OFF THE GRID

by Alex Kava

  His eyes met Maggie’s. She was thinking exactly what he was thinking.

  “No such thing as coincidences, right?” he said.

  “It’s no longer your case,” Maggie reminded him. “She wore a wig, probably stole her wineglass and the bottle was wiped down. I checked. They’ll never pull DNA off that tissue.”

  “The least I can do is say hello.”

  The woman’s back was to Glen when he walked up and leaned on the bar. He ordered another round of drinks and watched, waiting for her to notice him. The glance was subtle at first, almost flirtatious.

  Then he saw the realization.

  “Hello, Mrs. Gruber.”

  “Detective.” She kept her body turned away from him and looked for the bartender. “I’m sorry I don’t remember your name.”

  But he knew she did remember. He told her anyway, “Glen. Glen Karst. Are you here on vacation?”

  “We are. Yes, actually we were until the hurricane.”

  “No other reason you chose Pensacola?” His eyes waited for hers. She met his stare and didn’t flinch. Didn’t look away. In a split second he thought he could see her confirmation, her admission that she knew exactly what he was talking about. That she knew why he was there and what he had found.

  Without a blink she said, “Just having some fun and my friends can vouch for that.”

  The bartender interrupted with a tray of colorful drinks ready and hovering. Before Mrs. Gruber took them she pulled out a business card from her pocket, hesitated then handed it to Glen.

  “I have my own business now,” she told him, taking the tray and handing the bartender a fifty dollar bill. “Keep the change, sweetie,” she told the young man and without giving Glen another look, she returned to her table and friends.

  Glen returned to the high-top with fresh drinks and scooted his chair closer. He placed the business card on the table without looking at it or at Maggie.

  “You got lucky. She gave you her number?”

  “No, I already have it. What she gave me was a cold shoulder.” Glen said. “That’s Gruber’s ex-wife.”

  “I think she may have given you more than that,” Maggie told him and he looked up to see her reading the business card. She handed it to him and immediately Glen knew.

  Elaine Gruber had her own business all right. Making fine jewelry and specializing in gold-plating.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE: “A Breath of Hot Air” was first published in 2011 in the anthology, “Florida Heatwave,” edited by Michael Lister. It was written in cooperation with Patricia Bremmer whose Detective Glen Karst appears in several of her novels.

  It was also written as a companion piece to my novel, “Damaged,” so although this short story can be enjoyed on its own, there are pieces that go along with the novel that I’ve carefully tucked in. If you’ve already read “Damaged” or going to read it, you’ll notice some of the following: (Don’t worry, no spoilers.)

  Maggie is staying on Pensacola Beach at the Hilton and has just spent the day with a Coast Guard helicopter crew (rescue swimmer Elizabeth Bailey and company).

  Hurricane Isaac is barreling up the Gulf, headed for Pensacola.

  A stranger who introduces himself as Joe Black, shares a drink with Detective Glen Karst at the hotel bar. Joe Black plays an important role in “Damaged.”

  All of my short stories, novellas and novels can be enjoyed on their own, but because Maggie O’Dell is a reoccurring character in two of my series, I often meant some of the other cases she’s worked. The investigation she mentions with the six, young men in a cabin who commit suicide rather than be taken by law enforcement is the beginning to my novel, “The Soul Catcher.”

  COLD METAL NIGHT

  CHAPTER 1

  Sunday, December 4 2:37 a.m. Downtown Omaha, Nebraska

  NICK MORRELLI STUFFED HIS HANDS deep inside his pockets.

  Damn! It had gotten cold.

  And he’d forgotten his gloves. He could see his breath. Air so cold it stung his eyes and hurt to breathe.

  Snow crunched beneath his shoes. Italian leather. Salvatore Ferragamo slip-ons. Five hundred and ten dollars. The stupidest purchase he’d ever let his sister, Christine talk him into. They made him look like a mob boss, or worse – a politician – instead of a security expert.

  He was at a private party when he got Pete’s call. Figured he could easily walk the two blocks from the Flat Iron to the Rockwood Building. But it had been snowing steadily for the last ten hours. Now he treaded carefully over the pile of ice chunks the snowplows left at the curbs. He already almost wiped out twice despite the salt and sand.

  City crews were working overtime, trying to clear the streets for Sunday’s Holiday of Lights Festival. It was a huge celebration. The beginning of the Christmas season. Live music, carolers, art and craft events. Performers dressed as Dickens characters would stroll the Old Market’s cobble stone streets. The ConAgra Ice Rink would be packed with skaters. Tomorrow night the city would turn on tens of thousands of twinkling white lights that decorated all the trees on the Gene Leahy Mall and strung along the rooftops of the downtown buildings. Even the highrises.

  A festive time and a security nightmare for people like Nick. The company he worked for, United Allied, provided security for a dozen buildings in the area. The Rockwood Building was one of them.

  As Nick hurried across Sixteenth Street he glanced up to see the fat, wet flakes glitter against the night sky. It was the kind of stuff he and his sister called magical Christmas dust when they were kids.

  Pete was waiting for him at the back door of the Rockwood Building. It was one of Nick’s favorites. A historic brick six-story with an atrium in the middle that soared up all six floors. Reminded Nick of walking into an indoor garden, huge green plants and a domed skylight above. The building housed offices, all of them quiet at this time of night, making Pete’s job more about caretaking than guarding.

  But tonight Pete looked spooked. His eyes were wide. His hair looked a shade whiter against his black skin. He held a nightstick tight in his trembling hands. Nick had never seen the old man like this. He didn’t even know Pete owned a nightstick.

  “He didn’t show up at midnight like usual,” Pete was telling Nick as he led him down a hallway. Nick wasn’t sure who he was talking about. All he told Nick on the phone was, “To please get over here . . . now.”

  He was taking Nick to another exit, double-wide doors that opened out into an alley. The doors weren’t used except by maintenance or housekeeping to haul out the trash.

  “He usually stops by. You said it was okay.” He shot a look back over his shoulder at Nick but he didn’t slow down. “He does a little shoveling if I ask.” Pete was out of breath. The nightstick stayed in his right fist. “I made us some hot cocoa tonight. So cold out. When he didn’t show up I took a look around.”

  Pete shoved open the doors, slow and easy, peeking around them like he was expecting someone to jump out at him.

  “Pete, you’re starting to freak me out.” Nick patted him on the shoulder, gently holding him back so he could step around him. “If someone’s in trouble, we’ll help him out.”

  After Thanksgiving he had made an executive decision to allow homeless people to sleep in some of the back entries of the buildings he took care of. He told Pete and his other night guards to call him if there was a problem. During the holidays he didn’t have the heart to toss them into the street. Most of them didn’t cause any problems. They were just looking for someplace to get out of the cold.

  Nick took two steps out into the frigid alley and immediately he saw a heap of gray wool and dirty denim in a bloody pile of snow. The man’s face was twisted under a bright green and orange argyle scarf that Nick recognized. His stomach fell to his knees.

  “Oh God, not Gino. What the hell happened?”

  Nick tried to get closer. The damned shoes slipped on a trail of blood that was already icing over. He lost his balance. Started to fall. His hand caught the corner of t
he Dumpster. Ice-cold metal sliced open his palm but he held on. By now he was breathing hard. Puffs of steam like a dragon. He took a deep breath, planted his feet. Then he reached over to Gino while still gripping the corner of the Dumpster.

  Nick pressed two fingers to the man’s neck. Gino’s skin was almost as cold as the metal of the Dumpster.

  CHAPTER 2

  4:45 a.m. Crown Plaza Kansas City, Missouri

  SALSA MUSIC STARTLED MAGGIE O’DELL AWAKE. She jolt up in bed and scrambled to the edge before she realized it was her phone. She’d accidentally changed the ringtone and had been too exhausted to fix it.

  “I think we may have caught a lucky break,” the voice said without a greeting.

  It was R.J. Tully, her sometimes partner when the FBI sent two instead of one. A rare occasion these days.

  She pushed hair out of her eyes, blinked to focus on the red digits of the hotel’s alarm clock.

  “It better be lucky. You woke me up.”

  “Aw geez! Sorry. I thought you never sleep.”

  Tully had to be the only law enforcement officer she knew who said things like “Aw geez and holy crap.” It made her smile as she fumbled in the dark to turn on a light.

  “Seriously, I didn’t think you’d be asleep,” he followed up.

  He knew she had been battling a stretch of insomnia for over a year now. Getting shot in the head two months ago didn’t help matters. Technically it was called a “scraping of the skull alongside the left temporal lobe.” Unofficially it hurt like hell and the throbbing pain that still visited her head on a regular basis was a bitch. Otherwise she was okay. At least that’s what she kept telling people.

  “What’s the lucky break?”

  “Got a phone call from Omaha. Homeless man. Stabbed. Looks like our guy.”

  She stood up from the bed, rubbed the sleep from her eyes and started turning on lamps. She’d been in the Kansas City area trying to dig up something, anything. But the victim here, and the evidence, was already two weeks cold.

  “What makes them think it’s our guy?”

  “Blitz attack. No other injuries. Single stab wound to the chest, just under the rib cage. Preliminaries suggest a long, double-edged blade.”

  That sounded about right.

  For four weeks she’d been chasing this guy halfway around the country. It started at the end of October when FBI agent John Baldwin asked her to take a look at a slice’n go down in Nashville. Maggie was still recovering from her own injuries but she owed Baldwin a favor and told him she’d take a look.

  Lieutenant Taylor Jackson had sent Maggie every scrap they had on the case, which included witness interviews, security video and even a driver’s license. Unfortunately the video footage showed only a flash of white at the bottom of the screen the bill of a white ballcap. The driver’s license ended up being a deadend, too, although it was an excellent fake. Even the witness interviews didn’t turn up anything too interesting except that the man in question “smiled too much.”

  Just when Maggie believed there wasn’t enough to go on something odd happened. Her boss, Assistant Director Raymond Kunze, head of the Behavioral Science Unit at Quantico brought her the case – the exact same case. He insisted she and Tully make it their top priority. Kunze had been sending Tully and her around on wild goose chases for almost a year. Maggie was immediately suspicious. Why this case? What was the political connection? Who did Kunze owe a favor to this time?

  She hated that she was right. Turns out the senior senator from Tennessee was a personal friend of the Nashville victim’s father. It didn’t take much digging for Maggie to discover this wasn’t a onetime “slice ’n go.” She and Tully had found another two victims in New Orleans. According to NOPD Detective Stacy Killian, both were homeless, one a new mother, the other an elderly man.

  Searching ViCAP she discovered what could be as many as ten to twelve victims. Different cities across the country. Similar victims. Same MO. All of them quite possibly the work of one killer she and Tully nicknamed the Night Slicer.

  Now Maggie paced the hotel room listening to Tully give her more details. She could hear him rattling paper and knew the notes he had taken were probably on a takeout menu or dry cleaning receipt – his usual notepads, whatever was handy.

  “Here’s the thing,” Tully said. “Omaha’s ME thinks this one happened earlier this morning. Internal body temp says within last six hours. Night security guard claims it had to be around two o’clock.”

  “Two o’clock in the morning? That’s only a few hours ago. How can he be so sure?”

  “He knows the victim. Says the guy…” more paper shuffling. “Says Gino usually picked up a dozen extras of the Sunday Omaha World Herald right off the dock. He’d sell them on the street to make a few bucks. But first, he’d bring the security guard a copy and they’d drink hot chocolate.”

  “That sounds all very nice but since when do we determine time of death from a security guard’s Sunday morning ritual?”

  “Thing is, they found him between two-thirty and three this morning. He already had his dozen newspapers. The Sunday edition didn’t hit the dock until two-o-five.”

  Tully went silent. He was waiting for it to settle in and Maggie finally understood the lucky break.

  “So we’ve got a fresh kill,” she said. And then the realization hit her. “And less than twenty-four hours before he slices number two and leaves town.”

  “Omaha’s about 180 miles from Kansas City. Just a hop up and a skip down. Twenty, thirty minute flight,” Tully said. “Might be some delays. Sounds like there’s a bunch of new snow.”

  “I have a rental. I’ll drive.” She hated flying. Tully’s “hop up and down skip” already had her stomach flipping. “It’ll probably be quicker than trying to get a flight, getting to the airport, going through security.”

  “Looks like a three hour drive, but in the snow—”

  “No problem.”

  “You sure?”

  “You worry too much. I’ll exchange my rental car for an SUV. Let Omaha know I’m on my way.”

  CHAPTER 3

  5:41 a.m. Old Market Embassy Suites Omaha

  HE LOOKED OUT HIS HOTEL suite’s window and down on the empty cobble-stoned streets. Earlier there had been horses and carriages, street performers on a couple of the corners. The brick buildings used to be warehouses on the Missouri River but now housed restaurants and specialty shops.

  Last night despite the snow, the sidewalks had been filled with people, the streets busy with traffic. There had even been a patrol officer on horseback. And yet just five, six blocks away he been able to slide a blade up into a man’s heart and walk away. In fact, he walked back through the hustle and bustle to his hotel without a single person noticing.

  All was good. He was back in his groove. That nagging fury would no longer drive him to make reckless mistakes.

  New Orleans had set him off track. Then Nashville really screwed him up. He had always been careful about choosing targets no one would miss. But Heath Stover, a blast from the past, had knocked him way off his game. And so did that girl, that rich bitch pretending to be some lost soul. The news media continued to cover her murder but at least they were calling it just another unfortunate incident. Just another of a long list of crimes besieging the Occupy camps across the country.

  That’s the word a reporter used, “besieging,” like the protesters were soldiers in dugouts coming under attack. He shook his head at that. He was sick of seeing the protesters in every city he traveled to. Thankfully he hadn’t had to deal with any of them in Kansas City or here in Omaha. Another good sign that he was finally back on track.

  And why shouldn’t he be back on top of the his world? Sales were up. Bosco’s new laser-guided scalpel was a huge hit. Omaha’s medical mecca was like putty in his hands on Thursday and Friday at the Quest Center conference. He had exploded past his sales quota.

  Still, it had taken this morning’s kill to completely renew his con
fidence.

  He looked around the suite and rubbed his hands together. Checked his watch. Maybe he would shower, dress and go down for the breakfast buffet. He had the whole day off. He didn’t have to leave until tomorrow morning. Tonight he was looking forward to the Holiday of Lights festivities. The Old Market would be filled with people again and sounds of the seasons. Now with his newfound confidence he wouldn’t need to go far at all to find target number two.

  CHAPTER 4

  7:59 a.m. Omaha Police Headquarters

  NICK MORRELLI CRUSHED the paper cup and tossed it into the corner wastebasket. He’d had enough coffee. He was tired. He wanted to go home. He rubbed his eyes and paced the room, a poor excuse for an employee lounge with a metal table and folding chairs, a row of vending machines, coffee maker and a sagging sofa along the back wall.

  The door opened and his captor came in, shirt sleeves rolled up, shaved head shiny with perspiration. Detective Tommy Pakula handed Nick a black and white printout. It was a copy of a driver’s license.

  “Do you recognize this guy? Maybe seen him around any of your properties?”

  The license had been enlarged which only made the photo blurred. The guy looked pretty ordinary, could be anybody.

  “No, I don’t think so.”

  Pakula sat down in one of the folding chairs. Pointed to one across the table for Nick to sit down. They’d already done this. What more could he ask? But Nick sat down. Tommy Pakula was one of the good guys. Four daughters. Still married to his high school sweetheart. Nick had been questioned by him before a couple years ago. Another case. Another killer.

  “You were a sheriff not so long ago,” Pakula said, getting Nick’s attention.

  That was true. Nick had been a county sheriff. Got his fill after a killer almost claimed his nephew as his next victim.

  Just when Nick thought Pakula might finally cut him some slack, the man came in with another verbal punch. “You should know better. So tell me again why you thought you should be touching this dead guy before you called us?”