Mean Evergreen (Mercy Watts Mysteries Book Twelve)

by A W Hartoin

  “Miss me?” I asked.

  “Huh?”

  “Never mind.” I sat down, took some Tylenol, and drank some of my now-cold latte. Yum.

  Moe sat down. “Let’s have a talk.”

  “About?” I asked.

  “You will not Fike me. Don’t even try.”

  I almost dropped the latte. “You know about Fiking?”

  “Everyone knows about Fiking and you will not Fike me,” he said. “Got it?”

  I said I did and I even crossed my heart, but I didn’t mean it. Fiking happened. I couldn’t fight it. “Seriously, how did you hear about Fiking?”

  “I saw it in action. I almost felt sorry for your father. Michael Fike was a Grade-A jerk and I’m saying that as a human, not as a member of the opposition.”

  That was an interesting way to put it. The opposition. And Moe was right about my dad’s first partner, who hated him and did everything he could to ditch the wet behind the ears Tommy Watts, trying to make him a laughingstock. The term Fiking was born. I’d done a fair bit of it myself.

  “Why did Fike hate my dad so much?” I asked.

  “He was Ace’s son and great things were expected. Your father has a way about him. He knew he would be a great cop and detective, even with nothing to base it on. It irritated people.”

  “Sounds like my dad,” I said.

  Moe groaned and rubbed his leg. “I should’ve listened to Fats. Don’t tell her I said that.”

  “What did she tell you?”

  “To wear gym clothes, but I’m not an animal. I’m not walking around Germany looking like some gauche American in Under Amour. It’s embarrassing.”

  “I definitely wouldn’t tell her that.”

  Fats Licata only wore workout gear. It was going to be a problem for her wedding and we hadn’t found a solution yet. Uncle Moe didn’t look like he owned workout gear. But he was pretty natty for an old guy and I had to admit he fit in, more than me and Aaron anyway. We never fit in anywhere.

  “I won’t. But I should’ve listened and worn sneakers.” He held up a pointy-toed lace-up in camel. “These are terrible for a chase.”

  “Imagine that,” I said.

  “Hey, you couldn’t get him and you’re young enough to be my granddaughter,” said Moe.

  “I don’t deny it.”

  “Don’t beat yourself up. Fats says you have other skills.” He said it like he doubted it was true.

  “Thanks a bunch.”

  “Why’d you ask about the time?”

  “I think that kid was standing there right at the exact time Anton met that girl here, but I have to check,” I said.

  “I thought that was after school,” said Moe.

  “Except one Saturday.” I texted Novak for the time of that one Saturday withdrawal. He came back almost instantly with eleven twenty-five.

  “Dead on,” I said. “We got here at about what? Eleven fifteen?”

  “Thereabouts,” said Moe, nodding. “You think he was doing a kind of vigil?”

  I thought about the kid, his sadness and the tightness on the lines of his narrow face. “I think he was visiting the scene of the crime.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Getting back to the hotel took a lot longer than I expected, two hours longer to be exact. Koch insisted on taking us to his station for a formal interview, which wouldn’t have been so bad if we hadn’t sat in the waiting room for an hour. It was the quietest police station I’d ever been in and that includes tiny St. Sebastian.

  The station looked like it was built in 1820 and had hard plastic chairs to sit on in a partitioned-off area. At one point, I dared to put my feet up on a chair and an officer that was walking by somehow saw me through the partially frosted glass. He stopped, put down his load of files, and came back to tell me to take my feet down. He was pretty pissed and I wasn’t thrilled, either. The orange seats looked to have been installed in the seventies and I’d have to use a blowtorch to harm them but whatever.

  Eventually, Koch’s boss Tomas Nachtnebel made time to see me and it went about how I figured it would. He said I was in their jurisdiction, blah blah blah, no authority, blah blah blah, case dead in the water, blah blah blah. I told him what I had. He dismissed it. It was a lot like the States actually, except more rule-oriented. That guy took a look at me and decided I wasn’t going to get anywhere. Not the first time that’s happened, but it was the first time when I was jet-lagged and having a lingering headache. I was less accommodating, I admit. Moe didn’t have a word to say and Aaron never does. Nachtnebel did the majority of the talking. Although he liked to hear himself talk, it also appeared to irritate him.

  “This is an American crime, Miss Watts,” he said.

  “I agree,” I said.

  “Then you will go home and deal with it there.”

  “I will.” Eventually.

  “Good.” Nachtnebel gave me a dismissive wave and Koch walked us out to the car.

  “Your boss is a dipstick,” I said as I opened my door.

  A smile flickered across Koch’s face before being firmly replaced by his usual stern expression.

  “He doesn’t like cases being messy,” he said.

  “How’s that working out for him?”

  “Well. He’s made rank quickly.”

  “Alright then,” I said. “I’ll be on my way.”

  Koch frowned. “You will?”

  “To the hotel.” I laughed. “You know who I am. You really think I’m leaving? I’ve got solid leads.”

  “I’ve got another,” he said.

  I cocked my head to the side and said, “Do tell?”

  “I love your accent.”

  “Really? I don’t.”

  He laughed and said, “I’m still in your loop?”

  “You are, just keep that guy off me and we’re all good,” I said.

  “No problem. Nachtnebel’s off to Solden on Monday. Skiing.”

  “Perfect. What have you got?”

  Koch told me the bus the kid got on was 768 to Böblingen. The bus driver let him off at the Mineraltherme. Koch figured he was either catching another bus to the US garrison or heading for Goldberg train station. There were cameras at each stop, so he took a look at the cameras at Goldberg and spotted a teenager with a red coat buying a ticket. He couldn’t access the ticket kiosk, but he did see the kid get on the S1.

  “Where does the S1 go?” I asked.

  “It has a lot of stops. He could’ve gotten off anywhere.”

  “Does it go to Weil der Stadt by chance.”

  That made him pause for a moment and then he asked, “Why do you ask that?”

  I told him about Anton’s Saturday withdrawals in Weil Der Stadt and he paused again.

  “I’m not going to ask how you got that information. It is not in our investigation,” said Koch.

  “And I’m not going to ask if you’re allowed to just look at train station footage whenever you want,” I said.

  “We understand each other.”

  “I think we do.” I gave him my card and got in.

  Moe drove us out of the parking lot, breaking about five traffic rules and since it was Germany it was probably more like eleven.

  “What is your problem?”

  “Nachtnebel treated you like a cupcake,” Moe said through gritted teeth. “I wanted to pop him in his smug face.”

  “Oh, well, I’m used to it,” I said.

  “You shouldn’t be. That jackass has got nothing. You’ll track this down in under the week we have.”

  “I hope so.”

  He gripped the steering wheel, staring over the top edge with grim determination. The Sindelfingen cops hadn’t paid any attention to Moe Licata. I only hoped they wouldn’t live to regret it.

  I like to think I don’t get surprised that much anymore, but what I walked in to find in my hotel room surprised the heck out of me. Novak was there with a face covered in Noxzema, three laptops on the desk, and a keyboard in his lap. Grandma J was sta
nding behind him braiding his hair into cornrows with a shower cap on her head.

  “What in the world are you doing?” I asked as I dropped one of Anton’s boxes on the bed.

  “Occupying myself until you got back,” said Grandma J. “Novak wanted to try out cornrows.”

  “And Noxzema,” he said.

  “How’s that working out?” I asked.

  “Love it.”

  “Since when do you know how to do cornrows?”

  “Jilly went through a phase during her volleyball years and I learned,” said Grandma.

  “I don’t remember that,” I said.

  “I’m not surprised. You’re very busy. Always were.”

  I started pulling the AP books out of the box and said, “I’m not that busy.”

  “Do you remember Jilly wearing cornrows for three volleyball seasons in a row?” she asked.

  I didn’t remember Jilly playing volleyball, but I wasn’t saying that. “No.”

  “I rest my case. So what did you find out?”

  I gave her a quick rundown and then checked out Novak’s screens. There was some pretty questionable material on there. “You’re not worried about Grandma seeing that?”

  “I’m not wearing my readers,” she said. “I can’t see a thing.”

  “Well there you go,” I said. “What is that? A boat?”

  “Human trafficking ring bringing girls in from Morocco,” said Novak casually. “Nice reward involved.”

  “I assume that’s why they do it.”

  “That’s why I’m tracking. The girl on the left is a runaway from a prominent family. Her father offered 10,000 euro for her safe return.”

  “What about the other girls?” I asked.

  “A bonus save.”

  I checked out all the screens, two of which had multiple panes open and were confusing, to say the least. “You don’t mind me looking?”

  “You can’t make head or tails,” said Novak.

  “Insulting but true,” I said. “What’s going to happen?”

  “Spanish authorities are at Malaga waiting, so is the father.” He pressed a button and another window popped open showing a plethora of cops and a distressed father waiting in a white room overlooking the ocean.

  “Are you too busy or can I see that footage from the street camera?” I asked.

  “No problem.” He brought up the camera footage, but the kid I’d seen wasn’t on there. Several women that could’ve been twenty walked by, but there wasn’t anything to mark them as our person of interest.

  Novak clicked a few more keys and brought up more footage. “This might be more helpful.”

  There I was, looking flipping enormous in my stupid puffer jacket, but I digress. The camera caught me running after the boy on the street cam and another ATM got us behind some guy taking out money.

  “Can you roll that back?” I asked.

  He did and I said, “Freeze it.”

  We got a somewhat blurry side view of the kid full out sprinting. No front view, unfortunately, but he hopefully would be recognizable to someone who knew him well.

  “Do you want me to do some calculations?” Novak asked.

  “Er…sure,” I said. “What would those be of?”

  “I can get his height.”

  “Do it.”

  After some clicking and measuring and some comparing to structures and other people, Novak declared our suspect to be six feet tall give or take a fourth an inch.

  “He got on the S1 in Böblingen. Can you get that camera?”

  “I can, but I’ll have to get through their security. It’ll take some time.”

  “How about the ticket kiosk?” I asked.

  “That, too,” said Novak. “The Germans are very tight on their train security with the terrorist threat. I’ll have to work it pretty hard.

  “But you can get in?” Grandma asked.

  “Of course.”

  “But…if you can, the terrorists can.” She stopped cornrowing and bit her lip.

  “Yes,” said Novak. “Lucky for us, they are generally not patient nor geniuses. It will take time and work. The systems to actually mess with the trains, tracks and whatnot, are a whole other level of difficult. This is much easier.”

  “I think I feel better.”

  “You should, but not much,” he said.

  “Not helping,” I said.

  “You didn’t hire a liar.”

  I checked my phone to see if Spidermonkey was up, but he’d been silent so far. “Do you have anything on Alison Fodor or Sergio Tarantina yet?”

  “I do, and I think you’ll like it.”

  Novak had managed to work on my normal teens along with his trafficked ones. Sergio lived in Stuttgart West with his parents and three sisters. He was currently in Austria skiing. Novak got into his laptop and Sergio had been reading everything he could find on Anton and going to some Incel sites to have a look around. Most importantly though, he was hooking up with Alison Fodor. They weren’t dating though and barely communicated. They saw each other at some unnamed lake and at parties. There was only one text between them that could be relevant for us. Sergio and Alison saw each other the Sunday after Anton nabbed me. The counselors sounded like Anton being the kidnapper came as a surprise on Monday morning, but both Sergio and Alison already knew it was him. Sergio sent one text on Sunday night just before midnight.

  “Why won’t you tell me who it was?”

  Alison didn’t answer. He texted her twice more since then about innocuous things, but she didn’t answer those either.

  “It sounds like Alison told her best friend Cameron at school on Monday morning and Sergio on Sunday,” I said. “What else have you got on Alison?”

  Novak smiled and pressed a key. A map appeared on his right screen. Sindelfingen.

  “Holy crap. She lives four blocks from the café,” I said.

  “I thought you’d like that.”

  “Did she text the name to anyone?”

  He shook his head, causing Grandma to squawk and tug on his hair.

  “Cameron Little knows the name,” he said. “The texts between the two of them implies that. They’ve agreed not to tell anyone because they don’t want to get the person in trouble. Looks like Alison regrets telling Sergio. She says she told him to keep it a secret, which he didn’t do. She’s pissed.”

  “Nothing in particular about the person at all?” I asked.

  “No, but she knows them personally. I can show you the texts, but I think it’s someone in the high school.”

  “Do you have a recent photo of Alison?” I asked. “Full body?”

  “What are you thinking?” Grandma asked as she tied off a braid.

  “It could be Alison,” I said. “She could be the blonde in the café with Anton and doesn’t want to admit it.”

  “You saw her picture. You think she could be mistaken for twenty?”

  “I was all the time.”

  “That can’t be true,” said Grandma and I decided not to expand on it, but I got mistaken for eighteen at twelve. At fifteen, I got businessmen asking for my number while I was wearing my school uniform. You’d think that plaid would be a dead giveaway, but it wasn’t. A womanly body changes everything no matter how young the face. I got told great costume in August. I blame Brittney Spears.

  Novak typed for a few seconds and then Alison’s mother’s Facebook account opened. He brought up a picture taken in Venice over Thanksgiving. Alison had changed her hair. She was blonde now, but I just didn’t see the twenty in her. Also, older people tend to see others as younger than they are, not older.

  “It’s not her,” I said.

  “Good,” said Grandma. “I don’t want it to be her.”

  “You’re such a grandma.”

  “Guilty as charged.” She smiled and started another braid.

  Moe knocked and brought in the two other boxes, dumping them on the bed and making a growling sound that was reminiscent of Fats, and I suddenly missed my gia
nt bodyguard. Moe never ate toothpicks. Never. Not once.

  “I have half a mind to go back and tell that cop to drop dead and rot,” he said.

  “Where have you been and why did it make you madder?” I asked.

  “I was walking it off.”

  “Didn’t work.”

  “No.”

  “What happened?” Grandma asked and Moe went into a tirade about cops and treating me like a cupcake. I kicked off my boots and curled up on the bed with the yearbook, half-listening. I could see that kid’s face looking through the window at me so clearly, but in the yearbook everyone looked the same. He was kinda generic and the photos were black and white. I could see how witnesses got confused during a lineup and started looking for nervousness or familiar clothes. I switched to the other photos that Anton had, Sherri’s student council photos, and the AP books. He wasn’t in any of them. I was pretty sure on that, so I went back to the yearbook. It was last year’s book, so much could change in a year for kids.

  Moe came over and sat down. “You know we might be totally off base on that kid. Marta didn’t see Thooft with a boy.”

  “I know. I just can’t shake this feeling. He’s a part of this.”

  “Instincts. I understand,” said Moe.

  “Is Alison here?” I asked Novak. “In Stuttgart, I mean.”

  He shook his head, getting another squawk out of Grandma. “She’s in Amsterdam. These military people do not stay put. Before you ask, the friend Cameron, is in the process of moving back to the States. Her family is in Ramstein to catch something called the rotator.”

  “Crap on a cracker,” I said. “I guess I could call Alison.”

  “She’s pretty guarded,” said Novak. “You’d do better in person.”

  Grandma grinned at me. “Are we going to Amsterdam?”

  “No. We don’t have time for that. There has to be a better way,” I said.

  Moe went to Novak’s side. “Have you got a printer?”

  “I do. What are you thinking?” he asked.

  “Can you print that kid’s photo from the video?”

  “Sure.” He pointed at a bag on the floor. “Get it out and we’ll do it.”

  Moe set up the printer and I went through the yearbook again. The school had about 600 kids and he might not even be in there. Hobbes said a third move every year. That was a lot of newbies.