Bombshell (Devlin Haskell 4)

by Faricy, Mike

  “He didn’t feel the police could give adequate protection so he thought he better go right to the top, meaning you. That right?”

  “More like he had you as his point of contact with the department, Manning. I’m sure after your standard confidence—building speech regarding budget cuts he figured even I didn’t sound half bad.”

  “What was it like doing the security for that English team? Did I hear right, you were in their locker room?” Franco playing good cop.

  “Yeah, you know, it was just a job, comes with the territory, twenty or so gorgeous naked women all of them trying to get my attention, it was just an average day’s work.”

  Manning flushed close to purple.

  “That why you attacked the Bard woman? What is she about five-one, hundred pounds?”

  “I didn’t attack anyone.”

  “We’ve sworn statements.”

  “Actually no you don’t, Detective. I believe all, but one of those statements have been withdrawn. The one remaining statement is from Miss Bard herself, hardly credible in the face of sixteen statements being withdrawn,” Louie said.

  “You scare off all those little English girls, Haskell?”

  “Don’t answer that, Dev,” Louie said. “I wonder if I might have a moment with my client, Detective?”

  Manning and Franco nodded almost in unison. Franco got up from his chair.

  “Ten minutes enough time?” Manning asked, suddenly the voice of reason.

  “Ten minutes will be perfect,” Louie said, then watched the two of them depart the interview room.

  Louie turned to me, then moved his eyes to indicate the mirrored wall, reminding me we were not entirely alone.

  After ten or twenty thousand hours of questioning I felt completely drained. I was definitely in need of a serious shower. Louie on the other hand had arrived in that state, as a matter of fact, but right now he seemed to look better than me, a lot better. I couldn’t recall what, exactly, we had been discussing and suddenly came back to reality.

  “…seems to be finally going our way,” Louie said.

  “Hunh? Going our way, you’re delusional, you gotta be kidding?”

  “In my opinion, you’ve been set up. God knows why.”

  There was a knock on the door, Manning poked his head in.

  “Ready to continue? Need a coffee or anything?” again sounding the voice of reason.

  Louie waved him in, “Let’s just get this finished up as quickly as possible.”

  Manning went over the same ground all over again, and again, and again.

  Finally I couldn’t stand any more.

  “You know what you should do Manning, check my place out for DNA related to the fingers that were mailed to those other cities. I’d haul that refrigerator of mine from my garage into your lab, see if you can find anything. Maybe check the post mark on those envelopes. Run the things for a DNA comparison with me. Something’s bound to come together for you guys.”

  “We’re already doing that,” he smiled.

  “You’re catching on,” I said.

  “Detective, is there any new ground you wanted to cover?” Louie asked. “Because if there isn’t, I really think Mister Haskell has been more than cooperative, wouldn’t you agree?”

  “I agree we’ve most likely covered enough ground for today, Mister Laufen.” Manning said to Louie, but he continued to stare at me.

  “Then I take it you are about to charge Mister Haskell? Or are we’re free to go?” Louie asked.

  Charge me? I looked at Louie, wide-eyed.

  “For the time being, you are free to go,” Manning said.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  The crime scene tape was still keeping me out of my place. I didn’t think I possessed the stamina to spend a second night at Heidi’s. I was sitting in my car wondering who I could possibly call and scam an overnight from when my cell phone rang.

  “Haskell Investigations.”

  “Hello Dev, it’s Carol,” she said, sounding sultry.

  Well, surprise, surprise if it wasn’t little Miss Pepe le Pew.

  “Hi Carol, nice to hear from you, wow, I’m little surprised.”

  “Surprised?”

  “Yeah, the last time we spoke, yesterday I think, you told me never to call you again. It’s really nice to hear your voice. How have you been?” I figured I’d better soft peddle it since I needed a place to stay. Carol and her implanted attributes would be just the thing the doctor ordered.

  “Dev, you’re so sweet, things have been positively wonderful. I can’t thank you enough for introducing Nicholas to me.”

  “Introducing Nicholas? Carol, I didn’t introduce you two, we were out on a date, you and me. I was attempting to ply you with Cosmopolitans if you’ll recall. Then that Nicholas guy showed up and took my stool and the next thing I know you’re speaking French.”

  “Oh, don’t be silly. It’s just that he is so different, so interesting, so, so, romantic. He’s, oh I don’t know, so really different than you. I mean in a good way, I guess,” she added.

  That didn’t really help me.

  “And, he’s been such a little gentleman.”

  I didn’t want to touch the ‘little’ line. I was hoping maybe Pepe le Pew was out of town and Carol was fishing for a little ungentlemanly behavior on my part.

  “What can I do for you? Maybe we should get to…”

  “Just a tiny favor I’d like to ask.”

  I quickly ran the list of her particular perversions through my mind.

  “How can I help?” I said, then checked my face in the rear view mirror.

  “I left a couple of Leonard Cohen CD’s at your place. Any chance you could run them over, tonight? Nicholas will be here sometime after …”

  I decided it wouldn’t be the best idea to tell her I’d tossed them both in the trash. You’d slit your wrists before you finished listening to one CD from that guy, let alone both of them, totally depressing.

  “… to prepare a special night.”

  “I’d love to get them to you Carol, but I can’t.”

  “Can’t or won’t,” she shot back, her charming attitude suddenly gone.

  “Look, I’d like nothing better than to help with your love life, but I can’t get them tonight.”

  “Out with some bar floozy?”

  “I only wish. No, I…”

  She hung up, so much for Carol and Pepe le Pew.

  Against my better judgment I found myself on the front porch ringing Louie’s doorbell less than an hour later. It was a muggy, dreadfully still evening and the two front windows at Louie’s house were open with large fans roaring and clattering. The storm door stood open in a failed attempt to collect whatever breeze there wasn’t. I rang the front doorbell again, heard the thing chime from somewhere inside. Further back in the house I could hear a woman’s voice. She sounded like she was pleading. Whoever it was, she was in trouble.

  “Hello,” I called, then heard a shriek. I pulled on the screen door, but it was hooked. I pulled hard, wrenched the thing open and tore a part of the door as I did, splitting the wood where the hook had been a moment before. I followed the woman’s shrieks down the hall. Louie was in his den, he sat snoring in his ratty recliner, close to a dozen beer bottles scattered around him on the floor. He had passed out in front of his flat screen. Two large women screamed as they tested the support system on a tandem bicycle that careened down a steep hill, based on their size the thing had to have had solid rubber tires.

  I walked into the kitchen and helped myself to a cold bottle of Summit from his fridge. Then returned to Louie’s den, lifted the remote from the arm of his recliner, settled into an equally ratty couch and started flicking through channels and landed on a movie I’d only seen three or four times.

  Louie woke me sometime after midnight.

  “Want another beer?” he asked, holding a cold bottle out in my general direction.

  “Thanks.”

  “No woman stupid
enough to put up with you tonight?” he asked, and then followed up by chugging almost a third of his beer.

  I shook my head.

  “Any idea who put that thing in your garage?”

  “Someone who doesn’t know me very well. Just about everyone knew that little fridge was dead. And if they didn’t, once they opened it up they should have gotten the hint.”

  “Hint?” he asked, then chugged another third.

  “You kidding? I had boxes of nails and screws in there, what kind of idiot sees that sort of stuff in a refrigerator and tosses a finger in?”

  “I don’t know, some guy in a hurry, worried about getting caught sneaking in or rushing out. Someone who doesn’t really care, someone who wants to set you up, see you get jacked around and nailed.”

  “The guy sees the fridge, first of all he has to move a bunch of shit just to get to the thing. He opens it up, the light doesn’t go on, it’s not cold, there’s boxes of hardware in there, a couple of paint cans, seems like a pretty weak set up to me.”

  “Maybe,” Louie drained his bottle and didn’t ask if I wanted another. He just walked back into the kitchen and reappeared thirty seconds later with two more beers, he handed one to me. I set it down on the floor.

  “Plus, are you telling me the guy who was stalking Harlotte Davidson all this time around the country was some moron from Saint Paul?” I asked.

  “That second part, being a moron, that seems pretty plausible.”

  “Yeah, that’s for sure. But hell, I didn’t even know these English Roller Derby gals existed until Justine put me in touch with them.”

  “Well there you go, obviously if the great Dev Haskell didn’t know anything about their fund raising tour across the United States, no one else did, either. It just couldn’t be news, right?”

  I took his point, shrugged my shoulders.

  Louie shook his head.

  “It’s someone connected to the Hasting Hustler’s in some way. Some creep has the hots for that Harlotte chick or she gave some idiot the finger and now he’s following her around. What do they call it when all those creeps follow Jodie Foster around? It’s probably something like that.”

  “What do they call it? Nuts, they’re all whack jobs. I’m still not sure that explains the finger?”

  “The one in your garage?”

  I nodded and took a sip.

  “I honestly think it’s some sort of a diversion.”

  “Gee really? You mean some douche bag didn’t just walk around and pick up a middle finger lying on the sidewalk? Then decided to hide the thing in my garage?”

  “Yeah, I know it didn’t just occur, happen. The thing is obviously from the guy who’s really been doing this shit otherwise it makes absolutely no sense at all...”

  “Makes no sense, you mean unlike everything else so far?” I said.

  “I’m only half joking here when I say at no surprise you must have pissed someone off. You might want to think about who it could be.”

  “That list is long,” I said, then drained my bottle of beer and grabbed the fresh one off the floor.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  I was finally allowed back into my house late the next day. Manning had been right, they did take the non-working refrigerator from the garage. They also took the working refrigerator from my kitchen, along with all my knives, my tool box, a table saw, a skill saw and strangely, a set of utensils for eating lobster that I’d gotten as a Christmas gift one year and never used, the things were still in the original box.

  All the stuff that had been kept in my refrigerator; butter, oranges, left over pizza, cranberry juice, doggy bags from restaurants, ice cube trays, was all scattered across my kitchen counter. The beer was missing. Nothing was left out that twenty-four hours in humid weather wouldn’t help make worse. It was the second time that week I’d cleaned up a gallon of melted ice cream. I bagged everything and threw it all in the trash, opened the windows to air things out.

  Louie phoned later that evening, I could hear glasses clinking and the low hum of background conversation.

  “How you holding up?” he asked.

  “I’ve been worse, but it’s been a while.”

  “They grab that refrigerator?”

  “The one in the garage? Yeah. They also took the one in my kitchen, virtually all my tools, my table saw, all my knives, God knows what else.”

  “Well I know it’s a pain, but it’s not like there’s anything to find, right?”

  “That’s what you said before and then they found that finger in my garage. I don’t know, I just want all this over and done with, it sucks big time.”

  “Mmm-mmm,” Louie said after swallowing, “Yeah not fun. For what it’s worth I got a call from a source over at BCA.”

  “The crime analysis folks, what’d they have to say?”

  “About all they could confirm was they got a finger.”

  “I could have told them that.”

  “Nothing from any data base, no match. He said it had been frozen, before, the finger that is.”

  “Just like King’s,” I said absently.

  “What?”

  “The guy I spoke with in Denver, King Quinn, Kingston, actually. He said they determined the same thing, the finger out there had been frozen. That was the one taped to the door of the bus. They couldn’t link it to anything in their data base, the CODIS data base. Might be worth a heads up to your source, see if they want to contact King, maybe together they can come up with anything.”

  “Give me his name again,” Louie said, “I’m writing it down on a bar napkin. Got a phone number?”

  Once we were finished and I’d hung up Louie’s call got me thinking, I called Andy Lindbergh.

  “Hi Andy, Dev Haskell, sorry to bother you at home.”

  “No problem, Dev, but if you’re calling for bail money the answers no,” he half joked.

  “No, they just held me for questioning, but I’m out now, not fun, let me tell you.”

  Dead silence on the other end.

  “Andy?”

  “You serious?”

  “Yeah, not to worry, say let me ask you something. You were telling me the other day about the crematorium, maybe a place to, as you said, harvest.”

  “You’re back on the fingers, right?”

  “Yeah. Let me ask you a question, we’ve gotten results back on two fingers. I’m guessing here, but what are the chances of two random fingers not matching DNA anywhere in our data bases?”

  “From two different individuals?”

  “Most likely,” I said.

  “Sort of eliminates the usual suspects.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning the usual suspects, criminals, someone who has been convicted of a felony, sex offenders. You mentioned a bunch of cities, right?”

  “Yeah four, plus here, so that’s actually five, now.”

  “Okay, the set up varies from state to state, but in general it’s criminals, your violent offenders, guys guilty of sex crimes. I think in a couple of states they may have extended it to guys who have been charged, but not convicted. Anyway, individuals in that area of the criminal justice system. Based on what you’ve told me one would think it’s that sort of individual involved. But, the results, at least initially don’t seem to confirm your supposition.”

  “Yeah, all CODIS, I get that part. Okay, despite your use of big college words even I get it. What about other countries?”

  “A lot of them have a similar system.”

  “What about England?”

  “The UK? Yeah they have a database, actually, I think their system predates ours and is a little more thorough. I suppose you could theoretically check their system or Interpol or something like that, nab some major international villain. But you’d have to be dealing with a major crime, murders, plural. Multiple tons of drugs. I mean this deal is weird, the women are good looking, but it’s not even a blip on the screen of international law enforcement.”

  I spent
the rest of the night online, looking at illicit dating sites.

  Chapter Thirty

  I checked my bedroom clock as I reached for my cell phone, seven-ten in glowing green numbers.

  “Hask,” I had to clear my throat, “Haskell Investigations.”

  “Gee, sorry, hope I’m not disturbing that much needed beauty sleep of yours,” the voice sounded way too cheery and not at all sorry, I heard the gum cracking.

  “Detective Manning?”

  “I suppose you’re already at your desk.”

  I laid back, let out a long sigh, this couldn’t possibly go my way.

  “What can I do for you, Detective?”

  “Wonder if we might chat, I…”

  “Let me get in touch with my attorney.”

  “I got a better idea, how about I send a car around, say fifteen minutes?”

  “Are you going to arrest me, again?”

  “No, actually Haskell, much as that would make my day, the answer is no, you will not be put under arrest. In fact, we’ll be chatting in my office.”

  “Chatting?”

  “Just a few informal questions.”

  “In your office?”

  “Yes, how do you take your coffee.”

  “Actually, I’m into double Latte’s now-a-days,” I said, hoping to be difficult.

  “I’ll have a driver there for you in fifteen minutes.”

  I stumbled downstairs to the kitchen, put some coffee on, then went back up to shower. I had just stepped out of the shower and was toweling off when my doorbell rang. I wrapped the towel around my waist and went downstairs to open the door figuring Manning had probably sent some more weightlifters bent on intimidation and they’d break the door in just for practice.

  The bell rang a second time just as I got to the entryway. I saw the back of a blue uniform shirt through the window and opened the door. The officer turned to face me just as I opened door.

  “You didn’t have do that for me,” she smiled, nodding at the towel wrapped around my waist.

  I missed a couple of beats as I stared into the dark brown eyes and gorgeous face of an Asian female officer. Her eyes held a definite sparkle. I glanced down from her face and stared at the embroidered in gold thread over her breast pocket, Trang, L.