Sara Paretsky - Body Work

“Will do,” Rieff said. “What kind of priority?”

“Priority service, but not premium.”

“Have you read the whole report?” Rieff asked. “One of the oddities Winne found was scorching around the holes in the mitt. That fabric is too tough to cut without a special blade, so he must have burned it to get into it. That’s the one thing a defense lawyer could jump on in claiming the contents had been tampered with.”

He hung up, but I held on to the receiver, staring at the desktop. If Chad knew that his buddies had died because their armor didn’t protect them, no wonder he’d freaked out when he saw Nadia paint the Achilles logo on the Body Artist. He’d accused Nadia of spying on him. He must have thought she worked for Tintrey.

I looked up to see Petra watching me anxiously.

“Vic,” she said, “is there some kind of problem?”

“Not a problem,” I said slowly. “Just-I think I understand what happened, but not how to prove it. Not who pulled the trigger on the gun that shot Nadia Guaman but why they did, and why they framed Chad. Marty, how much did Chad say about the body armor?”

Jepson frowned. “He never stopped talking about it, ma’am-Vic. We knew he was angry. But he was always angry about the way him and his men had been treated generally.”

“But did he talk about the armor malfunctioning?”

“He said his men should be alive, that their armor didn’t protect them. But, ma’am, no disrespect, you get these IEDs, and nothing can protect you.”

“So he didn’t say the shields were full of sand instead of the nanoparticles they were supposed to contain?”

He shook his head, trying to remember. “I know he said he was going to tell the whole world how his squad got butchered, but, you know, that was just talk. It was his way of letting off steam. Least, that’s how Tim and me and the other guys took it. I don’t remember him ever saying he did like you did, sent the armor to a lab to get it analyzed.”

“No: I think he tested it by shooting at it.” That explained the burn marks around the holes in the mitt as well as the holes in Mona’s bedroom wall that had bothered her so much. Chad had attached the shield to the wall and shot at it. The bullet went through the armor and destroyed the drywall behind it. That was his proof. But how had the men at Tintrey known what he was doing?

“His blog,” I said. “The sections that got erased, I bet those were where he described the mitt. We need Tim. We need to see if he can resurrect Chad’s blog.”

I got up. “Jake’s leaving for Europe this evening. I want to see him before he takes off. Can you two track down Tim and see if he’ll come up to my place when he gets off work? In the meantime, make two copies of this report, will you? Send one to Murray Ryerson at the Star. The other goes to Freeman Carter.”

I’d offered to drive Jake to O’Hare, but the packing of his basses for international travel was a painstaking, if not heart-stopping, business. With a hundred thousand dollars’ worth of instruments, he bought tickets so that they could ride in the plane with him, but they required extra scrutiny and careful repacking once he’d been through security. The manager of his chamber group was bringing a roadie just to oversee the luggage.

Jake greeted me on the landing when he heard me on the stairs. “Vic, you made it. I was afraid you were shooting somebody or being shot at.”

He took me in his arms and danced me into his apartment, where the living room was filled with the luggage, including his two basses-the modern one for the chamber group, the period double bass for his early-music group. In their fiberglass cases, the instruments looked like stiff elderly people at a concert. I bowed to them and sang a few bars from “Non mi dir, bell’idol mio,” my mother’s signature aria.

Jake took me into the bedroom, where he’d touchingly set up a little table with champagne and a vase of flowers. “Three coach seats. I can’t afford to take my children first-class, so we’ll drink my champagne now.”

He slid my heavy winter layers over my head and unhooked my bra. He winced a little when he saw the bruises on my stomach, but he didn’t back away from me as I’d feared. By the time he had to get up to shower and dress for his flight, some of my earlier anguish over my visit with the Guamans had eased. I lingered in bed until the bell rang, when I pulled on my jeans and one of my sweaters while Jake went out to greet his roadie.

I stood on the landing with my champagne as the two men carted out luggage and instruments. “It will be almost April when you come home. I’ll miss you. But I’ll follow your concerts online when they’re being broadcast.”

“I hope you’ll be olive-colored again by the time I’m home,” he said. “This green and purple doesn’t look so good on you, V.I. Try to look after yourself, okay?”

A quick kiss, and then he was gone. I lingered on the landing, but there wasn’t time for me to feel sorry for myself. About half an hour after Jake left, Petra and Marty Jepson arrived with a couple of pizzas. Mr. Contreras and the dogs helped us eat while we waited for Tim Radke. When Tim showed up, around nine, he set straight to work, but even though he managed to crack Chad’s log-in and password, he couldn’t re-create the blog. The entries had been deleted, and that was that.

“Or he never wrote them,” Tim said. “I can’t tell. It’s not like the Artist’s website where we could see someone was issuing a command to shut down the site. Here, there’s just no trace that anything was ever there.”

“If we found his computer?” I asked.

He shook his head. “You’d have to hack into the blog server to see what was deleted. And even if I wanted to go to prison for Chad, which I don’t, I’m not good enough to do that kind of search. The only thing we might find if we had his machine is if he sent an e-mail or wrote a letter or something about the armor.”

I had to be satisfied with that, although it wasn’t the news I’d hoped to receive. The young people took off to go to a club. They invited me to join them in a way that made me feel like an elderly aunt. And like an elderly aunt, I stayed home and went to bed. Oh, those days of having so much energy that I could work all day and go dancing at night… I wanted that time back.

It was after one when the doorbell woke me. Someone was leaning on the buzzer so hard they’d roused the dogs. I could hear the barking as I made my way to the door on sleep-thickened legs. I pulled on my coat, put my gun in the pocket, and tried to run down the stairs so I could get to the door ahead of Mr. Contreras. Petra, I was betting. Petra had locked herself out of her apartment. I rehearsed a stern speech on how she could check into a motel or sleep on the living-room floor.

The ugly words died in my throat. Clara Guaman stood outside, her right eye swollen shut, her nose bleeding. When I pulled open the door, she collapsed in my arms.

You will be well, little one. Just uncomfortable for a few days, with this packing in your nose. Now, who did this? Did Victoria involve you in some desperate scheme?”

“Lotty!” I started to protest, but the words died in my throat. If I hadn’t nosed my way into the Guaman home, tonight’s assault probably wouldn’t have happened.

We were in Lotty’s clinic on Damen Avenue, along with Mr. Contreras, who had surged out of his apartment moments after Clara’s arrival.

“My God, is it Peewee?” he cried. When he saw that the face of the young woman, a stranger, was covered in blood, he’d ordered me to bring her into his place.