Footprints of the Dead (Tom Gabriel #1)

by Tim Ellis

  “I hate clowns,” Rae said, picking one of the cards up. “Since Stephen King, clowns aren’t the same anymore.”

  “He was a clown, was he?”

  She rolled her eyes. “Yeah.”

  The waitress came back with the pot of coffee. “Fill ya up?”

  They both nodded.

  After the waitress had left, Rae pointed to the Post-it Note. “Any ideas?”

  “None.”

  She pulled the tablet from her bag and switched it on. “I have an idea.” Once the machine was ready, she typed the alphanumeric characters into the search engine and touched Go.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Is it true you don’t own a computer?”

  “Yep.”

  “That pervert was right – you’re a dinosaur. They’re extinct, by the way.”

  “I thought I hadn’t seen any of the old gang about lately.”

  “You’re never too old to learn something stupid, you know?”

  “I don’t need to when I’ve got you.”

  “Well, that didn’t work. I typed it exactly as it is into the search engine, and it came back with a load of rubbish.” She turned the tablet around to show him what was on the screen.

  “What are those?”

  “Websites.”

  “And what do they do?”

  “Wait.” She went to the first six websites. “Hey, I think we might have hit the dinosaur on the head. They’re all coming back with computer code.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning, Mr. Dinosaur, that what you’ve got here is probably a scrap of computer code.”

  “Billy would have known.”

  “Maybe we can go back to Billy’s when we’ve had a look in Mercy’s apartment?”

  “Good idea.”

  “Well, when I say ‘“we”,’ I mean ‘“you.”’ I don’t want to go up there again, so that he can undress me with his eyes – pervert.”

  “You liked him a lot then?”

  “It shows, huh?”

  He took a swallow of coffee and picked up the picture.

  “There are names on the back, you know?”

  “Yeah, I’ve seen them.” He turned the photograph over again: Patsy Collins, Mia Monteith, Dani Butler, Callum Daly, and Kobe Howard.

  “Should we find out who they are?” She began typing the first name into the search engine – Patsy Collins. “Somebody’s put that same photograph on the net . . . Kobe Howard has a blog.” She stopped talking to read. “It’s a reunion picture of six university friends from eighteen months ago. Anything else you want to know?”

  “What about the other one?” he said pointing to the picture of the football player.

  She positioned it on the table and took a photograph of it with the tablet camera.

  “Ingenious,” Tom said.

  She uploaded it onto the ‘net and then ran an image search. “Randy Martin. Used to play for the Jacksonville Jaguars . . .”

  “Of course,” Tom said. “I should have recognized the black helmet.”

  “He died in a car crash three years ago.”

  “That’s the photographs off our list. Good job, Rae.”

  “Hey, thanks. You coulda done all that yourself if you’d had a tablet.”

  “No thanks. I’ll leave it to you.” He stood up. “Ready?”

  She pushed everything back into her bag and followed him out.

  “May as well leave the Dodge here and stroll over there,” he said when they were outside.

  The apartment block was diagonally left, and there wasn’t much traffic as they made their way across the road. Number three was on the ground floor.

  When he turned the key in the lock, he found it was already open. He pushed Rae to the side – out of the line of fire – and wished he’d brought his gun. He had a license for it, but not to carry it around the streets like the Lone Ranger. A PI’s license was becoming a priority. His training had already kicked in, and normally he would have shouted, “Armed police,” as he entered, but there wasn’t much point in shouting that if he had no weapon.

  “Hello?” he called instead, as he turned the handle and pushed the door open with his foot. “Anyone there?” He turned to Rae. “Stay here while I make sure it’s clear.”

  He moved inside slowly, keeping his back to the wall. His hand was up as if he had his gun, and he put it down by his side before anybody noticed. Without his gun, he felt naked.

  “Hello, anybody here?” he shouted again.

  There was still no response. As he went further into the apartment, he could see that someone had been there before him. He checked to make sure all the rooms were clear, and when he returned to the living room, Rae had already followed him in. She was standing at the end of the hallway staring at the chaos of ripped and upturned furniture, the contents of drawers spilled out all over the hardwood floor, and books from a smashed bookcase strewn about the room.

  “Didn’t I tell you to stay outside?”

  “I thought you might need some help,” she said, waving a tiny .25 Derringer about, her finger wrapped around the trigger.

  “Are you crazy?” He strode towards her. “You’d better give that to me before you kill somebody.”

  She slipped the gun into her bag. “It’s mine. I have a license for it. The safety was on. Stop looking so worried.”

  “The license allows you to keep it at home, not to carry it about in your bag like a gangster.”

  “A girl can’t be too careful, and I know how to use it as well.”

  “I’d be a lot happier if you left that at home tomorrow.”

  “Yeah. So, what do you think happened here?”

  “I think it’s fairly obvious. A better question would be, ‘What were they looking for?’”

  Chapter Four

  He told Rae to stay where she was and not to touch anything while he looked around. Who had ransacked the apartment? What were they looking for? Had they found it? Where the hell was Mercy Hebb?

  He quickly realized it was a waste of time trying to find any clues in the apartment – the place looked like a twister had come for dinner. “Let’s get out of here,” he said.

  “Is it me, or is this getting weird?” Rae asked as they made their way back out into the corridor.

  “I think Mercy Hebb discovered something about those missing children.” His face creased up. “What . . . is anybody’s guess.”

  “You think she’s dead?”

  They crossed the road and climbed in the Dodge. “Let’s not kill her off so soon. There are other possibilities.”

  “Such as?”

  “She might be on the run. Ransacking her apartment could be evidence that they haven’t found what they’re looking for.”

  “Who?”

  He shrugged. “Also, someone might have kidnapped her, but if they had, they’d also have her notebook. Everything she knew, they’d know. In which case, why search her apartment? Another possibility is that whoever searched her place also has her locked up somewhere.”

  “Maybe we should go to the police with what we know.”

  “We don’t know anything. All we’re doing is speculating.”

  Rae became silent as they made their way back to the Dodge.

  He joined San Marco Avenue again and drove back to Billy Hall’s apartment.

  “I’ll stay here this time,” Rae said.

  “I guessed you would.” He held his hand out for the Post-it Note with the alphanumeric writing on.

  She scrabbled in her bag and passed it to him.

  “I won’t be long,” he said shutting the door.

  He walked to the entrance and stood to one side as two men barged their way out. One was tall, muscular, and wore a tight, black t-shirt. The other man had on a linen suit and a collarless shirt, his face was all angles, and he carried a black doctor’s bag. Neither of them said, “Thank you.”

  As soon as he walked into the lobby, he remembered that the elevator was out of se
rvice and wished he’d sent Rae to deliver the Post-it Note instead. At least it was exercise, which was probably something he desperately needed.

  Finding the door ajar when he reached number seven, he edged inside.

  ‘Billy, it’s Mr. Gabriel.’

  There was no answer, and he quickly understood why. Billy was sprawled on the floor face down in a pool of blood. The back of his head was a goulash of bone and brain, and his hands looked like pieces of raw meat. Billy had obviously been tortured before he was killed. Tom had seen this type of murder before when he’d been a detective, and a club hammer came to mind.

  He crouched down to check the carotid pulse in Billy’s neck, just to make sure there was no spark of life left – he felt nothing.

  A number of questions needed answers. Was Billy’s torture and death related to their earlier visit? Were he and Rae being followed? Was it his fault Billy was dead? How come he hadn’t spotted someone following him? Was he getting too old for this? Should he go back to being retired and stop pretending he still had what it took? Should he have known this would happen? What the hell was he going to do now?

  He stood up. Where was the memory stick he’d given Billy? He was in two minds about contaminating the crime scene, but decided to make a cursory search of Billy’s pockets and around the computers. He found nothing.

  He used Billy’s phone and rang Mona.

  “You think I’ve got nothing else better to do than talk over old times with you?”

  “What about a dead body?”

  “You step out of your apartment, and the bodies start piling up. What’s the address?’

  He told her.

  “Don’t go anywhere.”

  “I won’t.”

  After pulling the door closed he walked down the stairs and to the Dodge.

  “You took your time,” Rae said, putting her tablet down as he climbed in.

  “Billy’s dead.”

  “Ya mean he died of natural causes?”

  “Somebody killed him.” He didn’t think it was necessary to provide her with the gory details.

  ‘Was it because of us?”

  “I don’t know, but I can’t find that gizmo we gave him.”

  “I don’t think I want to ride with you anymore.”

  “Probably a wise decision. After I’ve given the police a statement, I’ll take you home.”

  “Do you know what’s going on?”

  “No, and that bothers me. The detective inside of me has reawakened from its uneasy slumber.”

  Mona Connelly had been his partner for five years before he threw in the towel. Now in her mid-thirties, she had dark-brown, curly hair to her shoulders, an easy smile, and was slightly overweight. As a detective, she was up there with the best, but she couldn’t find a decent man if her life depended on it. She stumbled from one bad relationship to another.

  “Maybe I should arrest you,” Mona said when he met her on the sidewalk.

  “Maybe you should,” he agreed with her.

  She took out her notebook, and he gave her a formal statement.

  “And why did you come back?”

  “I forgot to tell him something?”

  “What?”

  “It’s not important.”

  “I’ll decide what’s important or not.”

  “I’ve heard that somewhere before.”

  “That’s because you used to say it.”

  “Trust me, it’s not relevant to what we’ve got here.”

  “There is no ‘we’ anymore, Tom. You’re simply a witness to a murder, that’s all.”

  “I’d say I am a bit more than a witness. I’m in the damned middle of this – whatever ‘this’ is.” He told her about Mercy Hebb’s apartment being turned upside down.

  “And you’re only just reporting it because?”

  “It wasn’t important.”

  “That’s the second time you’ve said that. My response is the same both times.”

  They entered the apartment.

  “I don’t need the medical examiner to tell me Billy’s been tortured before they killed him,” he said.

  “Yes, we’ve seen this before, haven’t we?”

  “About four years ago, just before I retired. The body near the marina – head and hands smashed the same way. The ME said a club hammer had been used.”

  “Yeah, I remember. So, this was a hit.”

  “Looks like it to me.”

  “And you didn’t see anyone?”

  “No.” He didn’t tell her about the two men that he’d seen coming out of the building. If he had, he’d be tied up for hours looking at mug shots, and going over and over his statement. Also, if the killers knew he was a witness, he’d be next for the hammer treatment. Until he knew what was going on, he’d keep his own counsel. He wasn’t a cop anymore, and he didn’t have the weight of the police department behind him. The game had different rules, and he had to adapt or perish.

  “What about the memory stick?”

  “I had a quick look, but couldn’t find it.”

  “So, it might still be here?”

  “Yes. It could all be a coincidence that Billy was murdered the day I turned up, but I don’t think so. You know how I feel about coincidences.”

  “And what’s on the stick?”

  “Encrypted files, that’s why I brought them to Billy. He was a genius with computer stuff.”

  “Where did you obtain the encrypted . . . ?”

  “The Record. That’s the thing, I can just go back there and get another copy of those files.”

  “And this what’s-her-name . . . ?”

  “Mercy Hebb.”

  “Yeah her. You’re looking for her?”

  “That’s right.”

  “And she’s looking into those missing children?”

  “That’s my understanding.”

  Mona’s brow furrowed. “You’d better give me everything you’ve got.”

  “I haven’t got anything.”

  “As I recall, you have a box of my files, the posters of those missing children, and . . .”

  “Come on, Mona.”

  “Come on what? This is a police investigation now. Unless you’re suggesting I let a civilian, who isn’t even a licensed PI, run a murder investigation . . . ? This is not fiction, Tom. It’s real life. If I helped you, there would be consequences. First of all, if the mayor found out I was giving a civilian information, I’d be out of a job – is that what you want? Second, if the other PIs in the city found out I was helping you, they’d expect the same. Third, that bastard Butler would rat me out to the chief because he wants to be detective commander. Not only that, if you’re practicing as an unlicensed PI, you could end up in a cell.”

  “You just don’t want to help me.”

  “Damn right, I don’t want to help you. My life’s already too complicated as it is without having a civilian retiree on the team.”

  “I wouldn’t be investigating Billy’s murder, I’d –”

  “It could all be connected.”

  “Thanks for nothing. I’ll call by the department tomorrow morning and drop everything off, if that’s what you want. I need to make copies first.”

  “You might need to make copies if you were continuing to investigate Mercy Hebb’s disappearance, but that’s not what you’re going to do.”

  “I made a promise to her mother.”

  “That was before the police got involved. Now, you can leave it to the proper authorities.”

  “What’s wrong with you, Mona?”

  “There’s nothing wrong with me. You’re retired. Go and play golf, sail a boat, or paint. Now, if you wanted to sign up again, go through recruit training, and become a detective.”

  “So, that’s it, you’re cutting me loose?”

  “You cut yourself loose when you retired, Tom.”

  “I’ll go get the stuff and put it in your car, Detective Connelly.”

  “I’d appreciate that, Mr. Gabriel.”

>   He turned to go and said over his shoulder, “Next Thursday’s canceled by the way. I forgot, I go to painting classes on a Thursday.”

  She gave him a wry smile. “I guessed it would be, and if my mother gives you any more messages for me, tell her to mind her own fucking business.”

  Outside in the car, he said to Rae, “How many photographs can you take with that thing?”

  “There’s not a roll of Agfa film in here, ya know. I can take as many pictures as there is memory available to store them.”

  “I don’t need to know the technical details, I just want you to take photographs.”

  “What of?”

  He lay each of the posters on the front seat while she took a photograph. Next, she photographed each of the missing-persons reports.”

  “I’m assuming I can get printed copies of these?”

  “You’re one of those evolutionary oddities, aren’t you?”

  “I’ll take that as a yes, shall I?”

  He threw the envelope with the posters inside into the box with the files, took it to Mona’s car, and put it on the passenger seat. Then he returned to the Dodge.

  “What happened with the police?”

  “Nothing much.”

  “They told you not to get involved, didn’t they? That’s why you’ve had to give them all the information you had. In fact, you can’t even look for Mercy Hebb anymore, but I have a feeling you ain’t gonna take any notice. I’m right, aren’t I?”

  “You seem to know a lot for someone who doesn’t know anything.”

  He started the engine and pulled away.

  “Where are we going now?”

  “Back to the Record, we need to get another copy of those encrypted files.”

  “And I can print off all the photographs I’ve just taken . . . and your application form.”

  “I’m sorry! What application form?”

  “For your private investigator’s license.”

  He glanced at her. “I don’t understand.”

  “While you were up in Harry’s apartment with the police, I downloaded the application form, read the instructions, and filled in most of the details.”

  “How could you possibly do that?”

  “Your life is on the Internet.”

  “Who put it there?”

  “Various agencies and people.”

  “I didn’t give them permission to do that.”