It made no sense. But I was alive.
The EMT bent and began wiping my left hand.
Plinnit froze. “What the hell are you doing?” he shouted.
“Cleaning away the blood,” the EMT said. “This man used his left hand to protect himself. He might have infected cuts.”
“His cuts can be tended later.” Plinnit turned to a crime scene technician. “Bag his hands until you can scrape underneath his fingernails.”
An elderly lady, ten feet away, gasped at me, the killer.
The crime scene technician put paper bags onto my hands.
“I fell onto your man,” I said. “Of course I’ll have his blood and his skin on me.”
“More interesting,” Plinnit said, “we’re checking my officer to see if he got your skin under his fingernails, trying to defend himself.”
The elderly lady, now within six feet, gasped again.
“It was someone else, Lieutenant. Short and light, but powerful.”
The elderly lady edged forward another foot. Her perfume got even closer, thick and cloying, like Elvis Derbil’s coconut hairspray.
I gestured at her with my bagged hand. “I think it was her, Lieutenant.”
“Asshole,” the old woman said, shuffling away.
“Christ, Elstrom,” Plinnit said.
“All right, Lieutenant,” the EMT said. He pulled my sodden shirt down over my side and stepped back.
The crime scene technician came back with some sort of kit, removed the bags from my hands, and scraped underneath my fingernails.
When he was done, Plinnit said, “Let’s go to the movies.” He helped me sit up, and he and the EMT lowered me into a wheelchair. As Plinnit began pushing me into the manager’s office, I saw that the wood trim around the door had been splintered.
“We had to break our way in. The day manager was unconscious, but you might already know that. Either you or someone else cracked his head open with a stapler.”
The glossy-headed concierge was waiting inside the office. He pressed the button on a small video monitor on top of a file cabinet. Plinnit stood behind me, exhaling on the top of my scalp, and we began to watch the images on the screen.
“This is our only camera,” the concierge said. “It’s old, not digital, and records only the people in the lobby.” He fast-forwarded the security tape, turning the silver-haired, well-dressed people into jerk-legged comics, like actors in Charlie Chaplin movies.
“There,” Plinnit said. “Our hero arrives.”
The concierge slowed the tape. I came into the picture, pushed the elevator button, and got in.
“This is our ending point. If we can go backward from here?” Plinnit said to the concierge.
The concierge reversed the tape, again at high speed. First me, then the other Chaplin figures began speed-walking backward through the lobby, robots run amok.
“Stop there,” I said, when he got to something dark, approaching the penthouse elevator.
The concierge slowed the video to regular speed. Someone in dark clothing was crossing the edge of the lobby.
“That’s nobody,” the concierge said, advancing the video frame by frame. “A homeless woman. She comes in to use the first-floor washroom. The manager throws her out.”
“She comes in frequently?” Plinnit asked.
“Not frequently, but she’s been in here before.”
On the screen, the woman paused to look around, and inserted a key into the lock that opened Sweetie Fairbairn’s elevator.
“Ah, hell,” the concierge said.
“Freeze that,” I said, as the woman again looked to the side.
The concierge pressed the remote.
Only her profile was visible, but it was enough.
“She look familiar, Lieutenant?” I asked.
Plinnit walked around my wheelchair, to stop two feet in front of the monitor. “Something about her…” He turned to look at me, confused.
“Call the Michigan City police. Ask them what they have on that person they brought in to give me a look-over.”
“That guy who collected cans?” Plinnit leaned closer to the video screen. “You’re saying that odd little man is masquerading now as a woman?”
“You tell me.”
“But why?”
“I think he was the torch for Andrew Fill’s trailer. He could have done Fill earlier, as well.”
“You were there, weren’t you?” he asked, his eyes hot on me. “You were in Indiana beforehand.”
I said nothing.
“Michigan City called me. It took a long autopsy, but they found that Fill was dead way before the day of the fire,” he said.
I could only shrug. Anything more might get me arrested for Fill’s murder.
CHAPTER 62.
Leo cabbed down to the Wilbur Wright, had the valet pull the Jeep around, and was behind the wheel when the concierge wheeled me out. Getting in, I saw a clumsy sort of wide strap that lay on the dashboard.
“You can wrap it around like a belt to hold your arm at your side, if movement is painful,” he said.
“Where the hell would you get something that barbaric?”
“Barbaric? That was Pa’s. From one of the times he fell, coming out of the tavern. He hurt his arm.”
“I don’t remember him hurting anything.”
Leo grinned. “He never spilled a drop.”
Instead of heading west toward the Eisenhower, he drove east, almost to the lake, and picked up Lake Shore Drive, southbound.
“No,” I said.
He kept looking straight ahead.
“I mean it, Leo. Amanda and I, we’re not, ah…” He was heading toward Amanda’s condominium.
“I know you’re ‘not, ah…,’ but from what you told me on the phone, some guy approximately half your size, and apparently a cross-dresser, keeps beating on you.”
“I can take care of myself.”
“Of course you can. If the killer cross-dresser comes for you again, I’m sure you can puncture his, or her, eardrums with your screaming.” He slowed to turn in front of Amanda’s high-rise.
She was waiting under the canopy, dressed in a glittering dark evening gown. Next to her stood one of the building’s uniformed security people, and a younger, dark-haired man who had the unsmiling face of someone who was used to shooting people.
“I can do this myself,” I said to Amanda after she opened my door. Getting out, I fell back against the Jeep. The young dark-haired man was at my side in an instant, and caught me before I fell to the ground.
“Of course,” Amanda said, “and if you can’t, Mike here”-she gestured at the unsmiling young man who was holding me up-“can throw you over his shoulders and carry you to the elevator like potatoes.”
“Ex-cop?” I asked Mike.
“Current cop, moonlighting,” he said.
Amanda reached to steady my elbow. “He does security for my father.”
Leo had stayed behind the steering wheel.
“How are you getting back to Rivertown?” I asked him.
“In this.”
“I’ll be stuck here.”
“In a high-security building, with extra security? Jeez, why didn’t I think of that?” He grinned, ever a smartster. “Want the strap?” he asked, reaching for the top of the dashboard.
“See those stenciled initials: R.P.D.?”
He looked down at the strap now in his hands. “Yes?” he said, uncertainly.
“Rivertown Police Department. It’s an old-time restraint, meant to cinch both arms tight to the torso. Supposed to work like a straitjacket, only it’s cheaper. Your pa probably found it on the street, thought it might be a way of controlling you.”
His grin got wider, and then he drove away.
Truth was, I didn’t like the idea of being alone in the turret that evening, not with a killer loose, and me feeling like I’d dripped the last of my strength away in Sweetie Fairbairn’s hallway. Then again, I didn’t like the idea of being alone with Amanda, either, because I didn’t want to think about what she’d been in the middle of, dressed as she was for a fine evening.