“Obtuse, Terrence? You’re the guy who’s not being clear. I have work to do, so blow. If you bother me again you won’t like what comes soon after.”
“Is that a threat? If it is—”
I stood and leaned over my desk at the Langtry dick. He flinched a bit. “Call it a prediction. Go see if Bland can tell you if it will come true. Out!” I said.
The three men stood, almost in unison, and made for the door. I followed.
“You’ll regret this,” Terrence said. “We’ll see to that.”
As they left my office I slammed shut the outer door as hard as I could. It sounded like a pistol shot. That was one of the nice things about plass panels. They wouldn’t shatter, no matter how hard you tried. I smiled as I walked back to my desk as the bell just ended its ring.
I called Blanc and filled him in on the BluCorp and Langtry operatives sniffing around. He spent a couple of minutes looking up Detective Samuel Houston, and lo and behold, there was no such person employed by the Gulf City Police Department. Who was the guy and who was he working for?
While Blanc looked up Houston, I checked the BluCorp site for information on Lawton Muckle. Not much there, just a generic bio and his photo. A forced smile trying to cover an unhappy face. My guess was he was a joy to be around.
I decided to wait until Cassandra’s opened and see if Sarah Morris showed up, or at least told Nan where she was. If not, then we’d have to assume the girl went into hiding or had been nabbed already.
I showed up at Cassandra’s a little before they opened. I called Nan and told her I was coming and she let me in the back. The three girls I’d talked to earlier in the day were there, but no Savannah Pupil. The BluCorp guys and Sam Houston had visited each of the three as well since I had seen them before. They said they told them the same thing they told me. I felt they were being straight about the matter.
I waited around for a half hour or so while Nan called Sarah’s comcode and a few other places, but it came to nothing. I told Nan to call me if the girl showed.
I let Blanc know the deal and told him I would start knocking off the leads we had and see if I turned up anything.
I went back to my office and skimmed over the printout Blanc had provided me. I decided to pursue the most likely and most obvious place to where she might have run, her mother’s place in Old Houston.
You would think people on the lam should know better than to run to family or friends to hide or get help, because that’s the first place a hunter will look. They almost always did that very thing, though. It was a basic instinct. Very often, it was the only place they had to go. That was why unless someone was trained or naturally savvy about evasion, they usually got bagged.
It was dark by the time I was on my way to Old Houston sitting in the back of a skycab. I could see the tall buildings lit up in the Uptown and Downtown districts.
The Uptown districts were dominated by the Silver Tower, the only skyscraper left standing in that part of town.
The southern part of Old Houston was beyond the control of the Gulf City authorities and gang warfare was a nearly constant reality in the area. They called it Sowtown. The dilapidated remains of two skyscrapers were the focal point for much of the fighting. It was not uncommon to see tracer fire and blaster bolts exchanged between the two buildings as their petty battles raged.
There were still a number of skyscrapers in the downtown area which, like the Silver Tower and the king of all high rises, the Spire, were enclaves of the well off.
Scattered throughout Old Houston were areas ranging from mansion lined lanes to shanty-towns, and all sorts in between.
The mother of Sarah Morris lived in a district in the southwest part of Uptown, a residential area that while not wealthy, was still a very nice place. Urban sprawl had never reached this area, and homes sat on grassy and wooded lots the way people commonly lived a century or more ago.
I told the hack to drop me at a business center not far from the residential area. I hoofed it from there.
Finding the place was easy enough, and locating a good observation point was just as easy. Across the street from the mother’s house was a lightly wooded area perfect for hiding, if a guy was good at that sort of thing. Sarah’s mother lived in a two story house. Nice, quiet, and old-fashioned. Grass in the yard and tall trees behind a white picket fence. In back there was a high fence, a couple of meters tall.
There were a few lights on inside the house, but it didn’t look like anyone was home right then. So I waited and observed. Using a pair of binoculars, I could see inside the house through some of the windows. What interested me most was the upstairs window on the side of the house that faced me. The room was slightly illuminated by a hall light that cast just enough brightness into the room that I could see images of pop stars on the walls and stuffed animals on shelves. A teenage girl’s room. The info on Sarah said she was twenty-four. If that was her room, it wasn’t very long ago that she lived there. Maybe mom just left it as was and Sarah wasn’t there. Time would tell.
About an hour later, a ground sedan pulled into the driveway and rolled into a garage. The door came down before I could see who was in the car.
Lights came on in the downstairs and I could see a blonde woman. Sarah was a blonde. The woman turned and I could see her face. It had to be the mom. Sarah favored her.
A light came on upstairs in the teenager’s room. I got a brief glimpse of the occupant as she drew the curtains and I was ninety-nine percent sure it was Sarah.
I crossed the street quickly and quietly and chinned myself up so I could see over the tall fence in the back, looking for more. I could see an old-fashioned clothesline with items hanging from it. Some jeans, a few summer dresses. A dozen g-strings and thongs. Half a dozen white blouses, a bunch of plaid socks, a half dozen short plaid schoolgirl dresses. I guess the last name Pupil conveyed something about her specialty. The girl had some marketing skills.
I moved back into the trees and called Blanc. I told him I had found the girl. He seemed surprised. Maybe he thought I was lazy. He said he’d get a PD skycar and be out in an hour or so.
I sat on the house. I had to duck into the brush a few times when some vehicle traffic went through. If I got made it would probably look like I was peeping a teenager or was an undergarment pervo looking to score some panties from the backyard.
Blanc set the unmarked skycar down on the side of the street up the block and came in by foot, and after we met up, we went onto the porch and to the front door.
Blanc used the metal knocker hanging on the door to announce our presence. A few seconds went by and Mrs. Morris opened the door. Blanc introduced himself and presented her his credentials, then stated his reason for being on her doorstep. She yelled upstairs to Sarah and a minute later, she came down.
“Let’s talk outside,” she said.
Mrs. Morris looked concerned and Sarah noticed. “It’s okay, Mom. They are here about a stolen property report I filed,” she said. She was a passable liar.
We stepped out onto the porch, and after she closed the door, Sarah said, “This about the man from BluCorp that got kidnapped, isn’t it? It didn’t take long for you to find me.”
“Rick Johnson was the one who found you, Sarah,” Blanc said gesturing at me. “This was the first place he looked. There are others looking for you, and if they get your name they may come calling here.”
“Johnson,” she said looking at me, “the private detective. Some of the girls at work have mentioned you. They said you helped them out of some jams.” She turned back to Blanc. “Am I in some trouble?”
He shook his head. “Not legal trouble, but we don’t know why these other people are seeking you. It might be they simply have some questions for you. Then again, it could be something else. Do you have any information about the phone call Charles Savan made with your mobile?”
“I have a recording of it. I leave the phone set that way, and I didn’t have time to mention it when Mr. Savan
asked to borrow it. When we heard what happened to him I became worried. I got a new mobile and comcode and thought I might lay low here for a few days and see if things were okay.”
“Do you have the recording here?” Blanc asked.
“Of course. It’s on the phone,” she said digging in a back pocket of her jeans and coming out with a mobile phone. “Right here.”
“I’ll need to take that into evidence. I’ll give you a receipt.”
She handed him the phone. Blanc dropped the phone into a plastic evidence bag he took from a jacket pocket. He slipped the bag into his jacket and began filling in a property receipt on his web-board. “Do you have somewhere else to stay, some place that isn’t so easily traced?” he asked as he wrote.
“I was going to house-sit for my mother while she is in Montreal for the next week or so. She leaves in the morning.”
“It would be better if she found someone else to house-sit and you stay somewhere else.”
She thought for a moment. “I could get my cousin to do it. I will have to call him. I have an aunt, she’s not actually an aunt, in one of the Downtown districts that I could stay with. Am I in danger?”
Blanc sighed with a concerned look on his face. “I don’t know. As I said, we don’t know who is looking for you or why.”
“Can you provide me protection, or put me in a safe house?”
I smirked a little. Entertainment shows made that kind of thing seem like a common practice, but not in real life. Cops weren’t under any legal obligation to keep people safe, no matter what catchy bullshit motto they slapped on their vehicles. Safe houses and personal security details cost a lot of money, and in the case of Sarah Morris, they didn’t even know if what she knew was worth anything.
“I’m afraid not,” Blanc said. “Do any of your coworkers know about this aunt of yours?”
“No,” she replied, shaking her head. “I don’t share much personal information with them.”
Blanc nodded. “Good. You should be all right. Be careful about telling anyone where you are.”
“I take it your mother doesn’t know about Savan?” I asked.
“That’s right,” she replied, sounding a little defensive.
“That’s good,” I said. “Don’t tell your mother you’re going to your aunt’s either. The fewer people who know the better.”
“I’ll call my cousin and tell him to come over midmorning, and then I’ll go to my aunt’s. What if someone comes by tonight?” she said in a worried tone.
“We’ll stay in a car nearby and watch the place tonight and follow you in the morning when you take your mom to the airport,” Blanc said. He glanced at me and could see I wasn’t happy.
“Thank you, but she’s going by the tube,” she said.
Blanc smiled. “The train station then.”
We said our goodnights, and on the way to his skycar Blanc called Lieutenant Weaver to tell him what we’d found. Weaver wanted us to stay quiet about Sarah until we knew what was on the recording.
A little while later I was sitting in the passenger seat of Blanc’s skycar parked across the street catty-cornered to the house of Mrs. Morris. “Thanks for volunteering my stakeout services,” I said glumly as I watched Blanc fill out a property form for Sarah’s phone.
“You don’t have to stay, you know. This isn’t a stakeout anyway.” Blanc replied glancing up from his board.
“I don’t feel like walking back, and this security detail is the same thing. They both mean sitting in a car and getting on each other’s nerves. In case you thought it might be cool to do this, trust me, it ain’t.”
“Well, it’s my first, so let me enjoy it.”
“Fine. Did you bring water or snacks? How about a urine container?”
“I have some bottles of water and protein bars.”
“Great,” I said flatly. “There isn’t a restroom nearby, so I guess we risk getting popped for a sex crime if we need to take a leak.”
Blanc stopped writing and gave me a look that told me he didn’t have a clue.
“Look, Detective. Prostitution is legal in Gulf City. So are stripping, sex shows, and bestiality for all I know. Public urination is illegal, and is considered a sex crime. Since we will probably be using those trees over there,” I said pointing at the bushes where I hid earlier in the evening, “we risk running afoul of the law.”
Blanc glared at me for several seconds. “Okay, I didn’t come prepared. Rookie mistake.”
I sighed loudly. “It’s okay. You can earn your stakeout merit badge next time. Consider yourself lucky you have such an easy-going and considerate partner. Wake me in a couple of hours. Enjoy your first watch,” I said as I turned sideways in the seat and tried to get comfortable.
The night passed without anyone being killed, so I considered it a success. We both caught a little sleep, and when morning came Blanc pulled the skycar back a little bit so it wasn’t so conspicuous.
Sarah saw us and waved when she came out of the house to get the ground sedan out of the garage. After loading a few pieces of luggage, Sarah and her mother made their way to the station with us following overhead. After seeing Mrs. Morris off on her trip we followed Sarah back to Mom’s house where her cousin was waiting.
He was a wirehead and had some dickhead pop star personality chipped in, but we didn’t stay around long enough for it to get too irritating. Less than an hour later Sarah was at her aunt-that-wasn’t-her-aunt’s place, a nice fifth floor apartment in a not rich, but not poor either neighborhood.
Sarah had our mobile numbers in case she needed anything and I gave her a burner phone I brought from my office, one of those cheap, semi-disposable, limited function, grey market knockoff mobiles, with no sex appeal, that didn’t need any registration. If she did have professional trackers looking for her, they’d eventually get her current phone info and track her down if they managed to discover her actual name.
She seemed like a smart girl, and we expected that she would be careful. She was to call Blanc or me if she thought something was amiss.
A short while later, Blanc dropped me off in front of my office and he went to the police station in High Town.
I took a quick shower and was in the midst of shaving when my phone rang. My gut said it was the girl seeing things and getting scared, but it turned out to be Blanc. “Rick, we have a problem. As soon as I step into the office at the station, a Sergeant Broxton comes to me and says he needs the name of a witness for a report. I ask him to tell me who he was talking about. He says it is a woman that overheard Charles Savan’s conversation at Lacey’s. I asked him who wanted the report and he tried to blow me off. I pressed him on it and he tells me it was a Lieutenant Nelson from Midtown Four.”
“Is this lieutenant involved in the case?”
“No. I told Broxton to tell Nelson that I don’t know her name because I am still working on it and there might not even be a witness.”
“Smart. You’re right, there is a leak somewhere. But they are a few steps behind.”
“What do you mean?”
“They don’t have her real name yet, not even her first name.”
“That’s right. So it isn’t Nan.”
“No. If she sold out or was forced to talk, they’d have the girl’s first name by now. The other three hookers that were at the club that night don’t know about the phone call and they don’t know her last name, so it didn’t come from them. If any one of the three talked they would have mentioned her first name as well. Whoever it is sniffing around is somebody that knows a little bit about last night, but has no details.”
“That means it’s cops. That’s why Weaver had us sit on this.”
“Yeah. Did you call Weaver yet?”
“No, but I will as soon as I get finished with you.”
“Go ahead. Let me know if you need anything.” About ten minutes later, Blanc called me again and told me Weaver was coming out to High Town, to my office. Blanc said he was on his way as well. Terr
ific, a police detective convention in my office.
~~~:{o}:~~~
Chapter 3
on the QT News Service - Local, High Town
Local Connection to Savan Nabbing Case?
Not so very long ago we reported on a lady from the Spire who paid a visit to the Red Light’s own Building 313. Was that lady Beverly Savan, lately in the news for joining the ranks of the recently kidnapped? Could the rumors of a drunken executive from the Spire needing an escort home from a Red Light entertainment establishment be connected? What of high-powered private dicks from the Spire and a GCPD detective rumored to be visiting the 313? Questions, questions, and on the QT looks to find the answers, answers.
on the QT - If we know it, you know it.
---o---
Weaver arrived by skycar and set down right in front of the building. I was watching out my office window. People in the neighborhood had to be wondering what the world was coming to. Four times in a matter of a few days, a skycar visited Building 313.
Blanc pulled up in a ground sedan just a few seconds after Weaver climbed out of his vehicle and they came upstairs together.
After introductions were made, we all took a seat at a double length card table I use sometimes.
“Did you bring the phone, Blanc?” Weaver asked.
“Yes, Lieutenant. I have it right here,” he said as he pulled the bagged and tagged phone from his jacket pocket and placed it on the table.
“Good,” Weaver said. “Did you listen to the recording?”
“No, Lieutenant. I cloned the memory and deleted all the data but the call Savan made, and put it on this data stick.”
“Nobody knows about this but us three and the girl?”
“That’s right,” Blanc said.
“Savan knows,” I said. “There were people in the club aware of Savan using a borrowed phone.”
“Good point. So someone could conceivably learn of this if those that know talk. Broxton didn’t mention the phone, right?” Weaver asked.
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