Unleashed

by Jacob Stone

“Strange. Dogs typically like me,” the twentysomething millennial said.

  He walked past them and Morris kept Parker’s muzzle clamped shut as the dog’s growling came to a stuttering halt. Morris considered taking a photo of the man and giving it to one of the LAPD detectives he was friendly with, possibly Annie Walsh out of the robbery-homicide division, although someone in narcotics would be a better fit. There had to be something of interest in his backpack. Morris looked back and spotted the guy thirty yards away and already mingling in with the crowd. Parker brought back his attention as he snorted out an angry noise that was halfway between a grunt and a whimper.

  “Yeah, I know,” Morris agreed. “Something’s off about him, but nothing we can do about it. You can’t win them all.”

  He gave Parker a good-natured thump on the side and grimaced as he got back to his feet and straightened his creaky knees. He thought once more about walking down the pier and taking a picture of the twentysomething with the backpack, but decided he didn’t want to agitate Parker again. Besides, maybe the guy just had a roast beef sandwich in the backpack and Morris misread the vibe he picked up from him. He led Parker off in the opposite direction, thinking he’d take the dog along the Santa Monica State Beach trail before heading back home.

  He squinted as he peered up at the sun and felt the warmth of its rays on his face. It was too nice of a day not to take advantage of it.

  Chapter 11

  Matt Kammer’s phone rang. He considered ignoring it, but his conscientiousness more than his curiosity got the better of him. When he saw the caller ID, his face contorted as if he were suffering a toothache, and he told Hannah that it was Kent Sangford from work. It was never good when his boss called him on a Sunday, and he knew Sangford was going to tell him something he didn’t want to hear. He considered again ignoring the call.

  “I could tell him my battery ran down?” he suggested.

  Hannah, being the voice of reason, said, “You should answer it.”

  Another idea came to him. He held the phone over the railing. “How about I drop it into the ocean?” he said. “If Kent wants to give me a lie-detector test to prove that I didn’t really lose my phone, let him. I’ll pass it with flying colors!”

  “Now you’re being ridiculous.”

  Matt had to agree that his wife was right. Reluctantly, he did as she suggested, and his expression grew increasingly despondent as he listened to what Sangford had to say.

  “There’s no one else who can go?” he finally asked when given a chance. He listened some more before muttering in a defeated tone, “I understand.” Once the call ended, he showed Hannah a bleak smile and informed her that he had to fly out that night to Omaha.

  “The company has me booked on a flight leaving at nine-ten,” he said. “Nothing I can do about it. According to Kent, the account’s in jeopardy, and I need to be there to support the sales team.”

  Hannah looked as disappointed as he felt. “How long will you be away?”

  “I’m not sure yet. Possibly the whole week.” He made a disgusted face, like he had swallowed a fly. “Omaha! They couldn’t send me somewhere decent, like Vegas, Seattle, or San Francisco? Goddamned Omaha!”

  “I see,” Hannah said. “That’s why you’re upset. Because you have to go to Omaha instead of someplace fun.”

  “That wouldn’t be the only reason,” he conceded. “I don’t sleep well when you’re not next to me.”

  “So I’m only useful as a sleep aid?”

  “No, that’s not entirely true either. You have other uses.”

  She elbowed him lightly in the stomach. “Thanks!”

  The look she gave him forced a grin out of him, but it quickly faded.

  “The truth is I worry about you when I’m away,” he admitted.

  “Finally, the truth.” She took hold of his arm with both of her hands, and bumped his hip with her far more slender one. “I’m a big girl, you know. I can take care of myself.”

  “I know,” he admitted, although the truth was he worried about her all the time when he was traveling. She was so trusting and the world was such a damn violent place. Hannah was only five feet one and couldn’t have weighed more than ninety-five pounds soaking wet. How could he not worry about her? How could he possibly want to live if anything were to ever happen to her? But enough of such morbid thoughts. “Whatever preparations I need to make for the meeting tomorrow will have to wait until I’m in the air. We won’t let this ruin our day.”

  He draped an arm over her shoulder and she moved in close to him.

  “We’ll walk to Venice and find a nice place for an early dinner,” she said. With a straight face, she added, “After all, I only had a salad for lunch.”

  As tempted as Matt was to correct her, he swallowed it back. The two of them headed off the pier so they could get on the boardwalk that would take them to Venice.

  Duncan watched them from a distance, making sure to keep far enough back so they wouldn’t notice him. He wished he could’ve overheard Kammer’s phone call, but he had little difficulty reading their body language and seeing how the call had temporarily dampened their moods. He also saw that this was short-lived, given the affection they showed each other afterwards, and it left him both simmering in his rage and knowing they were exactly what he was looking for.

  He kept an eye on them the rest of the afternoon, first following them as they walked the boardwalk to Venice (and wishing he had dressed differently—he was sweating through his shirt before he made it a mile), then having drinks at the bar while they ate dinner at a table, and finally following them back to Santa Monica. Once he figured out which parking garage they were heading to, he ran and got his car so he could be waiting for them when they exited. There was no missing them. They drove out of the garage in a new BMW convertible, and Duncan had little trouble recognizing Kammer’s doughy face behind the wheel and the man’s very pretty wife sitting in the passenger seat.

  Duncan knew his Cadillac would be conspicuous, so he made sure to keep at least three car lengths back. He almost lost them at an intersection after he got stuck behind a progression of cars taking left turns in front of him, but he caught sight of them before they got onto I-10 East, and after that it was smooth sailing to Pasadena. When they drove into a palm tree–lined cul-de-sac, he slowed down so he could see which driveway they pulled into, then continued on to the next block before turning his car around and parking so he could watch the entrance to the cul-de-sac. He was guessing that Kammer and his wife were in for the night, but if they were to leave again he’d see them and be able to follow them.

  The house he had parked in front of had its lights off and its driveway was empty. He figured the owners were out, and chances were good that no one else on the street would notice him parked there. It would be unfortunate if someone did and called the police. If that were to happen, it would mean he’d have to give up on Kammer and his wife, and he didn’t want to do that. The more he thought about them, the more he wanted them to be his next victims and he wanted to do it that night. It was almost like he needed to do it to relieve the pressure squeezing his chest. He made a disgusted face, realizing he was acting like a damned drug addict needing his next fix. He had a reason for what he was doing and a plan that he needed to follow. He couldn’t let himself be swallowed up by this compulsion. If it ended up being tonight, fine. If it turned out to be a week from now, that would have to be fine also. That was what he had to keep telling himself. He wasn’t a homicidal maniac. As cathartic as it might be, there was still a purpose to what he was doing.

  He took a few deep breaths, but it didn’t help him. He would just have to keep at it. Maybe if he meditated. Of course, it wouldn’t be what most people would consider a holistic, life-affirming meditation, but one where he’d visualize what he’d be doing to Kammer and his wife when he got them alone. He’d have to try that later in the rare event
that things didn’t work out that night. But why wouldn’t they?

  He checked the time. He’d been parked for almost twenty minutes. He couldn’t risk much more than that. Originally he thought he’d wait until it was darker before breaking into their home, but why wait any longer? If he knocked on the door, the odds were good that one of them would be clueless enough to answer it, and it wouldn’t matter whether they kept a chain on the door—he’d be getting in.

  When he drove to Kammer’s house, he had passed a school four blocks away. Nobody would see it if he left his car there. He had his kill clothes in the trunk and everything he needed in his backpack to add the snarling wolf’s-face tattoo to his wrist. With the stencil he had carefully constructed before he left Massachusetts, it would take five minutes, no more than that, and then he’d be ready to walk back to the cul-de-sac. If he wanted to hide in some shrubs by Kammer’s house until it got dark, he could do that. He’d decide later.

  He was just about to turn the key in the ignition when he spotted Kammer’s BMW driving out of the cul-de-sac and heading in the opposite direction from where he was parked. That was a surprise. He would’ve given odds that they were in for the night. Now he had a decision to make: Break into their house while they were gone and wait for them or follow them. He decided to err on the side of caution. He started the car and drove off after them.

  Chapter 12

  Philip Stonehedge filled everyone’s wineglasses with the sangria he had prepared that afternoon. Morris took a sip and showed a puzzled frown. “Is there gin in this?” he asked.

  “There is,” Stonehedge admitted. “I was given the recipe last month when I was shooting No Prior History in Barcelona.” He lowered his voice and added, “The sangria master swore me to secrecy, but I’ll admit to gin being one of the ingredients.”

  Morris doubted there was such a thing as a sangria master, and that his actor friend was embellishing the matter and that he must’ve instead gotten the recipe from one of the many bartenders he schmoozed with while in Spain. From the way Brie Evans rolled her eyes, she must’ve thought the same thing. Before Morris could comment further, Natalie told Stonehedge that the sangria was simply delicious.

  Stonehedge winked at her. “Wait until you try the Catalan paella that I’ve been slaving over for hours.”

  “With an assist from these,” Brie said as she wiggled her famous fingers—which were famous not only because she was a major star in Hollywood, but because they were attached to the person who topped People magazine’s most-beautiful list two years running.

  “I couldn’t have done it without you, my dear,” Stonehedge said with an intentionally wry smile. He took a healthy drink of his sangria and then used a ladle to refill his glass. They were all sitting around a patio table at Philip Stonehedge’s Malibu estate. Also joining them was Parker. Earlier, the bull terrier had been running around the grounds, chasing small critters who had ventured out after dusk, but now he was lying by Natalie’s feet. He wasn’t snoozing, though. Both his eyes were open and his ears perked up as he listened to sausages sizzling on the grill.

  The temperature had dipped down into the low sixties that evening, and Stonehedge earlier turned on a heat lamp. He got up so he could flip the sausages, and when he sat back down he was about to tell them about one of his adventures in Barcelona when he did a double take on Natalie.

  “You’re bursting to tell us something,” he said.

  “Big news,” Morris agreed. “At least for us.”

  “Rachel’s engaged,” Natalie said, beaming.

  “That’s wonderful,” Brie said. She was sitting next to Natalie and she reached over to take hold of Natalie’s hands. “It’s still so hard for me to believe that you could possibly have a daughter old enough to get married.”

  “Nat was only six when we got hitched and seven when she had Rachel,” Morris said with his best poker face.

  Natalie gave him a stern look. “Behave yourself,” she warned.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Mazel tov,” Stonehedge offered. He absently stroked the vivid scar that ran down his right cheek, his eyes distant as if he were trying to remember something. “Her fiancé is that fellow from the mayor’s office?” he asked Morris.

  “That’s right.”

  Stonehedge nodded to himself. He had met Gilman after he had used his studio connections to force his way onto the SCK investigation, which was also how Morris got to know him, and indirectly the reason that he got the scar on his cheek—although it didn’t come from SCK, but rather when Stonehedge was slashed with a gun barrel after he tried to play hero during a Beverly Hills jewelry-store stickup that he and Morris stumbled upon. He also got shot in the thigh during the robbery and if it hadn’t been for Morris’s actual heroics, he would’ve died.

  The actor raised his glass for a toast, and the others followed suit. “Is there going to be an engagement party?” he asked.

  “Nat’s trying to get one together,” Morris said.

  “No matter what, there will be one,” Natalie promised. “Even if it’s at the house.”

  “Let me throw it here,” Stonehedge said. “A Malibu location overlooking the ocean. It would be hard to top that.”

  “That’s such a generous offer,” Natalie said. “But only if we pay for the catering and all other costs.”

  “Uh-uh. It will be on me. I want to do this and besides, it will give me a chance to rub elbows with people in the mayor’s office and see if I can impress the heck out of them.”

  Morris leaned back in his chair, his arms crossed over his chest. “I can’t let you pay for something like that,” he said.

  Stonehedge smiled thinly. “How about we bargain, then? You’ve got something you could offer me that would be worth a whole lot more to me than whatever I could spend on a party.”

  Morris sat patiently and waited to hear what that would be. While Stonehedge rarely showed his theatrical side to him, the man was still an actor and so he attempted to build suspense by using that moment to retrieve the sausages from the grill. Parker pushed himself to his feet and followed after him, and with barely any mooching was hand-fed a generous piece of sausage, which he gratefully chomped on. The actor waited until he was seated again and had sliced the sausages into pieces before telling Morris what he wanted in return, which was to play detective for two weeks.

  Morris sampled a piece of sausage and nodded his approval before asking, “Why would that be worth anything to you?”

  Stonehedge made a face as if he were about to sneeze. “I’m shooting a crime thriller in Montreal in six weeks where I’ll be playing a police detective, and I’m having a hard time getting a handle on the role.”

  Another eye roll from Brie. “You’ll be fine,” she said.

  “I won’t be,” Stonehedge insisted, his usual carefree façade gone as his insecurities showed through. It was a painful thing to see. “I’m completely lost about what motivates my character.”

  “Philip, darling, you always go through this before filming, and you always find your center.”

  “Not this time,” the actor groaned miserably. “Unless Morris bails me out, I’ll be bombing badly. My career will be over.”

  “I can’t let that happen,” Morris said, somewhat tongue-in-cheek. He didn’t quite roll his eyes, but he came close to doing so. “You can tag along with me for two weeks. I can’t offer you anything as exciting as hunting a serial killer. The work will mostly be dull corporate stuff, but we just started working a missing-person’s case that you might be able to help out with.”

  Stonehedge’s face melted into a relieved grin. “You’re the boss,” he said. “A lifesaver, also. Whatever I can do to help, I’ll do it.”

  “You’ll be at MBI eight sharp tomorrow morning?”

  “You can count on it.”

  “I’ll need you incognito.”

&nbs
p; “No problem. I’ll use the same disguise I did with SCK.”

  “Good enough.” Morris held out his hand and Stonehedge took it.

  “Isn’t it nice when they get along?” Brie asked with an amused smile.

  “Yes it is,” Natalie agreed.

  “One more condition,” Morris said. “We pay the cost for the party.”

  “Definitely not,” Stonehedge insisted. “Morris, I’m being completely serious about this. I’d gladly pay five times what this party will cost for what you’re offering me.”

  Morris didn’t like the idea of taking that type of generosity from anyone, regardless of the circumstances. He gave Natalie a sideways glance and caught the tension straining her face. He knew she also wouldn’t feel comfortable having Stonehedge pay for something like that, but he could see that she was hoping he wouldn’t blow this up. Their daughter was as down-to-earth as anyone Morris had ever known, and wasn’t one to normally care about things like someone’s celebrity status, but having her engagement party at the Malibu home of one of Hollywood’s biggest stars would still have to impress her. Sometimes you just have to live to fight another day.

  “We can talk about this later,” he said.

  “We can always talk about anything,” Stonehedge agreed. “It won’t change anything.”

  Stubborn bastard, Morris thought. His friend might even be more stubborn than he was. There was even a chance he was more bullheaded than Parker.

  “Another day,” he said.

  “Of course.”

  Stonehedge whistled for Parker, fed the dog another piece of sausage, then pushed himself away from the table so he could get the paella.

  * * * *

  Duncan followed Matt and Hannah Kammer to LAX and watched their somewhat tender and awkward goodbye. From what Duncan could tell, Kammer felt uncomfortable kissing his wife in public, and he tried to usher his wife to a more private spot before embracing her and exchanging spit. How a guy like that ended up with a dish like his wife was beyond Duncan’s comprehension. However it happened, the two of them might just have won the lottery that night without ever realizing it. Or maybe not. It all depended on how long Kammer was away and whether Duncan found other victims.