DEAD GONE a gripping crime thriller full of twists

by T. J. Brearton

  “I’m very clear with my tenants — only people living in the apartment, or using the pool, are the people pay me money. No sublets, nothing.”

  “A friend? Anyone you might have seen her with? Doesn’t mean you’re spying, just means they happened to walk past your field of vision.”

  Massey lowered his voice. “You know, those women came by this weekend. They’re strippers, I think. Could tell by how they dressed and talked.”

  “How about a man? Ever see a man here?” Tom held up the photo of Steve Hobson first. “How about him? Have you seen him?”

  Massey squinted at the picture and shook his head. “No.”

  Tom switched to the one of Bosco.

  “How about him?”

  Something. A little tic in the corner of Derrick Massey’s already twitchy eyes. “No. I don’t know. I got forty units, sixty-eight tenants. I have a life. I can’t see all the people coming and going.”

  Tom nodded sympathetically. “I hear you. Maybe, though, if my associate here, Detective Gomez, takes you down to the police station, you have a cup of coffee, think about it, it might relax you, help you remember.”

  Massey snorted, an angry little sound. “I said no. I never seen that guy.”

  Tom decided to let it go for now. He slipped the pictures back in the book and zipped it up. He’d started away when Massey said, “I noticed those girls, though. You know? I mean, who wouldn’t.” He got a look in his eyes like he had some nasty fantasies tucked away. “You should check into them.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Massey.”

  Tom walked back into the apartment where the techs were already spreading the black, magnetic dust around, flipping on their special lights, snapping pictures. Massey called from the exterior walkway. “Hey, what happens to all her stuff? I mean, what if no one claims it?”

  “We’ll be in touch.”

  Tom nodded at Gomez, who took Tom’s meaning and closed the door, shutting Massey out.

  “What a little sleazebag,” Gomez said.

  “We’ll need his prints.”

  They stood on plastic laid out in the doorway while they slipped booties over their shoes. Gomez grunted and swore as he struggled. Tom looked around the room, then moved to the windows. The curtains were closed most of the way, like they had been the night before. Not much of a view, just the exterior walkway and the parking lot below. The door hadn’t shown any signs of forced entry, neither did the windows.

  Massey never saw anyone with Carrie, but that didn’t mean anything, or he was lying. She could’ve had a boyfriend. Most women, looking like Carrie, didn’t go long without one. Maybe someone had a key.

  Massey had a key.

  Tom picked his way through the apartment, Gomez trailing behind in his oversized suit. There wasn’t much to the place. Single bedroom, walk-in closet. Tom looked in and found it full of clothes. He pushed some aside, checking out the wardrobe. A couple of sun-dresses, a more formal-looking dress in a plastic garment bag. Blouses and tops and jeans — a couple designer brands, nothing outlandish. There was a suitcase on the top shelf, the kind with wheels. Unpacked.

  He moved to the bureau where he took a pen from his pocket and pushed through the underwear and G-strings, feeling a bit like a pervert. He wondered if Massey had let himself in here during Carrie’s absence, done a little luxuriating in her underwear drawer.

  He found it odd that there were no photos in her home. One framed picture hung on the bedroom wall, the kind of “corporate art” that looked like it came with the place. Flowers in a field, suggestions of lavender mountains in the distance. There was a paperback copy of Cujo, spine well-creased, on the bedside table. The bed was unmade, though one side was neater than the other.

  “What are you looking for?” Gomez had drifted so close his voice gave Tom a jolt.

  “Evidence of sudden departure, evidence of anyone else besides Carrie in this apartment.” Tom fanned the pages of the paperback before setting it down. “And, a box.”

  “A box?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  “It’s human nature,” Tom said, looking under the bed. “People tend to keep a box with things in it.” It could be anything, one of his psychology professors had said, sometimes valuables, or drugs, but often keepsakes such as photos, letters, other mementos.

  Carrie Hobson didn’t have a landline or an answering machine. Maybe Everglades County would eventually find her cell phone in the bay, but it might be useless by then.

  Nothing beneath the bed but dust bunnies and a worn pair of slippers. He wandered out of the bedroom, determined, Gomez still ghosting him.

  “You been with the Tampa CID long, Detective Gomez?”

  “Seven years.”

  They entered the kitchen and Tom opened the fridge. Not much in it, just a few sports drinks, yogurts, a bluish-looking head of broccoli in the crisper, condiments in the door.

  “And that’s the major crimes bureau you’re with?”

  Gomez scowled. “I’m SIB.”

  There were a few unwashed dishes in the sink. Tom looked through kitchen cabinets and drawers. “SIB? What’s that? Undercover ops?”

  “Right. Strategic investigations bureau. Narcotic and gang enforcement.”

  In a drawer beneath an unused coffee maker Tom found a wallet. Inside was sixty-eight dollars, a bank debit card, a Dunkin’ Donuts gift card, a few receipts, and Carrie’s driver’s license. He put all these in a baggie and took the baggie to the evidence box in the living room.

  “A wallet,” Gomez said. “No shit.”

  “I think between the wallet and the clothes, the unpacked suitcase, we can pretty much rule out that she took a trip on her own to Naples. She was either killed in Tampa, deposited in Naples, or she only expected to be in Naples briefly. Leaving her wallet behind . . . I’d say she was with someone who promised to take care of things.”

  Gomez nodded like he was thinking all these things, too, though Tom sensed Gomez was out of his element. He had no clue why Tampa would deploy an SIB detective to a homicide case.

  The living room was a simple set-up. A small flat-screen TV, a couch and chair set, a coffee table. Sasha had indicated that Carrie spent her money foolishly — Tom didn’t see any extravagant buys, just normal stuff. On the coffee table was an old box of Chinese food. He gave it a sniff from a safe distance. Highly unpleasant, but compared to the morgue, it was begonias. The box contained the remains of a single serving of sweet and sour pork. Maybe Carrie had been in the middle of a meal when she’d suddenly left the apartment, leaving her wallet and ID. Or, maybe she was just a bit messy at home.

  He checked the carpet. Noting a few specks, fibers well-matted, he guessed it hadn’t been vacuumed for a month or so. There was a rumpled blanket on the couch.

  Carrie wasn’t a drinker or druggie from the looks of it. She was fairly healthy. She’d been a dancer, but only an extra. She was from a small Midwestern town and looked like the girl next door. She read popular fiction, ate Chinese food. When her place got messy, she didn’t fret.

  Tom thought it again: She was anybody.

  She was nobody.

  About the only thing that was remarkable about Carrie Hobson was that she was a stripper. Though in Tampa Bay, that wasn’t very unusual at all.

  “Well?” Gomez asked, lingering in the kitchen doorway.

  Tom glanced at Gomez, and down at the man’s feet again, seeing the sharp points of his boots tenting against the blue booties like weird erections. Then his eyes drifted to the baseboard along the bottom of the wall. Tom looked around at the rest of the trim in the room, crown molding that abutted the ceiling, simple trim framing the doors. The place was in decent shape. But a section of baseboard next to the kitchen doorway bore dark smudges along its upper edge.

  “Hey,” Tom said to one of the techs. “Help me with this.”

  He got on his knees next to the baseboard, the tech beside him. The tech seemed to know what Tom was af
ter, and the two of them probed the seams with their gloved hands. A piece of baseboard wiggled fairly easily, and they pulled it away from the wall.

  Behind the section of baseboard, the wall had been cut away, forming a long rectangular compartment. Tom took his flashlight and got low to the ground.

  Just a small space, in between two framing studs, a couple inches deep, sixteen inches wide. Not a box, but something.

  He turned to Gomez.

  “Let’s get the landlord back in here.”

  Gomez was staring into the hole, but he nodded and left to fetch Massey.

  * * *

  Derrick Massey stood in the living room, twitching, looking at the baseboard gap.

  “Ever seen that before?” Tom asked.

  “No. Huh-uh.” He bent and stared in at the empty space. “You pull something out of it?”

  “No. But there’s room to store something in there, even stack something behind the drywall.”

  Massey stood upright. “Somebody’s got to pay for that damage.”

  “Well . . .” Tom tucked his flashlight away and glanced at Gomez. “. . . That’s what security deposits are for.”

  Tom looked at the tech lifting the prints from the baseboard, using the coffee table as a bench. It typically took between forty-eight and seventy-two hours to process elimination prints, so it would take at least that long to find out whether they belonged to Carrie, or if they were latents — unknowns. If they were latents even a priority response could still take a while.

  The hidey-hole in the wall was very interesting, but just another piece of the puzzle for now.

  * * *

  He left the evidence techs to their work and consulted with the Tampa officers. They’d covered the twenty units and spoken to nine tenants, and no one recognized either Raymond Bosco or Steve Hobson. Only one had ever seen Carrie, and that was a month ago. She’d been alone, coming back from the grocery store.

  “Keep up the good work, now the middle twenty units,” Tom said, and the cops looked like they wanted to throw him off the balcony.

  He headed for the strip club, wondering if this was the same route Carrie would have taken to work. He thought of her driving her green Hyundai along the Tampa streets. He thought of her about to dance for men who hooted and hollered, men like Derrick Massey, maybe, envisioning themselves taking her, devouring her. Was there pleasure in that? Did Carrie — or Sasha, or any of the rest of them for that matter — derive pleasure, knowing that they had something the spectators so desperately craved? Was it ever thrilling? Or degrading? Or just a job like any other?

  Ahead of Tom, Gomez’s unmarked car made a turn and Tom saw a familiar sight: the used car lot, strings of colored pennants flapping in the breeze. Across from the dealership, the plaza with the bakery, hair salon, and strip club. A bouncer, not Bosco, was sitting on the stool.

  A Tampa cruiser parked in front, blocking the entrance. Tom found an available spot and parked more like a customer would. A second Tampa cruiser carrying two more uniformed officers pulled in and stopped near Gomez’s car. Gomez had called in reinforcements. They all gathered in the parking lot, the bouncer glaring at them like it was business as usual.

  Gomez said that the police visited the club regularly. There was at least one drunk and disorderly per week. Every month or so, a fight. Tom thought about the group of businessmen who’d acted like frat boys on Monday night. Tampa was rounding up some persons of interest for questioning.

  “I want to pull any surveillance video from last Tuesday,” Tom said. “And that includes any of these surrounding businesses, like the car dealership. Let’s get basic statements from each employee, including the DJ. We’re doing two things here — we’re clarifying our timeline, and we’re also wondering about anyone who might’ve taken a special interest in the victim. I’m going to look at employee records and Carrie’s time sheet.”

  The quartet of Tampa cops went inside. Tom hung back for a moment while Gomez spoke with the bouncer. Jimmy was the day shift. Tampa PD had Bosco’s phone number and would give him a call, ask him to come down to the club. Jimmy said he thought Bosco would be at home. “He sleeps most of the day cuz he’s up all night.”

  Inside, everyone looked uncomfortable in the presence of the police. The music was thumping, a stripper doing her routine onstage, skin wet and glistening. Another was writhing over a man seated at the benches, his eyeglasses fogged up. The stripper threw her hair, arched her back, and thrust against the man’s pelvis. But the man had clocked the cops. He spoke to the stripper, who turned, hands plunged into her voluminous hair, and stopped.

  Sasha.

  The girl on the stage had halted mid-routine, too. Jimmy had followed the police into the club and hustled over to the bartender. They spoke, heads together, and then Jimmy moved on to the DJ.

  The DJ turned the volume down and made an announcement — the police had a few questions for the staff. The customers were asked to come back later.

  Tom had the DJ show him to a cramped office where the time sheets were kept in a file cabinet. Carrie’s file was right up front. He noted her last clock-in and clock-out and skimmed over her previous shifts. It was all as Sasha had reported.

  While the Tampa cops gathered statements, Tom checked the bathrooms. The men’s room was grimy, pungent with urinal cakes. The ladies room was nicer, smelled better.

  He opened the side door where Sasha had emerged two nights before and peered out, noting the dumpsters, the quiet side road.

  He returned inside and circled the room. He caught Sasha looking at him over a Tampa cop’s shoulder.

  Checking behind the bar, he stopped when he found a shotgun tucked up underneath. He waved Gomez over and pointed it out.

  “Yeah, we’re aware,” Gomez said.

  “Did you reach Bosco?”

  “No answer. I sent a black and white over to his place.”

  “Good.”

  Tom hung back and watched the exchange between the Tampa officer and Sasha. He observed her body language — she became agitated. At one point the cop reached out and grabbed her arm.

  “Hey, hey,” Tom called. He started over as Sasha disappeared into the dressing room. Before she slammed the door, she flashed him an angry look. Like he’d betrayed her somehow.

  The cop approached Tom with his hands in the air. “Relax, relax. She’s agreed to a formal interview. She’ll come downtown tomorrow and give us a full statement.”

  There was a star on the door, the kind you get backstage at a Broadway show. “Can you do me a favor?” Tom asked. “Follow her from here and see where she goes tonight. But leave her alone. I want to see what she does, who she talks to. Keep me updated.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  It was getting late in the afternoon as they drove through Tampa Heights, a working-class neighborhood. The house on North Morgan Street was quaint, surrounded by a white picket fence. An American flag hung from the front porch. There was one bushy palm tree in the yard, a large ficus beside the short dirt driveway where a white Honda CRV was parked.

  Gomez stepped onto the porch and rapped on the front door, Tom behind him.

  A warm breeze rustled the palm fronds overhead. Tom heard footsteps and the door opened. A short bearded man stood there. He was older than his picture, heavier, and wore glasses.

  Gomez pulled his badge. “Steven R. Hobson?”

  “Yeah? What’s going on?”

  Apparently Steve Hobson didn’t watch the news. “Sorry for the late hour. I’m Detective Gomez, Tampa Police, this is Special Agent Lange. Were you married to Carrie Hobson? Carrie Gallo?”

  His eyes flashed recognition. Then, concern. “Yeah . . . What is it? Is Carrie okay?”

  “Can we come in, Mr. Hobson?”

  Hobson tossed a look over his shoulder. Tom leaned in and saw a set of wooden stairs leading up to the second story. Hobson turned back to the cops. “Um, yeah. My son is napping, so . . .”

  “We’ll keep it quiet,” Gome
z assured.

  Hobson hesitated, then pushed the door open the rest of the way. He brought them to a small kitchen, all yellow and white and old-fashioned. Tom thought the floor was canted at an angle. “Is this alright?” asked Hobson.

  “This is great,” Gomez said. They sat down at the little table by the window. There was a view of the next house and the car in Hobson’s driveway.

  Tom wanted Gomez to lead the questioning, and had said so before arriving. Gomez began, “This is your house, Mr. Hobson?”

  “Yeah. I mean, I rent. What’s wrong with Carrie?”

  “Do you live here with anybody else?”

  “It’s just me and my son.”

  “How old is your son?”

  “He’s almost four.” Hobson’s eyes kept flicking between the cops.

  “Just a couple more questions and then I’ll explain. This isn’t a formal interview, okay? You’re not in any trouble. We’re just looking to get some information on Carrie.”

  Gomez wore a pleasant, if detached expression. But Hobson was quick, intelligent. “Oh, I get it. Something happened to her, right? You’re shaking me down.”

  Tom shared a glance with Gomez. “Why would you say that?” Gomez asked.

  “Well, you’re not telling me what happened because you’re waiting to see if I give something away.”

  “Mr. Hobson,” Gomez said, “let’s keep calm.”

  “I’m calm. What happened to her? Shit, I knew something like this would happen someday.” He rose from the table.

  “Something like what? Sit down, please, Mr. Hobson.”

  Hobson glared at Gomez, then returned to his seat. “Something like whatever it is that brought you here. Whatever it is — and it’s probably bad — and now you’re jacking me up.”

  Tom wondered where Hobson had heard terms like ‘shaking him down’ and ‘jacking him up.’ Probably on TV, but you never knew.

  Gomez leaned in. “When is the last time you spoke with your ex-wife?”

  “Five months ago.”

  “You didn’t have to think about that very long. You’re sure?”

  “Yeah, I’m sure. She needed money. That’s why she called. It was just before Christmas.”