Killer in Sight (A Tom Lackey Mystery)
Page 25
information for him. Lana Briggs answered the call.
“Lana, it’s Parker. Could you please go to my desk
and see if you can find my notes from the last few days?
They should be in a small stack by my computer. I need
the exact address of Mrs. Jenkins, Jack Little’s landlord.
I think I circled her name on the notes, so it shouldn’t be
too hard to find.”
Lana Briggs put him on hold for a few minutes, then
she came back on the line and gave him the address.
“Thanks a bunch. I might call back in a few to get
someone else to join me here.”
“Do you know where Lackey is? His girlfriend
called a while back looking for him.”
“I’m looking for him too. She called me after she
spoke with you. He missed his regular checkin, but
knowing how Lackey resents not having personal space
to follow his leads I am not surprised that his absence
didn’t alert a search for him.”
“Do you need reinforcement, Parker?”
“I’m good for now. I’m going to talk to the landlord.
I hate to wake her up at this time, but I can’t think of
anything else to do.”
“Okay. Keep me posted, Parker. If I don’t hear
anything back from you within thirty minutes I am
going to send a car.”
“Good idea, Lana. I will call right back.”
He got out of his car and squinted to see the dirty
plaque with the unit number that allegedly belonged to
Mrs. Jenkins. When he found it, he knocked on the door
several times before a sleepy-eyed Mrs. Jenkins
answered from the other side of the closed door.
“Police, Mrs. Jenkins. I just need to ask you a
question.”
Mrs. Jenkins opened the door, and Parker needed all
the self-control he could master to keep his face
impassive. Mrs. Jenkins’s hair was wrapped on large
rollers that in the semi-dark hallway light looked like
coiled pink snakes, and her withered body was barely
covered by a skimpy magenta nightgown which was
visible through the open robe she was wearing.
“Do you know what time it is, young man?”
“It’s very late, Ma’am, I’m sorry. I am looking for
an officer who came by here earlier today. Have you
seen him?”
“The detective that was here earlia’? Yes, I saw him.
His ca’ was still here when I closed ma blinds.” She
wiggled her neck to see around Parker, half-exposing a
sagging breast as she did that. Parker wanted to look
away and he couldn’t, and for a moment he thought
about people who don’t want to look at accidents but
can’t take their eyes off the mangled cars as they drive
by.
“His ca’s gone. He gone, I reckon.”
“Did you see anyone else go into the apartment,
Mrs. Jenkins?”
“Nah, but it don’t mean not’ng. Me and my
boyfriend was having a romantic dinna’ and I wasn’t
lookin’ outside.”
Parker tried his best to keep his running imagination
from painting pictures in his mind, and he just nodded to
shoo the thoughts away.
“I might have to go inside the apartment, Ma’am. Is
it okay?”
Mrs. Jenkins sighed heavily. “I’m in my nigh’
clothes. Let me get the key.”
“Take your time, Ma’am. I have to call for someone
to go in with me. It will take a while.”
“A while? How long’s that?”
“I don’t know. In fact, can you just give me the key?
That way I won’t bother you any more, and I can just
put it back into your mailbox.”
“That’s goo’. Let me get it for you.”
She stepped away from the door for a moment and
came back with a key which she handed to him. “Here
you go. Be quiet, so you don’t wake nobody.”
“I will. Thank you Ma’am, and goodnight.”
Mrs. Jenkins closed the door and Parker went to his
car to call for someone to join him. After trying to dial
Lackey’s number without luck several times, he laid his
head against the headrest and waited. A patrol car pulled
up within ten minutes.
Parker led the way to Jack Little’s apartment and
opened the door with the key that Mrs. Jenkins gave
him. Even before they went inside, they both saw a faint
trail of dried blood starting from the doorstep and
leading toward the bedroom. The trail led to a larger
blood stain beside the bed, and when Parker leaned
down to inspect it more closely, something else caught
his eye: Right beside the bed, half-hidden by the bed
skirt was Lackey’s mobile phone.
Brad Johnson laid awake in his cell, his mind
working overtime to come to a decision. The only way
for him to get out of jail was to destroy the life of the
only woman he ever loved. Erin Winthrow was his alibi;
she was also the non-happily married wife of one of the
most prominent men in town. She and Brad were
together the night that Tracey died, but he couldn’t tell
the Lieutenant about her without breaking the bond of
trust he and his lover had. Erin had two small children
and a very controlling husband who wouldn’t think
twice about taking her babies away from her if she
publicly humiliated him. Brad couldn’t do that to her,
and if his silence meant that he was going to serve time
undeservingly in exchange for her happiness, then he
was willing and ready to continue on the same path. He
heard his roommate snore and he sighed. How had
things spiraled down this way? He had no idea how that
shirt had gotten into his trunk, but he was sure it wasn’t
there the day before he was pulled because he had just
gone to clean his car that morning on his day off.
Someone had to have put it in there between that
afternoon and the next day before he got out of work.
His stupid addiction had taken him further than he
ever expected, and he couldn’t believe he had lowered
himself to selling drugs. He wasn’t a dealer, and he had
really tried hard to curb his need for pills after Tracey
could no longer provide them for him, but withdrawal
and desperation had quickly set in, and he wasn’t
thinking straight. The money he was earning wasn’t
enough to support what he needed, and he had agreed to
sell a bit on the side.
But if someone was trying to frame him by putting
the bloody shirt in his trunk, how did they know he was
going to be busted that afternoon? Who could possibly
hate him enough to follow him around and know of his
whereabouts? Did that someone listen to his
conversations on the phone?
His mind was spinning, and he felt nauseated. He
had to figure who this person was, and he didn’t know
where to start. He didn’t want Erin to sacrifice her life
for him, and he knew that she would do just that if he
went to trial.
Mike Howard tried to keep himself busy by reorganizing his
garage. Growing up with a neat-picking father taught him to do just that, and he could almost
hear his old man’s words ringing in his ears as he
worked: If your life is falling apart, organizing what you
can will help you remain in control.
Mike didn’t feel in control at all, but he continued to
arrange bolts and nails as he desperately tried to keep
from falling apart. He cleaned drawers and shelves, and
he nearly burst into tears when he found Alexis’s sand
toys neatly stored inside a box behind the weed eater.
Where was his little girl? Why was God doing this to
him? Rose wasn’t very religious, and Mike always felt a
bit uneasy about this side of her, but right now he began
to wonder if she wasn’t indeed right – how could a
righteous God allow a little girl to disappear, or a young
woman in her blossoming years to be senselessly
murdered?
A tiny meow coming from the other side of the
closed door wiped those thoughts from his mind, and for
a moment he was grateful to the kitten for now allowing
him to indulge such blasphemous ideas. He opened the
door and let Petey in to wander around in the garage
while he worked. Petey rubbed against his legs and
purred loudly, before he climbed over a cardboard box
set near his oversize tool box, and sniffed around. Mike
watched him for a few seconds and then went back to
separating nails by size. Petey jumped from the box onto
the table and continued his inspection, using all the
grace a cat could master until a small cockroach sped
from under a small stack of papers and raced over one
of his paws. All of a sudden, Petey was all paws, and in
a few strikes he knocked all the bolts and nails off the
table, as he desperately tried to catch his elusive prey.
Mike cursed under his breath, and he gently removed
Petey from the table and put him back in the house. He
had worked on those nails and bolts for the good part of
an hour, and seeing them all spread on the floor made
him want to scream out of frustration. He swept them up
with a small broom he kept hanging by the tool box and
opened a drawer of the shelf near the table to put them
in there until a later time when he could sort them out
again. When he opened the drawer, something metallic
clung against the back of the enclosure and he dug his
hand in to see what it was. When he pulled out his hand
and looked at the object, he felt his knees buckle up.
Clutched in his hand was his father’s cigarette lighter,
the one he had misplaced and could no longer find.
Instantly, a conversation he had with Alexis rang
through his mind and his heart began to race. “Do you
remember the lighter you lost last month, Daddy? The
one that belonged to Granddaddy?”
“Sure I remember. What about it?”
“It’s in the tool drawer in the garage.”
“How do you know that, Alexis? Did you see it
there?”
“No. Lily told me to tell you it’s there. You put it
there when that salesman came up our driveway to sell
you lawn treatments and you forgot about it.”
Alexis wasn’t with him when the salesman came;
she was in her room playing dolls by herself. The man
had come through the yard while he was organizing a
box containing his father’s belongings and he had
almost stepped out of the garage holding the lighter.
Since he was wearing a pair of gym shorts with no
pockets, he threw the lighter in the open drawer and
forgot all about it after the salesman left and Rose called
him in for lunch. Alexis couldn’t have seen him putting
the lighter in the drawer, and yet she knew it was in
there. Lily told her, she claimed. Something else of
importance nudged at the edges of his mind, and when it
surfaced, Mike gasped and had to hold on to the table to
keep himself from falling. Alexis also knew of Tracey’s
pregnancy, before anyone else knew. He dug his nails
into the cover of the work table and took a few deep
breaths to steady himself; he laughed hysterically and
then he cried, as he crumbled to his knees and realized
that no amount of organization could save him from
falling apart right now.
Chapter 18
When Parker returned to Jack Little’s apartment to
see how things were progressing, two patrol cars and an
unmarked car occupied three of the eight parking spaces
designated for the residents, and four other spots were
occupied by unidentified vehicles which Parker assumed
belonged to residents. Mrs. Jenkins was standing outside
despite the late hour, and Parker was glad to see her
completely dressed this time.
“Hello, Mrs. Jenkins, you’re up late I see. Or
early…”
“I dunno what’s happenin’ to the world, Detective.
In my day, now, you didn’t hear of this kind of
nonsense.”
“Maybe you should go inside, Mrs. Jenkins.” Parker
felt awkward preaching at someone her age, but this
wasn’t a good part of town and an elderly woman had
no business standing outside alone at this hour, even
with several officers just a few doors down.
“I’m fine, fella. I got to wait for the tow truck to
take this car right here. I tell residents all the time that I
don’t want their friends parkin’ in my lot, and look here
– this car don’t belong to nobody who pay rent in this
place.”
Parker’s instinct was on full alert. “This car doesn’t
belong to one of your residents? Could it belong to one
of their friends visiting them?”
“I got eigh’ apartments and eigh’ spaces. One each
resident; no mo’. Friends ca’s is not allowe’.
“Wait, Mrs. Jenkins, hold off the tow truck. Let me
check this plate first.”
“You do that, Detecti’, but you get this here ca’ out
of my property.”
“We will, Mrs. Jenkins. I promise.”
Parker jotted down the license plate number on his
pocket-size notepad and walked back to his car. He
called in the number and waited for a name to go with it.
His hopes of hearing that the car belonged to Jack Little
were quickly shattered when the plate was matched to a
man by the name of Eduardo Carlos.
He rushed back to Mrs. Jenkins. “You don’t have a
tenant by the name of Eduardo Carlos, do you?”
Mrs. Jenkins shook her head. “No, Sir, I su’ don’t.”
“Have you ever seen anyone going up to Mr.
Bernardini’s place?”
“Yes, I have. He has a small man who see him from
time to time. They look like bruddas, if you ask me. And
a woman too.”
“Did this man look like Mr. Bernardini?”
“Yes Sir, I just done told you that.”
“Did the man and the woman you saw go in
together sometimes?”
“Not sometimes. All the time. Only today, I saw
first the woman and
then the man goin’ in alone.”
“He was here today?”
“Yes Sir. I saw him this afternoon.”
“Thank you Mrs. Jenkins. I promise that the car will
be removed by morning.” Parker said as he got in his car
and started the engine. Maybe Eduardo Carlos had
nothing to do with Tom’s disappearance, but the only
way to find out was to ask him directly.
#
Kathy sat at the kitchen table and ran her fingers
through her hair. Almost fourteen hours later now, she
still knew nothing of Tom’s whereabouts. Parker never
called back, and Tom’s mobile phone was still turned
off. She felt in her heart that something happened, and
yet her mind refused to accept the possibility. She
rubbed her forehead with her thumbs and tried to focus
on the photos spread out on the table. A slingshot and a
dot – what, if anything, could they possibly mean?
Her phone rang and she jumped before
automatically turning her head to look at the clock on
the stove – seven o’ clock in the morning. “Hello?”
“Kathy, it’s Parker. I still don’t know where Tom is.
His car is gone, but we found his mobile phone inside
Jack Little’s apartment…”
Parker’s pause infused a double shot of anxiety into
Kathy’s veins. “Parker, you’re not telling me
everything.”
“We also found some blood stains, Kathy.”
Kathy swallowed a mouthful of bile before she
could answer, and felt faint.
Parker tried his best to sweeten the blow. “Kathy,
we don’t know it’s his blood. It’s just an assumption. We
also found a car which doesn’t belong to any of the
tenants. I went to the address of the owner, and nobody
is there. I’m still here, hoping that maybe he will come
home and I can ask him a few questions. According to
the landlord, a man was seen going up to Jack Little’s
apartment this morning, so I am banking on the fact that
the owner of the car and the guy who went to see Jack
Little are the same person.”
“Can you not get in there, Parker?”
“Not without a warrant or without the person who
lives here letting me in.”
“I’d like to show you some pictures, Parker. They
might be relevant to the case.”
“What sort of pictures?”
“They are shots of Tracey Newman’s pupils. Before
you discard the idea, please hear me out -- some of the