Day of the Tiger (A Carlos McCrary Mystery Thriller Book 5)

by Dallas Gorham

  “No. We planned this too long to bring in an unknown quantity. She’d be a wild card. Leave her out of this. Watch her reaction to the operation. Then you’ll know if she’s as dedicated as you think.”

  “Well, uh, there’s a little complication…”

  Redwood remained silent. Ponder hated that about him. When the boss wanted an explanation, he didn’t ask the question like a normal person. No, he waited and let Ponder stew.

  “She already knows about the operation. Look, I swear she’ll be all right with it. She’s a true believer, man. Besides, I told her it would be a peaceful protest.” Ponder didn’t tell Redwood that he had bragged about the up-coming operation while he snorted cocaine with the girl. Then when she asked for details, he’d made up some bullshit explanation.

  “What kind of protest did you tell her it was?”

  “I told her we would drape a banner across the front of the package with our message on it.”

  Redwood sighed. “It can’t be helped. That train has left the station.” He laughed at his little pun. “You realize that you have placed the whole project at risk—again.”

  “Yes, sir, but it will be all right, I swear.”

  “And you realize that if you’re wrong about her, there will be serious repercussions. For both of you.”

  “She’s okay. I’m certain of it. She’s coming over here later to wait for Kat—Kinetic’s call.”

  “Remember, Lamp Post. Clear-headed. If I find you’ve gotten high again, I shall be… disappointed. I don’t want anyone injured or killed this time; it causes too much backlash. You remember how much I hate to be disappointed, don’t you?” The line went dead.

  Ponder’s stomach knotted. He rubbed the stump of his left little finger. A few years earlier Ponder had accidentally killed a night watchman during an assignment. Redwood had sent two thugs after him. One thug had held his wrist while the other had cut off his little finger with a hack saw. “Just follow orders next time,” the man with the hack saw had told him. “Redwood don’t like it when you improvise.”

  Closing the flip phone, Ponder giggled and took one last drag before crushing the joint in the ashtray. The girl would bring Oxycodone to keep him happy when the marijuana wore off. And later Ka-BOOM! He would see the carnage and feel the adrenaline rush, and Redwood couldn’t blame him for the deaths.

  Chapter 2

  The girl picked up her phone and punched reject. “I feel kinda bad sending Daddy’s calls straight to voicemail like that.”

  Ponder wrapped his arm around her waist and tried to reach her phone. “Why don’t you turn the goddam thing off? You’re an adult for crissakes. This isn’t the nineteenth century, and your father doesn’t own you. You must assert your own personal identity.” He spoke with the certainty of long practice and much repetition of well-memorized slogans. “You don’t have to be defined by your subservient role to a patriarchal paradigm. You deserve your privacy. We deserve our privacy.” Ponder rubbed her breast with his chin, tickling her nipple with his beard.

  She rolled onto her side to face him, grabbed his hand, and kissed the palm. James had such a… a… facility with words. If only he wasn’t such an adrenaline junky. “I know, James, but… Daddy’s gonna be worried, you know?” She leaned backwards and set the phone on the nightstand. “Besides, Katherine or Steven might call.”

  She wrapped James’s arm around her waist and rolled onto his chest, straddling his body. James was a more persuasive speaker than she was, but she was better at persuading with her body. She wiggled her hips, giggled, and nuzzled his neck under the beard. “That got your attention. I feel that.” She ground her hips against him.

  James wrapped both arms around her waist. “Omigod, that feels good.”

  She nibbled his earlobe. “It could feel even better.” She rolled off and reached for her purse. “You’d better put on a condom. I brought some.”

  James lay there with his eyes closed. “Not this time. What are the odds, just this once?”

  “We discussed this. We won’t bring children into this world yet. Not until we clean up some of the pollution.” She nibbled on his earlobe.

  “I’ll put on a condom, if you turn off your phone. Don’t worry, we have my phone. I don’t get as many calls as you do.”

  “What if Steven calls me instead of you?” She noticed Ponder’s eyes narrow. “What, you’re jealous? That’s so bourgeois.” She hoped she had used the unfamiliar word right. She’d learned it in her poli-sci class the week before. “You know how pissy Steven gets if we don’t answer his calls no matter what we’re doing. Or whom.” She smiled.

  “Forget Steven.”

  “We can’t do that, especially not now.” She stroked his beard. “James, the project will happen any time, maybe tonight. We gotta be ready and available. Are you that easily distracted?” She blew in his ear. “Speaking of being ready and available…” She ran her fingers down his chest. “I’ll bet I can keep your attention, even if the phone does ring.”

  Chapter 3

  When John Babcock carried his coffee into my office, he looked as nervous as a nudist at a church picnic.

  “Sit down, John. You said on the phone that you had a family emergency. What happened?”

  “Mickie’s in trouble, Chuck.”

  “Your daughter Michelle, right? I met her at Hank’s Super Bowl party.”

  “Yeah. She’s a freshman at the University of Atlantic County.”

  “What’s her full name?” I asked.

  “Michelle Teresa Babcock.”

  My heart twanged when John told me her middle name. I’d once dated a woman named Teresa. I wrote it down anyway. “What’s her major?”

  “Environmental studies.”

  I wrote that down too. “How can I help you?”

  John rested his hands on his thighs and his chin dropped to his chest. “Mickie’s disappeared. I called Hank, and he told me to call you. Said you helped him out of a tough spot a while back.”

  Good old Hank. He’d sent me several clients in the last year. “Disappeared how?”

  “She doesn’t answer her phone. I emailed and texted her. She doesn’t reply.”

  “How old is she?”

  “Eighteen. She’ll be nineteen this summer.”

  “When’s her birthday?”

  “What difference does that make?”

  I shrugged. “Maybe none. It’s the way I work as a private investigator. I get lots of facts. When’s her birthday?”

  “Geez, I don’t know. Sometime next summer—June I think. Penny would know.” Penny was Hank’s daughter and John’s wife.

  “Never mind. I’ll get that later. Where does Michelle live?”

  “At home. She commutes to school.”

  “What’s your address?”

  He told me and I wrote it down. “How long has Michelle been out of touch?”

  “Since Saturday morning. I think something bad’s happened to her.”

  “What does Penny think?”

  His lips twisted in a half smile. “Her maternal instincts tell her that Mickie’s okay. Penny thinks maybe she skipped out with a boyfriend. She reminded me that we did that when we were in college.”

  “But you don’t think she’s with a boyfriend,” I said.

  “She doesn’t have a steady boyfriend.”

  “Sometimes parents don’t know their kids as well as they think.” I smiled to soften the comment. “Face it, John. Legally, Michelle is an adult. There are things you and Penny don’t know about her. She has a right to her privacy even if she does live at home.”

  “Mickie may be eighteen, but she’s not really an adult. I remember when I was her age. I didn’t have a lick of sense. Frankly, she’s naïve about the real world.” He lifted his coffee. “Maybe Penny and I’ve been overprotective. Okay, maybe I’ve been overprotective. You’ll understand when you have daughters.” He sipped his coffee.

  “When’s the last time you heard from her?” I asked.

/>   “Couple of days ago. Last Friday night at dinner Mickie told us she and a few friends from the university were gonna build houses for Habitat for Humanity during spring break. A local motel out in west Port City agreed to house the volunteers so they wouldn’t have a long commute through rush-hour traffic. At least that’s what she said. She packed a bag and left Saturday morning. Nobody’s heard from her since.”

  I looked at my wall clock. “Okay, it’s two-thirty. Why come to me now?”

  “This morning I had some business out near the Everglades. I called Habitat for Humanity and got the address where they’re building this week. I was gonna drop by and surprise Mickie. Take her and her friends to lunch.”

  “Good for you.” I smiled. “A great way for Dad to check up on his little girl.”

  He shrugged and grinned. “When I showed up at the job site, she wasn’t there. She hadn’t been there at all.”

  “So she played hooky today?”

  “Unh-uh. She wasn’t there Saturday or Sunday either,” John said. “She hasn’t ever worked for Habitat for Humanity. She’s not on their volunteer list.”

  Chapter 4

  John met Snoop and me at the door. “Penny would be here if she could. Her school’s spring break is a different week than UAC, so she’s at work.” He raised an eyebrow at Snoop.

  I put a hand on Snoop’s shoulder. “John, this is Ray Snopolski. He’s a retired Port City police detective who works with me from time to time.”

  Snoop shook John’s hand. “Everybody calls me Snoop.”

  “You gonna help Chuck find my daughter?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  John gestured us in. “Her room’s down this way.”

  Michelle’s bedroom was the second door on the right. The heavy perfume scent hit me before I turned on the light. When I did, it looked like her closet had exploded. “John, did burglars ransack her room?”

  He shrugged. “What can I say? Neat, she ain’t.”

  Piled against the front wall to the left of the door were assorted shoes and sandals. Textbooks and notebooks littered the bed; more were stacked in a corner of the room. An HD television had a string of Chinese paper lanterns hung across the corner of the screen. Bras and a swimsuit were piled into another corner, surrounded by a herd of blouses and pants in various colors. One corkboard displayed photos, a sparkly bow made of translucent red ribbon, posters, two blue first-prize ribbons, and assorted medals on tiny chains. Wildlife pictures in idyllic settings covered another corkboard. A pile of clean clothes was stacked behind the door. I knew they were clean because they were folded. I figured Penny had laundered them. Two thermal glasses, half-filled with amber liquid, sat abandoned on a nightstand next to a one-liter carafe filled with seashells. Two half-burned scented candles filled the rest of the crowded space.

  I turned to John. “We won’t do a thorough search. It takes hours to search a room properly.” And this one could take days, I thought. “If Michelle’s in trouble, I can’t afford to spend the time. We’ll do a quick-and-dirty for clues to where she might be, but it will take time. Why don’t you wait in the living room?”

  When he left, I turned to Snoop. “You have two daughters. Why would any woman need three hair dryers?”

  “Small, medium, and large? Hell, your guess is as good as mine.”

  I smelled the liquid in the thermal glasses. Some sort of cola diluted with melted ice from the last Ice Age. It must have been diet cola; otherwise, there would have been mold growing in the glasses. “My god, how can anyone live like this?”

  “What can I say? She’s a teenager. You should see my girls’ rooms. They’re just as bad. Maybe it’s their hormones.”

  I smiled. “First go through the pockets of every piece of clothing in the closet. Then check the clothing scattered all over the place. After you check a piece, hang it up so we can keep it straight. I’ll start with the bookcase.”

  A four-shelf bookcase was crammed against one wall. The top shelf bent under a stack of Mother Earth News and another of Rolling Stone. The next shelf held a few dozen CDs by groups I’d never heard of and a portable player. Michelle would have transferred the CDs to an iPod or Smartphone or whatever teenagers use to listen to music nowadays. The third shelf groaned with the weight of a half-dozen textbooks. Global Sustainable Energy: Past, Present, and Future. I read the book jacket. “Students will explore the global history of energy sources, both renewable and non-renewable. Renewable energy sources will be investigated and environmentally sound solutions to future needs will be analyzed.” It was already giving me a headache when I remembered the tortured prose in my own college textbooks. I flipped the pages. Nothing hidden inside.

  The next book was Forests for Florida’s Future. The book jacket promised “Examination of current environmental issues impacting community decisions regarding Florida forest resources. Each issue will be examined within a framework of human behavior, policy options, and media messages. Students will learn to understand key issues and analyze major ecological variables.” Nothing hidden in its pages either.

  I was getting woozy from reading the covers. I didn’t read the rest, just flipped through the pages. The next to last book was marked with a sheet torn off a lined pad with a handwritten note: James 55-22-16. Not a bible verse, maybe a combination to his school locker? I stuck it in my pocket.

  The bottom shelf held more shoes, a stack of coloring books from her pre-school days, and a bunch of journals. I made a note about the journals; we could read them later if necessary. I looked inside the shoes; found a penny in one. I finished the bottom shelf, moved to the bed, and searched the books there. I placed them on the shelf as I finished. “Snoop, there’s plenty of room on these shelves for these books she’s thrown on the bed. Why doesn’t she shelve them?”

  “I already told you, Chuck. She’s a teenager; they don’t think like humans.” He grabbed more clothes off the floor and searched the pockets. “Whoa, what’s this?” He pulled out a three-pack of foil-wrapped condoms from a pair of cargo shorts. “Well, that answers that question. John ain’t gonna like this.” He snapped a photo, then put the condoms back where he’d found them.

  I grabbed the shoes off the floor and dumped them on the bed for an easier search. I found her stash in the toe of an old pair of sneakers. “Snoop, take a look.”

  Snoop opened the baggie and stuck his nose in. “Pretty good quality weed.” He took a picture and handed the baggie back to me. As I finished each pair of shoes, I placed it in an empty shoe rack on the closet floor. “She has shoe racks. Why doesn’t she use them?”

  “Give it a rest, Chuck. You know my daughters. Teenagers are a different species.”

  Halfway through the shoes, I found a yellow pill bottle stuffed in the toe of one. The prescription label had been peeled off. The bottle held six pink pills with OC on one side and 20 on the other. “Snoop, I’m no expert on prescription drugs, but these look like twenty-milligram oxycodone tablets.” I handed him the bottle.

  He opened the childproof cap and dumped a tablet into his hand. He photographed the tablet and the bottle, then put the pill back. “I’ve seen enough, Chuck. You seen enough?”

  “Yeah. Even if she hasn’t run away, she’s in trouble. Sex, drugs, and rock-and-roll. Let’s go talk to John.”

  John was in the kitchen. “Want coffee, guys?”

  “A little cream, no sugar for me.”

  Snoop drank his black.

  “John,” I said, “we found a few things in Michelle’s room that you need to know about.”

  He swallowed. “What things?”

  “Snoop, show him the first photo.”

  Snoop had transferred the photos to his laptop, which he opened on the kitchen table. He rotated the laptop toward John.

  John looked at the screen. “That looks like a pack of condoms.”

  “It is,” I said. “Those condoms are sold in boxes of six. There are three left.”

  John frowned. “I don’t know what
to say.”

  “It is what it is. Snoop, show him the next photo.” He did.

  “What’s in the baggie?” John asked.

  “Marijuana. Snoop, show him the last picture.”

  “Is that what I think it is?”

  “Oxycodone,” Snoop answered.

  “Jesus H. Christ.” John put his face in his hands, elbows on the kitchen table.

  “John, is Michelle’s phone on your family plan?” I asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “Let me pull up your account on the phone company’s website. Let’s see what numbers she’s been calling.”

  John gave me his login and password.

  I set up my laptop across from Snoop’s. “She called three numbers a lot the last week. Texted them too.” I read off the numbers.

  Snoop wrote them down. “I’ll do a reverse lookup.” He punched his keyboard. “Katherine Shamanski is the first one.”

  I turned to John. “You know her?”

  “Nope.”

  “No problem,” Snoop said. “That’s why Al Gore invented the internet. She’s a student at UAC. I’ll check her Facebook page… Shamanski’s a senior and she majors in environmental studies like Michelle.”

  I made notes. “Shamanski could be a classmate, but there aren’t many classes that seniors and freshmen would both take. You got an address, Snoop?”

  “Yeah. I’ll check it on the map… She’s got an apartment near campus. Here’s her picture.” He turned the computer toward John. “You ever see her with Michelle?”

  John studied the screen. “No.”

  “I’ll print off a copy.” He tapped the keyboard. “The next number is a James Ponder.”

  I turned to John and raised an eyebrow.

  “No, I don’t know him either.”

  Snoop showed John the computer screen again. John shook his head. Snoop printed the photo.

  “Maybe he’s the James on this note.” I showed John the scrap of paper I had taken from Michelle’s room.

  “Could that be a bible verse?” he asked.