by Matt Coleman
Carlos kept watch from an inconspicuous parking spot down a row of unmarked cars. Mark Thompson and his partner, Richard Jolly, stepped out and lumbered inside to check in and pick up their assignments for the day. They looked similar. Jolly stood a bit taller, but both of their bellies protruded as they waddled around like scotch-soaked stereotypes. Watching them made Carlos wad up the last of a breakfast pastry in a napkin and shove it into a trash sack.
Thompson and Jolly disappeared into the station. They would be at least thirty minutes to an hour. Could be much longer. He might be sitting and waiting half the day. He decided to take what might be his one window of opportunity and run for the restroom.
Carlos passed the detectives’ car and ran in to use the restroom in the station lobby. Rushing back out to resume his position, he passed back by the car and paused. No cop locked his car when he parked right outside the station. Carlos decided to test the hunch. The driver’s door popped open.
Cigarettes and stale coffee wafted up into his face. Carlos settled into the seat to avoid drawing attention. He pulled down the sun visor. Flipped through the glove box. Poked around in the middle console. Nothing. Bright mentioned what she picked up from Jonathan Epstein. The screwdriver might have been police issue. He popped the trunk and got out to check it.
Sure enough, there sat the emergency kit the department issued to everyone. He leaned in and pried it open. The Phillips head screwdriver lay pressed into the slot where it belonged. Most of the kit seemed untouched. The jumper cables looked like they had been pulled out and thrown back a time or two. But the flares were still there. The tools looked clean. The flashlight untouched. Wire clamps in place. The only other thing disturbed was the bag of zip ties.
Carlos picked up the bag. It had been opened, and a few were missing. Cheap zip ties. Not police issue. He pulled one out and held it. It appeared identical to the one he found in the floorboard of Cary Trubody’s car.
He pulled his phone out and snapped a quick picture of the trunk. Easing it shut, he thought to snag a picture of the plate, too—in case he lost them. As he prepared to take the picture, he happened to look up and find Thompson and Jolly strolling out of the station.
Carlos spun on his heels and started back for his car. He made it about eight steps before he heard, “Hey!”
He stopped, frozen. Carlos turned to face Thompson, who stood next to the car cocking his head at Carlos. “Were you taking a picture of my car?”
Carlos looked at him and swallowed. “I—I was only going to—”
Thompson shook his head. “Going to what? Huh? Asshole?”
Carlos laughed. “My sister. She’s in a wheelchair.” He nodded at the handicapped sign. “That kind of shit pisses me off, you know?”
Thompson and Jolly looked at each other and laughed. “You gonna write me a ticket?”
Carlos scratched at his head. “I was thinking about reporting you.”
Jolly held a hand up, bracing it with his other hand. “Well, you see, dip shit, I got this handicap. I can’t…I can’t,” he worked at his hand until his middle finger shot up. “I swear, I can’t keep this finger down.” He and Thompson howled with laughter and climbed in the car.
Carlos hurried to his car and waited a minute before pulling out. He may have avoided disaster, but they would sure as hell notice him now if he followed too close. Luckily, they turned out of the parking lot and headed back toward him. He could ease unseen through the lot and exit from a different spot. As long as he didn’t pop out right behind them.
Carlos crept to the other exit until he saw Thompson’s car flash by. He let a couple of cars fill the space between them and pulled out. It was not his first time following a car. He kept Thompson and Jolly in sight without getting too close. But they were cops; he needed to keep a pretty good distance.
Thompson made no unexpected moves—keeping to main roads most of the time. Carlos lost him twice, but only briefly. They wound around to a part of the city known as Old Town, which made sense.
Old Town consisted of a knot of run-down buildings, with homeless squatters everywhere. Homeless murder cases happened routinely. They were awful—full of nowhere leads and suspects without any actual names or records. But two homicide detectives—or vice or anything, for that matter—pulling into Old Town was a common sight.
Thompson and Jolly took a slow cruise around the Parker Building, an old hollowed-out office building with homeless crowded in like campers at a national park. They were definitely watching for someone, but it might be anyone. They pulled around to an attached parking garage and parked behind it. Their car sat obscured from view of basically everything, tucked in behind the parking garage. Carlos had no hope of following them into the little alley lot they parked in. But he still kept them in sight as he made passes between neighboring buildings.
The two detectives got out of their car and started around the parking garage. Carlos surveilled them until they slipped into a back entrance of either the Parker Building or the garage itself. He found a row of spaces on a side street running along the side of the parking garage. He could just lay eyes on the back of Thompson’s car from where he parked.
He killed his car and got out, easing the door shut. Carlos stayed at the side of the parking garage, creeping up to the corner. Peering around the edge of the building, he surveyed both Thompson’s car and the door they must have used to enter the Parker building.
Carlos looked around at the ruins of a former city hub. About twenty yards back from Thompson’s car perched a rotten stack of wooden pallets next to an old dumpster. He checked up at blackened and broken windows of the Parker building, and over at the darkened caves of space in the parking garage. Seeing nothing, he crouched and ran over to the pallets.
Carlos slid in behind the dumpster and worked his way over until he found a perch behind all the rotten wood where he could peer through to the buildings. After about fifteen minutes, the detectives came out and hopped in their car. Carlos cursed to himself and glanced over the corner of the garage obscuring the view of his car. But Thompson drove straight for an entrance into the parking garage and disappeared into the cavernous relic of ramps and shadows.
Chapter 26
Cary stared at her second stolen phone in two days. Old Town was familiar enough. What used to be a bustling swath of downtown was now basically abandoned. A bit of a ghost town. The Parker Building didn’t ring any bells, but she figured a cab driver would know it. And she might not have clean clothes, but she did still have a couple thousand dollars in her tiny clutch of a purse.
Officer Doyle would figure out the phone switch any second. Cary was dying to get some answers as to why Marlowe’s name showed up as a contact in Doyle’s phone. But she was more anxious to talk to the other Cary Trubody and clear all this up.
Cary wasted little time. She grabbed her purse and shoes, running barefoot out the door. Instead of slipping out the back, she chanced her appearance in the lobby. It was mid-morning, according to the time on Doyle’s phone, so maybe it wouldn’t be too busy.
She eased carefully around each corner, making sure she didn’t run into Doyle on her way back for her phone. Although she caught an odd look or two, no one stopped her. Outside the front doors, she found a cab parked a few car lengths down the curb. The cabbie was leaned against the car reading a newspaper.
Cary fished a hundred dollar bill out of her purse and approached the cabbie. He eyed her up and down before looking at the bill. When he did, it was pure skepticism. Cary pushed the hundred closer to him. “Half this should get me to Old Town. The rest is tip. Work for you?”
The cabbie folded his paper and rubbed his chin. He looked back at the doors to the hotel. “You run from someone?”
He had the same accent as a couple of Nigerians Cary had worked with once. But he was older. Wore little reading glasses he took off to better examine the offer. Cary shook her head. “No. No, I’m just in a hurry. Can you help me?”
The cabbie
sucked at his teeth and accepted the bill like it was alive. He nodded. “Okay. Okay, I drive you.”
Cary jumped in the back of the cab and let it start rolling before adding, “Do you know the Parker Building?”
The cabbie eyed her in the rearview mirror and nodded. “Yes. But you don’t want Parker Building. All homeless. All run down. Bunch of homeless living in tents.”
Cary could sense things getting more and more difficult. “I know. But near there. My friend is going to meet me. If you could drop me off, that would be great.”
The cabbie kept looking back at her. “Your friend is homeless?”
Cary laughed. “No. No, he’s not.”
The cabbie nodded. “I think he is. All homeless. All homeless. Your friend? He’s homeless.”
Cary collapsed back into the seat and tried to enjoy a moment of quiet as they drove. She considered messaging Marlowe, but if Officer Doyle somehow knew him, it meant he knew her as well. This could all be a trap. If she had any options, she would be considering them.
The streets were abundantly clear when they drove into Old Town. The surroundings blanched out like a shitty arthouse movie. There was still traffic, but it was more sparse and suspect. Everyone looked like they were cruising for drugs or sex. Lots of ducked heads and popped collars. The cabbie stopped near a corner at a broken meter. He pointed at an old building on the next block. “Parker Building. Big one with the broken windows.” He sighed. “Why not let me drive you somewhere else? Call your friend.”
Cary mumbled, “No, this is good. Thanks.” She shot out of the car and walked off from the cab as he looked after her with worried eyes.
The Parker building appeared to be more than deserted. It was sad. Like some hulking person who had lost something. Some carcass, with the homeless like ants scuttling in and out of it. Cary leaned against an old storefront and examined it. The front of the Parker Building was all windows, most of which had been boarded up. One piece of plywood was pried loose at a corner. She noted an old man as he worked his way inside. Moments later a woman slithered out. Cary rubbed at one of her bare feet.
She glanced down at herself—her ruined dress, all torn and bloodstained. Her hair and makeup were a shit show. She was barefoot, holding heels like some deranged and jilted lover. There was little reason to lurk in the shadows. She fit in perfectly. Even Marlowe might not recognize her right off. But Officer Doyle would because of the dress. Either way, outside she was exposed. Whatever the inside of the building looked like, no question, it offered her more of a chance to move around undetected.
Cary started across the street toward the Parker Building. She muttered nonsense to herself and waved a hand around. Before slipping through the loose plywood, she slipped back into her heels. Cary hated heels. But stepping on cold pavement was one thing manageable, stepping on a discarded needle was not.
One good thing about the homeless: they don’t stare much. As a group of people who have been routinely stared at, they keep their eyes to the ground in front of their feet. Girl in a bloody cocktail dress and heels talking to herself? Not my business. Cary was able to move about the first few ambling people without so much as a glance.
The first floor of the building was a hollowed-out lobby. It had once served as either an office building or a hotel. Skeletons of reception desks flanked the belly of space stretching out in front of Cary. There was a smattering of tents set up across the open area. They were all make-shift and ready to be packed up on the run.
At the back of the lobby, an ornate staircase led to a landing and curved around to the second floor. From the outside, the building looked to have about fifteen stories.
There was a structure next to the Parker Building, which connected at multiple points up and down the side of the building. This structure was most likely a parking garage. Cary hadn’t seen any cars parked around the building as they were driving in, but anyone could’ve parked in that garage.
Making her way toward the stairs, Cary shot a cursory glance toward a trio of homeless men huddled around a barrel. There was no fire in their barrel at the moment, but it was obvious there had been from the charred black edges. Two of them smoked cigarettes, but no one spoke. Most of the lobby’s windows were boarded, blacking out its edges. The only light billowed down the wide staircase from the second-floor landing, where windows lined one side. Light spilled out onto the tile floor and spotlighted a trail of bottles and food wrappers and lost articles of clothing. Cary crept up the stairs with one hand on the railing. She darted looks over her shoulders the whole way up.
The landing gave her a view of the second floor. Two hallways stretched in either direction. They were dark, like the lobby, but with shots of light every ten feet or so. Open doors gave off boxes of sunshine like searchlights. Cary hung onto the railing before starting up for a moment. She scanned back and forth, up and down the stairs, looking for anyone different—someone less tattered or acting as uncomfortable as she felt.
After a full minute of zero movement in either direction, she made her way up to the second floor. The hallway looked to make a circle around the building. There was nothing to do but make the round and start looking for the way up to floor three. The ornate staircase only went to the second floor. The rest of the way would be some stairwell.
She had a sense of where the parking garage was from where she stood, and she figured on it being on that side of the building. So to start, she went to her right. Abandoned offices lay open on either side of the hall. The first three were empty. The next five each had one inhabitant.
They would always look up once, startled, and then return to studying their shoes or busying themselves with whatever they had been huddled doing before she passed. Cary jumped at every person she came across, but they were all quite obviously homeless. Most were men. But as she turned the corner, along the back stretch of the building, she came across a woman sitting alone in a small office.
She was younger than most—maybe late twenties. She had a bedroll and a spray of magazines she was flipping around in to kill the tedium of the morning. Cary paused and thought, What if the other Cary Trubody is homeless. Maybe that’s why Marlowe set the meeting here.
The woman gave her several quick glances. Cary stood in the doorway—almost too long. The woman exhaled loudly and slapped her magazine shut, looking up with a curled lip. Cary squinted at her. “Is your name Cary by any chance?”
The woman grinned. And laughed a little to herself. She shook her head, not in an answer, but more in disbelief. She looked back up. “No. It’s not.” She reached over into an open bag beside her and pulled out a metal spoon. She leaned back near a radiator behind her and tapped the spoon against one of the pipes running off into the walls. The taps rang out and echoed off into the building. She continued, clanking steadily in a rhythmic ping-ping pattern, grinning at Cary all the while.
Cary nodded and backed away from the door. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to bother you. Sorry.” She kept nodding and mumbling apologies out into the hallway and hurried to keep on her path around the second floor.
Cary passed a few more empty rooms, shaking her head and frowning at the steady pinging behind her. Rounding the back corner, she discovered several men on this side standing at their doorways. The first she passed stared at her—more than anyone had yet. He studied her face. The next did the same. And the next. Cary stumbled and looked back. The men were sliding out of their doorways and falling in pace behind her.
With her head turned, she didn’t see the mountain of a man who had stepped out into her path. She collided with him and bounced back, apologizing. Four men now approached behind her. She made a step to excuse herself around the huge bearded man in front of her. He looked like he should have owned a bar at one point in his life. Big, round head, with scruffy hair jutting out in every direction. Meaty hands. He wore an old army field jacket similar to the one Cary often wore, but he had it over a white tank top. Even had a towel tucked into the front of his t
an canvas pants like a bartender would.
He held something up next to her face—a piece of paper. Or maybe a photograph? A big smile revealed a rotten row of bottom teeth and betrayed a face full of wrinkles and scars. He looked past her, at the men gathering speed at her back. “Yep,” he said. “It’s her alright.”
He shoved the photo into a jacket pocket and placed a hand around the side of Cary’s head. The hand swallowed her from the fingers curled around the knotty base of her skull to the grimy palm pressed into her cheekbone. The man squeezed and threw Cary, headfirst, into the room to her left.
She tumbled into a sideways roll sending her all the way to the far wall, landing in a sitting position beneath a window. Cary shook her head hard, trying to lose the electric gnats at the corners of her eyes. The giant took a step inside and kept smiling. Cary tried to scuttle backward, pushing with bare feet. He had picked her right out of her shoes. She gaped as the four men following her kicked them out of the way coming to the doorway.
Her back pressed harder and harder against the wall. Her eyes cleared and she rummaged for anything around her. The giant kept smiling. He was talking. Something like “hold still,” but Cary was close to going into shock. Everything was moving slower. Shapes around her were huge—the walls, the window, the trash, the broken boards littered about the place. She reached for one jagged piece of wood and gripped its smooth end. She placed her other hand at its base and looked up at the looming figure above her. He was a blur of green and white and beard and smile. She focused in on the greasy towel hanging at his belly. And she lunged.
She put the pointy end of the board toward the towel, braced it with her hand at its base, and shot upward. It was a leap, all leg muscle. The board met something soft and Cary pushed against the resistance. There was a massive grunt over her head and she followed through until the board slipped from her hand and she rolled around the giant, toward the door. She came up in the middle of the four men, who stared past her, stunned. Cary looked back once to see the giant doubled over, moaning in pain. She didn’t hesitate. Taking advantage of the moment of surprise, she shoved past the men at the door and fell into the hallway.