9. Elias
Chapter nine
Elias
Istood at the curb, across from the Colchester, under a sweetgum tree.
It was six a.m., and a car had been parked in that precise spot most of the night.
Someone sat unmoving behind the wheel while I watched for at least an hour.
I went down to check the service entrance, and by the time I returned to the condo, the car was gone.
The car had no plate, and I couldn't see the driver's face clearly. There was nothing specific to report when I called Michael.
"So you watched a parked car for an hour," Michael said, "and now you're calling me at four in the morning about it. The sun won't be up here for a long time."
"You were up anyway, Michael. I watched it for an hour," I said. "It didn't do anything. That's what I don't like."
"You know what tonight is," he said. "Game One of a Cup Final, five miles from that curb. Half the metro area would sit outside Mercer's building just to breathe the air. You've got people wearing his face on shirts."
"I know."
He was quiet for a second. I heard him start to type. "Logging it. I'll pull what the city's traffic cameras give me for that block, which is probably nothing. Anything else?"
"No," I said. "Nothing else."
I stayed on the curb after he hung up. Then I slowly walked the length of the block, reading parked cars, their plates, angles, and which had dew on the windshield.
Nothing looked wrong. Local residents' cars slept in their usual spots. Michael was right. The street agreed with him, but I still didn't like it.
I re-entered the building through the service entrance and rode the elevator back up to the condo.
Nolan was in the kitchen buttering toast. He had his tablet propped against a fruit bowl holding bananas. Hockey ran on the screen with the sound off. He didn't look up.
He was deep inside his own head, probably thinking about what would happen in twelve hours. It would happen inside a building I'd helped seal tight. Whatever the car outside was or wasn't, for the game he'd be untouchable.
The security plan was a good one. Doyle had sixty security professionals stationed at the arena. The local police force was cooperating, and the league had its own layer over that. For one night, Nolan Mercer would be playing hockey in the safest building in Missouri.
I stood at the window with the last of my coffee and looked down at the empty curb.
"Eat something," Nolan said without turning around. "It's a long day. You need fuel."
"There's a guy down there with a dog the size of a Zamboni. He walks past every morning at the same time. It's a little tiny man with an enormous shaggy animal, looking like the dog's walking him."
"Baxter," Nolan said.
"The dog's name or the man?"
"The dog. It's how the neighborhood works." He turned the tablet facedown. "It's a Newfoundland, one hundred and fifty pounds. The guy salts the sidewalk himself in winter so the dog doesn't tear a pad. I watched him do it in February in a bathrobe."
"And you never went down and introduced yourself."
"Why would I do that? He'd probably want an autograph."
***
They brought the house lights down at seven-forty-five.
I stood at the tunnel mouth with a sightline to the Steamers bench and most of the lower bowl. Doyle's people murmured through my earbuds.
"Post four, I've got a hard-count issue, upper bowl, sending it to box office."
"Copy four."
"Post three, double-scan at 118, two guys, same seats. Sorting it."
"Copy. Comp 'em into the standing room if the tickets are both clean. Walk 'em out if they're not."
The jumbotron showed the clip they ran before every home game. It was Vern Danaher in 1986, breaking toward the net in overtime with the puck on his stick. They'd shown it ten thousand times. Tonight, a hush fell over the crowd.
The goal went in. The crowd rose to its feet, roaring. After thirty seconds, the PA asked for silence, and Nolan came out of the tunnel with Eileen Danaher on his arm.
He walked her down the rubber matting to the glass, matching her pace. She rested her hand in the crook of his elbow. Every Steamers jersey wore Vern's number on the sleeve.
The jumbotron displayed Vern's face and the two dates.
The PA announcer spoke. "Thank you." That was all. Around the bowl the players rapped their sticks on the ice, a hockey version of applause, while Nolan walked Eileen back toward the tunnel.
The game itself was a war of attrition dressed as hockey.
Boston played like their tape. They were heavy on the puck. Every time they lost possession, all five of them turned and hunted it down. Their defensemen jumped into the rush, exactly the way Nolan had called it two nights ago from the floor of his living room, a lacrosse ball under his hip.
They came in waves. The Steamers gave Boston the outside and slammed the door on the middle. Misha was a half-second ahead of the puck all night.
"Ward," Doyle was in my ear midway through the second period. "Northeast service corridor, door's propped. Fire watch says it's the caterers."
I moved to where I could see the corridor's mouth. A kid in catering whites wedged the door with a folding chair and hauled sheet pans. One of Doyle's men reached him while I watched. He took the wedge away and stood over the kid while he badged each trip.
The Steamers scored a goal at 8:27 in the third period.
Boston's defensemen gambled one time too many. The puck squirted loose behind them, and Jamie Loughlin was already gone. He'd been reading it for two periods, drifting a step toward open ice every time they committed.
There was nobody within thirty feet of him. He caught a pass at full speed, alone, twenty-two years old with a Cup Final on his stick. He didn't try anything cute, nailing the top corner before the goalie could set his feet.
The riverboat whistle blew, and the building erupted. The sound vibrated up through the concrete and into my boots.
On the bench, Nolan was the first one standing, banging the boards with both gloves. When Jamie came around on the flyby, Nolan leaned so far over the wall to reach him that the trainer grabbed the back of his jersey.
The minutes after the goal crawled. Boston pulled their goalie with 2:10 left, and the Steamers' coach sent Nolan over the boards for almost all of it.
He won a wall battle, pinning the puck for the better part of a shift with his back taking crosschecks.
Then he blocked a point shot with the good leg and lost the faceoff that gave Boston one last possession.
Misha stopped the last shot with his chest and held on. Game over.
Final score one–nothing. Steamers led the series one game to none.
The team spilled over the boards to bury Misha. Nolan was the last one into the pile, gloves in the air, grinning like a kid.
***
It was past one when I keyed us in through the service entrance, and Nolan was still lit up like the third period hadn't ended.
He'd done his media, all of it, last veteran out of the room like always, and then he'd ridden home with the window cracked so the sound of downtown could reach him. Crowds celebrated outside the bars, and tug whistles blew on the river.
In the service elevator, he leaned his shoulders against the wall and closed his eyes.
"One," he said.
At his door, I went in first, the way I had every night for a week and a half. The condo looked like it did every night. The furniture was clean and the windows locked. On the table by the recliner, the lamp glowed on low, the way we'd left it.
Behind me, Nolan hung his keys on the hook by the door and headed for the kitchen. I heard the refrigerator open. "Did you know Jamie saves his tape? He tears a piece off after every game and puts it in a scrapbook. I saw him carrying a piece in a Ziploc and asked about it."
"He had a hell of a night," I said.
"Hell of a night. Wait'll he figures out he's good."
The guest room and bathroom were clean. I entered Nolan's bedroom, and the night changed.
The heating pad was running. He hadn't left it on. Nolan turned it off every morning, managing the fire risk I'd needled him about on day two.
"Nolan."
Something in how I said his name brought him down the hall fast, phone still in his hand. He stopped in the doorway beside me, saw the light on the pad, and froze.
"I didn't leave that on," he said.
"I know."
He didn't move towards it. He stood next to me and scanned the room.
"It's squared," he said. "To the edge." His voice was flat. "I don't square it. It sits wherever it lands when I pull it up in the morning. Somebody squared it."
"Yeah."
He entered the room slowly, stopping at the dresser and looking down.
"The ball's on the wrong side." He crouched and pointed without touching it. "It lives here on the left side of the bed, so I can get it off the floor without standing up, because standing up is the part that—" He stopped. "It's on the right. Somebody put it back on the right."
"Don't touch it."
He stood and walked to the bathroom. I watched from the doorway while he opened the medicine cabinet.
"These are wrong too," he said. "They're in a row.
Labels out." He shook his head. "That's not my order.
Mine's the order I take them in, dawn to night.
You'd have to know the— " He turned and looked at me.
"Somebody took every one of these down. Read them.
Put them back the way a normal person would think they go. "
"And got it wrong," I said, "because your order isn't on the labels."
He looked at me, and then back at the shelf.
"Nothing's gone," he said.
"That's right. I checked the living room twice."
A stranger had entered Nolan's condo. No forced entry meant keys or competence, or both. The cleaning service had keys. The building had staff who could access the space.
Somebody had used the one guaranteed empty window, the night the North American sports world focused on an arena five miles east.
"Somebody was here while I was standing on the blue line holding an old woman's arm," he said.
"Yes."
He turned back down the hall to the bathroom. For a moment he only looked at the cabinet, the neat row, labels out. It was a stranger's idea of order.
"This is the part nobody sees," he said. "The whole point of it is that nobody sees."
Then he swept the shelf. A dozen bottles hit the sink and the floor, clattering into corners.
He was breathing hard.
I didn't move toward him and tell him it would be all right or that we'd find them. The locks would be changed by tomorrow, but that wasn't what he needed in the moment. I stayed where I was, silently witnessing.
"You were supposed to be watching," he said. "That's your only job. You watch."
"I was watching you," I said. "Everything I had was pointed at the arena. So was everything Doyle had. Whoever did this counted on that being the case. They were right, and this won't happen again."
He looked at me for a long moment. The anger didn't leave; it simmered. He crouched again and started pulling pill bottles out of the sink. I knelt on the floor beside him and gathered those that had rolled into corners.
Nolan's bedroom door closed a little after two. He didn't slam it; it closed with a quiet click.
I took my phone to the living room window and woke Michael.
He answered on the second ring, like he'd been sitting with the phone in his hand. I described everything.
"Nobody touches anything else," he said. "Photograph it all at first light, before the locks change. I want the pad's position, the cabinet, everything, exactly as you found it. And Elias." A beat. "The car from last night just got promoted."
"I know."
"I'll have better questions for the traffic cameras. Hold for Mac."
Mac skipped the hello.
"How is he?"
"Contained," I said. "He'll play Game Two on no sleep."
"What did they take?"
"Nothing."
"Nothing at all?"
"Nothing, full stop. There was a watch on the dresser worth thirty thousand dollars, and they moved past it to handle his supplements.
" I looked down at the street while listening to Mac.
The spot under the sweetgum was empty. "It wasn't a theft or a search.
They were taking inventory. Somebody wanted to know all the pills he takes. "
"The league hired us to look into a dead equipment manager," Mac said, "and now somebody with keys and patience is auditing our principal's medications. Are those unrelated?"
"I don't think they are."
"No," Mac said. "I don't either. Get some sleep, Elias. You did right telling us tonight."
The line went dead, and I stood at the dark window with the phone warm in my hand.
Below, the street lay empty. Last night a car sat under that tree with a person behind the wheel. Michael had offered me the reasonable read, and I'd accepted it. Half the metro area was in love with Nolan and would sit outside his building just to be near him.
I'd come to St. Louis with a second agenda apart from guarding a hockey player. It was one Nolan didn't know.
A rookie died thirteen years ago, and an equipment manager died two weeks ago, trying to reach Nolan. The Cup Final distracted me. Now it was back. The pills were the tell.
It wasn't about hockey at all.