28

The building on East Twenty-third Street is a Veterans Administration–assisted nursing home, six stories of grimy brown brick, just west of a boarded-up factory that once produced ball bearings, just east of a failing discount tire mart. Behind it, the constant moan of the I-90 interchange. The address, almost faded to oblivion on the front of the crime scene photo Paris had found in Mike Ryan’s desk, hadn’t promised much in the first place, and, as Paris traverses the run-down lobby, he expects even less.

Mercedes Cruz is off to interview the other detectives at the unit. Before driving to East Twenty-third Street, Paris had checked in with Reuben. Still no word from his contact in the document division of the FBI on the strip of purple cardboard.

Paris badges the attendant at the front desk. The deskman—tattooed, late sixties easy—is watching a soap opera on an old portable. His name is Hank Szabo.

“These guys are mostly WWII and Korean vets,” Hank says, after giving Paris the basics, his GI-bill dentures slipping on every sibilant. “A couple of guys were in Nam,” he adds with a glare, a look that tells Paris that Vietnam was Hank Szabo’s war. Paris glances at the man’s left forearm tattoo. USS Helena. “But most of us ain’t quite old enough for the heap yet, I guess.”

“This is the heap?” asks Paris.

“This is the heap.”

“How many men live here?”

“Twenty-two, current count,” Hank says.

“Were any of these guys ever cops that you know of?”

“Yeah. Demetrius used to be a cop.”

“Demetrius?”

“Demetrius Salters. I think he was a sergeant in the Fourth District for a lot of years. Gone now.”

“I’m sorry. He doesn’t live here?”

“Oh, he lives here. Room 410. He’s just gone gone. In the head.” Hank points to his temple, rotates his finger. “Old-timers, y’know?”

“I see,” Paris says. “Does he still have contact with anybody at the department that you know of?”

“Not that I know of.”

“Does he have friends or family?”

“I don’t think so. Never seen anyone visit him.”

Paris scribbles a few notes. “And how long have you worked here?”

Hank Szabo smiles, gives his uppers a northward shove. “Let me put it this way, Detective Paris. I started the day they stopped shooting at me.”

Paris walks down the fourth-floor hallway, a grim, cracked-linoleum corridor decked with faded holiday decorations. From somewhere below, a scratchy-voiced Patsy Cline sings about life’s railway to heaven.

He finds 410 with the door open, knocks on the jamb, looks around the corner into the room, then steps inside.

The smell is almost a living thing, instantly bullying him back a step. Camphor and pea soup and feet. A half-century of filterless cigarette smoke. Paris adjusts somewhat, breathing through his mouth, then steps inside to see a gaunt black man in his seventies sitting in a wheelchair, a moth-eaten Afghan covering his legs. A bed, a small bookshelf, and a nightstand are the only other objects in the room. Sadly, Demetrius Salters is sitting by the window, equally inanimate. Another furnishing.

And, it is easily ninety degrees in the room. Paris begins to sweat for a wide variety of reasons. “Sergeant?” he asks, thinking that he is probably speaking louder than he needs.

Nothing.

Paris knocks on the jamb again.

“Sir?”

Demetrius Salters doesn’t move or acknowledge him in any way. “Sergeant, my name is Detective Paris. Jack.” He steps around to the front and holds up his shield. For a brief moment, the daylight plays off the badge onto Demetrius Salters’s face and, for that moment, Paris senses that the old man recognizes something. Then, a collapse of his features says no. Paris picks up the old man’s hand, shakes it gently, returns it to his crumb-littered lap. “It’s a real pleasure to meet you, sir.”

Paris glances around the room, searching for a touchstone that might create a link to the here and now. On the bookshelf is a vintage framed photograph of a smiling Demetrius Salters standing on the bow of a destroyer. Another shows Demetrius in a different uniform, this one CPD dress blues. Demetrius is standing near a girder in right field at Cleveland Municipal Stadium, his arm around the slender waist of a pretty, toffee-colored woman.

“Back in the day, eh?” Paris says, wistfully, pointing to the photographs, trying to fill the room with noise, any noise, more for himself than anything. “Yeah, boy. I used to love seeing the Browns at the old stadium. Especially when it was cold as hell. Remember those days? The way the wind would cut off the lake? Man. My father took me to at least one game every year, right up until . . . yes, sir. Back in the day. The hawk was out.”

Paris glances at Demetrius.

Stillness.

He waits a few moments. He tries a new angle. “So . . . how long were you on the job, Sergeant?” he asks, shoving his hands into his pockets, rocking on his heels. “I’ll bet it was a completely different town then, huh?”

More silence. The man’s deeply creased, implacable face reveals nothing. Paris crosses the room and sits on the edge of the bed. He looks into Demetrius Salters’s eyes, searching for the young man who must certainly still dwell there, the swaggering beat cop who once trolled Hough and Glenville and Tremont instilling respect and fear, the handsome young sailor on watch.

They are gone.

And thus Paris realizes that his pleasantries, however heartfelt, are not really going to be noticed. Might as well get down to business. “Sergeant, I’m working a case that I think you can help me with.”

Then, even though Paris knows it is wrong, even though he feels in his heart it is probably cruel, he does it anyway. He stands, looks up and down the hallway, then clicks open his briefcase. He takes out the crime scene photo of the mutilated corpse lying in the parking lot. He holds it up in front of the old man’s face.

At first, it appears as if Demetrius can’t focus his eyes at the distance at which Paris is holding the photo. But, soon, recognition ascends, like a violent sunrise.

And Demetrius Salters begins to scream.

29

Carla Davis sits at a desk in a small room on the ninth floor of the Justice Center, a pair of computer terminals before her, as Paris knocks on the door.

Paris, having felt like a pimp for showing the crime-scene photo to that harmless old man, made his apologies to the stern-faced nurse and made a quick exit. Michael Ryan’s case, although not officially closed, was dormant. If there is a fact to be had, if there is something lurking that will shake up the inactive investigation, it would have to come to him.

Fact: There is a fucking lunatic loose in his city. Now. Today. And it is his job to catch him. And that job does not include shocking old men to death.

Paris stands behind Carla, looking over her shoulder, trying his best to focus.

“I ran the file with the woman and man talking,” Carla says. In front of her sit two computers. One belongs to the department. One is Fayette Martin’s. “But there is no video portion. Just an audio capture.”

“So, I was listening to what might have been the audio portion of an audio/video session?”

“It seems like it. I’ve listened to it twice myself. Now, the woman could have been watching the video stream and not recording it. Most people do it that way. But there’s no question that the woman could see the man she is talking to. Unless these are extremely creative people.”

“How do you think they hooked up?”

“Most of the commercial, noncorporate usage of videoconferencing is devoted to sex, of course. Lots of pay sites. You can watch women strip, men strip, men and women having sex, men and men having sex, women and women having sex—”

“I get it,” Paris says.