by Ben Rehder
And I began to feel his strength sapping.
“Come on, tough guy,” I said.
He didn’t reply.
“I think my partner could beat you,” I said.
I could feel him summoning one last burst of effort. Veins were popping on his forehead.
And then the resistance completely disappeared and I slammed his hand onto the table.
“God damn,” he said, rubbing the deltoid muscle in his upper arm. My bicep was burning, but I ignored it. I stood up again, because I wanted that advantage, in case I needed it.
I stuck my palm out. “Keys.”
He grudgingly dug into his pocket and tossed the keys onto the tabletop. I grabbed the key ring and handed it to Mia.
“Here’s a little something you should know,” I said, pointing toward my hat. “See the little circle in the middle of the logo? That’s a video camera.”
He closed his eyes momentarily. He’d been suckered. I had the arm wrestling recorded. Evidence that his insurance claim was a scam.
I wouldn’t have guessed that he had any fight left in him, but then his eyes popped open and he came out of his chair, making a grab for my hat. I was ready for it, of course. That’s exactly why I’d told him about the hat. I wanted him to make a grab for it. I deflected his arm with my left hand and then—remember what I said about punching earlier?—I drilled him with a punishing right cross directly to the bridge of the nose. It connected hard.
Moyer fell back into his chair, moaning and clutching his face. Blood began to spill from his hands.
“No fighting in here!” shouted a voice from behind me. Had to be the bartender, but I didn’t look.
“That’s all on video, too,” I said to Moyer. “You just tried to steal my hat. Have you learned nothing about theft today? If you’re lucky, I won’t report it.”
“Take it outside or I call the cops!” It was the bartender again.
Moyer was done, so Mia and I turned and headed for the door. The bartender glared at me, but he didn’t say anything more. The three guys on the stools had turned to see the action, but they lowered their eyes as I walked past.
I needed to get somewhere quick and start icing my hand.
13
“Why is it so damn crowded in here?” I asked. “Why aren’t all these people at work?”
“It’s Saturday, Roy,” Mia said.
“Oh. Right.”
When I’m working, I tend to lose track of things like that.
It was the following day—nine in the morning. After what Mia had been through with Shane Moyer, and after we’d had the showdown at the bar, I’d suggested we call it a day. Normally we work long hours when we have an active case—because there is plenty of involuntary downtime between cases—but I think we were both ready for an evening off.
The good news was, Heidi had left me a voicemail earlier in the morning saying the attorney for Moyer and his pals had withdrawn their claims. Of course, they’d be lucky if they didn’t end up in jail for insurance fraud. That included the doctor who had “diagnosed” all four of them, who might also catch some heat from the state medical board if Heidi complained loudly enough.
Mia and I had decided to meet at La Madeleine in Westlake Hills, on the western outskirts of Austin. We had already placed our orders at the counter, and now we were waiting for our food to arrive. We had a table as far in the back as possible, which gave us the tiniest bit of privacy.
“How’s your hand?” Mia asked.
I shrugged. “Forged from the finest steel, just like the rest of me.”
“Uh-huh. Really?”
“Well, okay, it aches a little.”
She gestured for me to reach my hand across the table, so I did.
“Your other hand, you dope,” she said.
So I gave her my right hand, the one I’d punched Shane Moyer with. She took it in both of hers and held it gently.
“Quite a bit of swelling,” she said.
“I’ll say.”
She looked at me and shook her head. “Why are you always so gross? What’re you, twelve years old?” Then she looked at my hand again. “Some bruising, too. Have you taken any Advil?”
“Took two last night, two this morning.”
“Can you make a fist?”
I did. It hurt.
“Can you straighten all the fingers?”
I did. That hurt, too.
“I don’t think anything’s broken,” Mia said.
It was another one of those oddly intimate moments we have on occasion. She was holding my hand and I liked it. No denying it. I could almost feel an electrical charge flowing between us. I wondered if she felt it, too. I wondered if I was an idiot for never pursuing these feelings. And, yeah, I wondered how our partnership would fare if we became more than partners—assuming she was even interested in me, which was a fairly sizable assumption. I’d never asked her if she was. She’d never said she was. Maybe I’d misread previous signals. Maybe the electricity was flowing only one way. Maybe I should stop with the electricity metaphor. Maybe Mia was holding my hand because she honestly wanted to make sure it wasn’t seriously injured. Maybe we—
Mia let my hand go, because a woman wearing a green apron was just now stepping up to our table with our food. I drew my hand back across the table. Like many times before, the moment was gone.
After the server left, Mia said, “Tell me about your trip to the dentist.”
I talked as I drizzled some syrup on my French toast. “Shelley, the hygienist there, got an anonymous letter in the mail at home. It said the sender would pay five grand for Boz Gentry’s file—but if she told anyone about it, they’d burn her house down while she was sleeping. And they’d know if she contacted the cops, because police reports are part of the public record.”
“Is that true?”
“In general, yeah, but in a case like this—with a death threat involved—I’m pretty sure the cops could seal it, or at least redact her name. But she didn’t know that, so she was scared. And I guess the money was pretty tempting, too, because she did it. She took the file home and stuck it in her mailbox, as instructed.”
“Her mailbox? Really? That’s not a very elaborate type of money drop.”
“Agreed. Unless there’s something we’re missing, whoever picked up that file would’ve been easy pickings if the cops had been waiting. On the other hand, the blackmailer might’ve paid some kid a hundred bucks to get the file out of the mailbox. That way, if the kid was grabbed by the cops, the extortionist would know Shelley had squealed.”
“Did you really just say ‘squealed’?” Mia asked.
“It slipped out.”
Mia said, “So, let me guess—Shelley never got the money.”
“That’s what I would have guessed, too, but she did get it. They took the file and left the money, just as they’d said they would.”
“Maybe they figured Shelley would be more likely to keep her mouth shut for the long term, because even though she was being extorted, she did take money for the file, and that has to be a crime, right?”
“Probably,” I said. “And then she used some of the money to put a down payment on a trip to France. Doesn’t exactly sound like someone who was an unwilling participant.”
I dug into my breakfast. Pretty tasty. I was finding it easier to hold the fork with my left hand.
Mia began to eat, too, but I could see that she had something on her mind.
“What?” I asked.
“Do we need to tell Ruelas about this?”
“This romantic breakfast? Why make him jealous?”
“No, about Shelley and the file.”
I sipped some coffee and took a moment to respond. “I don’t think so. See, the thing is, there’s no way to know who the extortionist was. That ship has sailed. There aren’t any phone records. Shelley tossed the original envelope and letter. The money she received was all used twenties, so that’s no help. If we told Ruelas, all we’d be doing is getting Shelley in trou
ble.”
“And there’s also the fact that you don’t like Ruelas,” Mia said, “so your judgment in matters like this could be clouded.”
“Well, yeah, there’s that,” I said.
Mia gave me a look I’d seen before. You sure that’s the right decision?
“Sometimes this is a tricky business,” I said, “filled with moral dilemmas and ethical conundrums. We make our way the best we know how.”
“You are so full of bullshit.”
“In all honesty, I don’t feel obligated to tell Ruelas anything. He already knows the file disappeared. If he’s not enough of an investigator to interview Shelley, that’s his own fault. Besides, my opinion is that he wouldn’t learn anything useful from her.”
Mia didn’t say anything.
“No comment?” I asked.
“You are rationalizing out the wazoo.”
“I’ve found that it’s the best orifice from which to rationalize.”
She went silent again, but she had something to say, I could tell.
“What’s on your mind, Mia?”
She set her fork down. “Okay. Please don’t get mad, but there are times when I feel like I have to coerce you into doing the right thing.”
“Ouch. You think you have to do that a lot?”
“No, not a lot,” Mia said. “Just occasionally.”
Truth is, her comment stung a little, but it would have stung more if I’d agreed with her. I ate a few more bites of French toast, then pushed my plate aside.
“I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings,” Mia said.
“Hey, you didn’t, and you gotta be honest,” I said. “You think I’m crossing a line, you tell me. Always.”
“And you do the same,” she said.
“I will. And I’d like to point out that there’s a difference between doing the ‘right’ thing and doing what’s legal. Those two concepts don’t always overlap perfectly.”
“I understand that,” Mia said.
“And there are times when we might simply disagree as to what the ‘right’ thing is.”
“I understand that, too.”
I said, “Think back to the Tracy Turner case. If I’d done the ‘right’ thing that night, I would’ve obeyed that cop and never gone inside that house. Which means I wouldn’t have found her. Which means she might not have been found at all.”
“Okay. Okay. I didn’t mean to open a can of worms.”
“Besides, I already told Ruelas about Erin Gentry’s late-night trip to Albeck’s house. Do we have to tell him everything we learn? Technically, every little scrap of evidence could be useful to him, so shouldn’t we just keep him posted on our daily progress?”
“Roy, don’t be a smartass.”
“Sorry, I really don’t mean to be—but what I just said is true. We’re basically investigating the same case he is, and we’re bound to learn some things he might not know. But we can’t tell him everything, because it goes against our own best interests, and also because we’d put ourselves out of business. You see that, right?”
“I do, yes,” Mia said.
I said, “On the other hand, if we had information that would unquestionably solve a possible murder, or whatever this case is, then we’d give it to him. Personally, I don’t think this stuff about Shelley qualifies—not even close—but we’re equal partners, so I’ll leave the decision up to you. If you think we need to tell Ruelas about Shelley, give him a call. I won’t be upset. Seriously.”
She was still working on her quiche Florentine. I drank some more coffee and gazed out the window to the parking lot. It was going to be a beautiful spring day in central Texas.
Mia finished with her breakfast a few minutes later, dabbed her mouth with a napkin, and said, “You are one of the most ethical people I know. I just want to make that clear. I didn’t mean to sound judgmental.”
“Thanks. But we all have lapses on occasion,” I said.
“True,” she said.
“Like the time I worked as a gigolo in that women’s prison.”
“Those poor ladies,” Mia said. “Talk about cruel and unusual punishment.”
I had to smile. “I walked into that one.”
She placed her napkin on the tabletop and said, “Okay, what now? How do we proceed?”
“Honestly, I’m not sure. You got any brilliant ideas?”
“Brilliant? No.”
“Any completely uninspired ideas?”
“Oh, sure. But can we get out of here? It’s getting too noisy.”
14
“We’re keeping track of Erin Gentry by way of GPS,” Mia said. “We don’t need to follow her in person. So I think one or both of us should focus on Alex Albeck. I still say there’s a good chance Boz Gentry is hiding out at Albeck’s house.”
We were sitting in the rear of the Caravan, which was, all in all, a fairly comfortable and practical rolling office. The rear windows were tinted so dark that passersby couldn’t see us.
“Ruelas said he didn’t think Albeck was involved,” I said. “But can we trust what he said?”
“Oh, I think he’d lie in a heartbeat if he thought Gentry was at Albeck’s house,” Mia said. “Just to keep us out of the picture. Doesn’t mean Gentry is actually there, though.”
A twentyish woman who had just parked in the space beside us opened her door and dinged the side of the van. I was tempted to rap loudly on my window and give her a scare, but I refrained.
“Ruelas said Albeck was willing to talk until his lawyer stopped it,” I said. “And that they couldn’t come up with probable cause to get a search warrant for Albeck’s house.”
“But Albeck is still worth watching,” Mia said. “Do you agree?”
“I can’t think of anything better to do, so I guess the answer is yes.”
That was often how our cases progressed—without any obvious steps to follow next. Instead, you had to just keep picking away, coming at it from any angle that might prove fruitful, until you learned something valuable. Keeping an eye on Albeck seemed like a reasonable angle.
After a few more minutes of discussion, we agreed that Mia would put Albeck under surveillance—but we couldn’t figure out the best way for her to do that. Should she try to gain access past the gate into his neighborhood? Then what? She couldn’t linger in a high-dollar area like that without being noticed. Which meant a security guard would show up moments later in a little golf cart and ask what she was doing.
Finally Mia said, “We don’t have to figure out a plan right now, do we? How about we just agree that I’ll investigate Albeck in whatever way I think works best?”
“Sounds good to me.”
“What’re you going to do?”
“Sit back, eat bonbons, and wait for you to wrap this thing up.”
“Hard to beat a good bonbon,” she said.
“Actually, I had an idea yesterday, before I talked to Shelley. It involves Albeck, too. I started wondering how many properties he owns.”
“Lessons learned from the Tracy Turner case,” Mia said.
“Exactly. I have to wonder if Boz Gentry could be hiding out in a house or a condo or some other place that Albeck owns.”
“Hmm,” Mia said.
“What?”
“Boz Gentry is an outdoorsman, right?” she said. “He likes to hunt and fish and camp and ride dirt bikes.”
“Yeah?”
“Okay, so where does he do all those things? Where does he hunt, for instance?”
“I guess a lease somewhere.”
“Why not a ranch that one of his friends owns?” Mia asked.
I grinned and started nodding slowly. “Makes sense. Albeck buys ranches and develops them for a living. A guy like him—a country boy with money—I bet he’s bought a ranch for himself. Why wouldn’t he? He’s a hunter. And his best friend would hunt there, too.”
“Probably has a house or a cabin on it,” Mia said.
“That’s smart, Mia. Really smart.”
“Thanks,” she said. “But it’s only smart if Albeck or one of his other friends does actually own a ranch somewhere.”
“I’d say the odds are pretty good. Damn, I’m starting to feel like a piece of luggage this morning.”
“Luggage?” she said. “What are you talking about?”
“You’re carrying me.”
It was nice to see her face beam like it did after that remark.
After Mia left, I stayed in the van and got comfortable with my laptop. There were times when it simply didn’t pay to drive all the way to my apartment to do online research. I might uncover a key fact in, say, five minutes, and that fact might put me right back on the road again. Besides, my laptop gave me broadband access everywhere I went, so it made sense to surf right there, in the parking lot.
First, I checked my email. Nothing important. Then I checked to see if Erin Gentry’s car had traveled anywhere since yesterday morning. It had not. Bit of a surprise, but then again, she was supposed to be in mourning.
Then—because I couldn’t resist any longer, even though I knew I should be as patient as possible—I sent Laura a text.
Have you reached any decisions about Hannah’s visit?
I sat quietly for a moment, hoping to hear back from Laura right away, but my phone remained silent. Five minutes passed. I had to put it out of my mind and focus on the task at hand.
I opened Facebook—the account for my Linda Peterson alter ego. None of Boz Gentry’s friends had accepted my friend request yet. Not unusual. Sometimes that ploy worked and sometimes it didn’t.
But that didn’t mean checking Facebook was a waste of time. I had learned from my research the day before that Boz Gentry’s Facebook privacy settings were loose, and I had spent a few minutes scrolling backward in time on his timeline. But I hadn’t gone very far. Now it was time to be more thorough. My objective: Find out where Boz Gentry did his hunting.
I might have been a little slow lately in coming up with specific ideas where Gentry might be hiding, but my research skills were as sharp as ever. After less than eight minutes online, jumping from Facebook to various county government websites, I was on the road, totally jazzed, heading west on Bee Caves Road.