by R.M. Haig
September 14th, 2016. 5:23PM
Burlwood, Indiana
Most of the disappointment and depression about having let his chase car get away had passed by the time Jake was cruising through Bumfuck Burlwood in search of ten-seventy-four Hideaway Pines, a former address for Ron Boudreaux as provided by a free background check site he had found on the internet. It wasn't free, of course, if you wanted to see any real details about a person and his history. With his budget down as low as it was and with no available credit card to use, the extraordinarily limited information that was truly free of charge was all he would have to go on. There were two addresses in Garthby proper that seemed much more reasonable options as a current residence of the county sheriff, but it seemed sensible to follow the progression of the man's life, if nothing else than to see how things changed for him over time.
According to a similar freemium real estate site, Boudreaux had sold the house on Hideaway Pines in 1996 after owning it for more than twelve years. Whomever had purchased it from him took a terrible bath during the housing crash and subsequently sold the place for less than half of the hundred-and-fifty dollars they'd put out for it, and it looked as though the home was currently owned by some development company that was trying to build condos in the neighborhood. One look at the place told Jake they weren't having much luck, as the house stood in ruin right next to two other vacant properties in similar states of disrepair. There was a for sale sign in front of the place that had belonged to Deputy Ron, but the entire cul-de-sac was rife desolation and blight and not likely to attract any upscale buyers.
Parking in the driveway of the place and walking across tall, unkempt grass to the front door, he discovered a realtors lockbox hanging from the doorknob that presumably held the keys. Looking around for a moment confirmed that there was nobody in the immediate area that would see him, he tried several three-digit combinations at random until one happened to unlock the miniature safe. Chuckling at the complete farce that these boxes were, Jake took the key and opened the front door.
Inside, he found the place had been stripped from top to bottom. There were massive holes in the ceiling and walls where someone had obviously sought out and then removed any traces of copper pipes and wiring. Every bit of the place was as much a write-off as the neighborhood on the whole, which was somewhat surprising to him given the fact that this end of Burlwood had always been considered the wealthy part of town.
Quickly determining that there was nothing to see here, Jake sealed the keys back in the sham of a safe and climbed back into his Malibu. There was a crack in the front bumper now that hadn't been there before, and a nice dent in the front left quarter panel that created a crease which followed the natural lines of the car almost all the way to the back. He was going to need to remount his mirror and get a paint job to take care of the scuffs, scrapes and scratches that resulted from his contact with the LeSabre, but those were problems for the future -- and therefore not issues for him to be concerned with whatsoever.
Punching eighty forty-one Iris Lane in Gartby into his GPS, he prepared to guide his damaged ride to the next address Deputy Ron had called home according to his background check website. This one he'd apparently purchased in '96 and divested in 2002, and public record claimed the people who'd purchased it were still the owners and presumably the tenants today.
The drive took around fifteen minutes, and this address stood in stark contrast to the one Boudreaux had apparently called home before. Eighty forty-one Iris Lane looked well maintained and was much, much larger than his previous abode, and it was complete with a horse barn standing on the two-acre plot that went with it. If there was a rural edition of Better Homes & Gardens, this place would certainly be a feature in a prominent issue.
Checking himself out in the vanity mirror, he realized he looked half-way presentable and decided that he would approach the place to make contact with the people inside. Pulling out his wallet, he worked to cover the Private Investigator endorsement again as he was intent on extracting as much information as possible from whomever lived in this particular home. Parking in the circular driveway, he climbed out and casually approached the front door. There was a doorbell button, which he pushed, that triggered a luxurious sounding chorus of chimes that far exceeded the sound he'd heard from any such device in the past. While they rang came the sound of approaching footsteps along with the tune, so he cleared his throat and prepared to present himself as officially as he possibly could.
A well taken-care of elderly box-blonde woman answered, wearing an expensive looking sweater and pair of form fitting jeans with her hair in a heavily teased pompadour. The do reminded him of his mother and the nineties, but this woman looked a number of years older than he was despite her obvious cosmetic work, so he couldn't hold her nostalgia against her.
"Good evening, m'am," he greeted her, having spent a bit more effort in developing his alias on this occasion than he had when he invoked the name Enrico Palazzo to Rusty. "My name is Detective Harris," he said, holding out his badge.
"Detective Harris?" She asked, calling him by his mother's maiden name. "I've never met you before." She paused. "Is everything okay? Has something happened to Ron?"
Shocked that she went right to Boudreaux and wondering if he'd stepped on his own tail again, he recoiled for a moment before reclaiming his composure to formulate a reply.
"No m'am, it's nothing like that," he assured her, slipping his wallet back into his pants to avoid exposing the words that made him much less authoritative.
"Oh, thank God!" The woman gasped, putting her hand to her chest. "It's been so long since he's sent someone else on the force instead of coming himself! I heard there was an officer shot downtown tonight, I was so worried it was him, and then you appear at my door!"
"Uhh, no, no," he improvised, trying to play along with the scenario she had laid out. "He's fine, believe me," he said, preparing to press his luck. "He did, however, ask that I come in his place tonight, as he's obviously got his hands full this evening."
"I was surprised he didn't come earlier in the week," the woman continued, "usually he's here by the second Monday of the month! I expected him on Monday, and here it is Wednesday evening already!"
"Well, he is a busy man Miss --" he paused, waiting for her to fill in the the blank.
"Miss Ferguson, of course!" She advised, seeming a bit suspicious that he didn't know without being told. "You did say that Ron sent you, didn't you?" She wondered.
"Yes, Miss Ferguson," he replied, trying to project confidence. "I'm sorry, I've had a lot on my mind with everything that's been going on, I've had my hands full myself. My apologies, I just let your name slip my mind in the chaos."
The woman looked terribly concerned at this, and Jake felt the proverbial fish pulling away on the line. She looked so uncertain about him that he thought for sure his line had snapped, and that was before she opened her mouth with the next sentence. "Maybe I should call Ron. Just to confirm, you know?"
"Oh, m'am, I'm sure that's not necessary!" He cranked his reel cautiously. "Like I said, he's pretty busy at the moment. I truly am sorry, it's just been so crazy lately."
Returning slowly to her cordial self, she painted a smile back over the doubt she had worn before. "It has been rather chaotic, hasn't it?" She said. "What, with the murder of that boy in Burlwood and all of the robberies taking place in Ashland. The local law enforcement has been stretched very thin! To send you instead of Rambo or Bailey, they must be even more overtaxed than I imagined!"
"Yeah," Jake chuckled, trying to figure out what he'd walked into, "it's been a month for the books!"
"Well it's all open back there," she said with a smile, motioning toward the barn behind the house, "I unlocked it on Monday in anticipation of his arrival and just never got around to locking it back up." Suddenly the concern was back on her face. "You won't tell him I left it open, will you?"
"Certainly not, Miss Ferguson,"
he assured her.
Still shaken, she continued. "I just figured he would have someone turn up sooner than later, so I just didn't think to lock it back up."
"It's no problem, m'am, trust me," he said.
"Either way, it's clear for you to just go ahead and do what you have to do," she sighed. "I'll be in living area having some evening tea if you need anything from me. It's Earl Gray, would you like a cup?"
"Oh, no thank you, most certainly not!" Jake replied, remembering the bitter disgust when he'd tried Earl Gray with Clyde Rambo. "And I don't imagine I should need to bother you, Ron gave me pretty explicit instructions so I should be able to just do what I need to do and get on down the road."
"Fabulous!" She smiled. Just as she was preparing to close the door, though, her surgically modified face fell as far as it could possibly fall, given the work she'd had. "Did he say anything about my, um," she paused, "my rent?"
"Your rent?" Jake asked, as confused as she was trying to look despite the influence of the botox and God knows what else.
"He normally brings it by on his visit. You don't have it, do you?"
"Oh, the rent!" He started in another fib. "He actually said he wanted to bring it by personally, so he didn't send it with me. Said he still needs to talk with you anyway, so you can probably expect to see him in the next several days with the check in hand!"
"Oh," she replied, still looking irritated. "A check? I guess things must be pretty rough lately, if he's bringing me a check. I suppose that will just have to do, if it's what he said. So long as he brings it soon, everything will be just fine!"
"Like I said, any day now!" Jake answered with the most manufactured smile he'd ever worn.
"Very well," she sighed, stepping back into the house a bit. "If you need anything, just buzz!"
As she closed the door, Jake finally let out the breath he'd been holding since the sheriff's name came up. He had no idea what she was talking about, and he similarly didn't know what he was supposed to be going to do in the barn. To top it off, he was convinced that Boudreaux himself would show up any minute to do his thing for real and shut down the charade Jake was running. That wouldn't be good at all, and he was horrified that he'd certainly be under arrest for something in the next few minutes, despite the fact that he hadn't really done anything illegal... yet.
Once he was convinced that Miss Ferguson was well within her house, he started the long trek along the side of the miniature mansion toward the barn behind it. For a few moments, he wondered if Boudreaux might be storing horses in it, as was obviously intended by the construction of the facility. That idea quickly faded, though, when he realized that once monthly maintenance wasn't nearly enough to keep any sort of equine healthy and alive. Besides, what interest did Boudreaux have in horses?
Whatever it was that was in there, it required little attention in the scheme of things. What's more, it was something that Boudreaux was willing to pay to store. In cold hard cash, no less. If ordinary storage what he was looking for, he could probably find a better deal with a group like Safe & Secure in the ghetto than he was receiving from this poodle-woman who seemed rather high maintenance and high rent to Jake. Hell, he could have the unit right behind Rusty's, probably at a deeply discounted rate given the condition of the pavement inside of it.
With that said, Boudreaux forking over cash -- which he valued as much as the blood in his veins in the past -- likely meant that whatever was back there was something that the man wanted to keep off the grid and completely secure. That could only spell evidence, and Jake figured that was a good thing, no matter how he sliced it.
Maybe there was a Dodge Ram Van with Our Mother Of Sorrows hidden inside of there at present. Or maybe it was a blue Cadillac Brougham, purchased at a close-out price from a drug addict desperate for his fix.
It could be anything, and Jake was eager to find out what anything was. As he approached the old wooden building, which seemed as well maintained as the woman living in the house, he saw that the main large door was locked with a chain and padlock as aged and rusty as some of those he'd seen at the storage facility earlier in the day. That made it clear that there was no livestock hanging out inside, as the only egress that would accommodate their size had obviously been secured for quite a long while.
To the right of the larger door was a man-door, which was equipped with a deadbolt and locking doorknob that seemed a bit too new for the structure as a whole. Stepping up to it, Jake paused for a moment to examine it and wonder if he wanted to open himself up to any questions by getting his fingerprints on the knob itself. Deciding it could only lead to trouble, he untucked his shirt and wrapped the knob with it before grabbing hold and turning it in hopes that it was, in fact, the one that Miss Ferguson had left open for Ron Boudreaux.
To his relief, it turned freely and the door swung in for him to enter and examine that which the sheriff apparently sought to keep hidden away. What he saw when he stepped inside was as peculiar as the woman who kept watch over it all, as peculiar as Rusty and as peculiar as this company called FGSI services.
Around the perimeter of the building was warehouse racking that stretched from the floor to the ceiling, which was at least twenty feet high. Each rack had three shelves; one directly above the floor, as though it were there to keep the contents of that which was stored on it dry in the event of a flood, a second about six feet above the first, and a third another four feet above that. A double-sided rack in the same configuration ran directly down the center of the space, creating enough room to store well better than a hundred pallets of whatever Boudreaux sought to hide.
In the corner was a stand-up forklift, which was obviously used to fetch pallets stored on the second and third shelves. That particular device would not be used on this night, as Jake had never driven a hi-lo in his life and figured trying to do so could only result in the collapse of the entire racking system and serious bodily injury.
This place had been converted into a warehouse of sorts, and the racks were nearly full of pallets containing cardboard boxes of different sizes and shapes. Each box was labeled with handwritten details in black marker, the labels declaring several different things that made no sense on the surface. Among the mysterious titles scrawled on the craft paper box sides were Leo's Transport, Pest-X, Thompson Construction, Avanti Holdings, Mega-Sure, Wilson Travel and perhaps most strangely, simply X. Studying the cartons closer, Jake saw that all of them had been marked with an X at one point or another, and that it had been crossed out with an amorphous blob when what seemed to be the names of companies were added at a later time.
Walking down the first aisle of racks, studying the words as he passed, he eventually came to a series of cartons labeled with something he was very familiar with. Seeing the letters there, spelled out in black Sharpie, sent a chill through his body as new pieces were added to the puzzle he'd been trying to assemble in his mind for several days. So far as he could tell, these new pieces were very important to the overall picture, and discovering them allowed him to fill in several blanks that had troubled him throughout his investigation. There before him, on a pallet stowed on the lowest rack, near the back of the place, were large boxes marked FGSI Services.
Feeling his heart race at the discovery, feeling his hands shaking with the adrenaline, he reached out for one of the cartons and lifted it from the pallet on which it sat. The weight of the box was incredible, and his lower back objected immediately to the action of lifting it and setting it down on the concrete floor of the barn. It landed with a thud and the tape holding the bottom closed shifted and buckled a bit, meaning the entire thing might fall out when and if he tried to lift it back into its place. Not concerned with that in the moment, Jake pulled out his car keys to slice the tape on the top of the carton open so that he might see what was stored inside.
As soon as the acrylic split and the lips of the box spread, the contents were plainly obvious. The fi
rst thing he saw was that distinct shade of green, that universal color unique to the United States Treasury and the product they churn out en masse at the Bureau of Engraving and Printing. Inside the large rectangular box was lots and lots of cash money. There were twenties gathered in two-thousand dollar bundles, fifties in five-thousand bundles and hundreds in ten-thousand dollar wraps of cash. Reaching inside to touch them, Jake knew immediately that the money was real based on the feel and texture of the paper. Trying to add up the total of the box mentally, he started to wonder if this was the entirety of FGSI's six-month profit as declared on the operating papers he'd stolen from Rusty. If it were, that would mean he was looking at over eight-hundred-thousand dollars in a box stored in a musty old barn. Even if it wasn't that sum, it was more money than Jake had ever seen in one place in his life, and it was shocking to look at.
Scanning the place, trying to sort out his thoughts, he realized he was looking at a giant cash laundromat. This was where Boudreaux brought his dirty money, his drug and probably gun money, and cleaned it by funneling it through various companies, one of which happened to be the illustrious and mysterious FGSI Services of Blackmoor, Indiana.
Amazed, he grabbed a second box marked FGSI from the pallet and pulled it down. This one was obviously a box that had originally stored reams of paper, and it had a lid taped over top of it which he quickly cut off with his keys again. This box was not filled with cash, but was instead brimming with paperwork that featured accounting way above Jake's head, and likely cooked twice over. Leafing through the sheets, he saw income and expenditures along with interest rates and other terms that he didn't understand in the least. It was enough to make an accountant's head spin, and it was all right there in front of him in black and white.
What he was able to comprehend in amongst the papers, however, was a particular sheet that featured a copy of a canceled check which sent another chill through his body. It was a standard generic check, nothing fancy, and in the pay to the order of field was written Safe & Secure Self Storage. In the memo field was the familiar phrase Unit 33-L, and in the amount area was eighty-four dollars and 00/100. None of that was shocking, as he'd seen the invoice for the unit before. He'd stolen it from Rusty's house, like the FGSI financials. The stunner in this case was contained in the signature line, and the identity of the man who'd written the check as printed in the upper left corner. It wasn't Rusty Parker paying the storage company for the unit registered in his name... it was Ronald L Boudreaux.
Christ, Boudreaux and Rusty had a very clear connection now -- both personally and professionally, as it seemed.
What did that mean?
What bearing did it have on the past?
What bearing did it have on the present?
Feeling the rush of fear that the sheriff would roll up at any minute again, Jake quickly returned the boxes to their pallet, nearly losing all of the cash out of the first carton as the bottom tried to fall out when he lifted it. Hurriedly, he sliced open the corner of several boxes on the way out to see if they contained anything different than the ones marked FGSI. Two of the boxes marked Leo's Construction matched FGSI's exactly, featuring cash in one and accounting in another. One of the boxes he could reach that was marked X contained money that had presumably still dirty and hadn't been assigned to one of the companies yet. It must take time to make such large sums clean through deceit and guile, and the X boxes were in a holding pattern..
Though he was eager to get the hell out of this place before he ended up in handcuffs, he paused for a second to wonder what was in the boxes on the unreachable top shelf of this make-shift warehouse. The boxes up there were all of one size, and they weren't marked with anything at all. Trying desperately to find a way to determine what was in them, he looked around for a rock or something he might throw at one in the hopes of breaking it open. There was no such object to be found, so he considered climbing the rack stanchion like a monkey and peeling at the sides. That would leave him terribly vulnerable should the sheriff appear, and he was fully likely to fall straight down on his ass, so that option was clearly out. The forklift would surely spell disaster as well, so it was no option at all in reality.
Finding no appropriate alternative but desperate to have an answer, Jake decided that there was only one thing to do to satisfy this question quickly enough to be feasible. Taking a deep breath, he unbuttoned the fourth button down on his shirt and reached for his Beretta. Standing by the exit but making sure to keep it closed tightly, he took a deep breath and lined up his sights with the box nearest to him. Knowing this would mean that Miss Ferguson would probably call Boudreaux, if she hadn't already, he released the safety and pulled back the slide. Shaking his head in disbelief at what he was doing, he smoothly pulled his trigger and squeezed off a shot.
There was an incredible pop in the confined space of this less-than-legal warehouse as his shot sounded out, and the slug went just where he wanted and intended for it to. It tore through the cardboard of a top-shelf box, leaving a small hole through which a cloudy crystalline snow came billowing out like the blood out of a stone.
Ron Boudreaux was still in the ice business, and by all indications it seemed that business was good...
Ready to be far away from this place, he opened and stormed out, strolling quickly but casually back to his car. He jumped in like the police were chasing and took off towards Burlwood like a bat out of Hell, lest his nemesis appear and he suffer two pursuits in one twenty-four hour period.
Miss Ferguson was watching from her living room window as he left, and she knew that something was wrong for sure now. It wasn't the shot that caught her attention, she assumed it was a backfiring car and paid it little mind. The trouble was obvious in the fact that this Detective Harris had neither brought cartons to the barn nor taken cartons from that barn. A combined deposit and withdrawal was generally the entire point of a visit from a member of the Garthby PD, and this man had done neither. Besides that, there was the matter of her rent, which was always delivered.
Watching the Malibu pull away, she reached for her cellphone.
Ron Boudreaux would hear of this...
FORTY-SIX