Footprints of a Dancer (Detective Elliot Mystery)

by Bob Avey

  “Not that I can remember. Gerald was related to him, though.”

  Elliot leaned forward. “Related? In what way?”

  “His uncle, I think. He wasn’t real open about it, but yeah, he mentioned it several times.”

  Elliot sat back in his chair and stared at the photocopy. “You’re right. He never talked much about his family. Did he ever mention anyone else, his mom, or his dad?”

  Terri shook her head, a look of both bewilderment and realization coming across her face.

  Elliot laid down enough cash to cover the tab. “I need you to do something for me. Go to the police and file a missing person report on Gerald.”

  “I thought you said he was….”

  “I can’t prove it yet. Maybe that will at least get them going. I don’t think anyone else is going to do it, especially not his wife.”

  “But if you can’t prove it, does that mean there’s a chance he’s still…?”

  Elliot started to say no, but considering the way things were going, he’d gone back to not being sure himself. And if Gerald was still alive, what were the implications? He shook his head. “Anything’s possible, but I wouldn’t get my hopes up.”

  Terri’s face looked as if she might crumple into tears. “I need to be going, Kenny. Thanks, though, for everything.”

  Elliot watched her until she disappeared from sight. With the elusive professor fresh on his mind, he called Buddy Wheeler, his old football coach, and asked him if he could dig up anything on David Stephens.

  As the traffic rolled by outside the restaurant, he thought about Jake and how he’d seemed a little off the mark of authenticity.

  Elliot left Joe’s and drove back to the metal building where he and the biker had hidden. He arrived with some luck. The overhead doors were open and a car was parked in the drive.

  Inside the metal building, a man stood at a workbench, grinding on a piece of metal.

  “Excuse me,” Elliot said.

  He jerked away from his work. He tore off his goggles and tossed them onto the surface of the workbench. “Something I can do for you, mister?”

  “Sorry about the intrusion, but the door was open. I’m looking for someone, a biker named Jake.”

  He glared at Elliot. “I don’t know any Jakes.”

  To the right of the man, a sink, a refrigerator and a microwave oven made up a small kitchen area. On the other end of the garage, three vintage bikes, two Harleys and one Elliot wasn’t sure about, an Indian perhaps, sat in various stages of restoration. “Tall, dude, rides a black Harley?”

  “Like I said, I don’t know the guy. I’ve been missing a few things around the shop, though. You know anything about that?”

  Elliot shifted his weight to his left foot. Everyone seemed to be in the mood for a fight. “No. I don’t.”

  The man stepped around the work bench and came toward Elliot. “I’m not sure I believe you.” He reached out with his left arm, not a real punch, not even a jab, but an attempt to shove Elliot off balance.

  Elliot stepped back and slid to his right, the opposite of what one would normally do when fending off such a lead, but the guy moved like a lefty and, if he struck again, it would be with a straight left or a left hook.

  Sure enough, the maneuver took Elliot out of range, and the left hook breezed past his jaw.

  The anger showing in the man’s eyes said he would try again.

  Elliot had to make a decision. It was either deck the guy or pull his badge. He showed his badge.

  He hovered in attack mode a few seconds before lowering his hands. “You might want to start introducing yourself. I almost took your head off. But, now that you’re here, maybe you could fill out a report for the stolen items I told you about.”

  Elliot tapped the badge, indicating it showed Tulsa. “I’m out of my jurisdiction. And I only do homicide.”

  “And you’re here, looking for this Jake fellow?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Yeah, well I meant it when I said I didn’t know him, but the description you gave got me to thinking. I’ve seen him around. He stopped by a couple of times. It doesn’t surprise me the law would be looking for him. I mean the looks of the guy for one thing, but he came in here asking about Indian things, wanting to know where he could buy arrowheads and stuff. Can you believe it? I mean anybody can see this ain’t no gift shop. So when you came in, asking about the dude, well…. What I’m trying to say is I’m sorry I started a fight with you.”

  “Don’t worry about it. If you could tell me where I might find the guy, I’d sure appreciate it.”

  “You might try Harry’s. The place seems to draw them in, the crazies I mean.”

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  “You’re looking good,” Buddy Wheeler said, “like you could still play. Maybe I should put you out there, see what you can do.”

  After Elliot had left the cycle shop, he’d called his old football coach and asked him to have coffee. He and Buddy talked on the phone, even exchanged emails, but it’d been awhile since they’d actually seen each other. “You never played me much when I was there.”

  Wheeler laughed. “You had a lot of competition. What can I say? You were a good kid, though. I miss having you around.”

  Elliot studied the plastic top to the Styrofoam coffee cup. Buddy was a good guy, with his own share of problems, a wife with a history of medical problems and a mentally challenged adult son who still lived at home, probably always would. “How’s the family?”

  “They’re okay. Betty’s blood sugar’s running a little high. She’s pretty good about it though, could be worse. And Jimmy, he took a job at one of those donation centers. He seems to like it. I think it might work out. How about you? How’s the cop business?”

  “It has its days. Unfortunately, it’s been awhile since I’ve seen one.”

  Buddy shook his head. “You always could make me laugh.”

  “It’s never been much of a challenge. And I really don’t want to change the subject, but were you able to find anything on Professor Stephens?”

  Buddy sipped his coffee and stared into space. “I’ve been at the university going on twenty years now. It’s different, working for a school you know. They have their own society, a city within a city more or less. And like any society, you got those who run below the surface of the system and those who try to fly above it.”

  “What are you trying to say, Buddy?”

  “Well, you remember all of the ruckus and hoopla when it happened. Anyway, it quieted down for a while, but the police started coming around again, asking questions and all. Maybe they found some new evidence or something. Stephens became too much of an embarrassment, I guess. Anyway, the right people decided they’d had enough of it, and Stephens was asked to leave. He tendered his resignation six years ago. The school kept it quiet. Far as I know, nobody’s seen or heard from him since.”

  “Any idea what happened to him?”

  “Nobody wants to talk about it. But there were rumors he went psycho or something, maybe even had something to do with the missing people. I’m not saying that’s what happened. You know how stuff like that gets started.”

  “Well, get ready for it again,” Elliot said. “I’m pretty sure the detectives will be coming around, asking more questions.”

  Elliot gave Buddy Wheeler a summary of what had happened since Gerald’s phone call.

  “No kidding. The nerdy kid you used to hang with?”

  “That’s right. And maybe by some miraculous stroke of luck you’ll be able to tell me where I could find his family.”

  “I wish I could help you, kid, but I wouldn’t even have remembered him if you hadn’t brought it up. But with a name like Stanley Gerald Reynolds, how hard could it be?”

  “You might be surprised,” Elliot said. He finished his coffee and stood. “It’s been nice visiting with you, Buddy, but I need to get going, lot of work to do.”

  Outside the coffee shop, Coach Wheeler said, “T
hat’s some fancy ride.”

  Eliot followed his line of sight to the engine of the bike. The fuel line had been disconnected.

  Elliot slid his hand inside his coat and touched the handle of the Glock while scanning the area. He saw nothing out of the ordinary.

  “Take it easy,” Coach Wheeler said. “You look like a quarterback who’s just met his replacement.”

  Elliot leaned over and examined the vandalism. Within the last twenty minutes, someone had walked up to the Harley and detached a key component, but that wasn’t all. Wrapped around the gas line, like some kind of sleeve, was a piece of paper.

  Elliot carefully removed the paper and unrolled it.

  It turned out to be a note.

  I’m taking a chance writing this. Disobedience is not tolerated. I can only ask that you stop what you are doing and go back to the world you inhabited before I, through actions not entirely of my own, gained the focus of your attention. I don’t want to hurt you, but I can promise if you continue with your present course of action, you will end up with more in common with your friend Stanley than you would find desirable.

  Elliot folded the note and an old memory buzzed through his head.

  He and Nick Brazleton had hiked up the grade behind their houses. They called it a mountain, though even describing it as a hill would have been a stretch. But it was their place to roam, their sanctuary, and it was what they wished it to be. During a particular excursion, they’d taken a new path and stumbled upon a place where they had never been, a strange area chock full of things to pique a twelve-year-olds’ interest.

  It was an old house site, though the only thing remaining was the foundation. It was a fascinating discovery but not the best of it. Occupying the property as well were two old cellars. The dugout near the foundation was, in itself, an explorer’s dream. The door long since removed, its steps descended into the darkness of a room where fruits and vegetables preserved in mason jars still rested on dusty wooden shelves. However, it was the other cellar-like structure that rose partially out of the earth a few hundred feet from the house that had sent chills down Elliot’s spine.

  The curved concrete roof with two small windows, one on each end, protruded above the ground, while the rest of the cellar, a small rectangular dungeon with walls of brick, was buried beneath the earth. The macabre design included no doorway. No way in, and no way out. The windows were much too small to allow the admission of an adult, but were sufficient for a child, if one so dared.

  Elliot lowered himself into the darkness, and even before his feet touched the floor, he sensed the foolishness of his decision. The pit could have been squirming with snakes, or crawling with spiders, or filled with God only knew what.

  Elliot found the dark hole in the ground to be absent of anything physical, but it was not empty. Just being there had filled him with shame and a sense of wrong-doing. He knew he’d picked up on a vibration, a reflection of the bad things that had taken place there, and his feet were only on the dark soil for a few seconds before he scrambled from the foul smelling enclave, pulling himself back through the window at a much faster rate than he’d entered.

  Elliot slid the note into his pocket. It was during his short stay in the old cellar he’d first realized he was sensitive to things that most people were not.

  Detective Ryan’s voice cut through the air.

  Coach Wheeler patted Elliot’s shoulder. “Hey, I got to go. See you around.”

  By the time Ryan walked up, the coach had found his car and was driving toward the exit. Ryan put his hands on his belt, though he wore no firearm or police belt around his waist. An old cop habit. “I see you didn’t heed my warning. You’re still hanging around.”

  “I have as much right to be here as any other citizen.”

  “Yeah, but you don’t have the right to be acting like a cop.”

  Elliot gestured toward Coach Wheeler’s car. “I was just having coffee with a friend.”

  “Why don’t I believe that?”

  “Beats me,” Elliot said. “But sooner or later someone’s going to file a missing person report on Stanley Reynolds. You might want to check with his wife, Cheryl. She asked a local bozo named Darrel Bogner about the prospect of getting rid of her husband.”

  “Someone had a run-in with Bogner at a bar called Harry’s, worked him over pretty good. You wouldn’t happen to know anything about it, would you?”

  Elliot reconnected the gas line then climbed onto the Harley. “It must have been somebody else.”

  “Don’t toy with me, Elliot.”

  “Don’t worry. It’s not my style. Anyway, we’re on the same side, or at least we should be.”

  Ryan exhaled heavily.

  “The newspapers in the old house,” Elliot said, “they’re the reason Laura Bradford was here. You should reexamine your notes on those drifters. There should be some clues there.”

  “What are you trying to say?”

  “I don’t think they just moved on. I believe they were murdered.”

  “You’re saying atrocities of that magnitude happened right here in my city, and I never knew anything about it? Doesn’t say much for me, does it?”

  Elliot looked away, observing the traffic. “I didn’t mean it that way. I’m just trying to help.”

  Color flashed across Ryan’s face. “Don’t tell me what I should or shouldn’t understand. I’ve just about had enough of you, Elliot. Maybe we should take off the badges and settle it right here.”

  Elliot tried to grasp what was happening. He’d seen some pretty hair-triggered cops, but nothing like this. He climbed off the bike and readied himself, aligning his left shoulder with Ryan’s chest. In an effort to not mirror his adversary’s aggression, he thought of Carmen, harnessing her influence to maintain control. “Don’t do this, Ryan. You’ll regret it.”

  As if someone had reached inside Ryan’s head and flicked a switch, he’d become irrational, and now the switch was flicked the other way. As quickly as it had started, it was over

  Ryan turned and walked away.

  Elliot watched Ryan climb into his car. There was no denying what he’d just witnessed. Either Detective Ryan had a serious personality disorder, or the old case meant more to him than he was letting on.

  Ryan’s uncanny behavior still occupied Elliot’s attention when his phone went off. It turned out to be Doctor Meadows, the Methodist pastor he’d asked to visit Angela Gardner.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Doctor Meadows, the Methodist pastor, was sitting at the bedside of Angela Gardner, reading quietly to her, but he closed the Bible and placed it on the bedside table when Elliot entered the room.

  “Thanks for coming,” Elliot said.

  “I’m grateful to be of service. And please, call me Tom.”

  Elliot glanced at the floor. Doctor Meadows had asked him before to call him by his first name, but it made Elliot uncomfortable, seeming to diminish the respect he felt he owed him.

  Doctor Meadows smiled. “How about Pastor Tom?”

  “I’ll work on it,” Elliot said. He glanced at Angela, who seemed to be sleeping. “I got here as fast as I could.”

  The sound of someone’s shoes squeaking against the tiled floor echoed through the hallway. Seconds later, Doctor Shaffer came into the room and went to Angela’s bedside.

  “The doctor gave her something earlier,” Pastor Meadows said. “I think she’ll be … resting for a while.”

  Pastor Meadows had avoided the term all right, but the question the words would have posed hung there, as if he’d added emphasis to them instead. He lowered his voice. “Miss Gardner said some peculiar things during our visit. She calls you her guardian angel, said she saw you on the other side, while she was out. Even in my line of work, I don’t often hear that kind of talk.”

  Elliot glanced at Angela. In the last few days, he’d seen the ghost of someone who’d passed away, and the spirit of another who had, at the very least, brushed the gates of death. He dec
ided to play it safe. “Angela’s been somewhat delusional, but her concern for her spiritual welfare seems genuine. That’s why I called.”

  He smiled. “You did well, son. We had a good talk.”

  Elliot considered confiding in the pastor. Such things often concerned him, wondering whether the source of his somewhat unusual abilities came from the right side of things. Carmen, the only other person he’d ever mentioned it to, said it was the nature of the individual that determined their effect, and not the other way around. Her wisdom had always inspired him.

  Angela’s eyes fluttered open. She rose partially out of bed and propped herself on her elbows. With a raspy voice she said, “Kenny?”

  Elliot glanced at Doctor Shaffer.

  The doctor nodded.

  Elliot went to Angela’s bedside and took her hand. It was almost as if she’d come to his rescue, helping him avoid what might have been an uncomfortable discussion concerning their relationship. “How’s my girl?”

  Angela managed a smile. “You know, it’s kind of like hiding under the covers when you’re a kid. You feel safe there, but if you ever stopped to think about it, what’s a bunch of wool or a bit of cotton going to do?”

  “I’m not sure what you’re trying to tell me, Angela.”

  “Don’t be silly. You’re the one who showed me. We have a similar false sense of security when we try to hide from God.”

  Pastor Meadows came over. He put his hand on Angela’s forehead. “Be at peace, my child. God is with you.”

  “My heart is stained but not darkened. I’ve done things which were not my own. The truth is hidden in my dreams, as well, but not so much that I can’t recognize it. I’ve lived there, an inward quest of consumption. Knowing whether or not I am for that purpose alone will be my redemption, if not my damnation. In the end, we all have to pay for our sins, don’t we?”

  “Jesus paid the price for you,” Pastor Meadows said. “All you have to do is believe and accept him as your savior.”

  Angela squeezed Elliot’s hand and started to cry. “The girl with the dark eyes became the enemy, her sole purpose to destroy the vehicle, to remove the pathway it created. Her life was offered, not to me but for the darkness, though ultimately it was I who took it, with a blade of black glass. I killed her, Kenny.”