Bad Memory: A Jake Abraham Mystery Novella (Jake Abraham Mysteries Book 2)

by Jim Cliff

  “I hired a private detective.”

  “Did you consider divorcing him?”

  “Of course. That’s why I hired the detective. I needed evidence.”

  “But Illinois is a no-fault state. You could have divorced him without evidence.”

  “That’s true. But thanks to the fidelity clause in our prenup, if I had proof Grady was having an affair he would get nothing in the divorce.”

  “So what happened? Why did you stay with him?”

  She thought for a moment. A wistful look came over her. “He stopped. One day he just stopped. He went from being out late most nights to coming straight home from work. I had the detective continue to follow him, but he never saw either woman again.”

  “Why do you think he stopped?”

  “I thought he decided to work on our marriage, to make an effort. And he did. He was more attentive. He started being a real husband.”

  “What caused the change, do you think?”

  “It was around the time of our tenth anniversary. I always thought that was what did it. It was as if he looked back at the time we had shared and decided it was worth saving.”

  “This is a long shot, but I don’t suppose you recall during the time he was working late did he ever tell you he was going to be out but come home early instead?”

  “Only once. About a week before our anniversary. He had said he would be out and he came home just after dinner soaked to the skin and tracked mud right across our carpet. I was so angry with him because we were having a party for our anniversary and I had to get the carpet cleaned before the party. But I couldn’t stay mad because he’d bought me flowers, which he never did. I think that was the turning point. That was the day he decided to try.”

  “Where did the mud come from?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “You said he tracked mud across your carpet. Why were his shoes muddy?”

  “He got a flat on the way back from the office. He had to pull over to change it, I guess, and it was raining hard that night.”

  “Do you remember whether he had mud on his knees?”

  “His knees? No. Just his shoes. His suit was soaking wet, though.”

  “When is your anniversary?”

  “November 12.”

  “And what year did this happen?”

  “It was our tenth, so let’s see. 1993. It didn’t last. A few years went by and we drifted apart again. After that, we never got it back.”

  “Thank you, that’s very helpful.”

  “Really? I don’t see how.”

  “Did you ever have any reason to believe Grady would hurt anyone?”

  “Grady? Never. He’s not a violent man. Vain, stubborn, greedy, selfish, but never violent. He wouldn’t hurt a fly.”

  “The detective you hired to follow Grady. Did he give you the names of the women Grady was seeing? Did he provide you with any photographic evidence?”

  “He took photos. He offered to show them to me, but I didn’t want to see them.”

  “Do you remember the detective’s name by any chance?”

  “Yang. Dennis Yang”

  Chapter 25

  I took the Pedway back to my office and googled ‘Dennis Yang’ on the way. He was still in the business, working out of an office down in Orland Park.

  The trip down there took over an hour. The heavy rain had caused an accident on the Stevenson and visibility was no more than a few car lengths.

  Yang’s office was in a strip mall on 151st, next to a meat market offering ribs for $4.99 a pound. His operation was somewhat larger than mine. I counted eleven employees on the walk between his reception desk and his office.

  “Sit down, Mr. Abraham,” he said, closing the door to his office. “How can I help?”

  “I’m working a cold case from the early nineties and one of my suspects is a man you followed during that time. Grady Caldwell.”

  “I followed a lot of wayward husbands in the nineties. That was my stock-in-trade back then. Now it’s all computer fraud, corporate espionage, insider trading. Haven’t done any infidelity work for ten years at least.”

  “Grady was having affairs with two women at once. He suddenly stopped, didn’t see either of them again, although his wife had you continue to follow him for a short time after he stopped.”

  “Ok yes, that rings a bell.”

  “Is there anything you can tell me about where he went, who he saw?”

  “Gee, I wish I could help you, man, but it’s twenty years.”

  “Twenty-three. Do you have any notes from back then? Any photos?”

  “I doubt it. We had a fire back in ‘02 that destroyed a lot of my old records. Anything that didn’t burn up is archived off-site but it’s a real mess.”

  “Any chance I could take a look?”

  “Can’t do that. Got a lot of client files in there and… well, you know. Confidentiality and all that.”

  “Do you remember anything about the case?”

  He shook his head. “I’m sorry, man. Look, I’ll tell you what I’ll do. Next time I’m down in the archives I’ll take a look and see if anything survived. I wouldn’t get your hopes up, though.”

  It was still raining hard when I pulled out of Dennis Yang’s parking lot and headed west on 151st, trying to figure out my next move on the drive back to my office. The Spin Doctors sang about Jimmy Olsen while I thought.

  As I crossed 94th, I heard brakes squeal behind me. A dark gray Mustang had run the red light causing three other cars to skid on the slick asphalt. Watch Cap and Kojak were getting sloppy. They accelerated right up to the back of my Saab and nudged my bumper. Seems they’d decided stealth was no longer necessary.

  I gunned the engine and pulled away, but there was traffic at the lights on LaGrange. I cut the corner, driving over the sidewalk and through a Toys’R’Us parking lot. The Mustang made the same turn, sparks flying as its chassis scraped the curb.

  I bumped down onto LaGrange and headed north, narrowly missing a Buick. They were a few car lengths behind me now, and my foot was hard down on the gas. My Saab was getting old. I hoped it was powerful enough to keep the distance between us.

  The Mustang caught up and nudged me again. It was hard enough this time to make the CD skip and suddenly Chris Barron was singing about Two Princes instead. I hoped that was their best shot, but then they started to pull around my left. I swerved in front so they couldn’t get beside me, and then we hit construction. Three lanes went down to two. Water filled plastic drums separated off an unpaved median strip between the roadways.

  I was traveling at ninety and the road work had created a bottleneck, which was approaching fast. I tried to judge the distance between the plastic drums and swerved onto the median. The Mustang followed, glancing one of the drums. It exploded in a fountain of water and slowed them down, gaining me a good twenty feet. My wheels couldn’t get purchase on the wet gravel. My progress was slowed, as the small stones flew up into my wheel arches and peppered the cars on either side. Several drivers leaned on their horns and shook their fists as we passed.

  We both squeezed past the lights at 142nd and the traffic eased up, clearing the road ahead. Watch Cap tried to get past me a couple more times. I took up as much of the two lanes as I could and he hit another plastic drum in the attempt.

  They dropped back three or four car lengths. Were they giving up, or had the last impact damaged their car?

  Then they accelerated. They had a lot more power than they’d been using. I tried to stay in front but this time, when they hit, it was harder to keep control. I skidded at a forty-five-degree angle across the road. I managed to keep the front wheels facing forward but in the moments it took me to straighten up they were beside me. I gave the engine everything I could. My foot was flat on the floor, but they were staying with me. Then they swerved into me.

  I countered, steering into them to try and stay on the road, and they pulled away. I was definitely going to need a new paint job. The
y came again, harder this time. My grip on the steering wheel made my knuckles turn white. I held to the road again, and managed to push them away. Third time they came, they pushed me up against the guardrail, sparks flying past my window as my car scraped across the metal. The friction slowed me down and they sped past.

  My turn.

  They were trying to slow down to get behind me again. I accelerated and pulled up with my front fender next to the Mustang’s rear tire. I swerved as hard as I could into them and they spun sideways. I kept going but when I checked my rear mirror they were right there behind me. My poor Saab had given me everything it could. Before I knew it, they had pulled level, and when they hit me again there was no guardrail. They pushed the car right off the road and I flew straight towards a tree.

  Steering doesn’t work so well when you’re airborne and the next thing I knew I was choking on acrid white smoke and my eyes were streaming. At first, I thought the engine was on fire but when I jumped out of the car I realized it was only the powder from the airbag that had deployed when I hit the tree. I felt like someone had punched me in the face so I sat down on the wet grass and checked myself for other injuries.

  All my limbs seemed to be working OK, but my ribs and my chest felt like they’d been kicked by a donkey. My forearms were burning. That’ll teach me to keep my hands at ten and two. My heart was racing. I took a deep breath, which made me cough, and It took a few minutes to get my bearings back. I looked around, but the Mustang was gone. Blood dripped from my nose onto my white shirt, turning pink as it hit the rain-soaked cotton.

  When Scott finally arrived a half hour later I was wet and cold. My head was clear but I was really beginning to feel the damage to my ribs. The first words out of Scott’s mouth were, “You see who it was?”

  “Same guys who’ve been tailing me all week. I got a plate number, make and model but it’ll be stolen again.”

  “We’ll find them. You OK?”

  “I think so.” I felt my abdomen gingerly. “I might have a broken rib.”

  “Your nose looks pretty bad too. We should get you to a hospital.”

  “I’ll be fine, but I could do with a ride home.”

  “Buddy, you’re not going home. People just tried to kill you. You’re staying at my place tonight. You’re gonna lay low and let me and Al find these guys.”

  I opened my mouth to argue, but I didn’t have the energy. Scott opened the rear door to his car and, as I climbed in, Al turned from the front seat and nodded hello.

  We headed north on LaGrange and within a few minutes Scott slowed down and started to pull over.

  “Hey Jake,” he said, “is that it?”

  He pointed to a beat up gray Mustang pulled over on the side of the road. We stopped about twenty feet behind it.

  “Yeah, that’s it.”

  “Stay here.”

  Scott and Al got out of the car. Al stayed back, and Scott approached the car from behind, gun drawn. He touched the left taillight as he went past and then stayed tight to the driver’s side of the Mustang, gun pointing at the driver’s window. When he got level, he looked in the car and turned back to Al and shook his head. He opened the driver’s door and looked inside for a moment, then came back to the car and got in.

  Al called it in, arranging to have both cars towed to the police lab, and none of us said any more until we got to Scott’s apartment.

  Chapter 26

  We made small talk around Scott’s kitchen table, beers in hand, as I held a bag of ice to my damaged ribs. I was wearing an old t-shirt and jeans Scott had lent me while my wet clothes were in the dryer.

  “When you checked out the car,” I said to Scott, “why did you touch the taillight?”

  “Part of the training,” he said. “If something went wrong, my fingerprints are on the car.”

  “Like what?”

  “Say they killed me and Al and then took off. Forensics could prove I was in contact with that car.”

  Al nodded. “Did you see how he hugged the side of the car as he approached the driver’s window?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Back when I was in uniform that wasn’t standard procedure. My training officer was one of the only cops that did it consistently. One day we stopped a guy for a broken taillight and Harry gets out, approaches the car with his hand on his gun. He slides up the driver’s side like always and right before he gets to the window he draws his gun and points it at the guy’s head. I freak out a little, start around the passenger side with my gun drawn, but before I get there, Harry’s reached in through the window and pulled out a shotgun. The guy had it pointed out the window but couldn’t twist around in his seat enough to aim it at Harry.”

  “Woah,” I said. I felt like it warranted a ‘woah’.

  “That summer,” continued Al, “there was this weird weather thing. A kind of red rusty powder coated cars all over the North Side. The EPA said it was dirt from Texas or someplace that came over with the rain. When I was on duty I kept seeing cars with this red dust all over except for a stripe from the taillight to the door along the driver’s side where it was clean. And all the guys at the station who drove patrol cars had nice clean uniforms except for a red stain around their right pants pocket.”

  “See, I’ve got a guy who should have had mud all up one pant leg if his story was true, but his wife said he didn’t.”

  “Who remembers stuff like that, Jake? You can’t rely on people remembering shit from that long ago. You’ve got to have evidence. Do you have any evidence?”

  I told them everything I had. The distance from the car to the body, the possible relationship between Grady and Elizabeth, the lies Grady had told. They weren’t impressed.

  “So that’s a ‘no’ on evidence then,” Scott said. I started to protest but then Al joined in.

  “I’m sorry, Jake. He’s right. You’ve got a mix of circumstantial evidence and bad memories. You haven’t even broken his alibi.”

  “But if Elizabeth was killed in the morning, his alibi is meaningless,” I said.

  “If. You haven’t shown she was,” said Scott. “Best case, all you can say is you can’t rule it out. That’s nowhere near enough to make an arrest. If you could prove she was killed in the morning, you might have something.”

  “It’d be a start,” agreed Al.

  “And how am I supposed to do that?”

  They looked at each other and shrugged. Scott spoke first.

  “You might not be able to. Can’t solve every case.”

  “That sucks.”

  “Yeah, it does,” said Al, “every time.”

  “What about the fact those guys followed me for days, then tried to kill me after I’d seen Dennis Yang? That must mean something, right? I mean, if he can find the photos he took, I can prove Grady was sleeping with Elizabeth.”

  Scott shook his head. “Sure, that might be why you were attacked, but even if Yang comes through, it still doesn’t prove he killed her.”

  “Goddammit!”

  I woke up on the couch in Scott’s front room when the sun peeked through his blinds. Scott had already left for work. The effort of standing reminded me quickly about my damaged rib cage. On my way to the bathroom, I noticed a sheet of paper Scott had pinned to the front door. It read simply: “Stay here. Get some rest.” Good advice.

  As I stood under the hot shower, I thought again about the case. No revelations had come to me in the night. I rubbed my face to try to speed the waking up process, and my broken nose started to bleed again. Blood dripped onto the floor of the shower, mixing with the water on its way down the drain. It made me think of Psycho, which made me think of Grady. And suddenly, everything fell into place. I ran, dripping and naked, through Scott’s small apartment to the dryer, and pulled out my shirt from the previous night. I made a quick phone call, dried, dressed, and left Scott a note - “Sorry, had to go.”

  Chapter 27

  Grady’s assistant was reluctant to let me into his office without an a
ppointment, but I insisted.

  “Surprised to see me, Grady?” I said as I stepped into the office.

  “What the hell are you doing here? You know what? I don’t care. Get out.”

  “No, I don’t think so.”

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Caldwell,” said his assistant. “I tried to stop him.”

  “This is harassment. You need to leave me alone. Roxanne, call the police.”

  “I think that’s a great idea. Roxanne, why don’t you call the District 11 headquarters and ask for Detective Scott Bales?”

  Roxanne looked from me to Grady, clearly unsure of what to do. After a short pause, he said “Never mind Roxanne. Close the door please.”

  “I’m afraid your boys couldn’t finish the job,” I said, after the door shut.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Of course not, Grady. I came to give you one last chance to come clean before I go to the police with what I have.

  “I’m not interested in what you think you know.”

  “Me neither. I’m interested in what I can prove. And I can prove you weren’t there when you said you were. And I can prove that while you definitely saw Elizabeth dead, it wasn’t in the evening.”

  “That’s absurd. Will you get to the point, please?”

  ”That time you met Elizabeth at her networking group wasn’t the only time you saw each other, was it? In fact, I’ll bet you started seeing a lot of her. I expect at some point you saw all of her.”

  “I’m not even going to dignify that with a response.” He stood, and walked to the window, looking out on the city as if it were much more important than this conversation.

  “Yeah, staying silent is totally your best option. You definitely wouldn’t want to explain yourself to the police. Actually, in your case staying silent might be better than those ridiculous stories you come up with. Like that one about how you found Elizabeth’s body in the dark in the woods without a flashlight in just a couple of minutes.”

  “What about the moonlight?”

  “Moon hadn’t risen. Wouldn’t rise for another half hour at least. In the pitch black, you were able to describe her. Even what color suit she was wearing. The human eye does’nt work like that, Grad., nobody is going to believe that.”