Almost Infamous (Detective Damien Drake Book 9)

by Patrick Logan

  “Yeah, yeah, he was one of the last cuts, actually. I’ve got—you know what, just hold on a second.”

  Jan closed and locked the door behind her, leaving Drake and Leroy on the stoop.

  “Jan got hella lucky,” Leroy said matter-of-factly. Then he turned to face Drake. “Hey, you think that Tobin auditioned under an alias? That he is this Lucas character? And now, Chad?”

  Bingo.

  Drake was impressed; this was the most logical explanation for the discrepancy and, somehow, he’d missed it.

  “You know what, Leroy? I think you might just be right. I think—” Drake stopped speaking when the door opened again.

  Jan nervously snaked her hand through the crack.

  “What’s this?”

  “The forms that Lucas filled out and his audition tape.”

  Leroy took both and said, “We’ll get these back to you after—”

  “No, no, I don’t want them back. I don’t want anything to do with him. Ever.”

  Leroy nodded.

  “One more thing, just out of curiosity.”

  “Yes?”

  “Why didn’t you pick Lucas for your show?”

  Jan lowered her eyes and Drake observed her closely as she answered.

  “There was just… just something off about him. I can’t quite place it but…” she shuddered, and Drake decided that she’d been through enough already.

  “Thanks. Jan, please call—”

  Drake heard the bike before he saw it. It came speeding around the corner so quickly that the rider, who was dressed all in black, fishtailed wildly. Drake pushed Leroy behind him and drew his gun.

  “Jan, close the door,” he instructed.

  “What? What’s going—”

  “Close the fucking door!”

  Drake heard the door slam shut as he sprinted down the walkway. Coming out of the fishtail, the rider spotted him, and his gun, and swerved too hard to one side.

  He rocketed over the handlebars, rolling impressively, before coming to a stop on the grass.

  “I don’t have any money!” the man proclaimed, wincing. “Just take the package… but leave the bike. I need it to work.”

  He was trying to get up, but Drake was having none of it.

  “Stay down,” he ordered, leveling his gun at the man.

  “I’m just delivering a package… I don’t want any trouble.”

  A package?

  Drake told Leroy to make sure that the man stayed on his ass as he walked over to the fallen bike. There was indeed some sort of box tied with bungee cords to a makeshift basket behind the seat.

  “Who sent you?” Drake asked as he began to remove the cords.

  “I don’t fuckin’ know, man. I just deliver the shit. This ain’t like UPS or registered mail.”

  Drake removed the package and placed it on the grass.

  “And who are you delivering it to?”

  “Jan something or other. Says right there on the top.”

  Drake felt a lump rise in his throat. The box that once carried noodle bowls was taped up so well that he couldn’t open it by hand. He used his keys to puncture the adhesive and then peeled it off. Leaning away, he lifted the cardboard flap to reveal a thick garbage bag inside.

  It’s just a bag, Drake. What’s wrong with you?

  Still, he hesitated before unraveling it. Even when he had the bag stretched over the mouth of the box it was too dark to make out its contents. He had to tilt the package toward Jan’s floodlight to see inside.

  And the second the object within came into focus, Drake wished he had kept the box sealed up tight.

  “Drake? What is it? Drake, what’s in the box?” Leroy asked, a tremor in his voice.

  Drake dropped the box back onto the grass.

  “Drake? What’s in the—”

  “A foot,” he answered in a voice just above a whisper. “A human foot.”

  Chapter 59

  “N-n-n-n-no, no, n-n-no way,” the still prone bike delivery man whined. “Don’t tell me there’s a real fucking foot in there, man. Please.”

  “Drake?” Leroy asked, leaning into the light.

  Drake pointed a finger at his partner’s thick chest.

  “Stay there, Leroy. Just stay there.”

  “Ohhh, you can’t be serious—I don’t get paid enough for this shit. First, it’s damn nasty ass used tampons and now a foot? What is this fuckin’ world—”

  Drake couldn’t concentrate with the delivery boy’s insane ramblings.

  “Shut up.”

  One thing that the man’s comments confirmed, however, was that he was not responsible for removing the foot—he wasn’t Tobin Tomlin or Chad or Lucas or whatever the psychopath responsible wanted to be called.

  Because he was now convinced that what Leroy had said was true: they were all the same person.

  Drake pulled out his cell phone and finally bit the bullet; cat murder, no matter how horrible, was one thing.

  A bloody human foot was another.

  “Drake?” a tired-sounding man said after less than a full ring.

  “Detective Dunbar, you’re not going to like this—I know you have had a tough night already, but it’s about to get worse.”

  Dunbar sighed.

  “What happened, Drake?”

  “First, tell me about Patty… is she doing alright?”

  “She’ll be fine. Gonna spend the night in the hospital but should be released in the morning. I have three fire teams still at the shelter, trying to dig through the rubble and figure out exactly what happened, and I dispatched all animal control vehicles in Manhattan to collect the animals that got away. Now, you going to tell me what kind of shit you’ve got yourself in this time?”

  Drake took a deep breath and told Dunbar the story, glossing over the whole Dr. Cratom kidnapping and extortion, breaking into Tobin’s apartment, and instead got right to the part where they met up with Jan Dewalter.

  “Wait—slow down, Drake. Who the hell is Tobin Tomlin?”

  Shit.

  Drake had forgotten just how much in the dark the detective actually was.

  “We think that he’s the one who killed the cat on video. Might go by a couple of other aliases.”

  “What cat—Drake, what the fuck are you talking about?”

  Drake pinched the bridge of his nose and turned his back to Leroy.

  They didn’t have time for this.

  “I’m on a case, trying to find a damn cat of all things. Patty from the shelter told me that she saw a video online of a man killing a cat, and we’re pretty sure it’s the same one.”

  “And you think that this is somehow related to the burning of the SPCA shelter?”

  The comment gave Drake pause. To this point, he hadn’t considered that the two events were related.

  “I don’t… I don’t know.”

  As Drake pondered this thought, Dunbar grew more and more impatient.

  “Listen, Drake, I don’t really have time—”

  “The package contained a foot, Dunbar,” Drake blurted.

  “What? A foot? A human foot?”

  “Yeah, a foot. We’re here talking to this producer lady, and a bike delivery boy comes by with a box containing a human foot.”

  “What kind of human foot?”

  Drake made a face.

  “I don’t know… a left one—what the hell do you mean?”

  “I mean, is it old?”

  “No, not old. It’s practically still fucking bleeding.”

  “Goddamn it.” It sounded like Dunbar started to get dressed. “Send me the address—I’m on my way. Just stay there, Drake. Stay with the delivery boy and the foot.”

  “Yeah, of course,” Drake lied. “Just come as fast as you can.”

  He hung up the phone then turned back to Leroy. Drake wasn’t sure how much his partner had overheard, but the man’s next comment confirmed that it was enough.

  “You’re leaving aren’t you?”

  D
rake shook his head.

  “Yeah, but you aren’t. Stay with this guy, don’t let him go anywhere.”

  Leroy crinkled his nose and Drake walked right up to him. He grabbed the folder and USB key containing Lucas Lionell’s audition then he started to walk away.

  “Drake, where are you—”

  “Just stay here.”

  The comment that Dunbar had made about the savage cat video and the SPCA fire being related stuck with him.

  Could it be?

  It seemed unlikely, but there was only one way to find out for sure.

  As he opened his car door, Drake dialed Screech’s number.

  “What are you doing up?” the man asked immediately.

  Drake started his vehicle.

  “The job of a PI never ends. Lemme guess, you’re still up, too, and still at the shop?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Okay, I’m coming to you.”

  “This about the cat case?” Screech asked.

  Drake pulled away from Leroy and the delivery boy, deliberately avoiding eye contact with his partner. The man was pissed and had every right to be.

  But while they may be equals when it came to their names on the door, Drake was capable of doing things that Leroy wasn’t.

  And he wanted it to stay that way for as long as possible.

  “It was… but now, Screech, now I think the cat case just became a human case.”

  Chapter 60

  “You going to tell me what this is all about?” Screech asked as he held the door to DSLH Investigations open for Drake.

  “Yeah, but first there’s something we need to watch.”

  Drake handed over the USB key and folder, but his partner’s main focus was the former.

  Tell Screech that all his dealings with Nick Petrazzino are going to be our dealings now.

  “What’s this?”

  Was that tremor in his voice?

  “An audition tape.”

  “A what?”

  “Just put it on.”

  There must have been a look in his eyes because Screech stopped asking questions and instead went to his computer. While he loaded the audition tape, Drake turned his attention to the form that Lucas had filled out.

  Drake read the first few lines of the application before shaking his head and starting all over again.

  It didn’t seem like a real application at all; it seemed like a joke. Half the page was filled with social media handles, number of followers, impact ratios, other garbage that didn’t mean anything in the real world.

  Under emergency contacts, Lucas had written one word: myself.

  None of this interested Drake, but one thing did catch his eye: Lucas’s address. Although the writing was so small on this part of the application that he had to squint to read it, it confirmed his suspicion: Lucas Lionell’s address was the same one that Drake had visited just a few hours ago.

  Tobin’s place.

  Tobin Tomlin was Lucas Lionell.

  “I’ll be damned,” he muttered under his breath. “They’re the same person.”

  “What?”

  “Nothing.” Screech eyed him suspiciously. “Is this the audition?”

  “Yeah,” Screech said, pressing play and leaning back from his computer monitor so both could see. “This is it.”

  After less than a minute of staring at Lucas’s face, his dull, flat eyes, Drake knew exactly what Jan had meant when she’d said that there was just something strange about the man. He had to give him credit: he was charming, clever, funny, and… off.

  Drake had stared into the eyes of many a killer and knew, without a doubt, that this Lucas Lionell was capable of murder.

  “All right, turn it off,” Drake instructed. “Just turn it off.”

  The second command was superfluous; Screech had already paused the video.

  Both men took a moment to catch their breath. It was as if they’d just finished a five-mile run instead of watched a failed reality TV audition.

  “Can you bring up the cat video, again? Do a side-by-side to see if that’s him?” Drake asked.

  Screech nodded and after jogging both videos back and forth he eventually paused them both with the man’s face in frame and at about the same angle.

  “It’s him,” Drake stated.

  “I dunno; look at his forehead, it’s—”

  “—him,” Drake concluded. “It’s fucking him.”

  “Naw, I dunno, Drake—his profile is different.”

  Drake remembered what Screech had told him what seemed like weeks ago about the man in the video having a tattoo on his forehead.

  “That ain’t a tattoo, Screech. It’s a scar. And his head looks different because it’s swollen. He had a-a—“ Drake wasn’t sure what to say. A fake surgery? “—an operation, of sorts.”

  Screech turned to him and gawked.

  Drake held his stare and eventually, the man shook his head and just conceded.

  “Oooookay, then. Well, I’ll tell you this much: this sick bastard isn’t going to stop at cats. If we don’t get to him soon, his next victim isn’t going to be an animal.”

  Drake frowned.

  “Too late.”

  “What? What do you mean?”

  Drake told his partner the same story that he’d told Dunbar only without skipping anything. By the time he was done, Screech’s skin was pastier than ever.

  “Fucking hell.”

  “No kidding. The real question is how do we find this asshole?”

  Screech shifted in his seat.

  “What? What is it?”

  “Well, it’s just… this seems like a job for the cops now, don’t you think?”

  Anger started to rise in Drake, which Screech quickly picked up on.

  “I know, I know, Drake, but it’s just given your legal issues? Don’t you—”

  “I don’t care about that,” he said flatly. “I just care about finding this guy before he hurts someone else.”

  It briefly looked as if Screech was about to argue some more, but he knew that it would be like arguing politics with a paper bag.

  “Okay, okay,” he relented. “But that’s going to be hard. People like this guy, they don’t have friends. They just use people up, spit ‘em out.”

  And cut off their feet, Drake thought.

  “So, how are we—”

  Dunbar’s voice suddenly echoed inside his head.

  And you think that this is somehow related to the burning of the SPCA shelter?

  “Shit. Look up Tobin Tomlin… see if he has any videos or photos.”

  Screech raised an eyebrow.

  “I thought his name was Lucas?”

  “And I think this asshole changes names like underwear; try Tobin Tomlin.”

  Screech shrugged and turned back to his computer.

  “It’s the same guy,” Screech exclaimed a few seconds later.

  Drake stared at what looked like a high school yearbook photograph on screen.

  “Yeah.” He was disappointed; he didn’t want the man who murdered the cat to be the same one who had sent a human foot to Jan Dewalter. He didn’t want to be involved in a police case.

  But he was. There was no denying that now.

  “Doesn’t look like Tobin has posted in a long while, though. Six months, maybe more.”

  “Alright, let’s look up Lucas next.”

  Unlike Tobin, Lucas had posted up until just a few days ago. Screech went through the first thirty seconds of each video and enlarged a few photos.

  “It’s all just visual masturbation.”

  Drake agreed. It was all superficial garbage.

  “What next?”

  “Well,” Drake began, performing a mental checklist, “we know that Tobin was the one who killed the cat. We also know that he tried out for this reality TV show under the name Lucas Lionell. He also harassed the producer and sent her a human foot.”

  “First class psycho.”

  “You’re not wrong.”

&nbs
p; “But how does any of this help us find him?”

  “He’s definitely not posting cat videos under Lucas or Tobin,” Drake offered.

  “Naw, I don’t think he even posted the first one. Like I said, it looked like someone just uploaded security footage.”

  Drake thought more about what both Leroy and Screech had said, about what he knew regarding the downward spiral into murder. The jump straight from cat to human seemed improbable.

  “Right. So, he didn’t upload that video, but maybe he uploaded others.”

  “I mean, I can go through more of Lucas’s and Tobin’s history, but—”

  “No,” Drake said sharply. “Not those names.”

  “What then? Fuckin’ Willy Wonka? Demented Dr. Doolittle?”

  Drake shook his head.

  “Chad.”

  “Chad?”

  “Chad.”

  Screech threw up his hands.

  “Okay, fucking Chad it is.”

  It didn’t take long before they’d found the Chad they were looking for.

  And both of them immediately felt sick to their stomachs.

  Chapter 61

  Throughout his tenure in the NYPD, and everything that had happened since, Drake had seen some pretty heinous things. He’d seen the bodies of innocent young women who overdosed after being forced to act as drug mules. He’d seen people hanged, he’d seen people shot, he’d seen murders made to look like suicides.

  He’d seen heads on stakes in Columbia.

  He’d seen people killed right in front of him, and in some cases, by his own hand.

  But never in his entire life had Drake seen anything as savage and as ruthless as what was on screen now.

  In the video, a man with his face mostly covered by a filthy bandanna hacked an Asian man to death with a butcher’s knife and then proceeded to dismember him.

  The man also had an infected looking gash running across his forehead.

  Several times, even Drake had to look away. It was just too brutal to watch.

  During these intervals, he noticed that Screech was also averting his eyes. Still, this only did so much; the audio might have been worse than the video.

  The screams, the gurgles, the sound of blood pumping out of dozens if not hundreds of stab wounds.

  Neither of them said anything for some time after the video ended. They just sat there, collectively trying to catch their breath and avoid vomiting.