Bad Memory_A Jake Abraham Mystery Novella

by Jim Cliff

  “I don’t know, she don’t have a whole lot of friends. I guess maybe I’m closest to her. She’s a quiet person. Keeps to herself, mostly. I think she just prefers her own company. As for ex-girlfriends, there’s only one she’s ever really talked about, name’s Abby something.”

  “Can you think of anyone who might want to hurt Susan?”

  “No, like I said, she don’t have too many friends, but she don’t have no enemies either.”

  “Okay, thanks for your help. Do you mind if I take a look in Susan’s room before I go?”

  “If you think it’ll help. I sure hope she’s alright.”

  Denise showed me to Susan’s room and I gave her one of my business cards, with instructions to call me if she remembered anything she thought might be useful. She left me alone.

  The room was a complete mess. At first, I thought maybe someone had broken in, searching for something, but I figured Denise would probably have mentioned that. I guess she was just messy. I started sorting through some piles on the floor, but it seemed they were just made up of various articles of clothing, so I moved to the desk.

  I couldn’t actually see the surface of the desk, as it was covered in paper. There were empty envelopes, course notes, letters from her father, a checkbook, old pay stubs, and some more University paperwork. Underneath the mess was an old-looking address book, and a desk diary, still in its plastic wrapping. I looked in the address book. Most of the names had been crossed out, but one caught my eye. Abby Dexter, presumably the ex-girlfriend; the address was out in Oak Park. There were few other entries, but I pocketed the book rather than transcribe what was there. I could always put it back later. The checkbook showed that if she’d paid for hotel rooms, car hire, or airline tickets recently, then she hadn’t paid by check. I saw from the course notes that she was taking some psychology courses. I wondered if any of my old professors taught her. It took me another couple of minutes to locate a class schedule. I recognized several of the lecturers’ names, but one brought back the strongest memories. My old tutor in Abnormal Psych, Dr. Aronson. It’s a small world after all.

  A laptop PC perched on the edge of the desk, the encroaching lava-flow of paper threatening to topple it onto the floor. I lifted the lid and fired it up, hoping Susan didn’t favor password protection.

  I worked through her emails, her Favorites folder, and her Internet history and came up empty. No evidence that she had contacted anyone about making a trip, or booked any travel or accommodation. No threatening emails, demands for money or ultimatums. I wrote down the name Anjali Sharma, who she seemed to exchange emails with about her Psych courses. I found no signs that Susan had succumbed to the temptations of Facebook or MySpace.

  The online resources exhausted, I turned to her hard drive and looked in her ‘My Documents’ folder. True to form, the files were not organized into sub-folders, meaning I had to wade through a virtual bucket of university-related Word documents before one filename caught my eye. Diary.

  Susan’s diary, it turned out, was the one file she had password protected – the 21st century equivalent of one of those lockable journals favored by teenage girls. I tried ‘password’, ‘abby’, ‘susan’ and her date of birth but had no luck, so I went back to the emails. Tucked away in her Deleted Items, which by the look of things she had never emptied, was an email from an online bookshop. When Susan had registered, they had sent her confirmation of her username and password. Most people can’t remember more than a few passwords, so they tend to choose the same one for everything and, sure enough, when I typed ‘folderol’ into the password screen I was granted access to her deepest thoughts.

  The diary was not a small document. Susan had typed anywhere between a paragraph and three pages per day for about the past 18 months. I started at the last entry, under Thursday’s date. Half an hour later I closed the file and the laptop lid, infuriated by Susan’s writing style. She had no apparent concept of what separates an anecdote from just something that happened, nor the prescience to highlight items which might be useful to my investigation. A cup of coffee was described in Michener-like detail over the course of one full page, including an in-depth analysis of whether the brand of artificial sweetener available had more or less aftertaste than the one she was used to. Conversely, the entry for Friday the 7th, one week before she went missing, read simply

  Saw W. again today. Tried not to blush. Failed. Don’t think she noticed.

  Working backward, I found more cryptic references to W., every Friday in May and June, but nothing in July and August. Had W’s recent return had anything to do with Susan’s departure? If W. was who Susan was meeting at Dutch’s, maybe I should talk with her. All I had to do now was find out the other letters in her name. I emailed the diary to myself at the office so I could read some more if I found the time but, knowing how way leads on to way, I doubted if I should ever come back to it.

  In the waste paper basket, amongst some aborted attempts at an essay, and a large number of candy wrappers, I found a credit card receipt for some groceries dated the week before. I put it in my pocket.

  On the way out I spotted Denise conspicuously hovering around the entrance to the small kitchen, probably wondering what I had been doing for over an hour.

  “All done?” she said, breezily.

  “Think so. I do have one more thing to ask you, though.” She nodded. “Can you think of anyone Susan might refer to as W?”

  She thought for a second. “No. Definitely not.”

  “How about Anjali Sharma?”

  “Anjali? Yeah, I’ve met her a couple times. She and Susan have classes together. Indian girl.”

  “Native American?” I asked.

  “No, Indian. From India.”

  I thanked her again and left. Since I was already in Greek Town, I stopped off at The Parthenon for some dolmades and flaming saganaki. Next stop would be Dutch’s, to find out if anyone saw Susan there on Friday night.

  Chapter 3

  On my way into Dutch’s, I was passed by two very muscular guys in tight T-shirts holding hands. I realized I may not fit in.

  I needn’t have worried. Nobody paid much attention to me. Also, I would have had to try hard to look as out of place as the bartender. He was a heavy-set, middle-aged man, with gray hair, and bags under his eyes, and he wore the international bartenders’ uniform of white shirt and black trousers.

  I sat at the bar and ordered a Budweiser. They didn’t serve Molson.

  “Are you Dutch?” I asked. I’m famous for my clever opening lines.

  “Yeah, I am. Are you a cop?” I knew I didn’t fit in.

  “No, I’m a private investigator. I’m looking for a girl.”

  He smiled. “You’re in the wrong place. All the girls here are looking for other girls. Now, if you were looking for a guy...”

  I ignored his remark and laid the picture of Susan that I’d got from her father on the bar.

  “I understand she was in here on Friday night. I wondered if you noticed her.”

  He didn’t look at the photo. “We get very busy in here, especially on Fridays, and some of the people who come here, they don’t want to be noticed, if you know what I mean. I’m very discreet.”

  “I admire your principles, but could you just take a look at the photo anyway?” I put a twenty on the bar by my beer.

  “Twenty bucks?” said Dutch, picking up the note between his thumb and forefinger and holding it out in front of him, as if to show his disdain. “You haven’t been doing this too long, have you kid?”

  I tried not to show how much it bothered me to be called ‘kid’ since I was trying to get on Dutch’s good side, and I put another twenty on top of the photo.

  Dutch took the photo from the bar and held it at arm’s length. After a few seconds, he decided his arm wasn’t long enough and took a pair of reading glasses from his breast pocket. He stared hard at the photo while I took a swig of the Bud.

  “You know what, she was in here on Friday ni
ght.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Yeah, I remember, because she was with this girl who was wearing a halo, and I remember thinking ‘What’s the deal with that?’”

  “A halo?” I was getting to be an expert at asking tough questions.

  “Yeah, it was, like, some wire with glitter or something on it. She’d bent it so a hoop sat a few inches above her head. You know, like a halo. What’s with that? I mean, what kind of person gets ready to go out, puts some wire on their head, and thinks ‘yeah, that looks good, I’m gonna go out in public like this.’ You know, we had a band in here a couple of weeks ago, and the singer wore swimming goggles on stage. Swimming goggles. On stage. I mean, it’s bad enough wearing sunglasses indoors, but swimming goggles? What’s with that?”

  Dutch was getting a little over excited, so I assured him I didn’t know what was with that and fought the urge to draw his attention to a guy at the end of the bar wearing high heels and a powder blue feather boa. I moved on to less controversial issues.

  “Had you seen either of the girls here before?”

  “Nah, they’re not regulars. I think I’ve seen the halo girl before, but I can’t be sure.”

  I thanked Dutch, and he moved up the bar to serve the feather boa. I put the photo back in my pocket and took another gulp of Budweiser.

  “Hi there, can I get you a drink?” said a voice behind me.

  I spun on my barstool to see a tanned, blonde man smiling at me. I smiled back.

  “No thanks, I've got one here.” I contemplated very carefully the ethics of flirting with a guy to get information. Eventually, I said, “Do you come here often?”

  He laughed. It was a corny line, but I wanted an answer.

  “Fairly often. I've never seen you here before, though.”

  “No, this is my first time.”

  “Well, welcome to Dutch's. My name's Frank”

  “Jake. Actually, I'm here more on business than pleasure. I'm looking for someone. A girl.”

  “You're in the wrong pl...”

  “I know, I know.” I showed Frank the picture. He shook his head.

  “Never seen her before. What's the story?”

  “She's missing. I'm helping her dad out. Have you ever seen a girl in here wearing a halo?”

  “Yes, Jaleesa was in here last week dancing with a girl who had a halo.” He yelled to a group of girls at the other end of the bar, “Jaleesa honey, come over here.”

  Jaleesa walked over. She moved like a cat, leisurely but precisely, and ready to pounce at any second.

  “Hey, Frankie, what’s up?”

  “You remember that girl you were dancing with last weekend, the one with the halo?”

  “Yeah, Angel?”

  “Angel?” I said. “Is that her real name?”

  “Far as I know.” She said. From the way she talked, I suspected she may have been smoking something. “Who’s this dude, Frankie? Why’s he askin’ about Angel?”

  “It’s okay Jaleesa, he’s a friend. He just wants to ask her some questions.”

  I smiled at Frank. He was doing a great job of interviewing my witness for me, so I let him continue. I considered winking at him but decided against it.

  “Well, I just met her that night. I haven’t seen her since, and we didn’t do much talking, if you know what I mean. Nick introduced us.”

  “Nick?” I asked.

  “He’s one of the bouncers here,” said Frank, looking around. “I can’t see him at the moment, but he’s definitely around tonight.”

  I waited while Frank went to look for the bouncer. I was feeling very warm and was about to take my jacket off when I remembered it was busy covering my guns. The bouncers probably wouldn’t take kindly to a man in their bar with a shoulder holster. Instead, I took a sip of my beer and waited.

  Frank reappeared, followed by a man the size of Hawaii, who I took to be Nick. His neck was about the same width as my waist, and he was taller than me by a good eight inches. His head appeared to be completely clean shaven, although I couldn’t see the top from my vantage point. Perhaps he had a little circle of hair up there.

  “Hi, I’m Jake Abraham.” I offered him my hand to shake and hoped he wouldn’t break it.

  “Nick.” He was clearly a man of few words. Those few words were spoken in a deep, Barry White voice.

  “I understand you know a girl named Angel.”

  He nodded.

  “Is Angel her real name?”

  He nodded again. He didn’t look at me. His eyes were scanning the bar, looking for signs of trouble.

  “Do you have any idea where I could find her?”

  “You got a good reason for asking?”

  “I’m a private investigator.” I showed him the copy of my license in my wallet. “Angel may have come into some money. I need to find her to verify that she’s definitely the mandated beneficiary. It’s a little complicated, and entirely confidential.”

  Fortunately, Nick wasn’t too bright. He seemed confused by long words and quickly decided it would be easier to tell me what I wanted to know, rather than try to understand why I wanted to know it.

  “Her name is Angel DeMarco. She lives at 959 West Armitage.”

  “Thanks, Nick. That’s a great help. Say, you may know someone else I’m looking for. She’s also been known to come in here.” I showed him the photo.

  “Yeah, she’s been in here. Her name’s Susie, or Susan, or something.”

  “Susan. She was here on Friday night, spent some time with Angel. Did you notice her?

  He shook his massive head, “I didn’t work Friday.”

  I thanked Nick again and offered to buy him a drink, but he had to get back to work. I was glad. I didn’t feel much like making small talk with a sumo wrestler in a suit. Frank was on the dance floor, and I waved goodbye to him on my way out. He made a thumbs-up sign and kept on dancing.

  Chapter 4

  From what I had found out so far, it seemed Angel DeMarco was the last person to see Susan before she disappeared. So, on Monday morning, I went to visit her.

  The security door to her apartment building was hanging off its hinges, so I went right in without buzzing. According to the name over the mailbox, Angel’s apartment was the first on the left. I knocked. There was no answer. I looked at my watch. It was eleven a.m. I knocked again, and then put my ear to the door. There was no sound. If Susan Patterson was tied up inside, she was keeping very quiet.

  I felt around the door frame and lifted the doormat to look underneath. There was no spare key. I could pick a padlock in about ten minutes on a good day, but padlocks are easy, and I hadn’t progressed to doors yet. Besides, I didn’t have the right tools with me. So, I decided to wait. It was then that it hit me that I didn’t know what Angel looked like. All the people I’d spoken to in Dutch’s, and I hadn’t thought to ask for a description. Shoddy detective work. I couldn’t hang around in the lobby all day without somebody calling the cops, and if I waited outside, I’d only be able to identify her if she happened to be wearing her halo. Which I doubted.

  I left the building and went to peer in at her window. The room was small and shabbily decorated. A bed, a couch, and a desk took up most of the floor space, and the remainder was covered in a threadbare gray carpet, strewn with thick textbooks and assorted pairs of shoes. A poster of Piper Perabo adorned the far wall next to the kitchen, and on the other hung a simple picture frame, with a collage of photos behind the glass. They were of young people at parties, proms, on holiday, and generally having fun. One girl featured in more than half of the photos. She had spiky, bleached-blonde hair, an eyebrow ring, and striking blue eyes. I decided to assume that this would be Angel.

  There was a coffee shop next door to Angel’s building. I went in and ordered a hot chocolate, two turkey sandwiches and a danish. I sat by the window, where I could just about see the entrance to 959. After I’d finished my first sandwich, I made a couple of calls on my cell phone.

 
“Area 3 Detectives Division, this is Detective Bales.”

  “Hi, Scott.”

  “Hey, buddy, how’s the P.I. business?”

  “Very exciting. How’s yours?”

  “This morning? I think the best word is bizarre.”

  “Have you heard about the former Captain Patterson’s daughter going missing?”

  “Yeah, I heard.” He didn’t sound like he cared.

  “Any idea how the investigation is going?”

  “Slowly, I would think.” He paused, and I gave him a few seconds to figure it out. Being a trained detective, he managed it in two. “Is that what you’re working on?”

  “Bingo. My first case.”

  “Wow. You really know how to stop a career before it’s started. There’s a lot of people hate Patterson. You don’t want to associate yourself too closely with him.”

  “Yeah, whatever. Anyway, do you know how it’s going?”

  “Not my case, but I’ll see what I can find out. At the moment, I’m kind of busy, though. Got this real wacko case today.”

  “Wacko how?” I asked.

  “O.K., listen to this. Twenty-eight-year-old African-American male, found sitting, dead, in his car, parked outside his building on Racine at eight yesterday morning. Medical examiner’s pretty sure he drowned”.

  “In his car?”

  “Not in his car. How could he drown in his car? No, in the lake, in a pool, M.E. doesn’t know. Point is, we got a drowned guy fully dressed, in dry clothes, in his car, like he drove home”.

  “You thinking it was an accident or murder?” I asked.

  “There was some minor mutilation to the body that makes us think homicide. Drowning homicide’s really rare, but if it was an accident why not leave him where it happened?”

  “Isn’t drowning really hard to pin down as a cause of death?”

  “Why would you know something like that?”

  “I read it somewhere.”