by Bob Mayer
That wasn't too surprising. Chase realized he'd asked about the wrong person having an affair when he'd questioned him. "You think he might have hired someone to kill her?"
Porter was non-committal. "Don't know. He's got motive and money. But that doesn't help explain the semen."
"Maybe Stevens hired one punk and the bozo brought friends along for the fun?"
"That puts me back where I was before. On the street busting ass, trying to make one squeal."
“Great. Got anything there?”
“Nothing specific.”
Chase could tell something was on his partner’s mind. “What was unspecific that you got?”
“Someone’s been shaking down dealers,” Porter said.
“Ripping them off?”
Porter shook his head. “No. Asking questions. Sounds almost like a cop. Trying to find who their supplier was.” Porter squinted. “Chase?”
Chase thought if he heard his name with that tone one more time he’d have to pull out his 10mm and shoot somebody. “Yes?”
“How did it go this morning with the chief?”
“He wanted to know why I didn’t let Barnes shoot me first. If Barnes had done that, then it would have been fine with the chief for me to off him. I think. I don’t know. Maybe not. The chief still might have been a tad disappointed and upset with my police procedure.”
“The chief’s a dick. A brown-noser.”
Chase shrugged.
Porter stood, reading the mood and ready to go home. “You need to talk, Chase, I’m here for you.”
“I know.”
Another great day at work done. Chase checked his messages and headed out.
* * * * *
Waiting for Chase in the parking lot was Fortin. He was standing next to a black van with tinted glass and waved Chase over as he slid open the side door. He was dressed in an expensive grey suit Chase had never seen before. Chase couldn’t even see the bulge for his gun. Fortin didn’t say hello. He just stared at Chase like he was a minor irritant.
Chase climbed in the back and took a seat, while Fortin got in, shut the door and sat across from him. Another man was seated behind the wheel. He didn’t turn his head.
“How’s Wyoming?” Chase decided to beat Fortin to the punch.
“We’ve got the Patriots locked up tight,” Fortin said. “No thanks to you,” he added.
“Screw you.” Chase tried to keep the anger out of his voice. “You ever kill someone in cold blood?”
“I’ve--” Fortin began.
“Bullshit.” Chase stayed on the offensive. “Am I fired?”
“Not yet.”
“Then what do you want?”
“To tell you to do your job,” Fortin said. “Again.” He was trying to keep his cool, but his face was flushed with anger. “You have your assignment with the Boulder PD. Do what you’re ordered. Don’t stick your nose where it doesn’t belong.”
“What--” Chase began but Fortin cut him off.
“I’ll pull the rug out from under you so fast your eyeballs will spin. You can kiss your retirement good-bye. You can kiss your job good-bye, and you screw with me again, you can kiss everything good-bye.”
“You really scare me.”
Fortin’s eyes went dead and Chase immediately realized he had underestimated his boss. He wasn’t just some flake. Chase had seen that look at the classified holding pens at the airstrip in Kandahar where the CIA hard-cases worked over the detainees that weren’t on any roster.
“You’re CIA,” Chase said.
Fortin didn’t say anything, as he continued to stare at Chase with his dead eyes. It was as much a confirmation as anything.
“Is there something specific I’m supposed to stop doing?” Chase asked. “How can I stop whatever it is if--”
“Don’t do anything other than what you are specifically told by either me or your Boulder PD bosses,” Fortin said. “Is that clear?”
Fortin was already out of the chair, opening the door. Fortin wasn’t even looking at him for an acknowledgment. He just assumed he had one. That bothered Chase more than anything else as he climbed out. Fortin slid the door shut.
Chase stood on the sidewalk, staring at the rear of the van as it drove away. Whatever Fortin’s intent had been, Chase knew only one thing: he was more than angry now, he was pissed.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Chase took a booth by the dark-tinted, front window of the Silver Satyr. It was only 5:30 and the evening crowd was just beginning to dribble in. He had barely enough light to read the papers Doctor Gavin had given him. Sylvie was backstage in the dressing room and he figured he'd just read until she showed up out front.
But he had trouble focusing. He kept replaying the scene inside the van again and again. His sense of duty had restrained him, he realized, even though he knew he had done the right thing and that Fortin was wrong. He should have—Chase paused in his thoughts when Tai walked up and sat down across from him.
Tai leaned back in his chair. “Hey, heard about last night. Pretty bad.”
Chase stared at the owner, knowing his name hadn’t been in the papers. But it seemed like everyone just assumed he’d been there.
Tai saw the look. “Chase, I know things.” He tapped the side of his head. “Boulder acts so prim and proper it makes me want to puke. The dark side, and there is one, a lot of it comes through here. And I listen.”
“And what do you hear?”
“I hear you offed that guy who killed his baby.”
Chase didn’t say anything. Tai was half-right and Chase couldn’t confirm the other half and disabuse him of what he had wrong.
“I knew Tim Barnes,” Tai added as he signaled for one of his girls to bring some beers.
“How?”
“A name. A face.”
“Do better than that.”
“You’re my guest here,” Tai said it low key, but Chase read the message underneath. For the first time Chase wondered if this club staying open had more than just legal briefs behind it and how right Porter might be about Tai. Everyone had some dirt somewhere in their past or present and that could be pretty strong leverage.
Chase decided to take a chance. Sylvie had said Tai was a stand-up guy and Chase trusted her instincts. “I killed him, Tai, but someone was there before me. Someone shot him, his wife and the kid.”
The waitress came over with two beers, then left. Tai took a deep drink, and then turned to Chase. “He didn’t kill his family?”
Chase shook his head.
Tai tapped a finger against his lips. “That’s interesting.”
Chase forced himself to keep quiet. If Tai was going to tell him something, he would. Chase had already let out more than he should have.
“The Barnes were into money.” Tai laughed without any humor. “Hell, everyone’s into money, aren’t they? It’s the American way. Just most try to do it the American dream way. You know. Work hard. Save. Send the kids to college. Then there’s the others. Who want a short cut. Who want it now.”
Chase waited as Tai waved at two men who walked in.
“It wasn’t so much the husband, Tim. He was dumb as a tree stump. His wife-- Trina. What a bitch. She wanted to work here, but when she found out I didn’t allow tricking with the customers, she got pissed at me. She couldn’t make enough dancing, she said. What kind of titty-bar was I running she wanted to know? Stormed out.”
Chase thought of the woman collapsing on the steps of the house. Her baby.
Tai gave the same hard laugh. “Hell, I got the city council saying I go too far and others saying I don’t go far enough. Can’t please anybody.” He seemed to realize Chase was still there. “Trina would do anything or anybody for a buck. And she’d make Tim do whatever she wanted. It wasn’t just that he was pussy-whipped; he thought he loved her. I mean she was pretty, he was ugly and she married him. What more could a guy like him ask for? He didn’t realize he’d be paying for it all his life-- and probably die because o
f it.”
“What were they into most recently?”
“Drugs.”
“Dealing?”
Tai nodded. “Somewhere in the supply chain. They sold not to users on the street, but higher-end dealers. Add it up and they did some heavy weight.”
“Who was their supplier?”
Tai shrugged. “Don’t know.”
“Could they have been hooked up with the Patriots?”
“The militia guys in Wyoming?”
Chase nodded. The club was filling up, men getting off work, looking for a little fun before going home to either nothing or someone not as exciting as what they saw here, or so they thought.
“Where would the Patriots get drugs, Chase?” Tai asked,
Before Chase could answer, the bartender was waving, holding a phone in his hand. “I’ll ask around,” Tai said as he got up.
“Thanks.”
He walked to the bar and Chase picked up the papers Gavin had given him. The top piece of paper was labeled: TELL ME ABOUT YOU. Chase loved psychologists. They were so subtle. Rachel had answered the questions in a very neat print.
NAME: RACHEL STEVENS
MY HOME TOWN IS: NORTH PLATTE, NE.
THE THING I LIKE MOST ABOUT THE UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO SO FAR IS: THE FREEDOM.
THE BIGGEST PROBLEM I'M HAVING RIGHT NOW IS: JUGGLING MY SCHEDULE SO I CAN COMPLETE SCHOOL.
I CAME TO CU BECAUSE: WHAT A PERSON CAN BE, THEY MUST BE.
MY FAVORITE HOBBIES ARE: READING, THINKING.
THE NUMBER ONE THING I HOPE TO GET FROM THIS PROGRAM IS: A CAREER.
WHAT OTHER QUESTIONS SHOULD I HAVE ASKED YOU: WHY CAN'T YOU BE CONTENT LIKE MOST OF YOUR PEERS?
WHAT ELSE WOULD YOU LIKE TO TELL ME ABOUT YOURSELF: DEEP DOWN I'M SECRETLY PLEASED THAT I'M NOT CONTENT LIKE MOST OF MY PEERS.
Chase thought the last one was pretty weird. Her husband was right. She had been very goal oriented. Chase looked up. Tai was off the phone and looking back at Chase. When they made eye contact, Tai turned back to the bar and Chase turned back to the papers.
The next sheet was THE NEED AUCTION BID CARD. It looked like typical crap psych teachers pull out on those class days when they forget to prepare their lecture. The number one priority bid on Rachel's list was for: ‘Complete self-confidence with a positive outlook on life.’ Interestingly, her lowest priority was: ‘A magnificent, servant-maintained mansion.’
Chase thought that was typical. It's easy to low prioritize things a person already had. Rachel Stevens had had the freedom to think all these great thoughts. People like Chase were too concerned about making it through each day.
There were several more surveys and papers. The interesting point that Chase noted was that Rachel had never once revealed her true life outside of school. There was no mention of husband, Pine Brook Hills, the Boulder Country Club or garden club. Gavin was wrong. Reading these papers had given him an idea of a fictional Rachel. She hadn't been truthful in her answers.
Sylvie was first dancer. She always was. They usually had a lineup of five or six women. That meant about ten minutes dancing with forty off in between working the floor for half of that. Sounds easy but it wasn't. Chase didn't watch as he continued to peruse the papers, but his mind was wandering.
In the beginning Chase hadn't give much thought to Sylvie being a stripper. Now he was thinking about it more and liking it less. Chase forgot about Rachel and thought about the woman in his life. He guess he thinking about it a little too hard, because he didn't notice Sylvie was finished until she slid into the booth next to him.
She gave his arm a squeeze and he looked at her. "Why do you strip, Sylvie?"
If it's possible to be angry and pleased at the same time, Sylvie achieved it. "The proverbial nice girl question. I was wondering when you were going to ask it. Three months is definitely a record; most men ask on the first date."
Chase tried to keep jealousy to a minimum in his life because it's such a worthless emotion. He didn't always succeed.
Sylvie crossed her arms and stared at him. “Why do you kill people?”
Chase felt the emotion drain out of him. “It’s my job.”
“You choose the jobs,” Sylvie said. “You choose West Point, Special Forces, Delta Force and this job, right?” Before he could say anything she went on. "Is that what you came for Chase? To ask me why I expose myself to a bunch of jerks, who are mentally fucking me while I watch? Why do you think I do it?" She held her hand up. "Never mind, don't answer that. I do it for money. I get a lot of money to show what's only special when it's free. My body means the same thing to me as my mind. If I were an accountant, I'd be charging someone by the hour for my knowledge of the tax code. Instead I'm looking at the bottom line. I can get a CPA when I'm forty, but I'll only have these tits for a few years. It's economic feasibility, Chase. You use the perishables first."
"You really believe that?"
Sylvie leaned back in the booth and regarded Chase with a sad smile. "That line usually works. It usually impresses the hell out of people. That some dumb stripper could talk like that.
"You're getting more perceptive, Chase. OK, the real reason is my ex-husband actually was an accountant who preferred snorting coke and gambling to crunching numbers. By the time I figured it out, we were hopelessly in debt and he was in jail. You wouldn’t believe the high price of a legal defense nowadays."
Chase didn't hide his surprise very well. "You were married? Why didn't you ever tell me that?"
"You never asked."
"That's not something you wait around with. That's something you tell."
“Do you care?”
Chase opened his mouth to answer, then stopped as he tried to gather his thoughts. Finally he replied: "Sylvie, I'm sorry. I had no right to question you the way I did. It's just that I had a weird day today and I really needed to talk to you."
She softened a bit. "What do you need to talk about?"
Chase told her about his conversation with Doctor Stevens. It took about five minutes, but he figured he covered everything. Then he pushed the papers over to her. "Read these."
She was a fast reader. When she was done she looked at Chase. "What do you think?"
"I don't think she was having an affair." Chase went over the discrepancies to that theory. That left him with the basic question that evidently meant everything in this case. What the hell had Rachel Stevens been doing every third Wednesday night?
Sylvie was most interested in the fact that Rachel had pretended to be single at school. She was just starting to say something when a new song came on.
Sylvie got up. "Gotta work the floor, then do the stage."
Chase waited out Sylvie’s routine wondering about why he had never really asked her about her past. She had never given any indication that she had once been married. Chase didn’t even know how old she was. That was a question he’d thought you were never supposed to ask a woman and Sylvie had never volunteered the information. Chase guessed she was in her late twenties, but he realized he might have to bump that up a couple of years. She wasn’t like most of her fellow dancers who had the advantage of a great body in its physical prime-- Sylvie worked out hard to stay in shape that he did know.
It was still early, but there were more men crowded around the stage. Chase had never really thought about how much Sylvie made, but he had seen her count her take at her place every so often and there were a lot of bills and they were rarely ones.
That brought Chase to another thing he'd never thought about. What did she do with all that money? He not only didn't know her past, he didn't know her future. If he'd been in a cartoon, a light bulb would have come on above his head as he had a moment's inspiration: he had been treating Sylvie the same way Doctor Stevens had treated his wife. Just drifting along without thinking.
By the time Sylvie got back to the booth Chase was feeling kind inspired. He had decided to adjust his attitude toward her and listen more. Her first words derailed that.
/> "I know what she was doing for those three hours."
"When did you figure this out?"
Sylvie gave Chase a look usually reserved for idiots. "Chase, it doesn't require much brain power to take your clothes off or talk to these guys."
If she wanted to discuss Rachel, Chase would listen. "All right. Tell me your brainstorm. Then I'll tell you mine."
"She was hooking."
"What?"
"Hooking, Chase. You know, prostitution or illegal solicitation as you cops call it."
"But why?"
"The money."
Chase sounded like a bad recording. "But why? She had plenty of money."
"Wrong, Chase. Her husband had plenty of money."
"Well, damn, Sylvie. I'm sure he gave her some."
"That's just it Chase. She needed money that he didn't know about."
Chase’s first thought, probably prompted by Sylvie's revelation about her own life, was that Rachel had needed money for drugs, but that came to an abrupt halt as he remembered Hanson's autopsy. Rachel had been clean.
"OK. Maybe she needed money, but isn't hooking a little drastic? I'm sure Rachel could have found an easier way to get money."
"She had pride, Chase."
Chase was lost. "She had pride? So she became a hooker? What kind of pride is that?"
"She wanted it to be her money."
"Why didn't she just get a job?" But Chase was thinking. About his mother and money. She’d had pride too, but she’d done whatever it took to make money. Pride can come in many different guises, Chase knew.
"She was working toward a career, Chase. Not just a job. She was in a Catch-22. She couldn’t make the money she needed in order to have the career to make the money she needed."
"But that's my whole point. What did she need the money for?"
"So she could leave."
Chase sorted the facts from this new perspective. It scared him how well they all fit: she'd had sex with four men; the KY jelly; the cab ride so no one would recognize the car; no ID on her so no one would know who she was. The gym bag could have held clothes or whatever she needed to turn tricks. Then he had a disconnect and Sylvie must have seen it.