by K. T. Tomb
“So,” I said tentatively, “how do we do this?”
“What do you mean?” Mark asked.
“Do we just walk up and knock? Should one of us take the back in case he runs or something?”
Mark smiled at me. “What do you think this is? Law and Order?”
“Well, excuse me,” I said nervously. “I’ve never done this before, so excuse my lack of professional expertise.”
“You’re right,” Mark said. “You don’t really owe me anything. I really appreciate you stickin’ with me this long. You’re a good friend,” he said.
“Okay, no reason to go soft on me. And now is definitely not the time for it,” I sheepishly replied. “Let’s go. I’ll follow, you’re lead.”
Mark walked up the driveway and I followed him. The house was well kept. There was a pleasant flower garden bordering the walkway from the driveway to the front porch. It was a big wrap-around porch—one of those porches that were really popular in the southeastern states. There was even a porch swing. I stood just behind Mark and to his right as he knocked on the door. The big bay window had the curtains drawn, so we couldn’t see inside. We waited about a minute. Mark looked at me, and I could tell that his suspicion was rising with every passing second. He raised his hand to knock again, but before he could, we heard shuffling footsteps.
Instantly, we were both on our guard, listening intently for the sounds to approach the door and whoever was inside to open it. What we did hear threw us for a loop. The garage door began to open and just as soon as the car could fit under it, a shiny, black, souped-up Mustang roared to life and sped out of the garage. He turned left at the end of the driveway and tore down the road away from the house.
We stood there, just looking at the car and then at each other with our mouths hanging open.
“Guess you didn’t see that one coming. Huh, Mr. Law and Order,” Mark teased.
“What the fuck do we do now?” I asked.
“Let’s take a look around the place.”
We circled the house a couple times, checking for prying neighbors who might be home as well as any clue that Adam Church might have lived with a woman; a wife or even a girlfriend, who could possibly end up being our victim.
Nothing.
On our second time around the back of the house, Mark approached the sliding glass door that led out onto the back patio and pushed against it. It slid right open.
“Ta-dah!” he said.
I feigned applause and replied, “Your best work yet.”
He rolled his eyes and led the way inside. Immediately, on a chair at the kitchen table, I noticed a woman’s purse. Bingo!
While I looked around the living space of the roomy ranch-style house, Adam skimmed through the bedrooms and bathrooms.
“There’s definitely a woman living with him,” Mark surmised.
“Yeah,” I confirmed. “But I don’t see any pictures of her or even of them together anywhere. There’s tons of empty space where picture frames used to be though.”
“Stranger than fiction,” Mark responded.
Deciding we were finished there and not wanting to risk getting caught by Adam in his house, we walked back down the hallway. On our way out, I grabbed the purse that I saw when we first came in. Mark and I made our way down the driveway and back to the truck. I got into the driver’s seat and toss the bag into the back.
“Uhm, by the way,” Mark said, “what is that?”
“What is what?” I said back.
“That,” Mark says loudly, pointing into the back seat.
“Oh, yeah,” I said happily. “I swiped it on our way out of the house. Pretty sweet right? Maybe we can finally get an I.D. on this chick, huh?”
“Okay. I like where your head is at, but if he calls the cops, reports his wife missing, and then says that two strange men were at his house, and they find us with her purse, shit is going to hit the fan,” Mark replied. “We need to hide that thing, and we need to get a file going on this as soon as possible,” Mark said urgently. “Now we’re up against the clock. We have to work faster than he does, and we have to work smarter than he does.”
“Okay, fine,” I said.“What’s the next step then?”
“We’re going to go back to my office and we’re going to come up with your backstory and why you’re hiring me. We’ll even have you pay a retaining fee so that if I get audited or if the cops start looking for us, then we’ll at least have this looking like it’s on the straight and narrow. Then we’re going to bring that purse over to Alex. We have to figure out who this girl is and why he decided to kill her to frame us.”
“How much is this going to cost me?” I asked jokingly. Other than that, I liked his plan. It was a very good plan. And it would give us a reason to snoop around Adam Church until we found what we needed to put him away for a really long time. It was too bad that California no longer had the death penalty. That’s what a scumbag like him deserved, after all.
“Mark,” I asked, “before we go through with this and really go after this guy, is there any chance he’s innocent?”
Mark gave me a deadpan stare. The conviction in his eyes was more than enough to dispel whatever lingering doubt had raised its head. Mark and I drove on in relative silence. We were both tired; you could tell that from the way Mark’s head slowly dipped down toward his chest. Right before his chin made contact, he jerked his head up, eyes flashing around wildly, and he intermittently said, “what?” as though he has missed something I had said.
“Mark,” I finally said after the fourth or fifth time it happened, “go to sleep man. Get some shuts while you can. Take a nap. I know where I’m going.”
Mark just grunted, but soon his breathing evened out and I knew he would be out for a while.
Chapter Thirteen
The man sat at his kitchen table again, trying to figure out what to do next. Had he covered all his bases? Done everything that was needed to keep the spotlight off him? He had almost forgotten to file the damn missing persons report, but luckily he remembered in time.
In time… that was a damn joke.
As soon as he had gotten up to grab his keys and head down to the police station, those two assholes had knocked at his fucking door. Not for a minute had he thought that the people he was setting up would have been able to trace things back to him so quickly. He also had not anticipated that it would take the cops as long to get on the case. He knew that one of them was an ex-detective, but since when did they get a pass on murder? Not that he had actually killed anyone, but still. To him, it was the principle of the thing. Why weren’t there cops swarming all over those two guys? He could not understand what was happening. The guy had driven a car around town with a dead body in the front seat. His passenger seat clearly had blood stains all over it. Adam had made sure of it, even so much as moving his wife’s head around to grind blood deeper into the fabric fibers.
His plan had been relatively simple. Kill his wife, plant the body, and plant the gun to make it clear they were co-conspirators and then sit back, and watch the fallout. Where had he gone wrong? Unless if, somehow, they had found a place to store the body. If that were the case, then it would make sense as to why it was taking them so long to be caught. He had not expected them to keep the body in the car, but if they had put it in a basement or buried it somewhere, someone would have noticed the stench by now and called the police. So that meant they had found a better place to keep the body. Someplace colder, more professional. That meant they had more help than he thought they had.
He began weighing options. He could run for it, but if he did that, he would never get the life insurance payout, he would never get to see his plan for revenge all the way through, and his wife would be left with whomever they left her with, and eventually given a small, low-cost funeral. More than likely, she’d be cremated. It wasn’t something they ever spoke about, but it was something he felt he should have a say in. He could call the cops, try to give them enough information to lead
them to his targets, but that could get complicated fast. If he gave the police too much information, they would be suspicious. If he gave them too little, eventually it would just look like a missing person’s case and the case would never be solved. He could push back. He could do everything in his power to cover up his trail. Go back through what he had already done, look for any small detail he had forgotten about and clean it up. Then he could go after the other people helping them—there was clearly at least a third, maybe a fourth, maybe a few others besides helping them. If he could eliminate their help, perhaps it would start drawing attention and it would look like they were the ones tying up loose ends.
He thought about it for a moment. Then he made a decision. He would backtrack everything he did and make sure that there was not a single, minuscule piece of information that could implicate him. It had worked before; it worked the first time. He would make this situation work to his advantage. They could not possibly already know what he had done, so he had time. He would have to plan with zealous care and painstakingly retrace every step, every move he’d made over the last few days.
As he planned, he began to forget his remorse. He did not realize it, but the distraction of having something to do; another goal to pursue took his mind off of what he had done. The first place he would start, he decided, would be at work. He would go in tomorrow and explain his two-day absence. He would make up a plausible story and he would go from there, assuring his coworkers that everything was fine with him, and that he had just been feeling under the weather for a few days, but that he was back to normal. It would also give him an opportunity to see if his sneaking suspicion that his targets had gotten his information from his place of work. Then he would be able to tie up whatever loose ends there were.
Chapter Fourteen
I sat down in the chair behind Mark’s desk as his office manager, Sammy, put on a pot of coffee.
The fact that Mark, as a private investigator and a self-employed private business owner was able to afford an office manager spoke volumes about his ability and his success. Mark did a whole host of things—from private investigations for people in Beverly Hills to multi-billion dollar companies out of Silicon Valley to heading up security teams for visiting dignitaries and athletes. He had built a real reputation for himself. Pictures of Mark with athletes like Vernon Davis from the San Francisco Forty-Niners and senators were all over the office walls.
He was a smart business owner too—he never took on more than he could handle. All of his new clients were referrals only. That was something we had in common. It was probably one of the things we had most in common, other than being friends for twenty years. Knowing how good Mark was at what he does, it’s no wonder that he wanted to handle this on his own. If I wasn’t so angry at what this guy was trying to pull on us, I would still be pushing to go to the police with all of this.
Mark’s nap left him well-rested. I, on the other hand, was starting to feel the lack of sleep. The sun coming through the windows was warm, and the office AC was on. It was the perfect temperature, a little chilly that was negated by the warmth of the magnified sun rays that came in through the glass windows. It made it difficult for me to keep my eyes open. Sammy came over with a steaming mug of black coffee. Mark only served the best—these were beans from somewhere on the Mediterranean coast. I could smell hints of chocolate and nuts. In short, the coffee smelled like a combination of life and heaven. I couldn’t wait to start drinking it. I knew better though—the last thing I wanted was a burned tongue.
“Thanks, Sammy,” I said, marveling at her attire. She was more than a snappy dresser. She was an exquisite specimen of the female race. Proportionate in all the right ways, she was never afraid to flaunt what she had. She made a marvelous first impression on Mark’s male clients. Her personality was humble and warm, and though her looks can be intimidating to everyone, her personality quickly put jealous wives and girlfriends at ease. She was easy to trust and easier to look at. I loved that she always pushed the boundaries of appropriate when it came to the cut of her shirt. I knew she would never go for me—I’m sure Mark told her what I did for a living—but that never stopped her from showing off for me. In fact, it probably made her show off more. The ultimate triple threat—brains, looks and personality. And she knew it, too.
“No problem, Jupe,” she said. “Just take care of the bossman here okay? Sometimes I worry he’s gonna work himself six feet into the ground.”
“You and me both,” I replied with a wink. I’ll keep an eye on him. At least, once I wake up.”
“You boys been burning both ends of the candle again?” she asked.
“Yeah,” Mark replied. “And not in a fun way.”
“Well, if you guys need any help, you just let me know,” she replied. “I’ll be at the front desk working up that report on your case with the…” and she stopped when Mark gave her a look. “The last case you took,” she finished, catching the hint. She sashayed seductively away, the perfect sway of her hips drawing the eyes to the small of her back and down.
“Quit drooling,” Mark said. “You’re staining my desk.”
“Yeah,” I sheepishly said.
“I would think that with all the tail you get, and after she’s been here all these years, that you would be somewhat immune.”
“If I ever become immune to that,” I said, “just go ahead a put a bullet in me right there. Don’t even ask.”
“Careful what you wish for,” Mark grumbled. “Here I was last week thinking that I wanted a real case, something that would challenge me. Look where we are now.”
“Well, I guess you can’t win ‘em all,” I chortled. “What is that, by the way?”
“What is what?” he asked, a defensive note creeping into his voice.
“That look you gave her. That ‘shut up in front of Jupe’ look when she was talking about your last case. You’ve never come out and told me about stuff you’re working on—believe me when I say I understand the need for discretion—but I mean, you’ve never exactly hidden stuff from me either. What gives?”
“Jupe,” Mark said, “there are a lot of people in this town. There are a lot of married people in this town. A lot of them have prenups and a lot of them are paranoid about who their significant others spend time with. Catch my drift?”
“Wait up a second,” I indignantly replied. “Are you trying to tell me that you’re on a case for one of my clients? Or that you were?”
“No,” Mark replied evasively. “Not exactly.”
“What does that mean?” I asked, getting defensive. I can tell that the lack of sleep was getting to me. I knew Mark would never sell me out, not like that and not without a heads-up first.
“Look,” he explained, “I’ve been doing this a while. I know that when women cheat, typically their first time is not with… an expert. But after that first time, they go looking for something more… professional. You happen to be a professional, and you’re good at what you do. I would never come after you. But I will say that if I have a client who has a wife in that situation, I do my best to put an end to it before that wife can seek… professional help.”
“Well, thanks a lot buddy.” I ended that conversation right there. “We need to get working on this Adam character. Where do we start?”
Mark and I talked at length about what type of case I should come to him with. We obviously couldn’t go with something like a girlfriend or a wife messing around. But we also didn’t know much about the girl whose murder we were working, either. I couldn’t start with finding a gun in the bed of my pickup either because we knew whose gun I had found and that would just circle the heat back on Mark. We tossed around the idea of finding blood splatters underneath my truck and up the side of the bed because that would be true; but again, it could lead back to Mark since the gun used was his. We sat in silence for about ten minutes. I was sipping my coffee when Mark said, “What if we start with the purse?”
“What do you mean?” I asked, waki
ng up a bit at this suggestion.
“You come to me with the purse. You say you saw it on the ground walking up to your truck after you returned the rental car.”
“Okay, and then what?” I liked this train of thought. The coffee was helping a bit, but my brain was going into that fuzzy, disjointed pattern of thinking that short nights of sleep and a long couple of days would do to a brain.
“I don’t know,” Mark dumbly stated. “It is just a thought.”
“It’s a good thought,” I reassured him. “I’m just a bit tired.”
“What if you found the purse walking to your truck and you open it up. You try to deliver it to the address on the ID but when you went to the house, no one was there. You knocked, and got no answer, but you could hear someone moving around inside. You didn’t want to leave the purse at the door because then anyone could take it. That’s when you noticed there was some blood on one of the corners. So you took it to your good friend, the private investigator, because you got a suspicion that something bad happened to the owner?”
Mark and I turned and stared dumbfounded at Sammy. Like I said, the triple threat.
“How long have you been listening?” Mark asked her.
“I been standing here, oh, a solid ten minutes,” she replied. “I was coming to see if either of you needed a warmer. I heard you boys talking, figured I’d let you work it out. Since you didn’t I thought I’d offer a solution of my own.”
Mark smiled and looked at me, then took his gun out of his holster and put it on the desk.