Footprints of the Dead (Tom Gabriel #1)

by Tim Ellis

  “Just a minute.”

  Rae pulled him by the arm further along the sidewalk, so that they could talk in private.

  “It’s your money, what do you want to do?”

  “How long would it take us to get someone else?”

  “Probably another day.”

  “And there’ll be no guarantee that they’ll charge us any less.”

  “No.”

  “And we’ll have to wait for the information.”

  “Yes.”

  “We don’t really have a choice then, do we?”

  “Not really.”

  “Tell her to do it. We’ll be back here in an hour with the five hundred.”

  Rae moved back and spoke to Jane. He saw the woman nod and return to the Internet cafe.

  “Okay,” Rae said. “She’ll have the reports in an hour. Have you got the money?”

  “I can’t get that much out of an ATM, I’ll need to find a bank.”

  They walked into the mall, and found a small branch of the Wells Fargo Bank. He took out six hundred, and stuffed a hundred bucks in his wallet. The rest of the time they hung about in a small coffee shop waiting for the time to pass.

  When the hour was up, they walked back to the Internet cafe and waited outside. Jane Cooper came out shortly afterwards with a handful of papers.

  “There you go.” She handed the papers to Rae. “The bank and credit card reports are first – he has two bank accounts and a credit card account; and the phone reports are next – his home number and cell. I didn’t bother with his wife’s cell, but I can . . .”

  Tom shook his head. “We don’t need the reports of his wife’s cell, but thanks.”

  “Sorry about the lack of staples, they didn’t have any in there.”

  “For five hundred dollars, I’d have expected staples,” Tom mumbled.

  “Take no notice of him. So, when should we come back for the report on Gibson’s Internet activity?”

  “Monday . . . say eleven o’clock?”

  “Got something to do at ten thirty,” Tom reminded Rae. “We can be here at two though.”

  Jane nodded. “That’s fine by me.”

  They turned to go.

  “Excuse me,” Jane said. “Haven’t you forgotten something?”

  Tom’s lip curled up. “I was hoping you had.” He handed over the five hundred dollars. At this rate he’d be a pauper before too long, living on the streets, begging outside subway stations. He’d have a piece of card that read Ex-policeman, please be kind! and a dog called Hobo that had fleas.

  “See you Monday at two,” Rae confirmed.

  Jane nodded again, and returned to the Internet cafe.

  ***

  Once they were driving along Route 1, Rae began going through Oscar Gibson’s bank and credit card reports. It was a twenty-seven-mile journey and would take them approximately forty-five minutes.

  “What are we looking for?” she asked.

  “Anything that says he’s not a normal guy. He’s married, he has two daughters aged three and five, and he works in real estate. His income and expenditure should reflect that.”

  “Okay.”

  “Having sifted through those type of reports a number of times, I can tell you that you want to get a piece of paper, put each purchase in a group, and cross it off the list as you transfer it from one place to another. You’ll have things like gas, food, mortgage, and so on. Most of a person’s salary goes on day-to-day living expenses – they have very little disposable income for the extras and perks in life.”

  “Yeah, it’s weird how you can build a profile of a person’s life from the shit they leave behind. It’s like the paparazzi who scavenge in celebrities’ trash cans and find out what meals they eat, the mail they get, and other stuff like that. You are what you throw away.”

  “Everything you eat, wear, do, think, speak, and hear tells other people who you are. Take you for instance –”

  “No, I don’t think you need to take me anywhere.” She stared out of the passenger window. “That’s part of it though, isn’t it? Everything about you is just data stored somewhere. What you eat is recorded on your food purchases and in your trash cans. All of what you just talked about is on computer or in paper files somewhere. We’re just made up of fragments of information – from birth to death. I feel depressed now.”

  “Concentrate.”

  “Okay.” She sighed, and began focusing on summarizing the information from the bank and credit card reports. “I’m learning a lot more from you than that idiot Franchetti.”

  “That’s because being a detective is not too far removed from investigative journalism. It’s just that detectives don’t get paid lots of money, and they don’t tell the world what they find out about people – you do that for us.”

  They arrived at Ponte Vedra at two fifteen and went straight to the newspaper offices on San Diego Road, the corner of which overlooked the beach.

  Rae put her unfinished analysis of Gibson’s bank and credit card reports down. “Don’t you wish you were lying on the beach chilling?”

  “No.”

  “Do you ever chill?”

  “No.”

  “Have you ever been to the beach?”

  “Once. Years ago, when my two daughters were young. I didn’t like it much – sand got everywhere.”

  “I bet you were a great dad.”

  “I was the world’s worst dad.”

  “You’re just saying that. I bet your daughters thought you were great.”

  “The amount of time I was home, they had trouble recognizing me.”

  Rae laughed.

  Ponte Vedra Camera was on the first floor. On the ground floor was the Streetwise Boutique, which Rae wanted to go in.

  “Afterward,” he said. “First, we have work to do.”

  “Yeah, I can see how your daughters would hate you.”

  The newspaper office was two rooms: a large room and a little office for the editor, who wasn’t there. There were three women in the main room.

  “Yes?” asked a stressed-looking woman with short, ginger hair, rimless glasses, a multicoloured t-shirt, and white shorts.

  “Sorry to bother you,” Tom said. He introduced himself and Rae. “We’re looking for Dulcie Carrick.”

  “You and everyone else. She’s been missing for a week.”

  His mouth dropped open. He wasn’t expecting that response. Or maybe he was, but he was still surprised. “We’re also looking for a journalist from the St. Augustine Record called Mercy Hebb.”

  “Burned down I hear?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ve heard of Mercy. Attended a conference that she was at a couple of years ago, but that’s as much as we know each other. As far as I know, she never came here.”

  “And you’ve no idea where Dulcie Carrick is?”

  “Susan Day – that’s the editor by the way – reported Dulcie missing to the police on Tuesday, but I don’t think they’ve bothered doing anything. Tiger Woods and a bunch of other golfing celebrities are playing at the Sawgrass Golf Course, so the police are a bit stretched . . .” She laughed. “Like us, I suppose. Dulcie’s missing, Susan has got a cold, and Victoria Wilkinson is off with her sick baby. We’re all females here, but sometimes I wish we had a few men to pick up the slack.”

  “Yeah,” Rae chipped in. “Men are good at that. The rest of the time, well . . .”

  Tom’s face creased up. “Thank you for that unhelpful contribution.”

  Rae smiled. “You’re welcome.”

  “You don’t happen to know what she was working on before she disappeared, do you?”

  “No idea. Dulcie keeps her cards close to her chest. Susan might know, but more than likely she won’t. Dulcie wants to be the next Judith Miller when she grows up.”

  “You’ve been most kind,” Tom said and turned to leave.

  “If you find Dulcie lying on a beach somewhere drinking tequila sunrises – tell her to have one for me.”
/>
  They made their way outside.

  “I’ll be five minutes,” Rae said and dived into the Streetwise Boutique before he knew what was happening.

  He hated going shopping with women and guessed it was one of the rooms in hell. With a wife and two daughters, he’d been subjected to quite a bit of shopping with women, so knew exactly what that room entailed. Sometimes though, he’d been allowed to stay home and watch the baseball game, while they ascended on the mall like a plague of locusts.

  The afternoon sun caressed his face as he sat down on a wooden bench. Traffic on Ponta Vedra Boulevard was slow and easy, and the window shoppers were filling in the time until the night gave them a second wind.

  Was Dulcie Carrick involved with Mercy Hebb? To his mind, coincidences never held up to scrutiny. If no one could find Dulcie Carrick, then it was connected to Mercy Hebb and the missing children – of that he was sure.

  “Look,” Rae said, holding up a mostly black sleeveless dress with a red pattern on it, which reflected the four suits of playing cards. There was a lace frill at the bottom and a large bow at the waist. “I had to have it.”

  “Will you wear your boots with it?”

  “I wear my boots with everything.”

  “Fantastic. Can we go now?”

  “You don’t like it, do you?”

  He stood up. “You’ll look very pretty in it.”

  “Pretty! I feel like taking it back now.”

  “Don’t you want to look pretty?”

  “No. I want to look young and streetwise.”

  “Oh yeah, you look both of those things.”

  “You know nothing.”

  “About young people – that’s about the size of it. Can we go now?”

  “I suppose. Where are we going?”

  “Dulcie Carrick’s apartment.”

  “But I thought –”

  “If the police haven’t checked, we might get lucky.”

  “You’re going to break in, aren’t you?”

  He closed his eyes to slits, and looked down at her as if she were a fossil from the Jurassic period. “An ex-policeman would never do such a thing. I’m quite sure the young lady will have left the door open for us.”

  “Of course. I knew the police were corrupt.”

  “There’s corrupt, and there’s bending the rules slightly to get the job done. I was of the latter type. Police work has got to the point where there’s so much syrup to wade through that – if you don’t do a bit of rule-bending – you’ll never see the light of day.”

  “If you say so. Did I say I was learning a lot working with you, especially about bent coppers?”

  “Glad to be of assistance.”

  “Do you really like my dress?”

  “I’ll have to beat back the boys.”

  “Boys! You have no idea, do you?”

  “Not really.”

  Chapter Ten

  Sailfish Drive wasn’t far away.

  Tom wondered whether anyone from the paper had been around to Dulcie Carrick’s apartment. Maybe he should have asked, but he guessed they had. They wouldn’t have reported her missing to the police without looking under every stone first.

  He pulled up outside the apartment block and switched the engine off. It was a quiet neighborhood. He could hear a dog barking, but didn’t see any people.

  “You stay here.”

  “Ya can stop telling me to do that. I ain’t staying anywhere on my own ever again.”

  “Okay, but stay close.”

  “That was my plan.”

  He took his set of “keys” out of the glove compartment and slid them into his trouser pocket. Why did he still have them? He’d had them for at least thirty years, but not used them for the last ten. The old chief of police, – Tony Freeland, – had passed them down to him when Freeland himself had retired –.

  The main door to the apartment block was ajar. They walked in and carried on up the stairs to the second floor.

  Tom thought his breathing was getting easier. All the exercise was turning back the clock. He’d soon be running marathons, although he’d never run one before.

  He knocked on the door of number seven. There was no answer.

  Rae pressed an ear to the wood. “What’s that noise?”

  He listened. He’d heard the noise before – a long time ago. “I know you don’t want to stay out here on your own, but you don’t want to go in there either,” he said tapping the door.

  “What is it?”

  “Flies – lots of them.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “If I’m not mistaken, there’s a dead body in there, and it’s been there for a few days.”

  “Dulcie Carrick?”

  He shrugged. “There’s only one way to find out.”

  “I think I’ll stay out here.”

  “Good decision.” His “keys” made quick work of the door. “I’d move down the corridor a bit if I were you.”

  She did.

  He opened the door. The putrid smell of dead rotting flesh rushed up his nose. He squeezed through the gap and closed the door behind him. Blow flies buzzed around his head, and he swatted them away with his hands.

  A woman’s body lay on the floor in front of the sofa. Her head had been caved in, and her hands had been crushed. Osip Lemontov had come calling.

  Blow flies had already laid their eggs in her eyes, ears, nose, and mouth, and in the bloody mess of her head and hands. Maggots were beginning to move away from the feeding area. He’d done a short course – about twelve years ago – on forensic entomology and guessed that Dulcie Carrick had been dead for about five days.

  Her ghost paced around the room shaking her head and wringing her hands.

  “You don’t want to look,” Tom said to her.

  “Is it really me?”

  “I’m afraid it is.”

  “My mother always said I’d come to a sticky end. I guess she was right.”

  “Is there anything you can tell me?”

  “Mercy isn’t dead yet, but there’s not much time left.”

  “Can you tell me where she is? And what about the children?”

  “Carrie’s here, you know.”

  His mouth dropped open. None of the dead people he’d spoken to in the last five years had ever mentioned Carrie.

  “Tell her I love her.”

  “She knows. She says that you know the rules, and that you’re running out of time. They’re beginning to dispose of the evidence.”

  “Who are they? What evidence?”

  But he was talking to himself. The ghost of Dulcie Carrick had gone.

  He had a quick look around, but the stench and the blow flies made it impossible to stay. He let himself out of the apartment.

  In the corridor, he took a deep breath.

  “Was it Dulcie Carrick?”

  “Yes.”

  “The man I shot?”

  “Yes. Come on, let’s go.”

  They made their way out to his Dodge.

  Rae stared at him. “Shouldn’t we call the police or someone?”

  “Do you want to wait here for them to arrive? And then explain what you’re doing here? And how you know there’s a dead woman in a locked apartment? And . . .”

  She pulled a face. “I guess that’s a ‘No’ then?”

  His lip curled up. “I would say so, yes.” He started the Dodge, and set off back the way they’d come.

  “What now?”

  “Back to the hotel. I’ve been away all day again. I wouldn’t be surprised if Allegre has thrown all my stuff out onto the sidewalk.”

  “That bitch.”

  “I’ve got a feeling you don’t like her much.”

  “I’d say you were right.”

  “Apparently, Mercy Hebb is still alive.”

  Rae swivelled in the seat to stare at him. “How do ya know that?”

  “Dulcie Carrick told me.”

  “But . . .” Her eyes creased to slits. “You
were talking to her ghost.”

  “Yes.”

  She shivered. “I’m glad I didn’t come in that apartment with you.”

  “She said that there wasn’t much time, and they were getting rid of the evidence.”

  “Is that it?”

  “Unfortunately. I asked for more, but there are rules.”

  “Rules?”

  “They’re only allowed to give me cryptic clues.”

  “That’s not very helpful.”

  “Tell me about it. I’ve had to work out those cryptic clues all my life.”

  “So, let me get this right. Mercy’s still alive, but we don’t know where she is? They’re getting rid of the evidence, but we don’t know who they are or what the evidence is? And there’s not much time, but we don’t know how much?”

  “I think you’re getting the hang of this detective work.”

  “I feel much better now you’ve told me that.”

  “Haven’t you got some analysis to finish?”

  “I’d much rather put my feet on the dashboard and chill.”

  “Or you could finish the analysis. It might be the key to finding Mercy and the children.”

  Rae sighed, picked up the papers, and began transferring the information on the reports into the groups she’d already highlighted in her notebook.

  ***

  As Tom pulled into the parking space beneath his apartment, Rae said, “Done it.”

  “Okay, put it all in your bag. We’ll get to it after we’ve done the rounds.”

  “I thought there was a rush on.”

  “There no point rushing if we’re homeless.”

  “That bitch wouldn’t throw you out.”

  “You don’t know Allegre.”

  “Maybe ya should stop being on-site security. From what I can see, ya can’t be a private investigator and on-site security at the same time; the two things don’t go together.”

  “You’re right, but I’m at a loss about what to do.”

  They climbed out of the Dodge and set off around the hotel. It was four thirty, and the sun was dunking itself in the sea.

  “It seems to me you got various options. First, you could just be on-site security and forget about being a PI. Second, you could pay the bitch for the room, and tell her to get someone else to do her on-site security. Third, you could pay someone to be on-site security when you’re not here, but when would that be? Fourth, you could find somewhere else to live and forget about on-site security.”