Why had that thing, and a whole lot of others if my bizarre post-coma vision were true, been after Ruthie, and why did they now appear to be after me?
And, most importantly, just what in hell had happened to make me see monsters when all I’d seen before was the truth?
Unfortunately, Jimmy was hiding. Conveniently, I was very good at finding the missing.
I needed to talk to Laurel and Hardy—I mean Hammond and Landsdown—and find out what, if anything, they’d learned since our last encounter.
I swept up the remains of my attacker, tossed him into a plastic garbage bag and deposited everything in the Dumpster. Then I washed that man right out of my hair. It took a lot of shampoo.
By nine a.m. I was headed past the heart of the city.
Like most ethnic towns, Milwaukee had sections— what had once been called boroughs or ghettos; hell, they still were. But along the river, the same one that divided Friedenberg from the rest of the world, the ultrarich occupied brand-new condos.
The only thing more expensive than living in one of those was living in a high-rise on Lake Michigan. Water—even water that’s icy eight months out of twelve—does a number on the real estate values.
I cruised by the courthouse, glanced at the Bradley Clock—the largest four-sided clock in the world—caught a glimpse of Miller Park to my right, and drove over the Hone Bridge. Ten minutes later I left my Jetta in the visitor parking lot and walked into the police station where I’d once worked.
At the desk 1 asked for Landsdown and Hammond. Just my luck, they were in.
“If it isn’t Sixth Sense,” Landsdown greeted, using the nickname I’d come to loathe.
I ignored him. Sometimes it helped.
“Have you been in contact with Sanducci?” Hammond asked.
“Not lately,” I said, skirting the truth with a lie.
His face fell. “Why are you here?”
“Maybe she saw him,” Landsdown murmured, “with her X-ray vision.”
“Why did you ask me to help if you think it’s all BS?” I demanded.
“You’ve come up with some extremely convincing BS.”
I had, at that.
“Either way,” Landsdown continued, “if you’re the real thing, which I doubt, or you’re bogus, which gets my vote—you’ve got a history with Sanducci. Even if you can’t tell us where he is, maybe we’ll stumble over him coming out of your place after a long night of the horizontal bounce.”
I hadn’t horizontal-bounced in so long I got distracted a minute just thinking about it. Sanducci had been a damn good bouncer.
“I wouldn’t hold my breath waiting for that,” I said. “I’ve got a few questions.”
The two men glanced at each other and together they shrugged, which I took as a green light.
“Any word on the autopsy?”
“Not yet.”
Rats.
“Do you know why Sanducci was in town?” Maybe knowing that would help me find him.
“According to his manager,” Landsdown said, “Sanducci was here to do a shoot with Springboard Jones.”
“The basketball player?”
“You know a lot of guys called Springboard?”
Excellent point.
Springboard—given name Leroy—was Milwaukee’s own Michael Jordan. He’d taken City High to the state championship at the Kohl Center, dragged the Badgers along with him to the Final Four, then been picked number three in the draft and would soon begin playing for our very own Milwaukee Bucks. Springboard had made good, and everyone loved it. However—
“Jimmy’s not a sports photographer.”
“Assignment was a portrait for the cover of Sports Illustrated.” Hammond explained. “Man of the year or some such shit. They wanted the best.”
Jimmy was that—in more ways than one.
“Did he take the picture?”
“No. It was scheduled for tonight at eight.”
“Where?”
“City High.”
I frowned. Only a few miles north of the bright lights and little city, the neighborhood changed—a lot. Tenements. Burned-out houses. Scrabbly grass, broken sidewalks. Boarded windows if they didn’t have steel bars. I had a hard time believing Jimmy would cart his precious cameras past Third and North after dark, even for Sports Illustrated.
“I thought they tore that school down.”
Asbestos in the ceiling and floor tile—a common occurrence in buildings constructed in the fifties and sixties—was making a lot of contractors a lot of money.
“Next week. I guess Sanducci wanted to work his magic in the gymnasium where it all began.”
I could see it—dusty faded court, broken wooden bleachers, old school uniform, the photo in black-and-white. Stark, beautiful, as only Jimmy Sanducci could make it.
Hammond studied me. “You don’t think he’ll actually show up there, do you?”
I shook my head. Jimmy wasn’t that dumb. But if not there, then where?
“Anything else I should know?” I asked.
Hammond tensed. Landsdown scowled.
“What?”
“There’ve been odd disappearances in some of the cities he’s frequented,” Hammond said.
“There are always odd disappearances in cities. You know that as well as I do.”