“You really think so? I just…I don’t know if—”
The floor shook, causing Frank to stumble back. Ava reached for him, but it was too late; he went falling over the side. The last thing Ava saw before gravity claimed him was his smile, as if he had wanted to fall the entire time.
Ava awoke with a start, her heart slamming in her chest. She momentarily clenched the mattress, her mind thinking she was still on top of the Chrysler Building for one terrifying moment. She looked beside her and saw Jeffrey, deeply asleep. She kissed him on the forehead and slowly got out of his bed. When she was out in the hallway, she checked her watch and saw that her nap had been a rather long one. It was 11:10 and she found that she was very much awake. After the fright the dream had given her, she didn’t see herself going back to sleep anytime soon.
She did the only thing shecoulddo, given the time and the increasingly tangled web she was creating for herself outside of her home. She went to her bedroom and lay down in the darkness. Staring up at the dark ceiling, she thought of all of the open threads of her life, of how quickly it had all changed, and how she might be able to tie it all up in a nice, neat bow.
She found no solutions, though. The best she could come up with was starting tomorrow with a mostly clean slate. And she thought everything needed to start by mending fences with Pawlowski—if her new partner would be willing to listen at all.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Ava arrived at the Seventeenth Precinct early the next morning, hoping to go over all of the files they had pertaining to Perkins one more time before having what promised to be a difficult conversation with Pawlowski. To her surprise, though, Pawlowski was already there. She was sitting at her desk, reading over a stack of papers. She glanced up at Ava for just a moment before turning her attention to the papers again.
“Good morning,” Ava said as she sat down behind her desk.
“Same to you,” Pawlowski said.
In the awkward silence that followed, Ava looked around the quiet precinct. She knew it wouldn’t be this quiet for much longer. Within another half-hour or so, the officers that came in from the eight o’clock shift would fill it, moving around and going about their business and caseloads. Unable to stomach the quiet much longer, Ava tried her best to get the conversation started.
“Are you still mad at me?”
Pawlowski waited a moment, her eyes still on the stack of documents in front of her. After a while, she looked up and met Ava’s gaze. “I am,” Pawlowski said, “but not as mad as I was yesterday.”
“That’s a start.”
“I guess I’ve just never been the sort to need someone to rescue me. I didn’t ask for your help. I didn’t cry out like a damsel in distress, but still…there you were. Looking back on it, I do appreciate the help. And it wasamazingto see those busters get what was coming to them. Still, it was a little embarrassing.” She shrugged and added: “You’ve been doing this long enough to know what I mean, right?”
“I know exactly what you mean. And I…I don’t know. It just made me mad, and I reacted.”
“You ever do anything like that at your old precinct?”
“A few times,” Ava said with a slight smile. “Are we good here?”
Pawlowski considered it, still looking Ava over. Eventually, she nodded and said, “Yes. We’re good. And with that…here’s what I was able to pull from those other names on the client list we found in Perkins’s office.”
She slid the papers over to Ava in an almost disgusted way, as if she was very happy to get them off of her desk. Ava looked the papers over and found that there wasn’t much there at all.
“I know,” Pawlowski said. “There’s not much there. They are all well-to-do businessmen and investors. I did also check their names against local obituaries and none of them have killed themselves.”
“I wonder how we could find out if any of them are investing any money into the Chrysler Building.”
“I doubt we can,” Pawlowski said. “I checked on that request we put in for a photographer, and it’s been denied. I know you don’t want to hear it, Gold, but you’re just about the only one that really thinks there might be foul play involved in this.”
This didn’t surprise her. In fact, she fully expected Miller to call them both into his office at some point during the day to tell them that he was killing the case and Alfred Perkins’s death would officially be ruled a suicide.
“The letter to Perkins from Albrecht didn’t seem at least a little strange to you?”
Pawlowski signed and gave Ava awhat-are-you-gonna-dosort of look. “Yeah, it does raise the eyebrows, huh? But then again, you saw how Miller and the rest of the precinct reacted when you bought Albrecht in here, right? I’m telling you…unlessyou can find some sort of undeniable proof, this is going to be dead in the water really soon.”
“How about you?” Ava asked. “Do you think it’s still worth looking into?”
“I honestly don’t know. I keep thinking about the prints we saw. Even the foreman thought they were odd. There’s also the fact that Perkins really would have had no business in the building in the first place. There’s a lot that doesn’t add up for sure, but that’s not going to be enough for Captain Miller to keep the case active.”
“So how about we do everything we can before Miller kills it?” Ava said.
“I’m not sure what else there is to do.”
Ave thought it over. She wasn’t sure how revisiting the Chrysler Building would help, so that was out. She supposed going back to Perkins’s office could be of some help, but digging through all of that paperwork was going to take a lot of time—and that was something they simply didn’t have. It then occurred to her that they may already have a built-in shortcut for finding smaller bits of information.