by Blair Howard
“You… you can’t be serious.”
“Oooh.” The word was drawn out. Savored. “I’m serious. Now, we can do it the easy way, or I can blow your damned head off, like you did that bird’s.”
Nicholson put his hands in the air and began to back away.
“Stop, you piece a’ shit.” The gun swung up toward his face.
“Okay, okay.” Nicholson stopped and dropped to his knees, his hands high over his head. “Why… why are you doing this? I haven’t ever….”
“Oh yes you have. One way or another, you’ve screwed over everybody you’ve ever come in contact with, and me… well, you know why I’m going to kill you, don’t you Peter?”
Nicholson stared at the muzzle of the gun. It didn’t waver. “But….”
“No buts. You’re a blight, Peter, a goddamn disease. Well, no more. It stops, right here and now…. God, how I despise you!”
“You can’t… you can’t. You—you—you won’t get away with it.”
“Hah! We’ll see, but I don’t have time to argue the point.” The muzzle of the gun came up just slightly.
“No!” Nicholson shouted. He shoved his hands out in front of him and jerked backward just as—
The blast blew him backward and sideways and then down to the forest floor. The wound didn’t look like much, not through the fabric of the quilted vest he was wearing. But the wad of number four shot had torn through flesh and bone and heart muscle… and it didn’t even hurt.
“Oh,” Peter Nicholson said. “Oh.”
***
The killer stood over the body, looked around, took careful note of the scene, then set the gun down and began to quickly rearrange things. First, the dead man was rolled over onto his stomach, then aligned west to east along the path, facing toward the trailhead. The legs were repositioned so that the feet were wide apart, the right arm folded underneath the body, the left arm positioned so that it pointed along the trail.
The killer stepped back, then forward again to adjust the position of the head, tilting it so that the chin and nose were in the dirt, and then stood back again, surveyed the scene once more, nodded approvingly, stepped forward again, picked up Nicholson’s shotgun from the stump, opened the breach, checked it, noted the two live rounds therein, closed it again and fired one shot into the air, then stepped carefully to the right side of the body, lifted it, and slid the muzzle of the gun under it so that it rested close to the wound, the stock pointing down the trail. The dead man was now lying on the gun.
Smiling, the killer untied the shoelace of Nicholson’s right boot and arranged the two tails so that they could easily be seen, then stepped back again and looked carefully around the scene, making sure everything was as it should be, that there were no loose ends…. Except for the shoelaces, hah! The killer smiled. You really should have been more careful, Peter. Tripping and falling on your gun like that…. What’s that? Someone’s coming.
The killer looked quickly around, bent down and grabbed the gun, then ran back along the trail for a short distance, stepped off into the forest, and pushed through the undergrowth for a hundred yards or so, found a secluded spot, and settled down to wait.
Chapter 2
Monday, January 9, 2017
I was feeling particularly pleased with myself as I drove down Scenic Highway that morning. It would be my first day back at the office after an extended honeymoon and vacation. For six of the eight weeks I’d been away, Amanda and I had sailed the Caribbean in a chartered sailboat—a forty-four-foot catamaran named the Lady May—and the other two weeks I’d spent sorting out the Martan family murders on Calypso Key in the US Virgin Islands. Now I was back and itching to get to work.
Amanda, my new wife, had already headed into town, to Channel 7, in the hopes of getting her old job back. She’d quit as their lead anchor a few months before the wedding, ostensibly to reconstruct, renovate, and decorate my—now our—new home on Lookout Mountain. She’d enjoyed not having to work for a while, but… well, eventually she started to miss the job, and I couldn’t say I blamed her. I felt exactly the same.
And so it was that I walked into my offices on Georgia Avenue that January Monday morning to wild applause from my gathered crew…. I’m Harry Starke, by the way and, in case you didn’t know, a private investigator and reluctant celebrity. I own and operate Harry Starke Investigations, and very successfully too, I might add. But to continue….
The clapping and hooting and dirty comments from Bob Ryan, my number two, only enhanced my good mood. I was glad to be back among my friends and ready to begin work. And so, the greetings and backslapping over and done with, I had everyone move into the conference room for the first weekly meeting I’d attended in more than two months.
Jacque, my PA, and Bob had run things while I was away, and for the next hour they filled me in on what had been happening: old cases and new, and how they were being handled. And, as the meeting dragged on, I became more and more aware that I was about to become a victim of my own success, that my staff was well able to run the company without me.
As I sat back and listened, first to Jacque, then to Bob, then Tim, Ronnie Hall, and finally Heather Stillwell, my second lead investigator, I was overcome by a sinking feeling that things would never again be as they had; my fledgling brood had found their wings, and I was all but redundant.
And so I listened, and I absorbed. I nodded, shook my head as needed, and I even asked questions, until finally….
“Okay,” I said, leaning forward and folding my arms on the table—my wounded arm had fully healed by then. “Well done everyone. I knew I was leaving the agency in good hands. Thank you, but what the hell am I supposed to do now?”
“It’s just good to have you back, boss,” Bob said, and there was a murmur of agreement all around the table.
“And I’m glad to be back, but it seems like you have everything well in hand.” I looked at each of them; they looked back, most of them smiling. “Okay. I get it. Jacque, you and Bob, my office. Let’s get coffee first…. What?” I asked, as Bob shook his head.
“Can’t, Harry. I have an appointment in—” he looked at his watch “—thirty minutes. Sorry. Gotta go. Can’t be late.” He got up from the table, gathered his stuff, grinned at me, and walked out of the room, closing the door behind him.
Well hell. “Jacque. My office. Now.”
My office had that… that… unlived-in smell, or maybe feel, about it. It wasn’t cold, at least not in the usual sense of the word, but it was… I dunno, vacant-ish?
“Sit,” I told Jacque. “I’ll turn the logs on. Cheer the place up a bit.” I rotated the gas tap and pushed the igniter; there was a whoosh, and happy flames danced around the synthetic logs—cheery, but not the real thing. Oh well, better than nothing, I guess.
“Talk to me, Jacque,” I said, sliding into my leather throne behind the desk—I was surprised to see my computer was already up and running.
“About what? We just got trew with telling you about arl the work and cases,” she said, playing up her usually much softer accent. She was teasing me.
I nodded, sighed, looked at her over the polished acreage that was my desk and said, wistfully, “Jacque, is there nothing at all for me to do? You and Bob… you’re doing a great job of running things, but hell, I’m not a figurehead, damn it. I need to work. Isn’t there something I can get my teeth into?”
She smiled at me. “But you said, before you left to go gallivantin’ arl over the Caribbean, that this was what you wanted, that you were going to hand over the day-to-day running of the business to me and Bob. We took you at your word. Now you’re complainin’ about it?”
“No, I’m just… surprised and… hell, Jacque. I feel like I’m not needed anymore. It’s—it’s not nice, damn it.”
“Oh, don’t you go worryin’. It will be fine. There will be somethin’ for you soon, I’m sure. In the meantime, I’ll bring you the mail. Maybe there’ll be something there for you.” She paused. “
Are we all done then? Because I have things to do, a company to run.” She was laughing as she said it, but I’m not sure how funny it was, at least to me.
“Yeah, go on. Get outa here. Bring me the mail… wait. Isn’t that Leslie’s job?” Leslie Rhodes was one of my clerks, Margo Tyler being the other.
“It is, but I’m sure she won’t mind you helping her out.” More laughter.
“Go on. Get out of here.”
And she did, with a swish of her hips and a swirl of her skirt.
I was left in what had become almost an alien environment, a vast, open room with no one but me in it, and me with nothing but a half cup of lukewarm coffee. Nothing to think about, nothing to do but twiddle my thumbs, which is pretty much what I did for at least five minutes. Jeez, I always have something to think about. I wonder how Amanda’s getting on….
So I called her to find out.
“Hey you,” I said when she answered. “I hope you’re having a better day than I am. They’ve just about taken over here. I have absolutely nothing, and I do mean nothing, to do.”
“Oh come on, Harry. It can’t be that bad.”
“Yeah. It can and it is. How about you? Did they give you your job back?”
“They did, but I won’t start until the first of February. What are you doing now?”
“I told you. Nothing!”
“So how about you take me to lunch?”
“Ummm, well. Okay.”
“Whoa, don’t sound so enthusiastic.”
“It’s not that. I just… feel like I’m at loose ends. I’m not used to it, and I don’t like it. Yes. Sure. Let’s go to lunch. The Public House okay?”
“Hmmm, I suppose.”
“Now who sounds enthusiastic?”
“No. It’s fine. It’s just that it’s usually so busy.”
“Give them a call and see if that room off to the side is available.”
“Done. If not, well, I’ll just have to suck it up. See you in thirty. Bye.”
“Yeah, bye.” I disconnected and called Kate Gazzara, my one-time, now sometime partner, a homicide lieutenant in the Major Crimes Unit at the Chattanooga PD. We go back a long way, Kate and I… but that’s a whole ’nother story, and one for another time. Anyway, she and I had solved the Calypso Key murders some two months ago when I was supposed to be on my honeymoon: she and the rest of my friends were in attendance, and—
“Hello, Harry,” she said when the call connected. “You back in the saddle again?”
I almost rolled my eyes. “Not hardly. They’ve just about done away with my job while I was gone. I feel like an unwanted guest.”
She laughed. “Yeah, I heard. I wouldn’t get bent out of shape about it; they’re just trying to get you to take it a little easy, is all.”
“Easy? You have to be kidding me. I’m forty-four, not seventy-four. I’m sitting here staring at the ceiling and drinking enough coffee to kill a horse.”
“I hear you. Hey. You’ll figure it out. In the meantime, how was your trip? Amanda fed up with you yet?”
“She’s not, no, and the trip was wonderful. But listen. I just wanted to touch base, let you know I was back. Can you talk?”
“Well, I’m pretty busy now, but how ’bout you call me this evening.”
“That’s fine.”
“Then have a good one, Harry,” she said, and disconnected.
I sighed, tossed the phone down on my desk. Then I went back to twiddling my thumbs.
Chapter 3
Monday, January 9, 3:00 p.m.
By three o’clock that afternoon, I’d had enough. I’d arrived back from lunch at around one thirty, done the rounds, annoyed everyone in the place, even dragged Tim kicking and screaming out of his cyber world, all to no avail. It wasn’t that they didn’t want me there; there was just nothing for me to do. So there I was, back in my own office, packing my laptop, iPhone, and what was left of a Cadbury chocolate bar into my briefcase, about to head on back up the mountain when Jacque came in.
“So,” she said, closing the door behind her, “I have a woman out there who says she needs a little help. She asked for you by name. You want to talk to her?”
I screwed up my face. I was skeptical.
“Any idea what she wants?”
“She wouldn’t say.”
“Well, what do you think? Divorce case? Cheating husband? If so, no; I don’t want to talk to her. Give it to Heather.”
“I don’t think so. She’s an older woman, looks… I don’t know, affluent? I think you should at least see what she needs. You did say you wanted—”
“Okay, okay, I know what I said. Show her in. I’ll give her five minutes.”
She nodded, backed out of the door, and returned a few seconds later. “Mrs. Helen Nicholson.”
“Mrs. Nicholson,” I said to the woman. “Come on in and please sit down,” And she did, in one of the two guest chairs in front of my desk. “What can I do for you?”
She didn’t answer right away. Instead, she looked at me over the desk. I had the distinct feeling she was sizing me up in some way.
She was indeed, as Jacque had put it, affluent, and I was surprised I didn’t know her… or did I? The name Nicholson did tinkle a bell or two somewhere in the farthest reaches of my subconscious. She was obviously one of Chattanooga’s moneyed elite. The gray Burberry overcoat and matching woolen dress must have cost a bundle.
She looked to be in her early sixties, slim, graying hair, and quite lovely—and not just because of the expensive work she’d had done on her face.
“You’re trying to figure out where you know me from, aren’t you, Mr. Starke.”
The voice was low, confident, refined, and English; the smile entrancing. She reminded me somewhat of Lauren Bacall in her later years.
“Do I know you?” I asked.
“Not personally, no. I do know your father, August, quite well, though he knows nothing about this visit. Lovely man, your father. Rose is a lucky woman.”
I nodded, though nothing she’d said made her look any more familiar. I decided on the direct approach.
“So why are you here, Mrs. Nicholson? Is it your husband?” I smiled at her. “Do you want to have him followed?”
“Hardly. I know you have a reputation for getting results, but I think even you might have difficulties pulling that one off. Chester passed away five years ago. No, it’s my son I want to talk to you about.”
She crossed her legs, adjusted her skirt, and folded her hands in her lap. She carried no pocketbook or clutch, and if she had a cell phone with her it wasn’t evident.
“Your son?” I leaned back in my chair, rested my elbows on the arms, steepled my fingers to my lips, and waited for her to continue.
“My son, yes, Peter. He died in a hunting accident almost fifteen years ago, in May of 2002. Well. They said it was an accident, but I know it wasn’t. He was murdered.”
Now she had my attention.
“Murdered?”
She nodded, clasped her hands together, looked down at them, then up at me.
“Yes, Mr. Starke. Shot through the heart while out hunting turkey. They said he tripped and fell on his gun. I didn’t think so then and I don’t think so now. And I want you to look into his death.”
“What makes you think it wasn’t an accident, and why now?”
“His death was… too convenient. Too many people benefited from it, but it’s more than that. Where his guns were concerned, Peter was a very careful man. He habitually carried his shotgun in the break position, either over his shoulder or under his arm; now and then he would carry it with the breach closed, by his side, but not often. I know. I used to shoot with him, once in a while. It wasn’t a cardinal rule, but unless he was in a shooting position, the breach would have been open.”
She paused for a moment, looked down at her hands, then continued.
“As for why now…. I’ve been trying to get the case reopened since the day it was closed more than fourteen ye
ars ago. I have, over the years, managed to persuade two police chiefs—including Chief Johnston—two sheriffs, and two district attorneys to look into it, all to no avail. After cursory glances at the case, the consensus among law enforcement is that it was an accident. So you see, you’re my last hope. Will you help me?”
“I don’t know if I can. If they all say….”
“Yes. I know what you’re going to say. If it walks like a duck….”
I nodded.
“Well, thank you for your time.” She started to rise. “I’m sorry I bothered you.”
“Whoa. I didn’t say I wouldn’t try; just that I didn’t know if I could help you. Please, sit down. Let’s talk.”
Reluctantly, she resumed her seat. I placed my elbows back on the chair, fingers to my lips, and looked at her. There was a certain defiance about her. She sat bolt upright, her back not touching the chair, head tilted slightly to one side, hands clasped together in her lap.
“Tell me about it,” I said, “but before you do, would you like some coffee?”
“That would be nice. I take it black, please.”
I picked up the phone and asked Margo to bring two cups. She did.
I took my digital recorder from my desk drawer, turned it on, and placed it between us in the center of the desk.
“So, let’s begin with the personal stuff,” I said. “You’re obviously English, right?”
“Yes. We came to the United States in 1987. My husband, Chester, was a heart surgeon. He had been offered a position at what is now CHI Memorial Hospital. Peter was eighteen at the time.”
Hmmm, then you’re a lot older than you look—seventy, seventy-one, maybe.
“I’m sixty-nine, Mr. Starke,” she said with a wry smile. “That was what you were thinking, wasn’t it?”
“You could tell what I was thinking?” I smiled at her.
“I’m a woman. Of course I could tell.”
I simply lowered and shook my head. “Please continue, Mrs. Nicholson.”
“Oh, please call me Helen.” She paused, then went on. “My son was an investment broker, though perhaps not the most successful in his field. He specialized in high-yield instruments and… well, he… he… made several mistakes.” She paused, picked up her coffee, sipped, and looked at me over the rim of the cup.