FIRST DROP: Charlie Fox book four

by Zoe Sharp

  I was already heading towards the coast and the closer to the sea you got, the greater the proportion of motels to other buildings. I picked the first one that looked reasonable. Not too smart, not too shabby. The neon sign out front said they had vacancies and free HBO. Nevertheless, Trey looked horrified when I turned in.

  I drove straight through the parking area to the back of the small diner next door where the Mercury couldn’t easily be seen from the road, and reversed into a space. The car only had a numberplate on the back and there was no point it making it easy to read for anyone doing a casual drive-by.

  I switched off the engine. “Stay here,” I said. “Lock the doors when I’m gone and if anyone comes, hit the horn and don’t let them in. OK?”

  He shrugged and muttered, “OK.”

  I walked back to the reception via the central courtyard. The motel was made up of ugly two-storey blocks of accommodation lining the car park on three sides. Each block had ten rooms per floor. Their doors were all accessed from open walkways at the front with stairwells at either end. It looked more depressing from here than it had done when I’d picked it, but I wasn’t going to go back and admit defeat to Trey

  I walked into the reception, which was small and nastily lit by a string of fluoro tubes across the water-stained ceiling tiles. It smelt of coffee that was brewed two days ago and has been on the hot plate ever since. The black girl behind the counter met my arrival with unsmiling lack of enthusiasm. Her name badge told me her name was Lacena. She had hair so elaborately styled and set it looked like a sculpture, and her fingernails were too long for her to have been able to put contact lenses in without the serious danger of losing an eye in the attempt.

  She took an imprint of my credit card and a cursory glance at the photograph on my UK driver’s licence. Apart from my name, I filled in a completely fictitious set of details required on the registration form and took the key making as little eye contact as I could get away with.

  Trey hadn’t shifted when I got back to the car. He’d even had the sense to slump down in his seat. I tapped on the window and he followed me silently to the room we’d been given.

  We were in the left-hand block, on the top floor in the end room furthest from reception. The number on the key fob read 219, which was ambitious considering there were only around sixty rooms. Maybe they were just trying to make the place sound bigger than it was.

  I opened the door on a pair of twin beds with cigarette-singed floral covers. The low-wattage bulb made the whole place look dingy and depressing.

  “Oh man,” Trey moaned. “This place is a dump.”

  He grabbed the remote control for the TV and flopped down on one of the beds. Even channel-hopping didn’t appease him, as he soon discovered that the promise of Home Box Office movies was a broken one. The picture on the other channels was so badly adjusted they were just about unwatchable. Still, there were hundreds to go at and he seemed determined to try every one.

  I left him to it, pulling the edge of the curtain back slightly and looking down on the car park. It all looked quiet. No-one new had arrived since we’d checked in.

  In my head I backtracked, replaying the conversation I’d had with Livingston Brown III outside the house. So Keith Pelzner had gone, apparently of his own accord. Sean, on the other hand, had not gone quite so willingly. I would have put money on it.

  Then a man who’d come to the house as a policeman – and I could only assume he was a genuine cop – had followed Trey and me to the amusement park and tried to grab the kid. Something about the setup didn’t quite hang true. I kicked and pummelled at my lumpy thoughts, trying to break the sense out of them. Then my brain tilted, and in the light of what Brown had told me I began to look at things from a slightly different angle.

  Supposing Oakley man hadn’t followed us? Supposing he didn’t need to, because he already knew where we were going to be? After all, Keith knew exactly where his son was heading. Exactly.

  Just after he’d handed me that wedge of cash that morning he’d turned to the boy and said, “I suppose you’re gonna drag Charlie onto your favourite old woodie until one of you is sick, huh?”

  Oh yes, Keith had known precisely the area of the park where we could be located, and that’s just where Oakley man had picked up our trail. I saw again the gun in his hands, the people scattering. The woman he’d shot fell again before my eyes.

  But if the cop was there simply to snatch Trey, why had he fired at us?

  I let the curtain fall closed and turned away from the window, moving to sit on the empty bed.

  “Trey,” I said. “We need to talk.”

  He sighed and clicked off the TV. I got the feeling his reluctance was more to do with a desire to avoid the subject rather than fascination with a fuzzy game show.

  “OK,” he said. “Talk.”

  “Have you any idea where Keith might have gone, or why he’s disappeared?”

  He shrugged. “Sounds kinda like he’s run out on me, doesn’t it?”

  I might have known this would be all about Trey. “Why would he do that?”

  Another hunch of those skinny shoulders.

  I waited, and when that seemed to be as much of an answer as I was going to get I added carefully, “Is there any reason you can think of why your father might want to harm you?”

  His head snapped up at that, eyes unnaturally bright. “Oh yeah,” he said. “I can think of plenty.”

  I sighed. God preserve us from teenage angst. “He’s your father, Trey, why would he want to do that?”

  “Why not?” the kid threw back at me, his voice oozing with bitterness. “He already murdered my mother.”

  Five

  For a moment I sat very still, my face expressionless while my mind reeled. I skimmed back over every chance remark and casual word I’d overheard since I’d arrived in the Pelzner household and came up blank.

  No-one had mentioned Trey’s mother.

  From somewhere I’d formed a vague impression that it was a bit of a sticky subject as far as Keith was concerned, but I’d no idea what the official line was on her whereabouts.

  I glanced at the boy. He was worrying at one of the burn holes in the bedspread with the end of his finger, staring fixedly at the bed. His other hand was clamped onto his own wrist so tight the knuckles showed up as a row of whitened double indentations. I wavered over believing him or dismissing the whole thing as another of his fantasies.

  “What happened to her?” I said quietly.

  “When I was a kid we were living up in Daytona and she and my dad used to fight all the time,” he said, speaking so low I could hardly hear him. “One night they had this mega row, like total war, screaming at each other and throwing stuff. The next day, when I got home from school, Dad told me she’d gone.”

  “It happens,” I said, disappointed at the lack of concrete evidence – or just of fresh laid concrete in the back garden. I tried not to put anything into my voice, one way or another. “Marriages break up every day.”

  He speared me with a single vicious look. “She would never have left me,” he said, vehement. “Oh she talked about going, but she swore she’d take me with her. She swore. Every time after they’d been fighting she’d come into my room and sit on my bed and cry and tell me how she’d find a place for us real soon, and it would just be the two of us.”

  He sniffed, letting go to wipe the back of his arm across his nose. He’d been gripping so tight he’d left reddened finger marks on the skin of his wrist. His hand still picked at the burn hole in the bedspread, which was now big enough for him to get his fist into, and growing all the time.

  I eyed the oblivious destruction. “How long ago did your mother disappear?”

  “Five years,” he said. “It was right around the time I turned ten. She’d promised me this real big party. The best ever. Dad was going on at her how we couldn’t afford it, ‘cos he wasn’t doing so good then. But that’s how I knew, when she didn’t come home, that it was
down to him.”

  I closed my eyes momentarily, trying to get a handle on the logic. OK, supposing just for a moment that there was any grain of truth in all this. Supposing Keith Pelzner had murdered his wife five years ago. It seemed far-fetched, but then so did being pursued and shot at by an imitation or off-duty cop in an amusement park. So did being followed in broad daylight by a couple of hardcases in a Buick.

  “So why has he waited until now to do anything about you?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “Dunno,” he said, looking up at me but unable to hold my gaze for long. “Maybe it’s ‘cos I wanted to go to Daytona for Spring Break this year. Maybe he thought if I go back up there I might find out what really happened to her.”

  Now that really was stretching it.

  I shook my head slowly. “I just don’t know, Trey, it sounds a little—”

  That was as far as I got. He jumped off the bed like someone had turned up the gas under him. “Oh sure,” he cried. “That’s right, tell me I’m talking weird, just like Dad does whenever I try to talk to him about Mom. Why don’t you tell me I’m delusional, too? Drop a few hints about how maybe I should, like, see a shrink, huh?”

  And with that he stormed into the only place he could get away from me – the bathroom – and made sure he slammed the door behind him hard enough to set the wall light fittings jiggling.

  I sat there on the bed and put my head in my hands. Of all the training I’d had in the army to prepare me for stress under combat, nothing compared to trying to keep a stroppy teenager under control.

  “Jesus, Sean,” I murmured under my breath, “where are you now when I need you?”

  I reached behind me and pulled the SIG out of the back of my belt. With automatic movements I dropped the magazine clear and thumbed the rounds out into a little pile in front of me, counting them. I had the full eight, but no spare magazine. I hadn’t expected Sean to carry a gun that wasn’t fully loaded but if people were going to keep shooting at me it was nice to be sure, even so.

  The sight of the pistol and the copper-nosed bullets brought back all the rush of emotion I’d felt at the house. I had to take a couple of deep breaths and clamp down hard on it, scowling at my reflection in the mirror on the wall behind the TV.

  Sean might still be OK, I told myself. After all, he had said he was going to see Gerri Raybourn this morning to find out what the real story was with Keith Pelzner. Maybe it was Keith himself who’d intercepted him. Maybe Sean had never got there. If he had, I tried hard to ignore the fact that he had promised to go armed and had clearly not done so. There could be any number of reasons he’d left his gun behind other than the one that was uppermost in my mind.

  And there was one way to find out.

  I quickly refilled the magazine and tucked the gun away again out of sight, then dug the mobile phone out of my pocket. I didn’t know the direct line number for Gerri Raybourn but, along with the obligatory Gideon bible, there was a Bell South Yellow Pages in the drawer by the bed. I looked up the number for the software company Keith worked for and dialled.

  As I waited for the phone to be picked up I checked my watch. It was well before five, but for a while I feared they’d already left for the afternoon.

  Eventually the phone was answered by a girl who spoke so fast I could hardly tell what she said. I gave her my name anyway and asked to be put through to Gerri’s office.

  She put me on hold and for what seemed like a long time I listened to the quick-fire presentation of the local commercial radio station. Then the lady herself came on the line.

  “Charlie!” she yelled, her voice strident enough to make me jerk the mobile away from my ear. “What the fuck are you playing at?”

  Well that answered the question of whether she’d been informed about the bloody battle at the park, I suppose. Not quite the face of concern I’d been hoping for, though.

  “Well thanks a bundle, Gerri,” I bit back, hackles rising defensively. “That kind of attitude’s going to get us a long way, isn’t it?”

  For a moment there was silence and I had visions of her building up to a real explosion. But when she spoke again her voice had that reined-in quality which told me she’d been using the time to get a grip on her temper. “OK, OK, I’m sorry,” she ground out, surprising me with the apology. “Just let me talk to Trey.”

  I glanced at the bathroom door, still firmly shut. “He’s not available to come to the phone right now,” I said dryly.

  I heard Gerri’s breath hiss out in annoyance. “Godammit, Charlie, he’s just a kid. I need to know he’s all right, you understand me? I can’t help you unless I know he’s OK.”

  Oh great, so you don’t give a shit if I get killed in the process? The thought was fully formed before it dawned on me that was exactly what I was being paid for. I suppose it was the realisation of my own expendability that allowed more sarcasm to creep into my voice than it should have done.

  “You’ll just have to trust me when I tell you that he’s unharmed,” I replied. “And I am doing my best to keep him that way.”

  “OK, OK.” Another long pause, then the words came out in a rush. “Look I’m here to help. I really appreciate that you’ve contacted me, but I need for you to tell me what it is you want me to do.”

  “Want?” Her question was so banal I had to wrestle a sudden splurge of temper. Jesus, and I thought these people were supposed to be professionals. “What I want you to do,” I snapped, “is help me find a way out of this mess.”

  “OK, that’s good,” she said, sounding distracted now, as though she was also trying to carry on a second conversation at her end of the line and was only managing to give me half her attention. Either she wasn’t taking this seriously or she was so far out of her depth she needed a wetsuit. “That’s good,” she repeated. “We can help you. Are you under threat at this time?”

  “Hang on.” I moved over to the curtain and peered down onto the parking area. Two cars that had been there when we’d arrived had now gone, but no new vehicles had taken their place. In particular, there were no beige Buicks. “No,” I said. “I don’t think so.”

  “OK Charlie, that’s good. Now, just tell us where you are and we can sort this whole thing out.”

  There was something about that slightly agitated tone that was setting all my instincts on edge like the fur down a dog’s spine. “What about Sean?”

  That got an immediate reaction. “Jesus Charlie, there’s nothing I can do—” She stopped abruptly, obviously realising what I was asking and that she hadn’t picked the most diplomatic manner of breaking the bad news.

  “Look, I’m real sorry about Sean, Charlie, but you’re gonna have to let him go,” she said, making a fresh start and hiding the fact she didn’t give a damn behind the quick apology, her voice oozing with insincere concern. “Let’s just concentrate on getting you and Trey to safety, OK? We can work out the details later. Just tell us where you are and let us come get you.”

  It was my turn to go quiet, fighting not to let the tears come. For a moment there was nothing but the occasional click of static on the line, then her patience broke. “Come on, Charlie, cut me some slack, huh?” she bit out. “I’m putting my neck on the line for you here.”

  “All right,” I said and gave her the name of the motel and a rough idea of its location, trying to ignore the mental klaxon that was blaring in the back of my skull.

  But not completely. When Gerri demanded the room number I squinted through the gap in the curtain at the block opposite, but the room numbers themselves were small and I couldn’t quite read them clearly at this distance. The room directly across from ours was in darkness, unoccupied. On impulse, I directed her there. “Right-hand block, left-hand end room, first floor,” I said.

  “We’ll find it, don’t you worry,” she said. “Now sit tight, Charlie and wait for us to come get you. And don’t worry. You’ve done the right thing. Everything’s gonna be OK.”

  So why, as I ended the call, did I
get the feeling I’d just made a big mistake?

  I knew there were a hundred other questions I should have asked Gerri while I had the chance, but I was still shell-shocked about Sean. I went backwards and forwards over that part of the conversation, recalling with a stark clarity the way Gerri had blown up at the mention of his name. She’d been evasive, too. Whatever had happened to him, it must have been bad to have provoked that kind of reaction.

  I was still sitting there, staring at nothing when the bathroom door opened and Trey shuffled out, looking a bit sheepish. He’d been attempting, I noticed, to clean up his shirt. The front of it was still wet. Not just sulking, then.

  I don’t know what he saw in my face, but his stride faltered and he came to sit on the side of the bed opposite. When he spoke his voice was almost tentative. “What’s up?”