by Ben Rehder
On top of that, she was just a warm, funny person in general—someone you couldn’t help but like. Great neighbor to have, and, quite frankly, it bothered me that my line of work could bring trouble or violence into our neighborhood that might potentially impact people like Regina.
I quickly told her about the man who accosted me on my porch and the vehicle that picked him up, doing my best to neither overstate nor underplay any possible risk to anyone else living nearby.
“Dude,” she said. “You need to be careful. I’ve grown rather fond of you, but don’t tell anyone.”
“Never.”
“Think they’ll come back?”
“I seriously doubt it,” I said, “Not here at the house. But I can’t guarantee it. I don’t even know who it was or what they wanted.”
“Could’ve been random?” she said.
“Could’ve, but I don’t think it was.”
She grinned and shook her head. “Living next to you and Mia is an adventure.”
“I’m glad you feel that way. That’s better than saying we bring turmoil and danger into your life.”
“I’ve always been a diplomat,” she said.
“And a first-class human being,” I said.
“Thank you. I’ll check my cameras,” she said, looking proud of herself.
Cameras? I’d been after her for quite some time to install surveillance cameras at her place. These days, there’s no reason not to, regardless of who lives next door. Cameras are relatively affordable and easy to set up. The peace of mind they can provide is invaluable.
“So,” I said, “you got some?”
“Yep. Last week. Four in total. Meant to email you.”
“Excellent,” I said.
“I’m just leaving now for a meeting, but when I get back, I’ll take a look.”
“I appreciate that,” I said. “And if you happen to see anyone hanging around who looks out of place…”
“Other than you?” she asked.
“Oh, man. That’s just mean,” I said.
She laughed. “I’ll let you know, but I’m leaving town tomorrow for a week.”
“Where you headed?”
“Big Bend. Just going to hike and bird watch and pretend the rest of the world doesn’t exist.”
“Sounds nice.”
“In the meantime—and I realize I’ve said this before—try to stay out of trouble.”
9
If Brandi Sloan was upset about anything, I couldn’t see it. There she sat, smiling and upbeat, behind the reception desk at JMJ Construction. A real sweetheart. A doll.
Then again, when I worked as a camera operator for one of the local news stations some years back, we had a receptionist who could charm a client as he came in the door and cuss him like a sailor after he’d left. We’re talking world-class two-faced potty mouth. Great actress, really.
“You’re back,” Brandi said, as I made my way toward her desk.
“And my front,” I said. “All of me is here to see Mr. Jankowski again, if possible.”
“Is he expecting you?”
“I’m afraid not,” I said. “I was in the neighborhood—not just a figure of speech, but for real—and I realized I needed to talk to him again, if he can spare a few minutes.”
“Oh,” she said, “I’m afraid he’s not here right now. He’s at a meeting and I think he’ll be gone all day.”
I had to wonder why she would ask if he was expecting me, and then reveal that he wasn’t even here. Maybe she was simply wondering if Jankowski had forgotten about an appointment he’d had today. With me. I had no problem with the situation. In fact, I preferred it. I’d made the trip for the sole purpose of interacting with Brandi.
“Bummer,” I said. “Well, that’s okay. It can wait. Maybe I’ll call him tomorrow. Nothing urgent.”
“I’m sure he’ll be happy to hear from you. Should I let him know you stopped by?”
“That would be fine,” I said. “Thank you.”
I made a show of turning to leave, but then I pivoted back around.
“Hey, Brandi, can I ask you something?”
“Sure,” she said, all smiles. Just as friendly as can be.
“Okay, it’s kind of…forward,” I said. “I don’t want to make you uncomfortable.”
She didn’t appear uncomfortable in the least, but she also didn’t appear to understand where I might be going with the conversation.
“That sounds mysterious,” she said.
“Not really, and just let me know if I’m overstepping any boundaries. See, I have this good friend—he’s going to be one of my groomsmen, actually—and he’s single…”
She laughed, because she finally got where I was going.
I said, “He’s a great guy. Smart, handsome, funny. He can juggle chainsaws.”
“A blind date, huh?”
“That’s what I’m thinking.”
“Oh, God. That’s so sweet! But I’m seeing someone.”
“I kind of figured you might be,” I said. “All the best ones are taken, you know? I mean that in the least creepy way possible.”
“That is absolutely the way I took it,” she said. “You are so nice.”
“Is it serious?” I asked.
She nodded enthusiastically. “It’s been a year now.”
A middle-aged man in a necktie came through the door and hurried through the reception area and down a hallway without the faintest acknowledgment of the two human beings he was walking past.
“Who’s the lucky guy?” I asked.
“Well,” Brandi said slowly, and I could tell now that she was deciding how much of her personal life she wanted to share with a man she hardly knew. Or perhaps she was stalling to make something up. Finally, she said, “His name is Karsten, and he’s from Denmark.”
“That’s cool,” I said.
“He’s a software engineer,” she said.
“Interesting,” I said. “How did you meet?”
“In a bar. Doesn’t that sound awful? I don’t ever talk to men in bars! But I’m glad I made an exception.”
The incoming line began to ring.
“I bet he is, too,” I said. “And with that, I’ll stop prying and let you get back to work.”
“Okay. Good to see you again,” she whispered as she answered the phone.
I stepped through the office door into the central atrium for the office building, and then headed for the double doors leading outside.
Hadn’t really learned all that much from Brandi, except that she and Lennox Armbruster were not an item. Didn’t mean they weren’t scamming Jankowski together, but they most likely hadn’t hatched the scheme while lying in bed together. Or maybe they had. You never know.
I exited the building and moved toward the steps leading downward to the parking lot. A woman in a suit was walking toward me, hurrying inside for a meeting, and I could smell the cigarette smoke from a man to my right talking on the phone. He was roughly twenty or thirty feet from the doors, as was required per the Austin smoking laws enacted back in 2005. Who would’ve guessed those laws would’ve impacted one of my cases so many years later?
Because I recognized his voice. Gritty. That was the best way to describe it.
He hadn’t said anything of importance—“I’ll be back over there in another hour or two”—but that was enough.
It was him. The man who had accosted me on my front porch. I was sure of it. The voice was too distinctive to be anyone else. There was one small difference this time, though. He was speaking as if he wasn’t opening his jaw all the way—as if it had been recently injured. Maybe even lost a tooth.
That cinched it.
How to react? I had to make up my mind in
in instant. I could approach him and lose the element of surprise, but then I would get a good look at him and could probably snap a decent photo with my phone. Or I could try to ID him without being seen, which was preferable, so I simply veered to my left when I reached the bottom of the stairs and walked away from the main entrance to the office building.
I snuck a quick backward glance and could see him now, leaning against the side of the building, phone to his ear and a cigarette dangling from his left hand. He hadn’t seen me or even noticed me. Too focused on his call. I quickly jogged around to the rear of the building and found another set of double doors into the atrium. Went inside and hurried to the front again. Found a bank of windows to the right of the doors, and from there, I could catch a glimpse of my assailant from the side.
Couldn’t see much, though. And there was too much glare on the window to get a decent photo. He was still on the phone, and the way he had his head down made it even harder to get a good look at his face.
I waited.
I had the advantage at the moment. I could stay right here, hoping to get a good photo, and then possibly follow him discreetly to his car, or to one of the offices, if he entered the building.
If for some reason that didn’t work, I would simply walk right up to him, phone in hand, shooting video. See how he reacted.
I waited some more. He dropped his cigarette butt and crushed it with his shoe. Still talking on the phone.
Then I saw Joe Jankowski walking toward the building from the parking lot. He was also talking on the phone. He disconnected. So did my assailant, who now stood waiting.
Waiting on Jankowski.
What in the actual hell was going on here?
Jankowski mounted the steps and the gritty-voiced dude walked over to join him.
I snapped out of my bewilderment long enough to realize they were going to enter the building, and unless I hid somewhere fast, one of them would probably spot me.
I literally ran for the men’s room door, forty feet away, and made it inside just in time. I ducked into a stall and locked the door behind me.
Waited some more.
Nobody entered.
I waited another full minute.
Joe Jankowski had sent that man after me with a gun. The question was why?
Less than thirty minutes later, Mr. Gritty Voice exited the building, and I got my first good look at him. Big guy, but big in the way of a man who needed to lose twenty pounds. Unkempt dark hair. Broad, flat nose. Thick eyebrows. Couldn’t tell if his jaw was bruised, because he needed a shave. Close to forty years old. I snapped several photos of him as he walked through the parking lot to a white Chevrolet truck. I got a clear photo of the license plate.
Then I followed him at a safe distance as he drove north, to a three-story building under construction on Burnet Road, a few blocks south of 45th Street, with a large sign out front proudly identifying it as a JMJ Construction project.
Who would’ve guessed?
He drove into a parking lot surrounded by chain link—for authorized personnel only—and I parked at the next lot over, with a clear view of the building site. I figured he was going back to work and wouldn’t be coming out for a while, possibly the end of the day. I was too curious about him to wait until I got home to do research. I got out my laptop, logged on to one of my favorite sites, and ran his plate.
Registered owner of the Chevy was Damon Tate. Switched to a different site and saw that Tate’s driver’s license photo matched the man inside the building.
Next I checked Mr. Tate’s criminal history.
Good Lord.
Tate had been arrested nearly twenty times since the age of eighteen, including a couple of felony charges for assault and armed robbery. He’d been incarcerated four times. This was the man with a gun to my head a few nights ago. He wasn’t the type to play around.
He’d been turned loose on an innocent public yet again just sixteen months ago, after serving three years for beating up a guy at a high school football game. The man was interviewed after the arrest, right after the game, and he’d said that Tate “thought I was staring at his junk in the bathroom, so he punched me in the side of the head.”
At nineteen, Tate had been dishonorably discharged from the U.S. Army, but available records didn’t say why. My understanding is that you had to do something fairly flagrant or stupid to get booted from the military. They didn’t ditch people for getting drunk or having shoes that weren’t quite shiny enough.
I dug some more but didn’t find anything else relevant. I concluded that Damon Tate was just an all-around bad dude. A social misfit who couldn’t contain his violent urges. The perfect man for Jankowski to send after me. But why? What was Jankowski trying to hide?
Tate was still inside the building, but I waited some more, just in case he went anywhere else. It would be great if I could slap a tracker on his truck, but the parking lot was just too busy for that.
While I was in research mode, I decided to see if Brandi was telling me the truth about her dating life. I went to her Facebook page and checked her friends list, and sure enough, there was a friend named Karsten. Yep, he was from Denmark. And he was a software engineer. She’d told the truth about that.
But I noticed that there wasn’t a single photo of Brandi and Karsten together. She never mentioned him in any of her posts. Not once. No date nights. No selfies of the two of them on vacation or out on the town.
Then I went to Karsten’s page and noticed that he was married. Happily, from what I could tell. For several years. To a man named Clarence.
10
Two hours later, after no further sign of Damon Tate and no new discoveries online, I drove toward home, pondering everything I’d learned.
Frankly, I was baffled, but as long as I kept acquiring facts and information, eventually I would be able to piece it together. One thing was for sure: This was not a simple accident involving an automobile hitting a pedestrian. There was something else behind it. Had to be.
Joe Jankowski had recruited Damon Tate to either do me great harm or attempt to scare me. What possible explanation could there be for that, except that Jankowksi was guilty of something and didn’t want it exposed? That also explained why he didn’t mention the dash cam in his SUV. He’d forgotten about it, and it had recorded the incident. I could only assume Jankowski had intentionally run Lennox Armbruster down.
But why?
Then there was Brandi. What role did she play, if any? I could believe that an attractive, single woman like Brandi had a ready-made excuse to fend off any unwanted suitors or matchmakers, but that didn’t explain Lennox Armbruster’s visit to her house.
I stopped for a late lunch at a Chinese buffet, and as I walked back to the Toyota afterward, I got a text from Regina, our next-door neighbor. She’d attached a video clip from one of her new surveillance cameras—a car passing by on our street exactly one minute before I’d called the police about Damon Tate. The getaway car. This clip was dark. Not a lot of help. Not yet.
I couldn’t make out much about the car. It had two doors. I think. It was a mid-sized car. It looked gray, of course, because most cars looked gray at night through a camera using infrared light. White was an exception. I knew the car wasn’t white. Yippee. Big progress. I froze the video to get a still shot of the car, but that wasn’t much better. Honestly, a lot of today’s cars look the same to me. Even if I had a clear photo, it wasn’t like I could immediately identify it.
Just as I was about to get back on the road, my phone pinged with another incoming text, this one from an unfamiliar number.
My name is Claudia Klein and Detective Chang gave me your number. I own the gun that was pulled on you. Sorry about that! Feel free to call or text anytime.
She even added a smiley face.
I replied immed
iately. Could we meet somewhere? Coffee shop?
She was tiny. No more than five feet and maybe ninety-five pounds. In her late twenties, I guessed. Medium-length blonde hair, with a small swatch dyed bright pink in the back. She carried herself with confidence. As we talked, she struck me as the type you could easily imagine smiling at the top of a cheerleader pyramid ten years ago, but also the type that would make light of the whole cheer experience later.
“I really appreciate your willingness to talk,” I said after some introductory chitchat.
“No problem,” she said. “I don’t know if I can help, but I’ll try. Detective Chang didn’t tell me much about what happened to you, just that a gun was pulled on you and it was mine. The one that was stolen.”
We were seated at a two-top table at a place called Blue Dahlia Bistro on Bee Caves Road, west of town. Busy. Lots of women in yoga pants. Claudia Klein was having a strawberry cream cheese croissant. I was sticking with coffee.
“Tell me about that, if you don’t mind,” I said. “Were you burglarized?”
“Exactly,” Claudia said. “Came home and found the back door open. Someone had broken one of the little glass panes and unlocked it. They got some jewelry, my laptop, and the gun—a forty-caliber Ruger.”
“Do you live alone?”
“My ex-boyfriend was living with me at the time, but we were both gone. I was at work and he was out of town. Cheating on me, as it turned out. The jerk.”
“That’s not cool,” I said.
“No kidding. Tell me you don’t cheat on your women.”
“Well, I don’t have women,” I said. “But I’m lucky enough to have one woman. A fantastic woman.”