Easy Prey

by Dan Ames

  I had figured as much. He wouldn’t have let me in if he hadn’t had an ironclad alibi.

  “Tell me about the trouble between you and Dave,” I said, cutting to the chase.

  A little vein popped out on his forehead and I wondered if he used steroids to pump up his muscles. Or some of those medications that made the veins on your arms swell up. Because you know how much the ladies love those.

  He looked at the ceiling, and I wondered if he was examining the vast array of built-in lighting or the elaborate crown molding.

  “You want to know the best thing I ever did to become a successful doctor?” he asked.

  “Medical school?”

  He shook his head. “My undergrad I double majored in pre-med and business. I took a lot of business courses because I knew that’s what separated the good and bad medical practices. I worked briefly at one that was so chaotic I couldn’t believe it. Horrible organization, systems inefficiencies and a joke of accounting practices.”

  “It’s a business,” I said. “Being a doctor.”

  “Damn right it is. So Dave and I were always on the same page about that stuff. Our practice, along with the seven other doctors, was a well-oiled machine, thanks in no small part to my training. There are plenty of good doctors, but not all of them are great business owners. You have to be both.”

  “Was Dave good at both?”

  “Absolutely, until about six months ago,” he said.

  I sensed genuine sadness on his part.

  “What happened?”

  “One day he came in to me with a new, highly aggressive plan to expand the practice. Multiple new offices, new docs, etc. He said that he’d been thinking about this for a long time and thought it was a fantastic plan.”

  “I take it you didn’t agree.”

  “Not at all,” Kemp said. “It was a fucking horrible plan. He hadn’t done his research, his market analysis, cost projections. It looked like something he’d thrown together on a meth binge.”

  I winced a little at the reference. I was still raw from losing Dave, but I could see the anger in Kemp’s face.

  “Not only that,” he continued. “It went against everything we had always agreed on. Our patients were happy and frankly, we had more business than we could handle. You have to weigh customer satisfaction, workload and profitability. All of the partners were making excellent money. Not internet-billionaire money, but plenty.”

  It seemed out of character for Dave. Although he was fun-loving, I also knew he was fairly conservative with his money.

  “What did you tell him?” I asked.

  “I told him he was out of his mind. I had no desire to expand and even if I did, his plan was a piece of shit. It would take at least a year or two of intense planning to grow the practice even more, which I had no desire to do. It would require even more money spent on lawyers, not to mention accountants and real estate agents. And I knew the other docs felt the same way.”

  Kemp slid off his kitchen stool and began pacing. He looked like he was warming up to do a major squat press or deadlift.

  “How did he take it?”

  “Badly. At first, he seemed to understand, but then he repeatedly came back at me over the next couple of weeks, each time more aggressive than the time before but I stuck to my guns.”

  “Did he say why he suddenly wanted to expand the practice?”

  Kemp nodded. “It was in a moment of weakness, I think. He’d been really hard on me, arguing, getting snarky. And then one day, his face kind of became really sad and depressed. And he looked at me. He said he was going to be totally straight with me. And then his voice got really soft and he told me he really needed the money.”

  “He needed the money?” I found that hard to believe. Dave was super successful. I knew he had a shitload of cash.

  “That’s what he said. He needed the money. I offered him a loan and then he got really pissed and threatened me.”

  “He threatened you?”

  Christine had told me just the opposite.

  “First professionally, as in he was going to boot me out of the practice if I didn’t go along with the plan, something he would never be able to do. We are, were, way too linked. It would have taken a team of lawyers months to separate us.”

  “And then?”

  “Then he threatened me personally. Said he was going to kick my ass.”

  I leaned back. That really didn’t sound like Dave. Dave had been an athlete, a tight end in football at a small college in Ohio, but he was not the kind to pick a physical fight.”

  “What did you say?”

  Kemp smiled at me, and this time I saw something different in his eyes. Not quite predatory, but a vibe that communicated ruthlessness.

  “I told him two words: any time.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Angelo Flores was no stranger to blackouts. He’d had some doozies that when he’d first gone to a treatment group and told the stories, the other junkies had howled. Probably the best one was when he came out of a drunk and he was standing in front of a jury, making his closing statement and he had no idea who his client was or what he’d done. The jury had looked at him, and then he’d looked at his client and then the judge and said, “The defense rests.”

  He hadn’t rested, though. He never had. By then he was on the prowl night and day for the next high.

  So he was no stranger to blackouts. He’d lived through all of them, and what a bizarre litany they were.

  But this one, this one was strange.

  His eyes slowly creaked open like a garage door in the middle of a frigid winter. Creaking and groaning, his eyes and mind winced at the bright sunlight.

  Not sunlight.

  Electric lights.

  Several of them, bright and intense, pointing at him.

  His first thought was that he’d been arrested (again) and was now being interrogated by the police.

  But somehow, that didn’t seem right.

  Angelo tried to swallow but his mouth was dry and his tongue was swollen. His head ached with an intense pain he instantly recognized as very different from what he was used to. What had that friend of his shot him up with? Angelo had assumed it was heroin, maybe it wasn’t.

  Now, he looked around. But he couldn’t see anything. The lights were so bright and there was a noise that penetrated his ears. He tried shouting but couldn’t hear himself.

  For the first time in a long time, Angelo Flores was scared.

  It was apparently a moment of firsts because he suddenly thought of his wife. Or ex-wife, actually. Nicole was a fair-haired beauty, with pale skin and auburn hair. Beautiful green eyes. They’d always made an interesting couple, he, Angelo, dark to the point of being almost swarthy. While she, Nicole, was the epitome of a beautiful Irish lass. They’d met at a holiday party the law firm had thrown for all of its clients. At the time, she was an assistant to the president of one of the firm’s biggest clients and Angelo was a young, hungry attorney. They’d seen something in each other and a year later they were married.

  It saddened him to think of her and how they’d been at the beginning. How naïve they both had been. Who could have predicted that the marriage would collapse and Angelo would wind up a junkie?

  The sadness vanished as his hardened heart exerted its ability to deflect pain. The other pain was real. A deep, throbbing pain in his body, extending out to his limbs.

  How could his entire body hurt?

  Angelo tried to look down at the rest of his body, but he couldn’t see. Something was covering his face, but it didn’t really matter because he knew what was happening. Not just by the pain, but from the smell.

  He was being burned alive.

  Chapter Fourteen

  The restaurant went by the name of the Casa Maya Grill and it was well known for serving authentic Mexican food with a nod to the Yucatan Peninsula.

  Nate Becker, my friend of many years and owner of several news-related websites, was a big fan. I had agree
d to buy him lunch there, against the best wishes of my budget. In fact, whenever I scheduled a meal with Nate Becker, the Rockne food bill pretty much doubled.

  Nate was more than just a lover of food, he was an obsessive stalker of food. He woke up thinking about what he would have for breakfast, and then halfway through breakfast, would start thinking about lunch with the pattern repeating itself for the rest of the day.

  He didn’t have a day planner, he had a meal planner.

  Even before his child had some health issues that created a lot of stress for Nate, he’d always been into food. A big eater. He had been born and raised in Michigan and in the Midwest, being able to pack away food was often seen as a positive character trait. I’d been to Los Angeles a couple of times and there, it’s the complete opposite. In LA, they race to be the first one to push away a plate full of half-eaten food and claim to be “stuffed.”

  Like always, Nate had arrived before me. He was my height, but about twice as broad. If Nate was a boat, you would say he had an impressive beam and would be solid in the water. Today he had on jeans, a flannel shirt and his salt-and-pepper hair was long and a bit wild. He had a thick beard, as well. All-in-all, he looked like an unemployed lumberjack rather than a highly perceptive journalist and very talented writer.

  He had picked a table in the back and he sat with his back to the wall, so he could see who was arriving. His notepad and pen were never far from his reach.

  I slid in across from him.

  “Is food from the Yucatan really that different from regular Mexican food?” I asked as I settled in.

  “Of course it, John,” he replied with a sigh. “Otherwise they wouldn’t bother mentioning it.”

  “What if it’s just a marketing ploy?”

  Nate had been trying unsuccessfully for years to try to turn me into a foodie but it just wasn’t happening. I was a plain old meat-and-potatoes kind of guy who’d been eating salads more often of late due to comments from my better half.

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t even want to try to talk about Mayan influences, the Spanish, and instances of Dutch flavorings in food from the Yucatan. It would be lost on you. Suffice to say, they smoke a lot more food and obviously a lot of great seafood dishes.”

  He could have fooled me. There were chips, salsa and guacamole, and as good as they were, tasted just like every other kind of chips, salsa and guacamole I’d ever had.

  “So what are you working on these days?” I asked him. Nate was a great source for me, and really a lot more than that. His vast knowledge of not only Grosse Pointe but Detroit as well, had come in handy on many, many cases. These meals, which I always paid for, was my way of thanking him for his help.

  “Oh, the usual corruption downtown,” he said. It seemed like there were always new stories about kickbacks and bribes in the government of Detroit. “But there’s a rumor someone is killing hookers again,” he said.

  A few years back, there had been a serial killer loose in Detroit and his prey of choice had been the many hookers who plied their trade in the Motor City. He’d been caught, eventually, and his tally had been somewhere around ten prostitutes murdered.

  “New cases? New victims?” I asked, meaning they weren’t just newly discovered remains from the old case.

  Nate nodded.

  “That’s the rumor, but I don’t have any facts, yet.” A waiter delivered our food and just before Nate tucked into his enchiladas, he asked, “What about you? The Dave Ingells case?”

  I nodded. Even though Nate hadn’t really known Dave, he’d met him a time or two. “Yeah, I don’t have a client but I’m helping out however I can,” I said. “Don’t want to get in Ellen’s way, though.”

  “No one wants to get in Ellen’s way,” Nate said. He knew Ellen pretty well, what with being a reporter, but he’d also been around her at my house a few times. “I’ve got feelers out on Dave’s case, too,” he added. “I’ll let you know if I hear anything. So far, nada.”

  We both ate in silence for a few minutes.

  “What did I order again?” I asked.

  “Pibil,” Nate said. “It’s a staple of the Yucatan diet.”

  “It’s delicious.”

  It was a burrito filled with pork that had been smothered in some sort of spicy, smoky red sauce.

  “The Ingells case is interesting, you know,” Nate said. “Unlike the hookers, which you know is almost totally random, there’s no way Dave’s murder was. Of course, there are always exceptions, but the guy was fairly squeaky clean, right?”

  I hesitated for the briefest moment, thinking about what Anna had said, but I decided to keep that to myself for now.

  “Yeah, Mr. Clean.”

  “The idea that someone would abduct a healthy adult male in Grosse Pointe, drive him to Detroit, strangle him and dump the body, are pretty slim,” Nate opined. “I say Dave knew his killer, for sure.”

  Unlike cops and detectives, whose guiding principle was to avoid jumping to early conclusions, Nate was a reporter. He could speculate all he wanted.

  But I had to agree with him.

  Dave probably knew his killer.

  The question was, did I?

  Chapter Fifteen

  Christine Ingells had no desire to be questioned yet again by me, certainly not in her house and certainly not in front of her children. So she agreed to meet me at Patterson Park, one of two city parks in Grosse Pointe set along Lake St. Clair.

  The lake and I had a tortured history. It’s where the body of Benjamin Collins had been found, after I’d unwittingly returned him to his killer. His life had ended, and mine was changed forever.

  Now, I got to the park early, walked past the little splash pad where it was too cold for any little kids to play, and the giant wood play structure. There was a breeze coming off the lake, crisp and sharp, hinting of much colder weather on the way.

  Walking past the permanent charcoal grills, most of them rusty and sad, and the now-empty kayak racks near the gate to the kayak launch, I stepped up onto the boardwalk that ran along the lake’s edge. The water was dark and choppy, white foam curling over the dark crests of the waves’ bodies.

  The boardwalk was empty and I took a seat at the first bench, a section widened out from the boardwalk and projected over the rocky bank of the lake. Tall grass had grown up, partially obscuring the water.

  A giant freighter nosed its way out from the Detroit side of the lake, heading north. The channel had been dredged through the otherwise shallow lake, nearly thirty-five feet in depth. The rest of the lake averaged between seven and fifteen feet deep. But it was still a big body of water, some thirty miles across in parts.

  I heard footsteps on the boardwalk, turned, and saw Christine Ingells walking toward me. She had on blue jeans and a dark black sweater with pockets into which she had thrust her hands. Her shoulders were hunched against the cold. Her pale face stuck out in the fading light.

  We embraced and then each took a seat on the bench. I could smell her perfume and it was a lovely scent, set against the natural backdrop of the lake.

  “How are you holding up?” I asked.

  She shrugged her shoulders. “As well as can be expected, I guess,” she replied, her voice soft and a little bit hoarse. “The girls are in a state of shock. Everyone’s home now and we go from laughing hysterically one moment to crying our eyes out the next. I guess that’s how grief works.”

  Words of comfort were needed, but they just didn’t find their way out of my mouth. It just seemed like anything I could say would be lame.

  “What did you want to talk about?” she said.

  “What you’re going through is horrible,” I said. “I’m going through it too, on a much different level. Dave and I were just friends.”

  “A lot of people are going to miss him,” she said. “That’s one of the things I loved about him. He was good with people because I think they sensed his innate goodness.”

  “You’re right,” I said. “
He was one of those guys you knew you could trust when the chips were down.”

  She sighed but it was shaky, a precursor to crying.

  “You didn’t invite me out here to talk about what a great guy Dave was, though, did you?”

  “No, I’m afraid I didn’t even though I could talk for hours about him,” I answered. “I talked to Barry Kemp and he told me some things that I figured aren’t true but I’d like you to confirm that for me.”

  “What did he say?” she asked. Her voice had taken on an edge and I knew I had to be careful here. Grief could turn to rage in an instant and I didn’t want to be responsible for causing Christine even more emotional trauma.

  “For starters, he insinuated that Dave wanted to expand the practice.”

  She tilted her head to the side as she thought about it. “Not really. I mean, he talked about it occasionally, but he was pretty happy with the state of the business. And, I mean, you knew Dave. Being there to see all of the girls’ games was pretty important. He often said that opening up any more offices would probably result in him being gone for that kind of stuff. So yeah, he had mentioned it in theory, but then he usually shot down the idea because family was more important to him than more money.”

  I knew Dave rarely missed family events. Especially when it came to his kids’ sports.

  “So you guys were okay financially?” I asked.

  She laughed and looked at me. “Yeah, of course. What, did Barry say we weren’t?”

  Now it was my turn to look out at the lake. “Not in those words,” I said. “But he kind of hinted that Dave was really eager to expand and increase revenues.”

  “Barry’s full of shit,” she said. “It was just the opposite. Dave told me that was the reason for the fallout between them. Barry wanted to expand, Dave didn’t. Barry needed the money. For what, who knows?”

  If Barry Kemp had lied to me, it certainly wouldn’t surprise me. In fact, he had used the truth about himself to project a falsehood onto Dave. That, too was an old trick.