. He’s wearing a black hoodie with a leather motorcycle jacket over it. I mean, a lot of people wear that kind of thing in Cleveland this time of year, but it matches what Martha Rodgers said the man near Martin’s SUV looked like—the man who threw evidence into a storm drain.

  It’s not likely that we have his DNA from an involuntary manslaughter charge, but it’s worth checking. He got out of the military before they started collecting DNA. Prints will be in AFIS, though, so that’s something.

  I send Jo Micalec a quick email asking her to let me know when she’s processed any of the physical evidence from either scene.

  A deeper public records search verifies that Jeff O’Connor represented Andersen in the criminal negligence civil case last year after he was acquitted on the manslaughter charge. Andersen won the civil trial.

  I make a note of the plaintiff, anyway. His name is John Snyder, and he sued Andersen on behalf of his brother Mark’s estate.

  There’s no direct link on paper, beyond the law firm, to Heather Martin, but I still decide to pursue Andersen. I run an internet search on “coolest muscle cars” then call Andersen Restoration. A guy answers in a deep baritone, and I ask in a cutesy voice if I can talk to Mr. Andersen.

  “That’s me,” he says. “What can I do for you?”

  I make up some story about how I just inherited a ’64 GTO from my grandfather and say I’d like to bring it in to see what he can do to make it pretty again, something about how it runs but needs cosmetic work. I damn near gag over my own saccharine voice, but whatever. Sometimes nice—even fake nice—works.

  He says he’d love to see the car, and we make an appointment for tomorrow after lunch. I tell him my name is Candy Cooper.

  I wonder how surprised he’ll be when he sees me get out of the police-issue unmarked Charger wearing my leather jacket, Glock, and shield, with my burly partner in tow. The Charger has a big V-8. Maybe that’ll soften the blow.

  CHAPTER 10

  At about seven, as I’m typing my abridged reports for the day, my phone beeps with another message from Cora, which contains only two question marks and a grumpy-faced emoji.

  Instead of replying, I call her back. As the phone is ringing, Fishner approaches on my right, looking like she has news.

  “Way to get back to me,” my ex says, but I can hear the smile in her voice.

  “Hold on.” I look at my boss and take note of her preoccupied expression. Fishner doesn’t usually avoid eye contact.

  “I don’t have all night. I have TV to watch,” Cora jokes as I pull the phone away from my ear and mute it.

  “Kasinowitz verified Eric Martin’s alibi,” Fishner says. “He was at her place on Saturday evening, through Sunday morning. She says her security system has video of her exterior doors and that the video evidence will corroborate the alibi.”

  She reaches for a dry-erase marker and turns to the crime board, and I wince. Please don’t touch my crime board.

  “I’m sending Roberts to get the video first thing in the morning.”

  “I’ll update the board.”

  She replaces the marker in the tray and steps back. “Agenda for tomorrow?”

  “Andersen. I have an appointment with him. Sims is working on cell phone location data for the vic. We’ll go from there.”

  She nods and pulls the belt on her coat tighter. “Good night, Boyle.”

  “’Night.” I wait for Fishner to leave. “Sorry,” I say to Cora. “You want to grab a bite to eat?” I roll my chair over to the board and cross off Eric Martin’s name. Next to it, I write the word alibi and Abby Kasinowitz’s name.

  “I already had dinner. You missed your opportunity,” she says in a joking tone.

  “What are you doing later?” I wince. I didn’t mean it that way. “I mean, I’ve still got a couple of things to do, but I could swing by and—”

  She chuckles. “I’m binge-watching season eight of ER and going to bed early. I just texted you to be a pain in the ass.”

  I stand as I tell the computer to print the reports. “What, no yoga?” Cora got really into yoga after we broke up, and she’s the reason I bought a yoga mat. I figured if it helps her manage the tragedy of the end of our official relationship, it might help me, too, and it sort of does.

  “Already done.”

  “Overachiever.”

  She laughs. “Call me later this week?”

  “Sure. Enjoy your trashy soap opera.”

  “You know it’s great. You love it. We’ll talk soon.” She’s quiet for a moment. “You holding up okay?”

  Grimes. “Yeah, I’m doing all right, I guess. It isn’t quite the big thing I expected it to be.”

  “I hope times are changing. I’m glad. Call me.”

  “Will do. See ya.” I end the call and walk to the printer. Maybe one day I’ll get used to being friends with her. I don’t know. I guess I don’t have to know.

  I sign the reports then slide them into the letter tray on Fishner’s door. On my way to my desk, I see Maliq Sims in the hallway. “Hey, Sims, you got a minute?” I ask him from across the squad room.

  “Sure, what’s up?” His voice is a deep baritone, which always throws me when we talk in person, because he can’t be more than five nine. He heads my way, brushing something off the lapel of his well-tailored suit jacket.

  “Anything on Martin’s computer or the cell phones?” I lean against my desk.

  “Still working it. She had security out the ass on the laptop, and we’ll probably never get into that. Better than government security, if you ask me. As for her regular phone, I should have locations and call records by tomorrow morning. There’s only one number in the burner, and from what I could get so far, she only made calls from that phone in or near her office building. I’m cross-checking the number.”

  I nod.

  He makes a face like he knows there’s more.

  “What’s up with the Lowell murder book?” I switch off my desk lamp.

  He nods. “Yeah, I can tell Goran’s pissed at me. Is that why?”

  “Yup.” I pull on my jacket.

  Sims
rubs his neck. “I was looking into another cold kid murder, doing a favor for a friend of mine. It was her son who got killed. Turned out there was some overlap with the Lowell dude, and I started thinking maybe he did the little boy too.”

  “What kind of overlap? What’s the other case?” I try not to sound like I’m interrogating him. I cross to my locker in a nonchalant way.

  “Lowell’s mama used to babysit for the boy, who was friends with the vic, Martina. They were neighbors for a time. I thought it was strange, given the whole black-and-white thing. But I’m thinking he mighta had something to do with it. Kid died in the same way. Evidence of sexual abuse. That’s all.”

  “You know it’s Goran’s hot-button case, yeah? He wasn’t happy when he saw the murder book on your desk.” I pull my gun out of my locker and shove it into its holster.

  He shakes his head. “I had no clue, or I would have gone to him right away.”

  “You probably should have talked to one of us, anyway,” I say.

  “Yeah, I’m sorry.” He winces and looks from me to the binders on his desk then back at me. “Look, I’m not second-guessing what y’all did. I’m the new dude. I’m not—”

  “I’m not trying to give you a hard time, Maliq. We’re just a closer-knit squad than what you’re used to. We take shit like this personally. Goran is thinking all kinds of shit he shouldn’t be, you know? Getting his panties all in a bunch over some kind of misunderstanding.”

  “Yeah, I’ll talk to him.” He purses his lips. “Thanks for the heads-up.”

  I nod and close my locker before changing the subject to the Heather Martin case, my way of letting him know that, as far as I’m concerned, it’s water under the bridge.

  THE FIRST TIME I EVER had an instinct to revisit a scene was during my second case as a detective, back when I was in Sex Crimes and was partnered with a good old boy named Jerry Goodlin. I’ll never forget the look of pride on his face when I suggested it. At his retirement party, after he’d had a few, he told me that was the moment when he knew I’d be a good detective. It’s all about going back once the dust has cleared and the techs are gone to get a better sense of the scene. The precise locations of things, yeah, those are all in the reports, on the map that I made. But even if a quieted-down crime scene doesn’t hold any additional physical evidence, it might show me something that we’ve missed.

  Seeing it after dark and with no police lights or crime scene techs might show me something too. I’ll see it the way the killer saw it.

  I enter through the back entrance off Mayfield, get out, lock the gate behind me, and pull into the service area, which is still surrounded by yellow tape. I take a deep breath and look around carefully, given that I’m here alone.

  It’s gonna get chilly tonight, and the wind rustles the remaining leaves in the trees as though rain might be on the way. I pull my jacket around me and traipse over to the edge of the woods where Tom found Heather Martin’s purse. I stand there for a minute and drink in the scene from this angle. The outbuildings. The shed. The place where she died. The place where Greenwade found the necklace and the fingernail. The footprints, the tire tracks.

  I’ve got to ask Jo about those tire tracks. I suspect the killer used her car then dumped it in front of Martha Rodgers’s house. If he entered from the back, he could have pulled up by the shed and wrestled her out. But no footprints are there. Maybe he dragged her, and the weight of her body obscured his own prints. There are no drag marks in that direction. She was barefoot when we found her, and we didn’t recover any shoes. It’s possible that she walked into the shed. Not willingly, though—he had to have incapacitated her, at least temporarily. The signs of struggle in the shed tell me that she was conscious for at least some of the time they were here.

  I wonder where her clothes are. We didn’t recover any clothes from her SUV or from this crime scene, and Patrol and the techs were here until this morning finishing the canvass. He might have kept them as a trophy of some kind. I add find her clothes to my mental agenda.

  The transponder we found in the storm drain is needling me, but there’s not much I can do about it until Jo works her magic and tells us what it’s for. It’s not a garage door opener; I know that much. It’s not an E-ZPass—it’s too small for that. It’s almost like one of those iClicker things that college kids use in big lecture classes to record attendance and take quizzes, but it’s not that either.

  The ground by the shed isn’t soft. It’s possible that he pulled his vehicle up next to it and pushed her in. The tire tracks would have come from him pulling away. It’s also possible he waited, watched her leave the shed, then left the footprint as he watched her crawl to the embankment.

  That would make him one sick dude.

  The sun sets behind me, and I contemplate the mark that violence leaves, the palpable force of it, the way it penetrates a place, hours, days, years after it happens. Some cops swear they can smell the tang of it for decades, that they can walk into a house and know that someone died a violent death there.

  I wouldn’t go that far, but I have to agree that death changes the energy of a place. Even a cemetery.

  I wander around for forty minutes before taking the main road to the front office. On the way out, I stop to introduce myself to Bobbie Butler and ask her a few questions about Anders Andersen, given that he’s the only lead we have. I hold my badge in my left hand and knock three times. She unlocks the door and regards me with narrow-eyed suspicion when I introduce myself.

  “When are you people going to be done with this?” she asks. “It’s almost nine o’clock. You can’t just come in here like this. How did you even get in here?”

  “The Mayfield entrance was open.”

  She shakes her head. “Paul hasn’t been right since he found that woman. I guess I’ll have to go lock it myself. This is affecting everyone. How is anyone supposed to get work done when they can’t even get to their tools?” Her voice has a shrill edge to it, and I hope she doesn’t freak out.

  “I locked it for you,” I reply. “And we’ll let you know when things can get back to normal.” I jam my shield down onto my belt and follow her through the doorway. “Until then, keep it blocked off, okay?” I fix my gaze on the stack of forms in front of her, which appear to be billing statements. I don’t see Andersen’s name anywhere.

  She eases into a chair. “Uh-huh. Please try to stay under the radar.” She rolls her eyes and perches her reading glasses, which hang from a beaded chain around her thick neck, on her nose. “I just can’t imagine why this has to go on forever.” She shakes her head and turns to her forms then moves one to the end of the pile.

  “Ms. Butler, this is a murder investigation.” I square my shoulders and resist the urge to cross my arms.

  She heaves herself out of her chair and waddles over to her filing cabinet with the forms. “I understand that.” She shoots me the side-eye. “Really, I do. I deal with death all day long, every day.”

  I let it go. “What can you tell me about Anders Andersen?”

  She sets the forms on top of the filing cabinet and plants her hands on her hips. “Mr. Andersen is a very nice man. I’ve known him for quite some time. He’s always been pleasant. He brings fresh flowers for his parents at least once a month.”

  “Anything else?” I lean against the partition that separates the spot where I’m standing from her office area.

  She yanks open the second drawer and begins filing, ignoring my question.

  I watch her in profile and get the sense that wheels are turning in her brain. She’s trying to decide whether to level with me—I can tell by the set of her mouth and the way she’s avoiding eye contact.

  I lean forward over the partition and fold my hands. “Look, Ms. Butler, I know this is inconvenient. And really, we’ll get out of your hair just as soon as we get a better handle on what happened to the murder victim. So if there’s anything you can tell me that I might want to know, even if you think it’s silly or irrelevant, n
ow would be a great time to do that. Let’s start here.” I pull my phone out and bring up a picture of Heather Martin. “Have you ever seen this woman before?”

  She squints through her glasses. “Only from the news reports. The poor woman.”

  I swipe to the next picture, one of Eric Martin that ran in the Plain Dealer a few months back. “How about his man?”

  She nods enthusiastically. “He’s a councilman.”

  “Has he ever had any business here?”

  “No. I would remember that.”

  “You’re doing great. Thanks. Anything else you can think of? Anything about Mr. Andersen that I should know?”

  She purses her lips and narrows her eyes. “Well, I’m not sure.”

  I search her face and wait for her eyes to meet mine.

  Once they do, she decides to tell me. “Oh, okay. But only because you apologized for the inconvenience. Paul and Anders used to be friends. Oh my, I’d better sit down.” She toddles over to her chair and throws herself into it with some effort. Her reading glasses fall against the top of her large bosom, riding along her polyester neckline, and she leaves them there. “Why don’t you come over here and take a seat?”

  I nod, thankful that she’s not still planning to be a difficult pain in my ass. I make my way through the small wooden gate in the partition and slide into a brown vinyl chair across from her desk.

  “Detective Doyle, is it?” she asks. She takes a sip from a McDonald’s cup on her desk.

  “Boyle.” I smile to show her how nice I am and what a good idea it would be to keep talking to me.

  “Sorry, right. Anyway. Paul, my brother—I think you spoke with him already. He said something about having to answer a tall woman cop’s questions.”

  I nod. “Yes, I talked to Paul. Is he here now?” It would be good to talk to him again.

  She shakes her head. “At his piano lesson, but he should be home by nine fifteen or so.” She taps a finger on her desk. “Paul isn’t normal. He isn’t like you and me.”