Free The Detroit Electric Scheme by D. E. Johnson

hand, pulling the front away to free it.
    A few years ago, Elwood’s battery department moved from here to the Detroit Electric garage on Woodward, but the equipment stayed—the charging board with its red and black cables dangling down like the legs of an insect, the lifts and tables, a small casting furnace, a welding machine, and four coffin-sized lead-lined tanks set up on sturdy iron feet. The engineers didn’t want to have to run down to the garage every time they needed to recharge or test a battery, and had successfully lobbied to keep the equipment here.
    The room took up valuable space and was nothing but a hazard for us. The engineers never used the welder or furnace, but kept the tanks filled, which was why one of my responsibilities was to ensure every morning that the chains locking down their sliding metal covers were in place. It was a little silly, given that the keys to the padlocks hung on a nail by the door. Still, more than once I had found an open tank, which was hazardous in the extreme, especially the acid tank. The sulfuric acid used to make the electrolyte for the batteries was one of the most caustic chemicals known. Small quantities could burn through skin or blind a man.
    I looked through the windows, which ran the length of the wall on either side of the pair of wide doors. The tanks looked secure, but I went in anyway and pulled on the chains before heading back toward the office. When I walked past the roof press I tried not to think about John, though I couldn’t help but look for traces of blood. The sharp odor of bleach overpowered the normal smells of metal and grease, but other than that there was no evidence of a man being killed on this machine only two nights ago.
    I couldn’t get out of there fast enough. I returned to my desk and began the tedious process of completing the daily paperwork—filling out dozens of parts requests for the foundry, ordering raw materials, calculating the department’s payroll, approving dozens more parts requests from other departments, and filling out the appropriate work orders. I caught myself in mistake after mistake. God knows how manyI missed. I’d have to read a form six or seven times for it to even register, while my mind jumped to John’s body, Riordan, the killer, the blackmailer, Elizabeth.
    I would go see her after work, force my way in if necessary. She
would
listen to me.
    It didn’t seem possible the killer could be anyone I knew, but I worked the idea just the same. I still had no theories other than the American Federation of Labor. The problem was, I’d never heard of an AFL union going to this kind of extreme. Not that they were opposed to violence, but usually it was the bosses, or in our case, the Employers Association, who upped the ante like this. I had to consider other possibilities.
    As far as I knew, no one hated John, nor was I aware of anything he had done that would make someone angry enough to kill him. But he was no angel. John wasn’t always the kindest person. People his size often don’t learn to couch their comments in ways that would make them more palatable, simply because they don’t have to. John didn’t seem to notice when something he said cut a person deeply, but it was invariably someone he thought to be stupid and bothersome.
    Until a year ago, it had never been me.
    Revenge seemed a possibility. In 1906, police had questioned him about the death of a University of Chicago player in a football game. Maybe someone in that boy’s family had it out for John. It seemed a remote chance. Not only would his family have no reason to frame me, the death happened four years ago, was ruled accidental, and was certainly nothing out of the ordinary—dozens of boys were killed that year in football games. John had anchored Michigan’s flying wedge and was responsible for multiple broken bones, punctured lungs, concussions, and untold numbers of bruises and