Storm Cell

by Brendan DuBois

  Then again, as he had earlier pointed out, what did I know? I was just an English major, a former research analyst for the Department of Defense, and an unemployed magazine columnist with a rapidly dwindling bank account.

  Assistant Attorney General Moran paused in her questioning, sipped from a glass of water, and said, “Detective Josephs, do you recall where you were on the night of Friday, January twelfth?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said. “I was at the Porter Police Department, catching up on some paperwork.”

  “Did something arise that called you away from your paperwork?”

  “Yes,” he said. “I got a phone call from one of the on-duty dispatchers, at approximately 11:12 P.M., reporting that a deceased shooting victim had been located at an apartment building on Sher Avenue, just off of Congress Street.”

  After that, the assistant attorney general calmly and methodically went through what happened during the rest of the night: his arrival at the crime scene, his initial inspection, the securing of the crime scene, the concurrent arrival of the EMTs from the Porter Fire Department, the call that went out to the state medical examiner, on and on and on.

  She looked up from her notes. “Detective Josephs, did you recognize the deceased individual?”

  “No, I did not.”

  “Did you know who was renting the apartment?”

  “Not at the moment.”

  “I see,” she said. “How were you able to identify the deceased?”

  “After Dr. Brown of the state medical examiner’s office declared him dead, I then proceeded to search the body.”

  A muffled gasp and sigh from Mr. Moore’s side of the row of spectators. Moran paused—to let everyone regain their composure or to let the jury fully hear what was going on?—and then she said, “What did you find upon searching the body?”

  “I recovered a leather wallet from his right rear trouser pocket. An examination of the wallet revealed a current New Hampshire driver’s license in the name of Fletcher Moore of Tyler, New Hampshire. A number of other pieces of identification were also contained in the wallet, including several credit cards.”

  “Was there any money in the wallet?”

  “Yes.”

  “In what amount?”

  “One hundred and twenty-three dollars.”

  “Was there any jewelry on Mr. Moore’s body?”

  “Yes.”

  “What kind of jewelry?”

  “There were two rings, one of which was set with three stones that appeared to be diamonds.”

  As a well-experienced police detective, Josephs didn’t say they were diamonds, only that they appeared to be diamonds.

  “Anything else?”

  “A Gucci watch.”

  “In your experience as a police detective, is the fact that jewelry and a sum of cash were left behind indicative of anything?”

  I held my breath, waiting for Hollis Spinelli to object, but he sat still. Even Moran seemed stunned, for she paused and then said, “Detective?”

  Josephs slightly smiled, like he couldn’t quite believe he was about to slip one over on the defense attorney. “Yes, ma’am. In my years of experience as a police detective, it would appear to me that robbery was not a motive.”

  “I see,” she said, repeating for the benefit of the jury. “Robbery was not a motive. Detective Josephs, was Mr. Moore a resident of Porter?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “Where did he reside?”

  “In Tyler, New Hampshire.”

  “The apartment on Sher Avenue. Was that rented in Mr. Moore’s name?”

  “No.”

  “Who owned the apartment?”

  “It was owned by the Port Harbor Realty Association,” he said. “They own the building. The apartment was currently unoccupied.”

  “Was it broken into?”

  “It appeared not to be, ma’am.”

  “That means the apartment was either unlocked, or someone used a key to gain entry, correct?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said.

  “Did you find a key on the premises?”

  Detective Josephs said, “No, ma’am, we did not.”

  The rest of Detective Josephs’s testimony took the rest of the afternoon, going into exquisite detail of how the apartment was searched, how the body was removed, and how the downstairs neighbors were eventually interviewed. The two women living on the second floor were in Boston on the night of the shooting. The woman who lived on the ground floor was at work, while her sick little girl was at the Porter ER with her grandmother all night. No one was present at the time of the shooting.

  At two P.M. Judge Crapser glanced up at the wall clock and said, “We’re done for the day and weekend. Court adjourned.”

  After the standard adjournment process, I wandered outside and found myself sitting alone in my Honda Pilot. I was feeling antsy and not so good about myself. I had two orders to do something to help Felix out. One was issued by the two FBI agents from Boston, and the other was issued by me.

  I started up the Pilot. Sitting and watching the proceedings as the state painstakingly built up its case against him wasn’t going to do a damn thing for Felix, except for having a friendly face in the courtroom when the guilty verdict came down.

  I wasn’t going to let that happen.

  I drove out of the courthouse parking lot and started making my way to Massachusetts.

  Raymond Drake had been Felix’s lawyer for as long as I’d known Felix. The two of them came together prior to my moving to New Hampshire, when Raymond Drake had gotten on the bad side of some associates of Felix’s and went on the proverbial one-way ride out to Boston Harbor one night. Feeling either generous or bored, Felix got on a boat and intercepted the mission before its completion, earning the eternal gratitude of Raymond, along with bill-free legal advice for the rest of time.

  Along the way, Raymond came to my assistance as well, and somehow I had been brought into his penumbra of gratitude toward Felix. This afternoon after court I was in Raymond’s hometown of Boxford, Massachusetts, a bedroom community about halfway between Boston and the New Hampshire border. Previously I had called his Boston office numerous times, each time getting the same reply: Raymond Drake was out of the office and left no forwarding location, phone number, or directive. And his home phone number was unlisted, no matter how many Internet searches I conducted.

  But now I was at his home base, after making a stop along the away at a flower shop. Boxford was home to a lot of executives from Boston, airline pilots, and attorneys like Raymond. His home was on Sunrise Road, along with other million-dollar homes. It was placed on a gently groomed lawn with granite posts on either side of the wide driveway, with brass numerals 12 marking the address. I parked on the street and looked up at the house.

  I had been here twice before, for Christmas parties that Raymond had hosted for his clients and his fellow workers. In mingling around with Felix, I had seen a couple of Massachusetts legislators, a Boston city councillor, a Red Sox player, and two Patriots players, along with a number of broad-shouldered men in thousand-dollar suits who were attending with young, attractive women who were either grad students or nieces.

  The home was a sprawling two-story faux Tudor, with lots of exposed stone and wood, an attached three-car garage, and perfectly formed shrubbery and trees.

  No sign of life.

  I got out and walked up the driveway. Time for a firsthand check.

  The driveway sloped up at an easy angle, and there was a flagstone path leading to the left. I was carrying an expensive floral display I had purchased about a half hour earlier. It had roses, tulips, and even two flowering orchids, and it had cost me almost a hundred dollars that I couldn’t afford.

  But I was hoping it would get me into a million-dollar home.

  The stone path had recessed lighting on each side, and led up to a wide doorway, with wrought-iron railings. I rang the doorbell.

  Waited. Looked around. The windows had their
curtains drawn. Interesting, but not indicative of anything.

  I rang the doorbell again.

  No reply.

  “Hello?” I called out in a loud voice. “Floral delivery.”

  Still no answer.

  All right, then.

  I walked back down the steps, off the path, and took my time in walking around the large house. I held up the flowers so that anyone observing me from inside the house could see what I hoped they would see, a nice middle-aged guy bearing a gift, nobody nosy or being a threat.

  Around the side of the house, then, and to the rear, where there was a large stone patio, with a covered swimming pool, some lawn furniture, and a marble fountain that wasn’t working. The rear entrance to the house was a set of sliding glass doors, again with curtains drawn. I went to the doors, rapped at them with my knuckles.

  “Hello? Floral delivery. Is anybody home? Hello?”

  Then I really started pounding on the glass, “Hello? Hello?”

  And a muffled woman’s voice from inside. “Who’s there?”

  I recalled the name of where I’d been earlier. “Boxford Floral Displays,” I said. “I have a delivery here for Raymond Drake.”

  “He’s not here,” she replied. Her voice had an Eastern European accent.

  “Doesn’t matter,” I said. “They still need to be delivered.”

  “Leave them on the table.”

  “Ma’am,” I said, putting some exasperation into my voice. “I can’t.” I held up the vase, hoping she or somebody else in there could see them. “They have to be hand delivered—that was the customer’s request. You can see how expensive they are.”

  “I don’t care,” she said. “Leave them on the table.”

  “Ma’am. I can’t do that. They’re expensive, with special handling instructions. I can’t just leave them, and if I take them back, then my boss has to call the customer, he’ll get pissed off, start making some complaints and shit, and well, it’ll just be easier if you take them, okay?”

  She was murmuring something. Two people in the house, then.

  “All right,” she said. “Stand still.”

  The curtain opened a few feet and she came into view. Tight blue jeans, ankle-high leather boots, long-sleeved black polo shirt, severe blond hair cut short, very little makeup, dark eyebrows, and a very suspicious attitude. She unlocked the glass door and slid it open. I passed the flowers over to her and heard a sharp male voice behind her. She said, “Tell me, your boss, he knows you’re here?”

  “You bet he does,” I said. “And I better haul ass and get back to the shop. I’m backed up on deliveries, and if I don’t move, he’ll wonder where I’ve gone.”

  A sharp nod. “Okay.”

  She started closing the glass door, and I said, “Oh, can I tell the customer how Mr. Drake is doing?”

  “Go away,” she said, and closed the door, latched it, and drew the curtain shut.

  I kept my smile in place, turned around, and slowly walked back across the lawn, like I didn’t have a care in the world, which was blatantly untrue.

  For how often can you walk away from a house, knowing without doubt that by answering a question a certain way, you avoided being killed?

  Back into the Pilot, I started up the reliable Honda engine—thank you, Tokyo—and I sped away from the house and drove around until I found a busy little shopping plaza that afforded me both witnesses and anonymity. I’d gotten the shakes for a moment. No doubt if I had told that blond woman back there that no, this was my last delivery of the day, I was heading home or to get groceries, she would have smiled and invited me in, and in less than a minute, I would have been dead.

  She and her male companion were obviously quite professional, deadly, and sitting on the house for a reason.

  Which was, I hoped, that they were keeping Raymond Drake company for some reason. Alive, I was sure, for whatever else could they be doing in there?

  I took a breath. All right, smarty-pants, now what? Call the Boxford Police Department, tell them that I believed Raymond Drake was in there, being held against his will? Okay, and how would that work out? I had no dealings with the Boxford police, and in a town of about eight thousand souls, I’m sure the police force was professional, but small. Would they listen to me? Kick it up to the state police? And tell us, Mr. Cole, why do you think Mr. Drake is there? What evidence do you have?

  Another deep breath. A couple of things could happen. A Boxford cop would knock on the door, and the hard blond woman would develop a charming personality and tell the cop all was well, and the state police would get the same reception.

  Upshot? Natasha and her friend Boris would know that the floral delivery was done under pretense, and that things were shaking up, and hey, maybe it would be just as easy to slit Raymond Drake’s throat and go on to their next criminal enterprise.

  But I could make another phone call.

  Sure.

  I wasted a few minutes looking for the business card of Special Agent Krueger before realizing it was back home in Tyler Beach.

  I left the shopping plaza parking lot.

  Some smarty-pants.

  When I got home I made a dash up to my rebuilt office, where I recovered the envelope with my story contract with the Law Enforcement Bulletin, and, sure enough, the business card for special Agent Krueger, whereupon I learned his first name was Alan. I dialed his office number and eventually slipped into voicemail hell. I left a message, and then called his cell phone number, slipped into voicemail purgatory, and then left another message.

  He called me back five minutes later.

  I picked up the phone, thought of about a half dozen or so snarky comments to make, and decided on the neutral one.

  “Hello?”

  “Mr. Cole?”

  I swiveled on my kitchen stool. “Agent Krueger. A pleasant surprise. Tell me, are you calling me back from your office phone or cell phone?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “Well, I was just checking on your office’s efficiency, that’s all.”

  “Don’t worry about how we get things done,” he said. “Let’s worry about you. What do you have for us?”

  “You have any contract employees staying at the home of Raymond Drake, Felix’s lawyer?”

  “Of course not.”

  “All right, I still had to ask,” I said. “Any phone calls to his office come back blank. I don’t have his home number. So I went to visit him in Boxford.”

  “What did you find?”

  “A gorgeous house, lawn, and shrubbery, with a man and woman inside who didn’t seem happy to see me.”

  “Did they threaten you?”

  “In a manner of speaking, yes.”

  “What kind of manner?”

  “After being prompted by her male partner—who was hiding in the shadows—I was asked if anybody knew I was there. Meaning, I’m sure, if they brought me in the house and throttled me, would I be missed?”

  “God,” he said. “What did you say?”

  “What do you think?” I said. “I’m here, alive and well and hungry, talking to you. I obviously told them I would be missed.”

  “What did you use as a pretense?”

  “What, you don’t think I’d be missed? No, I brought along some flowers, pretended I was making a floral delivery to Raymond Drake. They said he wasn’t there, and they reluctantly took the flowers and told me to leave them alone. Which I promptly did.”

  “Raymond Drake is at that house,” he said.

  “Agreed,” I said. “So why don’t you go fetch him?”

  A slight sigh of disapproval. “You and I both know he’s in that house. But how are we going to prove it? Call in the Hostage Rescue Team and have them raid the place? And suppose we’re wrong, that Raymond is on some mysterious cruise, out of contact, and those scary folks are just enthusiastic housekeepers?”

  “Then do something about it,” I said. “Electronic surveillance. Send a drone overhead. A couple of your black
-bag boys who can crawl up on the property at night and insert listening or video devices. You’d get your evidence then.”

  He paused. “What else are you going to do?”

  “What else? I’ve just located Felix’s missing lawyer, who could help us untangle why the hell Felix got caught up in a murder he didn’t commit. What else do you want me to do?”

  “Use your story contract from Law Enforcement Bulletin. Ask questions, poke around. That’s what you do, right?”

  “On occasion.”

  “If you want Felix to keep on living, get to it. In the meantime, I’ll see what I can do about Raymond Drake and his possible presence in Boxford. Call again when you get something.”

  I was going to say something snappy in return, but Agent Krueger was too quick for me, having hung up.

  I did the same, checked my watch, and decided I still had time for one last travel.

  The offices of Hollis Spinelli, attorney at law, were located in Cambridge, the upper-class, upper-college, and upper-snotty western neighbor of Boston. After spending a half hour finding a place to park, I walked through their private parking lot and went into their second-floor lobby. There were wide and tall windows overlooking the yards and buildings of the World’s Greatest University—aka Harvard—and the lobby area was full of plush furniture, nice carpeting, all of the day’s newspapers, some magazines, and some serious attitude.

  The receptionist was a severe-looking young man with gold stud earrings in each ear, a pressed blue dress shirt with a white collar, and a scarlet necktie. He had a Bluetooth headset in his left ear. His red hair was trimmed flattop short—like an Archie Andrews throwback—and he looked up at me like I had strolled in with manure clumped around my shoes.

  “Yes?” he asked.

  “My name’s Lewis Cole. I’m here to see Hollis Spinelli, and before we get any further, no, I don’t have an appointment.”

  He pursed his lips. “Then I’m afraid I can’t help you.”

  “I wish you would,” I said. “This seems like a nice, upscale law firm. I’m sure helping troubled people is in your mission statement or something.”