Ghost of a Chance

15 The Truck

The lobby of the Central Office of Police was still mobbed with reporters when Alex emerged from the stairwell. He didn’t want to spend any more time in the lobby than he had to; after all, he wouldn’t put it past Detweiler to come down after him. Still, he was at a dead end with all his current cases, and it was far too early to go see Jessica.

He resolved to go to Anne Watson’s house and dig through her husband’s files. It probably wouldn’t yield anything, but now that he had a list of the ghost’s potential victims, maybe he’d find a further connection.

“Hey,” a voice said, loud in his ear.

Someone grabbed his shoulder, and Alex tensed, fearing that Detweiler’s men had caught up to him. When he turned, however, he saw the face of a man in his mid-twenties. He had a broad smile under a narrow nose in the middle of a boyish face. A dimple in his left cheek increased his youthful look and his eyes were brown and inquisitive. He wore a brown suit that looked made for hard wear and a tag had been stuck into the band of his trilby hat that read, Press.

Alex suppressed a sneer when he saw the press card. He knew a couple of decent guys at the Times, but most reporters treated P.I.s like bumbling incompetents our outright competition.

“No comment,” Alex said, yanking his shoulder free and turning back toward the door.

“Wait,” the man said. “You’re that consultant, Lockerby. The runewright detective. Is it true that you’re working with the cops to find the ghost?”

“I said no comment,” Alex said.

“Aw, come on, pal,” the reporter pressed. “The whole city is scared to death over this thing. I mean, he seems to be mostly killing rich folk, but there was that one guy in Harlem. People are scared.”

Alex looked back at the man with his boyish grin.

“I was never working this case with the police,” Alex said. “I understand Lieutenant Detweiler is running the investigation. If you want information, you’ll have to take it up with him.”

With that, Alex pulled away and maneuvered through the crowd to the big glass doors at the end of the lobby.

“Thanks for nothing, mac,” the reported called after him.

Ten minutes and a short crawler ride later, Alex pushed open the gate to the Watson home. He was surprised to find it locked and empty. There wasn’t even a squad car on the street.

Detweiler must have called off the investigation into Anne when Paul Lundstrom was murdered.

Alex hadn’t anticipated being locked out of the house, but he came prepared. Taking out his rune book, Alex paged to the back. He passed a green and gold rune that would open the lock magically, but the components of that rune cost forty dollars. Alex preferred a much cheaper method of entry.

He tore out a vault rune and, taking a bit of chalk from his jacket pocket, drew a chalk door on the wall of the porch. A moment later he was back on the porch with the beat-up leather doctor’s bag that held his kit.

Alex paused for a moment to wipe away the chalk outline before he opened his kit. Anne Watson was his client after all; no sense in leaving her porch untidy. He took out an ornate pencil case that held the various writing instruments he might need on the job. The case was made of wood with a slender, mahogany tray and a cherry cover. Turning it upside down, Alex pushed his thumb along the bottom of the mahogany tray and a concealed panel slid sideways, revealing a hidden compartment. Inside were several tools for picking locks.

The Watsons’ lock was the newer kind that took a small key with multiple teeth. Setting his kit and the pencil case aside, Alex selected a slim tool with an undulating end and an L-shaped tension tool. It had been a while since he’d been forced to pick a lock, but Iggy kept saying it was like riding a bike. Alex had never ridden a bike, so he wasn’t sure that was true, but the lock clicked open after only a few moments of manipulation.

Feeling quite self-satisfied, Alex replaced the tools inside the hidden compartment of the wooden case, picked up his kit, and went inside.

Two hours later, Alex sat at David Watson’s enormous desk. It was no longer a shrine to neatness and order. Piles of file folders were stacked from one end to the other and his immaculately organized file cabinets stood open and mostly empty.

With a sigh of disgust, Alex closed the file he’d been reviewing and dropped it on a stack to his left. He’d been through almost every land deal for which David Watson had records, and none of them involved anybody on the ghost’s list. There were many records from Suffolk County, mostly houses David had built.

Alex stood up and went to the wet bar he’d found concealed behind a folding door. Locating a bottle of single malt scotch, Alex poured himself two fingers in a shot glass and sipped it.

It was exquisite.

He closed his eyes and enjoyed the aroma and the taste of the liquor. On his budget, the best he could do was bourbon. Occasionally Iggy would break out the good stuff from his liquor cabinet, but that was a rarity. He reserved that for important conversations and deep contemplation.

“I could get used to this,” Alex said, taking another sip. He looked around the office at the wall with the glass-enclosed shelves. Watson’s old surveyor’s transit and other equipment were there, showing his humble beginnings. The next case held blueprints and photographs of houses, detailing the man’s years as a builder and finally a developer. According to the files, Watson had built some of the biggest houses on the north shore.

Alex took another sip of the whiskey, but it didn’t go down as smoothly this time. Something about Watson’s wall bothered him.

Setting the drink aside, Alex moved back to the desk. Each of the folders had a label on it listing the date of whatever transaction the files detailed. He began staking them up by year and returning them to the file cabinets where he’d gotten them. After an hour of this, the clock on the wall read one o’clock; he was ravenously hungry, but he had a small stack of folders left on the desk.

These folders represented Watson’s work as a surveyor. None of the files detailed his work for the Assessor’s office; those records would be in storage in Suffolk County. The files on the desk represented Watson’s independent work. There were seventeen of them. The eighteenth file, in chronological order, had been the first building Watson had ever built, a glassed-in tennis court for a wealthy family.

As far as Alex could tell, David Watson had only been a surveyor for two years after he started working for himself. Alex had no idea when Watson had quit working for the assessor’s office, but he felt sure it was before the man started in the building trade.

Alex went back to the wet bar and refilled the empty shot glass with single-malt.

Watson had kept meticulous records. That was what was bothering Alex. In two years he went from being a surveyor to being a builder, but there was no record of his ever learning the building trade. He hadn’t apprenticed or gone to school, he just stopped surveying and started building for some of New York’s richest families. All in the space of two years.

Alex knew enough about building to know that Watson could never have pulled off a glassed-in tennis court with his surveyor’s knowledge. That meant he’d hired someone who did have the experience to run his crew. Add to that all the materials he would have to buy up front and it added up to a tidy sum. Watson would have needed that money before he put up the first glass panel in that tennis court.

“Where did he get the money?” Alex asked the stack of folders.

It was possible, of course, that someone had fronted him. A silent partner who believed in Watson enough to set him up.

Alex shook his head. That wouldn’t work. The folders contained every detail about the builds Watson did, and there was no payout to any partner. All the expenses were listed and catalogued.

“So where did the money come from?” he asked again. “There’s no way he saved that kind of scratch on a county surveyor’s salary.”

Alex’s stomach rumbled, and he sighed. If he wanted to make any more progress on this, he was going to need something to eat.

He picked up the telephone on Watson’s desk and gave the operator his office number. A few moments later, Leslie answered.

“It’s me, doll,” he said. “I’m over at Anne Watson’s house looking into her husband’s business dealings. I think I’m on to something, but I wanted to know if you’ve heard anything from lover boy?”

“I’ll say,” Leslie said, her voice positively bubbly. “He had a lovely bouquet delivered here for me.”

Alex chuckled.

“Not exactly what I was hoping for,” he said.

“Randall did send a card,” Leslie explained. “He said he didn’t find anything out of the ordinary in the files, but he’ll keep looking. Apparently there’s a lot of records to go through.”

With tax assessments on each property in the county required every year, and every land sale documented, Alex could well believe it was a mountain of paperwork.

“Well, if you talk to him, tell him to keep on swinging,” Alex said. “I’m going to grab a bite and then head over to the hall of records. I want to check some of Watson’s information against the permits he had to file with the state. Maybe I’ll find something there.”

“Before you do that, Danny called,” Leslie said.

Alex rubbed his forehead and stifled a curse. He’d forgotten about his promise to help his friend and he hadn’t even glanced at the lost property statement Callahan had given him.

“All right,” Alex said. “Call him back and tell him to meet me at Gino’s. I’ll go over his case while I get lunch.”

“Will do,” she said and then hung up.

Alex picked up the seventeen folders that encompassed David Watson’s surveying career, along with the ones for the first five builds he’d done, and slid them into his kit bag. The room looked pretty much as he’d found it except for the empty shot glass on the desk.

Thinking it would be rude to leave that out, Alex took it back to the wet bar, refilled it, drained it again, then rinsed the glass out in the sink.

Gino’s was a little hole in the wall diner with a short counter and a half-dozen booths. They catered to the beat cops who came in to grab a sandwich or a bowl of chowder. Alex was never one to be picky where food was concerned, and he liked that the proprietor, an older woman named Lucy, never skimped on the meat in her sandwiches.

“Two hot pastramis on white,” he ordered once he sat down at the counter.

Lucy wore a floral dress under a stained apron and her white hair was bound up behind her in a bun. She looked to be about fifty with a lanky, slender build and a rough but smiling face. Nodding at Alex, she took two ready-made sandwiches from a cooler and dropped them on a buttered grill.

“Cup of joe?” she asked, picking up the steel coffee pot from the far side of the griddle.

Alex checked the handful of change in his pocket before nodding.

The bell on the door jingled behind Alex but he was too hungry to care.

“There you are,” Danny’s exasperated voice assaulted him. A moment later them man himself was pulling on his sleeve. “I’ve been looking all over town for you.”

Alex picked up his coffee cup and sipped it, relishing the energy it was giving him.

“Well, you found me,” he said. “Pull up a stool.”

That was meant to be a joke as the stools were bolted to the floor and therefore, immovable.

“Get up,” Danny said, still pulling on his sleeve. “We’ve got to go.”

“What?”

Danny’s usually smiling face showed irritation and excitement in a fairly equal mix. He wore his gray suit with his gold detective’s badge clipped to the outside breast pocket. Danny was very proud of his status as a police detective.

“There’s a break in the case,” he said, still tugging at Alex’s sleeve, “but I need you and your bag of tricks.”

The empty pit in Alex’s stomach started to churn. He remembered his recent string of failures with finding runes. He hadn’t had one that actually worked since Hannah Cunningham came to his office three days ago and he definitely didn’t want to crap out in front of Danny.

“Can I at least eat?” he stalled. “I’m starving.”

Danny pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed.

“You remember how I told you that the stuff that was stolen was taken off delivery trucks?” he said, clearly not wanting to have to stop and explain.

Alex shrugged noncommittally. He hadn’t been sleeping well before last night and he wasn’t sure if Danny had told him that or not.

“Well, we caught a break. They found one of the missing trucks,” he said. “It broke down in the Outer Ring by the rail yards.”

“Was the stolen stuff still on the truck?”

Danny’s face split into a wide grin and he shook his head.

“No,” he said. “That means that the thieves unloaded it somewhere.”

Alex was nodding along now, seeing the way Danny’s line of thought was running.

“So as long as they don’t move that truck, I can use it as an anchor and track it back to where it’s been,” he said.

Danny slapped him on the shoulder again.

“I told them to hold the tow-truck until I got there,” he said. “But they won’t wait forever, let’s go.”

Alex downed his coffee as fast as the hot liquid would allow then motioned to Lucy.

“Looks like I need those pastramis on white to go out,” he said.

Alex had finished both his sandwiches in the half hour it took Danny to drive from Gino’s to the rail yards. When he finally pulled off the road, Alex saw a rather dilapidated-looking truck built from the frame of a Model A. It didn’t have any paint or signage on it indicating who might have owned it and Alex wondered how a patrolman managed to recognize it as one of the missing trucks.

A half dozen beat cops stood around looking at the vehicle. A disgruntled looking man with a tow truck was arguing with one of the uniforms but the cop waved him off when he saw Danny pull up.

“It’s about time, Detective,” the officer said. “We need to get this off the street and down to impound.”

“Send the tow guy home, Johansson,” Danny said. “We can’t move this truck till my friend here works his magic.”

Johansson looked dubious but, to his credit, he didn’t argue. The tow truck operator wasn’t so genial, and Alex heard him yelling at Johansson as he put his kit on the curb.

“What was this truck delivering?” Alex asked as he examined the bed.

“Rolls of denim fabric,” Danny said, checking his note pad. “They were on their way to a factory in the Garment District that makes dungarees.”

Alex circled around the truck but didn’t see anything out of the ordinary. Whoever stole it might have left fingerprints inside, of course, but they’d be impossible to tell from the dozens of others left by people who had access to the truck. He decided he’d let the police sort that mess out.

“All right,” he said to Danny. “When was this truck stolen?”

Danny checked his notes again.

“A week-and-a-half ago.”

“Damn,” Alex swore. “I was hoping I could use the truck to track its cargo to where the thieves unloaded it, but I don’t think that’s going to work.”

Danny looked dismayed.

“Why not?”

“Fabric is easy to sell,” Alex said. “I’m sure they’ve gotten rid of it by now.”

“There must be something you can do,” Danny said.

Alex thought about it. What he needed to do was to find out where the truck had been before it had broken down.

“When was the last time it rained?” Alex asked.

“Uh, Sunday,” Danny answered.

“Perfect,” Alex said, setting his kit on the bed of the truck and pulling out his multi-lamp and oculus.

“Why is that perfect?” Danny asked.

Alex pointed to a tin bucket in the bed of the truck.

“If the truck had been here on Sunday, there’d still be some water in that,” he explained. “That means the thieves kept it somewhere before it broke down here.”

“And you can use a rune to locate that place?”

Alex shrugged as he clipped the amberlight burner into his multi-lamp.

“Not exactly.”

He lit the burner, then pulled the oculus over his head, settling the telescope-like lens over his right eye.

Amberlight was one of the lesser used magics in Alex’s kit. It was essential for reconstructing a crime scene because if you shone it on an object, it would show you where that object used to spend its time. If you shone it on a discarded book, the amberlight would reveal a ghostly trail up to the shelf where the book had been stored.

Alex adjusted the colored filters on the oculus’ lens until he could see the caramel-colored light. The fact that it was early afternoon and the sun was high in the sky didn’t make it easy to see, but he’d manage.

As he looked at the truck, Alex could see almost invisible lines coming away from it and going back up the street the way he and Danny had come. They showed how the truck had moved to get her from wherever it had been.

“This way,” he said, holding his lamp out in front of him. “And grab my bag.”

Almost an hour later, Alex followed the faint lines of the truck’s passing along a waterfront street on the south side of the rail yards. The path had led them into the Middle Ring, to a hardware supply shop, then back out toward the Hudson. Now, as Alex walked along the street, the faint lines turned and flowed up against a carriage door set into the side of a dark warehouse.

Alex closed his right eye and opened his left, looking up at the building. There was no sign that anyone worked there. No doors were open, no windows were lit, and there was no noise or commotion.

“I think this is it,” Alex said over his shoulder.

Behind him, Danny and the six beat cops had been following in Danny’s car. He pulled over and they piled out.

“Check the door,” Danny told Johansson.

The big, blond cop walked over to a service door in the side of the building and tugged on the handle.

“Locked,” he said.

Alex tried the carriage door and it budged a little.

“I think this one’s open,” he said, putting his shoulder against it and pushing. A moment later he wished he hadn’t as his still cracked rib exploded in pain. Alchemy could speed up healing, but it still took time.

“Ah! That was stupid,” he gasped, clutching his side and stepping back so that Johansson and two other officers could take his place.

“What’s wrong?” Danny asked, stepping up beside Alex.

“Bad guys,” Alex said, giving their long established code phrase. They both knew there were parts of Alex’s job that a straight arrow police detective was better off not knowing about. Now, anytime Alex was involved in something that might put his friend in an awkward position, like being the victim of attempted murder, Alex blamed it on bad guys and Danny let the matter drop.

The doors of the warehouse creaked as the officers pulled it open, revealing a cavernous space beyond. Light streamed in from third-story windows, revealing an open floor with blocks and bolts and concrete pads arranged in rows that must have once supported machines on an assembly line. Whatever this factory had been, however, someone had turned it into a garage. No less than twenty trucks of all different shapes and sizes were parked inside. They sat, silently in four rows of five, just gathering dust. Other than the trucks, the warehouse was completely deserted.

Danny stepped up beside Alex and whistled.

“Would you look at that,” he said. “Why would people steal all those trucks and then just leave them sitting here?”

Alex shook his head.

“I have no idea,” he said, stepping into the cool space beyond the carriage door. He moved over to the first truck in line and pulled open the back door. The inside space was empty except for some tools and a broken crate.

Moving to the next one, Alex pulled the rear doors open. This time the truck wasn’t empty. A row of full crates lineed one side of the delivery truck’s cargo space and there were tied bundles of something that looked like cotton.

“Danny,” Alex called. “You’d better take a look at this.”

The detective and several of the officers came hurrying over. Danny took off his hat and stared at the nearly full truck.

“Check the other trucks,” he said to Johansson. The officers each took a truck and soon they began calling out their findings. When they were done, only six of the trucks were empty, and the rest had cargo left in them. Some of them had obviously not been touched.

“I don’t get it,” Johansson said, scratching his blond head. “I mean I’d get it if the guys who stole all this stuff wanted to use the trucks, but why steal a truck and just park it with everything still in it?”

Alex had a thought and pulled out the list Callahan had given him. Scanning through it, he found the rolls of denim, bales of cotton, cans of lamp oil, a crate of cast iron toy cars, paper napkins, and other things that didn’t seem to have any real value. There were, however, some things that stuck out. A dozen spools of heavy gauge copper wire, a truckload of magelights, assorted construction equipment, and building supplies.

Folding up the list again, Alex walked along the rows of trucks, looking at the company names. He stopped when he got to one labeled, Masterson Tool & Die.

Consulting the list again, he saw that the truck from Masterson had been carrying drill bits for a mining machine that were to be shipped by train to a site in Colorado. Walking around to the back of the truck, Alex opened the rear door. He already knew what he’d see there, but it was nice to have his hunch confirmed by the site of the empty cargo space.

“I know that look,” Danny accused, stepping up beside him. “You’ve figured something out.”

Alex put the folded list of stolen goods back into his shirt pocket and shook his head.

“Maybe,” he said. “It’s just a hunch right now.”

“Care to share?”

“Not yet,” Alex said, patting Danny on the shoulder. “Let me make a few calls first. I wouldn’t want to send you off on a wild goose chase.”

Danny looked like he might object but finally nodded.

“Okay,” he said. “Let’s go find a phone. I’ve got to call this in anyway.”