The Alex Shanahan Series

by Lynne Heitman

  “MasterCard,” I said.

  “How did you know that?”

  “His wife told me he hated credit cards. She had to remind him to carry one.” I leaned in toward the screen to see what Felix was looking at. “Does that give you the name of the agent that checked him out at the front desk? I’d like to talk to that person.”

  “No one checked him out. He walked.”

  “What do you mean ‘walked’? He didn’t check out?”

  He pointed to one of the fields on the screen. “His checkout time shows as noon on Tuesday. Noon is the default time the system uses for automatic checkout. That means he left without stopping at the desk. We must have used the credit card imprint he left when he checked in. That’s what we do when people walk. See? It’s not signed.”

  I wrote down “Tuesday, 3/6, noon—checkout.”

  “It wouldn’t have been like John to walk out without paying,” I said, “and he wouldn’t have left the charge on his credit card.”

  “Then someone must have snatched him.”

  “What?”

  “You know, abducted him. He wasn’t killed in his room and you say he wouldn’t have walked the bill, so either he left and never came back or someone came and took him. They gathered up all his stuff and let the system check him out. That way no one knew he was missing for a few days. In the meantime I’ve had two guests in there and the room has been cleaned up, wiped down, and vacuumed.”

  It made sense—I had no activity for John after the phone call to Terry—but I couldn’t get my head around the idea that anyone could have taken him someplace he didn’t want to go.

  “Here—” Felix started the printer and turned the monitor so I could see it. “I made this for you.”

  It was a timeline, his version of the one I had been trying to construct. “Felix, this is great. Is this what your program comes up with?”

  “Basically, but I added a few things.”

  “Felix, I love this.”

  “Piece of cake, Miss Shanahan.”

  I looked over the list of activities, trying to picture John going through each one.

  “Did your room service waiter see John to give him the ice cream?”

  “Emilio saw him both times—to take him dinner and the ice cream.”

  “So John went out after ten o’clock, came back before one, walked in, picked up the phone immediately, and made the call. Where did he go?”

  “He had a rental car, too. Did you know that?” Felix was on to another screen. “Red Ford Taurus, Florida license plate DK614V.”

  “I did. In fact…” I reached for my backpack again and fished out the receipt I’d taken from Mae’s kitchen table. For its compact size, it had lots of information. “The car was dropped off at six o’clock Tuesday morning,” I added the time to the list. “That narrows the window considerably. Now we’re talking about a five hour time frame. If he was abducted, he probably didn’t return his own car, which means…” I scanned the receipt. “Yep. The charge went to his MasterCard. I’ll bet they hit his credit card the same way you did.”

  Felix had been paging through screens, and found one that warranted his close attention. “Hold on.” His eyes scanned and his lips moved silently until he had his thoughts straight. “If someone took him from his room, it was probably closer to one a.m. than six.”

  I looked over his shoulder at the screen. Whatever he was seeing was not obvious to me. “How do you know that?”

  “See this entry?” He pointed to a small “NS” in a field next to John’s name. “That means no service. Housekeeping puts it in the record when they don’t have to make up the room, in case someone complains. That was my idea. They didn’t change the sheets at all, which means he never slept in his bed.”

  “Felix, your talents would be wasted as a travel agent.”

  He beamed.

  “Can you print this stuff out for me?”

  “No sweat.” He clicked his mouse, and the printer began to clatter again. This time, he turned, opened a door in the credenza behind him, and revealed the printer’s nesting place.

  “Is there anything else you can think of, Felix?” I almost hated to leave. This kid was a treasure trove of information.

  He sat back in his chair and blinked up at the ceiling. “I might be able to get you a list of cars that were in the lot that night that weren’t supposed to be there.”

  “Surveillance cameras?”

  “Way more low-tech. We use a security company to make sure no one uses our lot for long-term airport parking. What they do is drive around the lot once an hour and write down the license plate numbers for any car that doesn’t have one of our parking permits, which you get when you check in, so then if the car is there for more than two hours we can tell and we get it towed, only it usually takes forever to get a tow truck out here—”

  “Felix, I would love to have that information.”

  “Okay. I’ll have to make a few phone calls.”

  “Can I see the room John stayed in?”

  “Oh, yeah. Sure. Absolutely. Let me just check…” He pulled up another screen. “Yeah, there’s no one in there right now. I’ll take you up.”

  He gathered the printouts and handed them to me. I followed him out to the front desk, where he made a room key. We stepped into the elevator and swooshed up to the sixth floor of a seven-story building.

  This hotel had a totally different feel than mine. It was in Miami, but it could have been in Omaha for all the accommodations to the locale. I suppose if you’re on the road for two hundred days a year, it’s comforting to always see the same orange carpet and wide wooden doors with brass kickplates and doorknobs.

  After a sharp knock, he slipped the flat key into its slot, opened the door, and flicked on the lights. He started to give me the grand tour when his radio crackled. He was urgently needed at the front desk. Something about a room mix-up. He clearly didn’t want to go.

  “Can I call you if I come up with anything?”

  I gave him my card. “Please do. Use my cell phone number. It’s the only number on the card that’s still good.”

  “Cool.” And he was gone, sprinting for the elevators, off to solve another problem.

  That left me alone in the guest room, the last place anyone had seen John besides the Dumpster. As promised by the name on the bath soap, the room was a suite. The front room was made up as a sitting area with a couch, a console television, and a wide window that opened out onto a large center atrium. Heavy curtains covered the window in the bedroom. The room was spacious with two queen-size beds and a dresser. The air conditioner was going full blast, which I assumed signaled the expected arrival of another guest later in the day.

  I didn’t know what to look for—mainly I tried to get a feel for the place—but what I saw made me sad. Durable carpet, cheap phones with plastic overlays on the keypads, assembly line paintings on the walls. The place was spotless, antiseptic, and sterile—so different from John’s house back in Chelsea where well-used toys littered the floor, and the most important use of walls and shelves was to display the family photos. What were you doing here, John, so far away from home?

  Chapter Nine

  ​It was dark by the time I made my way back to the airport. I’d stopped for dinner on the way, not because I was particularly hungry, but because it further delayed the assignment I’d given myself for the evening, which was to call Terry McTavish in Boston and ask him if he was doing a dope deal that got his brother killed. I made another pass around level six of the Dolphin Garage, which, with its light green signs, was not to be confused with the Flamingo Garage and its orangey pink signs. The sodium lamps that lit the vast concrete space made it seem even darker outside than the hour would suggest. It was a heavy traffic day. I ended up in a far corner of one of the higher levels and felt good about snagging that space. I felt even better when a kidney red sedan showed up just behind me and began circling. Good luck, buddy. Try the next level.

  I dra
gged myself toward the elevator, slithering between the Mercedes coupes and Dodge Rams and Ford Explorers that were packed together well within door-dinging range. The sound of the airport hummed in the background, but in the top levels of the parking garage, it was quiet enough to hear the pings and ticks of recently extinguished car engines. I also heard the kidney car cruising around. If he was waiting for someone to pull out and vacate a space for him, he was in the wrong place. There was zero foot traffic on this level besides me.

  As he turned onto my row and approached from behind, I stepped to the left to let him pass. As he puttered slowly by, I caught a glimpse of his face in the rearview mirror. He was staring straight back at me. When our eyes met, his cut away and he immediately sped up. My heartbeat turned to an anxious flutter as he passed right by the turnoff that would have taken him up or down to another level. The flutter advanced to pounding as I watched him and realized he was not searching for a space. He was moving too fast.

  I looked around to make sure there really was no one else within earshot. This was a public garage, for God’s sake, at one of the busiest airports on earth. Where was the traveling public when I needed them?

  He made the turn to my row and came around again. This time he didn’t pass. He hung back, matching my pace, which felt far too slow. I slipped between a Jeep and a pickup truck, putting a row of parked cars between us.

  Get the license number, I thought. Get a description, dammit. Do something besides acting like a scared rabbit. But when I tried to see inside the car, to put a face on the faceless pursuer, the overhead lights were too bright. All I could see was a black glare. And all I could hear was the quiet thrum of his engine. More like a vibration than a sound, it crawled up my back, up my neck, and laid its hand on the back of my skull. I was shaking.

  What if he had a gun? What if he wasn’t alone? I hadn’t seen anyone else in the car, but that didn’t mean they weren’t there. That’s what did it. The thought of being pulled into a strange man’s car and driven somewhere. Somewhere dark and isolated. I turned and ran. His motor roared. His tires squealed on the slick cement. The acrid odor of burned rubber filled the air. He was in reverse, backing out of the row as fast as he could.

  I made it to the elevator bank in seconds and without looking back shoved through a heavy metal door to the stairs. The echo of my footsteps bounced around the tall, narrow well of unfinished concrete and iron. My knees, stiffened by adrenaline, made each of the stairs feel awkward and narrow.

  Halfway down. Stop. Listen for following footsteps. Hold my breath so I can hear. None. Take off again. Move fast.

  At the crossover level, I stood behind the half-closed door, peeking through the crack. Other cars were circling, but no sign of the kidney car. And there were lots of people making their way on foot to the terminal. I took a deep breath, stepped out, and jogged the full length of the garage. I didn’t stop until I arrived at the other end. I turned to scan behind me. If the red car was there, I couldn’t see it.

  Inside the terminal the moving sidewalk didn’t move fast enough, so I motored along beside. I didn’t slow down until I was standing in the blessedly crowded lobby of my hotel, with the elevator on the way. I bent over to catch my breath and ease the pain in my side. Perspiration ran down my nose and dropped onto the marble floor. When I felt a hand brush my shoulder, I bolted upright and almost took off again. If I had, I would have bowled over the man standing in front of me.

  He took a look at my face. “Miss Shanahan, are you all right?”

  “I’m fine.”

  It was the front desk agent who had checked me in. “I do apologize, but I called to you from the desk and I don’t think you heard.”

  “No, I didn’t. I’m sorry.” The doors to the elevator I’d been waiting for were closing by the time I noticed. I reached for the call button, hoping to catch it. Too late. My heartbeat was coming into normal range, oxygen was flowing through my bloodstream, and the dizziness was fading when I looked at him again.

  “I just wanted to make sure you got your message.” He handed me a slip of paper. “The caller said it was important.”

  The message was from Mae, and it was information I’d been waiting for.

  “Thank you,” I said.

  The elevator had come again. I stepped in and studied the list of phone numbers she’d left, calls John had made from his cell phone while he was in Florida. Two went to his house, one to what she described as a bar in Salem, Massachusetts. The last one was the most interesting. With a 305 area code, it was a local Miami number. When I got back to my room, I picked up the phone and dialed it. The call was answered in less than one ring by a woman with a crisp, authoritative voice.

  “Good evening,” she said. “Federal Bureau of Investigation.”

  Chapter Ten

  There’s a good reason not to go running in South Florida after the sun has been up for a while. The air outside turns sticky and thick and all the oxygen leaches out. If there’s a fire raging nearby it also turns smudged and dirty, conjuring images of ash and soot darkening the tender, pink linings of your lungs. Your face throbs, your body loses copious amounts of fluids, and no matter what you wear on your head, you can still feel the sun baking your scalp.

  But I had new shoes. New running shoes made everything right with the world. They made me faster and lighter because they came out of the box with Mercury’s own wings. So despite Bobby Avidor and his dismal accusation, despite being chased around by an unknown pursuer, it had been a fast, hard run, and as I stood cooling down in the lobby of the hotel, I dared to feel good. It was the shoes.

  “You just missed Mr. Ryczbicki,” I was told when I stopped at the desk for messages. “He was here looking for you not two minutes ago.”

  “Did he leave a message?”

  “He said to tell you your bag was here.”

  I didn’t like the scene as I came down the escalator and approached the Majestic Airlines baggage claim office. The ramp-side door was open, held that way by five or six baggage service agents clustered in the doorway. They stared out into the bag room, hands over their mouths as if they were telling secrets.

  Baggage service agents are the most cynical of a cynical breed. By definition of their jobs, the only customers they ever see are the ones ready to unload with both barrels because their bags are missing, damaged, or pilfered. Eventually, even the best ones come to see the world through the warped prism of customer discontent. The unabashed curiosity of such a group on its own would have been cause for concern. But it was the smell from the bag room that really had me worried. As I got closer, I realized the agents weren’t covering their mouths to whisper; they were blocking out the overpowering stench that hung like a putrid mist in the dense tropical heat.

  My stomach started to churn.

  I approached a petite agent with smooth olive skin and long black hair pulled into a thick ponytail. “I’m looking for Phil Ryczbicki. I’m supposed to meet him down here.”

  She asked for my name, and when I gave it, heads snapped around. The other agents stared at me with ominous recognition. Bic’s voice boomed from inside the bag room. “All you people get back to work. Joe, go down to the freight house and get a forklift for this thing.”

  Forklift? My anxiety deepened. It was never a good sign when a forklift was summoned to the bag room.

  The agents shuffled around so I could get through. They gave me a wide berth, careful not to get accidentally soiled by my sweaty running clothes. The gap closed behind me… and no one went back to work.

  The odor inside the bag room was so rank the first whiff withered all my sinus membranes and forced tears from my eyes. Bic was there, standing over what was without question the source of the odor—my bag. “Close that door,” he barked at the employees in the doorway. His voice ricocheted off the concrete walls like a bullet fired from a high-powered rifle. “Get back to work. Now!”

  My bag was unzipped, splayed on the floor like a pig with its belly sliced ope
n, and I wondered who had ventured close enough to unzip it. Everything that was pushing out was mine—except for all those dead fish. There was a big pile of them folded in among the underwear and T-shirts, the toothpaste and the blow-dryer, complete with heads, tails, scales, and rheumy dead eyes.

  Bic had me fixed in a coldly furious blue-eyed stare. He didn’t seem affected by the stench. Must have been the anger clogging up his sense of smell. “I told you I didn’t want any of this crap starting here.” He snapped the words off, leaving the sharp, ragged points. “This kind of garbage might be acceptable at Logan,” he said, “but not here. Not in my station.”

  I was angry, too, and not just because all my stuff was marinating in fish guts. I was mad at myself for checking the bag in the first place and leaving myself open for a sucker punch. And that’s what it felt like. A hard punch in the gut that had ripped a few internal organs loose.

  “The boys in Boston may have misrouted my bag,” I said, “but they’re not the ones who added the fish of the day. That had to be your guys. This is an organized racket.”

  “I don’t care.”

  “You don’t care?”

  “If you’re not here, this—” He pointed to the bag. “This fucking bullshit doesn’t happen. My operation is not in an uproar, and I’m not standing here getting stink all over my suit. That’s on you and I am not taking the hit for it.”

  “Thank you for your concern.”

  “I don’t deserve this shit you’re bringing down on me.”

  “No one deserves this kind of shit.” I wanted to kick the bag for emphasis but was afraid to get fish juice all over my new running shoes. “Including me, Bic. And if you had any balls you would find whoever did this and put the blame where it belongs.”

  “Where would I even begin to look? They hate you, Alex. They all hate you. That’s what happens when you off one of the brothers.”

  That was it. I moved so close, I smelled his aftershave instead of the fish. “This is the last time I’m going to say this to you. The man got himself killed. All I did was get out of the way before he killed me, too. You were not there, Bic. You can’t possibly know what happened, and I’m tired of your flip comments. I never want to hear another word about Boston from you. Do you understand?”