Dangerous Friends (A Carlos McCrary novel Book 4)

by Dallas Gorham

  Kelly cut her grilled chicken into smaller pieces and tossed them in her salad. “They emptied every dumpster within a mile of the crime scene. They looked in every storm sewer and trash bag. The divers raked the muck on the river bottom to see if the perp threw it into the water. Nada.”

  I cut into the sweet potato, stripped the peeling off. “If they haven’t found the phone by now, they’re not gonna. Unless the perp was stupid and didn’t throw it away.”

  “No one would be that stupid.” She sipped her beer, wiped the foam off her lip with a napkin.

  I forked a bite of sweet potato. Delicious. “How about the three perps? What have they got on them?”

  “Two men and a woman. They enhanced the video and one man had a full beard. Another one held up the phone to set off the bomb. They analyzed the images six ways from Sunday and determined that one walked like a woman and was five-foot-five or five-foot-six. The other two were men, both five-foot-ten.”

  She forked another bite of salad. “Oh, yeah. The one with the beard is a Braves fan.”

  Chapter 29

  Michelle looked very Hollywood when she sat down with her sunglasses on. We had a table at the Coconut Corral Café on Mango Island, but it was in the shadows since the sun hadn’t climbed over the high-rise luxury condos. Palm trees and bougainvilleas decorated one side of the outdoor tables, opposite the blue water of Seeti Bay.

  “You want breakfast, Michelle?”

  “Just cappuccino. I don’t eat breakfast.”

  “You’ll attract more attention wearing sunglasses at eight o’clock in the morning than you would without them. Why don’t you put them in your bag?”

  She glanced around at the other tables. “I never thought of that. I’m not used to this sneaking around.” She put the sunglasses in her bag.

  “It’s necessary for a while. But you should act like nothing has happened. Remember, as far as you know, nothing did happen. You were miles away from… anywhere. You got that? I’ve kept you out of this so far. But you have stay away from the other three musketeers.”

  “Why? They’re my friends.”

  “They may try to kill you.”

  She looked like I’d slapped her in the face. “I can’t believe they’d do anything like that. Katherine’s a pacifist, for God’s sake.”

  “Three thugs from Chicago with big guns followed me yesterday. They think I’ll lead them to you.”

  Michelle said, “Katherine’s from Chicago.”

  “But the only one of your friends who was aware that you knew me was Whiskers.”

  “Whiskers? You mean James?”

  “Sorry,” I said. “Snoop and I call him ‘Whiskers.’ James Ponder.”

  “How do you even know they were from Chicago?”

  “I trapped them on a lonely road, held them at gunpoint, and stole their wallets. A contact with the Port City police ran their rap sheets for me. They’re soldiers for an organized crime family in Chicago.”

  I waved at a server. “Two cappuccinos and I’ll have a Western omelet with hash browns and whole wheat toast with peanut butter. Thanks.”

  I waited until the server left. “And that’s why you need to stay hidden.”

  “Okay, I guess.”

  I patted her hand. “We’re making progress. We know where Whiskers stole the boat and we can prove it. I can turn that over to the authorities whenever I choose. They can nail him for stealing a boat, even if we can’t tie that specific boat to the bombing.”

  “But that’s the boat we were in.”

  “Yes, but you’d have to testify as a witness. Remember, I want to keep you out of this. Don’t worry; the FBI is searching the bay for scraps of the boat. And they recovered the engines from the river. They’ll match the serial numbers from them and match that to the boat. The FBI is good at that sort of thing. For now, I’m keeping the information on Whiskers under my hat until I have a package to give to the Feds. Just be patient.”

  The server arrived with our cappuccinos. “I’ll have your omelet out in two minutes.”

  “Thanks.”

  I would have preferred coffee, but Michelle liked cappuccino. So did Gene Lopez; there’s no accounting for taste. I can’t complain; Snoop drinks his coffee black and thinks I’m a sissy because I use a little creamer. I took a sip. “I still need to tackle Shamanski and Wallace to prove their involvement. What more can you tell me about Shamanski?”

  “She’s rich. I think her father is a high-powered entrepreneur in Chicago and owns a bunch of companies. He bought a luxury condo for her near campus. And I know she has no student loans, so he must pay her out-of-state tuition.”

  “What does he invest in?” I asked.

  “I don’t know. Just that he pays for everything.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “I’m sorry,” Michelle said. “Katherine just calls him ‘Daddy.’”

  “Don’t worry about it. With a name like ‘Shamanski’ it won’t be hard to track him down. What about her mother?”

  “She’s some kind of lawyer and a community activist for environmental issues. Or maybe she’s a lobbyist or something. Katherine told me that her mother spends so much time in Washington that she owns an apartment there.”

  “What’s her mother’s name?”

  “Sorry, I don’t know that either. But I know her last name is different from Katherine’s. She kept her maiden name when she got married.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Katherine told me that when she first came to UAC she almost registered as a hyphenated last name. You know, combining the names of her father and mother.”

  “You mean like if you called yourself ‘Michelle Babcock-Hickham’?”

  “Yeah, like that. But Katherine said that Shamanski plus the other name was too long, and she didn’t want to write them both for the rest of her life.” Her eyebrows raised. “I remember now. Katherine said her name would have been Shamanski-McAllister.”

  “Great.” I noted that for Flamer. “What else can you tell me?”

  “Chuck, I know so much about her that I could talk for a long time. But it might be a waste of energy since I don’t know what’s important and what’s not. I mean, she likes Indian food for example. But that’s not important, is it?”

  “Good point. Tell me the courses she’s taking and what her class schedule is.”

  Michelle thought about that and managed to give me a pretty good list. “I remember something that might be important. She changed her major. As a freshman, she enrolled in the College of Engineering and worked toward a BS in Environmental Engineering. As a junior, she switched to the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences. Now she wants a BA in Environmental Science.”

  “Why did she change?”

  Michelle scoffed. “She says it’s because the BA involves studying more Humanities and people-oriented subjects, but I think it’s because engineering was too much homework. You can tap-dance your way around the urban planning and political science stuff, but you can’t fake chemistry and calculus.” She leaned back. “And Katherine is la-a-azy.”

  That was interesting. “So she took chemistry?”

  “Oh yeah. I have to take it next year; it’s required.”

  “Did you know that Whiskers has a Bachelor of Science in Chemistry?”

  “Sure, that’s the main reason I’m sleeping with him. I expect him to tutor me in chemistry next year.”

  “Would he and Shamanski know enough chemistry to build a bomb?”

  Michelle’s eyebrows shot toward her hairline. “Omigod, yes.”

  Chapter 30

  Back in the office, I called my researcher. “Flamer, I’d like to know about global warming and/or climate change.”

  “This a paid assignment?”

  “Yeah.”

  “First thing to know is that the two terms do not mean the same thing, though the idiot media uses them interchangeably. But then, the idiot media screws up even the simplest facts.” Flamer al
ways calls the regular newspapers and network news the “idiot media.”

  I pulled out a notepad. “What’s the difference between global warming and climate change?”

  “Global warming is the theory that humans are causing a rise in global temperatures by the increasing use of fossil fuels.”

  “Yeah, my girlfriend said fossil fuels produce lots of CO2, which is a greenhouse gas.”

  “That’s right as far as it goes,” Flamer said, “but the global warming theory is mostly claptrap spread by a bunch of opportunists with a political agenda.”

  “How so?”

  “Because of climate change. Climate change is the natural change in global temperatures that occurs over time spans of years and centuries—like ice ages. Climate has always changed, and it always will. You sure you want to hear this junk? It can be pretty boring to anyone who’s not a science nerd.”

  “I’ve got a fresh cup of coffee. I’ll tell you if it gets too boring. Go on.” Flamer could expound at great length when he chose to. I glanced out the window at the traffic on Bayfront Boulevard. Another Ford, white this time, cruised by and parked in the lot across the street. Looked like a rental, and it had three people in it. Was it the same three guys?

  “You’re paying, Chuck. Yes, the idiot media are right when they say the earth is warmer today than it was at the end of the last Ice Age. But it’s also lots colder than it was 1,000 years ago. Did you know that when the first Vikings settled Greenland, it really was green?”

  “I thought that was medieval bait-and-switch advertising. They named it Greenland to attract settlers.”

  “Nope. God’s honest truth. The Vikings grew grain there for a long time. Climatologists call it the Medieval Warm Period, and it lasted from about 950AD to 1250AD. It was followed by a Little Ice Age from about 1350 to about 1850. That’s when the Viking settlements probably failed.”

  I wrote that down. I didn’t need to know that for the case, but writing things down helps me remember them. “So the warming today is part of the natural process of climate change. I didn’t cause it by driving my Avanti and living in an air-conditioned apartment.”

  “Mostly, yeah. And it’s not clear whether the global temperature has gotten warmer over the last few years. For example, a recent analysis of ice cores in northern Greenland showed it was warmer there from 1920 to 1940 than it is today.”

  “So what causes climate change, if it’s not me driving my Avanti?”

  “The biggest influence is variation in the amount of radiation the earth gets from the sun.”

  “The sun’s radiation changes?”

  “Yep. The earth is sending one-tenth of one percent more radiation our way than it did a hundred years ago.”

  “Doesn’t sound like much.”

  “It isn’t, but it doesn’t take much variation to cause changes in the earth’s weather. The closest correlation to solar radiation is sunspot activity—more sunspots, more solar radiation. Sunspots vary on about an eleven year cycle. There are also longer cycles that last a few hundred years.”

  “So it’s not human activity.”

  “Yes and no. It’s inconceivable that seven billion humans living on the planet and producing energy would have no effect on the climate. It’s just that no one really knows how much is human activity and how much is natural.”

  “So why is the public worked up about this?” I asked.

  “You know who H. L. Mencken was?” Flamer asked.

  “The name’s familiar, but I can’t place him.”

  “Mencken was a journalist and satirist. He said, ‘The politicians aim to keep the voters alarmed so they will clamor for the politicians to lead them to safety. They menace the populace with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.’ And then the politicians get more power and the bureaucrats get more money.”

  “So you believe people are upset because the politicians and the news media want them to be upset.” I drank some coffee.

  “The idiot media; don’t call them news media. They don’t give you the real news; they publish pre-digested pap for the benefit of their masters.”

  Don’t ever get Flamer started on his conspiracy theories. I take everything political that he says with a spoonful of salt and a heap of skepticism. But he’s a great researcher, in spite of his political views, or maybe because of them. Nobody’s perfect.

  “That’s a pretty cynical view of society, Flamer.”

  “Just because you’re paranoid, doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you. Look, Chuck, this whole change in the catch phrase from ‘global warming’ to ‘climate change’ shows you how silly this so-called issue is. The politicians and the idiot media paint the normal course of climate change as evidence of doomsday.”

  “Why would the media go along with this?”

  “Why not? Disasters make big headlines. They sell lots of newspapers to idiots who watch lots of commercials on television’s so-called news. Idiots who pander to other idiots.”

  Chapter 31

  A bomb big enough to take out a steel railroad bridge. The FBI estimated fifteen hundred pounds. That would be mostly ammonium nitrate. The Oklahoma City bombing spurred many attempts to regulate the sales and use of ammonium nitrate, but it was years before effective laws were passed and regulations issued. And enforcement was spotty. Still, thinking like a bad guy, if I wanted to buy fifteen hundred pounds of ammonium nitrate, how would I do it? I’d do it one fifty-pound bag of fertilizer at a time. That’s thirty bags and I would scatter the purchases over several states—none in South Florida.

  I called Michelle. “This is Chuck. Did any of your four musketeers leave town several times this year for any reason?”

  “Katherine goes home to Chicago most weekends to see her parents. She claims she hasn’t been laid this entire semester because she’s gone so much. But I know for a fact that she’s been sleeping with Steven. Why do you ask?”

  “Just gathering facts. Never know what might be important to know. Anyone else travel much?” I glanced out the window. The white Ford with the three Chicago hoods was still parked across the street.

  “Steven makes speeches at environmental rallies, mostly in Washington or Tallahassee or some of the other state capitals.”

  “How often does he do that?”

  “Maybe once a month or so.”

  “What about James?”

  “Nah, he’s pretty much a homebody.”

  “Thanks.”

  I called Flamer. “I need everything you can get on Katherine Shamanski and her parents.”

  “Katherine with a C or a K?”

  “A K. Last name S-H-A-M-A-N-S-K-I. Her father is an investor, lives in Chicago, maybe a suburb, and invests in green energy projects and companies. Her mother’s last name is McAllister. She may be a personal injury attorney in Chicago. She owns a house or condo in the Washington, D.C. area. She’s some kind of environmental activist or lobbyist or somesuch. That’s why the house in Washington.”

  “How deep you wanna go?”

  “To the center of the earth. Cover the last five years—no, make it six years. I need financials, politics, social activities. You know the drill. His and her friends, their business associates, where they vacation. Pull out all the stops. Same thing for the daughter. Oh, yeah, see if Katherine has any siblings. If so, get the same scoop on them.”

  “Anything else?”

  “That’s it.”

  The line went dead. Flamer once told me that saying goodbye wastes his valuable time. Like I said, he’s peculiar, but he’s the best researcher in fifty-seven states.

  Chapter 32

  “Road trip, Snoop.”

  “Where to?”

  “Athens,” I answered.

  “You gotta be kidding.”

  “Georgia.”

  “Oh, yeah. Whiskers’s arrest for that arson, right? I talked to Jake Andrews last Wednesday. He’s a detective in Robbery, Homicide & Forensics. He’s a real good ol’ boy.”
r />   “Call him and get an appointment for tomorrow morning.”

  I wished I could see the look on the faces of the guys in the white Ford when they followed me to the Port City airport.

  Snoop and I showed up at the Robbery, Homicide & Forensics office of the Athens-Clarke County Police Department at eight o’clock Monday morning. Andrews had told Snoop on the telephone that we had to meet with his boss, Lieutenant Ed Howard first. We waited a few minutes for Howard to arrive. We introduced ourselves and I handed him a box of donuts.

  He smiled. “You boys must need a favor.”

  “Of course. But regardless, we were both detectives in Port City before we became PIs. I remember how much we appreciated an occasional donut when we were on the job.”

  Howard stood. “Let’s take this to the break room. Share it with the other folks.”

  When we had sat at the table in the break room, Howard held his coffee cup in both hands and stared at me over the rim. “What can I do for you, Chuck?”

  “We’re investigating a man named James Ponder. Y’all arrested him for arson and homicide a few years ago. He started a fire at an apartment construction site where a night watchman was killed. Jake Andrews worked the case. When we called him for an appointment, he said we should talk to you before meeting with him.”

  “I recall something about that case. How can we help?”

  “We believe Ponder was guilty, even though the case was dismissed. We want to get him on a second murder.”

  “Then why aren’t the Port City police detectives up here instead of you two private investigators?”

  “Good question. Lieutenant Jorge Castellano in Port City Robbery/Homicide can answer that. Here’s his number.” I handed one of Jorge’s business cards to Howard.

  Howard stuck the card in his pocket. “Let’s go to my office. Grab your coffee.” He snagged another donut as he led the way from the break room.