Off the Record: An Avery Rich Mystery (Avery Rich Mysteries Book 1)

by Sara Gauldin

  I looked back at the Ford and tightened my seat belt. This couldn't be good, but maybe it is better to go out with a chance than to wait to be hunted down, and who knows what. Before I had time to predict what Kain had in mind, we were careening across the lanes of traffic, directly in the path of a semi-truck that was our only cover from the Taurus. I instinctively leaned away from the tons of steel hurtling toward my window. I could hear the groan of the truck's breaks and the squeal of its tires as the huge, eighteen-wheeler brought its load around in a colossal jack knife. The other vehicles scrambled to avoid the mammoth truck as its momentum forced it ever closer to the 6. I spotted the Taurus madly swerving in an attempt to avoid the floundering truck and the swarm of smaller vehicles who were also trying to escape the truck's thundering approach.

  Kain punched the pedal to the floor and aimed toward the next exit, for all the little car was worth. The squealing, groaning noise of the highway coming to a halt was deafening. The truck seemed to approach incrementally. Each moment it gained more ground in its quest to crush the little car like an inconsequential bug. The principle of momentum would either be our friend or our enemy. If the 6 had enough speed we might be able to clear the wreck, but if it didn't, we would be absorbed by the havoc we had caused. The truck seemed destined to overtake us in this life-or-death experiment, but just as it was upon us, the 6 cleared the exit, and we went whizzing around the curve twice as fast as was safe to proceed.

  I craned my neck to see what happened to the Taurus. It was safe, but it had stopped in the menagerie of traffic quickly collecting around the truck. Kain reached the top of the exit and immediately took the next exit to put us back on the highway, going in the opposite direction.

  “You could have killed us!” The words tumbled out with a flood of emotion that embarrassed me as soon I'd said it.

  “I know.” Kain's tone was very matter-of-fact. “However, my hope was to keep us alive. I think that's better than the plan those two thugs had in mind, which was more likely to kill us outright than not.”

  I knew he was right. As we rocketed down the road, I began to feel the wear of the day’s events. I pulled off my ruined heels and pulled up my pant leg to reveal a trail of road burn from the parking lot earlier. I could feel several bruises, already forming. Luckily, there were no bullet holes.

  “Are you alright?” My voice was softer now.

  “Yeah, I think I’m fine.” Kain’s voice had a guilty twinge to it. “I’m sorry if I hurt you when we hit the ground. Things just happened fast and I was out of options.”

  “I’ll be fine,” I said, and I would be, if I could get a moment in which nobody was shooting at me, to sort all of this out.

  “That really was too close,” Kain said. “I let myself get sloppy; it won’t happen again.” Kain held up his arm. I could see the fray marks and a hint of blood soaking through the fabric where a bullet had grazed his sleeve.

  “Oh, God, you’re hit!” I realized with a jolt.

  “It’s just a scratch--no worries,” Kain said. He cast a sideways glance in my direction, and I realized that his eyes had recovered that twinkle I saw the first time we'd met. I felt an involuntary shiver go down my spine. In another situation, Kain really would have been incredibly handsome.

  “Where to now?” I asked.

  “We need to regroup before we move forward. You need shoes, and we need to clean up. Access to a phone and the Internet would be great, too.”

  “Go to 1745 Faith Place,” I volunteered.

  “Your home?” Kain's eyes widened with surprise. “You know that if they track us, you won’t be safe there anymore.”

  “They're tracking me, not just my address. It really won’t matter when I go home; they'll find me there if they're looking,” I said. “Besides, I can change there, and we can patch you up.”

  Kain nodded in agreement, and we sped toward my home. I had to hope we could resolve this, so I could return there without fear, sometime soon.

  Chapter 8

  We pulled up to the curb outside of my place. My humble apartment was a portion of an older home. Both Kain and I paused and took in the neighborhood with an enhanced sense of skepticism. What or whom could really be trusted at this point? Until I knew the breadth of this situation, I was determined to be overly cautious.

  “Do you see any cars or faces you don’t normally see in the neighborhood?” Kain’s voice was firm but quiet.

  “No, I don’t think anything looks out of place.”

  “Let’s try not to draw too much attention," Kain said. "Hmm, we need a logical scenario.”

  “Logical? I think you're overlooking the obvious.” I felt a nervous laugh rise to my lips. “Just follow my lead.”

  Kain raised his eyebrows. I don’t think he caught my drift at all. Oh well, he would either figure it out, or look like the luckiest idiot ever to walk a girl to her door.

  “All right, let’s go.” Kain spoke with a tone of apprehension. He was not accustomed to not being one step ahead of the game. Now I had him in an unknown location with a plan with which he was not confident.

  We opened the car doors at the same time. He pushed the lock button on his key fob as we walked steadily toward my front door. As we approached, I took my key from my pocket. I paused at the threshold. It was now or never. I put the key in the lock and turned to Kain with a practiced smile. “Thank you for a wonderful afternoon.” I beamed what I hoped was my most seductive smile at Kain.

  He looked surprised for a split second, but his whole expression changed when he realized my plan, and he seemed willing to play along.

  “Well, of course, it was my pleasure.” Kain smiled at me with such sincerity, that for a moment I almost bought it.

  I leaned toward Kain for my ‘parting kiss.’ He reciprocated, and I felt the warmth of his embrace. He was muscular, and firm to the touch. His scent encircled me, and held me just as his arms had. His lips found mine, and we kissed with an element of passion that I cannot fully catalog as improvisation.

  I let the kiss linger. Part of me wondered if there was another side to this paranoid person, a side that might be open and receptive to another human being. Our kiss dwindled, and I gazed up into Kain’s ultra-blue eyes that now held more twinkle than I had ever known them to encompass.

  “Would you like to come in for a drink?” I asked. The charade mattered here.

  “Who could say no to a beautiful woman after a kiss like that?” Kain asked.

  I felt a rush of attraction that I immediately fought back down. There was no sense in falling for my own ruse. I opened the door and we stepped through. As soon as we were safely inside, the entire atmosphere of our new relationship altered. I checked the lock and the deadbolt. Kain immediately began closing the blinds and curtain in every room. “Does anything look out of place to you?” Kain asked. “It’s hard for me to tell if anyone's been here without a basis for comparison.”

  “Everything looks good so far, are the windows secure?” I asked.

  “Covered and locked, so far,” Kain responded. “Do you have more than one entrance?”

  “I have a back door, straight through, in the kitchen, and a balcony upstairs.” As I spoke I approached my home phone. The answering machine light blinked a steady throb of red. I pressed the button and listened.

  The first message was from my dad. He was just checking in, and wanted to tell me about his progress with his garden: so far so good. The second message was my dentist, wanting to confirm my appointment for next Monday. The last message was a voice familiar to me: Commander Calbert.

  Rich, this is Calbert. You haven't checked in for almost six hours. Your cell phone is unreachable. I'm getting odd reports of shots fired, and wrecks on the highway, but you’re not calling in. You’re not calling in. I’m worried about you.

  Crap, how could I call in without leading these morons back to me, or freaking Kain out, for that matter?

  “Interesting.”

  Kain’s voice
behind me made me jump. For a big man, he certainly was quiet on his feet.

  “Not really, he's my commander; it's his job to keep tabs on my progress.” I thought this one was pretty obvious.

  “No, that he knew about the shots fired, and the little cat and mouse exchange on the highway.”

  “I guess witnesses must have reported them.”

  “The witnesses named you, specifically?”

  “Oh, holy crap! You don’t think that those punks tracking us are on the force, do you?” How could this possibly be, to go from working inside the law, as its officer, to becoming as wanted as an average criminal?

  “Do you have any better explanation?" Kain’s query hung in the air.

  I wanted to confirm there was every logical explanation but crooked cops hunting us. Deductive reasoning stomped down every glimmer of an alternative I could come up with.

  “I wish I did. Either way, I need to let Calbert know I’m okay, and warn him if there's something off the books going on.”

  He shook his head. “Don’t bother. He knows. He's warning you.”

  Kain had to be putting something together I was missing.

  “Warning me? What do you mean?” I demanded. “Were we listening to the same message?"

  “Listen again, this time with an open mind. If you're open to the idea, the message is much more apparent.”

  Kain’s request seemed simple enough. I pushed play on the machine and skipped over the other messages. The machine beeped and played again:

  Rich, this is Calbert. You have not checked in for almost six hours. Your cell phone is unreachable. I'm getting odd reports of shots fired, and wrecks on the highway, but you’re not calling in. You’re not calling in. I’m worried about you.

  “Come on Avery, put it together,” Kain insisted.

  “I can’t help it if I don’t look for second meanings in every message. I over analyze criminal behavior, not my boss's phone messages!” I was vacillating from feeling like I was slow on the up-take, and that Kain would probably see hidden meanings in everything, and that I needed to be the objective one. “Okay, then, what is it I’m missing?”

  “He mentions knowing about the shots fired and the chase. He says that it came from a report. He’s telling you this so you know the police are involved. Then he says, “You’re not calling in,” twice. His whole tone changes when he says it. He's telling you not to call in.” What a double bind! I am either in trouble with work for not calling in on the right side of the law, or I'm somehow a crimeless fugitive from justice. Neither is a great career booster.

  What had I gotten myself into?

  Chapter 9

  I let the water run down my body as the shower’s steam filled my every pore. My hair hung past my shoulders in waving ripples that caused the water to form a multitude of rivulets. I wished I could wash away some of the day’s events, mostly, the doubt. Kain had warned me that knowing certain things would open a door I could not close, however, I'd marched, headlong, into this crazy world of conspiracy where nothing was what it seemed to be, without hesitation. I vacillated between taking comfort in the idea that Kain was truly insane, and I was only humoring him for the sake of my commander’s orders, and some deep-seated desire to classify the man whom I had kissed so convincingly on my doorstep, as something other than warped. Besides, if there was an element of society that is driving crime and civic unrest, it would be part of my job to be aware of it. I gave up on figuring it out and turned the water off.

  I treated and bandaged the trail of scrapes running along my calf before dressing in a hurry. All in all, I seemed to have come out better physically than mentally today. I opened the door of my only bathroom and watched a small gust of steam roll into the hall and disappear. I headed toward the kitchen where I had left Kain, who was already searching for food in my hodgepodge of groceries and take-out.

  Kain smirked at me when I entered the room. “Ah, you’re out.”

  “Yes, fresh, clean and ready to find a way out of this mess, and hopefully some missing bankers in the process.”

  Kain nodded in agreement. He gestured to my tiny table. He had already assembled a medley of the refrigerator’s contents.

  “You don’t get to the grocery store much, do you?” he asked.

  I shook my head, feeling self-conscious. “I guess not. It's just me here, and I live at work, more than I do at home.”

  He shrugged. “Either way, eat up. I have a feeling we'll need to stay on the move for a while.” Kain’s voice sounded severe. “By the way, where's your first-aid kit?" He waved his arm, swathed in his now blood-stained sleeve towards me.

  “Oh, let me have a look at that,” I demanded. I could not have a civilian in need of medical care, bleeding in my apartment, while I indulged in dinner. I braced myself. If he needed to be taken to a hospital, we would hit a wall in terms of our search and evasion.

  Kain hesitated, and then seemed to decide. “Yes, Ma’am.”

  I went back to the bathroom in search of my first-aid kit while Kain attempted to roll up his sleeve. After trying to finagle the torn, sticky cloth for a couple of minutes, I stopped him. “Just take the shirt off. I'll need to wash it for you, anyway.”

  Kain unbuttoned his shirt. He was wearing a plain, white undershirt beneath it. I noticed that it accentuated his muscular build.

  Suddenly, Kain smirked. “Avery, if you wanted me out of my shirt, you could have just asked. There was no need to get me shot first.” I felt my face flush before I could stop it.

  “I…err…just let me see your wound.”

  Kain obliged. The wound was superficial, a graze across his right bicep. The bleeding had mostly stopped, but it could have used a couple of stitches. I cleaned it carefully, and attempted a row of homemade butterfly bandages.

  “Try not to let it get soaked in the shower."

  Kain nodded and headed toward the bathroom. I listened for the sound of the water running before I sat down to eat. I found that I was much hungrier than I had realized, and made short work of my meal. I threw Kain’s ruined shirt in for a quick wash cycle, then I poured myself a tall glass of ice water, and sat down with a pen and paper. What did we know so far? I scribbled:

  -We know the names and branches of the missing bankers

  -Alan Morris, First National Bank, Wickford Park branch--a friend of the commander

  -Jim Maple, First National Bank, Ravensworth Shopping Center--from an anonymous tip

  to Calbert--blood was found on the phone which reported him missing at Fort Ward Park

  -Lawrence Shultz, First National Bank, Down Town–was never reported missing,

  noticed by the commander

  -Kain could draw some sort of symbol and locate the office of Douglas White

  -White was overheard saying “They” were puppets, and they were not needed. He spoke about loans being in default, and referred to someone by the name of “Collins”

  -White claimed to have met with both Shultz and Morris on Tuesday, after both were

  already missing

  -White provided contact information for Morris 555-2864 – home, 555-7439 work

  and 555-4351 cell

  -Kain has contact information for the last number called, Collins?

  -There are two armed men who want us not to ask around

  -One or both men are tied to the police

  -They have been driving a grey Taurus, a rental-plate number, AYW-4872

  -Calbert knew about the chase, and may or may not want me to contact him

  Where did any of this leave us?

  I needed to find out the name of the rental company, and the name they were given for the rental. I needed a first name and location for this Collins person. I needed to see the bank's records of foreclosures. Without a warrant, that was not likely to happen. I needed to talk to the families of the missing, but that would likely be a dead end as well, considering the strange twist that they were not willing to report their loved ones as missing. I need
ed a name to go with the phone number for White’s call. Lastly, I needed to know more about the lives of these men so I could understand why they would suddenly vanish. I made up my mind to start with the phone numbers I knew for Alan Morris.

  I picked up my home phone, blocked my number, and dialed Mr. Morris's home number. It rang twice before a woman answered.

  “Hello?” Her voice was high-pitched and anxious.

  “Hello, this is Detective Avery Rich; may I speak with Alan Morris, please?”

  “He can’t come to the phone; may I give him a message?” she asked. This was exactly the reaction Calbert had described.

  “Yes, please tell him I called, and that I’ll try to stop by his office to speak with him on Friday.”

  “Ah, yes, ma’am. I’ll let him know”

  “Oh, and one more thing--how long has Mr. Morris been out of town?” I needed a time frame, and I needed to hear her reaction.

  “Out of town?” she repeated. “Oh, yes, he has been away for two weeks.”

  “And where was he visiting?” I was pushing my luck, and I knew it.

  “Oh, he was just traveling for business.” Mrs. Morris seemed relieved to have found an appropriately vague response.

  “Thank you, ma’am. Have a nice evening.” I ended our call. Either way, I had set the bait for a bank visit tomorrow. If I could not go to collect the evidence directly, perhaps I could invite it to come to me.

  “Good-bye,” Mrs. Morris said. Her voice cracked.

  “Good-bye,” I said.

  I listened for the shower, but the water was already off. I decided to go ahead with another call, this time, the bank where Mr. Morris was employed. It was almost 5:00, closing time for most banks. I crossed my fingers, blocked my number, and dialed.

  The call was picked up almost immediately by a perky receptionist. Her voice sounded blonde, if that is even possible. “Hello, and thank you for calling First National Bank. How may I help you?”

  “May I please speak with Mr. Alan Morris?”

  “I’ll see if he's in. Can you hold?” She seemed a bit confused about the appropriate answer to my query.