by Lee Driver
Sara checked the clock on the wall above Dagger’s desk. The mall had opened thirty minutes ago.
He grabbed her wrist as she stood. “Are you sure you’re up to this?”
She nodded, mustering as much self-confidence as she could. “Yes. I’ll be fine.”
An hour after Sara left, the buzzer at the front gate sounded.
“AWK, COMPANY,” Einstein announced.
Dagger pressed the button to open the wrought iron gate at the entrance to the long drive. With a devilish smile, he set the spider under the coffee table and slipped the remote in his pocket.
Less than a minute later, Dagger opened the front door to a burly black man.
“PLEASE MR. POSTMAN. AWK.” Einstein spread his brightly colored wings and settled on his perch.
Simon gave a wave toward Einstein and rubbed a beefy hand across his chin. He walked over to the Florida room and peered in. “Got them paddle fans installed. Lookin’ good.” Simon rubbed his foot against the stone quarry-tiled floor. The addition was roomy, at least five-hundred-square feet. Jalousie windows were cranked open creating a pleasant breeze. “This must have set you back a pretty penny. You didn’t charge that sweet thing for all this work, did you?”
“Nah. I look at it as part of my room and board.”
Simon admired the variety of plants and bright floral cushioned chairs. “At least Sara added color to this place. You and that black and gray you always wear is like livin’ in a goddam silent movie.” He tossed a glance at Dagger’s black denim pants and black shirt and lifted his eyebrows as if to prove a point. “Be even better once she gets rid of that black furniture you got in the living room.”
Dagger’s fingers played with the buttons on the remote. Simon’s back was to the couch so he didn’t see the black object charging across the area rug, its red eyes gleaming in the sunlight. But once it hit the quarry tile, the tap-tapping of its metal legs made Simon jerk his head around. His eyes bulged, resembling hard-boiled eggs with giant Milk Duds in the center.
Simon screamed, “Holy shit,” lifted his foot, and slammed a heavy boot down against the ensuing bug.
Sinking against the door jamb, Dagger shook his head. “Who says old men don’t have good reflexes.”
“If it’s movin’, I’m stompin’.” Simon bent down closer, hands on his knees, as Dagger used a pencil to separate the pieces.
“You killed Mick.” Dagger placed the metal pieces in his hand and stood.
“What the hell is a Mick?” Simon peered into the palm of Dagger’s hand. When Dagger pulled the remote from his pocket and showed it to his friend, Simon started laughing, a deep jovial laugh that jiggled the belly hanging over his belt buckle. “You got a goddam baby robot there?”
Dagger slid the pieces into an envelope. “I’ll give the parts to Skizzy. It was just the prototype.” He sealed the envelope and tossed it on his desk.
Simon wiped the tears from his cherub cheeks. “Ain’t that a hoot. Where you gonna use them?”
“In the words of Skizzy, ‘anywhere we damn well please.’” A smile played across his lips as he told Simon how he had scared the daylights out of Sara earlier.
“AWK, AWK. KILL IT KILL IT.” Einstein poked his beak through the grating.
Dagger closed the Plexiglas soundproof door to the aviary reducing the loud screeching from Einstein. The macaw was thirty-six inches of bold coloring. He had been payment for one of Dagger’s P.I. jobs. Just never got around to taking him to the zoo or placing an ad in the papers. But macaws can be rather noisy and it was difficult finding an apartment let alone office space that would tolerate Einstein.
Simon set Dagger’s stack of mail on the coffee table and settled onto the loveseat. Running one envelope under his nose, he inhaled deeply. “Ummmm. Smells like pretty expensive perfume.” He dangled the envelope from his fingertips. “Must be close to Sweetest Day.”
Dagger sank down onto the worn leather couch, suddenly feeling the lack of sleep. He grabbed the envelope from Simon, checked the handwriting, and tossed the card on the coffee table. “I did something stupid last night.” He told Simon how he had helped a drunken Sheila home and tucked her in.
“I’m sure she wasn’t faking it.” Simon scoffed, a reaction from someone who knew women like Sheila. “Hope you didn’t do anything you’d regret later.”
“No. At least I don’t think so.”
“You’d remember that. Trust me. Must be tough being stalked by a woman who is NOT the love of your life.” Simon’s gaze circled the room, followed the steel staircase to the second floor. Finally, he said, “Speaking of the love of your life, where is Sara?”
“Can’t you ever walk in here without insinuating…” Dagger pressed the palms of his hands to his eyes. “I may as well be talking to a brick wall. Sara’s a child. She’s like my little sister.”
“Uh huh, uh huh.” Simon settled back against the cushions, hands clasped behind his head. He had a perpetual little-boy grin, the one his wife always said was a sign that he was up to no good. Always the tease, Simon never passed up an opportunity to rib his friend about his love life. “I’m sure being the great detective you are you noticed the birth date on her drivers license. That supposed child is going to be nineteen in a couple months.”
“Sara has a birthday?”
“Most people do.”
“You know what I mean.” Dagger made a mental note to ask Skizzy the exact date of Sara’s birthday. After all, it was Skizzy who had prepared all of Sara’s I.D.s.
“I just remember her mentioning her birthday was close to Christmas.”
One small detail Dagger neglected to find out about his partner. Less personal information he knew, the safer it was. But that was a joke. No one knew Sara better than Dagger.
“What else is happening in town, besides the ATF raid?”
“Mean you didn’t hear?” Simon was better than the old time switchboard operators. He loved being the one in the know. “Two joggers found a body on Lakeshore Trail.”
“Drowning?”
Simon shook his head. “Stabbing.” Simon stood and wobbled over to the desk in a rolling gait, as if his legs weren’t strong enough to carry his massive torso. “The body was hangin’ from a limb twenty feet off the ground.”
Twenty feet. Dagger’s mind was already beginning to calculate the distance. “Have they I.D.’d the victim?”
Simon shook his head. “Cops are very hush hush about this one.”
“Well, Padre’s on vacation so I doubt he’ll be working the case.” Dagger stood and stretched, checked his watch. “Sara was brave today and decided to go to the mall.”
“Uh oh,” Simon shook his head. “Bad day. They got that classic auto show at the mall. Expecting eighty thousand plus people.”
“Shit!”
CHAPTER 4
October 9, 10:18 a.m.
“Damn. I’m on vacation. Hasn’t anyone ever heard that term before?” Padre mumbled as he walked the grid again, squatting down every few feet to look for pieces of evidence the murderer might have left behind. A murderer always leaves something and takes something. Rule of thumb. It might be a thread, a hair, a fingerprint, footprint, saliva. But this was a puzzler. He straightened and stared at the body being lowered from the tree. A hush fell over the clusters of Crime Scene techs and fellow cops, as though in tribute to a fallen comrade.
How the hell did she get up that high, Padre asked himself. There wasn’t any reason she should have been left hanging there that long. But the chief wanted this case handled with kid gloves. Wanted the Crime Scene Unit to leave no stone unturned and the grid walked for hours before the body was removed. All procedures had to be followed to the letter. No cutting corners. This one was classified HSC-highly sensitive case.
The press had been kept at bay a half-mile away and given a simple press release stating a young woman had been stabbed. Time of the murder was estimated between three-thirty and five in the morning. The victim’s name was L
isa Cambridge. Lisa had been a member of the Cedar Point Police Department.
Padre stared past the yellow crime scene tape where Chief John Wozniak stood. Red-faced, red hair, a bulbous schnozz filling out his face. His aunt always told him noses that size could be used to snuff out the candles in church. Like Padre, John had attended Saint Michael’s School and even entered the seminary around the same time. Padre had found police work more to his liking. John found women more to his liking. He had been married three times.
As the body was placed on the gurnee, Padre was shocked at the slice across the woman’s neck. But what surprised him even more was when Luther, the county medical examiner, untied the sweatshirt from around Lisa’s waist. Shaking his head, Padre walked over to where Chief Wozniak stood. The sun dodged between the clouds and a damp breeze flirted with his thinning hairline.
“You won’t believe this, Chief. Lisa had her gun on her. And the safety was still on.” Padre turned and watched as Luther bagged the gun and handed it to a Crime Scene tech.
“Make sure the scumbag didn’t place it there. I find it hard to believe she didn’t fire her gun. And where is her Doberman? She never jogged without him,” Wozniak said.
“My men are combing the area now for the dog. Lisa didn’t get off work until three and usually jogged right after. Body was found around six.” Padre gazed at the crime scene again. “This is a mess. What blood wasn’t soaked up in the ground was instead soaked by the leaves which were then blown from here to kingdom come.”
John’s trench coat flapped in the breeze and he pulled the collar up around his neck. Settling his hat on his head, he turned toward Padre. “Sorry about the vacation, Martinez. I’ll make it up to you.”
“No problem.” Padre rubbed the bridge of his nose where a small bump reminded him every day of his fight with Merle the Moose in high school. Only time he ever had a broken nose. Padre was stocky, around five-foot-ten, but never shied away from a good fight. Now he preferred fighting twenty-pound salmon on the end of a fishing line. Which brought him back to pining for the fishing cottage up in Michigan where he was supposed to be right now.
“And about that other problem. You said you had someone you could talk to about it?”
Padre replied, “I have just the man for the job.”
“Good. You report to me and only me.” John shoved his hands deep into the pockets of his London Fog. “Great bust last night. I don’t know who your informant is but he’s worth every penny.”
Padre smiled. “Somehow I always end up owing him.”
John jerked his head toward the parking lot. “What about Lisa’s boyfriend?”
Padre studied the tall black man pacing in front of the M.E. wagon. J.D. was also a Cedar Point cop. A bruiser of a guy, shaved head, all muscle packed in a linebacker-sized body. He and Lisa had been living together for the past two years.
“I don’t think he had anything to do with it.”
“He found the body.”
“Only because he knew where Lisa jogged and she wasn’t home when he got up this morning.”
“No witness that he was at home, was there?”
Padre shook his head. “When it came to Lisa, he was a gentle giant.”
John gave the big man a cursory stare. “Would take a big man to pull a body up that high.”
“There was no blood anywhere on that tree, Chief.” Padre gazed again at J.D. who was sitting on the bumper of his Chevy Blazer, staring at the lake, obviously trying to avoid looking at the body bag being carried to the M.E. wagon.
“He could have knocked her out, carried her up the tree, wedged her body between the limbs.”
Padre lit a cigarette, took a long drag, flicked the match away. “And with his weight, he’s going to bend over that limb, slit her throat and then climb down?”
Chief Wozniak stared at the area where Lisa’s body had been suspended. The branches were wishboned and her body had been wedged in so tight they had to cut the limb from the tree by using a fire department snorkel.
“This one’s for the books, Chief,” Padre said.
A tall man appeared in front of the sergeant’s desk at the Indianapolis Police Department. He set a briefcase on the corner. “Came as fast as I could.”
Marty looked around the office. Curious stares had followed the man into the room. With a nod of his head he said, “Let’s talk over here, Bill.”
Sergeant Marty Flynn grabbed a file folder from his bottom drawer and his cup of coffee from the desk and led the professor to a conference room. The door closed with a click and he stared for some length at the youthful looking man with the streaks of white running through his hair. Bill opened his briefcase, pulled out his laptop and switched it on. Then he took out a thick notepad, which was divided in sections by dates.
“This one looks good,” Marty announced. “Call came in this morning from Cedar Point. Victim had her throat slit and was found suspended from a limb more than twenty feet off the ground.” He sat across from the professor and took a swig of hot coffee. “Do you think it’s possible it stayed here in the area? In the Midwest?”
The younger man’s fingers flew across the keyboard. “I’ve entered every homicide across the states around a Friday the thirteenth since March of ninety-eight. I knew the closer we got to October thirteenth the worse it would get.” He looked up from his keyboard, the lines etched around his eyes revealing a man who had slept very little lately. “It’s only the ninth of October. If it’s that brutal now, what’s it going to be like on Friday?”
Marty’s hand trembled as he brought the cup to his mouth. He checked his watch. Almost noon. “I know a guy on the force in Cedar Point. Good guy. Can keep his mouth shut. And God knows, we don’t need any publicity on this.”
The man stopped his bike at the designated spot under the viaduct. Low clouds were rolling in, pushed by a westerly breeze, promising afternoon showers. Swinging his leg over the back, he popped the kickstand and unhooked the straps on the saddlebag.
“Got the goods?” A figure in a hooded sweatshirt and dark sunglasses stood in the shadows.
“Got the package?” The man walked toward the concrete wall. He stopped and watched as a family pedaled past. Once the path was clear he pulled the package from the bag and set it on the ground. Never once looking at who was standing in the shadows, he picked up the envelope that was tossed in front of him, stuffed it in his saddlebag and continued his ride. All in a day’s work.
Dagger had circled the mall for several minutes before he found her. Simon was right. The classic auto show came every year to Cedar Creek Mall and packed in car enthusiasts that would shame even the busiest Christmas shopping day.
The closest parking space he found was across the inner drive so he parked his Navigator and walked toward the entrance between Field’s and the food court. Fall flowers were in bloom, filling the areas under the trees near the entrances. The management spared little expense in maintaining the outside as well as inside mall areas. And mall security was strict and plentiful, making sure area thieves knew the mall had the lowest crime rate in the Midwest.
Wooden park benches rested under the shade of the trees, and it was on one of these benches that Sara sat, staring straight ahead through dark aviator sunglasses, her hair draping past the hem of her plum-colored leather jacket.
Dagger hung back, studied her for a while. She had been here for almost two hours. Had she even ventured into the mall? He could imagine her driving his truck, finally feeling comfortable using a stick shift, and filled with all kinds of confidence that she could handle a somewhat crowded mall, at least more crowded than at ten o’clock, when it first opened. And then he could imagine her fear when she saw the packed lot and the hordes of people. She probably had been rooted to that same spot since she arrived.
He was just ready to approach when Sara stood, fists clenched, that determined firmness in her jaw. As she turned in the direction of the mall entrance, several clusters of shoppers descended, br
ushing past her, joining others as tight groups erupted from the building amid shouting and laughter.
Sara backed away, her hand feebly clutching for the armrest of the bench as she shakily lowered herself back down. Dagger expected it wouldn’t be long until one of her knuckles found its way to her mouth, a nervous habit that left Sara’s knuckles red and bleeding.
Just when he had thought she made progress with feeling comfortable in public, something like this would happen. She was frozen in that one spot, unable to just turn and walk back to the truck. But he could tell by the set of her jaw that she was bound and determined to not let her fears win.
Dagger also noticed several admirers, young men sitting on one of the benches under another tree, and others standing several feet behind her, like packs of hyenas waiting to pounce. Sara always drew stares. When she had stood, he noticed she was wearing a sweater that barely reached her waist, and low riding plum-colored denim pants, exposing a firm and tan midriff. He could only assume she put on the sunglasses to hide the tears in her eyes. If she hadn’t worn the glasses, they would have immediately noticed her exotic beauty, the high cheekbones and blue green eyes. He suddenly wished he hadn’t exposed her to fashion magazines and let her stay in her baggy, homemade sack dresses that covered all of her attributes.
Simon’s words kept ringing in his head. Dagger had a terrible habit of ridiculing Sara when she had one of her panic attacks, of calling her a baby. And Simon warned him to have more patience with her. After all, she had led a very secluded life. Even her grandmother had never left the three hundred acres except to sell her home-grown vegetables and canned goods at a self-built farm stand at the entrance to their property.
Patience. A word Dagger struggled with a lot. But he was getting better. And there was no better time than now to rescue Sara since the boys in heat were starting to circle, getting ready to make their move. Dagger could see it in their eyes.