Unsolved (Invisible #2) - James Patterson Page 0,51

be surprised that a woman cop would put her finger on it right away.

“Well, listen,” she says, “I’ll get us an autopsy on Mayday. Would that work?”

“That would be…so great.” I almost collapse with relief.

“Hey,” Ciomek says, “can you break free?”

I look back at Ashland, huddling with ASAC Wilson. “I think so. Why?”

“Got some things you’ll want to see,” she says.

49

IT TURNS out that it isn’t hard to break free. I tell Ashland I’m running off with Officer Ciomek to interview homeless people who might have been in the neighborhood while the bomber was milling around, which is basically the truth. She’s deep in conversation with Wilson, so she waves me off absentmindedly.

We get inside Ciomek’s squad car, and she hands me a laptop. “Pull up this surveillance footage,” she says, pushing a button. “It’s from the car wash a half a block north up the street.”

Like a lot of surveillance cameras, this one has its limits. It was intended to cover the lobby of its store, but you can see through the glass walls onto the street a bit, looking south and east. Unfortunately, it doesn’t go far enough south to capture the bomb site—the payday-loan store and Horizon Hotel. But there’s a decent shot of the east side of Broadway from several days ago. It looks quite different from the Broadway Street I saw yesterday.

On the east side of the street, south of the car wash, the grainy footage shows a tall, thin man in dreadlocks with what looks like a microphone in his hand, gesturing and apparently singing as people pass by.

“That’s Mayday,” says Ciomek as she drives. “Marlon Mayberry. He had one of those old Mr. Microphones and sang all the time. Made some decent money doing it too. Part of that was his talent and charm. He’d make folks laugh, sing silly songs or tell jokes, and people would reward him. The guy was a fixture on that block. He put in full days. He’d stay until it was long past dark.”

I watch him for a while, fast-forwarding through some of the video. I can’t make out anything specific about Mayday save for his dreadlocks, but it’s easy to see that he’s good at engaging passersby. I count at least a dozen people who dropped some money in his collection box, and he always gestured ceremoniously and seemed to serenade them in response.

And Ciomek’s right. According to the time stamp on the video, he’s still there at nine o’clock at night.

“The other reason for his success was that he was fiercely protective of his turf,” she says. “Nobody else got to work Broadway from Balmoral to Catalpa. Nobody.”

“Okay. This video is from last Thursday,” I say.

“Right. And if you look at video from Wednesday or Tuesday—and that’s as far back as they went—you’ll see Mayday there all the time, at least until eight or nine o’clock.”

“Okay. So?”

“So look at Friday,” she says. We stop at a light, and she reaches over and works the computer to pull up the video from Friday.

I fast-forward through it. Mayday is there at eleven in the morning. And at one in the afternoon…and three…and five…

And then he’s gone.

I rewind to where he left the camera’s field. Just after six o’clock. At 6:02 p.m., he turns and starts walking—briskly, as if agitated—south, going down the street and out of the camera’s view. He returns thirteen minutes later, at a quarter past six, walking calmly, even a skip in his stride. He picks up his collection box and walks north until he’s out of range of the camera.

“He called it a night early on Friday,” I say.

“And that’s the last we see of him.” Ciomek pulls the squad car over to the curb. “Alive, at least.”

I ask, “So what made Mayday leave his spot so early on Friday?”

Ciomek puts the car in park and reaches for her door. “Let’s go find out,” she says.

50

WE ARE parked outside a bagel shop, the smell of warm bread and pungent coffee unexpectedly making me hungry. I haven’t eaten much since we arrived in Chicago. People brought in bagels—from this place, I think—and then, later in the day, sub sandwiches, but I could hardly bring myself to look in the direction of food, much less put any in my mouth.

We get out of the car. Ciomek goes to the trunk and emerges with a couple of granola bars and a plastic storage bag of items. “Care package,” she tells me, and inside of it I