The Big G turned to a computer and monitor strategically placed on a credenza behind his desk and with his pointer finger, hit a key on the keyboard. Then another one. Then he turned back to Jim. “What did you say his name was?”
“Wannamaker. Noel Wannamaker.”
“How do you spell that?”
“W-a-n-n-a-m-a-k-e-r.” Jim pressed two fingers to his lips to keep from laughing.
“Slow down.” He tapped with his pointer, but he had to locate the keys first. “Okay. Go on.”
“Maker. M-A-K-E-R.”
Gargantua finished tapping it out and focused all his attention on the screen for a few moments. “Apartment two-fourteen.”
Jim cleared his throat. “Yes.”
He looked over his shoulder at Jim. “So what did you want?”
“Does he still live here?”
Glancing at the screen, the young man ran his finger over the words until he spotted something. “Computer says yes. His lease runs out September first.”
“So he hasn’t given his notice.”
“Nah. It would say so right here.” He ran his finger across the screen. “Nah. It doesn’t say so.”
“Could he have left without telling anyone?”
“You mean like in the middle of the night?”
“Precisely.” Jim held his arms still when what he wanted to do was shake the guy, not that the answers would be more forthcoming.
“Yup, I guess so. But like, why would he want to do that?”
Jim shrugged. “I don’t know. But he hasn’t been seen lately.”
“Who says?”
“Girl who lives next door. Does your record show what kind of car he drives?”
Gargantua checked his computer screen again. “Yup. Toyota.”
“Could we check his parking space and see if it’s there?”
Gargantua stood up and came around the desk, his pointer aimed at Jim. “You think something funny is going on with this fella, huh? Like, who are you anyway?” He towered over Jim and could probably crush him between his palms like biscuit dough.
Jim didn’t see any reason not to be honest with the big lug. He probably wouldn’t get it straight if he had to repeat it anyway. “A reporter. I’m doing a story, and Noel was helping me. Then suddenly he quit his job and supposedly left town.”
“Like on TV, huh?” One of the girls twittered.
“Yep,” Jim said. “Like on TV. Hey, if we’re going to go looking for his car, you want to look at his apartment, too?”
Gargantua gave Jim a sideways look.
“I mean since I’ve been told he left town and all, you probably ought to see if he cleaned out his apartment and stiffed you for the rest of the rent.”
“Yeah, right.” He went over to a closet door and pulled it open. There were hooks for spare keys for every apartment on the inside of the door and on the inside of the three walls of the closet. Plus, there was a portable key maker on a platform in the middle of the walk-in closet. A convenient operation. They probably charged twenty-five bucks a pop to make a new key.
Gargantua’s pointer followed the numbers until it came to two-fourteen. He grabbed the key, slammed the door, and beckoned at Jim and the girls to follow him. He clipped a cell phone to his waistband, and they went out into the heat. G locked the door and turned the sign over, changing the clock until it said, ‘Back at 3:00.’
“So you play football, son?” Jim asked as they walked side-by-side. The two girls hung back, talking and giggling between themselves.
“Used to, for UT.”
“What happened?”
“Flunked out last fall. After the season. Going back this fall.”
“That why you work here?”
“Yeah. Had to do something. Going to junior college and work here. Use the weight room to stay in shape.”
“Good idea. Junior college got your grades up?”
“Yup. Even made two Bs.” He grinned, his teeth an unnatural white. He stopped and held out his hand. “My name’s Howard.”
Jim stopped and grinned back at the big old boy. “Jim Dorman.” He started to shake Howard’s hand. “Promise not to hurt me?”
Howard flashed a smile again. “Promise.”
Jim shook his hand, and they started walking again. Howard slapped Jim on the back causing him to stumble forward. What was it with large men and slaps on the back? Apparently as common as women’s wimpy handshakes.
“So, you’re a reporter for who?”
“Used to be for the Angeles Evening Times until they folded last year. Now I freelance.” Jim had a strong desire to tell him about his job prospects—wanted to share his good news—but knew the giant was just making an effort to be polite.
“Freelance. That’s what?”
“Where you try to sell articles to all different kinds of places.”
Howard nodded as if he understood. “Like when a player becomes a free agent?”
“Yeah, kinda.”
“So what was this guy Noel helping you with?”
“Child support story.”
He clapped Jim on the back again. “Hey, my daddy used to pay child support.” Howard sounded like he thought that deserved a medal.
Jim flexed his shoulders to make sure they still worked okay. “So you know what I’m talking about.”
“Yeah. My daddy used to send my mama fifty dollars each and every week. ‘Like clockwork’, she said.”
Jim swallowed a snort. He wasn’t about to say anything to dispel the image in Howard’s mind that his father was some kind of hero for paying regularly. “What I’m writing about is why some men don’t pay their support.”
“Nah, really? I saw something about that on TV.”
“Well, that’s what I’m writing about.” Enough with the details. It probably wouldn’t do any good to explain further. They were near Noel’s apartment. “You see Wannamaker’s car anywhere?”
Howard stepped off the curb and began examining parking space numbers. It was not apparent exactly how they were arranged so Jim just followed Howard until he came to a Toyota. The space number was not two-fourteen, but it was the right make of car.
“This is it.”
“How do you know?” Jim looked up and down the rows. There were several Toyotas.
“We have a system so the public don’t know which car belongs to what apartment. You’re the public, so I can’t tell you, but this is Noel Wannamaker’s car.”
“Okay.” So it was there, and Noel wasn’t. Jim’s gut told him something was wrong. He stared at the blue Camry. Nice car. He touched the hood. Not enough heat for the engine to have been run recently. He circled it. No unusual dents or anything of a suspicious nature. Nothing resting on the seats. No newspapers, no magazines, no sunglasses.
But the odor Jim smelled, the odor that made his gut tell him literally that something was wrong, the odor that told him to call the police, pretty certainly came from the car, not from the dumpster sitting two spaces away. He glanced at Howard who stood watching him from the sidewalk. Howard apparently didn’t notice anything unusual. Football could have cost him his sense of smell. “So you think we should open his apartment since his car is here, Howard?”
Howard nodded his bowling-ball head. “You think something is wrong, don’t you?”
“I’m starting to get that feeling. Maybe we ought to call the police.”
“Let’s open the apartment first, Jim.” Howard pressed his lips together and scratched under his nose. “The police’ll just get pissed if there’s no body in the apartment.”
“Okay. But, remember, it was your idea.”
“Huh? That’s okay. I’m the apartment manager. I’ll tell the cops that, too. My decision.” He started for Noel’s apartment, his long legs making short shrift of the distance. Jim and the two girls formed a parade behind him.
Howard shoved the key in the lock and threw open the door. The air conditioning was on full blast, but the cream-colored curtains and blinds
were drawn so the apartment was cold and dim. The odor was like the inside of an almost empty refrigerator. The four of them went in and closed the door. One of the girls hit the wall switch before Jim could say, “Don’t touch anything.”
The girls squealed, each one clasping one of Howard’s arms. Jim’s throat tightened, followed by his abdomen.
Someone had tossed the apartment. Except for the blinds and curtains, the place was torn to pieces. Stuffing protruded from the cushions. The sofa laid face down, the shredded liner hanging like pieces of laundry on the clothesline. Coffee table drawers had been emptied out, their contents scattered on the carpet.
“Now, we call the police?” Jim glanced up at Howard to see if he agreed.
When Howard expelled a gust of air, followed by a “Yup,” Jim said, “Don’t touch anything.” He went next door to use the phone. The brown-haired young woman let him in and left the door open. Smoke rings circled in the air like buzzards. Dirty ashtrays overflowed. Jim had a hard time getting a breath but appreciated the loan of the phone. He wished all the more he had his cell phone back. Soon, he told himself. Just as soon as he got a job.
Remembering the odor coming from the car, he told the police dispatcher he thought there was something suspicious in the trunk. Thanking the brunette, he went next door to Noel’s apartment.
Howard stood on the sidewalk with the girls, arguing with them, telling them they had to go to the river without him. They were practically begging to wait and see what was going to happen next. He was resisting, but not doing a very good job. For just a moment, Jim wondered what it was like to be a guy like Howard, but pushed that thought away. Brains over brawn.
He went back into the apartment and stood for just a moment, looking the place over. Even his shoes could contaminate the scene, but the investigative reporter in him wouldn’t let him stand on the sidelines when he had time to examine the premises. His arms felt like pincushions with hundreds of small pinpricks being stuck in them at once. He studied each room more thoroughly, trying to get an impression, any impression of what had taken place.
The mess was of equal proportions in every room, thoroughly ransacked. Clearly Noel wouldn’t have done that to his own place. And the perpetrator couldn’t have found what he was looking for or he would have stopped before trashing the whole apartment.
There were two bedrooms, the smaller, set up as an office. Noel must have been a college student and attended at night while working at the courthouse during the day. Textbooks lay on the floor, the bookshelves emptied by the searcher. Sheets of notebook paper had settled on the carpet like large snowflakes. Again, drawers stood open.
The laptop computer was on, the screensaver photographs showed pictures of people—including a laughing Noel with his arm around a young woman’s shoulders—rolling hills, Texas wildflowers, and the river. Jim couldn’t resist tapping the spacebar to bring the screen up, but he used a pen so he wouldn’t smudge any fingerprints or leave any of his own. The screen that came up was blank.
He wanted to look into what files had been opened recently, but couldn’t figure out how to do it without smudging any fingerprints and leaving his own. There was no memory stick in the side slot. Whoever had been there knew something about computers. Jim looked through the desk, being careful not to leave prints, but didn’t find anything useful in the scraps of stuff left in the drawers or in what lay scattered on the floor.
After giving the remainder of the apartment the once over, he went outside to wait for the police. The Angeles Police Department’s finest arrived sans sirens about a quarter of an hour later. The girls had finally succumbed to Howard’s orders and left. Howard and Jim sat on the concrete parking space barrier right in front of Noel’s apartment.
In spite of the fact that the sun was on its downward trajectory, it was still mid-afternoon in the Texas Hill Country, which meant it was still searingly hot. He didn’t know who gave off worse body odor, he or Howard. Sweat ran in rivulets down Howard’s face. The only time Jim had seen that kind of sweat was in a reporter friend, who was an avid beer drinker. Jim was no slouch in the sweat department; it just flowed more slowly.
Howard didn’t say anything about the few minutes Jim had spent in Noel’s apartment. Neither did he seem to want to go inside himself. As dumb as Howard came across, he seemed to know the police wouldn’t want him stepping all over Noel’s stuff or sitting on his furniture. So there they sat. When the police pulled up, both Howard and Jim identified themselves. They were separated for interrogation after the cops did a walk-through of the apartment.
A Sergeant Ivan Denholt interviewed Jim. He was a thin, balding, bespectacled white fellow who was almost as tall as Howard.
A short, stocky, black fellow took Howard aside. “We saw you weren’t at spring training. You going to be back this year?” He clapped a hand on Howard’s shoulder and steered him away from Jim.
Denholt took Jim over to the police car, which he had left running, and took the basic information from inside where it was cool, both of them in the front seat.
“Who called this in?” Denholt pulled off his jacket and loosened his tie.
“Me. Howard had a couple of friends with him, but I told them not to touch Noel’s stuff.” He knew better than to volunteer anything. His insides had settled down, but he still felt jumpy. He wanted to go back to his own place and think things over but had an idea it would be a while before he’d be able to do that.
“How is it you know the guy that lives in this apartment?”
“From the courthouse. Met him at the district clerk’s office.”
“So what are you doing out here?”
“Looking to talk to him.” Jim ran his tongue around the inside of his mouth to wet it, but it didn’t help much, and he could hardly swallow.
“What do you want to talk to him about?”
“A story about child support.”
Denholt scratched his ear. “For?”
“I freelance. I’ve got several feelers out.”
“This don’t add up.”
“Sure it does.” Jim didn’t want to tell Denholt anything he suspected. After all, he didn’t have any evidence of wrongdoing by anyone connected to the courthouse. All he had was a dead Mr. Johnson—from a traffic accident—and a list of names from Noel, and he didn’t know who they were except for Mr. Johnson’s. There just wasn’t any more than that. To tell Denholt anything would be to bring a lot of problems onto himself. When he had more to tell, he could go to the police.
“You’re writing an article for some unknown rag, you come out to interview this kid, he’s not here, and his apartment has been ransacked. Tell me how that adds up.”
“I went to see his supervisor to interview her. I just happened to mention him to this girl who works the counter, Donna-something, and she told me he hadn’t shown up for work since I was in court last week. I asked his supervisor about it, and she said he quit. So since I’m doing this child support article from a man’s point of view, I thought I’d get a man’s point of view on the man’s point of view. I already got his female supervisor’s and the female judge’s points of view on it.” He struggled not to let any kind of expression cross his face.
Denholt rolled his head around wearily and rubbed the back of his neck. “So you couldn’t call the guy?”
“Didn’t think of it.” Jim tried to think of some way to tell Denholt his suspicions about Noel’s car. “Didn’t have his number.”
“Are you sure you aren’t working on anything else?”
“Like what?”
“I’m asking the questions.”
“Look, Sergeant, I’m just trying to make a living.”
“There’s something I don’t like about all this. You say this girl says he hasn’t been seen since when?”
“Last week, Friday. The supervisor said he called in and quit, I think it was on Monday.”
“If he’d left town, he would have taken his stuff with him. His suitcases, his paper
s.”
Jim licked his lips and said, “His car.”
Denholt’s eyes flared. “Yeah, right. Did you tell the dispatcher something about a trunk?”
“Sergeant, maybe it’s just me, but I think there is something in Noel Wannamaker’s trunk that ought to be checked out.”
“Next you’ll be telling me you think it’s Noel Wannamaker.” Denholt glared at Jim and heaved a deep sigh. He dropped his notebook into his jacket pocket and reached for the cruiser’s door handle before looking back. “I don’t believe it.”
Jim raised his eyebrows. “I don’t want to believe it.”
He stuck his forefinger in Jim’s face. “You stick around.”
Jim nodded and waited for the sergeant. He didn’t have to be there when the trunk was flung open. He didn’t have to have the horrific odor of rotting flesh slap him in the face. He didn’t have to see Noel Wannamaker’s decomposing body. The last one he had seen made him throw up and gave him night sweats for months afterward. There was a reason he hadn’t gone into the medical field. He didn’t have the stomach for it.
Nope. He’d wait and get the word from the sergeant. He had no problem waiting in the cool cop car for confirmation. He could think of other things, nicer things. Listen to calls that came over the radio. Think about Patty and their future. Wonder whether Patty had caught hint of any wrongdoing in the WiNGS group. Jim couldn’t help it. It came back to them. No matter what else came up, there was just something about that group of women.
It didn’t take long for Denholt to return for further questioning. Noel Wannamaker wouldn’t be making a statement.
Chapter Sixteen
“Okay, Dorman,” Sergeant Denholt said when they arrived at the station. “You might as well get comfortable.”
After shedding his jacket and loosening his tie, the sergeant plopped down at a worn gunmetal gray desk and faced an outdated computer screen. Files sat in stacks, and his in-box overflowed. He rifled the center desk drawer and came up with a password, which he kept glancing at as he typed it into the computer.
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