Bombshell (Devlin Haskell 4)

by Faricy, Mike

  “Be fun to watch,” The EMT smiled, “but if this is all we better get going, maybe take some extra strength Tylenol for a couple of days to make you a little more comfortable.”

  “Thanks, no offense, but I hope I don’t see you around, Doc.”

  He laughed, started placing things back into the medical bag. He tossed the bag on the stretcher and while his partner wheeled it toward the door he approached the group. Some low key murmurs followed, nodding, the occasional excitable outburst from Louie as the EMT continued to speak in low tones and then he nodded and left, giving me a wink on the way out.

  Louie strolled over, opened his briefcase, spoke to me under his breath.

  “Turn around and face me.”

  “What?”

  “Turn toward me, I need a picture,” he said, pulling a digital camera out of his briefcase.

  I turned sideways in my chair. Louie quickly shifted a couple steps to the side. He was going to photograph me with Manning and Elkers in the background, unfortunately Aaron would be in the photo, too.

  “Look toward the mirrors,” he whispered. The flash went off before I heard the camera click.

  “What the, oh shit,” Elkers said.

  Flash. Flash.

  Elkers stormed past, red faced.

  “Nice chatting with you, Captain,” I said as he tore open the door and fled the room.

  Louie moved around me taking more photos. Talking to Manning, as the camera flashed.

  “We’ll need a driver, my client, Mister Haskell will not be remaining in custody. Under the circumstances, I just don’t think your department is up to the task.”

  Flash.

  Manning looked like he was going to kill, but I’m not sure he was thinking of Louie or me as his intended targets.

  Flash.

  “Lift the shirt up Dev, let’s see those ribs.”

  I pulled my shirt up, slowly, maybe a little too dramatically.

  “Oh my God,” Louie said.

  Flash.

  “Christ, let me get some things arranged for you. You want anything?” Manning asked, he was standing with the door open, still red faced, but at least not heading toward purple any longer.

  Flash.

  “No, I think you’ve all done more than enough, already,” Louie said then took a couple more shots of the bruise on my ribs.

  Manning nodded and left. Aaron walked over, waited while Louie took a few more shots of my face from different angles.

  “I don’t know what it is with you people,” Louie said.

  “Hey, Louie, relax, he’s a pal. And stop flashing that damn camera, you’re driving me nuts,” I said.

  “Dev, what the hell happened, you were supposed to come nicely,” Aaron said. “You hit on one of the arresting officers’ wives in the recent past?”

  “If I did, she most likely turned me down.”

  “So what happened?”

  “I don’t know, these SWAT guys just…”

  “SWAT? They sent the SWAT team out there?”

  “Yeah. I looked out the window, saw a couple of black and whites on the street, a television news van. I knew why they were there so I went upstairs to get a clean shirt, pee, the next thing I know they kicked in my front door.”

  “What?”

  “Yeah, I was ready to let them in, I was coming down the stairs to open the door and ask ‘em if they wanted something to drink.”

  “Did they pound on the door or anything when you were upstairs?”

  “No nothing, believe me, I thought it was going to be a nice guy sort of deal. Next thing I know the door gets kicked open, and I’m looking down the barrel of a couple of AK’s. Some guy grabs me and throws me over the banister, they weren’t kidding around.”

  “Christ, that’s Elkers, he must have lined that up, wanted to go for the action shot,” Aaron said.

  “Hey, you got an action shot, all right. We’ll subpoena the news tapes,” Louie said, then smiled coldly at Aaron.

  “Dev, I’m truly sorry, it wasn’t supposed to go down like this,” Aaron said.

  “You realize, Lieutenant, that…”

  “Give it a rest, Louie,” I said. “Where do we go from here?”

  “Well, here’s the deal, obviously this thing has turned into a cluster fuck. That said, there’s no doubt it will be running on the news tonight. The arrest of a stalker and killer,” he turned to look at Louie. “If you’re going to pursue the police brutality angle, and of course you’ve got your signed agreement, it would seem to me running on tonight’s news could only help your case,” Aaron said.

  I nodded, it made sense.

  “Based on what you tell me, I agree with your attorney. You shouldn’t stay in protective or segregated custody here. You can however, get us to pick up the tab on a fairly luxurious stay at some hotel. Eat some good meals for a change, take a few days off, rest up. Hopefully, someone will surface once they believe we’ve got you locked up and the coast is clear,” Aaron said.

  “And if they don’t surface?” Louie asked.

  “Sue our ass one way or the other, under the circumstances you hold all the cards. Like I said before, after today’s incident, continued cooperation on your part would only seem to strengthen your chances with any lawsuit you decide to bring down the road.”

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  We were seated at a large polished table in my hotel suite. The curtains were drawn back so we had a view of the boat traffic on the Mississippi and the sun setting off to the west. The sunset was a gorgeous orange and reflected down the length of the river. A large white boat with a red paddlewheel had just begun heading upriver on its evening excursion.

  I felt a lot better after the massage, a hot soak in the tub and an hour nap. I sipped some more wine, then cut another piece from the perfectly grilled steak on my plate. I adjusted the thick, white terrycloth robe and got just a little more comfortable. Then clicked the remote to turn up the music and dim the lights over the table ever so slightly.

  “More wine, my darling,” I asked.

  “No, I better watch it, I gotta drive home,” Louie said, then burped some steak and baked potato.

  “Since when did you get so responsible? Come on.”

  “No, I better not, tell you what, you got a cold Summit or a Leinenkugel behind the bar there, I’ll take it.”

  “Help yourself, I’m the patient, remember? I’m supposed to take it easy.”

  “Man, Dev, you’re lucky those guys didn’t do some serious damage.”

  “They kicked in the door, splintered my damn door frame all to hell, that’s enough damage for me.”

  “You know what I mean,” Louie said. “Good thing you bounce well. A classic case of the right hand not knowing what the left is doing.”

  “No Louie, classic case of someone going in to grab headlines, steal all the credit and doesn’t communicate with the guys in the trenches doing the heavy lifting. Elkers was floating around knowing the press had been alerted. He moved things up a notch and got the SWAT team to barge in, instead of some baby faced rookie knocking on my door asking politely if I could accompany him downtown.”

  “But still, they should have taken it easy, no need for that rough shit,” Louie said. He was down on his knees behind the marble topped bar, rummaging around in the fridge. “Man, this place is well stocked,” he said standing up, he held a green bottle of some kind of German beer, opened it and poured it into a chilled glass.

  “The SWAT guys might have been jerks, but they didn’t know it was all prearranged. Far as they knew I was a baddy, murdered a woman, they bagged my pistols. I don’t like it, but you can’t really blame them. I can, however, blame Elkers.”

  “Yeah, and there he was tonight on the news, standing in front of your place taking questions from those reporters when they hauled you out, cuffed, beautiful, man. And then all those reporters while you’re sitting in the back of the squad car with the shit kicked out of you.” Louie waddled back to join me at the d
ining room table. “It’s like your buddy Aaron said, the news footage can only help us.”

  “Now if they can just get the guy who did this. Think Manning will take much flak on this?”

  “Manning? What do you care?”

  “I sort of like the guy. He can be a pain in the ass, but he’s a straight shooter, honest.”

  “No, I don’t think he’ll get much heat,” Louie gulped down a healthy amount of beer. “He’ll get some, but with all the news footage, it’s too high profile. But I’ll tell ya, I wouldn’t want to be Elkers tonight.”

  “What do you think will happen?”

  “To Elkers?”

  I nodded.

  “He’s history. It might be the resignation for the good of the department sort of deal or just a quiet retirement six moths down the road, but either way I’d guess he’s gone. Too bad, it’s a tough way to go, but no one to blame but his own ego,” Louie said then gulped more beer.

  “I just want them to get the guy who killed Fiona Simmons.”

  “Yeah,” Louie said, he was up and making his way behind the bar, again. “We need to talk about what you want by way of damages. This all expense paid visit to the hotel is nice, but you got all the cards my friend with a lot more available.”

  “Louie, I got kicked around a little, I’m not wild about it, but in a day or two I should be pretty much back to normal.”

  “Yeah, whatever normal is in your case.” He was standing behind the marble topped bar, watching the frost melt off the exterior of the fresh glass as he poured another beer.

  “Think about this,” he said. “You’ve got the physical beating, plus the damage to your reputation, reputational damage to your business, physical damage to your home, and then there are all the psychological issues…”

  “Psychological issues?”

  “Believe me, Dev, you got ‘em,” he said then drained a third of his glass and looked around. “Hey, this joint got an extra bed?”

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  “Detective Manning,” I said.

  “Who’s calling?” I had the feeling the guy on the other end of the phone was doing a half dozen other things while talking to me. I could hear the general hum of conversations in the background.

  “Devlin Haskell,” I said, not really sure I should be giving him my name.

  “Just a moment, sir.” He had sort of snapped to, or was I just imagining? Didn’t matter, Manning was always good for a ten minute wait before he bothered to pick up the phone.

  I’d just finished the order of Eggs Benedict plus the side plate of smoked salmon and caviar that room service had delivered. I poured another cup of coffee and glanced at my watch, nine-fifty in the morning. Louie had left an hour earlier. I had another massage and a spa treatment scheduled for eleven. That left enough time for at least two more of those really tasty blueberry muffins.

  “This is Detective Manning.”

  I checked my watch, it was still nine-fifty.

  “Detective Manning, Dev Haskell, didn’t expect you to pick up so fast.”

  “How’s it going?” he asked, actually sounding genuine.

  “I’ve got two of the most gorgeous black eyes you’ve ever seen.”

  “How you feeling?” he said, quickly moving on from my black eyes.

  “I’ll live. Anything turn up yet?”

  “You mean like a suspect with a note pinned to his coat that says I’m guilty?”

  “Could it be that easy,” I asked.

  “No, we’re sort of in the wait-and—see mode over here, shining a little light under the occasional rock.”

  Not the answer I was hoping for.

  “Anything I can do to help?” I asked.

  “Yeah, continue to keep a low profile, rest up, take it easy in that hotel suite. How’s the food?”

  We chatted on for a minute or two about my Eggs Benedict and then absolutely nothing important. I had the feeling the guy was really trying, but then another look in the bathroom mirror at my two black eyes, my nose and banged up face made me think he should.

  It was during my late morning massage that I got to thinking about what I could do to help catch Fiona’s murderer. The guy obviously was aware of the Hastings Hustlers schedule, the various cities where they were appearing. That narrowed the field down to anyone in the world with Internet access.

  I drifted back to the two cops who transported me yesterday. They tried the anti-woman angle, the religious angle, the stalker angle was it one of those? The guy had clearly been stalking Fiona, but why? A perceived slight? Some flake that followed her over here from England? Some sort of Jodie Foster deal?

  The only cameras at the hotel where Fiona was murdered were the ones carried by the guests. Late night hotel security consisted of a fifty—something woman with a bourbon buzz at the front desk and the pool maintenance guy. Fiona had been found in her room with her throat slit. The stalker seemed to know what hotels the team was going to be staying in. In fact, in the case of Chicago and St. Paul, he knew the actual room she was in. Twice in St. Paul, now that I thought about it, once to fire bomb her and then, well, the second incident, her murder.

  I felt the masseuse kneading my back. He moved cautiously around the ribs on my right side and seemed to know what he was doing. I felt completely relaxed. He had just massaged some sort of hot fragrant oil into my back and was in the process of laying smooth, hot stones along my spine and shoulders. I had to admit, this was the life, things were really going well if you glossed over my beating. I figured I could milk this luxury hotel stay for at least a good week. But there was a dark cloud, if my past history served as any sort of lesson, this was exactly the time when I usually screwed things up.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  No one was around when the taxi dropped me off down the block behind my parked car. I could see a white carpenter’s van parked in my driveway, saw horses supporting a number of different boards. Tools were set up across my front lawn and there was a guy hammering around my front door frame. I decided nothing positive could come from poking my nose in, plus I wasn’t supposed to be here, so I climbed in my car and drove off. No point in alerting Manning that I had wandered off the luxury reservation.

  I was thinking about the fingers as I drove, they’d been frozen, which made sense, sort of. Did some guy have a bucket of them in a freezer and he grabbed one whenever needed, a little different version of giving someone the finger? That seemed to make a lot more sense than some guy cutting off a fresh finger every time the Hastings Hustlers appeared in a new town. But then why would he leave one of the things in my garage?

  I ended up in the library, doing what I should have done a long time ago. I Googled the Hastings Hustlers. From all the searching I did, which was only an hour on the library computer before my time was up, I couldn’t find any mention of fingers sent to anyone on the team. For that matter, I couldn’t find mention of fingers sent to anyone, anywhere, until the Hustlers arrived in the United States.

  There were, however, three separate incidents back in the UK of property damage to some of the Hustler’s cars while the team practiced at night. One was spray painted, another had a windshield broken and a third had all four tires slit. All this occurred in the two months before they flew over for their fundraising tour.

  I drove back to the hotel to soak in the Jacuzzi and gave Manning a call. The Jacuzzi was an octagonal affair that would easily fit a half dozen people. It sat in a mirrored room off the bathroom so no matter which direction I looked I could see myself through the steamed up mirrors. The phone was mounted on the wall behind me and I had the Jacuzzi jets rumbling, causing the bubble bath to form a mountain of suds.

  “Who’s calling?” I thought it was the same guy who’d answered the phone earlier in the morning, but I couldn’t be sure. It still sounded like he was doing a number of different things while he answered my call.

  “Dev Haskell.” I expected to get a sense of him straightening up when he heard my name.
>
  “Let me see if I can find him,” he said, then dropped the receiver on the desk or maybe the floor. The bang caused me to jump. Things must have been getting back to normal because Manning didn’t pick up for a good five minutes, I almost dosed off.

  “Detective Manning.”

  “Dev Haskell,” I said, then waited, a very long moment before I followed with,” I was doing some checking, on the computer.”

  “And?” Manning said. I had the feeling he may have counted to ten before speaking.

  “And, I found at least three incidents of damage to vehicles belonging to members of the Hustlers team back in the UK. Before they came to the states.”

  “Okay,” Manning said, then sounded like he was whispering to someone else.

  I waited for a further response, but one didn’t seem to be coming.

  “Well, I thought it might be of interest. Someone or some group, vandalizing their vehicles before they came over to the US, the first incident was almost two months before they arrived here.

  “Yeah, that was the spray paint, right?”

  “Yeah, and then the windshield about three weeks… Oh, so you’re aware of all this?”

  “Yeah, Sherlock, the last incident, someone slit her tires, all four of them. Maybe about a week before they came over.”

  “Her tires?”

  “What?”

  “You said her tires, all three of these incidents targeted Fiona’s car.”

  “Yeah, of course it’s hard to miss a red Mercedes S400, but you didn’t hear that from me. And why aren’t you busy watching soft porn in your penthouse suite or lurking around the hotel lobby annoying female guests instead of wasting my time with yesterdays news? Where the hell are you, anyway?”

  “I’m at the hotel.”

  “Sounds like you’re riding in the back of a truck, what the hell is that noise?” he asked.

  “I think they’re vacuuming out in the hall,” I said, then turned down the Jacuzzi jets. “It would have been nice to know about the vandalism to her car. Three separate incidents? Think it’s the same guy? An S400, that’s kind of pricy, don’t you think?”