by K. J. Emrick
This time, it’s Barlow Michaelson out there, bags under his dull eyes and unshaven scruff along his chin. I’m betting he hasn’t gone a day without shaving since puberty. Guess I’m not the only one getting an early start to today.
“Hold on,” I tell him, undoing the lock and the deadbolt before opening the door for him. “Hi, Mister Michaelson.”
“Hello.” He’s dressed in another set of khakis and a dress shirt. Same style as yesterday, just a different color shirt. The man’s wardrobe must be full of dull. “Um. Is this a bad time? I thought I heard you talking to someone.”
“Er, no. Nope. Just me in here. Yup. Just me. Must have been the TV, or something.” I clear my throat to stop me from babbling. “Why don’t you come in? I’ve got some things to discuss with you about your girlfriend’s case.”
“You’ve made progress already?” he asks, obviously impressed. “Wow. I guess your Facebook page reviews don’t lie. I’ve got Katarina’s phone for you to look through as well. It’s unlocked, I made sure that she gave me her pass code and I… um. Nice rug.”
He’s staring at Harry’s carpet in the kitchen, still sprawling out against everything in the small space. “Thank you. Yeah, it is a nice one. Actually, that’s what was in the box you were carrying yesterday.”
“Oh? Did you order it off E-bay, or something? It looks really old.”
“It is.” Wanting to steer the conversation away from why I suddenly own an oriental carpet that’s thousands of years old, I take his elbow and steer us both towards the living room couch. “Barlow, are you certain that Katarina’s only friend was this Carol woman?”
“Hmm? Oh, yes. Most definitely.” Before taking a seat on my couch he pulls a purple cellphone from his back pocket and hands it over to me. “You can see for yourself. That was the phone I bought for her. Like I said, she left it in the apartment with all of her other things.”
I had to admit that was suspicious, but probably not in the way he was thinking. When people go out in the city, they bring things with them. Their purse. Their wallet. Definitely their phone. The fact that Katarina left all of that behind tells me one of two things. Either she was leaving Barlow here for good and didn’t want anything to remind her of their time together, or… she hadn’t planned on going out at all, and someone forced her to go to the bank and take out that money. Like the woman standing next to her in the video.
Let’s hope it’s option number one, because that would at least mean she wasn’t in danger. If someone forced her out of the apartment and then made her zero out Barlow’s accounts…
Yeah. That’s not good.
“I’ll look at it later,” I promise him, placing the phone carefully on the coffee table. I take a seat next to him on the couch, and then I dive right in. Clients don’t like to be handled with kid gloves. Especially when a loved one is missing. “Barlow, let me show you something.”
My own cellphone was in my leather satchel, still here on the arm of the couch where I’d left it yesterday. Bringing up the recording of the bank video, I scroll through it until I get to the best image of the woman who had been with Katarina that day. “Do you know who this is?”
He looks at the image, tipping his head back, squinting, until finally he shakes his head. “I mean, that’s Katarina, but who the woman is with her I can’t say. You can’t even see her face. Or her hair color. Who is she?”
“I don’t know, either, but I’m trying to find out. This was taken the day that Katarina took all the cash out of your accounts. That woman was helping her do it.”
Now he actually takes the phone out of my hands and holds it right up to the tip of his nose, using his two fingers to enlarge the image, and shrink it again, and then enlarge it once more.
Finally he gives up, just like I had. “I can’t tell who this is. Do you think she kidnapped Katarina?”
“Again, I don’t know, but she’s obviously linked to the events. When I find out more, I’ll tell you. At this point we haven’t involved the police. If we do, they’ll take one look at this video and assume she took you for your money and clear the case off their desks.” I mean, Christian might not be like that, but since he’s already threatened me with jail for getting this video, I think I’ll leave him out of it. For now. “Let me look into a few things. There’s been some… interesting developments that might help me.”
Across the apartment, I saw the tassels on Harry’s rug flutter. He knows I’m talking about him.
“All right,” Barlow says reluctantly. “If you’re sure. Oh. Um. Here.”
From the side pocket of his khakis he takes out a folded slip of paper and hands it over to me. It’s a check, which I knew it was before he even took it out of his pocket, but even with my future-sense working properly I wasn’t prepared for the number written there. That many zeros will cover my daily fee for the whole week. Maybe even my expenses.
“Thank you,” I tell him. That seems a little inadequate considering the size of the check but doing the happy dance in front of him would just be too embarrassing. I don’t require my clients to pay me anything except my daily fee until their case is resolved but I know from experience that you don’t argue when clients hand you money in advance. It just causes hurt egos and hard feelings. Whatever I haven’t earned out of this when I’m done, I’ll pay him back.
“Well,” I say after tucking the check in my back pocket. “I think that’s everything for now. If anything else comes up I’ll contact you.”
“Is that coffee?” he asks as we stand up together. “I sure would love a cup if you have one.”
“Er, sorry, I’m fresh out. That was my last cup.” It’s not exactly a lie, but I’m not about to explain that a genie made me fresh brew this morning.
“Oh. Well, that’s all right.” The disappointment is obvious in his voice. “I tell you what. When you find Katarina she and I will take you out for the biggest cup of coffee you’ve ever had. How’s that sound?”
“That sounds great,” I tell him. Although, honestly, after drinking what Harry had made me this morning all other coffee might just have been ruined for me.
He thanks me again, and actually shakes my hand before leaving. I find that old-fashioned sort of etiquette kind of charming. Politeness is actually becoming extinct in our society. Like keeping your voice down in a library, or letting someone go ahead of you in line. Whatever happened to common courtesy—
Turning around I nearly jumped out of my skin. Harry is sitting there at the table again, my coffee cup in his hands, staring down into the bottom.
“What are you doing!” I snap at him. “You’re supposed to be hiding! I mean, he’s gone, but you’ve got to be more careful, Harry.”
“Sidney Stone,” he says, clucking his tongue. “This is not good.”
“You’re telling me. If Barlow had seen you, do you have any idea how hard you would be to explain? What am I supposed to do, tell him you’re my cousin from out of town and you’re starting a nineties revival band or something?”
“Hmm? Oh. No, not that. I made sure to stay hidden until you closed the door. I mean this.” Turning the empty coffee cup around, he shows me the inside, where the little specks of coffee grinds have stuck to the bottom in an interesting pattern. “This is not good.”
He’s reading my coffee residue fortune, like he talked about before. Of course, he is. “So what does it say, Swami? Am I going to meet a tall, dark stranger with copper wrist cuffs and baggy trousers? Because if that’s what it says it’s a day late.”
If he gets my reference to his attire, he doesn’t say anything about it. His stony face is all serious frown lines. “No. It does not say anything about that.”
“All right, I’ll bite. What does it say?”
His gaze locks with my own. “Sidney Stone, this says you will die.”
Chapter Five
Looking through Katarina’s cellphone later as I sit in my car, I hear that fortune of Harry’s over and over in my mind. You will die.
Just what a girl wants to hear to start her day.
It was hard to concentrate on Katarina’s phone after that, but I made myself do it because I have a job to get done. Unfortunately, there really wasn’t anything of interest on it. I spent some time on it at the apartment, and now I’ve been going through it again, and what I’ve found out so far is that Katarina might just be the only person on the planet who uses their cellphone less than I do.
Yes, there were text messages between her and someone named Carol, but they were all innocent friend stuff, as far as I could see. Talk about the weather being stormy or clear, quick how-are-you-doing messages and even quicker responses like “Tired, going to bed,” or “I’m fine.” No personal information. No phone numbers. Carol didn’t even have a picture of herself attached to her account, just the letter C in a red circle.
This was actually boring.
Later today, when I get back to my apartment, I’d write it all down in a notebook, and maybe looking at it that way would let something pop out at me. Sometimes if you take plain information and write it out you can start to make connections. I’ve got notebooks full of charts and words, big arrows pointing between circles of red like a giant connect the dots game. Believe it or not this method has actually helped me crack cases before. Even when the information looks boring at first.
My fortune wasn’t boring, that’s for sure. I just didn’t know what to make of it. It wasn’t very specific, for one. No details, just ‘you will die.’ Shouldn’t there be some details like where, when how? I mean, seriously. What good is a fortune like that? Plus, it came from coffee grinds… so.
I mean, we’re all going to die someday, right? I could look at anyone on the street and say they’re going to die, and I’ll be right. In a world where death is the great equalizer, I know I’m going to meet my demise someday.
I’ve just never had my coffee grinds tell me so.
“Don’t be stupid,” I say to my reflection in Roxy’s rearview mirror. “It was just coffee. Really, really good coffee, but that’s all it was. Coffee.”
Still, sitting here in the parking lot of the St. Sigma Medical Center on Miller Street, I take a few extra minutes to make sure I’ve got everything, including my .38 pistol. It’s all there, neatly packed away in my satchel. Not that I’m expecting a lot of trouble from Louise Timmins, middle-aged nurse who was probably first runner up in the sweetest grandmother category. She sure looked like someone’s grandmother, but I’ve learned that looks can be deceiving. Once upon a time, there was a sweet little teenage girl who tried to put a knife in my back because I didn’t expect her to give me trouble.
That’s the sort of mistake you try not to make twice.
So then, I had to ask myself, what did I make of the muscular, dark-skinned guy in my kitchen who looked like he just stepped straight out of the Arabian Nights? It was kind of bizarre, I guess, but it could be a real opportunity for me. He’d already proven that he was only trying to help, even if he did waste an entire wish on a decent night’s rest. If I was going to wish for that I’d wish for a peaceful night’s rest every night of my life, not just once. Am I right?
Although, with my luck I’d probably end up dropping unconscious every night whether I wanted to or not, if I wished for that. Isn’t that how it works? You make a seemingly innocent wish and then something ridiculous happens to you? Like you wish you could jump really far, and you end up being turned into a frog?
Maybe I’m overanalyzing things. After all, my knowledge of genies comes from television shows I’ve watched. That, and Disney movies. Having a genie at my beck and call is kind of new territory to me. Although I really did enjoy that coffee.
The medical center opened up an hour ago, and I’ve been sitting here waiting all that time. I figure there’s always a morning rush for these places right when they first open, and then they quiet down around midmorning. I wanted as few people to be in there as possible before I went in myself. Getting close to ten o’clock now. I’d say that’s a good time for me to go in and have a chat with Louise Timmins. I mean, I could wait until the end of the day and follow her home, and try to talk to her there, but some people find that creepy. I’ll take my chances talking to her here, where she works.
Hopefully they have time to squeeze in an appointment with Laura Berkenstein.
It’s always the same alias for me whenever I’m working a job. Some days, my alias wears black pencil skirts like yesterday at the bank, and some days she wears jeans and a plain blouse, like now. Whatever sort of image I’m trying to present, it’s easier for me to remember just the one name rather than trying to remember which one I may have given to who at what location. That can get really confusing.
Laura Berkenstein—the real Laura Berkenstein—went to the same high school as me, in the same grade. She was the popular girl, and I was the nerdy brain getting good grades and already planning my future, so you can just imagine that me and Laura were something less than friends. She superglued my locker shut once. This other time my change of clothes ended up in the garbage during gym class. There were other things, too, and she would be sure to give me a smirk just to let me know she was behind them, while flipping her hair and pretending not to know who I was.
I don’t go in for all that psychological nonsense about how bullies just need some love themselves to become good kids. That whole idea that if you spend a day at camp together, locked in the same room, the two of you come out best friends is just garbage. Do some kids need love to turn them around? Absolutely. At the same time, most bullies are just entitled little brats who need to be told no once in a while.
That may be another part of why I joined the Marines. There are bullies everywhere in the world, and someone needs to tell them no.
Laura had all the love anyone could ever need as a child, from her parents and her friends both. She was just a rotten kid. Which is probably how five boxes of moldy tomatoes ended up smashed all over the interior of the new car her daddy bought her while she was at cheerleader practice. It seems somebody took the tomatoes from the dumpster of the local supermarket and left them hidden behind the bushes at school out in the hot sun all morning, and then jimmied her car door open with a homemade wedge and a metal coat hanger.
Not that I would know anything about that.
Smirk. Hair flip.
Anyway, now I always use her name when I’m doing undercover work. If anyone ever makes a complaint against Laura Berkenstein for something I’ve done, I hope the police land right on her doorstep to question her about it, wherever she may be living at the moment.
Putting Katarina’s cellphone away in my satchel, along with my own, I head right over to the medical center’s front doors. The place was made of red brick like most of the buildings on this street, with a short overhang above the double doors and the name of the place in block letters lit from within with red lights. St. Sigma. The S was burned out, so it actually read “Stigma Medical Center.” I had no idea who St. Sigma was, but I knew what a stigma was. I hoped that wasn’t some sort of omen.
My fortune came to mind again.
With my hand on the door, I waited for a count of three, just in case. I didn’t sense anything bad happening in those three seconds of my future, so I decided to push ahead and make this happen. Fortune and omens be damned, I have a job to do.
The inside of the place is not what I was expecting at all, even if I did get a hint of it a few seconds early.
There are posters up on the wall, like there are in most hospitals and medical clinics. Except here, each of them shows a smiling woman holding their hands over a swollen stomach or carrying a baby in their arms. The women are of all ages, and every single race is represented, and there’s a few guys in those ads but not many. This is a clinic for women.
More than that, this place is for pregnant women.
Oh. Well… that kind of changes the approach I was going to use but at least I’m the right gender to be here. Be kind of hard to exp
lain why I’m here if I was a guy.
The woman sitting behind the registration desk window, at the back of the waiting area, is watching me now. No doubt she’s wondering why I’m staring at the posters like I’ve never seen a baby before. So, putting a quick smile on my face I went past the rows of empty padded chairs and leaned in close to whisper to her.
“Hi. I was hoping you could fit me into the schedule?”
“Well, let’s see.” The woman was dressed in flower-print scrubs and had a little plastic name-tag on the shirt that read Charlene. Her wide face wore a carefully neutral expression as she checked the clinic’s appointment schedule on her computer screen. She might be a nurse, but I was betting she was a receptionist, with no medical training at all. “You’re in luck. Turns out doctor McGillicutty had a couple of cancellations this morning so we can get you right in.”
“Oh, that’s great. Thanks.” I acted relieved, clutching at the straps of my satchel, looking over my shoulder as if I was expecting someone to be following me. In this business you have to be able to read the room and become the person everyone expects to see. In this case, a nervous woman who needs help. “Listen, could you let me sit back in the exam room? My boyfriend doesn’t know I’m pregnant yet, but I think he’s been following me. Please?”
I don’t do damsel-in-distress very well, to be completely honest, but it was good enough for Charlene to buy it. She nods sagely, giving me the impression that they got this sort of thing here at St. Sigma’s a lot. Picking up a clipboard with forms already on it, and a pen, she waves me over to the door just to the right of the registration desk. “Right through there. We’ll have you fill everything out back here.”
She came all the way up to my chest when she met me on the other side of the door. She made sure to close it tight behind me, and I thanked her over and over, taking the clipboard and trying to look anxious about my pregnancy—a condition I’ve never known in my whole life.