Dying Breath - A Thriller (Phineas Troutt Mysteries Book 2)

by J. A. Konrath

  “Everything okay?” As I approached, I saw he was writing me a ticket.

  What the hell? Was it Pick On Harry’s Car Day?

  “Are you the owner of this vehicle?” The cop was pudgy, red-faced, and extremely short. Lawn gnome short. He had an uncool little blue helmet on his head to match his toy tricycle.

  “Yeah. And I’m parked legally.”

  “I don’t see a handicapped sticker on your car, and this is a handicapped zone.”

  That would explain that big blue sign with the wheelchair painted on it.

  “I’ve been meaning to get a sticker,” I said. It actually was on my to-do list. “I just lost my hand recently.”

  I waved my prosthesis at him.

  “You can’t park here without a sticker.”

  “My hand is gone,” I said. “How much more disabled can I get?”

  “Do you have any outstanding parking violations, sir?”

  “Uh, maybe one or two.”

  His little toy CB belched and he picked it up and cop-talked for a few seconds. I was wondering if I’d have to offer this twerp a bribe, or maybe sexual favors, and then he put his hand on his holster and barked at me.

  “On your knees, hands behind your back!”

  “It’s just a handicapped spot! There aren’t even any cripples here who need it!”

  “Knees! Now!”

  “You can’t arrest me for parking tickets, dumb ass!”

  “Knees!”

  I obeyed and he patted me down, taking my Magnum.

  “I’m a private detective. Legally allowed to concealed carry.”

  “Harrison Harold McGlade, you’re under arrest for hit and run.”

  “The car is parked. Who did I hit?”

  “A traffic camera witnessed an altercation yesterday on Michigan Avenue.”

  I’m pretty sure I would have remembered any hit and run.

  Wait… was he talking about that homeless guy who stole my tire?

  “I didn’t hit him. He dove out of the way in time.”

  “You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law.”

  “The guy was a thief. He took one of my Vette’s wheels. Those things cost more than you make in a week.”

  “You have the right to an attorney. If you do not have an attorney, one will be appointed to you.”

  “You’re just mad at the world because you still need a booster seat when you go to McDonald’s. Don’t take it out on me.”

  “Do you understand these rights as they’ve been read to you?”

  “No. Go over that part about the silence again.”

  “You have the right to remain silent…”

  “Yeah, I got it. I may be under arrest, but you’ll never be tall. Ever. Short little prick.”

  He cuffed me. Then he subjected me to the ultimate indignity of riding in the back of his little clown bike, down the sidewalk, all the way to the police station.

  Maybe this is what I get for not subscribing to that damn Christian newspaper.

  I sat in the public holding cell and waited for the wheels of justice to turn far enough to allow me my phone call. That short little prick was taking his time. Probably because I called him a short little prick.

  The hours ticked by, and I missed my Big Stinky Onion appointment with Kahdem, who would be doubly irritated not just because I was MIA, but because the Big Stinky Onion didn’t have what anyone would call elegant cuisine.

  I passed the time by going deep into my own head and playing a game that I called napping.

  I was no stranger to police stations. In fact, I believe I once puked in this very cell after being picked up for a Drunk and Disorderly. I’d had a few drinks and was hitting on a group of goth chicks wearing black and sporting big crucifixes.

  I later found out they were nuns.

  This caused a minor confrontation between me and the arresting officer, because I protested that nuns shouldn’t have been hanging out in a bar if they weren’t looking for a good time. He informed me that I wasn’t in a bar, I was in a church.

  No wonder the service had been so bad. I’d been trying to order a drink at the altar.

  That experience cost me five hundred bucks and a night in the slam. But I did wind up dating one of the nuns for a while.

  After my nap, I casually studied the motley crew who shared my cage with me. There were your average assortment of low-lifes, gang-bangers, drunks, and street trash. Also, trying to hide in a corner, was a guy in a suit who looked scared out of his gourd.

  A large man who could best be described as a mountain stuffed into a sweat suit approached the little suit guy and asked for a cigarette, loud enough for everyone to hear.

  The little suit guy said he didn’t have one.

  The mountain said maybe he would rip off his pecker and smoke that instead.

  I immediately stood up and hurried over there.

  After all, I’ve never seen anyone’s pecker ripped off before.

  “McGlade.”

  Some cop drew my attention away from the unfolding drama and I was led out of my cell. I thought I heard the sound of a zipper follow me out, but I couldn’t be sure.

  I followed the cop through a hallway and to an elevator. Normal police procedure was to book an offender immediately after arriving at the station. But they put off doing that with me because I knew someone high up in the department and I name-dropped, demanding to talk to my buddy personally. Which was where I was being led. The elevator ejected us on the proper floor, and he left me.

  There was no one around, so I engaged in a bit of harmless mischief. Then, a few minutes later, I was face to face with one of Chicago’s finest.

  Homicide Lieutenant Jacqueline Daniels.

  “Hiya, Jackie. How have you been?”

  “Ah, hell,” Jack said. “And I didn’t think my day could get any worse.”

  I grinned, wide. “Ain’t life a peach?”

  PHIN

  I sat in my truck in the parking lot of a coffee shop, sipping a large, hot cup of caffeine while considering my next move.

  Amy Scadder’s police record didn’t tell me much.

  I had gotten it earlier that day from Lieutenant Jack Daniels, trading for a bag of bakery donuts. The record contained no blatant information pointing to Amy’s current whereabouts, no clues that would lead me to a trackable trail, and no glaring inconsistencies that might need further checking.

  Amy was caught with half a key of coke. She claimed she didn’t know how it got there. Her fingerprints all over the bag made her denial difficult for the judge to believe. Daddy bailed her out. She ran away.

  I read the damn thing five times, and it kept saying the same thing, over and over.

  Jack did give me some interesting information on her father. Seems he had been arrested a few years back for tax evasion. Got off with a hefty fine. I didn’t see how it fit in, but this business often devolved to turning over stones, shining light on the dark and ugly things that were hiding underneath. It might be a good idea to check with Scadder’s accountant.

  Daniels also gave me a list of seventy possibilities for the owner of the black Jeep. I could probably narrow that down with a cell phone and/or a computer, but I had neither. And the guy I occasionally worked with who had both, Harry McGlade, hadn’t called me back. I bet he was shocked to hear from me, because he thought I’d died.

  McGlade wasn’t really reliable, or even particularly good at his job. But that was the pot calling the kettle black.

  Maybe Mac, that retired cop who moved to Florida, would come through for me with a plate number.

  In the meantime, I could try to talk to Amy’s old friend, Sharon Pulowski. Amy’s inebriated and unpleasant mother had pointed to Sharon as a possible source of information. Sharon moved from the upscale suburb of Shorington to a not-so-upscale neighborhood on the South Side of Chicago. She hadn’t picked up when I called before, but today was a new day.


  A new day, and I hadn’t called Pasha yet.

  Last night, after leaving Pasha’s place, I tried to distract myself with some games of pool with Lieutenant Daniels, and afterward, when thoughts of Pasha and my imminent demise refused to leave my lowlife skull, I hit an all-night liquor store and bought a bottle, letting the Tequila-Codeine Monster punch me to sleep.

  Now I had a hangover, and between my throbbing head and Earl’s gnawing I was seriously considering bringing the Monster back for a sequel. Maybe I could even numb myself enough to not think about the woman I loved, and what I had to do.

  What I had to do was simple, and impossible.

  I opened my glove compartment, hunting around for pills. Found some aspirin, some acetaminophen, some antacids, and my last two Norco.

  I took a little bit of everything, then choked it all down with the rest of the coffee.

  I needed to tell Pasha it was over. We were through. And I had to do it with conviction, so she wouldn’t think I was doing it to spare her from watching me die.

  I wasn’t doing anymore cancer treatment. And I wasn’t going to waste away to ninety pounds while Pasha held my hand and changed my catheter bag.

  It was a call I didn’t want to make.

  It was a call I had to make.

  Dying sucks.

  I got out of the truck, searching for a pay phone a decade too late. After three blocks I gave up, went into one of those discount electronic stores that sold off brand mp3 players and knockoff toys like Star Warp and Spuder-Man. I plunked down eighty bucks for a disposable cell phone, and another hundred bucks for a pay-as-you-go credit card so I could buy minutes for it. Once I went through the infuriatingly frustrating experience of setting up an account, I tried Sharon Pulowski’s number.

  “Yeah?” Female voice. Sounded disinterested, distracted, or stoned.

  “Sharon? My name is Phin Troutt. Amy Scadder’s parents hired me to find her.”

  Silence. I wondered if my cheap phone cut her off.

  “Sharon? You there?”

  “Yeah. Amy. Wow. Been a long time. Her parents hired you? Really? What did you think of them?”

  “They’re assholes.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Look, I’m downtown right now. Could I meet you somewhere, ask you a few questions?”

  “I don’t want to go out anywhere.”

  “Can I come over? I have your address.”

  “Come here?”

  “If that’s okay.”

  More silence. I checked my phone screen, watching the seconds and the dollars roll past.

  “Yeah. You can come over.”

  “I’ll be there in thirty minutes.”

  “Yeah. Amy, huh? Wow.”

  She hung up.

  Lake Shore Drive was jammed, as usual. It was a nice day and everyone and their brother was out to celebrate the fact.

  I crept along at thirty miles per hour, trying hard to keep my mind blank, trying hard to distance myself from the throbbing in my head and my side, trying hard and not succeeding. The radio played love songs to piss me off, and I killed it and listened to traffic.

  Traffic pissed me off even more.

  Lucky for my fellow drivers, the codeine kicked in, and they were spared me running them off the road and into Lake Michigan.

  Amy’s apartment building looked shitty, but my motel was shitty so I didn’t judge. I parked in the visitor lot, walked to the front of the building, and looked for the buzzer for seven-one-three. I pressed it, but the button was broken. Didn’t matter, because the security door was broken as well. I went in.

  An elevator that smelled like stale beer and piss spit me out on the seventh floor. I found Amy’s door, knocked, and took a step back so she could see me through the peep hole, trying not to look like the thug I was.

  Behind the door was a yipping sound, and when it opened I saw a young lady holding a dog the size of an ice cream cone.

  She patted the dog’s head and shushed it. The dog shushed.

  “He’s not used to strangers.” said the girl, “Are you Mr. Troutt?”

  I nodded. She not only remembered my name, she went with the formal. Points for politeness.

  “I’m Sharon. Come on in.”

  I let myself in and viewed my surroundings. The furnishings were old. The few things that were new, like the microwave and a love seat, were cheap. The odor of dog hung heavily in the air, and all the shades were drawn, making it seem almost murky. But it was clean, and the old couch I sat on was comfortable, and the coffee Sharon offered was pretty good.

  “I called Amy’s parents,” she said, sitting across from me on the cheap love seat in the small living room. “They told me they hired you, or I wouldn’t have let you in. So what do you want to know?”

  She had a thin face, high cheekbones, and muddy brown eyes. Her teeth were crooked and when she talked she was careful not to show them. Thin, possibly attractive, but too young for me to notice.

  “How close were you and Amy?” I asked.

  “Good friends. We’d known each other for four years, from school.”

  “How did she get along with her parents?”

  “She hated her mother. All the times I went over there I never heard her say anything nice to Amy. She was always bitching about something.”

  Sharon shifted on the couch. Arnold, the dog, was being held snugly against her chest, wriggling like a fiend to get away.

  “How about her father?”

  “I never met her dad, and Amy never talked about him.”

  Arnold wriggled free and bounced across the room toward me, where he barked furiously at my shoes.

  “Arnold! Stop it!”

  Arnold didn’t stop it. Sharon had to get up and grab him again.

  “He’s really not used to strangers,” she apologized.

  “Did she love her parents?” I asked.

  “Not her mom. Maybe she loved her dad, but I think she resented him.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. Doesn’t everybody resent their fathers?”

  I supposed everybody did.

  “Did Amy do drugs?”

  “Just pot. Not the heavy shit.”

  “What do you consider heavy shit?”

  “Coke. Smack. Meth.”

  That’s also what I considered heavy shit. “You’re sure?”

  “Yeah. She had plenty of chances to do coke after she got out of the hospital. She didn’t.”

  “How about boyfriends?”

  “She dated this one asshole. His name was Tucker.”

  “Where did she meet him?”

  “At a party her parents had. He was a friend of her mom’s, if you can believe it.”

  I let this sink in. “Are you sure?”

  “Yeah. Maybe that’s why she went out with him, to get back at her mother. She sure didn’t love the jerk. I couldn’t count the times she called me up crying over something he did to her.”

  “Is this Tucker?” I asked, showing her the picture of Amy and the guy in front of the Land Rover I’d had Jack trace.

  “That’s him. Where’d you get this picture?”

  “Her room.”

  “I’m the one that took it.”

  She stared at it for a moment, then handed it back.

  “Do you know where she went?”

  “Nope. She didn’t even say goodbye. I thought we were better friends than that. But that was what, two years ago? I want you to find her and everything, but I don’t think about her too much. I just hope when she took off she didn’t go with Tucker.”

  “Do you know Tucker’s last name?”

  She shook her head.

  “Where he lives?”

  “No. Even if I knew, I wouldn’t have gone over. He was a creep.”

  “Sharon, do you know where Amy is?”

  She shook her head.

  “Do you have any idea where she might have gone? My job is to find her. It’s not to bring her home. If she doesn’t want to s
ee her parents, I won’t force her.”

  “I really don’t know where she went. But if you find her… tell her… tell her I miss her.”

  I wondered what else to ask her, couldn’t think of anything, and said goodbye.

  I let myself out.

  The codeine was working on my pain, albeit slightly dulling my senses. I tried to concentrate on something that was right on the edge of consciousness, something I just couldn’t grasp. Something about Amy’s mother knowing Tucker. Something about drugs.

  It wasn’t working, so I let it go. Instead I found Mac’s number—that retired high school cop who moved south—and called him as I walked back to my truck.

  “Hello?”

  “Hi, Mrs. MacDonald. Looking for your husband. It’s Phin Troutt again.”

  “He’s mowing the lawn. Just a sec. MAC!”

  She blew out my eardrum. I switch ears, and he came on about thirty seconds later.

  “Hey, Spark Plugs, good tip. Got it working like a dream. I was gonna call you later.”

  “You got the guy’s name?”

  “I did. And lemme tell you, it was a pain in the ass to top all pain in the asses.”

  He began to rant about how his former department was converting its records to digital, and I occasionally interjected with a really or a huh until he finally got to the point.

  “Tucker Shears,” he finally said. “That’s the asshole’s name.”

  “Does he have a record?”

  “Didn’t check. Didn’t you hear the part about the department converting to digital?”

  “I did.” And I didn’t want to hear it again. “How about an address.”

  “That I got. I wrote it down somewhere. Gimme a sec.”

  By that time I was back in the truck, thinking about Pasha again, and what I’d say to her.

  I’d buy myself a bottle of courage, talk fast so she couldn’t get a word in, act like a total asshole so she’d hate me, and case closed.

  The end of my last love affair. I’d tuck my feelings away in my back pocket and never let myself get close to anyone again.

  Not like I had time to…

  Then afterward I’d score some coke.