Leo dropped me at the same place he’d picked me up, and I hoofed back across Thompson Avenue and the far edge of the spit of land to the river walk. Only when I got close to the turret did I notice the figure sitting on the bench by the water.
‘Elstrom,’ he said, straightening up.
‘Detective Jacks.’
He stood and motioned for us to head up the rise to the street. No surprise, a black Impala was parked at the curb, with Detective Kopek parked inside. Jacks tapped on the window and Kopek got out.
‘Fine night for a walk,’ Kopek said.
‘Cold, but all nights are fine nights for walks,’ I said.
‘Fine night for long walks and short walks,’ he said, making me wonder whether he’d been waiting a long time or whether he’d just arrived, perhaps driving in from a mostly deserted factory district in Chicago.
‘All are good,’ I said, waiting now myself.
‘Mrs Marge Sunheim,’ he said. ‘Ever wonder if she was involved in her husband’s nefarious activities?’
‘Nefarious?’ It was not a word a kolachky-cognizant cop would ordinarily use.
‘You know, up to no good?’ he nudged.
‘I don’t think she likes being involved with Herbie in anything. She threw him out to go live in a room with a loose baseboard.’
‘Got any thoughts about why her house got trashed, or what someone might have been looking for?’
‘Her house got trashed?’
‘Maybe not trashed, exactly, but it was searched, and not too unobtrusively.’
‘Marge Sunheim told Herbie Sunheim’s assistant that you and Jacks stopped by, wanting a look around inside her house. She told you to get a warrant.’
‘Someone else stopped by after us, when she wasn’t home. Her house got searched right after you supposedly found nothing in Sunheim’s rented room,’ he said.
‘Did she have a funny baseboard, too?’
‘Don’t crack wise, Elstrom.’
‘Then don’t accuse me of things I know nothing about.’
‘Walter Dace,’ he said.
I played it dumb. ‘Him I know something about, as I already told you. He’s the property manager for the buyers of the Central Works property.’
‘You told us you went to see him,’ Jacks said, then stopped so I could incriminate myself by knowing more than what had been reported in the news.
‘I gave him the same report I dummied up to leave at Rickey Means’ answering service. I was trying to maintain the charade that Herbie Sunheim was directing my activities.’
‘Walter Dace was found shot to death along with his receptionist,’ Kopek said.
I presented what I hoped was appropriate shock. ‘Who did it?’
‘Odd, you showing up where people are later found dead, Elstrom.’
‘I didn’t kill Dace, Detective Kopek. I went to see him twice, and only for a couple of minutes each time. He blew me off, protecting the privacy of his building owner.’
‘There’s more.’
‘Damn right there’s more,’ I said. ‘I’m looking for Herbie Sunheim and I’m looking alone. Like Rickey Means, he’s linked to the four properties that Dace managed, though what there is to manage is doubtful. Three of the four buildings look vacant and the fourth looks blown up.’
‘How do you know about those other properties?’
‘Clever investigative work. I went to the county recorder’s office and asked what properties Triple Time Partners owns.’ And then, thinking about the black Impala Leo and I had seen just a short time before, I said, ‘I drove by each one.’
‘You know more than that.’
I met his glare. ‘Hard to keep track of what everybody thinks I know,’ I said.
‘What’s that mean?’
‘Raines and Cuthbert,’ I said.
‘Who?’ he asked, but there was no confusion on his face.
‘Your fellow detectives. They’ve taken to stopping by to question me instead of working more closely with you.’
‘Different department,’ Kopek mumbled.
‘They did say they were working a different angle,’ I allowed.
‘I don’t know what damn angle they got,’ he said. He motioned abruptly to Jacks. They got in their Impala without another word, and drove away.
I went inside knowing even less than I had just a few hours before.
I’d cracked one of the slit windows open for fresh air before going to bed. That was enough to wake me when the familiar clattering of a poorly tuned automobile turned onto my street. The car stopped. Two doors opened and closed, as before. It was just past three in the morning.
I hurried up the stairs and the ladder to the roof, taking care to ease the hatch open quietly as I climbed up and out, into the night.
Rustling came from down below; footsteps on old leaves at the back of the turret. A moment later, the tapping started. The thing was moving its way up the limestone blocks, its whirring growing louder in the still night.
I grabbed the large pole net, moved low to the center of the circular roof and crouched down. Standing, I’d be invisible behind the balustrade to anyone looking up from the ground, but there was no way of telling whether the camera attached to the light that was making its way up the turret was recording internally or broadcasting to someone watching on a monitor nearby.
The tapping and whirring grew louder against the limestone, and at last the light rose up above the balustrade and hovered, not moving. I stayed low, crouched at the center of the roof, my right hand tight around the handle of the pole net.
A moment passed, and then another, and then the light began moving slowly toward the center of the roof, whirring just five feet above me in the night sky, a thing almost of science fiction. Searching, though not for me.
I moved my left hand onto the pole, now gripping it with both hands. I’d get one chance at a fast swing.
The light was directly overhead. I jumped up and swung. I didn’t get it all, but I got enough, snaring at least two of its rotors.
I swung the thing trapped in the net down hard onto the roof, stomping my foot onto the pole handle as if to pin some vicious, flailing evil. I tore off my peacoat, threw it over the net to blind its lens, and left it there, imprisoned in the net beneath my thick wool coat. I padded over to the roof hatch and eased the door open, careful to lower it silently behind me as I climbed down the first rungs of the ladder. There’d be a ruckus outside now, down on the ground, when the thing did not appear in the sky.
I went down to the second floor and looked out of one of the windows facing the river. Two beams of light had begun dancing upward from down below, touching, parting, searching. They’d brought flashlights.
The beams split up, one to each side of the turret. I crossed the floor to a front window and watched as they moved toward the street, casting wide bright arcs down into the bramble in the spit of land. The decades of blown-down branches and fallen tree limbs would make the search hellish for hours to come. Wonderfully, it would be for nothing. The thing they wanted was trapped on my roof.
I watched the flashlights dance their merry tango for another fifteen minutes, until at last I got tired enough to go back to sleep.