Dying Breath

by J. A. Konrath

  I actually wasn’t sure if I should stop to help, because she really didn’t need it. But I remembered my earlier thoughts of being alone, and maybe she would be up for a bite after beating up and arresting all of these guys, I decided to stick around.

  I double-parked, got out, and jogged over.

  “Hiya, Jackie,” I said. “You and your friends hitting the slopes?”

  “Beat it, Harry. I can deal with this.”

  “I know you can.” I raised my voice. “But I’m Harry McGlade, from the hit TV show Fatal Autonomy. And if you watch that show, at 9pm Thursday nights on Fox, you know I never pass up a chance to shoot somebody.”

  I took out my .44 Magnum.

  The ski mask guys all hesitated.

  “I’ll be honest,” I said. “I’m not a very good shot. Can you guys move closer together? Stand in front of each other if you want to. My Magnum can shoot through two or three people.”

  They scattered. I turned to Jack, and saw she still had her fists clenched.

  “Really? You want to beat me up for saving your ass?”

  She dropped her arms and made a big dramatic show about blowing out her breath. “What are you doing here, McGlade?”

  “I was getting a bite to eat. Want to join me?”

  “No.”

  “Who were those guys? More members of your fan club?”

  Jack walked past me, over to her piece of shit Chevy Nova.

  “C’mon, Jack. Let’s have a beer. For old time’s sake.”

  She climbed into her car. Apparently she hadn’t heard me.

  I watched as she turned the ignition. Once. Twice. Three times. When it failed to turn over, she got out and opened the hood.

  “Sounds like the starter,” I offered.

  Jack hunted around in her back seat, found a can of starter fluid, and gave the intake a few squirts. Then she got behind the wheel again.

  The Nova chugged, and then began making a clicking noise.

  “Sounds like the battery,” I offered.

  “Can you jump me?” Jack asked.

  “Of course,” I said. “Then afterward, maybe I could help with your car.”

  She didn’t laugh. Tough crowd.

  “Jack, not to get weird, but you look like you’re ready to cry. You okay?”

  “I’ve had a shitty week.”

  “Want to grab some food and a beer? My treat.”

  Jack rubbed her eyes. “No.”

  “So what are you going to do? Call your boytoy, Nathan?”

  “No.”

  “So you’re just going to sit there all night and wait for the ski mask crew to come back?”

  “Just help me get my car started.”

  “Fine. But one drink first.”

  “Harry…”

  “One drink. Have you been to this Irish bar around the corner? The potato skins are amazing.”

  # # #

  Jack refused to do the Irish bar, but it was Chicago so there was a bar every ten meters. We wound up in a place that didn’t seem to have an actual name, just a large Old Style sign hanging in front. I got a burger and a beer.

  Jack got whiskey.

  Then she got another whiskey.

  Then she got chatty.

  “Feebies just took it, Harry. Remember what it was like? To have cases taken away?”

  “It’s the Job,” I said. “You know that.”

  “You miss it?” she asked. “Being a cop?”

  “Were you drinking earlier? You never get personal unless you’ve had too many.”

  “Just answer the question.”

  “No,” I said. “Being private is much better. No rules. Higher pay. Set your own hours. And much less of a chance of being killed.”

  I neglected to mention the sniper. It wouldn’t help me make my point.

  Jack ordered another drink. I thought about saying something, but it was her life, her liver. And, honestly, I was enjoying the company.

  “You know the Feebies are morons,” Jack said. She was slurring ever so slightly. “They’re gonna mess it up. And this is a bad one, McGlade.”

  “We’ve seen some bad ones. You want some of my burger?”

  “No. This one is real bad. We think it’s more than one guy. Abducting girls. Torturing them to death. What’s wrong with people?”

  “Everyone sucks,” I replied. “I’m on this case right now, this douchebag is pretending to be a talent scout in order to take naked pics. I can’t tell how bad he is yet, but a few other ladies have disappeared, and he might have just abducted two more. I may have to go to frickin’ Minnesota to track him down.”

  Jack snorted. “Minnesota. That’s why the Feebies took over jurisdiction. Asshole lives there. Get this; he works at a place that rents plants.”

  “Ha! My guy owns like a dozen shops that rent plants. Plantasy Zone.”

  Jack squinted at me. “Tell me you’re kidding.”

  I didn’t know what she meant, and then it hit me. “My guy is named Edward Cline.”

  “My guy works for Edward Cline.”

  I dug out the picture I took from the trailer. “That’s Cline,” I pointed out.

  Jack tapped her finger on the pic. “And that’s our suspect, Garrett McConnroy.”

  It isn’t often that something gave me chills, but that did. “He’s the Motel Mauler?”

  “The Feebies are calling him a person of interest. But everything points to him.”

  “Jack, Cline’s got two girls with him. And he just left town.”

  Her eyes got wide. “Do you know where?”

  “I have Cline’s Minnesota address.”

  “I gotta call the Feebies,” Jack said. She took out her cell phone and messed up dialing. Her drink came, she killed it in one gulp, and she dialed again. Her volume was loud enough for me to hear.

  “Special Agent Dailey.”

  “It’s Daniels. We think that Edward Cline may be involved.”

  “Edward Cline?”

  “He’s McConnroy’s boss. The guy who owns Plantasy Zone.”

  “We’ve got a team watching the Bankfield location.”

  “You need to put someone on Cline’s house. He has two women with him. We believe they’re in danger.”

  “We’ll alert the Twin Cities office.”

  “You need to do more than alert them, Dailey.”

  “You’re not running this case anymore, Lieutenant.”

  “I know that. That’s why I’m calling you.”

  “Now that we have jurisdiction, we’re following up on several leads. Garrett McConnroy is just one of them.”

  “He’s the one that rented the truck from Gomar. Didn’t you follow up with that former employee? Dalt?”

  “We haven’t interviewed Mr. Dalt yet. As I said, we’ve identified several suspects. Do you have any information about Niles Bormat?”

  “Who is Niles Bormat?”

  “A travelling vacuum cleaner salesman from Scranton. Vicky matched him to our unsub. He’s a sixty-four percent match.”

  “Vicky? Your stupid computer program?”

  “She’s not stupid. Did you know that vacuum cleaners were used at two of the crime scenes?”

  “They were at motels,” Jack said. “That’s what the maids use.”

  I felt for her. I’d dealt with the Feebies before.

  “Thank you for your call, Lieutenant. We’ll be sure to let you know when we catch the guy.”

  The FBI dude hung up.

  “Wow,” I said. “Guy isn’t just a tool. He’s the whole tool box.”

  “Do you know the Amaco on Division? Near Goose Island?” Jack asked me.

  “Yeah. You ever have Goose Island Bourbon County Stout? One of the greatest beers of all time.”

  “Take me there,” she said. “Now.”

  “To the brewery?”

  “To the Amaco. We gotta talk to a guy.”

  PHIN

  As the cops took their cop time doing their cop thing in the parking lot, I l
ooked through Tucker’s address book.

  On the plus side, there weren’t many addresses.

  On the minus side, they were written in some kind of code.

  The first page read like this:

  Rargtet Ncmocrony

  1890 Nroome Lcceir Airhrpabtc LI

  Dedrwa Ilpnknhapse

  9110 Ldnaong Ts Pmaonisnlei NM

  Adch Ihcdrasrno

  224 W Reywenga Lbvd Atnsi Onsim LI

  Aekl Livoet Ibanc

  Nadubnr NM

  If I wrote a list of my talents, skills, and abilities, cryptography wouldn’t be on it. I stared at the letters, trying to figure out what they meant. Some sort of substitution code? Like the letter A is actually Z, and B is Y, and so on?

  I found a pen in my bedside drawer, next to the Gideon’s Bible, and tore out a few pages of Genesis to take notes.

  Two of the addresses ended in NM. Was that New Mexico?

  So what was LI? Louisiana?

  Geography wouldn’t make my skill list, either.

  The cops began a door-to-door, looking for witnesses. There wouldn’t be any. The Clan wouldn’t talk, Kenny would make up some wild story, and everyone else would mind their own business. Forget it, Jake. It’s Chinatown.

  I stared at the letters Lbvd. That looked familiar. Roman numerals?

  Maybe Pasha could help with this. She was book smart.

  Look closer, Earl said.

  I ignored Earl. When the police knocked on my door, I ignored them, too.

  Lbvd. Ywa. Ts. Look where they are in the addresses.

  Without being able to help myself, I stared at the letters Earl was pointing out.

  Something about their placement…

  Wow, you’re stupid.

  While stupid was perhaps harsh, I knew Earl wasn’t really a separate entity who talked to me. Earl was my own subconscious personification of my cancer, and how I dealt with it.

  So if my subconscious knew something, then I must have known something.

  9110 Ldnaong Ts

  It’s in an address book. So it’s an address.

  An address is a number, followed by a street name.

  Ldnaong Street?

  Wait… the Ts was just St backward. That was the abbreviation for street. And LI was IL backward, the postal code for Illinois.

  Was this all just written backward?

  A few seconds of scribbling showed that wasn’t the solution.

  Lbvd. Ywa. Ts. Look where they are in the addresses.

  “Shh,” I said out loud.

  Then I got it.

  If Ts was Street, then Lbvd was Blvd—boulevard. And Ywa was Way.

  The words were scrambled.

  Once I knew that, I figured a few out. Rargtet was Garrett. Adch was Chad. Dedrwa was Edward.

  Okay, those were the addresses for Tucker’s partners in crime.

  So what was the fourth address?

  Aekl Livoet Ibanc

  Nadubnr NM

  It was scrambled, so NM wasn’t New Mexico. It was MN—Minnesota—which Tucker mentioned in a few of his phone calls.

  He also mentioned lake and cabin, which were scrambled as Aekl and Ibanc.

  So they were killing women at a cabin on Lake something.

  I wrote down the letters L-I-V-O-E-T in a circle, and then tried connecting them in various ways.

  It looked like the word violent. Or violate.

  No, it was violet. As in Lake Violet.

  Lake Violet Cabin.

  I used my handy new phone to access Google, and looked up Lake Violet in Minnesota, expecting there to be dozens of them.

  There was only one. And bringing up a map of the area, I saw it was located in the town of Danburn, an hour northwest of the Twin Cities.

  That was where Tucker had gone to meet his friends.

  Road trip time.

  In a little hidey-hole under the carpeting in the corner of the room, I had a stash of weapons. Some of them, I’d purchased. Most of them I picked up because a person had dropped it, after I knocked them out. Kenny gave me a free room at the Michigan Motel in exchange for dealing with riff-raff, and I considered keeping their stuff a perk of the job.

  The first thing I grabbed was a Stoeger Condor over and under shotgun.

  I liked shotguns, because shotgun pellets weren’t traceable like bullets were. Aspiring hitmen take note; if you ever want to commit a murder, use a shotgun. You don’t have to ditch the weapon afterward.

  An over and under had two barrels, one on top of the other. Unfortunately, the pinhead I took it from used a hacksaw on it, turning a thing of beauty and craftsmanship into an illegal and inaccurate weapon by sawing down the stock and the barrel. I took it from him when he got drunk and shot the ice machine in the hallway. While understanding his frustration (when you pressed the lever it only dispensed one tiny cube at a time), I felt he overreacted, and then he made the mistake of pointing the shotgun at me. I persuaded him to relinquish it by punching him in the face repeatedly.

  The shortened stock meant it hurt like hell to shoot, and the shortened barrel meant it couldn’t hit anything further than five feet away, but I figured it would be a good up-close weapon.

  My next donated acquisition was a Henry AR-7 Survival Rifle. It was a takedown model, meaning the barrel, action, and magazine detached and fit into the stock. It floated too. I guess this was important if you accidentally dropped it overboard while shooting fish. Or swimmers.

  I picked up the rifle from a kind gentleman who was renting one of Kenny’s rooms by the hour, and when his escort insisted he wear protection, he went into the bathroom and instead of slipping on a condom, he assembled his rifle and threatened to kill her. I entered his room using my universal key (aka my boot), slapped him so many times he forgot his own name, and showed him a different type of escort; off the property.

  The Henry AR-7 fired .22lr, which was a tiny round compared to my 9mm, but it was much more accurate over twenty meters.

  The last little item in my arsenal was a hand grenade.

  I’d had some recent, unlucky experience with hand grenades, and had vowed to stay away from them. But some guy in an alley sold this one to me for thirty bucks, and the definition of a bargain is something you don’t want at a price you can’t pass up.

  There was probably one chance in a thousand that it worked. But it looked scary, so maybe I’d find a use for it, even if it was a dud.

  All of these items, plus a tactical flashlight, went into my duffel bag. I also reloaded my AMT in my heel, grabbed two more mags for the 9mm, and stuck an extra switchblade in as well.

  Next I grabbed a pair of Bushnell x50 binoculars. These were obtained from a man in the parking lot, peeking in the motel windows. I didn’t even have to hit the guy; when he saw me coming, he threw them at me and ran.

  I topped off the bag with a black sweat suit, black socks, a pair of black Nikes with the white Swooshes blackened with marker, and extra underwear. Then I replaced the carpet over my hidey-hole, turned out the lights, and waited for the last cop to leave.

  Through my shades, I watched the sun set. Just like it has set every night for the last four billion years. Just like it would for another four billion, until it finally burned out, leaving a frozen universe and a tiny white dwarf to mark the place where it had shone.

  But before it died, it will explode a thousand times its size, becoming a super nova, scorching the planets, lighting up the solar system, setting fire to the world.

  Not yet, though.

  Not for a long, long while.

  The last cop finally left, and I hopped into my Bronco and hit the nearest Amaco station. Besides gas, I bought a map of Minnesota, a marker to trace the fastest route to Lake Violet, a travel toothbrush and toothpaste, twenty candy bars, a pound of beef jerky, a six pack of energy drink, a gallon of bottled water, and a baseball cap that read KISS MY ASS.

  Then I headed north.

  JACK

  I’d had a drink or two too many
. I knew that. The last one was hitting me especially hard, as I sat in the passenger seat of Harry’s Corvette, heading toward the Amaco station. I lowered the window, letting the cool night air whip my face. I closed my eyes for just a second, and when I opened them I saw a Bronco speed past.

  “Was that Phin?”

  “Who?” McGlade was futzing around with the stereo.

  “I thought I saw him, in his truck.”

  “You know, if I didn’t know better, I’d think you had a crush on that guy.”

  “Phin?” I snorted. “Never gonna happen.”

  “The heart wants what the heart wants. Take Rover, my miniature dwarf pony. He met a mare today. Sure, she was ten times bigger than he was, but that was love at first sight. Now realistically, he’d need some sort of boost, or ladder, or sex harness, to consummate their relationship. Maybe some kind of block and tackle system. Like Herb probably uses. But it’s still possible, with help. A tolerant owner, wearing a raincoat and elbow-length gloves, could easily—”

  “Here’s the Amaco.” I was happy to interrupt him. “Gimme your picture.”

  “You want a pic of me? After all these years? I’m touched. You want one with pants on, or no pants?”

  “The picture of the three guys.”

  He frowned, but handed it over after we parked.

  When I walked into the little mini-mart store, I was able to instantly spot Dalt. There were two employees behind the counter, but only one of them looked like he lost his brain and didn’t have the first clue how to find it; thick glasses, walleyed with his left pupil looking way off to the side, and a line of drool on his chin.

  “Mr. Dalt? Lieutenant Daniels. We spoke on the phone twice.”

  “I’m at work,” he said.

  Of course he said that. I wouldn’t have expected less.

  “I need you to look at a picture, Mr. Dalt. Tell me if you see the man who rented that truck from you.”

  “I don’t work at the rental company anymore. I work at Amaco.”