Footprints of the Dead (Tom Gabriel #1)

by Tim Ellis

  He squeezed her arm. “I knew I could rely on you.”

  “You knew you could sucker me, you mean.”

  “Come to the hotel for dinner next Thursday night. Bring an overnight bag. We’ll get smashed, and talk over old times.”

  “Is that woman still there?”

  “Mabel? Yeah, it’s her apartment. I’m just a guest.”

  “I’ll come for dinner, but I’m not staying with her there. She doesn’t like me.”

  “Mabel’s the life and soul of the apartment – she loves everyone.”

  “Except me.”

  “Okay, but come after work. You can take a shower when you get there.”

  “I’ll look forward to it.”

  “Oh, I nearly forgot. I have a message from your mother.”

  “Do you know how weird that sounds when my mum’s been dead for seven years?”

  “Yeah, I know. Anyway – and don’t go shooting the messenger – but she said, ‘You want to throw that two-timing cheating bastard out onto the street.’”

  “She never could keep her nose out of my relationships.”

  “If I recall, she was always right about the guys you chose.”

  “Shit! I was just getting comfortable with him as well.”

  “You want me to come ‘round and beat the crap out of him?”

  “Your days of beating the crap out of people are long gone, Tom. You should stick to watching it on TV.”

  “Thanks.’ He pushed himself up like an octogenarian. ‘I’ll see you next Thursday.”

  After grabbing a coffee at Zero’s diner on the corner of Riberia Street, he wandered back. As he was passing Mona’s desk, he helped himself to a box of old files that just happened to be sitting there taking up space.

  He sat in his Dodge outside the department for a good half hour going through the files. ‘Pending’ had been stamped in large, red letters, on the cover of each file. Yeah, he remembered that ‘Pending’ meant ‘Unsolved’, ‘No leads’, ‘No chance’. Nobody was looking for these children except maybe Mercy Hebb.

  Chapter Two

  It was a hot one, but somehow it didn’t feel as hot when you were retired. Still, he was glad when the air conditioning kicked in as he pulled away from the department and headed up King Street.

  Just before the Bridge of Lions over the bay, he hung a right down the Avenida Menendez and pulled up outside the three-story St. Augustine Record.

  He’d been here a handful of times when he was a detective, but it had been a few years ago. The paper had even done an article on him and his ‘gift’, which must have been how Mercy Hebb had heard about him. He hadn’t been hiding though – just resting.

  The woman on the reception desk – Katie Wallis on her name badge – looked at him as if he were a tourist. He wore shorts with a bunch of pockets, an oversized Tampa Bay Rays baseball shirt, and a pair of loafers. He hadn’t felt the need to get dressed up for quite a while. In fact, he wondered if any of his ‘proper’ clothes fitted anymore.

  “Ray Franchetti, please,” he said in answer to her quizzical look.

  “Is he expecting you, Mister . . . ?”

  “Tell him Tom Gabriel is here about Mercy Hebb.”

  “Please take a seat, Mr. Gabriel,” Katie said, and showed her perfect teeth.

  He didn’t sit down, but walked around the lobby, reading the framed news articles hanging on the walls. There was one about owls entitled “Look Whooo’s Here,” – another one describing the “Live Music at Ann O’Malley’s” – the Irish bar on Orange Street. Another place he hadn’t been in a while. In fact, he hadn’t been anywhere for quite some time. Since Cassie had gone, he’d stopped living as well. There hadn’t been much point to his life without Cassie. Then he’d retired, so he didn’t need to get out of bed in the mornings. He’d lost the two things that he’d cared about most in the world – Cassie and being a detective.

  “Mr. Gabriel?” A small man with a hairline that went so far past his forehead he actually only had hair at the back of his head, a grey beard with patches of black, and rimless glasses. He wore a dark-grey shirt, matching trousers, and a dark-orange-and-blue swirly tie.

  “Yes.” He shook Franchetti’s hand, and guessed by the man’s appearance, that he had nothing to do with the mafia.

  “You have news of Mercy?”

  “Mrs. Hebb has asked me to look into her daughter’s disappearance.”

  “Ah, I see. For a moment . . . well, you’d better come up.” He led the way up two flights of stairs.

  Halfway, Tom had to stop and catch his breath again. He hadn’t realized how unfit he’d become. It wasn’t as if he’d put on any weight. He was still six foot two and a hundred eighty-two pounds – as he’d been for the past thirty years. There were certain places on his body where his skin had lost its elasticity and sagged like a wet T-shirt, such as ‘round his neck, his elbows and knees, and stomach – he still had a flat stomach, but it looked like parchment used during Cortés’ conquest of Mexico. Also, he wasn’t as suntanned as he used to be. Overall though, he was still in good shape.

  “Sorry, I should have thought,” Franchetti said. “I use the stairs to keep in shape, but forget you old people like to use the elevator.”

  Old people! “I’m fine, Mr. Franchetti. It’s been a while since I did any exercise. Keep going, I’m right on your tail.” Was sixty-two old? He would have said eighty-two was old, not sixty-two. Maybe he was prematurely aging. Maybe he’d caught a disease that was ravaging his body. Maybe . . .

  “Coffee?”

  “That would be good.”

  Franchetti pointed to a seat.

  His breathing was labored as he sat down. Maybe he was dying from the inside out. He’d go for a check-up – just to be on the safe side. With the expectation of dying each morning as he pulled the trigger on the Smith & Wesson, he’d felt no need to keep in shape, or look after his health. He’d decided he was going to die to be with Cassie, but it hadn’t happened. What now?

  “Thanks,” he said as Franchetti passed him a mug of Joe.

  “Milk and sugar on the table.”

  “No thanks.” He drank his coffee as it came.

  “So, you’re here to find out if I know what’s happened to Mercy?”

  “Yep.”

  “I’m the one who rang her mother.”

  “I know. That’s why I’m here.”

  Franchetti sat behind his large, mahogany desk. There were framed articles on the walls, different ones from those in the lobby. Here, there was one about the Yellow Jackets’ “Player of the Year,” “A Tree-climbing Porcupine Born at Alligator Farm,” and “Ponte Vedra’s First Title in Basketball.” He thought that maybe the choice of articles hanging on his office wall said something about the man.

  “She was doing her usual job covering local events,” Franchetti said. “I gave her the go-ahead to work on the missing kids . . .”

  “So, you knew about them?”

  “Yeah, she came to me about six months ago, said she had some ideas . . .”

  “Did she tell you what they were?”

  “No, but she did say that she wouldn’t sell the story to one of the nationals – that’s why I allowed her to work on it when things were slow.”

  “And she didn’t keep you in the loop?”

  “You didn’t know Mercy.”

  “No, I didn’t.” He took a swallow of the coffee, which was more like a solid than a liquid, and tasted like bathwater.

  “Wouldn’t give you the fleas off her dog.”

  “Did she have a dog?”

  “No, it was just an –”

  “I see. Where did she keep her research?”

  “She had a notebook. Carried it with her everywhere she went. Used to write longhand in it, but you’d need a magnifying glass to read what she’d written. Could write four times the amount that other people put on a page . . . Do you remember the notebook in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade?”

  “Sorry,
don’t watch much television.”

  “Well, Indie’s father had a battered old notebook, and inside were drawings, clues, maps . . . well, you name it, he had it in there. That’s what Mercy’s notebook was like. All her research was in that notebook.”

  “Nothing on her computer here?”

  “Apart from her usual articles. Except . . . there are a couple of encrypted files we can’t get into.”

  “Can I take a look?”

  “You know how to decrypt encrypted files?”

  “No, but I know someone who does. Is it all right with you if I take copies?”

  “We did an article on you a few years back, didn’t we?”

  He was tempted to deny it. “Yeah, that’s right.”

  “The detective who sees dead people?”

  “One and the same, but I’m retired now.”

  “Can you see any dead people in my office?”

  Tom shook his head. It was always the same, people wanted him to perform – like a trained seal at the circus. “There are two children sitting on your desk, a man in the corner, and three women . . .”

  Franchetti went white. “Jesus!”

  “I’m joking. I very rarely see the dead these days,” he lied. “I think the older I get, the less I see them.”

  “You had me going then.” He gave a nervous smile. “I would have thought that the closer you got to death, the more you’d see them.”

  “Thanks, but I’m not that damned close to death yet.”

  Franchetti smiled. “I was joking.”

  “I see.” His sense of humor only went one way. “So, can I . . . ?”

  “Yeah sure. Except . . . there’s a condition.”

  “Oh?”

  “I don’t want anyone else getting the story . . . if there is a story.”

  “Okay.”

  “I have my interests to protect.”

  “What exactly are you saying . . . ?”

  “I want you to take someone with you.”

  “I work alone.”

  “That’s not strictly true is it, Mr. Gabriel? As I recall, you had a female partner when you were a detective.”

  “That was different.”

  “I could help you . . . with resources and so forth.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Then I’m also sorry. You can’t have copies of the files.”

  Tom’s eyes creased to slits. “Don’t you want to find Miss Hebb?”

  “Of course, but I could employ someone who is a bit more . . . cooperative.”

  He didn’t really want someone tagging along with him, getting in the way, annoying him with inane chatter, but with the newspaper covering his back, he’d certainly be in a better position than if he was out there on his own. “I call the shots?’

  “Of course.”

  “A trial run?”

  “But then you’d already have the files.”

  He was between a rock and a bigger rock. “It seems I have little choice.”

  “Excellent. Her name is Butterfly, she’s a cub reporter.”

  “You’re giving me an inexperienced child to take with me?”

  “She has some experience – not much – and she’s a bit more than a child. To be honest . . .”

  Ah! Now we’re getting to it, he thought.

  “. . . I have to get her out of the office; she’s driving everybody crazy.” He stood up from his desk. “Follow me.”

  “I’d like to look through Mercy’s things as well?”

  “Can I trust you?”

  “With what?”

  “We have a lot of sensitive information here.”

  The St. Augustine Record was a local paper for goodness sake. Skepticism dripped from his voice like maple syrup. “Like what?”

  “Sources and . . . you know . . . that type of thing.”

  “Of course,” he said, not believing a damned word the man said. “You can trust me. If I come across any sensitive information, I’ll be sure to forget it instantly.”

  “Yeah, I heard old people have problems with their short-term memories.”

  He laughed politely as Franchetti led him through the newsroom to a desk by a window. There were four other people in the room who looked up as they entered.

  “Butterfly?” Franchetti called, and signalled for a thin, young woman to come over.

  “Are you sure she’s left school?” Tom hissed at Franchetti.

  “You’ll like her. Trust me.”

  He didn’t trust Franchetti as far as he could spit. “Then why do you want to get rid of her?”

  Butterfly had a variety of tattoos down both arms, a winged dragon on the left side of her neck, and a large red butterfly across her stomach. She had black hair that touched her shoulders and bright-red lipstick. On top she wore a leather bra underneath a patchwork waistcoat, and on the bottom, shorts with heavy army boots.

  “Yeah?” Butterfly said through a mouthful of gum, as she walked over to them.

  “This is Mr. Gabriel.”

  “So?”

  “So, you’re going to be helping Mr. Gabriel find Mercy.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I want you to.”

  “Is it part of my training?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay then.”

  “The first thing you can do is get Mr. Gabriel into Mercy’s computer files, and then you can go with him.”

  “Where?”

  “Wherever he’s going.”

  “You’re getting rid of me?”

  “Yes, but I also expect a story at the end of it.”

  “A story?”

  “Yes.”

  “What type of story?”

  “The type of story I can put in my newspaper.”

  “And you want me to write it?”

  “Why not?”

  Butterfly’s lip curled up. “And you’ll put my name on it?”

  “Second name.”

  “First, or I don’t go.”

  “All right, first.”

  She grinned. “Okay.”

  Franchetti walked away then, and Tom could have sworn he saw a weight lifted from the man’s shoulders.

  “You’re a bit old,” Butterfly said.

  “And you’re a bit young.” She was at least ten years younger than his daughters, Misty and Sara. ‘”How old are you?”

  “Twenty-one. Got any tattoos?”

  “I can see you have.”

  “Tribal body art. So, show me yours, and I’ll show you mine.”

  “I can already see yours.”

  She grinned. “I have them in other places as well.”

  “I don’t think I want to see those, thank you. Right, can we do what we’re meant to be doing? Get me into Mercy’s files.”

  “Sure.” She sat down at the desk, switched on the workstation, and logged on. “Which files do you want?”

  “The two encrypted ones. Put them on a floppy disk.”

  She laughed as if she had hiccups. “Yeah, you are ancient. Floppy discs are so yesterday. Today, we got memory sticks and flashcards.”

  “As long as the files are on something I can take with me, and someone else can access them.”

  “Okay.” She handed him a tiny gizmo.

  He held it in the palm of his hand and stared at it. “The files are on this?”

  “Yep.”

  He put the gizmo in one of the pockets in his shorts. “Okay. Are you ready to go?”

  “Where?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “I suppose not. I’ll get my sack and use the bathroom first.”

  “You do that while I look through Mercy’s desk.”

  “Okay.” Butterfly wandered off.

  He didn’t know why, but he was excited. Not by Butterfly – even though she was a very lovely young woman – but it struck him that he was doing something he loved to do. He was a detective again – collecting evidence, asking questions, following leads, putting the pieces together. He scratched his h
ead. Why the hell did he ever give it up?

  Sitting down at the desk, he began rifling through the drawers. He had no idea what he was looking for, so he cast a suspicious eye over everything. There was a bunch of papers in one drawer, which would need careful examination, so he stacked them neatly on the desk to take with him. He found an address book and put that on top of the papers. There were lots of pens, pencils, empty notebooks, and other stationery – Mercy Hebb was a hoarder. There was a stash of business cards held together with an elastic band – that went on top of the papers as well. She had a good supply of Post-it Notes, and he held each pad up to the light to see if there were any indentations. On the top sheet of a half-used bright pink pad, he found some, and used one of the HB pencils from a drawer to highlight the mix of numbers and letters:

  Cj3X0Dkz0TkzC0tkzChjG3IY

  His face creased up as he looked at what had been revealed – it was meaningless, but he stuck the sheet on top of the papers. Just because it didn’t mean anything to him, didn’t mean that it was gibberish to everyone. And not only that, he had the notion he could detect a pattern in there somewhere.

  “Ready?” Butterfly said when she came back.

  He finished going through the drawers and got down on his hands and knees.

  “Oh God,” Butterfly said. ‘What ya doin’ down there? Are you all right?”

  He didn’t bother answering, but began pulling the drawers out one at a time to examine the underneath and the backs. Then he ran his hand under the desktop, and looked on the floor. There was nothing of any interest, except . . . a girl of about seven years old with long, blonde hair and bruising around her neck was squatting under the desk by the wall.

  “Have you seen my mama?”

  He was only slightly taken aback. Surprises of this nature had plagued him all his life. He’d learned to accept them for what they were a long time ago. The dead couldn’t hurt him, and sometimes they were helpful. “No, but she won’t be far away, I’m sure.”

  “Are ya talking to yourself down there?” Butterfly asked.