by Osborne, Jon
The Carters’ apartment looked exactly like one might suspect an octogenarian couple’s living quarters to look like. Plastic-covered couches in the living room to go along with matching recliners positioned in front of an old, cabinet-style television on the south side of the room. A teetering stack of National Enquirer tabloids that was piled three feet high on top of a scarred dining-room table.
Maggie Carter lifted the magazines off the table and placed them on an old wooden chair three feet away. “Here, have a seat, dear,” she said. “I’ll be back with our tea in just a minute, and then I’ll go get Oreo for you. He has his own room, you know.”
The old woman beamed with this revelation, and Dana had no doubt that her cat couldn’t have been left in more capable – or loving – hands.
Twenty minutes later – their tea finally drunk, pleasantries exchanged and a thorough update on Mr. Carter’s colitis condition delivered in graphic detail – Maggie Carter retrieved Oreo from his bedroom and placed him down on the floor in the dining room.
Dana’s cat glanced up briefly at her to let her know that he didn’t especially care for being abandoned this long before finally sauntering over to her and rubbing his portly body against her ankles. After a moment or two, he began to purr. Dana smiled softly, happy to be reunited with her best buddy. Unlike dogs, however, she’d learned that cat’s made you earn their affection. Not that it took all that much, of course. Keep them fat and safe and warm and you had yourself a friend for life.
“I missed you too, big guy,” she said, leaning down to scratch Oreo behind his pointy ears for a few seconds before scooping him up into her arms. “Now let’s get you home already.
“Let’s get both of us home already.”
Chapter 22
Thanking Maggie Carter again, Dana exited the old woman’s apartment and headed for the elevator down the hall. Stepping inside a moment later, she punched the button for the fourth floor and held Oreo close as they made their ascent, knowing that she’d need him as a security blanket to get through this next part.
When the elevator reached the fourth floor with a high-pitched ding! a moment later, she exited the car and made her way down the hall to apartment D12 on badly shaking legs, purposely shifting her gaze away from the apartment located directly across the hall.
D13 had been Eric Carlton’s apartment – the best human friend Dana had ever had in her life and another unfortunate victim of the Cleveland Slasher when Nathan Stiedowe had caved in his head with a claw hammer. Tears flooded into Dana’s eyes at the horrific memory. She still had Eric’s spare key stashed underneath the welcome mat in front of her own door to remind her of that heartbreaking fact. So even if moving on wasn’t very high on her list of priorities right now, moving definitely was. Because she knew that there was no way in hell she’d be able to continue living here with reminders of Eric constantly staring her in the face just five short feet across the hall. Not after the unspeakable thing her half-brother had done to him.
Still, much like the forgotten gift for Maggie Carter as thanks for watching Oreo, that was something she’d need to worry about later. Right now, she desperately needed a long, hot shower. Everything else in the world could wait.
She slipped her key into the lock and pushed open the front door to her apartment before stepping inside, pausing in the doorway and looking into her home.
Complete silence greeted her. Stale, unmoving air filled her nostrils. No big surprise there, however. After all, the place had been locked up tight for months now.
Dana made her way farther into the vaguely familiar apartment and placed Oreo down on the floor at her feet before taking a moment or two to re-acclimate herself with her surroundings.
In the living room, a pair of plaid armchairs flanked a matching plaid couch – a bit more up-to-date than those belonging to the Carters since the furnishings had been purchased at Pier One five or six yeas ago as opposed to JC Penney’s sometime back in the late-1960s. A coffee table with a thick, cut-glass top served as the centerpiece of the room, and an old-fashioned coat rack stood watch over in the corner next to the front door like a painfully thin scarecrow, an old raincoat and a floppy beach hat hanging from a couple of the hooks. Above the flat-screen television mounted to the north wall of the living room, an old Sears portrait showcased a four-year-old Dana book-ended by her parents, James and Sara. A beautiful moment suspended forever in time.
Dana sighed heavily. Even though her mom and dad had been gone for more than three decades now, she still missed them every single day. More now than ever now that everyone she’d ever loved since the day they’d died had moved on to the next world without her, too.
She was two-thirds of the way home to feeling sorry for herself when the harsh jangle of the phone on her kitchen wall suddenly interrupted her pity-party. Fighting back a hot jolt of panic in her chest from the abrupt noise, she walked quickly into the kitchen and picked up the phone, placing the receiver to her ear.
She half-expected God to be calling to tell her to quit her crying already and just get on with her life, but she was surprised instead to hear Sergeant Gary Templeton’s voice fill her ear.
Dana grimaced. The last time she’d spoken with the Cleveland cop, she’d been screaming up into his face about how the Cleveland Slasher never left a shred of evidence behind at any of his many crime scenes. Still, the truth of the matter was that it should have been Templeton screaming at her – considering the fact that she’d just thrown up her lunch all over a freshly discovered murder scene.
“Dana,” Templeton said, and for a moment she thought she detected a note of apprehension in his voice. And why not? He was probably still mad at her, and if he were, she wouldn’t blame him. The way she’d behaved the last time she’d spoken with him had been bush league, at best. At worst, she’d made Amateur Hour at the Apollo look like Barbra Streisand performing at the Grammys.
“I’m so glad I reached you,” Templeton went on after a brief exchange of how-are-yous. “I heard that you came out of your coma a few weeks ago but I didn’t want to bother you while you were recovering. Anyway, how long have you been home?”
Dana glanced down at her watch, a silver Rolex that had once belonged to her mother – a first-anniversary gift from her father, who’d worn a matching gold one, saying that he and Sara matched so perfectly as husband and wife that the least their jewelry could do was the same. Dana always wore the watch, regardless of her outfit, even though every time the battery ran out only reminded her of the horrific bloodbath in which both of her parents had died. “Well, let’s see here,” she said. “About two minutes now. Give or take.”
“Ouch,” Templeton said. “I’m really sorry to hear that, but I’m also happy as hell to hear that you’re finally out of the hospital. We’ve all been really worried about you, you know.”
Dana smiled. It was a nice thing for him to say. “Thanks, Gary. Anyway, before you say anything else, I want to apologize for the way I spoke to you the last time we were together. It was completely uncalled for and you didn’t deserve it. You were just doing your job and protecting the crime scene. It was my fault, no two ways about it. I was way out of line and I won’t ever let it happen again.”
Templeton paused. After a moment, he cleared his throat. “Don’t worry about it, Dana. The stress of the case was getting to all of us back then, including me. It’s perfectly understandable. Anyway, I’m sorry to catch you right when you got home. You must need your rest. I’ll give you a call later on tonight or tomorrow morning.”
Dana shook her head. “No, it’s fine, Gary. What’s up? What’s going on?”
Templeton cleared his throat again. “Ah, nothing. I’ll handle it myself.”
Dana stretched her neck to the left and fought back a sudden swell of irritation inside her chest. She just couldn’t help herself. She knew that Templeton was just trying to be polite, not wanting to bother her right after she’d gotten home. But polite or not, his reluctance to tell her w
hat he’d called her about was a little bit aggravating, too. “If I ask you pretty please will you tell me?” she asked.
Templeton laughed, and Dana smiled again, this time with relief. Obviously, bygones really were bygones when it came to him, and thank God for that much. Because when the Cleveland cop buried a grudge, it clearly stayed buried, bless his heart.
Dana lifted her eyebrows. Much as she’d done with Maggie Carter, she found herself thinking that she could probably learn a thing or two from the veteran police officer. Steal a page from his playbook and cut people a little bit of slack from time to time. After all, to err was human but to forgive was divine, right?
Just so long as you weren’t asking forgiveness for murder.
“OK, Dana,” Templeton finally relented. “I’ll tell you what I’ve got to say if you absolutely insist on hearing it, but I’m warning you right now that you’re probably not going to like it.”
Dana kicked her feet out of her shoes and shrugged her shoulders out of the lab coat. “I’m a big girl, Gary,” she said. “Try me.”
“Fine – I need your help again,” Templeton said without further preamble, referencing the fact that it had been him who’d called Dana in on the Cleveland Slasher case two years earlier. “Christian Manhoff was found lying dead in the middle of Prospect Avenue while you were recovering in the hospital.”
Dana searched her memory until she remembered the name. Even though another murder case was the last thing in the world she felt like dealing with right now, her investigative mind nonetheless sprang into action processing the information, the mental equivalent of a whiplash reflex. Unbelievably, it also actually felt good. Much like cockroaches and the seemingly never-ending trend of tourists sporting fanny packs to go along with their white sneakers and black dress socks, it seemed, old habits died hard.
Finally, she seized upon it.
Christian Manhoff was something of a local celebrity around Cleveland – a “super-fan” of the Cleveland Browns, the erstwhile, blue-collar city’s professional football team. That is, if you wanted to count a bumbling squad that seemed to drop the ball every bit as often as they caught it and which hadn’t made the playoffs in anyone’s recent memory as “professional”.
The cartoonish image of Christian Manhoff filled Dana’s mind. An obese, three-hundred-and-fifty-pound man, Manhoff had gained a certain measure of national celebrity by dressing up in an orange-and-white plastic hardhat and a “dawg” mask while going shirtless and sporting nipple rings in the frigid winter air at the Browns games every Sunday afternoon during football season.
With his seat situated near one end zone in Cleveland Browns Stadium – a section of the stadium known affectionately around the city as “The Dawg Pound” – Manhoff often got an abundance of face-time, or at least mask-time, on ESPN during its post-game wrap-up shows. But with a visage like that representing the city, Dana wasn’t surprised that the rest of the country still viewed Cleveland as a joke. Situated on the shores of Lake Erie, the city’s “Mistake By The Lake” tag still hadn’t worn off yet – and at this rate she highly doubted it ever would. And guys like Christian Manhoff did absolutely nothing to burnish the long-suffering town’s hopelessly tarnished image.
Dana caught herself mid-snark and mentally berated herself for her pissy attitude. When the hell had she become so damned heartless? So cold and uncaring? She’d never liked to speak ill of the dead before – or even think ill of them, for that matter. In most cases, anyway. Especially not the recently dead.
Shame heated up her cheeks as she wrapped the telephone cord around her finger until it cut off her circulation and Templeton filled her in on the rest of the story.
As he spoke, she gathered that Christian Manhoff had been found naked and lying dead in the middle of a downtown street with a large rawhide dog bone shoved halfway down his throat – a favorite prop of the Browns’ “super-fans”. According to Templeton, the ME had concluded that Manhoff had choked to death on the bone, though Dana didn’t think that eight years of advanced schooling were necessarily required to come up with that unsurprising diagnosis.
“There’s something else,” Templeton said when he’d finally finished bringing her up to speed.
“What’s that, Gary?”
The Cleveland cop hesitated. Then he blew out a slow breath and went on. “There was also a picture of your brother attached to one of Manhoff’s nipple rings.”
Dana’s stomach flipped inside-out. Her world swam out of focus before suddenly clearing up again in a dizzying flash of color. “What?” she asked hoarsely, feeling her knees buckle hard beneath her.
“Yeah, I know,” Templeton said. “It’s fucking weird. The photograph wasn’t there at the initial crime scene, but the ME said he discovered it when he went to do the autopsy.”
Dana held onto the edge of the kitchen counter to support her weight and glanced over at the digital clock on her stove.
“Where are you now?” she asked.
“Down at the stationhouse.”
“Where’s Christian Manhoff’s body?”
“At the coroner’s office.”
“I’ll be there in half an hour to pick you up.”
Templeton let out a relieved breath. “Thanks, Dana. I really appreciate it. And I’m really sorry for dropping this shitstorm into your lap right after you got out of the hospital, but I really didn’t know who else to turn to. I owe you one.”
“Don’t mention it, Gary. I’ll see you in half an hour.”
A familiar thrill boiled away deep in the pit of Dana’s stomach as she hung up the phone, completely chasing away the vertigo she’d been feeling despite the overwhelming shock of being thrust smack-dab into the middle of yet another homicide investigation featuring a very personal connection to her.
The thrill of the chase.
She took several deep breaths through her nostrils and steeled herself for what would come next. Hell, maybe she wasn’t crazy, after all. Maybe she’d just been born for this kind of work. Had been born to chase killers. God knew she loved it – all of the horrible collateral damage usually involved notwithstanding. And much like the rest of the country, anything concerning Nathan Stiedowe – even peripherally – fascinated the hell out of her.
Besides, Gary, she thought as her gaze drifted upward and landed on a fresh bottle of Jim Beam that was sitting on top of her refrigerator next to a roll of paper towels. It’s me who owes everybody else. Jeremy, Eric, Crawford, my parents… all the others…
And now it was time for her to pay up.
CHAPTER 23
After finally discarding the silly white lab coat in favor of her worn brown leather bomber jacket, a fuzzy green scarf and a pair of faded blue jeans – tucking her Glock 17 into her shoulder holster to complete the hastily thrown-together outfit – Dana exited the elevator on the ground floor of her apartment complex and rushed out the front door of the lobby to go meet up with Templeton at the stationhouse downtown.
Dana took a deep breath and steeled herself for what would come next. Her heartbeat hadn’t slowed down one little bit since she’d first hung up with the Cleveland cop, and judging from the incessant thumping still banging away against her ribcage she highly doubted it would anytime soon.
Entirely preoccupied with thoughts of her brother and how he might tie into Christian Manhoff’s brutal murder, she didn’t notice the television news crew that had been lying in wait for her just outside the main doors of the apartment complex until it was already too late.
Dana gritted her teeth and skidded to a stop. Clever as the sleight of hand might have been with the doctor’s outfit back at the hospital, the press hadn’t been fooled for long. Still, she was happy that the misdirection had worked for this long. After all, she certainly hadn’t expected them to stay in the dark forever on the subject of her whereabouts. They were just too good at what they did; too hungry; too goddamn relentless.
As was usual with television journalists, everything happened ve
ry quickly from there. Before Dana knew what was going on, lights from three different cameras blinded her and a microphone was shoved into her face. A second boom mike was lowered just above her head while a young man with perfect hair stepped forward in the middle of the pack and smiled perfect teeth at her, each one of his dental veneers as bright and dazzling as the lights that were blazing forth from the cameras.
The powerful lights sliced through the foggy winter air with all the efficiency of a vicious paper cut and stabbed Dana’s thoroughly shocked brain via her woefully unprepared eyeballs, causing a smattering of tiny black dots to dance crazily in front of her face for several long seconds.
She blinked rapidly against the intensity of the lights and counted the number of figures huddled in a rough semi-circle around Colgate’s poster boy. Four. The lead reporter had come with a full crew in tow, and why not? This story could be his ticket out of Cleveland and onto bigger and better things. Los Angeles, perhaps. Maybe even New York City itself – the holy grail of TV news.
“Agent Whitestone,” the man said with a melodramatic flair that he’d no doubt been practicing in front of his bathroom mirror each and every night for the past five years now, refining it and redefining it until it sounded as smooth as processed honey, both to his own ears and to the ears of his viewers. “Brent Price, Channel Four News. You walked right past us at the hospital, didn’t you?”
The reporter narrowed his bright blue eyes beneath his carefully coiffed brown hair to let her know that she’d been caught red-handed and there was nowhere left for her to hide. “Didn’t you?” he repeated accusingly.
Dana forced back the abrupt swell of anger she felt rising up in her chest. Wasn’t easy. “I have no idea what you’re talking about, Mr. Price,” she said, putting down her head and beginning to hustle past the journalists, making a beeline for her car parked forty-five feet away. She really didn’t have time for this crap right now. Having never been anything less than a total gentleman a day in his entire life, Gary Templeton would no doubt be waiting for her on the curb downtown, and she didn’t want to keep the Cleveland cop standing out there in this cold any longer than she absolutely needed to.