I shook my head. “Don’t drink. Just keep ‘em for company. On account I’m such a social creature.”
That seemed an agreeable answer for him, which worked because I didn’t plan on coming up with another one. I took my coat off, draped it on the back of a chair and took a seat. I motioned to the empty chair. “Help yourself.”
He kept his coat on and sat down. He was younger than I’d thought, but life had packed years on him. He kept the beer bottle tight in thick, calloused hands.
“What can I do for you, Mitch Fisher?” I said.
“Jackie Hall told me I should come by, see you,” he said.
“He say anything about calling first, and not just showing up unannounced on someone’s doorstep?” I said. “What if I’d been out carousing or running around bare-assed naked?”
Fisher laughed. “Lt. Hall said you were a funny guy.”
“Yeah, I’m hilarious. I suspect you’re not here for the jokes, though.”
He took another drink. “My sister’s Bobbi Fisher.”
“Your parents must be real proud, but that doesn’t answer the question of what you want.”
He cocked an eyebrow. “Don’t you know who my sister is? Don’t you watch the news?”
“I limit my news intake to anything about the royal family and if the Browns make it to the Super Bowl. Your sister marry a prince or get drafted as a running back?”
Fisher reached into his coat pocket and produced a newspaper clipping. He unfolded it on the table, smoothing it out before sliding it across to me.
Investigation Into Missing Mother Stretches Into Second Month
By Jason O’Brien
Parker County Herald-Tribune
Authorities say that while there are no fresh leads into the disappearance of Parker County resident Bobbi Fisher, they are continuing to pursue the case while the mystery of what happened to the mother of two stretches into its second month.
State Police Lt. Jackson Hall said the toll-free telephone number started to accept tips into Fisher’s disappearance is still receiving calls but has produced no new leads.
“This doesn’t mean that people should stop calling,” Hall said. “All this means is that we are now going back and reviewing previous leads and working to see where that goes. We are encouraging anyone with any information into Bobbi Fisher’s disappearance to call. We want to return Ms. Fisher to her family.”
Fisher, 27, of Serenity, was last seen Oct. 2 as she dropped her daughters off to daycare at 8 a.m. Police were called when she failed to report to work that day at McGinley and Kurt, the Serenity-based law firm where she worked as a secretary, and never came to pick her daughters up from day care.
Police found Fisher’s car, a blue 2005 Ford Focus, abandoned off Rt. 232 the next day. A forensic investigation of the vehicle produced no results.
The picture of Bobbi Fisher showed a woman attractive if a little worn, the result of too much drugstore beauty product and too many late nights of beer and Marlboros. She was blonde with roots to make Alex Haley proud, a round, moon-shaped face, and almond-colored eyes. She wasn’t my type, but she still would have been attractive even before last call.
I handed the clipping back to Fisher. “I’m sorry your sister’s missing, but that’s got nothing to do with me.”
Fisher refolded the clipping and slipped it back into his coat. “You used to be a cop.”
“‘Used to be.’ Past tense.”
“Right, but he said you were good, and he thought you might help. You could look at things, see something that no one else is seeing.”
A smile flickered across my face. “Lt. Hall told you that, huh?”
“Yes, sir.”
I rested my forearms on the table. “Mr. Fisher, I think Lt. Hall might have overstated a few things. Whereas I used to be a state trooper, what I am now is an ex-cop on retirement disability. That limp you pointed out, it makes my life miserable most days, and it doesn’t make me the best choice to play Jim Rockford. Besides that, I don’t have any licensing or legal standing to be a private investigator.”
Fisher took off his hat and ran his hand over his head, brushing down his thinning hair. “I didn’t like coming here and asking you, but this was Lt. Hall’s idea, Mr. Malone. Bobbi’s a good mom, she loves her girls, and she wouldn’t never just leave them, no word or nothing. The day care, the day it happened, called up me and my wife—my wife, her name’s Jessie—and we picked the girls up and drove over to Bobbi’s house and we waited with ’em and she never showed up. We called her cell phone over and over, and all it did was send to her voice mail. She just up and vanished.”
Mitch Fisher’s voice ached of concern, of worry, of fear, of loss—even if there was no actual knowledge of known loss yet. But it made me think about his nieces, and what it was like to find out your mother wasn’t coming home.
I pushed myself out of the chair and opened up the junk drawer, found a mechanical pencil and a notepad, and sat back down at the table. “Your sister, she got anyone who doesn’t like her? An ex, or her boyfriend’s got an ex?”
“Nah,” he said. “She spent her time with her girls.”
“How old are your nieces?” I said.
“The little one, she’s four. Her name’s Amelia. The older one, Becky, she’s nine,” he said. He finished his beer and set the empty bottle down.
“Want another?” I said. He said yes, and I got it for him. The painkillers were wearing off already, and I felt the blood coursing through my knee. I sucked air through my teeth and told myself I could take it. Mitch Fisher sipped his beer and was kind enough to not comment on me grimacing.
“How long were you a state trooper?” he said.
“Sixteen years,” I said.
“What happened that you’re not one anymore?”
“Shit that’s neither here nor there. I’m sure you’ve been told this already, but there are certain realities you need to deal with, Mr. Fisher,” I said.
“You‘re gonna tell me you don’t know if you can find Bobbi,” he said.
“I am. I’ll bet Lt. Hall has said that by this point, finding your sister, the odds aren’t good.”
Fisher looked down at his beer bottle. “He’s gone over it with us.”
“If he’s saying to not get your hopes up, then he’s being honest with you, which you need to hear,” I said. “I might not be able to find your sister, and even if I can, you may not like what I have to tell you. I can run down what the cops had, see if anything new comes up, but time’s the disadvantage here. I’m one guy, and trails like this, they get cold quick.”
Fisher scratched at the label on the beer bottle with his thumbnail. “You got kids?”
“I don’t.”
Fisher cast his eyes downward. His voice dropped low. “My wife, she can’t have babies,” he said. “We tried, and nothing worked, so Bobbi’s girls, my wife put all that love into them she couldn’t put into ones of our own. But we ain’t their parents, and Jessie’s not their mom. They need their mother, and my wife needs to not raise those girls knowing they’re not hers to have.”
I nodded. “I’ll check around, see what I find out,” I said. “No promises. I can ask questions and make phone calls. Can’t promise much past that.”
He extended his hand toward me. “I appreciate you doing this, Mr. Malone.”
I shook his hand. “It’s Henry.”
I locked the door behind him as he left and watched out the window as he drove away and the taillights faded into the darkness.
Back in the kitchen, I looked at the refrigerator’s contents longer than I should have. There was fresh bread and milk, questionable eggs, cheese that wasn’t improving with age, something that had once been a half-pound of hamburger, and four six-packs of Bud Light.
I closed the refrigerator door and opened a can of beef jerky on the counter next to it. Four truck tire-sized paws hit the living room floor, and Izzy lumbered
in toward me. Even for food, that dog didn’t get herself in a hurry.
I stood with arms crossed and tried to keep the jerky out of sight. She stopped and sat down in front of me and cocked her head to one side.
“Yes?” I said.
Izzy twisted her head to the other side, staring at me with brown eyes the size of coffee saucers. Drool gathered at her jowls.
I reached the jerky out toward her. She leaned forward and took it from my hand and laid on the floor to eat it. I patted her on the head and started a pot of coffee. It was late, but that didn’t matter; I wasn’t likely to be asleep for a while, anyway.
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Here is a preview from Dark as Night, a crime thriller by Mark T. Conard.
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Chapter One
Billy Hope Jr. was looking for the duct tape.
It was Wednesday, April 5th, and the rain hitting the roof sounded like bacon frying. Billy grabbed the bottle of Jim Beam, upended it, letting some run down his chin, onto his shirt. He checked the hall closet, dug through the boxes, all the coat pockets, ran his hand along the overhead shelf—no duct tape. Shit. Slammed the closet door, hard, breaking the latch.
Billy could feel the left side of his face doing gymnastics—the tic worse than ever. He took another pull on the Jim Beam, rubbing his big belly, then belched loudly.
Billy’s father, William Hope Sr., prominent Philadelphia surgeon, at sixty-two the top cutter at Jefferson, walked into the O.R. one afternoon eight months ago, grabbed a scalpel and sliced his wrists and throat—dead before he hit the floor. Billy’s mother, Catherine June Hope, always a little nutty, went off the deep end, had to be institutionalized. Billy’s younger sister, Anita, of course, took over the estate, and now controlled the money. They weren’t about to leave the house, the bank accounts, or the stocks in the hands of a forty-year-old drunken gambler, a career criminal like Billy, especially since everyone thought he took after his mother and was a little cracked in the head. He was ordered held for observation twice now, once when he found himself wandering down Broad Street naked, though that was just an alcohol blackout from mixing tequila and bourbon—but try telling that to a shrink on the city payroll; the other time when he exposed himself to the female Assistant D.A. And that was bullshit—did it on purpose, hoping to beat a B&E charge on a psycho. Didn’t work, he still took the fall, though the judge reduced it to time served and probation. Thank God for prison overcrowding.
Now he was wandering around his parents’ huge house in the Mount Airy section of the city, looking for the goddamned duct tape. Had to break in—Anita changed the locks and wouldn’t give him a key, but what she didn’t know was that he had the security codes to the alarm. She’d have them changed after today, but of course what the hell did he care what she did after today?
Billy walked over to the roll-top desk, the Jim Beam hanging at arm’s length, bumping up against his leg, started searching the desk. Nothing there but papers—mom’s correspondence, sympathy cards for the old man’s funeral. No duct tape, not even Scotch tape or masking tape, nothing. Shit.
It all started when he got the call earlier this afternoon. Sonny Jackson was the only person who knew where he was holed up, back of the Greek’s TV repair shop, living on canned ravioli and sodas out of the machine, the Greek away for a month visiting the homeland. Billy was afraid to stay at his apartment, because he knew what was coming, he just didn’t know when.
Sonny was a tall, skinny black dude, with a huge seventies ’fro. Pretty decent car thief. He wasn’t any good with alarms, but without them Sonny could crack and hotwire most American-made cars in under ninety seconds. He was partial to Caddies and Lincolns, as Billy figured most sensible people were. Billy acted as a spotter a few times for Sonny. The order would come down from the Eye-tys, somebody wanted a Town Car or an Eldorado, late model of course. Billy’d find it, Sonny’d boost it. Three large, split any way they wanted.
So when the phone rang Billy knew who it was.
“Yo, man, Vince is gettin’ out.”
“When?”
“Today, man, he’s fuckin’ out now!”
“No shit?”
“Straight dope.”
Billy dropped the phone, felt his face go into spastic convulsions, and went instinctively for the bourbon. He knew they’d be coming for him. They always said they would, once Vince got out. It would either be them or Vince himself. Well, fuck ’em, he wasn’t going to give them the pleasure. Got into a cab, went straight to Mount Airy, his parents’ home. Something just felt right about doing it there.
Billy thought of the utility drawer by the sink, stumbled through the dining room, knocking over a planter, went into the kitchen. Pulled open the drawer. Corkscrew, twist ties, cheese grater, menus from Chinese restaurants. No duct tape.
Billy and Vince must have pulled, what, a dozen jobs together? Liquor stores, check cashing agencies, one gas station. Maybe a baker’s dozen. Of course! That was it, the last one, the one that went bad was number thirteen.
Shit!
Billy stopped in his tracks, standing in the middle of his parents’ living room, thinking about it. He ran his hand over his bald head. He had a bad feeling about the whole thing when Johnny Stacks set it up. Didn’t sound right, or, really, it sounded too right, too easy. Some old Jew’s got a hundred grand worth of diamonds insured for a cool quarter million and wants them stolen. He’s into Johnny for something like seventy-five grand, betting the ponies, and this is the only way he can pay him back. Whatever the diamonds sell for, Vince and Billy take half, Johnny Stacks gets the other half, and the Jew pays off his debt outta the insurance. Too easy, and he should have known better. You never pull thirteen jobs with the same guy—it’s bad luck. You just don’t do it. End it at twelve and move on.
Billy upended the Jim Beam again, but found it empty. He let the bottle drop to the floor and stumbled into the den, opened up his father’s liquor cabinet. No bourbon, no Jack. Lots of fancy single malt and a bottle of Cutty. He took the Cutty.
Well, it was a good ride. Made a lot of money from those jobs, even though he lost even more betting on football. Him and Vince and Sonny, they had a good time. Sonny was never actually in on the robberies, but he’d boost a car for them to use. Afterwards, they’d get together, the three of them, blow some of that dough on booze and broads, have a few laughs.
Until the jewelry store. Number thirteen. Goddamn, how could he have been so stupid?
Billy opened the Cutty, let the cap fall to the floor, took a long pull on the bottle, started gagging on it, nearly puked. He felt like spitting it out, but got it down, coughing, tears coming to his eyes. Goddamn his old man for not having any decent booze in the house.
Then it hit him: the garage. The goddamn duct tape’s in the garage.
He went through the kitchen, into the laundry room, to the door leading to the garage, opened it. His old man’s maroon Jag was still sitting there—Billy already had the keys to it in his pocket. He stumbled over to the workbench. There was a box sitting there—lying on top of a pile of nails inside the box was the duct tape. He grabbed the tape, walked around the Jag to where the garden supplies were kept. Took a long drink of Cutty, still wincing at the taste, set the bottle on top of the car. He reached down and grabbed the garden hose. Stretched it out, took an end, walked around to the back of the car. Started to bend down, but wobbled, grabbed the bumper and fell on his ass and grunted. Sitting there, he fitted the end of the hose into the exhaust pipe, and sealed it up with the duct tape.
Billy stood back up slowly, using the car as support. He grabbed the Cutty, walked around to the driver’s side, pulling the hose along with him, opened the door and cracked the window. He fitted the other end of the hose through the open space at the top of the wi
ndow, then sealed it up with the tape.
Got in the car and closed the door, then dug into his pocket for the keys. Took a long drink of Scotch, cursing his old man again, then thought it would be nice to have a tape to listen to, the Doors or the Stones, but he didn’t bring one, and his parents sure as shit wouldn’t have anything like that lying around.
Started up the car, took another long drink from the bottle and belched. Turned on the radio—it was set to the classical station, so he turned the knob until something else came on. It was a news conference. The mayor was saying there wasn’t any money for city pay raises this year, the union leaders could bitch all they wanted to, there just wasn’t any more money. Everybody was going to have to bite the bullet.
The exhaust fumes started coming into the car—Billy could smell them now. He took another long drink of Cutty. The bottle was half empty, and he was starting to get used to the taste, thinking it wasn’t so shitty after all. Probably if you cut it with a little water, it ain’t so bad.
Tears started coming to his eyes, and he wiped them away, noticing his facial spasms had stopped. He leaned back in the seat and closed his eyes.
Never, ever pull thirteen jobs with the same guy.
Never.
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