Shakedown jd-1

by Joel Goldman

  The local news had reported that the victim was another drug dealer. The reporter noted there was speculation that the murder could be part of a gang war that had started with the murders earlier in the week. Good, Latrell thought. Things were coming back together.

  Dressed in black jeans and a black T-shirt, he was nothing more than a shadow. No one saw him slip into the eastern edge of the woods. Aided by the moonlight and the years underground that had sharpened his night vision, and with his?ashlight tucked into his backpack, Latrell kept on walking.

  Though the night had cooled, the woods were dense, holding on to the day’s heat. Latrell heard occasional rustling in the underbrush, night prowlers giving him wide berth. It took him close to an hour to reach the entrance, a thin sheen of sweat coating his skin.

  The entrance to the cave was through a hollowed waist-high gash nature had cut into a rocky mound that pushed out from the face of a wooded hillside like a blunt snout.

  Concealed with a quilt delicately woven from fallen tree limbs, torn shrubs, and other debris, it appeared natural and random to anyone who stumbled onto it. It was for him a perfect example of ordered chaos, another trick he played on the rest of the world from whom he hid his true self.

  Latrell’s breath froze in his throat when he saw that his careful camou?age had been shredded, reduced to a pile of rubble scattered around the entrance as if thrown from the back of a truck. He was certain that no animal could have caused such a disturbance. Someone had found his cave. He clutched his gut as if he’d been cut open.

  Kneeling in the darkness, Latrell examined each limb, each fragment of tree bark and remnant of bushes and vines, trying to understand what had happened. His mind raced with so many possibilities the woods began to slowly rotate, speeding up until he threw his arms around the base of a tree, holding on with his eyes pinched closed until the earth stopped moving.

  Breathing heavily, Latrell let go of the tree, sat with his back to the trunk, and hugged his knees to his chest. He sorted the possibilities like the papers he filed at work until he gained control of them. The exercise calmed him so that he could think clearly.

  Whoever had found the entrance may have stopped outside or gone inside and left or gone inside and stayed. There could have been one person or several-kids drunk or stoned, a bum looking for a cool dry place or, worst of all, it could have been someone who knew, someone who might be waiting inside to ruin everything.

  Shock and fear had given way to the fine, hard rage that drove Latrell to put things right. Gripping his?ashlight, he shimmied through the slanted opening, crab walking down ten feet of a rough-hewn chute until he came to the first and smallest of three chambers. Standing, he swept the chamber with the?ashlight’s halogen beam.

  The?oor of the cave was dirty. Latrell had given up trying to keep it clean. Not even he could do that. For once, the dirt was helpful.

  There were two overlapping sets of footprints, one coming toward him and the other going back toward the interior of the cave, neither of them his. They were large, bigger than his feet, and smooth, not ridged like the athletic shoes he wore. The footprints had not been there when Latrell was in the cave the night before. Latrell stopped, listened for echoes of the intruder’s footsteps.

  Hearing nothing, Latrell hurried through a?oor-to-ceiling crevasse that split the first two chambers, the rock cool and moist, easily picking out more footprints on the?oor of the second room with his?ashlight. This room, slightly larger than the first, was a humpbacked oval wide enough for a large table but with a ceiling low enough that even he had to stoop. The opening to the main chamber was a long, shoulder-width vertical cut rising from the base of the opposite wall.

  Latrell waited again, pressing against the edge of the opening, listening for any sound that didn’t belong, and then, comforted by the silence, he pushed through the opening and into his private cathedral. The ceiling was twenty feet above the?oor, the walls sloping outward to the edges of a wide basin with jagged alcoves cut into the limestone face. An underground lake lapped at a rock beach, its far shore beyond the reach of Latrell’s?ashlight.

  He stood on the outer edge, cutting through the darkness with his?ashlight. The cave was empty, save for him.

  Latrell didn’t stop to marvel at the limestone formations dripping from the ceiling like melted wax. He didn’t stop to light the candles he had left hidden on ledges along the wall. He didn’t look for the occasional salamander that crawled out of the ink-black water to lounge on the rocks.

  He went straight to the deepest recess of the cave, his most private space, where behind a small barricade of rocks he kept the photograph Johnny McDonald had taken of him and his mother in front of the house when he was fifteen. There, the rocks had been scattered, kicked to the far corners. The photograph was gone. His breath was coming in gasps, his belly churning.

  He checked his other hiding place, an alcove Latrell could only reach by climbing ten feet above the?oor and holding tight to natural footholds cut into the rock face. That’s where he kept his gun and night-vision goggles. They were gone, too. He cocked his head toward the cavern roof, certain that he heard laughter deep in the darkness. He dropped to the?oor, spotlighting the ceiling with his?ashlight, the beam bouncing back at him from the empty shadows.

  Latrell lit every candle, painting?ickering images on the limestone canvas, kicking small rocks out of his path, hurtling larger ones into the shallows of the lake. The rest of his things, the canned food, the sleeping bag, the change of clothes he kept neatly stacked and folded, were untouched.

  He found more footprints, these coming from the water’s edge as if the person leaving them had emerged from the lake. If someone had crossed the lake, how did he do it? By boat? Then where was the boat? Swimming? How could someone swim across the lake in the dark without getting lost or drowning? Latrell followed the footprints from the lake, tracing their route across his cave, eventually coming to each of his hiding places.

  He walked back to the water, peering out into the darkness. Latrell had never crossed the lake, had no idea how far it extended or how deep it was. He’d only waded out until the water touched his chin, retreating to the safety of dry rock.

  Now someone had crossed the lake, found his hiding place, and stolen his special things and his gun, coming and going through his hidden entrance like they were roommates. He didn’t believe such a person was an accidental explorer. No, it had to be someone who had sought him out, someone who had spied on him until he had unwittingly led him to the cave.

  What was it the FBI agent had said? That someone always sees something. The agent was taunting him, telling Latrell that he was the one who’d seen something and that it was Latrell he had seen.

  This FBI agent who didn’t have a badge, who had tried to trick Latrell into remembering a man who wasn’t there, he had to be the one who’d followed him to the woods, found the cave, and found a way across the lake in the dark, perhaps in one of those in?atable dinghies Latrell had seen in movies.

  This agent who shook so much he couldn’t work. That was nothing but a trick meant to throw him off. Latrell should never have given Marcellus’s dog to him. He should have taken the agent like he took Oleta when she interfered with his plan. That’s what he would have to do now if he were to put things right.

  Latrell waded into the water until it covered his ankles. The invisible insects attacked again. He clawed at his?esh until blood ran down his arms, wanting to peel his skin from his bones. Then he dropped to his knees and began to scream.

  Chapter Thirty-five

  I learned two things at the radiologist’s office. The first was that no one would tell me the results of my MRI. Everyone had a friendly smile, offered a helping hand, and gave me the same answer. Your doctor will tell you.

  If they had seen something awful on the films, if I only had twenty-four hours to live, or if all was well and I could look forward to being interviewed for my hundredth birthday by the Today show weatherman, they w
ouldn’t tell me. Telling me nothing came as easily to them as breathing.

  I imagined the radiologist sitting in her office,?ipping through films, tossing them into separate piles marked yes, no, and try again later, the medical version of a fortune-telling eight ball. Whatever the news, she would pick up the phone and hand it off to the patient’s primary doctor, whose job it would become to break it to the patient while she receded, Oz-like, behind the lead curtain.

  My life, my future, had become a digitized entry in the American medical machine. I’d been reduced to a one-dimensional collection of data points, diagnostic codes, and billing schedules. The system knew everything about me, but I was the one who remained in the dark, enlightenment waiting on the other side of the weekend, another version of the neon sign in the bar on Strawberry Hill promising free beer tomorrow.

  The second thing I learned was that an MRI made a hell of a racket.

  “It’s the magnets,” the technician explained, her genial disembodied voice filling my headphones as I lay inside an elongated tube that with only a few inches between my nose and the ceiling was more coffin than diagnostic dream machine.

  “Just relax,” she told him, “and don’t move.”

  “Easy for you to say,” I answered.

  “That’s why we get to say it,” she said with a practiced laugh.

  My appointment was at eight o’clock. I was finished at eleven. While the MRI was thin-slicing my bones and tissues, relieving them of their secrets, my squad was being x-rayed by the polygraph examiner. I was lying still. I wondered if any of them were still lying.

  Kate had left a message on my cell phone that our class in facial micro expressions would begin at seven o’clock at my house. She was, she said, bringing dinner and a toothbrush. I heard the echo of advice I had often given Wendy: “Be careful what you ask for.” I had eight hours to ponder the women in my life. That was plenty of time to sort things out, even if I spent part of it chasing bad guys.

  Chapter Thirty-six

  I pulled into the driveway of Jill Rice’s house as the door to her three-car garage was going up. I waited while she backed a Mercedes sedan onto the driveway, braking just in time to avoid crashing into my Chevrolet’s grille. She laid on her horn and mouthed something in her rearview mirror that looked like asshole but could just as easily have been fucking asshole.

  I was glad to catch her off guard and angry. That made it more likely I would learn something useful. I’d put on an old sport coat and tie that didn’t match. My attire was intended to depress expectations, another effective tool in lowering someone’s defenses. The more they looked down on you, the more likely they were to underestimate you.

  I had slipped my Detective Funkhouser ID into the clear plastic slot of my wallet normally occupied by my FBI credentials. I knew the shelf life on my phony ID was running out, but I needed all the time I could get before Colby Hudson found out I was investigating him. I got out of my car, holding my ID in the palm of my hand, and approached her car.

  “Jill Rice?”

  She rolled her window down, her eyes obscured by oversized dark glasses. “Yes. You’re blocking my driveway. Who are you?”

  “Detective Funkhouser. Kansas City, Kansas, Police Department.”

  I?ashed her my ID. She took off her sunglasses, double-checking my picture against my face.

  “I hope this is important.”

  I stepped closer to her door. “Are you in a hurry, Mrs. Rice?”

  “Yes, detective,” she said, one arm resting in the open window, the other on the steering wheel. “I’m in a hurry.”

  She was an attractive woman, forty-plus, her tanned arms lightly muscled, her auburn hair cut short, her pink lip gloss gleaming, and her face unburdened by crow’s-feet, laugh lines, or other evidence of natural life. She was wearing a pale green, low-cut tennis top, and a black tennis skirt that was hiked above her well-toned thighs. Rice leaned forward just enough so that her top billowed out, offering me a fuller view of breasts that either defied gravity or weren’t original equipment, assuming the sight would either shorten our meeting or distract me from its purpose. I kept my eyes locked on hers until she straightened her blouse, which she finally did, neither of us blushing.

  “I won’t keep you any longer than I have to.”

  “What’s this about?”

  “Your husband, ma’am.”

  “I don’t have a husband, Detective. I have an ex-husband.”

  “My mistake, ma’am. I apologize. I visited your ex-husband yesterday. He seemed quite worried.”

  “I’m not surprised. Prison would make anyone worry.”

  “You’re right about that, ma’am. Any idea what he’d be worried about, not counting the whole getting-raped-in-theshower thing, because I don’t think that’s what was keeping him up at night.”

  “I don’t know and I don’t care. What’s this got to do with me?”

  “That’s what I’m trying to find out, Mrs. Rice. I can’t share with you all the details of our investigation at this time, but it appears that Mr. Rice may be under pressure to authorize the sale of certain of his assets against his will.”

  She shook her head. “Against his will?”

  “What I mean, ma’am, is that he may be the victim of extortion, someone trying to take advantage of his incarceration, figuring he’s in no position to do anything about it. We’ve learned that you’re also the owner of those assets, so you can understand why I need to talk with you about all of this, even if you are in a hurry. I could have you come down to headquarters and talk there. We’d have plenty of time and no one would bother us. Or we could try and wrap this up now.”

  Rice let out a sigh. “Thomas doesn’t have any assets. I got everything in the divorce.”

  “Actually, ma’am, that’s only partly correct. I checked the court file on your divorce and it turns out that Mr. Rice gets half the proceeds from the sale of your house and he has to sign off on the sale price. We understand that you’ve agreed to sell the house at a price that’s well below market value, which means that Mr. Rice comes out the loser. If someone is using threats to make Mr. Rice sell cheap, that’s against the law. Both of you would be victims of extortion.”

  She tossed her head back, laughing with disgust. “That little shit. He wouldn’t know the truth if it bit him in the ass.”

  “And would you, Mrs. Rice?”

  “Would I what?”

  “Know the truth if it bit you in the ass.”

  “Look, Detective. Thomas agreed to give me everything in the divorce. I thought it was because he felt so guilty, but that’s an emotion Thomas is not familiar with. He told me he made a deal that would help him get started when he got out of prison. All I had to do was sell the house and his car at the right price to the right person.”

  “And you went along?”

  “And I went along. He said that if I didn’t, he would fight over everything. I went along because I wanted to cut my ties with him as quickly as possible.”

  “When did he tell you about this deal?”

  “Right after he agreed to plead guilty,” she said. “He said we’d have to wait six months after he went to jail so my name would be the only one on the papers and the sales wouldn’t attract any attention.”

  “Did he tell you how much to sell the car and house for?”

  “He said the buyer would name the price.”

  I waited a beat before asking the money question, afraid of being right. “Did he tell you who the buyer would be?”

  “Not at first. He said he’d let me know when he knew. He called me a few weeks ago and asked me to come for a visit. It was the first time I’d been in a prison. It was awful. I almost felt bad that I had turned him in, but he was the one who cheated on me. So I went to see him and he said someone named Colby Hudson was the buyer. I sold him the car a couple of weeks ago and we closed on the house the other night.”

  Rice’s eyes widened as she said his name, her hand suddenly cove
ring her mouth. “Oh my God, I am such an idiot! He’s an FBI agent. I saw that on the forms he filled out. Was I wrong to sell the car and the house to an FBI agent? Did Thomas get me into another one of his messes?”

  I sidestepped her question. “I can’t answer that, ma’am. Have you talked to Mr. Rice since then?”

  “No.”

  “Had you ever met Agent Hudson before? Maybe while your husband’s case was going on?”

  “No. I mean there were a lot of agents at our house when they arrested Thomas, but I only met two of them-a man and woman. I’m sorry, but I don’t remember their names. Am I in trouble?”

  Her concern may have been sincere. It may not have occurred to Rice that her husband was dragging her into yet another scheme until a police detective showed up and started asking her questions. Or, it could all be an act. She seemed too calculating a woman not to have questioned giving a sweetheart deal to an FBI agent so her ex-husband could get a fresh start when he got out of prison. I ignored her question again, sticking to my own.

  “When you went to visit your husband, what was his mood like? Was he glad to see you? Was he worried or afraid?”

  “He was pathetic. He whined how sorry he was and how much he missed me. All the usual crap. If he was scared, he didn’t show it. But then, Thomas was the best salesman I ever saw in my life.”

  I studied Rice, not saying anything, waiting for her to volunteer something. She tugged at her top again and then checked her watch.

  “Can I go now, Detective? I really am in a hurry.”

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  I moved my car to the curb, watching her drive away, wondering if I would know the truth if it bit me in the ass. Colby’s story that Jill Rice had called our office looking for a buyer didn’t stand up against her version. That didn’t make Colby the liar but it did mean one of them wasn’t telling the truth. Thomas Rice had offered his alternate reality, that his wife had gotten everything in the divorce and that what she did with the property was up to her. He was careful enough to tell a story that was at least technically true even if it wasn’t the whole story.