DEAD OR ALIVE a totally addictive thriller with a breathtaking twist

by T. J. Brearton

  “Would you have a full name for Guttridge?”

  “Gimme a sec.”

  Tom waited until Pembry came back on the line. “Francis. Francis R. Guttridge.”

  The hairs stiffened on the back of Tom’s neck. “And the two other guys, Trafford, Goins, they weren’t dealing? They were buying.”

  “Believe so, yes.”

  “What happened to Guttridge? He still around?”

  “Well, Polk County worked on it with us. Once we completed our investigation — it’s in the Army’s interest to try and keep these things internal. But that only extends so far. Guttridge got eighteen months, served eleven.”

  “Was he on probation after that?”

  “Home monitoring, yeah.”

  “Where was the home monitoring?”

  “Right here in Lakeland.”

  “You got that address?”

  “He doesn’t live there anymore. Not for a couple years.”

  “You know where he went?”

  “Not for sure, no. Lakeland is in Polk County but right on the western edge of the line. It’s the Tampa Bay area, so he slipped away.”

  “How about a vehicle?”

  “Uh, I’ll have to check on that. You got a number where I can have someone reach you?”

  Tom relayed his number. “Last question . . . you get any kind of . . . well, you ever deal with anyone named Vasquez?”

  “That would be a question for County, or maybe the narcotics squad over in Tampa.”

  “Thank you, sir. You’ve been a big help.”

  * * *

  He stood over the empty unmade bed and loaded his gun into the holster behind his back. In jeans and white t-shirt, his badge clipped to his belt, he thought about Vance. Then he left the room, took the truck from the garage and headed out.

  The preacher on the radio quoted from Proverbs: “Do not withhold good from those to whom it is due, when it is in your power to act.”

  That was the thing with scripture. Maybe it was no different than horoscopes — just broad enough to see yourself in it, see some divine wisdom guiding your life. Or maybe it was like targeted marketing. A kind of cosmically guided target marketing. Tom was still of two minds about a lot of things. But maybe that’s where reality settled in, right in between.

  The Veterans Affairs police had called him back with information on Guttridge: the make and model of the vehicle he’d owned at the time of his arrest, a Toyota Highlander. The vehicle had not been impounded. Tom started calling wrecking companies, salvage yards — places where vehicles went to die, get resold for parts and scrap metal. There were at least a hundred of them in the area. He started close to Everglades City and worked his way north up the Gulf Coast. The first sixteen hadn’t scrapped or salvaged any Highlanders that week. The seventeenth one had.

  Aardvark Wrecking Company covered three acres, a mountainous landscape of flattened cars and trucks. A kid of about twenty came over with grease smeared on one cheek, wearing dirty denim coveralls, his black hair sticking up to the side. He looked at the wound on Tom’s face, then his eyes dropped to Tom’s badge.

  “Help you, officer?”

  “Hey, I called.”

  “Oh, right. Yeah.”

  “I need to see your past weeks’ intake.”

  The kid sniffed and looked around. “Come with me.”

  They entered a pillbox office that was glass on all sides and held the stale reek of cigarettes. Aside from a countertop desk with an ancient-looking computer sitting on it, the room contained three metal filing cabinets. The kid pulled out the top right drawer and finger-walked until he pulled out a manila file. He licked a dirty thumb, opened the file and handed it to Tom.

  “That’s it?” Tom counted three sheets of paper.

  The kid shrugged. “Yeah, that’s it.”

  “Meaning that’s all that’s on the books. A retired tour bus, a totaled taxicab and a limo. I mean, for private vehicles. Your secretary said on the phone that an ’04 Highlander came through here.”

  The kid’s eyes stared into space, then back at Tom. “Someone was already here asking about that.”

  “Yeah? From the police?”

  The kid shook his head. “Don’t think so. Unless he was undercover or something.”

  “Name?”

  “I don’t know.” The kid dropped his hands to his waist and made a circle shape with his hands in front of his pelvis. “He had a big old belt buckle.”

  “Big belt buckle? Pewter?”

  “Gold, I think. Had a big, angry bull on it.”

  “Dressed like he was about to go square-dancing?”

  The kid nodded.

  “Did you give this person what I’m asking you for?”

  “Sir, I don’t . . . no, sir. It’s not a . . . I don’t have such information, sir.”

  Tom closed the file and fixed the kid with his best friendly face. “How about this. What’s your shift?”

  “Eight to five, six days a week.”

  “You’ll be my file, then. Have you seen a Highlander come through here?” He formed his own circle shape with his hands. “Maybe with a nice 9mm bullet hole in it?”

  The kid blinked, shifted his jaw, looking nervous. “Uh, officer — we only deal with EOL vehicles here.”

  It made him think of Vance. “End-of-life, yeah, I know.”

  “And those VIN numbers get taken out of the DMV system,” the kid said. “So we don’t—”

  “Well, then you de-pollute the vehicle, right?”

  “Yeah, I mean—”

  “You take out the mercury switches and antifreeze, you sell the useful parts back to your customers.”

  “Yeah.”

  “I used to live near a place like this. We raided it as kids and caught hell for it. Whatever you don’t sell you keep for yourself — aluminum wheels, copper wiring, palladium, platinum — all sorts of goodies.” Tom held out his hands and seesawed them to represent scales. “Every component represents a positive value in material or a negative in disposal cost. Yeah? You guys — you calculate down to the half-cent. The half-cent. Per ton or per gallon. It’s all on a ledger that fluctuates daily with global spot commodity prices.”

  “Well, yeah, we . . . okay.” The kid looked like he just realized how hungover he was.

  “It’s a punctilious salvaging of every morsel of recyclable material, including the license plate. So don’t tell me you don’t have the information. I know you do. Call the owner, whatever you have to do, but I’m going to see your ledger one way or the other. Know what I’m saying?”

  * * *

  Tom sat on a stack of old tires with the sun beating down on his back, looking through a printout the old computer had managed to belch out. In the distance, the crusher was turning a black BMW into a metal pancake and about a hundred yards away the shredder jettisoned bits and pieces of another dead ride. The air smelled like rubber and dust and burning brakes.

  A truck came up the road, winding through the piles of crushed cars as Tom got up. The truck stopped and the dust hovered and a man got out, hitched up his pants, snorted and walked over.

  Tom smiled. “You must be Mr. Aardvark . . .”

  The man didn’t find the humor in it. “That’s just to bump us up to the top of the phone book.”

  Nobody was any fun. “Yeah, I know. I’m Tom Lange with the state police. Domestic Security.” He stuck out his hand.

  The owner looked at it. “Trevor told me. So — what are you doing? I deal with police all the time. You can ask anyone — we have a good relationship, I’m always happy to help.”

  They had to raise their voices above the roar of machinery, crumpling metal, and breaking glass.

  Tom dropped his hand. “I didn’t get your name.”

  He snorted again. “Deakins.”

  “Well, Mr. Deakins, I got your ledger here from the past weeks’ intake.” He lifted the printout, a ream of paper connected by perforated ends. “One of these vehicles is a Toyota Highla
nder and you kept three of its doors. I need to see the license plate on that one.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN: CLOSING IN

  The excitement was a welcome distraction from his loneliness and the terrible news about Vance. And it was substantive: the DMV had come back with the plate number linking to a Francis R. Guttridge.

  Deakins had made no mention of a bullet hole in the vehicle, but Tom had seen the recognition in his eyes. The coincidence of these two things — the salvage yard vehicle and the veteran’s clinic drug bust — was enough for Tom to bother Skokie.

  “And your friend, this Jack Vance, he found this how?”

  “I asked him. I know Blythe has been looking at any military leads, but I figured more eyes on it couldn’t hurt. When we got the name Frank, you know . . . how many veterans are there named Frank in Florida?”

  “368.”

  “There you go.”

  “This one’s name is Francis Guttridge?”

  “Yeah. You get Frank from Francis. We need to get a picture of him to the girl. She positively identifies him and we can put it out — we’ll know exactly who we’re looking for.”

  “Give me a half an hour.”

  The waiting was agony. In the meantime, he called Katie.

  “Hey.”

  “How’s Jack?” she asked. “I’m still waiting to catch a break and go over to see—”

  “He’s got cancer. Gall bladder. But it’s spread around.”

  Katie didn’t speak for a moment as she managed the shock. “Oh my God, Tom.”

  “Yeah.”

  “What are you going to — oh, I need to get over there and see him — let me see if I can just — is his family coming? Doesn’t he have a daughter?”

  “Yeah. I didn’t know that.”

  “He mentioned her once to me. You were — I don’t know what you were doing. There are lots of things Jack doesn’t talk about though.”

  “She’s flying in, I guess. Today. Tomorrow. But, Katie, I might need to leave for a little bit. I got a lead on who the girl’s kidnapper is.”

  “Oh my God, Tom, this is just . . . yeah. Okay. I’m going to talk to my supervisor and get out of here. When will you be back?”

  “I don’t know. Soon, I hope. Just waiting on the girl to look at a picture. Certain people have to be present and all that.”

  “Okay.”

  He hesitated. “I still talk to you now you’re not here.”

  “What?”

  “Yeah. And, um . . . I know that . . .” He couldn’t put it into words. I’m always running off. Can’t stay put. Afraid to be still. But it would come out wrong. And anyway, he wasn’t sure it was the only problem. I know you’re not my mother and I can’t expect you to take care of me. Of course, she took care of him, in a sense. Not as a nursemaid, but as a friend and lover and confidante. It was more that he wouldn’t let her. He was afraid to lower his guard. Afraid of being soft. For the same reason he felt better angry, taking a beating, whatever. His brain was scrambled. The therapist called it trauma. The therapist said there was no cure for trauma either.

  “Tommy? You still—”

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’ll talk to you as soon as I can.”

  * * *

  Skokie called back.

  “The girl failed to make a positive ID.”

  Ah, shit. “What? How did you do it?”

  “How did we . . . We did it the only way there is to do it and build a healthy case. She was shown several line-ups of photos. Each set included one of Guttridge.”

  “And she never made an ID? Did you have anything of his hand?”

  “No, nothing with a hand in it. Listen, she positively identified Guttridge, but only once out of the five sets. And that was his official army photo. It’s not enough.”

  “It was late. In the middle of a storm. She’s in crisis.” He thought about the type of relationship, brief as it was, that would have formed between Lemon Madras and Frank, her kidnapper — at least in Lemon’s mind. Maybe she saw Frank as someone who had saved her from the bad guy. In her eyes, that would make him heroic.

  Skokie was still talking. “. . . what happens when you have a child witness. At one pointed she selected another man in the photo line-up. But then she retracted.”

  “Okay, but she did positively identify Guttridge once. In his army photo.”

  “Yeah, smiling and over a decade younger. One out of five doesn’t fly, not from a prosecutorial standpoint. You know that. And, Lange, she wasn’t able to identify Lupton either. We got her with a sketch artist and she described a man in a mask. Blue eyes. Lupton’s are brown. We’re going to have another look at Angus Hale.”

  “Skokie, I—”

  “As far as Guttridge is concerned, the last known address for him is in Polk County, but that’s an apartment and it was rented out to someone else a year ago. After his probation ended, he split. We don’t have anything current on him, nothing from any VA clinics. He’s got a DD-214 . . . he’s fully out of the Army, not getting any money.”

  “Wait — are you putting the picture out?”

  “We’re putting the picture out, giving it to the FBI. They’ve developed their own suspects, as you know, and they’re not likely to give this one much attention.”

  “I think we should give it our attention. I think it’s a mistake not to.”

  “Take it up with Blythe. I’ve delegated this to her. She’ll decide whether to have Polk County do a check on the house in Lakeland or handle it herself if she wants to. Guttridge’s ex-wife lives there. If Blythe wants you, she’ll take you.”

  * * *

  He called Blythe, who said she was going to visit the ex herself. She accepted his request to accompany her and he got the feeling she had an ulterior motive for that.

  They drove in silence for nearly thirty minutes.

  “Tom—”

  “I know.”

  “I mean—”

  “A friend showed me the article.”

  “Vance. Who found the body of Brian Hollister. Skokie asked you to put some distance between yourself and Mr. Vance.”

  “He’s in the hospital. He’s got cancer and he’s dying.”

  That stopped her. “I didn’t know. I’m sorry. But that still doesn’t—”

  “And, anyway, Skokie . . . I gave him a plate number for the GMC Yukon. He goes and stumbles around the possibility of a black-market registration. He fumbled it, gave me some fake registrant named Janice Hawkes.”

  “What Yukon?”

  “Some guy following me. I’ve seen him three times now. Same guy I’ve been checking to make sure isn’t following us now because I think he works for Valentina Vasquez. I searched relatives and KAs but couldn’t match the face.”

  “Go easy on Skokie. He’s staked a lot on you.”

  Tom felt a little wounded. “And here I was thinking it was you in my corner.”

  “Tom, look at you. In your jeans and t-shirt. Face still bruised and cut. You’re a smoke jumper in Colorado, not a suit-and-tie officer for the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.”

  The remarks stung, but her viewpoint was unsurprising. He’d been thinking along the same lines himself.

  “We’re all real people here,” Blythe said, “trying to do a job. We don’t always get it right. Skokie sees what appears to be a valid registration — he’s got a lot of balls in the air.”

  “You trying to get rid of me?”

  “I’m not trying to get rid of anyone.” She used her ring finger to smooth an eyebrow. “You’re a good cop. We brought you in because . . . Put it this way, I told Ed Skokie we could set you like a cruise missile. So, yeah, I’m in your corner. But I warned him that there was a potential downside.”

  “My head is swelling.”

  “Your job was to gather information on the Balfour death threat, and report back with any information on the missing girl. You gave us Wilbur Beck and the way into looking at those properties and we found the girl. But now we need to th
ink about what’s next and I’m saying maybe coming back to IFS isn’t the best place for you. Too many stress fractures, Lange — you leave a trail of people who have to explain your actions in order for them to stick.”

  “Skokie feel the same way?”

  “Skokie likes you. I wouldn’t be surprised if he asks you about working in Domestic Security full time.”

  “And so we’re riding up to Lakeland, you’re out of the office, putting everything aside to take this bad lead with me, so we can . . . so you can break up with me.”

  “A little, maybe.”

  He gave her a sidelong look as she sat in the driver’s seat as imperious and indifferent as ever. Nothing got to Blythe. Maybe Coburn’s death, a little, but even then, she never cried. He wondered what she would think about Monique Johnson’s theory on the body collecting pain through the years.

  Blythe said, “We all come to a point where we have to take a serious look at who or what we really are, and what we’re hiding from.”

  “Are you talking about me or you?”

  “Watch that. The thing that’s different about you . . . Well, not all of us but a lot of us, we were military first. I have a sensitivity here. I don’t want to go off accusing a veteran of kidnapping until we have everything in our pocket. Right now, we don’t.”

  They were quiet for a while. He thought of what they knew about their suspect. Guttridge had served as a sergeant in the US Army and was a recipient of the Distinguished Service Medal. He’d been a part of several units in Iraq, most of them hunting IEDs, from 2003 up until 2007. Guttridge had been a spotter. Beyond that, the details were nebulous, as the Army kept their records confidential for reasons of national security.

  He felt himself calming. Staying in the moment. “What was it like for you in the service?”

  She cut him a look. “I enlisted in ’88 and two years later was the Gulf War. You’re what — a millennial? So you were a toddler then. That doesn’t mean much to you — I’m not meaning anything bad by that. Just that you grew up after that point. You grew up with cynicism.”

  “I can go with that.” He had a sudden hankering for a cigarette and realized it had been a couple of days since he’d smoked. “You got any gum?”

  “In the glove box, I think. You have to understand the idealism that still undergirds — well, you know, we’re over there in Kuwait for two years. We thought we were making a difference. Now, you know, you hear it everywhere . . . the whole thing is about oil production. Oil pricing. Whether it’s Kuwait or Iraq, Syria or Yemen. These are proxy wars. It’s tough to hear talk like that. Cynicism. I’m not saying there’s no truth to it. But you have to understand the culture.”