by Nick James
* * *
They were seated at the kitchen table, looking out on the sculpted lawn and gardens, some sort of bird chirped outside. What looked like a father and son, possibly Latino, were edging one of the gardens and pruning a number of rose bushes. The older man wore a dark, heavy beard. Two lawn mowers and a large black plastic bag for grass clippings rested next to the wooden gate presenting a marked contrast from the urban blight that was Denis Kemper’s front lawn.
“I really appreciate you doing this for me. I have to tell you, I was not looking forward to the drive to the airport with Addison behind the wheel.”
“She’s a fast driver?”
“Among other things.”
“What did she say when you told her you had a ride?”
“Actually I didn’t, she’s still asleep. Out to all hours of the night, God only knows what she’s up to,” Cori said sounding like she maybe knew more than she wanted.
Bobby nodded. “Were you ever able to get in touch with the folks at City View?”
“Oh my, what with packing and everything, I just haven’t been able to find the time, maybe when I get back.”
Bobby had an image of her small red suitcase, it couldn’t possibly take more than five minutes to pack. It seemed everyone would be better off with Denton dead, including Denton. “I suppose we should be off.”
Cori’s face seemed to brighten at the thought of leaving. “It will be nice to have a change of scenery for the next few days,” she said then carried their coffee mugs to the kitchen sink, washed them, and arranged the clean mugs on the top rack in the dishwasher.
The fifteen minute drive to the airport was uneventful. Cori made an obvious effort to stay away from any conversation involving her husband, the firm or her daughter. Bobby listened attentively to tales of sorority sisters from Cori’s youth, the same women she was on her way to meet. He dropped her in front of Terminal 2, pulled her suitcase out of the trunk and said, “Have a great time with your friends. Call me if you need a ride home from the airport.”
“I’m sure I can get Addison to pick me up,” she said, not sounding all that sure.
He drove back into town and stopped at the hardware store to have a copy of Emily’s key cut. Then he drove over to Emily’s, replaced her spare key in the fake rock and used the new key to open her front door. The newly cut key worked perfectly. He hurried up to her bedroom and took another eighteen hundred dollars from her envelope. He locked the door on his way out, attached the new key to his key ring and was back in the office before noon.
Chapter Fifty-Five
He left the office later that afternoon. He pulled up in front of his building and parked behind Earl’s white paneled van. Earl oozed out of the drivers side of the van like a long drip of honey.
“I hope you weren’t waiting long,” Bobby said checking his watch, Earl was a good fifteen minutes early.
“No,” he said then opened the rear door on the van and hoisted a brown cardboard box under his arm. Bobby led them in the front door then unlocked the security door and held it open for Earl. He let Earl step off the elevator first, checked the hallway, then hurried past him to unlock the door to his unit. Earl followed Bobby back into the kitchen and set the box on the kitchen counter.
“What do I owe you?”
“Eighteen even will do it,” Earl replied.
Bobby pulled out the wad of cash, he stolen from Emily, counted out eighteen, hundred-dollar bills and handed them to Earl. Earl recounted them then smiled and slid the box across the kitchen counter. Bobby pulled open a kitchen drawer for a knife to open the box when he heard a click.
Earl held a metallic blue handled knife and was in the process of inserting the blade between the two flaps taped shut on the top of the box. “Part of the beauty of these items is there so damn simple to use. Is that your computer?” he asked and nodded at the computer on the counter.
Bobby nodded.
“Fire that thing up, we’ll get you logged on and working these babies in just a minute.”
Bobby turned on his computer and waited a moment before he could log on while Earl pulled out nine, shrink wrapped little black squares and lined them up across the kitchen counter. They looked like blocks of wood, maybe two inches by two inches, cubes, flat black cubes actually. He used the knife to cut the wrapping off of one of the blocks. “You logged on?”
“Yeah, give it fifteen seconds to ramp up then I’m good to go.”
Earl pulled a white sticker from the bottom of the cube that looked like a bar code. “See that first set of numbers? Just type them into your search bar and hit return.”
Bobby typed eight numbers in, double checked his accuracy then hit return. A simple black and white screen appeared with a number of options.
“All right, now look at this thing,” Earl said holding the cube. “See this little deal here, that’s your on and off switch. In order to work this has to be turned on,” he moved the small switch and it made a barely audible click. “And you have to click that “On” button on your computer, too. Now you can just leave it on and like I said the other day, she’ll last the better part of a month. Or, if you turn it off on the computer when you don’t need it, it’ll last a hell of a lot longer. Maybe you just want it to operate when you’re not home, you can come in at night, log on and shut her off until you leave the next morning. Now to change the battery, just slide this bottom panel off, like this. That round little silver thing that looks like a dime, that there is your battery. The battery should run you about four bucks apiece.”
Bobby nodded.
“Now you can focus, and raise or lower the sound on line. Unfortunately, you can’t move the damn thing so you have to set it where you think it will work, then check it out on your computer screen. You just click that live button there, go ahead, give her a click. Yeah, now there you go. See?”
Bobby’s computer screen suddenly had a blurry image of half his coffee pot and the kitchen knife rack. “Now see you got them two arrows for focus in and out, try ‘em.”
Bobby moved the cursor to the arrow labeled ‘in’ and the image on the screen became more blurry, he moved to the arrow labeled ‘out’ and the image gradually came into focus.
“Now you move that cube left or right,” see how it adjusts.
Bobby held the cube between his thumb and index finger and moved it left and right. The image on his computer screen jumped a couple of times before it focused on the new position.
“Now you can move your lens up and down with these two arrows,” Earl pointed at the computer screen leaving a smudged finger print in the process. “But there ain’t a hell of a lot of flexibility. If you’re wanting to just see if someone who shouldn’t be here comes in, I’d put one of these focused on your front and back doors. Then after that, you know, maybe you’d want to watch yourself sleeping or whatever else might happen in the bedroom,” he said and smiled.
Over the next few minutes Bobby unwrapped and activated two more of the cubes by himself.
“I think you got it down. One piece of advice I can leave you with, maybe put them stickers together in a safe place. Someone steals your computer here, or the damn thing gets lost or just plain crashes you still have the serial numbers and of course, access.”
Bobby walked Earl to the door, and thanked him. Then watched out the front window as he pulled away. He took two of the devices and his computer and hurried out to his car. He drove over to Emily’s, used his new key to let himself in and then hurried up to her second floor.
He set his computer on the desk, positioned the first cube on her fireplace mantel just as a test and then logged on. He got it working once he remembered to turn on the switch on the back of the cube. He ended up positioning the cube on the top of the moulding surrounding a closet door in the corner of the room then adjusted the image for focus.
He could see the better part of the room, most importantly the two couches in front of the fireplace and her desk in the far corner. Satis
fied, he turned the cube off from his computer and hurried into her bedroom.
He positioned the bedroom cube much the same way, on top of the moulding around the door leading into the room. He tested the image, adjusted the focus and then clicked the off button on his screen to save the battery.
Twenty minutes later he was back home in his kitchen sipping a glass of red wine and doing a final test on the monitors at Emily’s. Everything was ready for her return tomorrow night.
Chapter Fifty-Six
The ten o’clock news led with a fifteen second blurb about the police press conference, before a voice over said, “Meanwhile, further tragedy this afternoon on the city streets.” The image showed a half-dozen police cars with flashing lights, a lot of crime scene tape and two body bags being loaded into the back of a County Coroner vehicle before the standard four or five minutes of commercials began.
Bobby refilled his wineglass and waited for the reports. Frogtown was listed as the general location of the murders. He couldn’t be sure where, exactly the shootings had taken place because there weren’t any noticeable landmarks on the residential street, but it looked familiar, maybe, sort of. He was tempted to call Camila just to check on her, then half laughed at himself and sipped some wine. The woman had a half-dozen cold hearted body guards. What difference did Bobby think he could make?
The news report hinted that the murders were drug related, saying, “The two most recent shootings in what has already become the city’s most violent month, ever.” The report ended with the standard line of the police asking anyone with any information to please come forward. It seemed almost a given that no one would.
Following the news he activated the remainder of the cubes and placed them throughout his unit. He had one each focused on the front and back doors. One on his living room, and another in the dining room. He sat in bed on his laptop, playing with the positioning of the unit in his bedroom, in the end he positioned it almost exactly where he’d placed the one in Emily’s bedroom, on the moulding above the bedroom door.
He checked the locks on his doors again, made sure the chains were hooked then placed his handgun on the stand next to his bed and went to sleep.
Chapter Fifty-Seven
Bobby was up and out early the following morning. He drove over to Cori Denton’s and deposited another little gift wrapped pharmaceutical on Addison’s front seat. This time he attached it to a bright pink bow. He was pleased to see she had a recently broken front head light and a damaged front quarter panel. He got all excited when he saw the chipped bricks on the corner of the garage and the black streak of paint running a good five feet along the front of the structure, nice work.
Next he drove to City View to look in on Noah Denton. He stepped into Denton’s room and watched for just a few minutes before he left, satisfied there didn’t seem to be any apparent progress. On his way out the door he spied the nurse he’d surprised yesterday and walked over to her as she read from a sheet of paper attached to one of the breakfast trays.
“Excuse me, I just looked in on my father, how’s he doing?”
“Oh yes, Mr. Denton in 612, correct?”
Bobby nodded.
“Weren’t you heading out of town?”
He could have kicked himself, but smiled instead. “Just a day trip, down to Chicago and back late last night.”
“Well, probably was best that you left when you did. He was a little confused when he woke. As a matter of fact, he couldn’t remember you. Kept insisting he didn’t have a son. Poor soul. Sometimes they’re able to get back on track as the day progresses. My shift ends at nine AM so I really wasn’t able to check on him again. You could go ahead and wake him, I’m going to be in there in a couple of minutes with his breakfast and was going to do it anyway.”
“No, let’s not confuse him. I’ll be stopping in around the lunch hour and I’ll see him, then.”
She gave him a soft look and smiled, “That’s so sweet. I went through the same thing a couple of years back with my mom, it’s a lot of work, you get so tired and then when they don’t remember, well heartbreaking. But right now, I’d give anything to have just one more day with her.”
“I’ll never be able to pay him back,” Bobby said.
By nine he was in the office and had phoned Dorsey for some files. Once they were delivered he sent a text message to Emily offering to pick her and her mother up at the airport. It was just a little after seven out on the west coast and he didn’t expect a response from her, if at all.
Emily’s response came through around two in the afternoon saying they were waiting to board the plane and how anxious she was to see him.
Bobby offered to pick them up at the airport.
Emily replied that her mother’s friend was going to give them a lift.
Bobby did the math, then looked at the arrival schedules for the Twin Cities airport and saw a San Diego flight arriving at 6:40.
Just to be on the safe side he parked down the street from Emily’s twenty minutes before the flight was due to arrive. He sat there for over an hour waiting before he spotted what looked like a limo turning the far corner and coming down the street. The sleek vehicle drove past Bobby and parked directly across the street from Emily’s. The driver, a different fellow from two days earlier, hurried out of the car, walked around and opened the passenger door. He unlocked the trunk, pulled out two suitcases and quickly carried them up to Emily’s front door as the same neatly trimmed, grey haired guy stepped out of the limo.
Bobby recognized Gregory Lindgren from the images he’d seen of him online. He held the door and Emily climbed out, they embraced and pawed one another on the sidewalk until the limo driver returned and stood waiting at the passenger door.
Lindgren grabbed her by the shoulders, kissed her a final time then turned her round, and gave her a quick spank before she headed across the street. The limo driver seemed to give Lindgren a look. Lindgren shook his head, made the ‘crazy’ sign twirling his index finger alongside his head and smiling. The two of them shared a chuckle behind Emily’s back.
She climbed her front steps then waved good-bye and blew a kiss as they drove off. Bobby’s phone rang fifteen minutes later. He was still parked down the street from Emily’s, in the process of attempting to calm down.
“God,” Emily gasped once he answered.
“Are you at the airport?”
“No, my mom just dropped me off, thank God. Is it too late to ask if you have dinner plans?”
“As a matter of fact, I don’t, I’m just finishing up some research. Would you like to come over?”
“Actually, I was thinking I’d rustle a little something up here, would you mind?”
“I’ll come over on two conditions.”
“Go ahead and name them, I’ve already got my clothes off,” she giggled.
“Well, that was going to be the third condition, actually. No, I want to bring dinner and wine, no compromise here. You’ve had an exhausting couple of days with your mom, and I think you’re the most wonderful woman for spending time like that with her. So, how about you take a hot soak in the tub, I’ll pick up dinner, we’ll be dining Italian, and I’m getting the wine. See you in an hour.”
“Can’t wait,” she said and hung up.
Bobby pulled away from the curb, as he drove past Emily’s he could see the lights were on in the second floor den. He drove home, parked on the street and hurried up to his unit. He turned on his computer, logged onto the sites for the two monitors at Emily’s and activated them. Both the den and her bedroom appeared empty although the bed did have an open suitcase on it with a pile of clothes next to the suitcase. He sat and watched for a few minutes, but never saw her so he turned the computer off and hurried back out to his car.
He ordered two meals to go at an Italian restaurant named La Grolla, then walked up the street a half block and crossed over to the Solo Vino wine store where he purchased two bottles of wine. He gave four sharp raps on her lion’s head kno
cker fifty minutes later and then conjured up the image of that Lindgren prick doing the exact same thing just two-and-a-half days earlier.
Emily answered the door barefoot and wearing a fluffy-white terri-cloth robe wrapped around her. She looked relaxed, newly tan and freshly out of the tub. She stood on tip toes, gave him a big kiss, then took the wine bottles from him and said “Get in here, I’m ready to just eat you alive.”
Chapter Fifty-Eight
He followed her out to the kitchen and set the bag with the two white styrofoam trays containing their dinner on the kitchen counter. She placed the bottles of wine on the counter, next to the food, gave him a long wet kiss then took him by the hand and led him upstairs. Once on the second floor she walked down the hall toward her bedroom. She dropped her robe out in the hallway and continued, naked into the bedroom. The drapes were pulled and the room was illuminated by a single lit candle sitting on top of her dresser. A silver ice bucket with a bottle of champagne sat next to it.
“You can have some Champagne once we finish the all important business at hand,” she said as he followed her into the room. Then she reached down and unbuckled his belt.
Twenty minutes later they were sipping Champagne and watching the candle burn. Bobby seemed very interested in her trip.
“So, does your mother go out there often?”
“Oh, once in a while.”
“And what’s your aunts name?”
“Grace.”
“Is she older or younger than your mom?”
“Younger.”
“I’m pretty familiar with San Diego, what district does she live in? I bet…”
“What is with the fifty questions, mister? Apparently you weren’t completely satisfied. Here give me this,” she said rolling over and straddling him. She took his Champagne flute and set it on the night stand.