I parked on gravel off Riopelle and walked down to the river to finish a cigarette, stepping carefully over chunks of brick and Jell-O pudding tops. The lights of Windsor, Ontario made waffle-patterned reflections on the surface where the Detroit River squeezes between countries. The spot where I stood hadn’t changed since Prohibition, when rum boats docked there and men who weren’t dressed for the work offloaded the cargo into seven-passenger touring cars with a man standing sentry holding a tommy gun. It was late August and already the air felt like October. We were in for one of those winters that shut up the global-warming people for a while.
The place I wanted stood fifty yards away, with all the character sandblasted off the brick and yellow solar panels replacing the multiple-paned windows. The concrete loading dock was intact, but above it someone had substituted a faux — wrought iron carriage lamp for the original bare bulb. It was an amateur facelift, done on the cheap by a landlord who’d seen too many local renaissances fizzle out to put any faith in the current one.
The big bay doors were chained and padlocked, but decks had been built around the corner with steps zigzagging up four stories and doors cut into each level for the tenants, with small windows added to let in light and accommodate the occasional window-unit air conditioner. The only lights burned on the ground floor. The kid at Chrysler had said none of the other apartments was ready for occupancy.
When no one answered I tried the knob. It turned freely.
There might have been nothing in that; college housing is always getting burgled because the students are careless about locking up. The boxy window unit that stuck out of the nearest window was pumping full out. I didn’t like that. The damp air off the river was too cool to bother running up the utility bill. I went back to my car and transferred the Chief’s Special from its special compartment to my pocket.
Still no answer. I opened the door as quietly as I could, just wide enough to step inside around the edge with my hand on the revolver. It was like walking into a refrigerator truck.
The first one lay on a blown-out sofa near the wheezing air conditioner. He was in his underwear, lying on his side facing the back of the sofa, as if he’d been caught sleeping. I found the next one on his back in an open doorway connecting to a hallway and had to step over him to inspect the rest of the apartment. I had the gun out now.
Number three was twisted like a rag on the floor halfway down the short hallway. I eased open the door to a small bathroom, dirty but unoccupied, found an untidy bedroom with no one in it, checked out a narrow closet with sports equipment piled on the floor, and finished the inventory in another bedroom at the back. This one, more cautious than the others, sprawled on the bed with his legs hanging over the footboard, arms splayed. When I stepped in for a closer look, my toe bumped into something that rolled: an aluminum baseball bat. He’d dropped it when he fell backward. He was naked, the others nearly so. No one wears pajamas anymore.
I put away my weapon. There was nobody left to shoot.
I noticed the smell then, faint but bitter, mixed with the slaughterhouse stink. They’d all been blasted at point-blank range by a heavy-caliber shotgun.
Checking for pulses would have been redundant. I went back to the first corpse. The back of his head was a mass of pulp; stray pellets had torn fresh holes in the upholstery, but he’d taken most of the charge. The others had been struck in the chest or abdomen. Mr. Sofa was the only white victim. Mark Childs was white.
I wished it was that easy, but I had a report to make. Setting my jaws tight, I grasped his bare shoulder to pull his face into view. The skin was cold and the body turned all as one piece, stiff as a plaster cast. Death alters features, but he looked enough like his picture to give him a name. The birthmark on his upper lip settled the question.
The front room was as big as the rest of the apartment. The sofa was part of a rummage-sale set facing a home theater from a box, with a kitchen at the other end. Disposable food cartons littered a folding card table with four mismatched folding chairs around it, but plastic forks and smeared paper napkins suggested more nomadic dining habits. My breath made gray jets. I thought about turning down the air conditioner but didn’t. Whoever had touched the controls last wasn’t present.
The place didn’t seem to be wired for a telephone. I found a cell on the sticky kitchen counter and called police headquarters. I bypassed 911 and asked for Lieutenant Mary Ann Thaler.
“Why felony homicide?” she asked. “Why not plain homicide?”
“It looked like a drug thing,” I said.
“It still looks like it.”
“So I called you to avoid a handoff.”
“I appreciate it. I’ve been on duty thirteen hours now.”
She sat across from me at the folding table, dangling a tea bag on a string in a big cardboard cup with a Powerpuff Girl printed on it. Now that she no longer wore glasses the tiredness showed, but she was still the best-looking thing I’d seen all day, and mine had started as early as hers. Her skin was fair, she had her light brown hair tied in a ponytail with a yellow silk scarf, and a fitted jacket and pleated slacks didn’t distract the admiring male gaze from the rest. Her SIG Sauer would be on the left side of her belt, the gold shield on the right. Her brown eyes were as big as wheel covers.
The place buzzed with assorted professionals. A happy Asian medical examiner hummed show tunes and probed at wounds with the nightmare tackle from his tin box. Young people of both sexes measured spatter patterns and bumped into a big black radio-car cop who kept grunting and moving out of their way and into someone else’s. Every light was on and a couple of arcs had been brought in for a better look.
Finally the air conditioner stopped. A fingerprint tech had lifted latents off the controls with a gizmo that took pictures like a camera phone.
“That should wrap this,” Thaler said. “The heat wave broke night before last; the tenants had no reason to crank up the cold. Whoever did wanted to keep them from getting ripe long enough to split and set up an alibi. I figure these boys have been dead since early this morning or they wouldn’t have been undressed for bed.”
She sipped tea and twisted in her chair to gesture with the cup. “Your boy Charles died in his sleep. The next two came running when they heard the noise and Shotgun popped them, one, two, like birds. Number Four stuck it out in his room in batter’s position, but rock breaks scissors. That how you see it?”
“Clear as gin. Can I smoke?”
She nodded, watched me light up while she rotated the cup between her palms. She kept her nails short and polished clear. “What else you see?”
“Not a thing. I called you right after I ID’d my runaway.” I drew in a lungful and staggered it out through my nostrils.
“You didn’t snoop around for dope? Funny money? Stolen rubies?”
“I’m not as curious as I used to be.”
“Who else you call?”
“The client. It’s all in your notebook.”
“Before or after you called me?”
“After.”
She was still deliberating my case when a sergeant or something in a sharp suit and cowboy boots came over carrying two Ziploc bags. The one he dropped on the table contained four spent shotgun shells. “Twelve-gauge double-O buck, L.T.,” he said. “Nothing surer, richer or poorer.”
“Rick McCoy, Amos Walker. Walker called it in.”
He took my hand in a hickory grip. He wore his hair to his collar and a soul patch in the hollow of his chin. I figured he was working undercover with a Wild West show.