by J. R. Rain
“Good.” She got up and threw her handbag over one shoulder. She reached out for my hand. “Let me know what you find, and thanks again.”
As always, I hesitated before shaking any hand. But hers I was almost eager to shake. I did so now, taking her small hand in my own, and I was not very surprised to discover it was ice cold.
She stared at me intently, just a few feet away. The hair at the back of my neck was standing on end. And then she winked at me, turned, and strode off through the parking lot.
She moved gracefully and effortlessly, and I watched her until she got into her dark Mercury Sable and drove out of the parking lot, and as she did so, I was certain I had just met my first vampire.
Chapter Twenty-nine
I sent Danny a text asking for an update, and he responded almost instantly: Anthony was in stable condition and sleeping soundly. I texted Danny back and reminded him that his cell phone was supposed to be turned off.
He wrote back: Yes, Mommy. And added a happy face.
Danny was being oddly playful and, well, nice. Maybe it had to do with his son being seriously ill. I didn’t know, but I found it creepy as hell. Any feelings I had had for Danny were long gone.
And what did he want to talk about? I didn’t know.
I sat in my minivan for a few minutes, wondering what I should do next. The museum could wait. The girl needed my help, except I didn’t have much to go on. I removed my copy of the picture of the big black man, and I suddenly knew what I needed most.
Manpower.
* * *
His business card was still in the van’s center console. I turned the interior light on, even though I really didn’t need it.
His card was simple but compelling. On the right side were written the words: Jim Knighthorse, Private Investigator. On the other side, filling the entire left half of the card, was his picture. He was smiling. A sort of crooked half-smile that showed a lot of teeth. The smile was arrogant. The smile was casual. The light in his eyes was filled with good humor, as if he alone was in on a joke.
I had met the tall man a few weeks earlier. At the time, he had radiated a quiet strength and a lot of cockiness. Both were good qualities when it came to investigations. In fact, I would argue that both were ideal in a good investigator. But more than anything, I had sensed a sort of old-school chivalry in him, that he was a man who protected those who couldn’t protect themselves.
I needed this man.
I made the call and, despite the fact that I sensed I had interrupted him from something important, he immediately agreed to meet me.
* * *
“I had a strange feeling we would meet again,” he said, as he approached my van.
Correction: swaggered to my van. Even though he limped noticeably.
“Maybe you’re psychic,” I said.
“I’m a lot of things,” he said, grinning easily, “but being psychic isn’t one of them.”
By a lot of things, I knew he meant a lot of good things. I shook my head. The guy was too much. But he was hard not to love.
I was standing outside my minivan, itself parked outside a Norm’s in Santa Ana. When you work the night shift like me, you’re fully aware of each and every all-night restaurant, even if, like me, you can’t actually partake from them, outside of water and cheap wine.
Knighthorse glanced over at the dimly lit Norms. “You would make a cheap date.”
“What can I say, I’m a simple woman.”
He glanced at me sideways. “I somehow doubt that. Anyone who hangs out with Orange County’s most famous defense attorney has a few surprises up her sleeve.”
He was, of course, talking about Kingsley, whom I was with when I first met Knighthorse on the beach a few weeks ago. “Okay, maybe one or two,” I said.
He folded his arms over his chest and leaned a hip against the van’s front fender. Although it was chilly out, he was wearing only a black tee shirt and blue jeans.
I’m a woman. I’m recently divorced. Outside of an orgasm a few weeks ago, I hadn’t had any sex in six years. The orgasm, I think, opened the floodgates.
So I’ll admit it. I found myself staring at his biceps. Just his biceps, I swear. The way they reflected the yellowish parking lot lights. The way the thick veins protruded nearly an inch off his muscles. The way the muscle itself seemed to undulate even with the slightest of movements. I have keen eyesight, and I used every bit of it as I studied his biceps.
He looked down at his shirt. “Is there something on me? It’s jelly, isn’t it? I just ate a jelly donut and I felt some of it drop, I just didn’t know where.”
“It’s not jelly. Sorry, I just have a lot on my mind.”
He quit inspecting his shirt and went back to leaning a hip against my fender.
“So tell me more about the little girl.”
I did, recalling everything I could. I handed him a photocopy of the trio at McDonald’s. He studied it closely. Holding it up to the parking lot lights. Myself, I could see it perfectly, but he didn’t need to know that.
“We’ll need to canvas the area,” he said.
“That’s what I figured.”
“A guy like this, some lowlife drug-dealing asshole, is probably on the move, especially if he just killed the mother.”
“We’re making a lot of leaps here,” I said. “The guy could be innocent. Maybe he’s an old friend.”
Knighthorse shook his head and came over to me. He smelled of raspberry donuts and Old Spice. God, I loved a man who wore Old Spice. The jelly donuts, not so much. He held up the picture of the black man and pointed.
“Look here,” he said. “He’s wearing a trench coat for a reason.”
“Covering a gun?”
“Why else? It’s 80 degrees here 300 days of the year. But look...” Knighthorse shuffled through the three photos I had given him. “There. Look.”
I saw it. It was a slight bulge at the man’s hip. “A gun,” I said.
“Of course.”
“And we’re not racially stereotyping him?” I said. “Because he’s black?”
Knighthorse looked down at me, and all the swagger and cockiness was gone, and I saw the real investigator in him, the man who took his job deadly serious. “What does your gut say about him?”
“That he’s our guy. That he killed Maddie’s mom, or at least knows the person who did. That he presently has Maddie somewhere, perhaps hurting her, perhaps killing her.”
Knighthorse’s jaw rippled. I think his teeth actually ground together. “Yeah, that’s what my gut says, too. And race has nothing to do with that.”
“What are the chances he’s a drug dealer?”
“About the same chance that I’m tall and roguishly good-looking.”
I shook my head. The guy was too much. I said, “So, if he supplies drugs to the neighborhood....”
“Few will talk,” he said.
“That, and they’re probably scared of him.”
“Someone will talk,” said Knighthorse.
“And if he did kill Maddie’s mother, then he’s laying low.”
Knighthorse winked. “We’re gonna need more manpower.”
Chapter Thirty
There were four of us now.
We were all sitting in the McDonald’s in Buena Park, the same McDonald’s where, for all I knew, Maddie’s mother was last seen alive.
I was drinking a cup of water. Knighthorse had just polished off three Big Macs and a large vanilla shake. Now he was munching on a bag of fries the size of my purse. The fries smelled so damn good that I nearly reached over for one. I resisted. Fries and my undead stomach do not mix.
The thirty-something man sitting next to Knighthorse was about a foot shorter. He was also a specialist in finding the missing, particularly children. His name was Spinoza, and he was a private investigator out of Los Angeles and a friend of Knighthorse. Spinoza, who was oddly shy for a private eye, was shrouded in a heavy layer of darkness. His aura itself seemed weighed down by something.
>
Guilt, I suddenly thought. Something is eating away at him. Tearing him apart. And just as I thought that, a brief image appeared in my thoughts, so horrific and heartbreaking that I nearly broke down myself. It was snapshot of him holding a burned body. A tiny burned body.
It was his son, and now I understood the waves of guilt.
The image was of a car accident. Like with the McDonald’s manager, I saw a burned-out vehicle, but this time I received another sensory hit: The smell of alcohol, along with the smell of burned flesh.
Sweet Jesus.
His palpable waves of guilt nearly overwhelmed me in my current, fragile state, and I was beginning to see the downside of this ESP business.
I need to learn how to shut this shit off, I thought.
Spinoza was friendly enough and had smiled and shaken my hand, but he easily lapsed into a dark silence that made it nearly impossible to warm up to the man.
Sitting next to him was another investigator—yet another specialist in finding the missing. His name was Aaron King and he was older than the hills. He was also damn good-looking and frustratingly familiar-looking.
And the psychic hit I got from him was an unusual one: Mr. Aaron King had a secret. A big secret.
He caught me looking at him and and gave me a beautiful smile, complete with twinkling eyes. I found my heart beating a little faster.
Aaron King and Spinoza (I never did catch his first name) passed on eating and instead sipped from oversized drinks. Men and their oversized drinks. Sheesh. They examined the photos while I recounted the events of the last few days, beginning with the first phone call from Maddie, my discussion with Chad, my conversation with Detective Hanner, Maddie’s second call, the meth lab and dead body, the Happy Meal, and the video surveillance.
“All this from a wrong number,” said Aaron. God, I loved the lilt to his voice. A hint of an accent. Melodious. A beautiful and agonizingly familiar voice.
“Probably not a wrong number,” said Spinoza. The man spoke as if it were a great effort. As if it took all his energy and strength to form the words. If ever there was a man who needed a hug, it was him.
Knighthorse nodded. “Your number was programmed into the phone. No way a kid that young finds you in the phone book.”
“Could be our guy’s phone,” said Spinoza.
Knighthorse looked at me. “Any reason why a six foot five black thug would have your number programmed in his phone?”
“Maybe he’s looking for a good time?” I said.
Knighthorse grinned, and so did Spinoza. I think. Aaron King chuckled lightly.
“Maybe it wasn’t his phone,” offered Spinoza.
“Her mother’s?” said King.
I nodded. “Maybe her mother gave it to her before her death.”
Spinoza said, “Maybe she suspected something bad might happen. If so, she wanted her daughter to have it in case of an emergency.”
“And she pre-programmed it with Samantha’s info?” said Aaron King. “Why not the police?”
“Or maybe she took it off her mother’s dead body,” said Knighthorse, and the expression that briefly crossed his face was one of profound pain. Knighthorse, I realized, knew something about dead mothers. His own dead mother.
Jesus, we’re all a mess, I thought.
“And you don’t recognize the woman?” King asked me.
“No. And her name doesn’t show up in any of my case files.”
“Did you check all your case files?” asked King.
“All my files are in a database.”
Knighthorse and King whistled. “Maybe I should get me one of those,” said the old guy, winking at me in such a way that my stomach literally did a somersault.
Spinoza plowed forward. “Still, that doesn’t mean the mother, what’s her name—”
“Lauren,” I said.
“That doesn’t mean Lauren didn’t look you up prior to being killed. Maybe she knew something was wrong.”
“Or something was about to go wrong,” said King.
“Right,” said Knighthorse. “She looks you up in the Yellow Pages, punches you in her phone for a later call.”
“But never makes the call,” I said.
“Right.”
“Maybe the mother tried calling you, Samantha,” said Spinoza. “Perhaps you were her last call.”
“Except you were too damn busy with your database to pick up,” said King. He winked at me, and I elbowed the old guy in the ribs. He chuckled again.
“If so,” said Knighthorse, “then perhaps you were the last call she ever made. And if the call came through as blocked, which can be done automatically, then you would have no record of the call.”
“It’s a theory,” I said.
Knighthorse said, “And then all the daughter had to do was hit redial.”
“And she would call me,” I said.
“Bingo.”
We let that theory digest for a few seconds. Then Spinoza sat his oversized drink down. No doubt his normal-sized bladder was bursting at the seams. “So let’s hit it,” he said.
And we did. But first he went to the bathroom.
Chapter Thirty-one
Private investigators seem to hold a certain allure for many people. I get that. TV has certainly made the work appear glamorous; after all, there’s something exciting about being a lone wolf (no pun intended), working when you want, living on the edge of society, and catching the bad guys. The adventure. The excitement. The mystery.
Sorry folks, but fifty percent of P.I. work is following cheating spouses and doing background checks. And even then, the background work is getting sparser and sparser, thanks to so many new internet sites that do the work for us.
But, yeah, every now and then we do get a juicy case. And it can be fun. Especially when you do help those in need.
More often than not, P.I. work takes great patience, especially when you’re watching a subject at home for days on end. Or when you’re beating down doors looking for leads.
Like we were doing now.
Canvassing a targeted area will eventually turn up something. With enough people pounding doors and stopping people on the streets, someone, somewhere will recognize the man in the picture.
Canvassing is painstaking and frustrating at best, hopeless and infuriating at worst. And just when you think you couldn’t knock on another door, or stop another stranger on the street, someone starts talking, and that someone will tell you exactly what you need to know.
Ideally.
So the four of us hit the pavement and, using a street map, centered our efforts on four different quadrants surrounding the meth house. I had the northeast section, which included a lot of rundown apartments, rundown homes, and a handful of motels. The guys didn’t like me running off on my own but I reminded them that I was a highly trained federal agent. They didn’t like it, and made me promise to keep my cell phone and pepper spray handy. I didn’t have any pepper spray, but the old man Aaron, gave me his.
I checked with Danny once, confirmed that Anthony was still sleeping, checked with my sister, confirmed Tammy was safe and sound at their home, and then hit the pavement.
And hit it hard.
* * *
We did this for four hours.
I questioned dozens and dozens, if not hundreds of people. I sensed that many of the young men recognized the man in the picture. None of them were talking. I would make them talk if I had to. I remembered where all of them lived.
Sometimes I don’t play by the rules. Sometimes I make up the rules. Someone was going to talk, whether they wanted to or not.
A few of these men let it be known that they didn’t appreciate me walking around and asking a lot of questions. One of these men might have threatened me. One of these men might have soon thereafter suffered a broken finger.
Might have.
I handed out all the fliers I had, each one with my cell phone number on the bottom and a promise that the call would remain confidenti
al. And at the end of the night, with no one talking and the neighborhood shutting down, the four of us reconvened at the McDonald’s. We discussed our options. We all felt we had hit the area pretty hard. Most of us felt someone knew something but wasn’t talking. We all agreed that unless someone started talking soon, we would have to take drastic measures. None of us talked about what those drastic measures were. I suspected each of us had our own definitions.
Knighthorse and Spinoza would both be back tomorrow morning. I would be back in the evening. Aaron King had a lead or two he wanted to follow up tonight. He insisted on following up alone, stating he would use his old Southern charm to get the information he needed. He even winked. Hell, I was charmed ten times over.
As I stepped into my minivan, Knighthorse pulled up beside me in his classic Mustang. He cranked down his window and said he’d heard from someone on the street that a mean, dark-haired lady had broken some gangbanger’s finger. His eyes narrowed. “That wouldn’t have been you, would it?” he asked.
“Everything but the mean part. It’s not nice to threaten a lady.”
He threw back his head and laughed. “I knew you were a badass.”
“Badder than most.”
“Hey, that’s my line,” he said, winking. He rolled up his window and peeled out of the parking lot.
Spinoza followed behind in his nondescript Toyota Camry, a car much better suited for investigations than Knighthorse’s eye-catching classic Mustang. He nodded at me and told me we would find her. I thanked the deeply troubled man for his help, and secretly hoped he would find himself.
As I started up my minivan—a vehicle even better suited for long surveillances—Aaron King sidled up to the window. His eyes twinkled. As if he was in on a private joke. Or if he knew a secret. I rolled down my window.
“We’ll find that girl,” he said. “I have a daughter. I can’t stand the thought of a little girl alone and scared and possibly abused.”
“I have a daughter, too,” I said. “And a son.”