“Smaller and saltier than I prefer, but ultimately satisfying.”
“So spill. What are those metal shavings?”
“My uncle used to have those things stuck in his shoes all the time,” Herb said, treating me to what cheap tacos looked like after partial mastication.
He paused, obviously gloating in the fact that he recognized what those shavings were, while I didn’t. So I played disinterested and waited for him to get on with it.
“They’re called swarf,” he eventually revealed. “My aunt used to raise hell. He’d walk in the house and rip up the carpet because they would stick to his shoes.”
“Not that I don’t love the homey anecdotes, but I don’t. You want to tell me what swarf is?”
“Swarf. Shavings. Chips. Turnings.”
“Now you’re just showing off.”
“They’re the curly parts that fall off when you’re machining metal parts,” he grinned, mouth full. “My uncle worked on a pipe threading machine. Those metal shavings are swarf.”
“How sure are you?”
“I know swarth when I see it.”
I tried to fit this new piece into the puzzle forming inside my brain, and couldn’t find a place for it.
“So the truck was in a pipe threading factory,” I conjectured.
“Or some other kind of factory that turns or lathes metal.”
“From the industrial lot?”
Herb shook his head. “I checked. Not a single shop in town has a metal lathe.”
“When did you check?”
“When you were on the phone with the rental place, I made a few calls of my own.”
“So what does it mean?”
Herb shrugged and shoved another taco into his mouth. “Got me.”
I let my mind wander. Three bodies. All young girls. All wrapped in duct tape. The first two dead from dehydration and found in motels. The third found in a rental truck, presumably dead from blood loss, dehydration, or hypothermia.
The alias Doug Jackson was used to rent the first room.
The alias Doug Stephenson was used to rent the second room.
The alias Chuck Gardiner was used to rent the truck, prior to both of the motel rooms.
Burlap found on the first two bodies.
The metal chips.
“Could one of the perps be a machinist?” I asked.
“Maybe. It was a lot of swarf. Probably a plant or a factory of some kind.”
“That’s the part that doesn’t make sense. If he’s been so smart so far about not leaving evidence—no prints, no DNA, fake names—why leave something as obvious as the metal chips in the tires?”
“That’s the ten dollar question.”
We both puzzled over it while finishing my cinnamon crisps. Benedict had long since finished his own crisps and had moved on to mine. His walrus mustache, glistening with grease, looked like it had been waxed.
“I remember when you were thin,” I said. It was an observation, not meant to be mean.
“I remember when you were happy,” Herb countered.
“Really? I was? When?”
“Before you were married.”
“You mean when I was partners with Harry McGlade?”
Herb nodded.
“No one could be happy partnered with Harry McGlade.”
“He’s an acquired taste,” Herb said. “Like blue cheese. And don’t get me wrong; I really hate blue cheese. But he wasn’t the reason you were happy. Back then, when you were a rookie, before your marriage, you had hope.”
“So you’re saying I’ve lost my hope?”
“You’ve become a cynic. No… a fatalist. You don’t think you have control over the future.”
“Sure I do.”
“All you do is complain about moving to the suburbs, but you moved there anyway. Like you didn’t have a choice. You can’t sleep because of your workload. But no one forced you to be a homicide cop. It’s a choice. And now, you’re getting married again…” He let his voice trail off.
“I want to get married,” I said.
“Are you sure?”
“Latham is the sweetest guy I’ve ever met.”
“And you want to settle down? Have kids?”
“I don’t think I’m meant to have kids.”
“See? Fatalism. You know what? Someday, maybe, I’ll be thin again. But I’m not going to let my happiness hang on that possibility. With you, it’s impossible.”
“How’s that?”
“Because for you to have your happiness hang on the possibility that you’ll be happy again, you’d have to be happy now. Since you aren’t, you won’t ever be happy.”
“You know what, Herb?”
“Tell me.”
“You’re full of shit.”
He shrugged. “Maybe. But I’m happy with that.”
As Herb’s stupid verbal jujitsu beat up my brain, I found the on ramp back to Chi-Town, saying goodbye to the burbs.
At least until I had to go home later.
We were almost back to the big, bad city when my cell rang. I hoped it was Latham, because then I could lay on how much I missed him and how happy I was with our upcoming nuptials.
But, alas, it was Gomar, the truck rental place. So much for drowning Herb in syrupy love talk.
“Lieutenant? I found the address.”
He’d promised to call me back when he found the employee who rented the truck to Chuck Gardiner. That employee had left three months ago.
“Thanks. I’m giving you to my partner so he can write it down.”
I handed over the phone to Herb, who was, quite sadly, licking the grease stains on the paper fast food bag.
Herb jotted something down, thanked the man, and handed me my phone back.
“The good news is, we’ve got a number and address,” he told me.
“But there’s bad news,” I said.
Herb nodded.
I frowned. “He lives in the suburbs.”
“Flutesburg,” Herb said. “A few miles from where we were forty-five minutes ago.”
Rush hour was just starting, and being on the expressway would become twice as excruciating as it currently was.
“Tomorrow?” I suggested.
“Sounds good to me.”
My phone rang as I was tucking it away. This time it was my fiancé.
“Hi, honey,” I answered, smiling. “I was just thinking about how much I—”
“Did you stay at my place last night?” Latham asked, interrupting.
“Yeah, I—”
“Building manager called me. Said you parked in their loading zone again.”
“Yeah, but—”
“I thought we talked about this.”
I glanced at Herb, who’d taken a sudden, intense interest in his fingernails.
“Latham, I’m a cop, I can park wherever I—”
“Jack, I’m late for a thing. I don’t want to be that pain in the ass boyfriend but—”
“Technically,” I said, interrupting him this time, “you’re my fiancé.”
“Fiancé. Right. Look, this trip is kicking my ass, and I want to catch up with you, I swear, but can you please promise me not to park in the loading zone? You used to live in Chicago. You know how hard it is to get a good place. If they keep giving me warnings, the board could vote to kick me out. I love that place.”
“Do you love your condo more than you love—”
“Gotta go! Talk soon!”
He hung up.
“Sounds really busy,” Herb said, still memorizing his cuticles.
“Yeah. Biggest conference of the year. He’s on six panels, doing a keynote speech. Wanted me to come with, but…”
“But you had to work,” Herb said.
“Yeah.”
“Does he like his job?”
I nodded. “He loves it. And he loves his condo.”
“And you,” Herb said.
“Yeah. Though he forgot to mention that.”
�
��He invited you to come along, Jack. You’ve got vacation days to burn. Why didn’t you go?”
“Can we not psychoanalyze me for the rest of the car ride?”
“He loves his job,” Herb said, apparently unable to comply with my request. “Do you love your job?”
“The Job is the Job. Do you love it?”
Herb seemed to consider it, then nodded. “I do. It’s hard, and parts of it are depressing. But this is something I’m meant to do. I can turn it off, though. I take my vacation days. I limit overtime. When I go home to my wife, I’m focused on her, not on catching bad guys.”
I stared at him, my irritation rising. “Are you trying to teach me something here? Or just rub my nose in your perfect life?”
“You know you’re like family to me, Jack. Like a younger sister.”
“I’m your boss.”
“You’ve got a higher rank, but we’re partners. And for a while, I had the higher rank. It’s not about who can order the other around. It’s about working together to solve the crime.”
“So how is you lecturing me about happiness us working together?”
“Remember earlier, when you said I had some donut on my face?”
“So this is the same thing? I point out you’re a sloppy eater, and you point out I’m miserable?”
“There’s a difference. I was always a sloppy eater. You weren’t always miserable.”
“Let’s keep the conversation professional from now on, Herb.”
He shrugged. “Whatever you say, boss.”
Herb turned away, and I felt like an asshole.
I’d make it up to him later. Herb’s emotions could be bought with as little as a candy bar.
Me? I was more complicated than that.
I switched off navel-gazing mode, and flipped back to cop mode.
There was something about the Motel Mauler slayings that was eating at my subconscious.
We’d been under the assumption we were after two perps, working together. And there have been many famous cases where killers worked in pairs.
But Herb’s comment about it feeling like a frat party had stuck with me.
It’s never just two guys at a frat party.
Parties had more than two people.
What if the Mauler wasn’t a duo? What if it was three people? Or more?
I looked at the Chicago skyline, looming in the distance. A city of almost three million people.
And I had the dark feeling it was a part-time playground for a pack of serial killers.
HARRY MCGLADE
An epigraph? What the hell’s an epigraph?
I can’t even spell epigraph.
Who writes this shit?
THE PRIVATE DICK
They call me Harry McGlade. Probably because that’s my name. I’m a private investigator. I’m not the best that Chicago has to offer, but I make up for that by charging the most. No refunds either, whether I get results or not.
I get by.
But even if I don’t solve most of the cases I take, every once and a while I get lucky…
HARRY
The sunlight coming in through the window ripped my eyelids open and slapped me in the face.
Well, not really. But that’s a poetic way to start things off, isn’t it?
There were probably worse ways to wake up than the sun beating your ass, but I couldn’t think of any. Sunlight was to hangovers what salt was to a herpes sore. So I’ve heard.
My head throbbed in a dull way, like being repeatedly hit with a lead pipe wrapped in the Sunday Tribune. My stomach churned and quivered and swam around my insides like a spawning salmon. My throat was dry enough to spit up dust.
I needed aspirin. I needed Alka-Seltzer. I needed more sleep. I needed…
Hell, I needed a drink.
I made like a porno star and deep throated the last two fingers from the bottle of Pappy Van Winkle on my desk. It burned going down, and my stomach made a motion to reject it, but I put a hand over my mouth and thought pleasant thoughts until the crisis passed. Then I peeled myself out of my chair and stretched, listening to all the crackly sounds my bones made.
The phone rang loud enough to wake up a patient in the coma ward.
Yeah. I like metaphors. Deal with it.
I squinted against the sun. My interior designer was a green hipster douchebag who was all about open concept and recycling and beetle-killed wood and smoking weed while contemplating the meaning of the word space. During his violation of my condo—which I paid way too much for because I’d also been so stoned I’d forgotten how to swallow—he removed all of my walls, window coverings, and doors, going for an urban plains style that made my place look like a sports gym minus any exercise equipment.
So I get a lot of sun.
The phone rang once more, and I snatched it up quick so it wouldn’t ring again. The phone was a Princess model, complete with push buttons and curly cord. My interior designer called it retro upscaling. I called it dumpster diving then charging me three hundred bucks.
“Harry McGlade, private investigator.”
“Mr. McGlued—”
“McGlade.”
“I’m calling to talk to you about your relationship with Jesus.”
“It’s platonic. We’re just friends.”
“As part of the Holy Sunbeam Resurrectionist Church, it is my duty to spread His word in the form of Good Thoughts, an enlightening pamphlet about our Lord, Praise God.”
“How did you get this number?” I asked.
“Good Thoughts is not available in stores, but can be yours free if you decide to subscribe to the Weekly Advent, a Christian Newspaper for God fearing Christians like yourself.”
“Is there nudity?”
“The Weekly Advent can be yours for… pardon me?”
“Nudity. Adam and Eve were naked in the Garden of Eden. Got pics?”
“When they knew that they were naked, they sewed fig leaves and made clothing for themselves.”
“Where’s the fun in that?”
I hung up, stretched again, vertebrae crackling like a campfire, and went to the john to shake the bacon. A glimpse of myself in the mirror didn’t do much for the ego. Stubbly face. Greasy brown hair. Vampire eyes. Grubby wrinkled stained suit.
Good thing I was a rich celebrity or I might have to consider cleaning up my act.
I splashed some water on my face, extending the motion into slicking back my hair. Then I gargled some Scope, sprayed some Brut on my suit to kill the aroma of sleeping in it, put on my Bogart fedora—which was literally Bogart’s fedora that I got on eBay—and last night played through my head.
Well, parts of last night.
I had been celebrating because I’d gotten yet another giant royalty check from Hollywood. They were making a TV series based on my life, and I was making so much money I could stuff my mattress with it. And I did. No metaphor there. So I’d bought something really expensive and stupid and had gotten so drunk I couldn’t remember the really expensive and stupid thing I’d bought.
I looked around my condo, seeing if anything looked new and pricey.
Plasma screen TV. Had that before.
Overclocked Dell PC. Had that before.
Empty bottle of Pappy Van Winkle 21 year old bourbon? I remembered it being full. Maybe that dick condo manager was sneaking in and drinking it while I slept.
Olivia De Berardinis painting of Bettie Page. Had that before, but I continued to stare at it for about thirty seconds.
Dwarf miniature horse?
That’s new.
It also explained why my condo smelled like horse shit.
“Hello,” I said, half-wondering if this was some sort of hallucination.
The hallucination whinnied at me.
It was short, didn’t even come up to my crotch, and chunky in that Achondroplasia way (I knew that word because I’d dated a little person once), and it had brown hair and a blond mane with a lock that stood up from the top of his head and droo
ped over his left eye, like a brooding teen from a 1980s John Hughes dramedy.
And yes, it was a he, as evidenced by his horse-sized package. Nothing small there.
“What’s your name?” I asked.
The horse didn’t answer.
This would require some deduction, and I considered hiring a private eye to get to the bottom of it, but I didn’t know any good ones. So instead I climbed on his back and took a bunch of selfies.
Coincidentally, there were already thirty-six selfies on my phone of me doing the same thing the night before.
I guess the thing to do when you get a dwarf mini horse was to hop on and take selfies.
I grew kind of bored after about forty minutes, and then figured I needed to start my day.
There was a good amount of horseshit in the house, so I called the cleaning service (they’d cleaned up worse than that at my place), and then I noticed my answering machine was blinking.
I dismounted, which I accomplished by standing up, and then pressed the button to play the three messages. Normally the only people who called my home were my maid service, and escorts to confirm arrival times. But my office was currently closed, so I had those calls forwarded here.
“Harry, this is Phineas Troutt. I’ve got some work for you if you’re interested. Call me at the Michigan Motel.”
Phin was sort of like a bodyguard slash enforcer who usually passed shit work my way, like stakeouts and digging up dirt on people. He was an okay guy, and the pay was alright, but lately being around him depressed me. Phin was dying of cancer and in a permanent sour mood. In fact, I thought he’d already died.
Guess he hadn’t.
He couldn’t afford my outrageous rates, which I’d been forced to implement due to nonstop interest in hiring me, from kids searching for their lost cats to crackpots who wanted me to shoot the aliens that were abducting and probing them every night.
If I saw an alien probing somebody, the only thing I’d shoot was pictures.
There was a beep, and the second message began.
“You’re dead, McGlade.”
It was one of my many secret admirers. This one was using some sort of voice modulator gizmo, so he sounded like a cross between Darth Vader and the villain in those Saw horror movies. “Enjoy your final time alive, you little bitch.”
Phineas Troutt Series - Three Thriller Novels (Dead On My Feet #1, Dying Breath #2, Everybody Dies #3) Page 32