Almost Infamous (Detective Damien Drake Book 9)

by Patrick Logan

  It worked; the strange question got the officer speaking again.

  “Yeah—well, it’s my aunt’s cat. Just—it’s an indoor cat and it somehow snuck out last night. Just wondering if anybody in the neighborhood saw it, is all.”

  “S-sorry.”

  “Right, okay.” The officer folded the photo and put it in his pocket. “If you see it, please give me a call. There will be a cash reward.”

  The officer handed Tobin a business card and then stood up straight, acquiring a more professional stance.

  “You were saying something about last night?”

  “W-w-what?”

  “Before—when you answered the door, you were saying something about last night?”

  “No, no, nothing. Nothing.”

  The officer seemed unconvinced, but he had other things on his mind, it appeared.

  He tipped his cap.

  “Okay, thank you. Have a nice day.”

  The moment he closed the door, Tobin started trembling all over.

  “He gone? He ask about me?”

  Tobin whipped around and glared at Kenneth.

  “He ask about me?” the man repeated

  “No, he didn’t ask about you…”

  He asked about a cat, a cat that I strangled and then kicked across an alley.

  “Oh, good, good.”

  “Why the fuck would he ask about you?” Tobin lashed out unexpectedly. “Not everything is about you, Ken. Get over yourself—the world doesn’t revolve around you.”

  Chapter 26

  As much as he’d joked about the cat caper, Drake wasn’t actually upset about being handed this job. Coming off the Marcus Slasinsky nightmare and learning about Beckett’s death, well, he could deal with a fluff case.

  Drake drove his car to the address listed in the file that Screech had handed him. Even though it had been a long while since he’d driven his car, it was comforting being behind the seat again. In addition to acquiring it through means that he could only begin to guess at, Hanna must have also given the Crown Vic a tune-up. Sure, the door still squeaked, but it ran better than he remembered.

  Ms. Stephanie Schmidt lived on the ground floor of an apartment building on the East side of Manhattan. Graffiti marked the exterior brick, but the entrance and foyer were clean and didn’t smell half bad.

  Drake made his way to the woman’s apartment door and knocked.

  “Ms. Schmidt? It’s—”

  The door opened and a desperate woman in her mid- to late-sixties stared out at him. Her grey hair was pulled up into a bun and her small features were shrouded in thick wrinkles.

  “Did you find him? Did you find my Cosmo?” the woman asked in a scratchy, high-pitched voice.

  A pang of sadness suddenly struck Drake. He wasn’t much of an animal person, but that didn’t matter; what mattered was that this woman was.

  “No, ma’am—not yet.”

  Ms. Schmidt’s eyes narrowed, and she gestured for him to come inside.

  “You must be Damien.”

  Drake nodded and followered her in. As he looked around, he tried not to let his shock at what he saw show on his face.

  The apartment itself was clean, and while the furniture was old and outdated, it was all in good shape. What gave him pause, were the photographs. All around the room were photos of the cat—of Cosmo—either lounging, eating, sometimes curled up on what he presumed was Ms. Schmidt’s lap.

  The walls were nearly completely covered in them.

  “Yes, uh, but please, call me Drake.”

  “Okay, Drake. Would you like something to drink? Tea, perhaps?”

  Scotch.

  “No, thank you. I just came to ask you a few questions, so as to better help me find your ca—uh, Cosmo.”

  “Did you speak to my nephew?”

  Drake raised an eyebrow. There was no mention of a nephew in the case file.

  “Nephew?”

  “Yeah, I think maybe I forgot to tell your boss—Stephen—about him when I called.”

  Drake chuckled.

  My boss…

  “My nephew is a police officer for the NYPD. His name is Officer—”

  Drake’s face drooped. He was positive that the woman was going to say Kramer.

  “—Dean Billups. He’s trying to find Cosmo, too, but he’s real busy at work. He’s actually the one who suggested I find a Private Investigator.”

  “Uh, no, ma’am, but I’ll be sure to contact him.”

  “Thank you. You sure you don’t want any tea?”

  “No, I’m fine. But there are a few things that I want to go over from your file.”

  The hunched woman lowered herself into a faded blue armchair. Drake’s heart sunk a little when he saw her hands awkwardly come to rest in her lap. It was clear that she was used to caressing Cosmo this way.

  Drake opened the file and read a few lines. Sure, this case might only be about a cat and obviously carried less weight than some of the others that he’d been involved in, but this was her cat. Cosmo meant the world to this woman, and that was enough for Drake to take it seriously.

  “So, Cosmo is mostly an indoor cat?”

  Ms. Schmidt nodded.

  “When he was younger, I let him out a little, but not recently—not in the last few years. He’s getting older and isn’t as nimble as he used to be.”

  The woman was struggling to hold back tears.

  “Yeah, I understand. You’re positive that he’s not inside somewhere? That he went out?”

  Her thin, dark brow furrowed.

  “I would know if Cosmo was here,” she said sharply.

  “Right, of course. Maybe you can tell me about the last time you saw him, then?”

  “Sure… I was cooking some bacon on the stove and I left it on a little long… it started to burn. I opened a window to air the place out, you know? But—oh, geez—I-I-I think I forgot to close it and he went out last night. If anything—oh—if anything happened to Cosmo, I don’t know if I—”

  “I’m sure he’s fine,” Drake lied. He had no idea what the likelihood of the cat returning home safely was. It could be a hundred percent or could be zero. He scanned the page in his hands again. “And the day that he went missing… you took him to the vet? Is that correct?”

  “It was nothing serious. It’s just that recently I noticed Cosmo staring at his food more than eating it. He would just look at it and I would clap my hands and say, here Cosmo, Cosmo, Cosmo, but he would just wait until I scratched him and then he would twitch a little. Like a shudder? I took him to see the vet, Dr. Cratom, and he said that sometimes when they get older, cats can zone out. I mean, it has happened to me before… I was watching TV just the other day and blanked for a good half hour. Don’t even remember the story, plot, nothing like that.”

  “Yeah, I know what you mean,” Drake said, and this time he wasn’t lying; the same thing had happened when he was locked up. Beckett had once told him that this was a type of seizure—an absence seizure and that they were almost always benign.

  In humans, anyway; Drake had never thought to ask about cats.

  And now you’ll never get a chance to.

  This time, it was Drake who was forced to fight back tears.

  “Do you have the vet’s address? It’s okay if you don’t, I can probably find it, but…”

  “Of course,” Ms. Schmidt said, rising to her feet. As the woman made her way to the kitchen, Drake got a better look at his surroundings. In addition to the photographs, there was cat paraphernalia everywhere.

  Everything from porcelain bowls with Cosmo written on the side, to a scratching post, climbing apparatus…

  It reminded him of a couple who had been trying for years to have a child but were told over and over again that they were infertile. Then, by some miracle, they conceived.

  That couple had more pictures and were more overprotective of that child than the government was of State secrets.

  A child…

  This case d
idn’t feel like a nothing, fluff-job to Drake anymore.

  It was personal now.

  After what had happened at the Loomis Estate, Jasmine had fled with baby Clay, while Drake was miles away, trapped on an island, fearing serious jail time if he returned. At the time, it felt like the right decision, no matter how painful.

  What did Beckett use to say?

  Drake sighed.

  Everything you touch turns to shit… you’re like the King Midas of feces… or something like that.

  Drake missed Jasmine, he missed his son, he missed Suzan, and he missed Beckett.

  But that didn’t change the fact that they were all probably better off without him.

  “Drake?”

  Drake shook his head and straightened, realizing that to the elderly woman he must have looked as if he was having one of the absence seizures they’d just spoken about.

  He took the business card from her wrinkled hand.

  “Dr. Alex’s Pet Shoppe,” he read out loud.

  Drake pocketed the card and thanked the woman. He was partway to the door when her words caused him to turn. Ms. Schmidt’s eyes were wide and wet.

  “Are you going to find him? Find my Cosmo?”

  The appropriate answer was, I’ll try, I’ll do my best, or something of the like. But the sheer desperation in the woman’s features did something to Drake.

  Something that forced him to break the very first rule of Private Investigation.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, I’m going to find Cosmo… I promise.”

  Chapter 27

  Tobin knew that after everything that had happened, it was probably best for him to stay away from the Internet for a while. There were cameras everywhere in New York, after all—doorbells, ATMs, run-of-the-mill security cams—and staying offline was one way of making sure that no more cops showed up at his door.

  Avoidance was the first step to ignorance.

  But Tobin and his many personas were born and raised on the Internet. Staying away would be like living without oxygen. You could do it, but only for a very short while.

  Even though, in this case, no news was good news, Tobin was still disappointed at the lack of activity on his many channels. Lucas Lionell’s heartfelt soliloquy from inside his Hollow Shelter, his personal message to all the Luscious followers, had long since fallen to the bottom of everyone’s news feeds.

  Normally, even after a week, someone would repost his video, or link to it, which would garner him a few dozen more hearts and another second in the spotlight.

  But Anon had soured pretty much everything that Lucas had said and done, regardless of its impact, both potential and realized. In the sound-byte era, context had become irrelevant. You could give a thousand motivating speeches, write dozens of inspiring posts, and dedicate your life to helping others. One slip of the tongue, one incorrect gender pronoun use, or one fucking troll calling you out and it was all over.

  Tobin realized that he was grinding his teeth and forced himself to stop. The last thing he needed now was to develop thickened jaw muscles like some sort of Neanderthal, to lose the balance and symmetry that his last surgery had afforded him.

  And yet, despite his relaxed features and posture, his frustration was still peaking. Tobin navigated to Anon’s profile and was dismayed to find a general paucity of information. Anon had but a few followers and Tobin couldn’t find out any personal details about the man… or woman.

  The only thing that seemed to fuel Anon’s existence was trolling Lucas Lionell.

  What the fuck is your problem? What did I ever do to you?

  Tobin debated sending Anon a DM but changed his mind.

  Internet trolls were parasites of the truest kind: they fed off the pain and suffering of others. Fail to give them the response they so relished and eventually, they would either die off or find a new host.

  Why me?

  Tobin reluctantly logged out of all his accounts and stared at his blank computer screen for several moments.

  Even though Anon would have to be dealt with, there was a more pressing issue, one that he’d managed to avoid until now.

  Tobin sighed deeply.

  No one saw, he told himself. Nobody was there.

  He stared for so long that his vision started to blur. It was only when Tobin’s body demanded him to move, to offer some distraction from his generalized pain, was he forced to do something.

  With shaking hands, he logged into his VPN.

  Nobody saw.

  A Google search brought up a case of a mentally disturbed woman who had drowned six cats in her bathtub. Dated more than eight months ago, this seemed to be the only newsworthy report of cruelty to animals that still garnered any attention.

  The fact that anybody wrote about it at all was surprising but illustrated another harsh fact of the Internet: the lifespan of positive stories was but a fraction of those containing any degree of hatred.

  There was a logarithmic relationship between pain and suffering sustainability.

  Tobin exhaled loudly.

  “Good, good,” he whispered.

  But deep down, Tobin knew that he wasn’t out of the woods yet. Google might be the king of Internet search engines, but it was blind to some of the darker parts of the web.

  His fingers were trembling so badly that it took Tobin three tries to navigate to 8chan.

  If it’s on 8chan, then it probably isn’t on the web, he concluded.

  There was still the Dark Web, of course, but Tobin was less concerned about this unregulated and relatively unknown corner of the Internet. The Dark Web was like the Las Vegas of the Internet: what happened there, tended to stay there.

  It didn’t matter that the Dark Web was a place where people could buy anything from drugs to guns, to actual people. Where you could hire a hitman or post hate-filled manifestos.

  Download child pornography.

  Purchase or even commission smut films.

  For the general public, and the media, if it didn’t show up on Google, it didn’t exist.

  For the most part, anyway.

  Tobin logged into 8chan anonymously and then tentatively searched for violence against animals.

  More specifically, the strangling of a cat.

  After scrolling through two pages of mislabeled Hentai images, Tobin’s anxiety, which had previously made it difficult to breathe, finally started to lessen.

  See? Nobody saw. You’re getting worked up about nothing. Just forget about it. Focus on you, on Chad.

  It all came roaring back, however, when he spotted the blurry thumbnail of a man in a white beanie.

  A Balenciaga beanie.

  One that Tobin wore at this very moment.

  He stopped breathing entirely when he read the headline: Asshole Savagely Strangles Defenseless Cat.

  Chapter 28

  Drake was surprised to discover that Dr. Alex’s Pet Shoppe was open on a Sunday. Not only that, but it was packed. He sat in his car and watched as a woman in a long dress awkwardly carried an over-sized hamster cage through the front door.

  “Yeesh,” he whispered under his breath in a moment of rare introspection. “This is what your life has come to?”

  Instead of being annoyed or frustrated, Drake just laughed. The absurdity of going from hunting violent, sadistic murderers to seeking lost kitties wasn’t lost on him.

  Still grinning, Drake got out of his car and hustled across the parking lot. He walked through the front doors and went directly to the front desk, intentionally staying away from the crowded sitting area.

  As he approached, Drake saw the secretary’s right hand slip off the keyboard and slide beneath the desk. This was subtle but deliberate, and he had no doubt that there was an emergency button hidden beneath.

  Drake filed this into his memory and put on his best smile.

  “Hi there,” he said. “My name’s Drake and I’m looking—”

  “Do you have an appointment?” the woman’s lips were curled downward, and Dra
ke resisted the urge to replicate her frown.

  “No,” he replied, shaking his head. “No appointment, but I just—”

  “Can I help you?” a male voice demanded.

  Drake tore his eyes away from the curmudgeonly secretary and watched a large man step through a pair of swinging doors. Dr. Alex Cratom’s brow was knitted and while he wasn’t scowling, he wasn’t smiling, either.

  Instead of answering, Drake produced a business card and held it out to the man. Dr. Cratom looked at the card but didn’t immediately reach for it. Drake flapped it slightly, and eventually, the vet grabbed it.

  The man scanned the card and then looked at Drake.

  While they exchanged no words, the implication of this silent exchange was clear: either Dr. Cratom could invite him somewhere private, or Drake would announce who he was, loudly and clearly. Even though he was just looking for a lost cat, the optics of having a Private Investigator visiting you at your place of work were never good.

  Dr. Cratom picked up on this immediately, and he cocked his head in the direction he’d come. Drake nodded and walked past the secretary, noting that her hand had never re-emerged from beneath the desk.

  Together, they entered a room that reminded Drake of a triage area in a hospital, only it smelled different. Whereas hospitals were often aseptic, this room was musty and reminded him of a wet dog.

  “What can I do for you, PI Drake,” Dr. Cratom asked, gesturing toward a small metal gurney.

  Drake raised an eyebrow and elected to stand.

  “It’s nothing serious, I’m just looking for a cat.”

  Dr. Cratom stared at him as if trying to figure out if he was joking.

  “A cat?”

  Drake nodded.

  “Yeah, a cat—big orange fluffy thing. Goes by the name Cosmo. The… uh… mother, Ms. Stephanie Schmidt, said she brings it here for… vet stuff.”

  Just uttering these words made Drake cringe.

  Mother? What the hell are you talking about?

  Yet, Dr. Cratom’s face lifted.

  “Ah, no shit? I saw Ms. Schmidt just the other day. She came in with Cosmo… really? He went missing?”