“This is Detective Harden.” She nodded to the man I assumed was her partner. “We worked the Callahan case. How can we help you?”
“You got a name?” Harden folded his arms over his chest.
I stared back and forth at them both for a few quick beats. “Worked?”
“Suicide.” No empathy in Harden’s voice. He almost sounded proud when he said it.
My stomach tightened. What did you get yourself into, Sean? It was no time to be emotional. That could happen later.
It wasn’t a suicide, but Harden wouldn’t be convinced. Sean was nothing but a file shifted off Harden’s desk at that point.
Detective Shirley glanced around, avoiding eye contact, then motioned for me to follow them. She spoke as she walked. “We should go sit down to discuss this. Are you family? The one who called?”
I shook my head and followed them back to the bullpen. We split the middle of two rows of cubicles and ended up at Shirley’s desk. Her name plate on her cubicle read KRISTINE SHIRLEY, DETECTIVE. She was young. Looked about twenty-three which meant she was probably twenty-five or twenty-six. Had to be.
I removed a bag from the dry cleaners and sat down on a chair across from her desk. Starsky, the new name I’d given Harden in my mind, posted up behind her when she sat down. The guy looked like he was trying to stake a claim. He was middle-aged and had a simple yellow-gold wedding band on his left ring finger. He was maybe mid-forties.
Shirley started to speak, and he barreled right over her. “Suicide. Clear as day. No sign of foul play.”
“I don’t think so.” I tried to be as polite as I could, but he made it difficult. The guy was a grade-A prick.
His eyes narrowed, and his jaw clenched. “Excuse me?”
My eyes rolled up to his. “Is that rhetorical?”
“Do you have evidence?” Shirley leaned forward like I’d just piqued her curiosity and was simultaneously trying to defuse the tension that just filled the air. Her voice remained soft. Good cop, bad cop? I wasn’t a suspect. Maybe Starsky was just a dick. That was probably the case. Didn’t matter.
I leaned back and said nothing.
“Well?” Starsky’s hands balled into fists at his sides.
I glanced to the copy of the Tulsa World newspaper on Shirley’s desk. “You have one of those from two days ago?”
She nodded. “Sure.”
Starsky rolled his eyes like I was wasting their time.
“Evidence is in there.” I stood up.
They both looked at each other then back at me.
“Huh?” Starsky said.
I looked at Detective Shirley and gave the best smile I was capable of. “Thanks for your time.” I walked off. Had all the information I was going to get. Starsky was convinced he was right and there’s no way he’d let Shirley talk to me. I didn’t have time to waste. If they thought it was a suicide, all Sean’s personal belongings, including the laptop, would be at his place.
They both followed me back the same way we came in.
Starsky grabbed me by the forearm when we passed the receptionist’s desk. I stared down at his hand and then back up at him.
He released his grip. “You have a name?”
I didn’t answer. The guy could piss off for all I cared.
Shirley came up from behind him. She stared at me like I was a school project or puzzle. I liked her immediately. She was a problem solver. Some people you could just tell. No wonder she’d made detective at her age in a department full of testosterone.
Starsky glared. “Look, stay out of this, okay? I’m sure you’re some kind of family or friend looking to play investigator, but there’s nothing there. Let the professionals handle it.”
Shirley cleared her throat.
Starsky’s neck tensed up, like he’d realized he was being harsh. “Sorry for your loss if you knew him. But we can’t have you interfering and getting in our way.”
I snickered.
“Something funny?” A vein bulged against his collar and he snapped back into “dick” mode.
“Sure.”
“Well?”
“How can I interfere?”
“Huh?” He stared blankly.
“Case closed. No crime.”
Shirley grinned. Starsky’s face screwed up tight and reddened.
I did a one-eighty and disappeared through the entrance and back into the stairwell. I’d get the answers myself.
3
“WAIT!” DETECTIVE SHIRLEY CHASED ME down the front steps of the building. I didn’t stop walking and didn’t turn around for her. If she wanted to talk she could keep up. I had work to do, and I wanted to make sure her partner wasn’t following. My hands balled into fists thinking about that arrogant asshole.
Shirley didn’t pant when she reached me. Good for her, staying in shape like that. It was more than I could say for a lot of detectives. I glanced up at the third-floor windows. Starsky stared down at us from one of the panes of glass. Something about him rubbed me all wrong. It was probably nothing. He was just a dick. Detectives were dicks sometimes—a lot of the time. I’d dealt with plenty and didn’t blame them. They spent most of their days being lied to by criminals.
“Detective.” I gave her a quick nod and moved straight ahead, south toward 4th Street.
“Sorry about my partner. He’s a little rough around the edges.”
“Looked more like owner and pet to me.”
She glanced down to the sidewalk. Didn’t argue. Reactions were everything. They told you more than words. A person’s words were usually a shiny paint job on a rusted-out beater car. Read any resume in the world. I’d never seen one where the applicant didn’t look like a superhero. I always watched reactions.
Her head tilted back up and angled toward my face. “Get some coffee with me.”
I didn’t respond and kept in a straight line down 4th Street. A to B. Fastest way.
“Please?”
I stopped and turned. “Why?”
“I have more questions.”
“I want mine answered first. Deal?”
She stood there, hesitated, then stuck out a hand. “Deal.”
I shook her hand. “Where do we get coffee?”
She gestured across 4th Street. “Starbucks?”
I glanced over. I didn’t like chains and always looked for mom and pop establishments. Better service. Better products. What little money I spent didn’t end up in a hedge fund somewhere, divided up into a million different wealthy bank accounts. “Is there anywhere else?”
“Who doesn’t like Starbucks?” She stared like I was from outer space.
I thought about Sean. I needed answers and I wanted them fast. Some things were more important than my disdain for large corporate entities. “Fine.”
We walked in and ordered. I took my coffee black. Shirley had the same but dumped a few packets of sugar in hers. She pulled out a copy of the Tulsa World from behind her before she sat down.
I smirked and started for the door. “Nice try, detective.”
She glared. “Where are you going? If there are clues to the case hidden in there we need to know about them.”
“We had an agreement. My questions first.”
She glanced off at the hissing stainless-steel machines, then at the coffeemakers they called baristas—a marketing ploy to add two dollars to the price of coffee—for another quick second. She sighed. “What do you want to know?”
I took a seat. “I want you to walk me through a timeline.” Asking questions was never as good as hearing the story. If they told me the story, I could decide what information was relevant.
“We got a call last night. A friend of his hadn’t heard from him. Said it was unusual. We sent a squad car for a wellness check at the friend’s request. They found him in his bathroom. Gunshot wound to the head. Not uncommon. Over half of suicides are carried out with firearms. No signs of foul play. Open and shut.”
“Not quite.”
Her forehead wrink
led up and her face heated with pink hues. Not the blushing kind. More like the you’re a jerk kind. “I’m sorry?”
I did my best to soften my words. Maybe I’d been too harsh, and I wanted to know what they knew. “Who was the friend?”
“Who?”
“The one who called it in.”
“I don’t know. The person who took the call said the caller was really evasive. Not local. They were friends on the internet. It’s one of the reasons we didn’t take it too seriously. But we promised to check on him. Was it you?”
“Do I look like I have friends on the internet? Trace on the location?”
She stared out the window and wouldn’t look at me. I knew she was about to give me more ammo to fire at her.
“Shirley? Trace?”
“It bounced around locations. They couldn’t pinpoint it. He scrambled it somehow.”
I leaned back. “So, no questions asked? Didn’t even get a name and number out of the guy? Brilliant work, detective.”
I gave her a hard time. It was damn well deserved, but the information was important. The fact it bounced around let me know it either was a friend of Sean’s, or someone trying to cover something up. That was the crowd Sean was into, so it was a tricky situation. Once a hacker always a hacker. I’d been wary when he’d first told me, but he’d assured me he was what was called a white hat. They didn’t engage in illegal activities, more like a club or network of guys. They pushed computers to see what they could make them do—what they could build. It was the challenge that was the allure, not financial gain or activism or revenge on people who’d given them swirlies at school for playing Dungeons and Dragons during their formative years.
Shirley still hadn’t looked back at me. Her cheeks had gone from heated red to pink with embarrassment. It seemed genuine. “We took a few statements for recordkeeping. But there was no reason we thought of at the time to push any further. And we didn’t know Callahan was going to be deceased when we got there.”
“Still unacceptable.”
She whipped her head around. “Hey, we’re overworked and underpaid. You see the stacks of files in the office back there? Cut us some slack. If you have information that sheds new light, I’m all ears. More than happy to listen and reopen the case.”
I held up an index finger. “Rule number one. Don’t make promises you can’t keep, detective. It can come back to bite you in the ass.”
“Of course I’d keep that promise.”
“Your boss back there didn’t seem like he’d be open to it.”
Her jaw flexed. “He’s not my boss.”
“Could’ve fooled me.”
“What’s your name?”
“It’s probably about time you asked that, isn’t it?”
She turned her gaze to the window again. The two detectives didn’t seem very adept at collecting information. It was okay. They weren’t dealing with a normal civilian, so I gave them a pass in my mind, but I’d have to keep their feet to the fire if I wanted any results.
After pressing her for a moment, I relaxed in my chair. “Savage.”
“Excuse me?”
“Max Savage.”
I thought I heard her mumble, “Savage beast,” under her breath, but I couldn’t be sure. I smiled at the thought, though.
“Okay, Mr. Savage.”
“Just Max or just Savage.” I added a “please” after a second or two of delay.
She stared down at the Tulsa World dated two days prior. “Okay, Savage. Can you tell me what I’m looking for in this paper?”
I eyed her up and down for a few quick seconds. She really was beautiful, but beyond that, she had a spark in her eyes. There was a story behind those irises. Maybe she had an overbearing father, probably a cop. She’d worked hard to please him, taking up the family tradition. Maybe an only child and she was supposed to be a son. She’d let him down before she ever took a breath. Daddy issues?
I raked my eyes up and down a few more seconds. I’d been harsh on her, but it wasn’t undeserved. That look in her eyes captured my attention though. She cared. She wanted the truth, justice for my friend. My gut told me I was right. The gut rarely missed things. I decided to throw her a bone. Maybe she could be useful if she didn’t slow me down.
“Ever heard of a rail fence cipher?”
She looked at me with a thousand-yard stare. The corner of her mouth twitched before she spoke. “A what?”
“Pull out the classifieds and look for an ad that looks different from the others.”
She thumbed through the newspaper while I explained it to her.
“It’s a rudimentary form of encryption and decryption. A way to pass messages. This one in particular scrambles the letters a certain way. If you know the number of rails you can read it on the other end.”
“Why would there be one of those ciphers in the classified section?”
“Because Sean took out the ad.”
“But why?”
“It’s how we communicated with each other.”
“No phone?”
“Don’t have one.”
“Email?”
“Don’t have email anymore.”
She shook her head like she couldn’t believe what I’d just said, and her eyes darted back and forth over the paper.
“It was fun for us. How we first bonded. What we did. He taught me. Callahan was a communications expert in the Army, among other things. I have a subscription delivered to an, umm, employer of mine. I check the classifieds for messages from him. Mostly jokes. Sometimes serious information if something important happened in his life. Fortunately, I was there yesterday when they delivered that one.”
Shirley flipped the page of the paper and held it in front of her. Those green eyes of hers scanned up and down each column methodically. “Didn’t know what he did in the Army.”
“Of course you didn’t. Open and shut, right?”
Shirley ignored the insult. She was catching on quick. “Found it!” She flipped the paper around and dented the ad in with her index finger. There it was.
FOR SALE!
Multiple items. Antique MCMLiV windmill. Seven 1950s era dolls, all related.
Build-a-bear. Assorted fake Ruby jewelry. Couch with Cushions, OK condition.
$168. No less.
SERIOUS INQUIRIES ONLY!
SUSGOHRYAAESRV
I nodded. “That’s the one.”
“What does it mean?”
“Not sure about the body of the ad, yet. The last line is the cipher. As soon as I saw it I hopped on a bus.”
“Bus from where?”
I flashed her a derisive stare that said really? Giving her information about myself was not at the top of my priority list.
“What does the last line say?”
“That’s your homework.” I stood, draining the last of my coffee. There was no other reason to stick around and I didn’t like Starbucks.
She frowned. “You’re leaving?”
I didn’t respond. I’d said enough. Things would get complicated, and she had work to do. I’d see if she got the cipher figured out. If she didn’t, she probably wouldn’t be able to help much more anyway.
She stood and reached into one of her pockets and thrust her card at me. “If you find anything.”
I took it and held it up, pretending to examine it. “I’ll be sure and do that.” I smirked at the card and shoved it in my pocket. My shoes squeaked on the tile when I turned on my heel toward the door.
“Stay out of trouble.” She folded her arms across her chest.
“Not a chance.” I shoved through the door.
The humid afternoon sun socked me right in the face as the door sucked shut behind me. The air in Tulsa was heavier than Kentucky. I thought back to the second I saw the cipher. It was unexpected. I’d figured it would be a dirty joke or something funny to laugh at on a weekday morning. My chest squeezed tight when I’d processed the last part, and I’d borrowed the truck and rushed to the bus statio
n.
Sean and I always used three rails. The cipher transposed the letters in an orderly system. It was easily cracked without the aid of computers. I’d gotten to where I could do it in my head without writing it down.
The cipher read: SUSGOHRYAAESRV
Decrypted it read: SOS HURRY SAVAGE
4
THE DAY HEATED UP FAST. I walked all the way to Sean’s place from Starbucks. It was a three or four-mile trip with the sun blazing on top of my head, but it was nothing for me.
It was a scenic route. I traipsed south at a fair clip along a street called Riverside. The Arkansas river snaked around and tapered from a wide ribbon to a thin blue film in the distance. Huge sandbar peninsulas curved out in lazy arcs into the middle of the flat shallow waterway. Thick green deciduous trees lined the banks. Moving south, a hint of raw sewage fell in my nostrils like a water treatment plant was nearby. It wasn’t the cleanest river I’d ever seen but it gave off a decent view.
There was a huge park that ran along the bank. It was the usual scene in any park in any city—people walking dogs, fit co-eds in sports bras or shirtless, running with headphones in and a phone strapped to their biceps with black elastic.
Brookside was interesting when I cut back east to Peoria Street. There was a strip of shops, bars, restaurants. They had character. A few chain stores dotted here and there, but there were a lot of older independent establishments that looked like they’d been in business for decades and some newer boutiques. It all formed a nice little cornucopia of old and new trends. Tulsa seemed pleasant enough. Big city, but not too big. Not a ton of traffic. I could see why Callahan liked it there. It was home for him. I scolded myself for not visiting while he was still alive.
I preferred the country and living on my own in seclusion. Didn’t like being found. Didn’t like paying for things. I reached back for my rucksack and searched with my hand for my Ruger 22/10 takedown rifle, then remembered I hadn’t brought anything. I felt naked without it. If you wanted to live off the land, that gun was the one to do it with.
Savage Beast (Max Savage Book 1) Page 2
