Spare Parts: A Ted Mitchell Detective Novel (Ted Mitchell Detective Novels Book 4)

by Jeffrey Kinghorn

  “How long has it been?” I said.

  “A week,” said Seldeen, “ten days. Feels like a lifetime.”

  “You’ve been front and center at work,” I said.

  “What am I going to do,” he said, “sit here and listen to silence?”

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “You have any idea how much sound three kids can make,” he said, “even when they’re trying to be quiet?”

  I did not. Reed Thomas. Now the Seldeens. Marriage just didn’t seem to work anymore. Adrienne sat cross-legged on the floor next to Grace. She listened but was not invested. The tea grew cold. We waited for another idea to descend, not wanting to abandon Adam to the dark, empty house on the heels of my outrageous idea having gone belly-up. We were stuck.

  Adrienne said, “I’m going to call Rita.” She took her cell phone back into the kitchen. The sound of each of her foot-falls echoed through the house, making its emptiness more than what it visually seemed to be. She went far enough away that we could not hear her conversation.

  “You were right to come here,” said Seldeen. “Had the situation been normal this would have been the perfect place for the child. Not now, obviously.”

  “No,” I said. “Never would have figured this.”

  To his credit, Seldeen had not resorted to booze for solace. He sipped more of the cold tea and, if I sensed correctly that he seemed sharper than when we had first arrived, it would have to be in gratitude for something to focus on other than his family’s having left him.

  “She gives even temporary custody to her mother,” I said, “or to her former husband, and she’ll never see Grace again.

  “No,” he said, “she shouldn’t do that. Give me a minute.” He slid the back of a knuckle across his lower lip.

  My mind went to Althea Morgan Pearce. She could summon a posse of well-armed men and boys from the streets of her neighborhood who would stake out an impregnable perimeter around her small house. The challenge would be in convincing Adrienne that the plan, and that location had merit, which didn’t seem likely. We continued to sit in each other’s presence, silently working over our separate angles.

  When Adrienne headed back toward us, we could hear her long before we saw her. I believe I noted the outcome on her face before she tried to communicate anything. When she saw me looking, she simply shook her head, and dropped the phone back into her shoulder bag sitting on the floor. So, now the Rita-option wasn’t going to fly either.

  Seldeen said, “You willing to take a ride?” His turn to be outrageous.

  We all quickened on it.

  Forty-five minutes later, we pulled up to a sprawling ranch house in the Briar Forest section of west Houston. I had driven. Adam rode shotgun. Adrienne sat in back with Grace.

  “Okay,” he said, “let me lay it out. Stay put.”

  He hopped out of the Chrysler and headed up the walk to the front door. Lights shone from inside. The house had a broad plane of green roof across the front that over-hung the entire breadth of the structure to form a ground-level, covered porch. In another context it might have been called a farmer’s porch. The front window was slightly bayed.

  “And if this doesn’t work?” said Adrienne.

  I said, “We’ll come up with something.”

  I saw her, in the rearview mirror, caress the top of Grace’s head without waking her. She was girding herself for the unthinkable. “I may have to send her back to Virginia,” she said.

  I was not yet willing to consider such a possibility. But I let that moment slowly become the next one. Seldeen trotted back out to the car and it was only then that I got the full picture of how unkempt he was. I rarely saw him in shirt sleeves. A mask of dark stubble sooted his jaw and neck. His hair, always fastidiously groomed, was all fly-away and cascading down his forehead. That he had invigorated himself to tackle our problem revealed again the degree to which he had suspended effort when alone in that grim, empty house, tether-less without work, adrift without family. He said, “Bring the child. And do not set him off. He’s on the edge.”

  This last, of course, was aimed at me.

  Inside, Mulcahy displaced as much air as he did in all other landscapes. The difference here was that his wife Catherine, whom he referred to as Cat, was in no way diminished by his need to dominate. It became instantly clear that he had chosen well and that he was evenly matched. While she did not challenge his gruff demeanor, nether did she fall prey to it. She let it spend itself without confrontation even while she pressed on.

  Mulcahy growled, “You have got one hell of a nerve, Mitchell.”

  I pressed my lips together and nodded in agreement, resolved on Seldeen’s admonition, to swallow anything hurled in my direction.

  Grace responded to Catherine’s out-stretched arms with a delight that was rare with strangers, but welcomed. Adrienne allowed Cat to take her. It was enough to seal the deal. Cat said, “But of course she’ll stay with us. There can be no discussion.” She offered a gracious smile, independent of whatever might be brewing in her husband. “Come in,” she said. “Please. Come in.”

  Catherine Mulcahy was the color of copper thanks to a thorough covering of freckles. She brandished her high-wattage smile again which broadcast about itself that it could not be withered. Watching his wife set Grace down and walk with her into the living room followed by Adrienne revealed Mulcahy to be every inch an equal in his own house, as compared to his presumed alpha-dog comportment in all other environments. He turned to Adam Seldeen and allowed the disapproval he noted in his appearance to find its mark. He said, “The hell’s the matter with you?”

  Adam blanched and looked away. “There was no one else,” he said. “I took a chance.”

  “You sure did,” said Mulcahy, who was then back on me. “You’re crossing all kinds of lines here, P.I.” Again I bit down on the inside of my lips to keep my mouth shut. Let it come, I thought, just take it. Dennis Mulcahy moved in very close to my face and lowered his voice so the ladies would not hear. “I keep my work out of my house,” he said. “I do not involve my family. You have darkened my door. You have sullied my home.”

  “Dennis,” said Seldeen.

  Mulcahy backed away and said no more.

  I recognized something in his face, in his eyes, a shadow of fear which I’d never credited as being possible in him. It was an almost imperceptible tell of raw concern for his wife. My gut flipped in comeuppance of my shallow disregard. I said, “Thank you.”

  He pressed in to within an inch of my face again and bared his teeth. “My family gets hurt because of this,” he said, “you won’t be thanking me or anyone else.”

  “Dennis, “Seldeen said again.

  “Don’t Dennis-me,” said Mulcahy. He fixed his partner with a glare that had to have been hard for Seldeen to absorb. I had never seen this degree of displeasure in a man well known for exhibiting displeasure. Adam and I became school boys in danger of spontaneously igniting from mere proximity to the heat that filled the front of that house. Mulcahy broke, turned away, and joined the ladies in the living room, adopting an air of heartfelt concern so opposed to the moment we’d just shared as to be astonishing.

  After a time it was decided that I would run Seldeen back up to his home in Spring, which would give Grace a period of settling in before I returned to pick up Adrienne. We rode together in silence. There was no ease in it. How do you comfort a man who had lost everything, yet had extended himself in extremity to benefit you? “Adam,” I said, “I don’t know what to say.”

  “Nothing to say,” he said. “Life happens.”

  “You’re welcome to stay at my place,” I said, “if you’re sick of being alone at yours.”

  “Thanks,” he said. “Maybe. I don’t know.”

  “Got a new bed,” I said. “It’s yours. I’m good on the couch.”

  “Thing is,” he said, “too many people end up dead at your place.” Gut-punched. But no argument from me. “Sorry,” he added after a mome
nt.

  “It’s the truth,” I said. “I was hoping for some protection.”

  “Plenty of floor at my house,” he said.

  Again we became that same couple of school boys, only, now, afraid of the dark.

  The contortions this case continued to manifest in place of path or direction did not cease when Adrienne and I arrived back at her place. Constance Davenport was gone. Make that vanished. Her purse was there. Her clothes. Cosmetics. Medicines. Nothing had been disturbed or was out of place anywhere in the house. The front door had been closed but not locked. A light in the living room had been left on as if to welcome our return. It was, however, a lamp that Adrienne rarely if ever used; thus, neither had her mother.

  I kept my thoughts to myself and dared not look directly at Adrienne for fear she’d see them anyway. I had led the way from room to room to ensure each one was clear.

  She checked for the telling articles that screamed out how everything about this discovery was wrong. We ended up in the kitchen. Adrienne straight-armed the butcher block work table in the center of the room and allowed her head to drop down between her arms, lower even than her taut shoulders.

  Had we left too soon? Or gotten out just in time? Twenty-four hours would need to pass for the proper registering of a missing persons report. In the circumstance perhaps there might be some yield regarding that requirement. To whom should we appeal? Mulcahy? Seldeen? All capital there had been spent. Ebbersole and Taggart? Whoever was on call? Given the history of the parties involved, and the fact that an unseemly argument had occurred with an exchange of harsh words in the last moments together between mother and daughter was likely going to ensure that the twenty-four hour wait period be formally observed.

  “What now?” asked Adrienne. This had been given to the floor.

  I observed her peripherally from the pillared archway where kitchen became dining room. My mind had gone riot. She came off the work table with a round house punch directly into my gut for which I was not prepared. She could use her fists like a man. She pushed passed me into and through the dining room. Perhaps she was making another sweep through the house. Maybe she was careening toward a toilet in which to heave whatever was in her stomach. Most likely, she simply had to get away from me.

  There might once have been a time Adrienne would have welcomed such a disappearance of her mother, to slake a thirst she would not have wanted to own. But the circuitous labyrinth of dysfunction between them had turned absurd. They had reconnected, only to be at odds once more, full of rage, forgiveness, love, fear, panic, a seesaw of opposites.

  Once I got my breath back and could stand up straight again, I worked on checking the trembling at my core. It was like fevered chills. Certainty. Constance Davenport was already dead. Never mind there was no lacerated, bled-out corpse left behind. She would never be found. Of all, something told me this last would end up being the truth.

  Sixteen

  It took me two full days and a night to happen onto Reznikov again. I was no longer discreet about it. And like anything for which you go out looking, it evades you to the extent that your determination is resolute. It is only when you cease to pursue that the thing itself appears.

  Deep in the night of the second day, I had just given up the hunt when I thought I saw the E150 glide through a La Quinta Motel parking lot via my right side mirror as I was about to change lanes. I was on the I-10 frontage along which the parking lots that lined it were all connected. I turned into a medium-sized multi-business structure ten stories high, and wound my way back through the lot to the far side of the La Quinta, where I spotted the van easing up to a side door quite a ways from the covered lobby entrance in the center-front of the building.

  Each time I had encountered Reznikov, it had been during the day. The marketing of human organs, daytime hours, okay, sure, why not? But the hustle business, which was the front, was traditionally and predominately a dusk-until-dawn operation. That Reznikov might not be out on the prowl during prime time was worth thinking about. In and of it’s self, did it bespeak which of the two endeavors held his chief interest?

  I was past caring about who might see me. The adoption of that attitude appeared to charm my continuing to remain undetected behind a row of parked cars as I watched the van’s now customary near-stoppage that allowed Reznikov to step down out of the vehicle and go directly up to and through the side door that eased open for him the moment he had reached it. Another perfectly timed and coordinated delivery that occurred so fast and so gracefully that it had obtained to the near invisible. Even before he had reached the building’s side door, the van had eased away from the curb and had continued its glide through the lot, back onto the I-10 frontage, where it sped up and disappeared into traffic headed for the freeway. Smooth did not begin.

  A last known sighting after two days of diligence required that I stayed put. It was after 2 a.m., the magic hour, when most bars closed and the last-call big push for street business got underway. I was tired but did not want sleep to overtake me, so I kept my mind engaged. First up: was this common practice for Reznikov, or a single event? If it were the latter, it begged that something out of the ordinary was about to occur that necessitated such a move.

  I relocated to a more advantageous spot several rows over in line with the door. It was a small change that allowed me to see a stairwell and beyond it down the corridor on the inside of the door. Were I alert enough come morning, I was going to be able to see Reznikov’s approach to the door, which would afford me the added detail of observing his preference for ground floor or upper storied accommodation.

  And, La Quinta, what of that? Not a flop-house. Not a five star hotel. Did he prefer motels to hotels? If motels, were they always adjacent to freeways outside the gridlock of downtown traffic? Motels with easily accessible side doors for unmonitored comings and goings?

  How about this? He decided where to put his head at night only at the very last possible moment. I liked it. Rooms might be secured at several different places, under bogus names, registered for by a posse of henchmen, who then stood by respective side doors and waited for calls or texts that would alert imminent arrival. I continued to like it.

  Reznikov had no residence. He remained a man without a home who made virtue of a city rich in hospitality establishments. The mix of variables was stunning. A random selection of motel rooms secured in as random a rotation as names out of a hat might provide. This, coupled with a short-straw selection of each night’s choice made moments before arrival, and this guy could only be found by luck, such as I had benefited from, or, what’s the word…synchronicity? I’d had only the briefest glimpse of what I thought was the van, but wasn’t sure until I’d circled back in time to catch another brief glimpse of it before it virtually disappeared for the night.

  And that was another thing, the van was not parked at Reznikov’s physical location. No one could spot the van in a parking lot and have found the prize. Not a bad construction of how Reznikov got from one day to the next while maintaining a life of continuous movement.

  I needed proof.

  I needed it for Allison.

  I needed it to close with Adrienne.

  And there it was, fully blossomed into words…to close with Adrienne. I let that hang there without touching it for a while. Recognition that it had been a long time coming, and that it wasn’t going go away grew like a lens adjusting itself to bring the object of its eye into sharpest clarity.

  Adrienne and I had not spoken much beyond what was required to report on her mother’s disappearance. Still no word on that. Prior animosity, on top of their vitriolic last exchange, had pushed the emotional weight of Mrs. Davenport’s having vanished into a place beyond reason or explanation. Having eventually filed a missing persons report, Adrienne quickly became a person of interest regarding suspected foul play. Moreover, her refusal to reveal Grace’s whereabouts did not win her a lot of support among the growing number of reluctant investigators who had tripped into havin
g official roles in the case.

  Mulcahy and Seldeen doused the flames of suspicion somewhat by commandeering the report of Constance’s disappearance into their ongoing homicide investigation on Pepper. It was an escalating entanglement of what had essentially begun as a matter for the Vice Squad, then for Trafficking, and only then did it become ripe for Homicide. Their expectation was that a discovery of Mrs. Davenport’s body would be forthcoming in the message-sending accumulation of corpses that seemed to be accruing as the case continued to unfold.

  For Mulcahy, in particular, that I was associated, was grist for his ongoing animus toward me. Understandable, since I’d had the temerity to invade his home and had co-opted the emotional engagement of his wife for the safety of Grace. It was immaterial that we had showed up on his doorstep at the behest of Adam Seldeen.

  Conveniently, again, I recognized that my ability to move more fluidly than codified procedure permits allows for a private investigator to become a tacit sub-contractor to police investigators whose efforts can get bound up by regulation. A gray area, to be sure, never openly acknowledged. Despite our ongoing antagonism, Mulcahy, Seldeen, and I, over the years, had come to lean on my willingness to play piñata with hornets’ nests. Yet…

  And yet…

  I felt myself moving toward a place of disengagement. From everyone. An active turning away from attachments in all things personal, while remaining viable where professional necessity required. Hunger for such personal solitude grew stronger every day. I had long felt I spent far too much time alone; whereas, of late, no amount of being alone was ever enough.

  My eyes settled on the glass side-door again, and beyond it to the corridor inside. Where I to go inside and walk the place out, would I see the proverbial man on the watch? I concluded not. Where I to go from room to room, would I find Reznikov alone, or would that aforementioned man-on-watch be inside the room, watching over him as he slept? I concluded no again. Perhaps in an adjoining room, in which case, the cost for lodgings would be formidable.