by Grant Pies
This was advice Leland gave Carter on his first day, and, fortunately, advice he hadn’t had to use yet. Outside of the gun range, he hadn’t shot his gun. He had fired some rifles as a young boy, hunting with his dad in the hills of Kentucky, but he didn’t much like it. Once his father died, Carter never hunted again.
“Wait, this isn’t half. It’s too much,” Sam said, hanging his wet jacket by the door and counting the bills out.
“I kept enough to keep the lights on. You need it more than me.” Carter shook his head. He needed the money too, but Sam had alimony and child support payments. On top of that, Sam had to fund his alcohol and drug habits. The alcohol he needed, but the pills were a bonus when he could come by them.
“Shit, you need to get over where the money comes from. What would the old man have to say about you turning money down? I didn’t know Mr. Garrett all that well, but he didn’t seem one to run a background check on the person handing him money.”
“I didn’t turn the money down; I’m just giving most of it to you.” He pointed at the bills in Sam’s hand. “Unless you want me to take it back?” Sam shook his head. “And before he died, Leland put me in charge to run the business how I see fit. I’ve never been given such a hard time giving money to another person, Sam.”
“It’s just – no you’re right. Thanks. This’ll go straight to the landlord.” He nodded and shoved the bills into his pocket. Carter knew that was a lie. Sam would be at his usual dive bar tonight, drinking shots of whiskey to wash down the Xanax he’d surely buy from the bartender. Maybe even hit up a strip club, a private dance … if there was anything left.
Carter stood and looked into the safe, focusing on the cash from George Kingsley. It wasn’t that he felt bad about blackmailing George. It wasn’t the actual act of blackmail that left a bad taste in his mouth. It was living in a world that required such a thing if one wanted to survive that turned his stomach just a bit.
“You know there’s a safer way to store that stuff.” Sam sank into his desk chair and unwrapped a sandwich he had picked up at a gas station on the way back.
“What, the gun?”
“No, the photos. You never hear of a computer?”
“You think that’s safer?” Carter shook his head and closed the safe, tugging on the handle to make sure the lock engaged.
“You think it’s not?” Sam said with a mouthful of his God-knows-how-old ham and swiss, then washed it down with a swig from his metal flask.
“I know it’s not safer.”
“Someone wants in that thing, they’ll get in. Drill. Blowtorch. Whatever.” Sam still hadn’t dried off from going out in the rain. Now, the rain soaked into the cushion of his chair. What little hair Sam had left had dried on its own.
“Before,” Sam continued, “when I was with the CPD…” Carter rolled his eyes, and wondered if Sam could start a story without bringing up the fact that he used to work for the Chicago PD. “I worked B and E’s for a bit. That’s breaking and—”
“I know what it means,” Carter interrupted.
“Anyways, some dealer kept his stash and cash in a safe. Two guys bust in, shotguns in hand, one smacks the dealer in the bridge of his nose, the other wraps a chain around the safe. Ties the other end to the back of their truck. Two minutes. In and out. They drag the fucking thing halfway across Chicago, till it busts open and spills coke and twenties all over the Kennedy Expressway.” Sam laughed, food bits falling out of his mouth.
“You ever want to know why Laura left you, just watch yourself eat.” Carter pointed at the crumbs dropping to Sam’s shirt.
“Hey, at least I had a wife.”
“Just means you can keep up a charade longer than me.”
“Anyway, these guys dragged the safe down the expressway. Sparks flying out behind ‘em.”
“Not too bright,” Carter said, unimpressed. He hung his jacket on the coatrack and pushed his hair back out of his face. A headache had been brewing deep inside his temples since lunch; now it boomed and echoed inside his brain with each movement.
Sam took another bite of his sandwich. “I always wondered who was worse.” The two that dragged that safe until it busted open, or the dealer who called the cops cuz his drugs were stolen!”
“Well, I guess if someone wants something bad enough, they could get into just about anything, computer or safe. But for now, I’ll stick with what I got. Bolted to the floor, bullet proof, fire proof”—Carter tapped the safe with his foot— “and a combination only I know.”
“Suit yourself.”
Just then the office door opened. A man and a woman stood sheepishly in the doorway, rain dripping from their clothes. The man wore mechanics coveralls, sleeves rolled up to the middle of his large forearms, his hands covered in grease. Fingers the size of sausages and grime crammed under his nails. The woman wore a rain-soaked cardigan over a uniform for a drycleaner.
“Welcome to Carter Investigations.” Carter walked to the couple, tapping Sam on the shoulder, hoping he would stand to greet them. He didn’t.
The man reached out to shake Carter’s hand. “I’m Robert Bishop. And this is my wife Claire.” She barely gripped Carter when he took her hand. Her eyes were sunken in, and the delicate skin around them was red and puffy.
“I’m Will Carter and this is my, uh, associate, Sam Murphy.” Sam nodded from his chair, brushing crumbs off his chest. “Please take a seat.” Carter sat and motioned for the Bishops to sit in the two chairs across from him. Sam pulled his chair beside Carter’s. Carter grabbed his notepad and pen. “What can I – we help you with?”
“It’s our daughter,” Robert said. The words came out like he hadn’t spoken in some time. “Rose.”
Claire blinked and fought back tears at the mention of the girl’s name and when she spoke her voice was raspy. “She’s missing for two months.” She reached into her purse and pulled out a pack of cigarettes and a lighter. Her hand shook as she lit the cigarette. Carter typically wouldn’t let Sam smoke in the office, but he figured he would let Claire have this one comfort. He slid a coffee mug half filled with room temperature black coffee from the morning across the desk for Claire to use as an ashtray.
“You go to the cops?” Sam asked, leaning forward placing his elbows on his knees.
Nodding, Robert said, “Yeah.” His jaw tensed. “They says they’re done looking for her.”
“That’s not what they said,” Claire said, putting her lighter back in her purse. She held her cigarette in her left hand. Her thumb and index fingernails were stained a brownish-yellow. At least a pack a day, Carter guessed. Probably more since her daughter went missing.
“May as well have,” Robert said.
“What did they say?” Carter asked, trying to cut to the important facts.
Claire gripped her cigarette like it was the only thing holding her to this world. “They said since there’s no evidence of foul play, they couldn’t dedicate more resources to the case. They said Rose could have left on her own, but some missing person’s task force would keep her file open.”
“Task force, ha!” Robert scoffed. “Just two guys in an empty room scratching their asses, playing fantasy football.”
“There’s a lot of ass-scratching going on at the CPD. Isn’t that right, Sam?” Carter elbowed Sam, knowing that he didn’t share the same skeptical view of the CPD as he did. “Sam used to work for them.”
“Yeah.” Sam forced a smile. “There’s a few bad apples over there, but they’ve got a lot on their plate.”
“You left the CPD?” Robert asked. “What, you get sick of shuffling papers around? Wanted to actually solve a case?” Claire nudged her husband.
“Something like that.” Sam looked away.
“I apologize for Robert. He’s just upset is all.”
“That’s understandable,” Carter said.
Claire took a long drag on her cigarette, tapped the ashes into the mug, then looked at Carter. “You know we came to you cuz we’d seen
you on TV.”
He looked down. Carter didn’t make a habit of ending up on TV, so he knew right away what case she was talking about.
“We saw you took that other case a couple years back. What was her name?”
“Beth,” Carter said flatly and quickly, almost interrupting Claire’s question. “Beth Freidman.”
Leland’s last case with Carter before he died. It took too much out of Leland, left him empty and even more reclusive than he was before. He refused to talk to the press about the Friedman case, so he left it up to Carter, throwing him in the deep end on a case he barely worked.
Now, Claire was here, bringing it up, the case haunting him like it haunted Leland before he died.
His final words to Carter were an echo rattling in his head. “Make this matter. Make them pay.” ‘This’ meaning the job? Life? Leland’s death? Carter never knew for sure. ‘Them’ being the police in Chicago? The ones who botched the Beth Friedman case from the get go? Or just those that would skirt responsibility?
“Beth Friedman.” Claire nodded. “I watched that story every night on the news. My heart broke for that girl when they stopped looking. The cops just gave up.”
“It was unfortunate the cops gave up so soon. The whole thing was unfortunate.” Carter nodded.
“But you found her … eventually.”
“Too late.” Carter wanted to move on, because finding Beth Friedman dead wasn’t something he talked about; because it wouldn’t make Claire and Robert feel any better about Rose; because he figured if he ignored it enough then it wouldn’t repeat itself.
“But you didn’t give up. You gave her parents answers.” Claire looked down. Her hair dangled in her face. “Maybe not answers they wanted, but…”
“We just want to know where she is,” Robert jumped in.
“Sure, sure.” Carter nodded. “Like Sam said, the police have a lot on their plates. Us private detectives have more time to devote to each case.”
“Exactly,” Robert said. Claire sniffled and sucked on her cigarette. “And the cops aren’t motivated. Not like someone who’s getting paid. Well … they’re getting paid, just not from us.”
“We get that too.” Carter flashed Robert a quick smile.
“Speaking of payment,” Sam said. Payment was a difficult subject to bring up for most, but Sam didn’t shy away from discussions of money. Carter wondered just how deep in a hole Sam was.
“We’ve got money.” Robert motioned to Claire. She held her cigarette between her lips and dug inside her large purse, pulling out a roll of cash bound by a thick rubber band.
“My pa passed last year and left us some cash. He’d want us to use it for this. And…” Robert gripped his large fingers around the gold wedding band on his left hand. He struggled to pull it off, but finally got it free. A clean white band of skin on his otherwise dirty hand was left. “It’s gold. Gotta be worth a couple hundred.”
Carter looked at Claire’s left hand, a similar band of pale skin was on her ring finger. In tough times it was always the woman’s ring that went first. Pure economics. Once a couple had decided to pawn jewelry all sentiment was tossed aside.
“Keep your ring,” Carter said. “And keep your cash for now. We don’t need payment just yet.” Sam cleared his throat and shot Carter a look. “Tell us about your daughter.”
“She was fifteen,” Robert said. His voice was deep and gruff. His cadence was somewhat stilted, like speaking was only done out of necessity and not for extraneous stories and conversation.
With a shaky hand Claire slid a photo of Rose across the desk towards Carter. She was smiling in the photo, blonde hair pulled back in a ponytail. Her eyes were a deep brown, and her right pupil was misshaped, like a spreading ink blot.
“This was taken last year. She’s dyed her hair dark since then. Just turned fifteen a week before she went missing.”
“Her eye.” Carter pointed at the picture. “Is that permanent, or just something she had when this picture was taken?”
“Been that way since birth,” Claire answered in her raspy smoker’s voice.
“You said she went missing two months ago?” Sam asked, tilting his head and turning the photo upside down, like a different angle would reveal something more.
Robert nodded. “Cops passed it off to their task force a week ago.”
Jotting notes on his pad, Carter asked, “What did they find? The cops?”
“Jack shit,” Robert sunk down even further into the chair. “They just questioned us. Asked our neighbors if they’d seen anything. Heard any arguments. Once they figured it wasn’t us who’d done anything, they gave up.”
“If it ain’t the parents then it’s just too hard for ‘em I guess.” Claire took one final drag on her cigarette before dropping it into the coffee mug. “Here’s a copy of the police report.” She handed Carter a nearly empty folder.
“Not much here.”
“Tell me about it. They didn’t interview anyone else besides us and a couple neighbors. Fucking useless.” Robert balled his large hands together and cracked his knuckles, like he would fight any of the cops involved if they were there.
“Where was she last seen?” Carter asked.
“Leaving school. School security camera has her walking alone. Never made it home.”
Carter scribbled a note. “What school?”
“St. Mary of the Lake,” Claire answered, digging around in her bag.
“Private school?” Sam asked.
“Mm-hmm.” She nodded with her head looking down in her purse.
Sam slid the photo of Rose back to Carter, and he placed it in the folder with the police report. Claire finally located her cigarettes in her purse and brought one up to her mouth. Before she could light it, Sam reached over with his lighter.
“Thank you.” She flashed an obligatory smile.
Pulling out a cigarette of his own and lighting it after Claire’s, Sam said, “My pleasure. So, any boys in Rose’s life? Anyone she’d sneak out to see?”
Claire shook her head. “We wouldn’t let her date until she was sixteen.”
“You ever hear of a teenager who listened to everything their parents said?” Carter asked.
“She listened to us,” Robert snapped. “She did what she was told. She knew the consequences.”
“Okay, sure,” Sam said. “How about boys that were just friends? Maybe a boy who may have had feelings for her? Maybe upset she wouldn’t, or couldn’t, date him?”
“There was one boy,” Robert said. “Mike Mason. He’d help Rose study after school sometimes. Usually they walked home together.”
“Usually?” Carter raised his eyebrows. “Why wasn’t he with her on the day Rose went missing?”
“Fuck if I know,” Robert grunted. “I never liked the kid. Always had his pinky nail painted black. Shaved one side of his head. Strange fucking kid.”
“He’s a nice boy,” Claire rebutted. “Just … different.”
“The two of them do anything more than study?” Sam asked.
Robert opened his mouth to say something but Claire spoke up first.
“Just studying. Mike’s too scrawny to do anything to Rose. He’s barely bigger than her. And like I said, he’s a good boy. Just looks a little strange is all.”
“Well we’ll need to talk to him regardless,” Carter said. “And her room, is it still as it was when Rose went missing?”
Claire nodded and took a puff of her cigarette.
“Can we see her room?” Carter asked. “Look around?”
“Does that mean you’ll take the case?”
“I don’t see a reason not to,” Carter said. “Her room is probably the best place to start.”
“If you think it’ll help, sure,” Claire said, then after a short pause, “How long was Beth Friedman missing before you took the case? When did her parents come to you?”
Carter knew she wanted answers. Not just answers, she wanted assurances. She wanted someone to tell her ev
erything would be okay. She wanted to hear the Beth Friedman case was different, that she’d come to them quicker than Beth’s parents had. He knew that because that’s what he would want. That’s what anyone would want.
“Every case is different. We’ll do our best to find your daughter.” Closing the police report folder, Carter said, “Is it alright if we get started on this right away? We could head over to your house right now. I assume the address on the police report is your home?”
Claire’s eyes widened, and for the first time it looked like she was actually alive. “Sure. Yes.” She nodded and dropped the second cigarette butt into the coffee mug. Sam and Carter stood up and saw Robert and Claire to the door.
“Thank you,” Claire said.
“Don’t thank us yet,” Carter said. The two parents walked out into the pouring rain.
“She’s dead,” Sam said, the door barely closed behind Claire and Robert.
“You don’t know that,” Carter said, but with no force, like it was only a formality. “And put that fucking cigarette out!” He picked up the mug and held it out to Sam.
“You hear the dad? She was fifteen.”
Nodding, Carter said, “Yeah, I caught that. But how many guilty people hire investigators?”
“Maybe Mrs. Bishop put him up to it. Wouldn’t take no for an answer.” Sam paused and watched Carter watching the Bishops climb into their beat-up rusted car. “So, you’re gonna put hours into this. A missing girl. Two months missing! You know the odds she’s alive?”
“You say that because the cops gave up? If they can’t solve it then it’s unsolvable?”
“Chances are there’s a reason they moved on.”
“Just like the Friedman case?”
“Is that what this is? You want to prove you’re better than the cops, huh?”
Carter paused, clenched his jaw tight, holding something back because he knew it would do no good. Eventually, he said, “Maybe I’m getting tired of existing only to break up marriages. Maybe we should do something that means something every once in a while. Make this matter.”