by Libby Kirsch
He started walking again, and Janet followed him down the hall.
“I wasn’t there, you know, when it happened. I was still at home; my first class wasn’t until noon that day. Abe saw the whole thing, though. Right in front of his eyes, his best friend was snatched away. The first cop on the scene drove the man who did it home, like a taxi service.” He jabbed at the down button for the elevator and shook his head.
“It sounds like you haven’t forgiven Ike.”
“He never asked for forgiveness!” Benji said, and his voice echoed in the empty concrete hall. He shook his head and lowered his voice. “You’re right: I haven’t forgiven him.” He blew out a breath and jiggled his keys in his hand. “But the crazy thing is, even if the cops who showed up had given him a Breathalyzer, chances are the same thing would’ve happened. It’s astounding how cyclist rights are trampled on a near-daily basis across this country.”
“Cyclist rights?”
“People think cars own the roadways, but it’s simply not true. The law gives cyclists just as much of a right to be on the road as motorists, yet time and again cyclists are treated like second-class citizens and literally run down by drivers who think they shouldn’t have to share the road. It’s ridiculous. I mean, we’re people, okay? Some drivers are more careful when they see a dog on the side of the road than when they see a cyclist.”
Janet narrowed her eyes and tried to make sense of the man in front of her. “What do you do, exactly?”
“I’m a lawyer at Dystel & Schmatt,” he said, naming one of the largest law firms downtown, “but I also work pro bono to represent cyclists who’ve been injured.” They were on the elevator now, heading down to the ground floor. “You wouldn’t believe how many police officers don’t even know the law. Cars have to wait either until it’s safe to pass a cyclist or until they have enough room to go wide around them if there’s not a bicycle lane. Lots of cyclists get charged with blocking traffic if they take up any space at all on the road, though, like they’re supposed to ride through the potholes or something!” He tsked in outrage before the ding of the elevator doors interrupted him; they stepped off together into the wide, open lobby.
“Did you know I was premed in college? I was planning to become a doctor, but then Ollie was killed and rage changed my passion from health to litigation. The fact is that Ike was drunk. He should have been charged with drunk driving and vehicular manslaughter. Instead, he got a taxi ride home, paid for by the city. My goal is to make sure that doesn’t happen again to anyone.” He slipped a hand inside his briefcase and flicked his card to Janet. “I’m late for work, but if you have any more questions . . .”
She followed him out of the building and watched him unlock his bicycle from a covered rack in the parking garage.
“Hey, Benji! When’s the last time you saw Ike?”
He put his bicycle helmet on and clicked the latch together under his chin before answering. “I’ve actually never seen him in person—only in the papers.” He threw one leg over the bike and, with a last wave, pedaled down the street, his unbuttoned suit jacket flapping in the wind.
She felt like scratching her head. Benji certainly didn’t seem upset to learn Ike was dead, but she couldn’t really blame him. As he disappeared into traffic, she realized she hadn’t even asked him where he’d been the night Ike was murdered. God, she’d make a terrible investigator. He had said one thing that stuck with her, though: he hadn’t been riding with Ollie the day he was killed. Their other roommate, Abe, had been. She dug around in her purse, finally finding the old receipt on which she’d scribbled their addresses. She wondered if the person who’d watched Ollie die still felt any anger toward the man who killed him.
Chapter Fourteen
Abe also lived in a nicer section of Knoxville, but his neighborhood was less urban and Janet felt even more out of place. Everything from her car to her clothes to her hair screamed that she didn’t belong in this suburban utopia, littered with expensive jogging strollers, luxury cars and SUVs in every driveway, and stucco as far as the eye could see.
It could have been her imagination, but as she knocked, she felt like a couple walking by slowed to watch her. It made her want to turn around and let them know she wasn’t going to steal anything.
A beautiful brunette woman wearing tight-fitting yoga pants and a matching tank top and jacket that likely cost more than Janet averaged in tips each night opened the door. “I’m sorry, sweetheart, but we’re not interested.” The woman’s twang was strong; she was clearly a native of Knoxville, or somewhere else down south.
Briefly curious as to what this woman thought Janet was selling, she said, “I’m looking for someone named Abe.”
The woman’s eyes narrowed. “Who may I say is asking for him?”
“Janet Black.” She held out her business card and the woman snatched it out of her hand then pushed the door closed. Janet heard her yell up the stairs for Abe.
Footsteps pounded down the stairs. The woman pulled open the door again, still assessing Janet through narrowed, now suspicious, eyes.
A man came to stand next to her. “Vanessa?” She shrugged and stared at Janet, so he looked over, too. “Hi, I’m Abe.”
He was tall, slim, and muscular, with sandy-blond hair, wire-framed glasses, and long, Nordic features.
Janet zipped up her hoodie, which was at least a size too big with frayed seams at the hemline, and flicked a look at Vanessa before saying, “Is there somewhere private we can talk?”
Abe squeezed the woman’s hand, then motioned that he would follow Janet down the walk. Vanessa’s eyes disappeared into slits as Janet turned to head toward the street.
“Sorry,” Janet said, glancing back, as they reached the sidewalk. “I think she’s—”
“Don’t worry—my wife is used to it. Patients sometimes show up here. How they find me, I’ll never know. Are you a patient?” He stopped walking to look her over, his eyes resting on the white bandage on her finger.
“No! I’m . . . well, I guess I’m looking into the death of Ike Freeman.”
“Ah,” Abe said, his face scrunched together in not quite sadness, but something near sorrow.
“You heard?” Janet asked.
“I saw it on the news the other night. I was sorry to hear it. Yes, I really was,” he said in answer to Janet’s surprised expression. “His life wasn’t an easy one. It took me years to forgive him for killing Ollie, but I did, and I was sorry to see he wasn’t ever able to . . . to get his life on track.” He flicked Janet’s card back and forth against his hand as he spoke. “I actually became a doctor because of him.”
“Really?”
“Ollie and I were both physical therapy majors, but being there when he was hit and not knowing what to do while I waited for the ambulance . . . well, it changed me. It put me on the path I was supposed to be on.”
“What did you think when Ike wasn’t charged in Ollie’s death?”
“I thought it was a total miscarriage of justice, just like everyone else. You’d think five eyewitnesses would have been enough to challenge the official version of what happened, but it wasn’t. I can’t make sense of it, but I’m glad it forced me and Benji to rethink what we were going to do with our lives. That’s the only good to come from the terrible accident.
“You’re with KPD?” Abe asked, finally glancing down at Janet’s card.
“Oh, no. I’m, uh, I’m not.” She knew Detective O’Dell well enough to know she couldn’t pull off impersonating an officer without getting into trouble.
Abe looked down at her business card and frowned. “You own the Spot? What are you, like, a private investigator?”
“Oh, no.” She chuckled at the thought.
“What do you have to do with—”
“I’m really just checking facts in a nonofficial capacity,” she said with authority.
He squinted down at her. “What does that mean?”
Janet sighed. “It means Ike was found dea
d outside my bar, and his daughter is having this . . . prayer vigil on my property until his killer is found. So, I guess I’d like to speed that process along.”
Abe blinked several times, and then shrugged. “Well, it’s been hard on Ollie’s family, but I’m sure they’re finally feeling a sense of closure. Knowing Ike was out there, living his life, while their son wasn’t was difficult for them—for Mr. Daniels, especially.”
Janet asked a few more questions but didn’t glean any new information, except that Abe’s wife seemed the jealous type.
Vanessa glared down the walk through a small crack in the curtains. Janet’s bar-fight radar was running hot, so she held out her hand to Abe to say goodbye.
“It’s a felon,” he said matter-of-factly.
“Excuse me?” Janet said, affronted. “A few misdemeanor run-ins with the cops when I was a teenager certainly doesn’t make me—”
“No—no,” Abe said with an uncomfortable laugh, “your finger. The kind of infection you’ve got is called a felon.”
“Oh . . . uh, good to know. I have an appointment scheduled with my doctor for later today, hopefully she can fix me up.” She waved before heading down the front walk, feeling like she’d just wasted her morning. Benji and Abe both seemed about as vaguely unaffected as could be expected when someone who had altered the course of their lives ten years earlier finally met what they must have seen as a fitting end.
An idea occurred to her, and she stopped walking and turned back toward the house. “Oh, hey, one last question: when did you last see Ike?” She was thinking about Larsa’s ghost-from-the-past comment, wondering if Ike had actually seen a familiar face recently that had sent him over the edge. Abe didn’t answer, he was scrutinizing her card again.
“Do the police know you’re out here, talking to people about a murder case?”
“As if I’d take on all of this on my own?” Janet asked, arching her eyebrows incredulously. Abe cocked his head to the side and narrowed his eyes, and she decided to leave before he could delve more deeply into how she was connected to the case.
As she drove away, though, she realized he hadn’t answered her last question and wondered if that was by design.
Chapter Fifteen
Janet had just over thirty minutes until her appointment, so she grabbed lunch at a drive-through on the way to the office. But after two bites of hamburger, her stomach clenched.
What was she doing, investigating a murder? It was crazy, and though she hadn’t been impersonating a police officer, she hadn’t been far off. She’d never felt so out of control! She laughed without humor in the silence of her car, because that was really saying something. Her life had not been the smoothest over the last few years.
Something oozed from under the bandage around her finger; she dabbed it with a napkin and tossed her trash into the takeout bag before putting the car in drive and heading toward her doctor’s office. There, she sat impatiently in the lobby, reading an old, torn-up magazine for twenty-seven minutes before her name was called.
She stood, and her finger gave a last, painful pulse, as if it knew treatment was near. But her brow furrowed when she saw that the woman waving her over wasn’t wearing cat-and-dog scrubs like the other nurses in the office. Instead, she wore a crisp, black business suit.
“I’m so sorry, hon—I forgot to have you fill out the financial responsibility form, and we’ll need to get payment for your services first.” She handed a clipboard to Janet over the counter.
“You don’t know what they’re going to do yet, though. How can I pay for it?” Janet asked, feeling her face heat up. “I know I don’t have insurance, but I’m here for a cut finger, not chemo!”
The woman adjusted her glasses. “Yes, well, it’s just office policy, hon—nothing to get offended about.”
She looked at the clipboard distastefully before pulling out her wallet. “How much?”
“Well, as you so succinctly said, we don’t know yet. We’ll just go ahead and put a five-hundred-dollar hold on your credit card and then charge you the exact amount when our billing department determines what that is.”
“What? That’s just . . . that’s so . . . it’s just a cut!” Janet said.
The woman merely raised her eyebrows and looked pointedly at the forms.
“I don’t have five hundred dollars!” she snapped. “I’ve got renters who don’t pay and employees who steal, but I don’t have five hundred dollars!”
“Well, I’m sorry to say that’s exactly why we’ve got the policy in place,” the woman said with a smugly superior expression.
“This is unbelievable!” Janet stared at the receptionist and waited for her to come up with another plan. After all, the customer was always right. But the woman only stared back, and finally Janet, her finger now pulsing in time with her heart, shoved her wallet back into her bag and marched out of the office. She was officially pissed off.
She threw herself into her car and slammed the gearshift into drive, her foot heavy on the gas as she navigated the streets of Knoxville. She’d called Cindy Lou in early to sign for deliveries that morning, so she could get her finger looked at. Instead, she’d chased false leads all over town and nearly gotten fleeced by a doctor’s office!
She parked on the street in front of the duplex and snorted in disbelief when she saw her renters—no, her squatters—sitting outside, sunning themselves, as if they didn’t have a care in the world.
She climbed out of the car and called to the woman not holding a baby. “Mel! We need to talk!”
Mel headed toward her slowly, clearly sensing a shift in Janet’s demeanor.
“You guys can’t stay if you can’t pay—it’s that simple. This isn’t a free boardinghouse; it’s not a stop on your European vacation where you can run out before having breakfast without paying.
“This rental home is a business for us, and if you want to stay, you need to pay money to live here. If not, you’ll need to be out by the end of the week.” She resolutely did not look at the baby, suddenly angry that these women were unable to organize their lives.
Mel nodded solemnly, and her lack of reaction somehow stifled Janet’s anger.
“Well. Okay then. I’m glad we’ve got that straightened out.” Instead of going into the house, she got back in the car and headed to the drugstore. They were out of bandages at home, and it was clear that she needed a new treatment plan to fix whatever was happening in her finger. The skin was red, tight, and angry looking, with some pearly-white liquid oozing out one end of the cut.
She marched to the back of the store and picked out the biggest box of bandages on the shelf, then grabbed a bottle of hydrogen peroxide and a bottle of rubbing alcohol. She was going to kill whatever was growing in there, no matter how much it hurt—and it was only going to cost her nine dollars.
She pivoted for the cash register and nearly ran into another customer.
“Janet!” Detective O’Dell also had his arms full. He was balancing an eight-pack of toilet paper, a giant red sports drink, a bag of candy, and a value-size container of Tylenol. “I just came in for the Tylenol. I should know by now to always get a cart,” he said with a self-deprecating grin.
Janet crossed her arms over her chest and leaned toward the detective. “I have a question about the case.”
O’Dell squinted back at her, losing his friendly smile. “So do I.”
“Oh?”
“Where is Elizabeth? We’re starting to wonder if she really exists.” He hitched the package of toilet paper under his arm and looked at her with unabashed curiosity.
She tensed up. “Of course she exists! She’s one of my original bartenders at the Spot.”
“You mean she was.”
“No, she is. I just don’t know where she is right now.”
“Is that common? Has she missed work like this before?”
“Yes.” Janet shifted her load to free up her injured hand. “You don’t often become a bartender because you’ve go
t your shit together, you know?”
“Why do you become a bartender?”
Janet looked up sharply, but for once, O’Dell wasn’t smirking. He seemed genuinely curious.
“It’s what you do when you’ve got great people skills,” she deadpanned. O’Dell didn’t laugh, and Janet added, more seriously, “It’s happened before—with Elizabeth—but it’s unusual. It isn’t like her, and I’m—I’m worried about her.”
“We’re worried, too, Janet. It doesn’t look good. She’s either involved in something or got in the way of something, you know?”
“Well, she’s not involved in anything!” she said with conviction she didn’t feel.
“That’s worrisome, too, isn’t it?” O’Dell replied. “Finch checked her apartment—had the manager let him in yesterday afternoon—and said nothing was out of place, but there was no sign of her.” They stared at each other for a moment before he said, almost reluctantly, “You had a question for me?”
She took a breath and her shoulders dropped. She no longer felt combative—just tired. “Larsa was at the bar yesterday, again. She said her dad had been in an accident recently. Do you know anything about that?”
O’Dell’s eyes widened in surprise. “Well . . . it was a single-car accident maybe a month ago.”
Janet’s fingers twitched. “What happened?” It was a pain in the ass not to have access to the case file.
“An anonymous passerby called 911 about a car off the road and a man bleeding. Dispatchers sent an ambulance, and EMTs treated Ike for a concussion at the scene. When our officer arrived, he was so drunk that he didn’t really remember the details of the crash—his blood alcohol level was over twice the legal limit to drive. He should have been served papers to appear in court a few weeks ago, but there was a filing error, so it just crossed my desk.”
“Any idea who this Good Samaritan was who called 911?”
“We’re working on it.” O’Dell frowned and subconsciously made a humming sound as he blew out a breath. He finally shook his head. “One more for you: I just got a call from Dispatch. They fielded inquiries from both of Ollie’s old roommates. Care to explain what you’re doing?”