Dead On My Feet - A Thriller (Phineas Troutt Mysteries Book 1)

by J. A. Konrath

  After Neil, John Denver came on. I paid as much attention to the lyrics as I could, because it distracted me from my life.

  It took sixteen more oldies before I made it to Flutesburg.

  The suburb looked like every other suburb, strip malls nestled among the residences, or vice versa. How many Starbucks did the world need? Apparently a lot.

  The strip malls segued into a real mall, one of those stupidly large ones with over a hundred shops, half of them probably shoe stores. Next to the mall was—surprise surprise—another mall. Between the two there were a total of forty movie theaters.

  Seriously, Flutesburg, read a book.

  I followed Higgins Road east and kept my eyes peeled for Peach Grove Road. I used to have one of those portable GPS units, but that went the way of my last cell phone. I found Peach Grove, hung a left, passed a golf course, and took another immediate left to turn into the Peach Grove Apartment Complex.

  There were no peaches, and it certainly wasn’t a grove, but the complex certainly had its share of apartments. It also had good reason to call itself a complex; ranks and files of identical brown brick dwellings attached themselves to each other in semi-symmetrical patterns, interrupted at regular intervals by small, ten-car parking lots.

  I spent fifteen minutes driving through a maze that M.C. Escher and Mobius had conspired to design, looking for Building 17, apartment B. It did me little good.

  From what I could observe, the buildings were numbered randomly. Building 8 was in between Building 13 and Building 18. My guess was that the apartment residents had no idea where the hell they lived either. I wondered if half of the people here were living with families other than their own, simply because they could never find their original apartments.

  After the third trip around, a small fact detached from my subconscious and alerted me that there were two Building 7s. I parked in the street in front of the closer of the two and got out to take a better look.

  Sure enough there was a slight discoloration on the brick next to the large plastic number 7, indicating another number used to hang there with it. It didn’t anymore. I checked the ground, and saw a large plastic number 1 resting face down in the grass.

  “One down, seven to go,” I said to nobody.

  I parked, taped my door, and walked up to the building. After a cursory check of the parking lot, I opened up the main door, and was met by a security door and a wall of buttons next to the intercom. I pressed the button next to ‘Kapoor’ to the tune of Shave and a Haircut.

  “Who is it?”

  “Phineas Troutt.”

  “If it’s you, then what did you say right before we got off the phone?”

  She was playing it cautious. But if her problem was anything like Dr. Griffith’s, I could understand it. “I said I’m harmless around women.”

  That was the magic phrase, and she buzzed me through the security door. I walked down the carpeted hallway, up a flight of stairs, and found the appropriate apartment number, giving it a knock. In my line of work I usually try to anticipate danger before I’m actually in it. Expect the unexpected and all that crap. But even with years of danger-plagued problem solving behind me, I still had a healthy shock when Bipasha Kapoor opened the door.

  I’m not impressed by looks, so the fact that she resembled a bigger busted, Indian version of Halle Berry didn’t faze me.

  What did faze me was the 9mm Beretta she had trained on my mid-section, cocked and pointing uncomfortably at my pancreas. Maybe I shouldn’t have left Snoopy and Friends in the car.

  I raised my hands and tried a disarming smile on for size. “I’ve had warmer receptions.”

  My smile didn’t disarm her. Her mouth, sans lipstick, was a tight line and her eyes were intent. I suppose my appearance unnerved her. Mr. Clean usually doesn’t make house calls.

  “If you’re going to shoot me, you have to take the safety off first,” I told her.

  “The safety is off.”

  “You have a round chambered?”

  She nodded.

  “What kind of ammo?”

  “Hydra-Shok.”

  “That makes a really big hole.”

  She nodded again.

  I switched my gaze from her pretty eyes to the barrel of the weapon. The muzzle looked impossibly big. Like I could crawl inside and sleep forever.

  All I had to do was yell, or make a sudden move, and odds were good she’d end me.

  We stood there for a moment, the door still open, both of us considering my demise. Then her brows creased and relaxed, and a burst of air came out of her flared nostrils. The 9mm lowered, and she walked into the living room. I closed the door and followed.

  The apartment was tastefully furnished, if not extravagantly. The sofa and love seat were soft, deep suede, built for comfort and not style. There was a luxurious looking throw rug in the middle of the floor, some sort of white synthetic thick enough to sink into. Several lamps of varying size, shape, and color gave the place more than adequate light, and there was a bean bag—did they still make those?—off in a far corner.

  Ms. Bipasha Kapoor perched herself on the edge of the loveseat and put the Beretta on the teak table in front of her. I sat opposite her on the sofa, and waited for her to say something. In the meantime, I indulged in my piggish habit of trying to imagine her naked, and had to admit she would probably look better than she did wearing that severe gray jacket with the big shoulder pads. I resisted the urge to ask if she played football in it.

  “Cancer?” she asked, catching me totally off guard. I briefly glanced away, then met her intense stare and nodded.

  “Pancreas,” I responded.

  “I noticed the venous catheter scar on your arm, and the hair is obvious.”

  “You a nurse?”

  “I’m a doctor. Do you think women of color can’t be doctors?”

  “I think anyone can be whatever they want to be when they grow up. But on the hallway wall is a picture of a woman in a nurse’s uniform. I was wondering if you followed in your mother’s footsteps.”

  “My mother died when I was four. That’s my aunt.”

  “There’s a strong family resemblance.”

  “Step-aunt. We weren’t related by blood.”

  “Easy mistake. All of you people look alike.”

  Her eyebrows creased. “You people?”

  “You know,” I said. “Healthcare professionals.”

  The barest of smiles blew across her face, then she went back to judging me unworthy. She had the kind of face that was more accustomed to looking tough than relaxed.

  We played the staring game for a little longer, and I did my best to look both non-threatening and threatening at the same time, which was a tough line to walk because I really needed a bump. I considered the Hydro in my pocket.

  That’s the way to land this job, Phin. Snort drugs in front of her and turn into a raving maniac.

  “Can I get you something to drink?” she asked. “Coffee? Espresso?”

  “Espresso would be lovely.” It would help counter the oxycodone sleepies.

  Bipasha got up and smoothed out her gray slacks, then went to the kitchen to get my caffeine. I looked around the room again and noticed the absence of a television. That was odd. Maybe she had one in the bedroom.

  A short haired gray and pink cat came out from under the sofa I was facing and stared at me with unblinking alien eyes. I made a kissing sound with my lips and wiggled my fingers.

  In two springs the cat was standing on my lap, extending its head to be stroked. I complied. From the kitchen came the whirring sounds of an expensive appliance.

  Thirty seconds later, Dr. Kapoor returned with my tiny cup, not indulging in one herself. I thanked her, downed it in one hot, delicious gulp, and set it on the teak, next to her gun.

  “For future reference,” I said, “when a strange man is in your apartment, don’t leave your loaded gun on the table and leave the room.”

  “It isn’t loaded,” she said.
“But this one is.”

  She reached into the V of her jacket and pulled the most adorable little Derringer I’d ever seen out of her bra holster. Dr. Kapoor avoided pointing it at me, and I avoided saying that with a chest that size, she could have concealed a Magnum instead of a Derringer.

  Self-control points all around.

  I rubbed the cat’s stomach, and it purred. Dr. Kapoor put her gun away, giving me a glimpse of black lace.

  “His name is Groucho,” she said.

  Groucho’s ears pricked up when he heard his name. I scratched his ears and waited for her to get on with it already.

  “I just wanted to see how you’d react when someone pointed a gun at you. The people involved in this use guns. I didn’t know any other way to test you.”

  “Did I pass?”

  “I don’t know,” she frowned. “I don’t have any experience with this kind of thing, and I don’t like admitting I’m not competent at something.”

  “Would it have been better if I disarmed you and broke your jaw with a karate kick?”

  “Probably not,” she said.

  Groucho purred.

  “When someone is pointing a gun at you, point blank, there isn’t any way to disarm them. It isn’t like the movies. Bullets move faster than any human being can. As for the karate, I don’t know any. I taught a yoga class for a while, and downward dog isn’t much of a self-defense. But I can tell you what to do if you’re facing a guy with a gun.”

  “What?” she asked.

  “Tell him you’ll blow him.”

  “Seriously?”

  I nodded. “No guy is going to turn that down.”

  “And then what do I do?”

  “Bite his dick off.”

  “He’ll shoot me.”

  “You have to assume he’ll shoot you anyway. And do a lot worse to you beforehand. But this way, at least you bit his dick off.”

  She seemed to consider it, then frowned. “I don’t think you’re the right person for this job, Mr. Troutt. I’d like you to leave.”

  I set Groucho on the cushion next to me, then crossed my legs. “I just braved rush hour traffic to get here, Dr. Kapoor. I’m not eager to leave just yet.”

  I saw it. Fear. She covered it up fast, but it was there, in her eyes.

  “I’ll call the police.”

  “Do you think they’ll help?” I asked. “The police obviously didn’t help you with your problem, or I wouldn’t be sitting here. If you can’t count on the police, and don’t want to hire me, you’re going to have to do things on your own. Here’s what you do. Take your gun out.”

  She stared at me.

  “I’m bigger and stronger and a helluva lot meaner than you,” I said. “Take out your gun.”

  She did, pointing it at me.

  “Now shoot me,” I said.

  The bullet didn’t come.

  “If you aren’t going to shoot me, you aren’t going to shoot the people bothering you. That’s why you’re hiring me. To do the shooting for you. I’m not sure what you expected from this meeting, because I’ve never been in your shoes. When someone threatens me, I don’t threaten them back. Bad people don’t respond to threats. They respond to violence. The only time I point a gun at someone is when I’m going to shoot that person.”

  “You’re scaring me,” she said.

  “You’re not scaring me,” I said.

  We did the stare down thing again.

  “Either shoot me, or get me another one of those delicious espressos,” I said. Then I added, “Please.”

  Dr. Kapoor stood up.

  “You’re closer to the door than I am,” I told her. “You can run. But I’m guessing you’re not the run away type.”

  “No. I’m not.” She tucked the gun back into her bra, giving me another flash of lace. “I changed my mind. You’re hired, Mr. Troutt.”

  “Call me Phin.”

  “Then call me Pasha.”

  She extended her hand. I shook it. It was firm and dry, but soft in the way that women’s hands are.

  “Do you really want another espresso?”

  “If it wouldn’t be too much trouble.”

  She padded off to the kitchen. Groucho bumped his head into my thigh, demanding attention. I put him back in my lap.

  “I own and operate the Hearst Clinic in Flutesburg,” Pasha said above the sound of the espresso maker. “Women’s healthcare, both body and mind. Obstetrics, prenatal, gynecology, fertility, counseling. But the thing that draws all the attention is abortion.”

  She stuck her head out of the kitchen and squinted at me. “What’s your opinion about right to life?”

  I was more of a right to death kind of guy, but I soft pedaled it. “People shouldn’t tell one another what they can and can’t do with their bodies. Pro-choice and pro-life aren’t mutually exclusive terms.”

  “How about the rights of the unborn?”

  “If the kid can live outside the womb, it should have rights. Until then, it’s a parasite.”

  “And how do you feel about abortion protestors?”

  “Everyone who has ever been to an abortion protest should adopt at least two children or shut the hell up.”

  Pasha appeared satisfied by my answers, and disappeared back into the kitchen.

  “Last week, I received a call here, at my home, offering me fifty thousand dollars to close the clinic. I refused. The man told me to take it, or else he would burn the clinic down and then rape and kill me.”

  Pasha was talking in the steady tone of a person who had a handle on her emotions. I gave her points for that. She came out with the espresso, and I thanked her and took a sip as she sat across from me, legs tucked under her.

  “You were right. Police did nothing. Not because they were sexist, or bigots, or pro-lifers, but because there isn’t anything to be done about phone threats. Best they could do was tell me to change my number. That’s impossible, because too many of my patients have my number and call if they need help. “

  She took a deep breath and closed her eyes.

  “The next day after work, someone grabbed me. He came from behind when I was going to my car. I think I was hit with some sort of stun gun or Taser. It hurt so bad. I passed out. I woke up sometime later, naked, in an alley.”

  She opened her eyes again.

  “I wasn’t raped. I wasn’t hurt at all. My clothes were next to me, along with a note that said ‘This is a warning.’”

  “What did the police do this time?”

  “What could they do? I was grabbed by someone I didn’t see. They said they’d check around for witnesses. Nothing has turned up. They kept an eye on me for a few days. But when nothing else happened, they stopped coming around.”

  “Do you have the note?”

  “The police have it.”

  It probably wouldn’t help anyway. I doubted her abductor had his name and address written on the back.

  “Did you see any other cars in the parking lot before you were grabbed?”

  “I guess there were a few. Nothing sticks to memory.”

  I sipped more espresso. “Did they contact you again?”

  “Yes. Three days ago. They told me they had the money and they’d drop it off. I told them to go to hell. I haven’t heard from them since. But for the past two days a gray sedan has been following me around. Tinted windows. No license plates. It parks outside the clinic, and parks outside my apartment. When I call the police, it disappears before they get there. The cops have stopped taking my calls. They think I’m nuts.”

  She didn’t seem nuts to me, and I told her so. She wasn’t impressed by my warmth.

  I asked, “When did you get the gun?”

  “Right after I was abducted. That’s also when I wrote to you. One of my secretaries used to work for Dr. Griffith before his clinic closed. She still had your name and address in her Rolodex.”

  “His clinic closed?”

  “Last month. We’re now the only clinic that terminates pregn
ancies in Flutesburg.”

  I thought about this for a moment. Here was a smart, tough lady who was up against something beyond her realm of experience, yet she would rather be killed than show any weakness. If someone offered me fifty grand to quit my job, assuming I had one, I’d take the path of least resistance and go to Hawaii.

  “What do you want from me?” I asked.

  “I want you to stop whoever is doing this.”

  Which was what I figured she would say. I crossed my legs and Groucho jumped off my lap and looked back at me, irritated.

  “My fee is eight thousand dollars,” I said.

  “You charged Dr. Griffith five.”

  “I’ve run into some expenses since then.”

  She nodded, obviously thinking about the cost of my cancer therapy.

  I was thinking about the higher street cost of coke.

  “Deal. The important thing is keeping the clinic open.”

  “And keeping you alive,” I said. “I’ll take the job.”

  She didn’t throw her arms around me and kiss my neck.

  She didn’t even smile and say thanks.

  “When do you want the money?” was what she said.

  I wanted it all, right now. That probably wouldn’t fly with her, though.

  “Half today, half when this is all over. If I have any extra expenses, you cover them. If this runs on for more than two weeks, I’ll ask for more money. I may have to hire outside help, but that will come out of my fee.”

  “I can get you a cashier’s check tomorrow. Or would you prefer cash?”

  “Cash. I don’t like to deal with banks.”

  “Fine. You can start right now.”

  I smiled. “Can I finish my espresso first?”

  “The gray sedan has been parked around back for the last two hours.”

  I drained the rest of my cup and decided to go have a look.

  Peeking through the blinds of Pasha’s bedroom window, I saw the sedan parked in the resident’s lot, a hundred meters away.

  It was as she described it; gray, tinted windows, no plates. I think it was a Buick, but they all have that rounded-corners look these days. It wasn’t running, as indicated by the lack of exhaust fumes escaping the tailpipe. But there was cigarette smoke wisping out of a crack in the driver’s side window.