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

by J. A. Konrath

  Wait until the cover of night?

  They could follow my muzzle flash. And for all I knew, the cameras had night vision.

  I rolled options around in my noggin and kept up the watch. During the next two hours I saw two more guys; one who went to the garage to get lawn chairs, and another who began digging a hole in the copse of pine trees. Both were around Tucker’s age, and both had enough muscle tone to make me think twice before I signed up to be their sparring partners.

  At noon, Tucker and the guy who brought out the chairs dragged a large Weber grill from the garage and began to make the preparations for a barbecue. Knowing they’d stick around for a while, I carefully extracted myself from the ditch, stretched to work blood into all of my cramped muscles, and eased out of my hiding spot and through the forest, back to my Bronco.

  I knew what to do.

  There were cameras everywhere. The trail. The house. The garage.

  But not the pier.

  The pier was the answer. I believed this was a puzzle I could solve.

  I just needed one more piece.

  HARRY

  “Now what?” I asked.

  After the diner parking lot show when Jack had gone Van Damme on Marky Mark and the Hugga Bunch (how’s that for random pop culture references?), I grabbed some gear from the Vette and we drove the van to Edward Cline’s house in Minneapolis—

  —finding it empty, with a For Sale sign in front, no sign of any Jeep.

  “If he moved, he left a forwarding address,” Jack said. “We can track it.”

  “You mean the Feebies can track it. Post Office won’t give out that info without a warrant, which we’re not going to get because we’re not Minneapolis PD.”

  “Let’s try his neighbors. You want your shoes back first?”

  I wiggled my toes in Jack’s flats. “Naw. I’m good.”

  We knocked on a few doors, asking if they knew where Cline moved. Out of the five houses we tried only one person was home, and she had no idea where he went.

  “Newspapers,” Jack said. “Or cable TV. Or the electric company. If he moved, he forwarded his services.”

  “You’re thinking like a PI,” I told her. “Maybe you’ve got a future in my biz. I was considering taking on a partner.”

  “No way. Never.”

  “Never say never. You don’t know what the future holds, Jackie. We might have all sorts of fun adventures together over the next decade or two.”

  “Don’t hold your breath, Harry.”

  I wouldn’t hold my breath, but I had a feeling I was right.

  As I called up the local papers, Jack tried local cable providers. Good ideas, but we came up empty. When Jack tried Xcel Energy, which provided electricity to the area, the operator asked for a password.

  “This would take me one phone call in Chicago,” she said, clearly irritated.

  “We could try Garrett’s place,” I said. “You have his address?”

  Garrett McConnroy lived an hour south.

  No one was home. No Jeep parked there.

  “Call Fatso,” I said. “I’m out of ideas.”

  Jack called Herb, who didn’t seem happy to be asked to find Cline’s new address.

  “Offer him buffalo wings,” I suggested. “I bet he’d do anything for buffalo wings. Or the whole buffalo. Promise him the whole beast, with a pool full of cool ranch dressing.”

  She didn’t offer him that.

  While waiting for Herb to call back, we got coffee at a nationwide chain. Jack got hers black. I got a caramel mochaccino latte with vanilla and extra whipped cream, because I’m fun.

  It tasted like Stage II diabetes. I threw it away.

  Herb eventually called Jack back, and we found out Edward Cline had moved to a house on the same block as his old house. So back to Minneapolis we went.

  “Van is getting low on gas,” I said. “Should we fill it up for the car thieves?”

  Jack didn’t respond. She didn’t have a sense of fun like I did.

  An hour later, we were at Cline’s new house.

  No Cline. No Jeep.

  “I’m out of ideas,” Jack said. “Where could Cline have taken the women?”

  I called Jasper, the doorman. The Jeep hadn’t returned.

  “I could try the secretary at Plantasy Zone again,” I suggested. “She said she didn’t know where Cline went on vacation, but maybe with the proper application of flattery, bribery, and threats…”

  “Vacation,” Jack said, snapping her fingers. “That picture you took, of Cline, McConnroy, and Shears.” We knew it was Shears because Herb had emailed the guy’s mugshot. “Maybe they went to that place on the lake.”

  “Minnesota is the Land of 10,000 Lakes,” I said, repeating their state motto. “You want to search the upper five thousand, I’ll take the lower?”

  Jack frowned. “If this was Illinois, maybe we could trace it. Search for property owned by Cline. Or Shears. Or McConnroy. Local tax accessor, or a deed search.”

  “It would still be tough. If you searched by theirs surnames, assuming they’re staying someplace that they own, you’d have to go county by county, and I’m sure there is more than one person named Cline who owns a house on a lake. And what if they’re renting? Or the fourth guy owns it?”

  “Fourth guy?” Jack asked.

  “There are three of them in the picture. Someone must have taken it.”

  Jack’s face, so jubilant since the diner fight, sank like a box of rocks. “We failed.”

  “We didn’t fail. It’s just a setback.”

  “We don’t know where Cline or McConnroy are.”

  “You could stakeout Cline’s place, I could do McConnroy’s. Maybe they’ll show up.”

  She didn’t reply.

  “So you want to go home?” I asked. “Just give up?”

  Jack gave me a long, sad look. “Do you know why I became a cop, Harry?”

  “That’s easy. You’re a control fiend with a barely concealed violent streak who likes to catch bad guys. It’s who you are, and you push people away because you feel you can’t do your job and protect them at the same time.”

  She blinked. “That was…”

  “Mean?”

  “Surprisingly accurate.”

  “You think I’m an idiot because I crack a lot of jokes and don’t seem to care about anything. I’m not an idiot. I was a good cop. I’m a good private eye. We can find these guys. We just need to think harder.”

  She let out a deep breath. “Okay. We’ll keep at it. I just wish we had something to go on.”

  “Maybe there’s some clue in the picture,” I said. “Some landmark in the background that can be recognized.”

  Jack snorted. “We don’t need a landmark. We need a phone number.”

  Oh, shit, I said to myself in my Rover voice. Harry, you really are an idiot.

  “I may have a phone number,” I revealed. “When I was in Cline’s trailer, I took some pics of his landline Caller ID. Maybe one of those is the place on the lake.”

  Rather than bust my balls like she should have, Jack immediately asked for the numbers, then called Herb.

  I heard a lot of swearing on Herb’s end, which was unusual for the guy.

  “Tell him we’ll send him a sheet cake,” I suggested. “Wrapped in bacon.”

  Herb put her on hold while he checked the numbers. You could cut the tension with a knife.

  Well, not really. That’s a pretty stupid expression.

  “One number is Garrett McConnroy’s cell phone,” Jack repeated when Herb came back on. “One is a pizza place in Maple Hills. One is the home of Tucker Shears, in Green Birch. And the last is a house, owned by Theodore Cline, is on Lake Violet, an hour northwest of here.”

  Jack looked triumphant. Her enthusiasm was infectious, and I smiled big.

  “Okay,” I said. “Let’s go catch some bad guys.”

  PHIN

  I gave myself one final shake, brushing off the remaining dirt and leaves, b
efore climbing into my Bronco. Then I stowed my duffle bag in the back seat and went to the bait shop I saw on the way over. The moment I stepped inside I was coated in fish odor.

  The smell brought back a bad memory of my youth, of the only vacation my family ever went on. Fishing at a forest preserve. I remember being five years old and scared by the live leeches the proprietor was selling, and older brother Hugo taking my hand and forcing it into the leech tank, laughing at my screams.

  This establishment also had leeches, along with minnows and earthworms and mealworms, and a wall full of over-priced, out-of-date, dusty lures with ridiculous colors and designs. One that caught my eye had propellers on it. How that imitated a bait fish, I wasn’t sure. I’d never seen a minnow with propellers.

  A bell sat on the dirty counter, and I rang for the proprietor. He was bald but had enough ear hair to do a comb-over. The guy walked in through a door that probably was directly attached to his house. He scratched his chest through a dirty undershirt.

  “Help you?”

  “I want to rent a boat.”

  “Ain’t got no boats here.”

  “Do you know who rents them in the area?”

  “Gus does. Go on about three miles down Grundle Road, turn left on Halifax, he’s up there another three. You need a fishing license?”

  “Got one. Do you have any jig paint?”

  “Every color of the rainbow. Also got the glitters and the flower-escents.”

  “How about glow in the dark?”

  “Sure do.”

  He rummaged under the counter and came up with a container of paint the size of my big toe. It was a clear glass jar, allowing me to see the milky green inside.

  “Six-fifty.”

  I took the paint, cupping it in my hands to see if it glowed. It did. Then I used every bit of strength in my fingers to screw off the lid. The paint inside was runny, and the oil had separated and floated to the top, but it should be okay with a good stir.

  “I also need some bug spray. Something with deet.”

  He found a bottle. “Eight bucks.”

  I gave him a twenty.

  “Anything else? We just got some fresh minnows in.”

  He pointed to his live bait tank, where I saw a dozen minnows floating dead on top, swirling through the current.

  “No, thanks,” I said, pocketing my change. I went out the way I came in.

  Three miles down Grundle and another three down Halifax, I found Gus’s. Earl was acting up, so I swallowed a few aspirin before getting out of the truck.

  Gus’s wasn’t a watersports mecca. Mostly, it sold chainsaws. But resting on trailers next to the shop were several boats. There wasn’t anyone in the store, and I could have walked off with twenty chainsaws if I wanted to.

  I didn’t want to.

  I went through the shop and out back, into the yard, where a man hunched over a workbench. Sweat glistened on his bare back, and his hands were attending to a chainsaw.

  “I need to rent a boat,” I said.

  He looked up at me, his face still scrunched in concentration. “For what?”

  “Water skiing.”

  He nodded, wiped his greasy hands on his greasy jeans, and walked past me, into the store.

  “Got a fifteen footer, hook it up with a twenty-five, it’ll pull a skier,” he said, assuming correctly that I was behind him.

  “How fast?”

  “Bout twenty-five knots. Give or take. It’s a good old engine.”

  He went over to the corner of the room and removed a tarp from a squat object. It was a black Mercury outboard motor, mounted on a hand truck.

  “Runs a little lean. How long you need it?”

  “A week,” I lied.

  “Could give it to you, with gas and oil, for forty a day. Take your pick of the aluminum boats.”

  “I trust your judgement.”

  He nodded and spat in the sawdust on the floor.

  “Interested in a saw?” he asked.

  “No.”

  He nodded again, and I followed him to find a boat. When he judged one of them suitable we winched it onto a trailer, which he rented to me for an additional ten bucks a day. The trailer went on my truck’s ball hitch, the motor and gas tank went in the back, and three hundred bucks went from my pocket to his.

  When he asked to see some ID, I showed him my newly acquired badge. He didn’t require a driver’s license. No one questions a cop.

  After signing the cop’s name on the rental form, I got in the truck and towed away the boat. I pulled over a few kilometers away from Tucker’s house, uncapped my jig paint, and gave it a quick stir with an old pen. Using a wadded-up napkin, I carefully painted the sights on my AR-7 rifle. I also painted the trigger. Next I painted the trigger on the shotgun, recapped the paint, and left my weapons on the passenger seat to dry.

  The boat landing on Lake Violet was down the road I’d taken earlier, where I met Fred and Edna and Hal. I had to back up to the lake, the water up to my rear tires, and then manually release the trailer and push it the rest of the way in. Once the boat was floating, I beached it, tied a rope around the trailer, and used the truck to pull the trailer back out. The outboard motor attached to the boat on the back with two screws, tightened by hand. I hooked it up to the portable gas tank, used the bulb on the hose to pump gas into the engine, and pulled out the choke.

  I pulled that damn starting cord forty times before I got that engine to even sputter. Then I yanked on it another twenty to finally bring the monster to a coughing start.

  “Runs lean my ass.”

  I pressed the stop button and went back to the truck, driving it into the bushes alongside the road. I detached the trailer, grabbed all of my things, and took them back to the boat.

  Tucker’s place was on the opposite side of the lake. I restarted the motor and sat on the aluminum slat seat. Facing forward, I reached my left hand behind me to the motor arm, and gave it some gas.

  After some initial sputtering, it evened out and ran pretty good. There were enough horses in the engine to tip the boat if I accelerated too fast.

  I buzzed past their place. Tied to their pier was one of those cigar shaped boats that looked like a spaceship. It had two engines on the back, each double my horsepower.

  There was no one on the dock, so after my first pass I made another, closer one. Just beyond the pier on land was a deck with lawn chairs set up on it. At the moment they were empty. Tucker and the gang were probably still barbecuing out in front.

  I took the boat back around to halfway between both shores and killed the engine. Taking out my binoculars, I watched and waited.

  Come night, I’d charge the glow paint on the rifle with my flashlight, so I could see the trigger and sights. Then I could row in, lob the grenade into their speedboat, and shoot Tucker when he came out to investigate. It the grenade was a dud, I’d get in closer and use the shotgun, then retreat to a safe distance with the rifle for my shot. Once Tucker was dead, I’d call the police.

  The cops would save any women that were in the house. I wasn’t the hero type.

  I put on my cap, put on some bug spray, and tried to make myself comfortable.

  The lake was still. Mirror still

  I rubbed my neck.

  I stretched my legs.

  I waited for night.

  JACK

  “This is it?” I asked, staring into the woods.

  Harry had pulled over, and according to his iPhone we were supposed to turn, but I didn’t see any road. Just trees.

  “This should be it.”

  “Are you sure your phone is right?”

  “It usually is.”

  “Usually?”

  “Jackie, this miracle of modern technology that I’m holding in my hand is finding our location by bouncing radio waves off of a tower and syncing with a satellite that was launched into geosynchronous earth orbit. Cut it some slack.”

  “You memorized that line for when people question your iPhone, di
dn’t you?”

  “A little.” He pointed out the window. “Look. A camera.”

  I followed his prosthetic finger and saw the surveillance camera, high up in a tree.

  “Pull away,” I told him.

  “Why?”

  “Just do it, McGlade.

  Harry took off. “Aren’t we supposed to be going to their house?”

  “We don’t want them to see us before we make a plan.”

  “Plan? We drive up, break down the door. That’s the plan.”

  “Bad plan,” I said.

  “Bad? Remember Charles Kork? I ran up to the front door and broke in with a plastic milk jug full of cement, and kicked so much ass I now have a TV series.”

  “He was one guy. This is three guys, or more. Your milk jug trick won’t do it.”

  “It would work.”

  “Do you even have a milk jug?”

  McGlade pouted. “No.”

  “We need a better plan.”

  “Okay. Brainstorm.”

  “I was thinking we do some surveillance, try to see if the women are there, then call the local cops.”

  “Too easy,” he said. “I have a better idea. First, we go to a hardware store.”

  “This is a set up for a dumb joke, isn’t it?”

  “We buy cement.”

  “And a milk jug?”

  “And a milk jug.”

  “How about we each carefully approach the house from a different angle, try to see what’s going on inside, and if we notice anything illegal, we call the local cops?”

  “I’m leaning toward the cement and milk jug plan,” Harry said.

  “I’m up for doing anything other than the cement and milk jug plan.”

  “Okay, how about this. We go to the bank, and buy about fifty dollars’ worth of pennies.”

  “And put them in a milk jug?”

  He pouted again.

  “How about,” I suggested, “we each carefully approach the house from a different angle—”

  “I don’t do woods,” Harry said.

  “You’re afraid of the woods?”

  “Not the woods. What’s in the woods.”

  “Bears?” I asked. “Deer?”