The Lucky Dey Thriller Series: Books 1-3 (The Lucky Dey Series Boxset)

by Doug Richardson

  After a quick scrub-over, Karrie toweled off and dug into a Hello Kitty backpack where she kept all her clothes, makeup, and hygiene supplies. She came up with a pair of low-mileage underwear, leggings, plaid skirt, and her one, cable-knit sweater. Cute enough, she decided. Her hair she’d worry about in the car. Lastly, Karrie reached into the front pocket of the pack, using a sharp fingernail to reach the hidden compartment she had fashioned to store whatever cash she collected from the occasional work she had managed to find. She counted out three twenty-dollar bills which she quickly folded into fourths and secured into one of the cups of her bra.

  And what about Cherry Pie?

  Karrie unzipped the front pocket once again and peeled off two more twenties. She’d offer both to Cherry for rent and food, insisting she take at least one of the bills. Karrie wasn’t a sponge. Nor was any member of the Kaarlsen clan, she reminded herself in a secret moment of pride.

  That’s right. Daddy would want me to pay my way.

  “Are you coming?” shouted Cherry, sounding as if she was already out the front door.

  “Right behind you,” piped Karrie, re-zipping her backpack and rushing from the bathroom.

  11

  “So where we going?” inquired Andrew.

  “You? You’re going back to your hotel,” said Lucky, flat and without compromise.

  “Whoa, wait,” said Andrew. “Thought we decided that I was gonna ride shotgun.”

  “Homework first.”

  Lucky wheeled the Crown Vic left onto Olympic Boulevard and pointed it in the direction of downtown Los Angeles. Even with Saturday morning traffic, Lucky was still calculating a slow commute.

  “What kind of homework?” asked Andrew, not-so-comfortably settled into the worn, velour-covered passenger seat replete with cigarette burns.

  “Called around yesterday,” said Lucky. “Never worked a missing persons before. But the biggest clues about where your daughter is today are best found back where she came from.”

  “You mean back home?”

  “We’re already here and I’m not keen on experiencing Wisconsin in the winter. So I’m gonna need you to write down everything and everybody she had contact with in the two weeks before she turned up missing.”

  “She’s here,” insisted Andrew. “We know she’s here because of the photo I showed you.”

  “All I know is that she was here,” pressed Lucky. “I’m serious. Wanna help me? Then gimme a detailed chronology of where she’d gone, who she’d been with. Everybody, everywhere. Phone numbers of friends. Anything you can get. Who she talked to, what they remember she said.”

  Lucky glanced at Andrew to see if he was a man switched into receptor mode. What he got instead was the daunted look of a father who might have all along been struggling to know his daughter.

  “Christ,” said Andrew. “Not sure I know where to begin.”

  “Doesn’t matter. Just start it and go ’til it’s done. Work the phone ’til your ears bleed. And write everything down.”

  “You know I’ve pretty much already told you just about everything I know—”

  “Then you’re gonna find out more,” demanded Lucky.

  Lucky heard the harshness of his own words. He’d recognized his own chippie tone and momentarily questioned if he had gone over the line with his very first and one and only client. Everything about Andrew appeared relatively genteel. He came off as the picture of a Midwesterner with soft hands. A rich, reserved desk jockey suffering the loss of his marriage and his daughter.

  And he also holds the checkbook.

  Money, again, thought Lucky. Why the crap did stuff most always come down to dollar signs? He weighed his options—the same choices that usually came down to: do I kiss ass or do I kick ass?

  Lucky’s factory settings were pretty much always switched to the latter.

  “Listen,” said Lucky, sounding almost apologetic, hefting the words he chose. “Been a long morning. And now I gotta print up a whole bunch more of these to paper the beach tonight. So forgive me if I sounded short—”

  “Not at all,” answered Andrew. “You’re right. I wanna help. I wanna do anything I can do to find my daughter. And if digging up more than I already know is gonna help us, then I’m for that.”

  “Should warn you,” cautioned the cop. “You might not like some of the shit you discover.”

  “…I’m well aware of that.”

  “Can’t let the fact that you’re her old man color judgment.” Lucky was already rethinking his request of Andrew. “Might wanna hire a Milwaukee investigator just in case.”

  “In case of what?”

  “In case you can’t stomach the ugly truth.”

  Lucky would have preferred the remaining portion of the downtown drive be served in silence. And if not for the nerves of his passenger that had been plucked like the strings of a tuneless harp, the twenty final minutes might have passed with little more than road noise. Instead, Andrew fussed and probed Lucky with pro forma questions one might’ve asked on the first tee of a country club.

  Married?

  Never.

  Girlfriend?

  Not presently.

  Brothers, sisters?

  Nope.

  College?

  Some.

  Football fan? Baseball?

  If the beer’s cold...

  Parked in a cab lane in front of the downtown Biltmore Hotel, Lucky said so long to the bereft father, offering an encouraging, but not quite whole-hearted, thumbs up before launching away from the curb. As he unconsciously plotted his short route through traffic to the Piper Technical Center, he noticed the slick forming on the Crown Vic’s steering wheel. His palms were wet with perspiration.

  Jesus, Lucky? Really? You?

  He was used to sweat leakage. He was a man. He preferred Gatorade over coffee. And he could barely begin a workout without opening ten thousand pores. The morning, though, was cool. His kidneys, he figured, had probably already scrubbed the last microgram of Percocet from his bloodstream, evidenced by the girdle of pain that currently squeezed him. So why the hell were his palms opening up in a stigmata of sweat?

  Because you haven’t seen her in nine months, you dickhead.

  As Lucky’s subconscious demanded to be heard, he relented without a struggle. Wrestling with himself felt like a waste of time and energy. So he swallowed his sudden and begrudging case of anxiety, left-blinkered the Crown Vic onto Broadway and finished off the drive in a bit of policeman double-time, weaving between cars and sometimes speeding down yellow-striped dividers until he was at the garage entry to the Piper Technical Center. The supercharged Ford bottomed out and sparked on the ramp to the parking lot, followed by the familiar sound of squealing rubber against years of oil deposits on tire-polished concrete.

  Lucky set the brake and swallowed his spit, considered refilling his anti-pain bucket with a half tab of Perc, then popped the console and fished around until he heard the rattlesnake sound of his Advil bottle. The voice in his head recommended a triple dose. Lucky’s abused stomach lining might have disagreed. But he planned to split the difference with something stale from a third-floor vending machine. So he locked the Crown Vic and made a heading for the corner stairwell.

  It was 12:54 P.M. in Chinatown.

  The LAPD’s Hooper Heliport sat atop the Piper Technical Center. The largest rooftop heliport in the continental U.S., it was home to the city police department’s fleet of nineteen helicopters. The mid-December sun hung at what appeared to be the sky’s apex. Unfiltered and pale, the vertical cast left the faces of various flight techs appear black in the harsh down-shadows.

  Finishing off a microwaved muffin, Lucky hung back under a stucco awning, watching her move through the pre-flight inspection of her helicopter. From two hundred feet, she appeared even taller than he remembered. Her wild spray of black hair was pulled back into a tight bun and neatly tucked under a fitted aviator’s cap. Her athletic body moved elegantly inside the matching blue-bl
ack jumpsuit. Not quite the jeans, boots, t-shirt, and letterman’s jacket she was wearing when he had first encountered her in a Pasadena café. She had made a strong impression then. Just the way she was making an impression now as Lucky quietly observed the woman and her Bell JetRanger chopper. A beauty with her beast.

  It was when she shouted out to a helicopter tech for an oil rag that she noticed him, half-hidden in the shade, licking the reconstituted blueberry off his fingers. After a squinty pause, she gave Lucky a wary wave and began to walk in his direction. With that, Lucky meandered out onto the tarmac and met her halfway.

  “Hey, stranger,” said Gonzo, at first apprehensive, then braving a hug and a warm kiss to Lucky’s unshaven cheek.

  “Hey yourself,” he said, momentarily lifted by her flashing smile. “Like what you’re wearing.”

  “Yeah?” she said, faking a model’s twirl. “Suits me, yeah?”

  “That it does.”

  “So what brings you over this way? You lookin’ to switch from muscle cars to helos?”

  “Charger’s in the shop again. Drivin’ a borrowed Crown Vic. You should see it. Primer gray. Duct tape. Real shit-mobile.”

  “Sounds badass enough for you.”

  “It’s a beater. But fits my current job status.”

  “Still in Lucky Limbo?” she half-joked.

  “Cop union. Lawyers. You know.”

  “And the pain management?” she asked, arms flexed akimbo.

  Pain management. Gonzo’s code for Lucky’s alleged addiction.

  “Well, that didn’t take long,” said Lucky, mock-checking his watch.

  “Honest question,” defended Gonzo. “Not like I ever stopped giving a shit.”

  “Then you know the way it is.” Lucky’s words were suddenly clipped with a dash of teeth.

  “Guess I do.”

  Lucky’s pain management was a sore spot and the unsaid core of the former couple’s way-too-civil breakup. If Lucky ever wondered if he truly missed her, the answer came with some bitter truth. The moment they politely touched on the heliport tarmac would sting and linger for days.

  “Pain’s still there,” admitted Lucky. “At least the bullet…”

  “Yeah, the bullet,” she finished with a nervous laugh, welcoming the slight change of subject.

  The story of the bullet predated their knowing each other. But was an endless fascination to Gonzo’s curious son, Travis. Years back, Lucky had been ambushed in an apartment corridor and shot in the back of the head. Obviously Lucky had survived, but the .25 caliber bullet had proved inoperable, lodged in a delicate, but somewhat benign tangle of nerves and soft tissue near the top of his soft palate. The injury wasn’t without pain, causing chronic headaches for the deputy sheriff. There was also the scallop of a scar that remained two inches behind his ear. Gonzo had dubbed it “Lucky’s unlucky conversation starter.” Unlucky, not because he was the rare cop who survived after getting shot in the head; unlucky because Lucky could usually do without conversations, especially those in which he was the primary subject. Gonzo had confessed that sometimes at night while Lucky slept, she would brush the rim of the intrusion scar with her fingertips and ponder her own mortality issues along with those that plagued their profession.

  Then came the “accident.” At least, that’s what Lucky preferred to call it. It happened exactly forty-one days after Lucky had thrown himself head-to-windshield into the onrushing Volvo wagon. While sharing a physio-rehab unit breakfast with Gonzo and Travis, Lucky had felt something wedged at the back of his throat, setting in motion an awful coughing fit. The result was a bloody, metallic flavor in his mouth. The foreign object briefly wedged under his tongue felt as if he’d loosened a filling. Yet the moment he spit it onto his plate he knew what had happened.

  There, on the plate, rested a copper-jacketed hunk of lead. Malformed. But without a doubt, a .25 caliber bullet.

  “You know Travis keeps the bullet in a jar on his nightstand,” said Gonzo. “But he wants to preserve it forever in a custom snow globe.”

  “He’s a weird kid,” smirked Lucky. “Good thing Christmas is coming.”

  “Told you when my pre-flight was, didn’t he?”

  “Yeah. What you get for allowing your kid a cell phone.”

  Gonzo chuckled and nodded, but still had her arms wrapped across her chest. There was a familiar ease to the duo but obvious tension in equal measure. It was as if the natural warmth of affections still lingered behind heavy layers of bulletproof Kevlar. It reminded Lucky that their choice to split up after their brief relationship was far too cordial. Possessed with both love and defense. Why the hell had neither cared enough to fight for it?

  A cop in an identical jumpsuit to Gonzo’s brushed past her as he hauled a pair of hard cases toward the helicopter.

  “We workin’ today?” chirped the helo-cop.

  “Be right there,” answered Gonzo, before cuing Lucky for his windup. “What’s going on with you?”

  “Side gig,” said Lucky. “Missing persons thing. Think I remembered you worked a detail like that.”

  “For like a cup of coffee. Had maybe three weeks in that unit before robbery/homicide called me up.”

  “More experience than me.” Lucky unfolded one of his flyers, giving Gonzo an acquaintance with Karrie Kaarlsen’s smiling, fifteen-year-old face.

  “Young and very white.”

  “Milk-fed from Milwaukee.”

  “You’ve done all the initial stuff? Public and private agencies?”

  “Working with the girl’s father. He had a pretty good head start before I got the call.”

  “Did I miss you hanging out a private dick sign?”

  “Right. And the joke is I was an a-hole before I went private.”

  “Okay,” she relented. “Peace.”

  “It’s a one-time dealio. The dad’s a pal of Conrad Ellis.”

  “Ah. So Connie figured the guy who successfully tracked his daughter’s killer—”

  “Could easily find one, freckled teenage runaway.”

  Gonzo shook her head, easily recalling the three-day descent into hell that had brought her together with Lucky. Back then, he was a Deputy Sheriff working for Kern County, trying to chase down a killer ex-Marine and his refrigerator truck loaded with frozen blood. Gonzo, practically free-floating between assignments within the LAPD, had been assigned to babysit the visiting detective and keep him out of trouble.

  It didn’t quite work out.

  “Any tips you wanna give me?” asked Lucky.

  “Pretty blonde runaway in LA?” quizzed Gonzo. “Like a needle in a haystack of needles.”

  “What it looks like.”

  “Gotta hope you get lucky.”

  “Not a science, huh?”

  “Not hardly.”

  “Suppose if I gave you a bunch of these flyers and asked you to drop ’em from your whirlybird…”

  “Would if I could,” squinted Gonzo. “Anyhow. Gotta get up in the air. So lemme know how it goes?” And she meant it. Well, sort of. Unless Lucky cleaned the painkillers from his system, the boundaries were clear and concise.

  “Will do,” was Lucky’s terse promise.

  And that was that.

  A nod from Gonzo and she’d already begun backing away toward her helicopter. The hug and kiss that came with hello was noticeably absent from their goodbye. Tension had clearly crept in and made a home, aided by the visual cues and subtle mental reminders of the gulf between them.

  Lucky had turned himself around and was already legging it back to the pilot-house when he heard Gonzo shouting back at him.

  “HEY!” she yelled. “FIND OUT WHAT HER DREAMS WERE.”

  “WHAT?”

  “FIND OUT WHAT SHE WANTED TO BE,” Gonzo impressed. “THAT’LL SHOW YOU WHERE TO LOOK.”

  A quick wave goodbye and she jogged the rest of the way to her helicopter.

  12

  Hollywood. 2:16 P.M.

  “Just look into the camera and s
peak your name.”

  “Cherry Pie,” said the dancer and hopeful commercial actress. She faced the video lens and let her lips slide across her gleaming teeth.

  “Cherry Pie,” repeated Herm. “That’s a good one.”

  “Long story,” shrugged Cherry.

  “That so?” Herm tried not to smirk. In his years as a flesh wrangler, he figured he had heard at least three other young women who had used the name. All strippers. He didn’t have to guess how Cherry paid the rent.

  “Is this okay? How I’m sitting?”

  “Perfect,” said Herm. “Tell me a little about yourself.”

  Not that Herm cared a lick. He knew from the moment he’d cracked the casting studio door and read off her name. Cherry had stood as if built out of springs, looked him directly in the eye, and crossed the threshold with far too much confidence. While she rattled on, flashing her perky charm with animated flourishes, Herm continued to ask the same rote questions he had asked most of the other young women, all the while he discovered himself quietly obsessing over the strawberry-blonde sitting outside the door. The pretty thing whose name very clearly wasn’t on his list. What had Cherry called her? Val? Not that it mattered. He just needed to get her through the door and parked on the stool and in the warm glow of his umbrella light. Herm’s flesh-radar had been more than tickled by the lass with those aquatic eyes.

  There was ripe…And then there was her.

  A unicorn. The first one to cross Herm’s path in years.

  Karrie was dry-throat thirsty from a night of popping X, clubbing and scoring drinks off anybody who would buy for her. Seated on a folding chair next to a water cooler, she only wished the cup dispenser hadn’t been empty. She had checked for a kitchen, then the women’s restroom for a cupboard that might hold a sleeve of paper or Styrofoam cups. She had even considered drinking directly from the cooler. Just a sip to relieve the feeling that her tongue might soon become permanently stuck to the top of her mouth. It was just that the act itself might have proved embarrassing, requiring Karrie to kneel at the cooler and tilt her head sideways while opening her mouth and depressing the spigot release.