The Sarah Roberts Series Vol. 7-9

by Jonas Saul

  “Excuse me?” the veteran asked.

  “I said, open the door.”

  “No,” he chuckled. “You’re not going anywhere. And with that attitude, I might take you to the station until we can get a better handle on what happened here tonight.”

  “I told you what happened!” Parkman shouted.

  “That doesn’t help,” the older cop yelled back. “You say you were an officer of the law. You say it was a Jaguar, but you didn’t get a plate number, or a description of the driver, yet they had their windows down to shoot. You’ve given us nothing and told us everything.”

  “What is that supposed to mean?”

  “When the paramedics got to you, one of them saw you bend down to the victim’s ear and mumble something.”

  “I was telling her to stay alive.”

  The cop looked out through his windshield and watched as other cars showed up. “I was afraid you’d say that.”

  “What? Why?” Parkman clenched his fists. “You know, talking to you is maddening. How long you been a cop, Rookie?”

  When the veteran cop turned back, the streetlights outside reflected off his pate where the hair had thinned in the center of his dome.

  “The paramedic heard you say, ‘I will fucking kill you if you don’t die on me.’ Do you deny saying that?”

  “Why would I say something so ridiculous? I told her she can’t die. Sarah and I talk that way. She has said to me, if I were to die, she would punch my corpse. That’s the way we are. I was telling her that she didn’t get much of an option. It was either live, or deal with me.”

  “You too must have some kind of weird relationship.” The cop smiled through his words. “Fascinated on death much?”

  A man in plainclothes, a tie and jacket knocked on the cruiser’s window. Thinning hair lowered it.

  “Yeah?”

  The man bent down and looked in at Parkman. “This the shooter?”

  “Not sure yet, but probably.”

  “Let him out. He’s coming with us.” The man pulled a wallet and flipped it open to ID. “Homicide Detective Richard Joffrey. This is my case now.”

  Parkman’s stomach twisted and dropped so far he thought it was filled with radioactive clay.

  Why would homicide be involved if Sarah was still alive?

  “Whatever,” the veteran cop said. “Fine with us.”

  He opened his door and got out. Parkman waited a full five minutes while the two men talked ten feet from the cruiser. The younger partner sat in the passenger seat.

  “Hey, sorry about what happened.” He looked back at Parkman. “For what it’s worth, I believe your story.”

  Parkman nodded, looked down at his hands, and pried at a thumb nail.

  A moment later his door opened and Thinning Hair gestured for him to get out.

  Parkman got out and stood beside the open door of the cruiser. He caught a sneer on the face of the veteran cop.

  What a fucking idiot. Parkman was losing Sarah. It was his fault she got hurt. And this cop stood beside him, sneering. Everything in his soul begged his muscles to listen and strike at the cop’s face, hard and swift.

  Cops like that gave the force a bad name. It was men like him that reminded Parkman why he wasn’t on the force anymore and thankful that he had his own private security agency.

  “Come with me,” Joffrey said, adjusting his jacket.

  Parkman followed him to an unmarked sedan where Joffrey opened the passenger side door.

  “In the front?” Parkman asked.

  “Of course. You’re Parkman, right? Sarah’s friend?”

  “Yeah,” he said as a wave of emotion swept over him at the mention of Sarah’s name. This new guy sounded like he knew more than he was letting on.

  “I’ll take you to the hospital. Let’s see what her condition is before you tell me what happened. Deal?”

  “Deal.”

  “After that, I’ll get you to write out your statement and then we’ll call it a night.”

  Parkman dropped in the front seat hard.

  The detective got in, turned the car on, and started down Keele Street toward the hospital.

  Parkman turned to him. “How do you know me so well?”

  “You were in Toronto working a case with Sarah a while back. A few officers were killed in the mall on Yonge Street. Guys with white shit on their faces were hunting Sarah and you helped see that case to its conclusion in a yoga studio. I’m sure you remember?”

  “Yeah, the Rapturites. How could I forget?”

  “There’s a lot of respect on the force and surrounding police departments for Sarah Roberts and Parkman for what you two have done for this great city.” He turned to Parkman. “Not every cop has been briefed on your history, like those two back there.”

  “Makes sense.” He looked out the window as they crossed a bridge spanning the huge 401 highway. “What did you two talk about?”

  “That cop back there?”

  “Yeah.”

  “The usual. He had an interesting theory about your involvement.”

  “I thought so.” Parkman faced front, staring out the windshield, the grief for having pulled Sarah into his trouble almost too much to handle.

  “You mind if I make a call?” Parkman asked. “Sarah’s boyfriend should know.”

  “No problem, go ahead.”

  When Parkman pulled his cell phone out, he noticed Sarah’s blood on his hands. He hadn’t retrieved his suit jacket from under Sarah’s head. It still lay on the cement back at the scene. Inside the jacket was the note from his client, Violeta.

  Shit, that is not going to look good for me.

  Violeta was very clear what would happen if the police found out what Parkman knew. He had tried to deal with it the proper way, but Violeta had disappeared under a layer of security at her mansion near Santa Rosa. He hadn’t spoken to her in almost two weeks, but she had sent him messages through third parties, loud and clear.

  He dialed and waited as Aaron’s phone rang at his apartment.

  “Detective Richard Joffrey, right?” Parkman asked as he waited for Aaron to answer.

  “Yeah. Why?”

  “Richard is often changed to Dick. You ever get called, Detective Dick, or Dick Dick?”

  “Funny.” Joffrey looked sideways at him. “Yeah, I do. Used to it now.”

  Aaron answered the phone.

  Chapter 5

  Aaron checked the clock again. Sarah should’ve called, let him know she was okay. He wondered how Parkman took the news that she was quitting the psychic vigilante gig.

  Maybe that was what was taking her so long. Parkman’s performing some last ditch attempt to convince her otherwise.

  Aaron set his cup of tea on the coffee table and walked to the sliding doors. They were open, the screen letting the cool night air inside the apartment. He stepped out onto the balcony and closed the screen behind him.

  June in Toronto was always a good time, but it was even better now that Sarah was back from Italy, back from being a missing person for two months. It had been one whole week together and he still worried when she got home late.

  Sarah had worked her way into his heart unlike anyone he had ever been with. He saw them making a life together, getting married, kids. Things seemed more plausible now that she was ready to retire from her day job.

  He had decided months ago to never stand in her way, whatever she decided to do in her life. To try to understand and support her in any way he could. But if the day ever came when she chose to quit, he wanted to be there and was willing to accept her for who she was until then.

  The phone rang.

  He turned and walked into the screen door.

  “Dammit.”

  It took an extra ring to get the screen door unjammed after bumping it off its track.

  “Coming, Sarah,” he yelled at the phone.

  On the fifth ring, just before the machine picked it up, Aaron got to the phone.

  “How did it go?”


  “Aaron, it’s Parkman.”

  His stomach dropped. “Why are you calling? Not that I don’t miss you much, but where’s Sarah?”

  He pulled the phone away from his ear and checked call display.

  Parkman’s cell.

  Parkman was talking when Aaron brought the phone back to his ear. “Did she show up?” he asked.

  “I was just telling you—”

  “What happened?” Aaron couldn’t contain himself. He had lost his sister to a madman. Then he fell in love with Sarah and lost her for two months, the whole time thinking she was dead and buried in some field in Italy. To only have her back a week and …

  “Can you meet me at Humber River Regional Hospital on Keele Street?”

  “Tell me what happened!” Aaron shouted.

  There was a moment of silence where Aaron heard the background noises of a car on the road and his own breathing. For a second, he wondered if Parkman would hang up or if the signal would drop.

  Then Parkman said the words that would haunt him for a long time.

  “Sarah’s been shot.”

  “How, how …” he choked and swallowed. “She was with you. What happened?”

  “At the hospital. Come there. I’ll explain everything.”

  “Shot where?”

  “At the factory off Keele. You know the one—”

  “No, I mean where did she get shot. Stomach, arm, leg?”

  “Head.”

  Aaron dropped the phone and ran for the apartment door, snatching his key ring off the clip on the wall as he went by it.

  By the time he got to his car, he had to wipe his eyes in order to drive.

  Chapter 6

  Oliver Payne made it to Nafplio without another police car or officer paying any extra attention to him. The Greek sun beat down so hard that his shirt had pasted itself to his back and he had finished half his bottle of water.

  The massage he had booked was going to be extra good this week. He had found out about Sugar Spell Spa by going to the twice-weekly Farmer’s Market that assembled on a side street in Nafplio just off the main road downtown. Large colorful signs advertised the spa on the second floor of a building built over a small gas station across the street from the market.

  When he looked into them, he discovered they weren’t a dirty replica of the massage parlors back home. No, Sugar Spell Spa was a studio, clean and professional, exactly how he wanted it. The attendants were schooled and educated, the owner, Lina, one of the best masseuses he had ever had.

  In the past, during years of traveling with Violeta for business, it was a regular routine of theirs to stop during business holidays and enjoy a massage in a local spa and then compare them to other spas from around the world. Oliver had been massaged in Budapest, Toronto, Vancouver, Los Angeles, Italy and now Greece, just to name a few. Lina, at Sugar Spell Spa, had now been crowned the best in the business, and due to the economic crisis in Greece, the least expensive. He would pay double—or even triple—what Lina charged at her spa for the kind of work they did there, but he was informed that would come across disrespectful. Even tips were discouraged.

  The streets got progressively busier as he neared downtown Nafplio, a bustling city that didn’t show any outward signs of economic struggle. Retail stores were open, cafés had their outside chairs filled, and restaurants were always in demand.

  He quickly surmised that the economic struggle in Greece was one of a political nature. The people had money because they didn’t pay their taxes, so the people were doing fine. It was the government that was in financial trouble.

  He had heard countless times in his four months in Greece that it was considered a national sport to not pay taxes. There were entire islands that had never paid taxes and still, the antiquated system the Greeks had for tax collection was years behind.

  At times, around ten in the evening, he couldn’t get a table in any of his favorite restaurants as the crowds were simply too large. It didn’t seem like a country in trouble by a long shot.

  Five streets converged at the center of the city where there were no traffic lights or signals. It was called suicide corners because drivers were supposed to enter at their own risk and once inside, navigate through the pile of other drivers attempting the same thing. He had seen more than a dozen vehicles in the center of the intersection at once and yet they all made it through after the required honking.

  Sugar Spell Spa was a block away when another police car drove by. This time the little car had two officers inside. Neither turned to look at him.

  “Paranoid,” he whispered under his breath. “Just paranoid.”

  He hadn’t done anything wrong. Leaving his wife wasn’t a crime. Over staying the ninety-day limit in the Eurozone made him an illegal immigrant, but as far as he understood it, the Greeks didn’t really care about things like that.

  Isn’t an illegal immigrant just someone who moved from here to there?

  He passed the bustling Wednesday market, past the smell of booths where swordfish were sold, and eventually made it to the street the spa was on ten minutes before his appointment.

  At the door to the spa, he hit the buzzer and waited. On this side of the building, the sun was relentless. No breeze, no shade. Nothing to quell its onslaught. The sun beat down, baking him in his clothes, making him yearn for the shower before his massage.

  When the buzzer clicked and the door unlocked, he opened it and a chill, like someone was watching him, fluttered through his shoulders. He turned around and examined the street behind him.

  Vehicles were parked wherever there was a spot along the edge of the road, close to the curb. Roughly a dozen cars to his left, a police cruiser with two men inside sat behind a small red Fiat. From where he stood, half in, half out of the door to the spa, it looked like the men were watching him. The way the sun reflected off their windshield, he couldn’t tell for sure.

  Why would they be watching me?

  He stepped inside the spa and closed the door behind him, listening for the telltale click of the lock.

  Maybe he should leave. Get back to the village, grab his things and take a taxi to another city. Or grab a plane to another country in the Eurozone.

  Or maybe he was just being paranoid. What could Violeta do to him on Greek soil? He hadn’t broken any laws in the States. He’d simply left his wife and took not even ten percent of the wealth they had together. If he was considered to be on the run it was because his wife had terrorized and emotionally abused him.

  Rationalizing it, he had nothing to worry about. Police cars were all over the city. Why all of a sudden did he feel they were all after him?

  Maybe because of that American man with the camera that Oliver would swear had taken his picture about a week ago.

  He started up the stairs, feeling like he missed something. The idea that he was being watched may be ridiculous, but it was borne from somewhere. He was a businessman first. His decisions were derived through logic and reason. That was how he made it so long with a witch like Violeta.

  If he felt the eyes of the law were on him, then maybe they were. But not for any reasons he could come up with.

  But for reasons Violeta could come up with.

  Lina opened the frosted glass doors ahead of him on the second floor.

  “I was wondering what was taking you so long,” she said, her usual smile changing his mood instantly. Lina was perpetually happy.

  “I thought I saw someone I knew outside. Had to do a double take.”

  “No problem. Your room is ready. Just go in there,” she gestured to the left where a shower and bathroom was located. “Have a shower and I’ll meet you inside.”

  Oliver headed in while Lina walked back behind her counter.

  The bathroom window looked down onto the street where Oliver had seen the cop car. Before disrobing, he slid the window open and stuck his head out.

  The police car was gone.

  “See,” he said to himself. “It was not
hing.”

  But he still felt he was missing something.

  He prepared for his massage, entered the room in his gym shorts, the rule at Sugar Spell Spa, and lay down on the table. Lina entered less than thirty seconds later.

  The massage was amazing as he had expected. They talked about life, her boyfriend, Oliver’s enjoyment of Nafplio, and Greece in general.