Let It Burn Read Online Free PDF Page A

sometimes.”
    “You’ve been up there ever since you left the force?”
    “Took me about a year. Then I finally wandered up there.”
    “I know that must have been rough. And you do realize…”
    He hesitated, looking me in the eye.
    “I’ll just say it, Alex. You do realize that nobody blamed you for what happened to your partner.”
    I waited a few beats before answering.
    “I did. I blamed myself.”
    He shook his head. There wasn’t much else to say, and he was smart enough not to try.
    “So when’s the last time you got back down here?” he finally said.
    “It was a few years ago. I saw the new stadium, but I don’t remember if I drove by the old one.”
    “You would have remembered, believe me. If you saw Tiger Stadium half torn down … That was just the worst. Of course, now it’s just a field, and the old flagpole.”
    “I do remember going by the old precinct,” I said. “The building didn’t look much different, at least.”
    “You realize that the First and Thirteenth are combined now.”
    “Are you serious?”
    “Yep. The old rival precincts are now the Central District. They’ve got six districts now, instead of thirteen precincts.”
    “That’s amazing.”
    “The city’s lost half its people, Alex. I mean, literally half the people are gone now. The population is back at around what it was in 1900. A couple of those precincts, they became like outposts in the desert. No houses around them. Hardly any people. They’ve even got bears living in some of the old buildings now.”
    “Bears? Are you serious?”
    “That’s what I’ve heard. They’ve got companies that go around tearing down houses as fast as they can. Whole blocks, just disappearing. When you were down here before, did you drive though any of the neighborhoods?”
    “A little bit through Corktown, but not much else.”
    “What about the train station? Did you see that?”
    “From a distance. I never got too close.”
    “Well, you have to go see it, then. The whole city, Alex. Just take some time today and drive around. You have to go see what’s happened to our old Motown.”
    *   *   *
    So that’s what I did. After I thanked him for the beer and saw him back to his car, I got in my truck and started driving around. FBI Agent Janet Long was still at work, after all, and I had a few hours to kill before meeting her for dinner.
    You have to understand, Detroit is a huge city. Not in terms of population—not anymore, at least—but it’s 140 square miles in area. You could fit Boston and San Francisco inside the city borders, and still have room left over for Manhattan. I drove straight east, through Redford, where I lived as a young married cop, just across the border. Then a minute later I was in the city itself. This place I was sworn to serve and protect.
    It’s so easy to stay on the freeway and to zoom right through it all. As I crossed over the River Rouge I made myself get off and start driving down those residential streets. I had to see it for myself.
    I crossed through the northern reaches of the city, turning down one street after another. I saw the abandoned houses. I saw the garbage and the graffiti and the high weeds. I saw the charred remains of houses that had burned down. This is something Detroit had always been known for, of course. Devil’s Night, the night before Halloween, when people would come from literally all over the world to watch the city burn. Every fireman on the job would be out that night, and just about every cop, too. It always felt like a losing battle, but now …
    Now it was like the whole city just said, all together … Let it burn.
    An hour later, I was still driving. I finally had to stop for a while. I sat there in my truck and looked at an entire row of empty houses. They would be torn down eventually. The demolition companies just hadn’t gotten to them yet.
    Having worked my way through the west side, it was hard to imagine that the east side could be any