The Boat Man: A Suspense Thriller (A Reed & Billie Novel Book 1)

by Dustin Stevens

  Late in the afternoon Reed shut his computer down, leading Billie out to the parking lot, ignoring the sideways glances from coworkers as he went. Once loaded into his sedan he drove eleven blocks and parked along the street, leaving his partner behind and walking the last two on foot.

  Halfway between four and five o’clock he stepped onto a sagging front porch and knocked on a door, the screened top of it shaking with the impact. He took a step back and waited, hearing the sound of a television on inside, the approach of footsteps.

  A moment later the door swung open, the top half of Gale Pearlman visible on the other side. If she was surprised in the slightest to see him she didn’t show it, wiping her face with a cloth napkin as she appraised him.

  “Mrs. Pearlman, I’m sorry to show up like this,” Reed said, “but I had a couple additional questions and I thought you might be the best person to answer them for me.”

  Taking a step forward she looked through the screen in either direction before stepping back, offering a slight nod. “Thank you for not parking in front of the house. Will keep the lookey-loos from getting too fired up.”

  Reed took the statement as an invitation, stepping inside, and pausing on a small linoleum foyer. He glanced down at the three pairs of shoes lined by the door and pushed his from his feet, stepping on their heels without bothering with the laces.

  “I hope you don’t mind, I was just having my dinner and watching my stories,” Pearlman said, moving straight back for the couch. In front of it stood a wooden folding TV stand, a plate of pork chops and gravy half-eaten atop it.

  The smell filled the air as Reed moved for the arm chair sitting perpendicular to it, his stomach clenching but remaining silent.

  “Please, continue,” Reed said, watching as Pearlman took up her utensils, intent to move on with or without his permission.

  “You know, I figured you’d be back,” Pearlman said, starting again on the meat.

  “Why’s that?” Reed asked, masking his surprise at the statement.

  “Because the last time we spoke, it was plain as day that you were just getting started,” Pearlman said, cutting a chunk of meat free from the bone and stabbing it with her fork. “Hard for a man to know what to ask when he doesn’t know what he’s looking for.”

  She forked the oversized bite into her mouth and chewed loudly, Reed looking away as he considered the statement.

  Very little actual time had passed since their last meeting, though she was right in assessing his position was radically different. No longer was he solely focused on whoever might have committed a heinous act or two, now pulling on the common thread between them, determined to see what had driven someone to do so.

  Only then would he be able to figure out who he was searching for.

  “That’s quite astute,” Reed said, nodding, forcing a small smile. “And quite accurate, I have no problem admitting.”

  Continuing to chew, Pearlman nodded in approval at his humility.

  “Today I only have a single question for you,” Reed said, reaching into his pocket and extracting the same photo, still folded into quadrants. “If the answer is no, I will be on my way with my sincerest apologies for interrupting your dinner.”

  Across from him, Pearlman seemed to sense what he was trying to say, placing her utensils down and pushing the plate a few inches away.

  “And if I say yes?”

  “Then I will probably have a few more questions to ask,” Reed said, still holding the sheet between his thumb and forefinger, resting it against his thigh.

  Raising a hand to him, Pearlman flicked her fingers back towards herself, motioning for him to pass over the paper.

  “Are you sure?” Reed asked. “You might not have much of an appetite afterwards.”

  The right side of Pearlman’s face curled up as if she was offended, her head rocking back a few inches. “Boy, one thing you ain’t ever got to worry about with this old woman is her appetite.”

  There was no doubt in Reed’s mind about the veracity of the statement, the corners of his mouth both turning upward. He rolled his body forward and raised his backside from the chair, extending the paper out to her, before dropping himself back down against the green upholstery.

  One corner at a time Pearlman unwrapped the image before setting it flat on the TV stand beside her dinner, brushing it smooth with both hands. Once she had done so she stared down at it a long moment, her face unmoving.

  More than once Reed wanted to ask if she recognized it, prompt her to search back in her mind, but he remained silent.

  Anything she had needed to come from her own recollections, an organic response not persuaded by him.

  Seconds seemed to crawl by as Reed forced himself to remain motionless, his elbows resting on his thighs, his fingers laced and hanging down between his legs. He turned his gaze to the side so he wasn’t staring straight at her, a muted episode of the newest cop procedural playing on the screen.

  The irony was almost too much to ignore.

  “Yes, I remember this,” Pearlman said, snapping Reed’s attention back to her, palpitations racing through his chest.

  She reached out and traced each of the letters with her fingers, her movements slow and deliberate. “They called themselves the KOTB. Kings of The Bottoms.”

  The simplicity of it was almost too much to bear, Reed biting his tongue to keep from cursing his own fallibility.

  “They were here for a total of maybe two, three years,” Pearlman said, her voice far away, her mind in another place. “Dropped out of sight for good a little over two years ago.”

  His breathing picked up as Reed stared at her, resisting the urge to start jotting notes down, not wanting to interrupt her thoughts.

  “Two years ago? You’re sure?” Reed asked.

  “Yes,” Pearlman said, her eyes growing glassy as she rocked her head up and down. “I know because that’s when my Henry passed away. I remember at the time being worried they might start messing with me, but they never did.

  “They were gone by then.”

  Warmth crept up Reed’s back as he added the information to what he already knew. Not only did he now have a name, but he had a specific time frame to work from.

  “Why were you concerned? Had they ever bothered you before?”

  “No,” Pearlman said, “but like I said, Henry was still here. He’d been in the Navy before we got married, knew how to shoot a gun.”

  She left the end of her statement dangling, allowing Reed to ascertain that it was common knowledge he wasn’t afraid to fire it either.

  “So, two years or so?” Reed asked.

  “Yeah,” Pearlman said. “They just kind of showed up one day, all with those tattoos you’ve got here. Started messing with folks, stealing things, being a general nuisance to everybody.”

  The last sentence brought disdain to her face, the sheen of moisture on her eyes at the mention of her late husband now gone.

  “Were the police ever notified?” Reed asked, again wondering why his search had revealed nothing.

  “Never by us,” Pearlman said, shaking her head. “But I imagine by somebody at some point.”

  Scads of questions came to Reed’s mind as he tried to get a handle on what Pearlman had just said. Most of them were things he knew she couldn’t speak on, but that he needed to find the answers to fast.

  His pulse pounded through his temples as he ran his hands down the front of his jeans, fighting not to jump up and run straight back to his car, set to digging on a new line of inquiry.

  “Just one more question, if you wouldn’t mind,” Reed said. “How many people in total would you say was involved with this gang?”

  The right side of Pearlman’s nose pulled up in a snort, the sound sharp and derisive. “Gang? Oh no, this was barely enough kids to be called a group. Maybe a half dozen or so, tops.”

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  “Kings of The Bottoms.”

  “Kings of The Bottoms,” Grimes repea
ted, looking down at the picture in his hands, the creases in it growing wider with excessive use. “Not a real original bunch, are they?”

  “Were,” Reed corrected. “Past tense.”

  Grimes looked up from the photo and tossed it onto his desk, the paper landing near the middle intersection and rotating once before resting on a side. “As in they no longer exist?”

  There was no attempt to hide the smirk on Reed’s face as he rocked his head back, letting the full effect of it hit Grimes. “If our database is any indicator, they never existed at all.”

  The eyebrows on Grimes’s forehead rose a bit higher as he opened his mouth to speak, paused, then started again. “Really? There’s nothing in there anywhere?”

  “Not about that emblem or any complaints, arrests, warrants, anything ever associated with them. Like I said, it’s as if they never existed.”

  “Yet you’re sure they did?” Grimes pressed.

  “Yes,” Reed said, motioning at the photo. “That tattoo proves they existed, the statement of Gale Pearlman confirms it.”

  A moment passed as Grimes lowered his shoulders deeper into his chair, his chin receding back into his chest. Thick folds of skin gathered along the bottom rim of it, one layered atop another.

  “I feel like you’re taking this somewhere, Detective, I’m just not sure where.”

  The question was one Reed had expected when he first requested the meeting with Grimes, knowing full well the conclusion he was fast drawing towards would not sit well with the captain.

  “Figuring out what these guys did will enable me to figure out who’s going after them now.”

  The frown remained on Grimes’s face as he kept his fingers laced, the pads of his thumbs tapping together above his belt. “But you can’t do that now, because...?”

  “Because somebody is hiding something,” Reed said, pushing the words out in one quick breath. “Something happened that made these guys suddenly disband two years ago. And it was something bad enough that now someone has taken it upon themselves to rectify the situation.”

  Without even realizing it, Reed had slid to the front edge of his chair, the same one that Brandt had been perched in that morning. His heart rate and breathing patterns were both high, his brow wet with perspiration.

  “So you’re saying we’ve got a mole?” Grimes asked, his face, his voice, relaying the displeasure he felt at the mere insinuation.

  “That I don’t know,” Reed said, moving back an inch, forcing his hands to remain flat on his thighs. “What I do know is somebody worked damn hard to scrub these guys from the system.”

  He paused for a moment, collecting his thoughts, thinking of a new way to approach things.

  “Think about it, Captain. Have we ever had a gang before, no matter how small, no matter how short lived, that didn’t pop up on somebody’s radar? That didn’t piss off the wrong neighbor, or try to rob the wrong old lady, or something that got them at least a warning?”

  On the other side of the desk the look of discontent softened a bit, Reed knowing he had struck pay dirt. Both of them had spent far too many years with the department to believe that any group just came together, acted as proper citizens, and dissolved without the slightest hint of mischief.

  Especially not someplace like The Bottoms.

  “What are you asking me to do?” Grimes said. “If something is in there and isn’t coming up because it was expunged, you know there’s nothing I can do about it.”

  The response too was something Reed had come in anticipating. There were only two logical explanations he could conceive for the Kings having been nowhere in the system. One was a dirty uniform, which would take an unheard of level of deceit from both them and their partner to pull off.

  Possible, but not likely.

  The other was that for some reason the charges had been redacted, expunged from the permanent record by a judge and therefore untouchable by someone like him.

  “I know,” Reed said, settling his gaze on Grimes, hoping the look alone was enough to relay what he was trying to say.

  A long moment of silence passed between them as Grimes matched the stare, realization settling over his features.

  “So you came here to tell me, not ask me,” he finally said.

  “No,” Reed replied, pushing himself to a standing position. “I came here so if Brandt and her watchdog show up here again in the morning you’ll have enough to keep them off my ass.”

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  There were two rules that were non-negotiable at the place Reed was headed. The first was to never, ever arrive empty handed. If services were to be performed, payment must be made.

  The second was if a job well done was sought after, never let that payment be in cash.

  The full handle of Jack Daniels was stowed away in a gym bag as Reed walked up to the front door, the weight of it resting against his hip. He could sense the liquid inside sloshing back and forth with each step, though his shoes scraping against the sidewalk masked any sound.

  The place was somewhere he hadn’t been in many months, not since before everything changed. In the time since he hadn’t been avoiding the place, no reason to, but as he grew closer he could sense he hadn’t made an effort to seek it out either.

  Like most of the other things from his life just six months before, it had been purged away, just one less reminder of the way things were and could never be again.

  The sound of the doorbell echoed through the house as Reed pressed it and stepped back, waiting as feet shuffling over tile grew louder within. A moment later the corner of the curtains over the glass top of the door peeled back, the porch light coming on simultaneously.

  The glare from the light caused Reed to take another step back, raising his hand to his face as the door wrenched open, a rush of warm air escaping.

  “Can I help you?” an elderly woman asked, suspicion in her voice. Despite the hour she was already in pajamas and an oversized pink bathrobe, her short grey hair in tight curls around her head.

  “Good evening, Mrs. Chamberlain,” Reed said, moving back a few inches out of the direct light. “Is Deek home?”

  The suspicion in her voice spread to her face as she looked at Reed, peering down her nose at him. “So you’ve been here before?”

  It was at least the tenth time Reed had stood on the front porch, though the first time he had ever been scrutinized so closely. On previous trips Riley had handled the interactions with Mrs. Chamberlain, the two falling into friendly banter before being welcomed inside.

  Apparently now those days were gone, Reed just another potentially nefarious character looking to corrupt her grandson.

  Reaching into his sweatshirt, Reed pulled out his badge, letting it slap against his chest. “Yes ma’am, I’m here on official police business. I need Deek to run some records for me.”

  All concern bled away as she looked from the badge to Reed, a faint smile crossing her lips. There seemed to be no notice of the duffel bag over his shoulder as she stepped aside, extending an arm towards the door.

  “Oh, I’m so sorry, Officer. One can never be too certain these days.”

  “Not a problem, Mrs. Chamberlain,” Reed said, stepping through and heading straight for the doorway on the opposite side of the foyer. “Thank you so much.”

  “That’s quite alright, you just go on down. Derrick is always happy to help!”

  Her voice carried through the door swinging closed behind Reed as he descended a set of wooden stairs, a two foot swath of carpet covering the middle portion, bare blonde pine on the outside. They creaked heavily beneath him as he trudged downward, the sound of video games growing louder with each step.

  Fourteen rungs after passing through the doorway, Reed found himself on the basement floor, a contrast in every way to the scene upstairs. What had been a scene out of Country Living magazine, filled with light blue and cranberry red, had been replaced by an exaggerated dorm room, the entire basement turned into an enormous den of
arrested development.

  One half of the basement was a living space, with a king sized water bed and a kitchenette, both illuminated by neon signs that had once hung on the walls of some nearby tavern. Across from it was a makeshift living area, the centerpiece an eighty inch television, towering speakers and subwoofers on either side.

  Parked in front of the television was a single black leather recliner, its occupant extended back as far as the chair would allow. From where he stood Reed could see only the top of his head, most of it covered with a headset, and a pair of feet silhouetted against a war video game.

  “Damn it, where is my sniper!” the occupant shouted, a male voice, slightly pinched. “Sniper! Where the hell are you?!”

  Reed arched on eyebrow as onscreen the main character took one bullet and then another, digital blood spatter shooting into various directions.

  “Get them off my ass!” the voice yelled, a note of fear and desperation present, before a final kill shot struck home, the top of the main character’s head exploding in vibrant color.

  The screen froze as the game was paused, the headphones pulled down over a shock of thick dark hair.

  “Grandma, how many times have I asked you to not come down uninvited while I’m working?”

  An air of annoyance was unavoidable.

  “I came down because I’m working,” Reed said, putting a bit of extra bass in his voice for effect.

  The reclined portion of the chair snapped down in response, the man in the chair springing to his feet. He turned with a look of pure shock on his face, his jaw hanging open, the chair rocking back and forth between them.

  Derrick Chamberlain was a friend of Riley’s from their time at Ohio State together, an odd-duck pairing of neighbors that somehow became friends, even now ten years removed. One had gone on to the police academy while the other returned to his grandmother’s basement, content to do just enough cyber sleuthing to pay the bills.

  The rest of his time was spent in a fog of Red Bull and first-person video games, insisting that everyone call him Deek.