by Christa Wick
"This is Ivy."
"Hey, do you think you can stay late?" Ivy was married with two teenaged kids and a husband, so I hated asking. "Don't know how late."
"Only if you tell me you have a hot date with a rich man."
I sighed, half wishing it was true. Instead, I was trying my best to disentangle myself from a hot, rich male who still knew how to deliver mind blowing orgasms even if he was faking it to get his son out of jail. "Best I can offer is overtime and something from the liquor store."
There was silence on the other end as Ivy evaluated her bargaining position. "Jack Daniels, single-barrel. Ed'll expect me to put out if he has to cook dinner for the kids tonight and..." she dropped her voice to a whisper, "If I have to sleep with my husband, he better have whiskey dick."
I laughed, thinking about all the Amish and other inspirational romances on momma's bedside table. "I'm not sure you have to whisper that. Momma sure knows what whiskey is, but you might as well be speaking Spanish for the other."
Ivy laughed. "So it's a deal?"
"Deal," I laughed back and said good-bye. Hanging up, I called Craig while I pulled into traffic.
"Where are you?"
"Just finishing up my beef and cheddar, which you're paying for since the manager wouldn't let me stay without buying anything."
"Can you see across the street?"
Craig gave me a cheddar clogged, "Yes."
"What's there other than the liquor store?"
"An out-of-business bookstore and," he paused, his gaze jumping to the next shop. "An out-of-business jewelry store."
That two out of the three storefronts across the street were empty didn't surprise me. I'd taken a small start-up loan for my business coming home. The lender had given me an ugly set of statistics about failure rates. In return, I gave him an even uglier set of statistics on rising crime rates in Masonville and the rest of the state.
"Well, finish your sandwich and meet me at the liquor store."
"Liv, you don't have to get me drunk if you want to tango," Craig cracked.
I rolled my eyes, even though he couldn't see it over the phone. "I assure you, my intentions are professional, although hopefully video will be involved."
"Fuck," Craig growled, more at himself than at me. "Yeah, he's got a fish bowl outside the door. Sorry Liv, I'm getting a little nine-to-five in my mentality."
"You weren't the only one that missed it," I offered, knowing my powers of observation had turned to crap with Dante back in my life. "I'll see you in twenty if I don't hit a snag."
********************
It took a little over thirty minutes to reach the store. Craig waited inside talking with the clerk. I walked in, caught the subtle drop of Craig's hand to his side and the quick rub of his thumb over the pad of his fingers.
Great, the guy wanted money to let us see the video. I cocked my head at Craig and he dropped two fingers. I hoped he only meant hundreds, otherwise I might have to call the cops and report the clerk for extortion.
Grabbing a cold Perrier from the refrigerator, I walked over to the register and dropped two-hundred and five dollars down on the counter. The guy pocketed the two hundreds and gave me change back on the five before nodding at a dingy door that had once had "Office" stenciled on it.
The tape was cued up to Friday, six P.M. I took the only chair in the small room and Craig perched on what looked like a hundred-year-old safe behind me.
"I hope this at least shows the dumpster," I groused. My entire drive there, I hadn't been able to get my mind off Dante and the hard cock I'd had pressed against my stomach.
"He checked," Craig answered. "Wouldn't let me see, but I told him I'd wring his scrawny little neck if he was lying."
The clerk was telling the truth, or a half truth. Maybe one-third of the truth, I thought, craning my head to the side as I watched the video play in black and white.
"Screens don't work like that," Diamond laughed and gave my right shoulder a friendly prod. He was lucky he hadn't hit my left -- I would have decked him. "You can slant your head all you like, you won't see the rest of the dumpster."
I snorted at him while I fast forwarded between lulls in the tape. There weren't that many, sad to say. Payday in Masonville and a large segment of the population headed straight to Arby's after six.
As the tape approached nine-thirty and we still hadn't seen anything remotely suspicious, I grew frustrated. "We have to focus on the phone. That's the last missing piece from the murder scene."
"Except for what we don't know is missing," Craig reminded me.
I nodded and glanced at my watch. We had spent an hour and a half watching three and a half hours of mind numbingly boring video.
Standing, Craig stretched. "Maybe it's been used since the murder. Can the defense get a phone dump?"
"Probably not until after the preliminary hearing." I rewound the tape a few seconds. "What's this?"
Craig was instantly hovering over my shoulder as I replayed the tape. We saw the front quarter of a car only a little newer than the Ford that had hit me that morning, and with a spot or two less rust on it. The interior and doors were out of camera range.
I paused the video and printed a screen shot of the car. As the printer hummed noisily to life, the clerk called out from the storefront. "That's ten bucks a page."
"Thank God the little fuck doesn't know who's paying for this," I hissed under my breath. I left the paper drying while I slowly advanced the video. Ten seconds later, we saw a bare forearm toss a bundle of gray over the roof of the car and into the dumpster. I took another screenshot and printed it.
Provided it was the killer's arm, it didn't help Alex. The car might be beat to hell and not what Alex drove, but even with the black and white video, the arm clearly was white and had a similar build. I did a quick mental calculation for the killer's approximate height. That, too, didn't bode well for Alex who was at the top end of my calculation of anywhere from five-foot-ten to six-four.
On screen, the car started to pull forward, teasing us with the promise of the driver coming into view.
"Yes, yes...c'mon asshole..."
A different asshole ruined the shot, pulling his white Chevy Silverado the wrong way into the drive-thru and blaring his horn at the car in front of the dumpster.
"No!" Craig and I yelled the word at the same time as the car began to back out of the camera's view. We watched, crestfallen, through the rest of the tape until Max appeared and went dumpster diving, coming up with the jacket.
I rewound the tape back to the truck and took another screen shot.
"You know," Craig started. "The phone could have been in the jacket pocket...I don't think Max would have noticed if it fell out along the way."
I shot him a hard look, letting him know I didn't like that scenario at all.
Shrugging, Craig pulled the tape out and put it back in its case. "So, what are you going to do?"
"Sit on the tape, first." I looked sheepishly at him. "While you run through the rest of them for Friday and Saturday."
Craig lifted a brow and gave a little puff of air.
"He could have gotten nervous and come back." Craig knew as much, but I felt guilty for making him sit through them and wanted to remind him of why.
He nodded reluctantly as I reached into my wallet, pulled a few more hundred dollar bills out and handed them to him.
"The picture I'll send off to this guy I have in Chicago to see if he can pull up a clean reading on the truck's license plate. At least get us a partial." I slid the printouts into my bag as I thought out loud. "Then we hand the tapes off to the prosecutor and get the cops to run the plate for us. Whoever was driving that truck got a look at the killer. We need to find him before his memory has any more time to go stale or he's had a chance to see Alex's face on the television a couple dozen times."
"I'll get through the tapes tonight, before that asshole out front closes up," Craig promised. "How long will it take your guy to clean t
he image up?"
"Tomorrow afternoon if I can get him to prioritize it." I scratched my head, thinking about where I should go from there. "I'll take the information to Davies, catch him alone and see if I can get him to agree to do a phone dump for Ray at the same time."
"Hicks--"
"Hicks has a hard on for Dante Serrano," I broke in. "And he's not going to back down because it will make it look like he foolishly jumped the gun -- which he totally did."
Craig dropped his gaze for a second, acknowledging that I was probably right. I knew he had worked with Hicks in the past, but he was going to have to learn to use his knowledge and contacts as a weapon when necessary if he was going to survive as a PI. That he hadn't quite learned that lesson yet was why I hadn't explained my outfit change outside the shelter to him or told him about the recording I had of Hicks being a bigot with a grudge.
Grabbing the door handle, I quickly changed the subject. "I'm not screwing up your plans for the night, am I?"
He shrugged. "I'm a retired cop with a small pension. I'm too poor to have plans."
I smiled, knowing he was exaggerating at least a little. "We get the charge against Alex dropped and help catch the actual killer, you'll be golden. You'll have to turn work away."
He gave me a quick, two-fingered salute, promising to do his Boy Scout best, and turned back to the TV, pulling the next cassette from the shelf as I shut the door behind me.
In the store front, the clerk stared at me expectantly, his arms folded across his chest. I flashed the print outs at him and pulled three twenties from my wallet as I ordered Ivy's single-barrel Jack.
"What about the big guy?" The clerk jerked his head in the direction of the office door.
"He's watching a few more cassettes. He'll square it with you when he's done."
"Did it help?"
The clerk had more dollar signs in his eyes. I shrugged, not wanting to add fuel to the fire. "Too soon to tell."
It wouldn't have bothered me in the least to have lied to him, but it was the truth.
Chapter Eleven
My cell phone started ringing at five A.M. the next morning. I picked it up to see Dante's name on my display. At least, unlike Gabriella, he didn't refuse to give me a little warning.
I accepted the call, tentatively putting the phone to my ear and asking, "What's wrong?"
Something better be wrong, as bad as it felt thinking that. If he was hoping to make an attempt at pillow talk, I'd take my pillow to his house and smother him to death.
"Alex is in the hospital." The words came out angry and frustrated.
I bolted upright in bed. "How bad?"
"Broken arm. Crane said they're going to have to do surgery this morning." He paused and I could hear him exhale slowly. "I'm sorry, I don't know why I called you."
I knew. He wanted me to tell him Alex wouldn't be in jail much longer. He wanted me to comfort him, if not with my actual words then by the sound of my voice speaking them. He had been a confident, masterful young man on our first go round, but he hadn't been Superman. He still wasn't. I could hear the need for solace in his voice now as easily as I had been able to detect it back then. He might be intent on walking away when this was over, but right now he was looking for a sympathetic ear.
I couldn't promise him it was all going to be okay. Instead, I told him about last night's progress.
"Someone saw the killer," I started, carefully choosing my words so he'd realize we still had a long distance to go. "We have a picture of the witness's truck, I should have a license plate number, at least a partial, by the afternoon."
"So you'll be able to show it wasn't Alex?"
"First we have to find the witness," I cautioned. "And it was about nine-thirty P.M. when he saw the guy. If he says it wasn't Alex that he saw, that's something for trial."
He snorted and I felt his frustration. I offered a sliver of hope for a faster resolution. "If he can ID the person he actually saw, that's different. We'll work both angles."
I hesitated over mentioning Ray's phone to him but I could tell by the sound of his breathing that he was having a hard time holding it together now that Alex was injured and in the hospital. "I think this will finally help tug one of the cops over to Alex's side, at least enough that he'll be willing to get a dump on Ray's phone."
"Didn't they do that already?"
"I mean one from after the killing," I explained. "The phone wasn't discarded with the jacket, so either the killer doesn't have it or he had a reason for holding onto it."
"When will you get the phone records?"
"Soon, today or tomorrow," I promised. I didn't want to use the recording of Hicks and Davies so early, but the audible pain in Dante's voice weakened my resolve. Knowing he needed something more to preoccupy him -- something that wasn't any of my girlie bits -- I asked him about defense counsel. "Have you made any progress finding Alex a new attorney?"
"Yeah, Adam Malkin is flying in this morning. He hasn't said he'll take the case yet, though."
"I know his reputation, give me his number and I'll see if I can't cement it for you."
"How?" His voice grew more alert. "Is there information you're not giving me, Liv?"
"No." I held my breath, hoping he could no longer tell when I was lying.
"Liv?"
Shit. I cleared my throat. "It's how I'll spin the information, Dante. You're up to speed on everything now."
He let it go, but I could tell when he said good-bye that he felt like I was holding out on him. Two decades ago, he would have kept at me until I spilled everything. I wasn't sure whether it was good or bad that he was willing to let it go right now.
Idiot!
Snarling at my stupidity, I rolled over to look at the alarm clock. It had nothing to do with good or bad. It was merely too goddamned early -- even for Dante Serrano -- to fight over it.
Closing my eyes, I quickly fell back to sleep, my hand curled around the piece of paper with Malkin's number on it. At seven, my alarm went off and I stumbled out of bed, tossed a robe on, and met momma in the kitchen where she had just finished brewing a pot of coffee.
"Momma, you're a life saver." I kissed her on the cheek, grabbed a cup of coffee and went into the front room to retrieve my laptop.
Back at the kitchen table, I turned the computer on and connected my phone to it so I could copy the voice recording of Hicks and Davies. When the copy was made, I looked Malkin's email up on his firm website and sent the file to him and then punched his number into the phone, hoping it was his cell and not just an answering service.
A high voice answered, saying Malkin's name, and I was certain for a second that it was his secretary or some other person low on the totem pole.
"Yes, this is Olivia Miller. I'm working with Alex Serrano on his murder case."
"I'm meeting with Alex today, Ms. Miller," the voice told me.
I released a big mental sigh, glad I hadn't talked to him like I thought he was anyone other than who he was. Not that he could have reasonably gotten mad at me; it wasn't my fault he sounded like a twelve-year-old boy whose balls hadn't dropped.
"That's great," I went on. "I know you're partial, if I may say so, to cases with police irregularities." I didn't want to say "abuse" yet. It might only be Hicks' subconscious screwing the case up, not an outright intent on his part to fuck Alex, and thus Dante, over.
His voice deepened with interest. "I'm listening."
"I sent you a recording and details on how I obtained it." I paused. I had experienced more than a moment's worry about sending the recording to Malkin. "So I can moved forward on my end, though, I'd like you to keep the recording to yourself for the time being. It's not exculpatory," I assured him. "But it might be worth something at trial."
I intended it to be worth a little leverage with Hicks and Davies long before that and hopefully to avoid a trial altogether, but I couldn't tell an attorney I intended to resort to leveraging the tape with the cops.
"I'll do
whatever is in Alex's best interest, Ms. Miller," Malkin said.
"Of course, I'm not asking otherwise." I finished the call with Malkin, agreeing to meet him before he flew back home if he decided to take Alex's case.
Next I called Chris in Chicago to make sure he had received the image scans and to strong arm him if necessary to process the pictures as soon as possible. Satisfied that, if there was anything to be pulled from the image, he'd have it to me by noon, I powered the laptop down and made momma an omelet before showering. By the time I was ready to leave, Ivy was there.
At the office, I called Craig. He sounded like he was still in bed.
"Hey, just checking whether you found anything else on the video." I didn't figure he had or I would at least have a text from him.
"Wasn't jack on it."
"'Okay. Sorry you had to sit through that torture."
"Kind of made me nostalgic about being on the force," he laughed.
"Seriously?"
"For about fifteen minutes," he snorted. "So what's next?"
"I need Davies direct number, you got it?"
Craig hesitated.
"I don't want the call routed through the station," I said and cleared my throat with meaning. "Or recorded."
"I don't think I want to know...give me a few minutes to find the number and I'll text it to you."
"Thanks."
I let him go and walked across my office to the white board. I took the memory card from my video recorder and popped it into the card slot on the 65-inch television that stood to one side of the white board. Like the television, the camera was high definition and I ran through the murder scene looking for something I had missed.
While I watched, I divided the white board into sections. The murder site, Ray's truck and Arby's took up half the board. The columns were filled with inventories, site descriptions and other details. On the other half, I listed names: Ray, Alex, Dante, Claire, Lee, Vivian and Briggs. When I was done, I sat down on the floor and looked up at the board.
I didn't have enough information about Ray or his family. It was day three and I should know more about the Epps and their circle of friends and neighbors. Because either the killer knew Ray or it was a random killing. I had no means right now to find a random killer. But the space under the columns for the Epps family was inexcusably empty.