by Blair Howard
I guess I’ll go by myself, then.
And I did; I blew through two hundred rounds at Shooter’s Depot, banging them all over the place, and was glad I’d come alone. I was rusty as hell. I hadn’t shot for more than two months—before the honeymoon I’d made it a habit to practice at least once a week—and it showed. Toward the end, however, with a little extra concentration, it was beginning to come back and, by the end of the session the six-inch pattern had shrunk to a more respectable two inches. I could live with that.
Chapter 21
Wednesday, January 18, 9:00 a.m.
I didn’t bother to go into work on Tuesday. Instead, I met my father and Rose for lunch and then played nine holes, by myself, in the afternoon—have you ever played golf by yourself? It was freezing cold, and the most boring two hours of my life. Even the pro thought I’d gone nuts when I told him what I was about to do, and managed to come up with some half-assed excuse why he couldn’t go out with me. I was tempted to ask him for a lesson, get him out of his nice warm shop, but hell, I was in no mood to have my game chopped all to hell by a vengeful teacher, so I went out and played against myself—two balls, one against the other and, surprise, surprise: I won.
Jeez, I have to dig myself out of this rut somehow.
Tuesday evening went a whole lot better. Amanda arrived home early from work—she wasn’t yet officially on board at Channel 7, but she couldn’t stay away from the place—and we had a nice quiet evening at home together. I really was beginning to like this married-life thing.
And then Wednesday arrived, and had I known in advance what would happen, I wouldn’t have gone in that day either.
Even from the beginning, the omens did not bode well. The mountain was again shrouded in icy fog, and to make matters worse the temperature was also below freezing. Amanda decided to stay home and enjoy a quiet day, and she tried to persuade me to do likewise, but I was in one of those antsy moods where I couldn’t stay still for more than a few minutes. I needed to be working, or at least at work. True, I had a lunch appointment with Helen Nicholson at noon, but I decided to brave the elements and headed down Scenic Highway, through the fog and icy mist, and with a sigh of relief, rolled out onto Cummings Highway at the bottom of the mountain. I didn’t get in until just after nine.
“Anything for me?” I asked as I pushed through the side door, stripping off my gloves and jacket.
Jacque looked up, shaking her head. “No. Everything is ticking right along. Bob has a handle on just about everything.”
Sheesh. I might have to buy that boat after all. I’m sure as hell not needed here.
“I turned on your logs,” she said. “You can grab a coffee and go put your feet up for a while.”
It would have been easy to take that the wrong way, but I could see she was smiling as she said it, and I knew it was all part and parcel of her personality. So I did as she suggested. Twenty minutes later, I’d had enough and was ready to make someone’s life hell.
I went into the outer office, looked around, spotted Ronnie leafing through a pile of papers, and decided it was to be him.
I walked quietly up behind him. “What did you did you find? Anything?”
He almost jumped out of his skin. “Damn! You startled me. No. Well… not much.”
My heart sank. If Ronnie hadn’t found anything, there was nothing to find.
“Not much? What’s ‘not much’?”
“Well, as you know,” he said, reaching for his mouse and bringing up a page of dates and numbers I couldn’t make heads or tails of, “all four of them were heavily invested in startup companies—IPOs—during the dot-com bubble. Webvan.com and Pets.com being just two of the biggest. During that five-year period, Nicholson cleaned up, made close to a quarter-million dollars. The other three didn’t do too bad either. They all made a little money. Warren was up about $10,000 when the bubble burst; the other two a little less than that. Myers had almost $100,000 invested, most of it borrowed. Harrison had almost $115,000—again, almost all of it borrowed money.
“Just before the collapse of Pets.com in November of 2000, Nicholson shorted all his stock. Over the next several weeks, he made almost $25,000. His three friends lost everything they’d invested in that particular outfit. Webvan tumbled in July and, guess what?” He looked up at me.
“He did it again?”
“Yup. Three weeks before the crash, he unloaded his stock, and so did Warren. Myers and Harrison, however, stayed in the game, and again they lost everything; Nicholson and Warren cleaned up.”
“Okay, so that just confirms what we already knew.”
“Yeah, but what’s new is—and it’s just conjecture, Mr. Starke, but—Nicholson’s timing was impeccable. There was talk that he was about to be investigated by the SEC when he died. It looks greasy. I’m almost certain Nicholson knew somebody in the know. For five years he went through the motions, barely making a living, and then all that changed. Not only was he able to get in at the beginning of a good run, he also seems to have had an uncanny ability to read the trends. But if it really was his ability to read the markets, he would have been a whole lot more wealthy than he was. His picks were sporadic, and unlikely, but his timing was… well, as I said, impeccable. Suspicious, to say the least.”
“So. Insider trading.”
He nodded. “Had to be.”
“What about Warren? Was he playing the same game?”
“No, I don’t think so, at least not until Webvan. He was, I think, riding Nicholson’s coattails. Nicholson was probably feeding them tips, which in itself is not unusual… unless those tips are coming from someone in the know, on the inside. On the buy side, they were all within an hour or two of one another. You could say they were just acting on educated advice, I suppose. On the sell side, no! Only Warren seemed privy to that information, and then only for the Webvan deal.”
“Your conclusions, then?” I asked.
He shrugged. “Insider trading, but there’s no way to prove it now. We can look at the big picture and be certain what was going on, but that’s it. Sorry, boss.”
I nodded and left him to it, the wheels in my head spinning.
It was maybe five minutes later that my cell phone rang.
“Hey, Kate,” I said. “What’s the haps?”
“You better sit down, Harry. I have some bad news for you.”
“I am sitting down. What’s wrong?”
“It’s your client, Helen Nicholson. She’s dead. Less than an hour ago.”
Chapter 22
Wednesday, January 18, 10:00 a.m.
I was struck dumb. My head spun. All kinds of thoughts flashed through my mind.
“Where, for God’s sake? How?”
“Hit and run. No, not that. This was cold blooded, really cold blooded. She’d been to her yoga class at Warehouse Row and was in the parking garage, on the second floor. Someone in a pickup truck ran her down, backed up over her, then drove off. She died in the ambulance on the way to Erlanger.”
My blood began to boil. I clamped my eyes shut, so tightly that I could see white lights flashing in the darkness. I opened them, shook my head.
“Did they catch him?” I asked quietly. I was hoping they had, and that Kate might give me five minutes with him—no two would be more than enough.
“Nope. There were two witnesses, though: a doctor who was going back to his car, who was maybe twenty feet away when it happened. And a mother with a young daughter, who was about to back her car out of her spot. Neither of them got a good look at the driver. Both of them agreed he was wearing a dark-colored hoodie. The EMTs did what they could for her but… well, her chest was crushed. She was never going to make it.”
“How about the truck? Either of the witnesses get a plate number?”
“Yep. The doc got everything but the last digit. It was a Dodge 2500 diesel reported stolen last night, and found abandoned on the ground floor of the same garage, the engine still running. Whoever it was had a switch car right
there in the garage.”
“Security cameras?
“Nuh uh. Nothing.”
“Where’s the truck now?”
“On its way to Mike Willis.”
“I’m on my way. Meet me there, okay?”
“Wait, don’t hang up.”
“What?”
“It’s my case, Harry, not yours.”
“So?”
I heard her sigh. “Yeah, so. What the hell. Okay, I’ll meet you there. They’ll be expecting you.”
***
She was waiting for me inside the compound when I arrived. I pulled up at the gate, waited for it to roll open, and then drove inside and parked.
“You’re not going to like this,” Kate said as we walked across the lot to the shop. “She took a hell of a hit before she was crushed.”
The truck, now inside a perimeter of black-and-yellow tape, was a brute, a lifted Dodge Ram 2500 Outdoorsman 4x4. It was big, black, and sported a custom front bumper that incorporated a bull bar and a winch. And the truck, a 2016 model, looked to be almost brand new; as far as I could see there wasn’t a mark on it… other than the blood and flesh in and around the winch housing. Kate was right; Helen had taken one hell of a hit, and not just from the winch. That would have hit just above the knees; the bull bar was eighteen inches higher and would have hit her right in the gut.
She must have been as good as dead even before he hit her again.
Willis and another tech, both dressed from head to toe in white Tyvek, were already at work. He looked up through the windshield.
“Hey, Harry,” he said as he backed out of the cab. “This is a bad one, huh?” He pulled off the latex gloves and offered me his hand.
“This is a show truck—” he turned and looked at it admiringly “—but the bed’s trashed, loaded with 8 × 8 × 16 concrete construction blocks, almost a ton of ’em, I should guess, just thrown in there. The guy who owns this truck will pitch a fit when he gets it back. I doubt he would ever have allowed so much as a cardboard box in the bed. Whoever loaded it did it for the extra weight. They loaded it to kill, no doubt about it. That’s what you call ‘premeditated,’ Harry.”
“Any chance we could trace the supplier?” Kate asked.
“Of the blocks? It’s not likely. I doubt they got ’em from the local Lowes. They could have come from any one of fifty builder’s yards in the area; probably stolen, like the truck.”
Kate nodded. “Anything inside the cab?”
“Uh.… I don’t know,” he said sarcastically. “I’ve only had the thing a few minutes. Ask me in a couple of hours. Maybe I’ll have something for you then.”
I walked slowly around the taped perimeter. I made a full circle, ending up back at the front. I stared down at the winch, at the heavy hook wound tightly into the housing. It stuck out maybe four or five inches and I could see, even without touching it, that it was immovable; it was also covered in blood and tissue. I shuddered to think of the wound it must have inflicted.
No, I don’t want to know. Not this time. I’d like to remember her as the beautiful woman she was. Not the broken, bloody….
“Hey, Harry. You still with us?”
I looked up. Kate had her hands stuck in her back pockets; her head was tilted, the look questioning.
I heaved a sigh. “Yeah. I’m still with you.”
I rejoined the group, now grown to six. Willis was pulling out all the stops. Good.
“Come on, Harry,” Kate said. “We need to talk. I’ll buy you lunch, okay?”
“That will be a first,” I joked, but there was no humor in my voice. “The Boathouse is just down the road. That work for you?”
“It will. My car or yours?”
“Mine, of course. I had enough riding in cruisers ten years ago.”
She smiled. “C’mon then. There’s nothing we can do here.”
***
The Boathouse is kind of unique. It sits just off Amnicola on the banks of the Tennessee River. On a nice day, a meal there is a pleasant experience. The food is good, and the view stunning.
That day, however, was not nice. The icy rain was whipped by a fifteen-knot wind and the river had whitecaps on it. It was a day not unlike the night now more than two years ago when Tabitha Willard decided to throw herself off the Walnut Street Bridge. Those weren’t good memories either, though, and by the time we found a table and were seated, I was in a terrible mood.
One of these days, I’m gonna have to quit this stupid life. I don’t know how much more death and heartache I can stand. No wonder Richard quit and became a barber. I mean, jeez. I stared out of the window at the rain and the turbulent waters of the Tennessee. I came back from the best six weeks of my life to this. A kind and lovely lady smashed down in a goddamn parking garage, for God’s sake… and the weather sucks; it really sucks.
“Harry? Harry?”
I came back to earth with a bump. “Yeah? What?”
“Where the hell were you? I’ve been talking to you; you haven’t heard a word I’ve said.”
“Yeah. Sorry. I was feeling sorry for myself, is all…. What were you saying?”
“I was saying… no, I was asking, if you thought this is tied into your investigation.”
“What the hell do you think? Of course it is. Somebody thinks that with Helen Nicholson out of the way, I’ll quit. No friggin’ chance of that, though.”
I stared across the table at her. She stared back. “What?” I asked.
“You know what. I want it, and I want it all.”
I sighed and shook my head. Yes, I did know. I’d been expecting it.
“I’ll have Tim make copies of everything relevant.” I took out my iPhone, hit the speed dial for my office, told Jacque what I needed Tim to do, and asked her to get everything over to Kate’s office as soon as possible.
“Happy?” I asked, as I slid the phone back into my jacket pocket.
She didn’t answer immediately, but then, “I don’t know, Harry. ‘Happy’ is not the word I would use, not even satisfied. I know you. I know what you’re thinking, and I don’t like it. If you’re going to work with me—”
“Whoa!” I said it a whole lot louder than I intended to, and attracted a lot of alarmed and annoyed looks from the patrons scattered around us.
“That’s not the way I see it,” I said. “I’m not working with you. You can work with me, if you want, but this is my case and, and, and… it’s my case. You can work it with me or you can work it on your own; your choice.”
She folded her arms across her chest, and no, she wasn’t happy, not at all, but I wasn’t about to soften my position. Except then I did just that.
“Let’s work together, okay? A partnership. That’s it. Take it or leave it.”
For a long time, she didn’t move or say anything, and then she simply nodded and unfolded her arms.
We ate lunch in silence and then ordered coffee. I just wasn’t in the mood for conversation.
“Snap out of it, Harry,” she said suddenly. “This is not like you.”
I looked at her, put my cup down, and said, “Yeah, it is. Over the past few years I’ve known a lot of good people that died too soon. Kate, I mean, I never really got over Tabitha Willard. The look she gave me that night she jumped off the bridge… I still dream about it. And Charlie Maxwell, what about her? You didn’t know her, but she was a beautiful person, inside and out. And Emily, the chief’s daughter. You knew her. What a sweetheart she was. And… and… now Helen Nicholson. Kate…. Aw hell. What’s the point?”
“It’s the job, Harry. It’s what we do. It’s what we choose to do. You told me that a long time ago. Remember?”
I nodded. She was right. I looked at her and, for a moment, I remembered the day now more than sixteen years ago when they’d foisted a fresh-faced, naive kid on me as my new partner. I wasn’t happy about it then, but it turned out to be one of the best things that ever happened to me.
“Yep, you’re right. You wanted to talk,
so talk.”
“As I said: I know you, Harry. You’ve been working this case for what, ten days?”
“Nine.”
“Okay, nine. You must have some ideas, right? I’d like to know what you’re thinking.”
“You’re wrong, Kate. I don’t. I know who I like for it—Ellis Warren—but liking him for it and being able to prove it are two different things. Look. Let’s do it this way: you go back to the station. Take a look at the stuff I had Tim put together for you, and then we’ll get together tomorrow and go over it. Maybe between us we can come up with something. There’s not much else we can do until we get Peter Nicholson’s body exhumed and I get the DNA back. We also need to know what Willis will find in the truck, if anything. You can get that from him later today. In the meantime, I’m going home to Amanda, a warm fire, and a half bottle of Laphroaig. My office at nine in the morning. That good for you?”
It was, and that was how we left it.
Chapter23
Thursday, January 19, 9:00 a.m.
The weather had not improved. If anything, when I woke up the next morning, it had gotten worse. The Southeastern United States is a beautiful place to live, except in winter. That Thursday morning the temperature had risen to a balmy forty-three degrees, and the rain was coming down hard, the way it had been doing all night long. I, that is we, woke early to find a thunderstorm raging around us. Lighting lit up our bedroom, so bright I swear I could see Amanda’s bones. It didn’t last long; the thunder and lightning were gone by six o’clock, and although the storm wasn’t over—still a deluge—it was a lot less violent. Even so, Amanda was on edge, and I have to admit, I was a little shaken myself.
And so I missed my early morning run yet again, and I would have stayed home again too if I hadn’t arranged to meet Kate at nine that morning. So, three cups of coffee, a waffle, and a fried egg later, I headed down the mountain through the wind and the rain and the fog. Oh how I missed those balmy days on Calypso Key.
Thirty minutes later I was happily settled behind my desk in my second-favorite place on earth. Kate arrived a few minutes later.