Ames To Thrill: Three Full-Length Gripping Mystery Thrillers

by Dan Ames

Fred wheeled his chair over to the monitor's control panels and he hit a button to make the film pause.

  "There were four reels, each one about ten minutes,” Fred said. “I put them all on one tape, a few seconds gap between them."

  He hit another button and the film began again.

  For the next forty minutes, we watched the screen with growing revulsion. The young girl was placed in every position, on her hands and knees, her small white ass raised into the air, the man standing behind her, looking like a savage, nothing on his face but a dark intensity. Had the camera come equipped for sound, I would have been able to hear the girl’s teeth rattle.

  The last reel was a close-up of the young girl clearly being coached how to give oral pleasure. The man grabbed her hair and pulled her head up and down, as if to demonstrate. Her head moved woodenly, the man's hand clenched her hair. A hands-on manager, apparently.

  At last, his body convulsed and the girl looked directly at the camera.

  It was the final shot of the last scene.

  The film ended and went to black. Fred clicked a couple of buttons and swiveled in his chair to face me. He let out a long breath and took a drink of water. I rubbed my face, some unconscious effort to wipe away the filth of what I'd just seen.

  "The world's oldest porno video?" Fred asked. "That's what Tim was working on?"

  "Nuh-uh,” I said.

  "Then what was he doing with this?" he asked, waving his hand at the now blank monitors.

  "He's a historian Fred, what do you think he was doing with it?"

  Fred pondered that briefly.

  "Back up to that last shot of her," I said. "Sans the dick.”

  Fred punched some buttons until the close-up of the girl filled the screen.

  "Can you rip me a still photo of this frame?" I asked. A plan was forming in my head and the nausea was replaced with hope. There was a chance I could help Gabby. Whether she liked it or not.

  "Sure," Fred said. He punched a couple of buttons while the final shot stayed on screen. In the tape room, I heard a machine start up.

  We went back through the rest of the film. Looked for a good shot of the Hairy Man. We found one, where he briefly looked at the camera. Fred made a still photo of that frame, too.

  Fred went into the tape room and a few minutes later came back with the photos.

  "What are we going to do now?" Fred asked me.

  "You've got a safe in the office, right?" I asked.

  Fred nodded yes.

  "You're going to put the film in there for safe keeping. Don't tell anyone about this, okay?"

  "But the cops-"

  "We’ll give it to them soon enough," I said. "I just want to nose around a little bit first, okay? It’s my job, right?”

  Fred shook his head. “We have to give it to them right away, Burr. We’re just going to create more trouble. Isn't that withholding evidence or something?”

  “Soon enough, Fred. In the end, they’ll thank us for helping.” I stood to go.

  "Where are you going?" Fred asked.

  "I'm going to break into an apartment," I said.

  6

  Six

  Greenfield was the heart and soul of the Milwaukee cliché: a tavern on every corner and Packer paraphernalia in every window. The area was home to pick-up trucks, rusted out Pontiac Bonnevilles and small houses with cramped yards featuring rusted swingsets.

  After his divorce, Tim had taken an apartment here for simple economics; it was the best of the places he could afford. Which clearly meant that he'd been able to afford next to nothing.

  Tim's apartment was in a red brick four-plex with small windows and cheap doors. The lobby smelled musty and dank, like a wet basement. I went to Tim's mailbox slot. Glanced over my shoulder, then pulled the narrow jimmy strip from my wallet. It only took me a few seconds to pop the lock. Inside were grocery store fliers and bills. I thumbed through the entire stack, found nothing out of the ordinary. I put it all back and closed the mailbox door.

  I climbed the steps. Even through the decades old carpet, they creaked loudly. From one of the downstairs apartments I heard the unmistakable sound of disco. Blondie.

  Crime scene tape was criss-crossed over Tim’s door.

  I used the key Tim had given me in case of an emergency and heard the lock click open. I pushed the door open, crouched down and sneaked between the ribbons of tape. I stepped inside the apartment and closed the door quickly behind me.

  From previous visits, I knew what to expect. A living room, a bedroom off to the left, a kitchen at the other end. A bathroom just off the kitchen.

  But the apartment had been tossed. Thoroughly trashed. What few things Tim had managed to retain possession of after the divorce were now strewn around the room.

  In the living room the cheap couch and recliner had been gutted. The upholstery was slashed, the stuffing strewn around like confetti. The cheap plywood frames had been literally pulled apart and smashed to pieces.

  Down the short hallway to the kitchen, the carpet had been torn up. Beneath it the old stained wood floor had chunks missing. Holes had been knocked in the thin walls.

  The kitchen wasn't much better. The refrigerator was tipped over on its side, a flood of water seeped into the floor. Food was flung everywhere and it was starting to rot. The cupboards had been all but ripped from the walls. Plates and glasses were smashed upon the floor. Drawers had been emptied and tossed on top of the mess.

  I looked down the hallway, into the first bedroom. Everything was on the floor, heaped in a pile. Pillows. Sheets. The mattress and box spring. Someone must have had a sledgehammer because the dresser was smashed into long planks of splintered wood. Clothes from the closet were tossed everywhere, the cheap white plastic organizer lay in a jumbled heap on the floor.

  To the left was the spare bedroom Tim had used as an office. The door was ajar. I peeked in.

  The entire room looked as if someone had picked it up and shaken it. Papers were everywhere, covering a pile of computer equipment that lay in a heap on the floor. The desk chair was upside down, its upholstery slashed. His file cabinets had been pushed over and laid on top of one another. Their drawers were out, their contents apparently read then tossed to the floor. Tim had kept a neat stack of open files on the main part of his desk. These were gone as well.

  Tim's computer, an older desktop Mac, was in the middle of the pile. The screen had been bashed in, the keyboard bludgeoned and the hard drive flattened.

  It seemed that whoever had done this hadn't found what they were looking for and decided that if they couldn't find it, neither would anyone else.

  I walked back through the apartment, anger building inside me. They must have killed him first. Tried to get him to give them what they were looking for. When he didn't, they tossed him through a window then came here. It was like they took what little remained of the man after his death and trounced all over it. Spat on his grave.

  My hands were shaking by the time I'd made my way back to the front door. My jaws were clenched so tightly it was a miracle my teeth didn't crack. I wanted to find the people responsible. I wanted their blood on my hands.

  I realized that Gabby must have known about this when she came to talk to me. I wondered why she hadn’t mentioned it. Probably playing head games with me instead of trying to find the killer. Well, she could fuck around but I was going to find the person responsible.

  I took a last look around. This had been Tim’s life away from the office. Where he’d begun to put his personal life back together again after the divorce. The images came to me. Football games I'd watched with him. Tons of beers, some card games, cigars and bullshit talk. It was all gone now.

  I slammed the door shut behind me.

  7

  Seven

  Darkness had fallen. A half-moon hung behind the cloud, its brightness ricocheted off the snow until an eerie blue light electrified the air. The temperature had plunged once again. When I turned off the stereo in the Audi,
I could hear the wheels crunching on the brittle snow.

  It had been at least two years since I'd seen Emily Lyons. Her house was in Elm Grove, a small pocket of snobbishness sandwiched between Milwaukee's eastern suburbs and Western sprawl. The house was a ranch with an attached two-car garage. The yard was big, the house relatively small. A gable dominated the roofline, extended it enough so it didn’t look like a shoebox. The house had a picture window framed by shutters, a front porch with a simple white handrail.

  I parked the Audi in the driveway, went to the door and rang the bell. I waited in the silence of a cold night. It was strange to be here, to see Emily, without Tim around. I didn't like it.

  When she opened the door, it all came back to me. She’d changed a little bit, but was still a head shorter than I was. She was a little thicker around the middle, her face a little more full. Her blonde hair was straight, and cut simply. Her eyes were a pale blue.

  "Burr, come in." She hugged me, then used a Kleenex to wipe her nose, either from crying or a cold. I couldn't tell which. "Beer?" she asked.

  "Of course."

  She gestured for me to sit in the living room and I looked around. There was an entertainment center on one end, surrounded by a long sectional couch and a glass coffee table.

  I didn't see a single picture of Tim anywhere.

  Emily brought in a bottle Bud.

  "So you heard." I said.

  She nodded. "The police told me yesterday afternoon."

  "I'm sorry," I said.

  "I still don't understand...,” she said.

  There was a brief silence as she looked at her feet.

  Emily had been Tim's first and only steady girlfriend. They'd met just after Tim finished grad school and took a job at Marquette. She was a secretary in the Dean of Education's office. They met at a faculty party, dated for six months and then Tim proposed. They had a good, solid marriage for four years. Then Tim started showing up at my door from time to time, saying that he and Emily had fought. He never went into what the fights were about and I never asked. He occasionally made comments about Emily's desire to join a country club, to drive better cars, to eat at the best restaurants. On Tim's salary, those desires were by and large out of the question.

  "What happened?" she asked me. "Do you have any idea if Tim was doing anything...wrong?"

  I shook my head, kept my face straight. But it was a stupid question. I drained half of my beer. "Of course he wasn't doing anything wrong. This is Tim we're talking about."

  She reacted to the tone in my voice by going to her purse and pulling out a pack of cigarettes. She lit one up, took a deep drag. The smoke lazily circled around her head.

  "Look," she said. "I hadn't spoken with him much recently, and planned to keep it that way. Even though I loved him at one point in my life, I don't...didn't anymore. When I met Tim I was a girl, I didn't know what I was doing. I changed. I wanted someone outgoing, someone who when he walked into a room, everyone looked and wondered who he was."

  "So that's why you divorced him?" I asked.

  "No, Burr," she said, irritation in her voice. "That's just one example of how we'd grown apart. Don't get supercilious on me, he didn't love me anymore, either."

  There wasn't much I could say to that one.

  "Why are you here?" she asked.

  "I wanted to find out if you knew anything about Tim's recent work, what he may have been up to."

  "Sorry."

  She smoked in silence for a moment. Then she said, "That was another thing. All Tim thought about was the past. I heard endlessly about his projects, about some incredible discovery he'd made that excited him to no end. He'd tell me, and it would be something like he discovered that Wisconsin's population spiked .03% in 1878 thereby nullifying some other obscure professor's theory that fertility rates had been in decline for the last two hundred years. See what I mean?"

  "Jesus, Em, he was a history professor." I said. "What did you want him to do when he got home from work, turn into James Bond?"

  Emily crossed the room and crushed her cigarette out in an ashtray on the dining room table. I finished my beer, took the empty out to the kitchen and grabbed another.

  "You're here to find out if I know anything about Tim?" she finally asked.

  "And then I'll be on my way. Anything you can think of might help."

  She stood in front of me, her arms across her chest.

  "He called me."

  "When?"

  "A week ago,” she said.

  "What did he say?"

  "He wanted to meet for coffee."

  "Did you?" I said.

  "Yes. We met at the Elm Grove Inn. He was nervous, not himself. Said he just needed to see a familiar face."

  "That's it?"

  "That's it."

  "And that was the last time you saw him?" I said.

  "The last time."

  I wondered why Tim had chosen to see Emily. Why not me? Why not Fred? Why his ex-wife, with whom he hadn't really spoken since the divorce? It didn't make sense.

  I jotted down the date and time Emily said she'd met with Tim, pounded my beer, then stood to go. It wasn't the kind of information I'd been looking for. I felt cold inside. I thought I would learn about plots against Tim, that the mystery would unfold easily. Instead, I wondered if part of the mystery was Tim. I didn't like that one single bit.

  “I’ll see you around, Em.”

  She nodded and acted if she wanted to tell me something else. Her face was slack, her eyes cloudy. It was that, or the cigarette smoke.

  I let myself out, started up the Audi and backed out of the driveway. Emily watched me from the front window.

  8

  Eight

  "Michael Ashland?"

  "Yes," I said.

  The voice on the other end was a man with a high-pitched voice. He spoke quickly.

  "This is William Vanderkin...ah...I'm a history professor at Marquette. I was a colleague of Tim Bantien's."

  I forced myself to focus. Another rough night. The beers at Emily’s had just been the start. I’d stopped for a twelve pack of Point, then demolished most of it once I’d gotten home. Now, my tongue felt thick, my mouth dry. "Uh-huh."

  "I was wondering if we could talk," he said. "Maybe this morning before I leave for the Christmas break? “

  "Okay,” I said. “In an hour?"

  "My office is in Coughlin Hall."

  "I know it."

  We hung up and I went into the bathroom. Started the shower and stripped. Under the hot water, I searched my memory for any mention of William Vanderkin. I vaguely remembered Tim talking about a Vanderkin in his department. Or was it Van Dressen? If I was correct, Tim had said he was an asshole.

  It took me about a half-hour to shower, shave and dress before I was on my way to Marquette's campus.

  It was one of those beautifully sunny winter mornings. The kind that fools you into thinking it's warmer than it really is. Where you step outside and the cold hits you like a sucker punch courtesy of Mother Nature.

  I took the 13th street exit, passed back under the freeway, and drove into the Marquette campus. The university is in a strange area, smack dab between the business district and some of the hard ghettos in Milwaukee. It wasn't uncommon to see students walking side-by-side with gangbangers and winos.

  The history department, in Coughlin Hall, sat on the edge of the block, a stone's throw from I-94.

  Finding a parking space was unusually easy. I parked, hurried through the cold and was glad that the front doors were unlocked. I made my way to Vanderkin's office. It was easy. Tim's office had been in the same building. I felt my mood darken.

  I checked the directory near the history department's main office, and saw that Vanderkin's office was in 305. I walked up two flights of stairs, the light stale and yellow as it poured through tall windows at the top of the stairs. I went down the long, tiled hallway until I came to an old wooden door with cheap decals. Prof. William Vanderkin.

&nb
sp; I knocked on the door.

  "It's open."

  The office was small, with an L-shaped desk dominating the space. Bookshelves lined the walls and were jammed to overflowing. What books didn't fit on the shelves were piled on the floor in towering stacks.

  William Vanderkin sat at the desk, typing on his computer. A Styrofoam cup of coffee sat to the left of his keyboard.

  He turned and looked me over.

  "Mr. Ashland, I presume," he said, then stood and extended his hand. He was a bit shorter than my six-one, but he was wider, with a narrow waist and thick shoulders. He wore a sweater, jeans and hiking boots. His grip was firm and he smiled easily. He had clear blue eyes and blonde hair, brushed lightly at the sides with gray. His face was all sharp angles and smooth skin. He'd pulled a hat trick in the looks department: handsome, distinguished and slightly rugged.

  "Mr. Vanderkin," I answered.

  "You'll pardon the mess," he said. "But I've had so much work to do; grading papers, preparing a paper to be published..." his voice trailed off. "I guess housekeeping hasn't been my utmost priority." His smile revealed perfect white teeth. He cleared books off the visitor's chair, gestured for me to sit. I did. He went back to his desk chair, swiveled it so he was facing me, then sat.

  I decided I didn't want to hear anything else about his schedule. So I got right to the point. "You wanted to talk about Tim Bantien?"

  He nodded his head.

  "How did you get my name?" I asked.

  "Tim mentioned you often." He gave me a big, phony smile that was designed to make me feel good. It did just the opposite. "You were friends, right?" he asked.

  "We went to school together," I answered evenly.

  "And I seem to recall Tim saying that you are a... a private detective, right?"

  "Were you and Tim close? Like I said, I don't remember him mentioning your name."

  I crossed my leg casually, my foot millimeters from a tall, wobbly stack of books.

  He laughed, a hollow sound that reminded me of a politician being caught breaking a campaign promise.