Dying Breath - A Thriller (Phineas Troutt Mysteries Book 2)

by J. A. Konrath

  “Cruel, but fair.”

  “But I have paid you to find my employee. What Cherry does is not my business, but I want to make sure she’s okay.”

  They say a picture is worth a thousand words, even though I’ve never figured out who they actually are. In that spirit, I took out my iPhone and showed Kahdem the pics of Cherry I took at the trailer park.

  He flipped through them, then went too far back and started looking at my selfies of me riding Rover. I snatched my phone back.

  “Do you know who it is?” Kahdem asked.

  “Of course I do. I wouldn’t ride a horse I didn’t know.”

  “Not the horse. The man with Cherry.”

  “You hired me to find Cherry. I did. Finding out who that is goes a little beyond employer concern, even taking your empathy into account. Cherry wanted to keep this from you. So did Puma. Why?”

  Kahdem paused, and I knew I’d caught him. It was a classic case of the client keeping some dark, hidden secret that he hadn’t revealed earlier. Maybe he was sleeping with her. Or she stole money from him. Or she was his daughter. Or it was some psycho kind of love, like I’d guessed, and he wanted to freeze her severed head.

  “I’ve been keeping something from you,” said Kahdem.

  I’m just that good. No wonder I had a TV show based on my exploits. While I bathed in the warmth of pure smug, a waitress came by and took our drink orders. Kahdem had a sparkling water. I had Blanton’s whiskey on the rocks, because I deserved it for spending the day in the slammer, helping my cop buddy catch a serial killer, and being right about my no-good client, who I was going to lay into, but not too much because I still wanted him to pick up the check.

  “Cherry wasn’t the first girl to disappear without telling anyone where she was,” Kahdem said, talking before I had a chance to berate him. “She was the third.”

  “Go on.” I was still feeling smug, but I was kind of disappointed she wasn’t his lover-slash-daughter-slash-robber.

  “The first was twenty months ago. Same situation. A dancer disappeared. You’d think, in this business, there are a lot of people who quit, or have troubles, so disappearing is common. Actually, there are only so many exotic dancing clubs in the Midwest, so many of the dancers know one another. They make friends. They talk. When one of them vanishes, without telling anyone, and doesn’t ever turn up again, it’s strange.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me this when I started?”

  “I have no evidence of any foul play. It’s just a feeling. But I didn’t want my feelings prejudicing your investigation.”

  That made sense. Perhaps too much sense.

  Wait—making too much sense isn’t bad. That didn’t make sense.

  “When did the second dancer go missing?”

  “About ten months ago.”

  “So you’re thinking that every ten months, someone abducts one of your employees?”

  “I didn’t say abducts. The girls have stalkers. All dancers do. They are quick to tell me, and Parviz makes sure they leave the girls alone. This is something different.”

  Like someone pretending to be an agent, luring strippers to his trailer to take pictures with promises of fame and fortune.

  “If you’d told me this earlier, I wouldn’t have left her alone with that guy,” I said, putting the blame on Kahdem instead of my fleeing from the Maple Hills police. “But it still doesn’t explain why Puma lied to you about knowing where Cherry was, and why Cherry hasn’t told you where she was.”

  Kahdem frowned. “I gave Cherry a loan. For her surgery. I think she hasn’t called me because she skipped the surgery, and perhaps used the money for something else.”

  “I get it. You’re like some pimp loan shark sugar daddy sex trade club owner who forces women to work for him to pay back their markers.”

  “It was a zero interest loan for two thousand dollars. I think Cherry didn’t tell me because she was ashamed, and Puma covered for her. This isn’t about the money, Mr. McGlade. It’s about Cherry’s well-being.”

  Well, he convinced me. I wish I had a boss like him. Sweet guy.

  “Do you know who this man is?” Kahdem asked.

  My whiskey came. I told the waitress I needed a few minutes before I ordered, then tipped the booze down my throat in a really cool dramatic way.

  “Not yet,” I told Kahdem. “But as long as I’m on your dime, I aim to find out.”

  PHIN

  Shivering.

  Dreaming.

  My thoughts liquid, spilling everywhere. Blurring slow motion.

  Dark. So dark.

  On my back.

  No hole.

  Pain.

  Open eyes, total blackness.

  Spinning swimming spirals.

  My fingers, so long. The legs of spiders.

  Distance and balance, merge and contract.

  Like brief snatches of reality on the edge of sleep.

  Dead.

  Not dead.

  Shifting planes.

  Closing my eyes made me believe I was just waking up.

  Shot.

  Ringing in my ears. Dry mouth. Thirsty. Metallic taste. Can’t swallow.

  No hole in my chest.

  Drifting. Disassociation. Melting. Blending into the dark.

  Cold.

  Numb.

  Erratic pulse.

  Alive.

  Of course you’re alive, Earl said. You think I’d let you go so easily?

  Mirror undulating. Focus shifting.

  My chest.

  Shot.

  No blood.

  No hole.

  But something…

  A dart.

  Drugged.

  Semi-aware… everything spinning, moments strung together and together…

  Pull out the dart. Pull out my insides through the hole.

  Deflating.

  Can’t trust past or present.

  Not dead.

  Drugged.

  Time stretches and slows.

  Fainting, waking, remembering, forgetting, shivering.

  Hallucinating.

  Familiar.

  This feeling is familiar.

  PCP.

  Fear. Sweating.

  Dark. Trapped.

  Get up. Move. Scream.

  Reach.

  The walls are cold.

  Neck is buzzing. On my knees. Pull imaginary covers around me.

  My hands are cold. Can’t wake up.

  So I’ll sleep.

  JACK

  Benedict came back into my office with two cups of coffee in his hands.

  “Find your Mr. Coffee?” I asked.

  “Vending machine.”

  I debated thanking him, since the coffee was so bad, but let manners and my need for caffeine override my displeasure at the taste.

  “Thanks.”

  The coffee was grittier than usual. After my first sip I wanted to floss all the little grains of whatever out of my teeth. I could only hope they were coffee grounds.

  “I know,” Herb said. “Tastes like sand.”

  “Sand would be an improvement.”

  “Did you hear anything?”

  “You mean during the five minutes you were gone?”

  “Don’t be rude. I brought you coffee.”

  “That’s why I’m being rude.”

  Herb made a you think you’re funny but you’re not face.

  “Actually,” I said, “I did. Gomar Rentals called me back about the former employee. The guy who rented out the truck to the killers. I’ve got a phone number.”

  I put my desk phone on speaker, and dialed.

  The line picked up on the third ring.

  “Mr. Dalt?” That was me talking.

  “Yeah?”

  “This is Lieutenant Daniels of the Chicago Police Department. Would it be possible to see you later today?”

  “Why?”

  “It’s about your former job at Gomar rentals.”

  “I don’t work there no more.”


  “We are aware of that, Mr. Dalt.”

  “Huh?”

  “We know that you don’t work there anymore.”

  “So what do you want?”

  “To ask you a few questions about a truck you rented out. The one that was never returned.”

  “Got a new job now. At the Amaco.”

  “We’d like to come to your home.”

  “Amaco wouldn’t like no cops coming to hassle me.”

  “We’ll meet you at your home, Mr. Dalt.”

  “I ain’t gonna be home after four.”

  “Then we’ll be there before four.”

  “I don’t work for Gomar anymore. I work at the Amaco.”

  “We know, Mr. Dalt.”

  “I quit there. Boss was always hassling me. Don’t like getting hassled.”

  “We’re not going to hassle you, Mr. Dalt.”

  “You want to come over and talk to me?”

  “Yes we do.”

  “I ain’t gonna be home after four.”

  “We’ll be there before then, Mr. Dalt.”

  “It’s pronounced dolt.”

  No kidding.

  “See you at your home before four, Mr. Dalt,” I said.

  “You know where I live?”

  “Yes, Mr. Dalt. We’re the police.”

  “Just come before four.”

  He hung up.

  “He’s gonna be fun to talk to,” Herb said.

  “As long as we get there before four. You hear anything from Cluck?”

  Cluck was the nickname everyone knew Wallace O‘Clusky, who was heading the Mauler task force. The term task force made it sound like there were twenty SWAT commandos in full body armor on 24 hour standby, ready to parachute in and snipe all hostiles. The Mayor liked to assign task forces to major cases, because then it sounded like everything possible was being done.

  In actuality, task force work was the worst. It was boring desk jockeying and phone jockeying, and if you were lucky the monotony was broken up with almost entirely fruitless door-to-door questioning. So far the task force had been assigned a plethora of menial tasks. Calling motels and searching for the fake names used to check in, checking all the factories and shops in town who operated metal lathes, to try and match the swarf we found in the truck’s tires, and calling all police precincts in Illinois, Indiana, Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin, and Missouri to check if they found any similar victims in motels.

  Rather than an elite fighting force of twenty, our task force consisted of seven very tired and very overworked individuals, either fresh out of the academy, on restricted duty, almost retired, or being reprimanded for some minor indiscretion.

  If I found out who took the damn Mr. Coffee, that person would see task force duty for a year.

  “Cluck,” he answered, then coughed.

  “Daniels. Got anything for me?”

  “Naw. We’ve been gardening here.”

  Gardening was cute task force jargon. They were turning up shit.

  “How many of the motels have you gone through?”

  “All of them. No check-ins or reservations from anyone named Doug Stephenson or Doug Jackson in the future, or going back six months.”

  “How about the third name?”

  Cluck coughed. “There’s a third name? Why don’t people tell me this shit?”

  “Chuck Gardiner.”

  Cluck coughed again, but I realized his cough was a laugh.

  “Let me in on the joke,” I said.

  “Well Doug Stephenson and Doug Jackson, they’re pretty common. I thought it was a coincidence. But now we got Chuck Gardiner on the list. Next name will probably be Bobby Hull.”

  Bobby Hull. Why was that familiar?

  “Hockey players,” Herb said. “The names are all Blackhawks?”

  “Hey, there, Benedict.” He coughed again. “Yeah, Chicago Blackhawks. Apparently our perps are sports fans.”

  “You know what you need to do, Cluck.”

  “Yeah. Gotta visit every motel in the city with pictures of every Blackhawks team going back to 1926 and ask if they’ve seen any of these men.”

  Cluck found himself so funny that he was lost to a coughing fit for ten seconds. When he settled down, he said, “Seriously, Lieutenant. We’re talking over a thousand guys.”

  “See if you can narrow it down. Maybe those three have something in common.”

  “Goalies,” he said. “Jackson, Gardiner and Stephenson were all goalies.”

  “How many goalies have there been?”

  “I dunno. Hundred? A few more?”

  “Make a list. We’ll send it to the motels.”

  “You expect some schmo working at a motel for six bucks an hour is gonna go through a hundred names.”

  Putting the outdated word schmo aside, he had a point.

  “There’s some sort of Cook County Crime Watch reward program. Anyone with tips that lead to a felony conviction gets a thousand bucks.”

  “I’ll get a list together, Loot.” He began coughing again.

  “How’s the health?” I asked, as if I couldn’t hear for myself.

  “Wanna know the worst thing about emphysema? It ain’t the hacking, or getting winded walking up stairs. It’s that I miss cigarettes.”

  “Sorry for your loss, Cluck.”

  “I know. Thank God for cigars.”

  I hung up. Cluck was one of the old timers who wasn’t pressured to retire because we were always low on manpower. I think when he joined the force they were still using flintlock pistols.

  “Need more coffee?” Herb asked.

  That was a tough question. Yes, I needed the caffeine, and no, I didn’t need any more grit in my teeth.

  “Okay. Grab a filter so we can strain out the hard bits.”

  “When you say it like that it sounds disgusting.”

  “Do you want to drink the hard bits?”

  “I’ll find a filter.”

  Benedict got up for more coffee and I flipped open the autopsy report. The body was of a post-pubescent young woman, age 15 to 20. Date of death was difficult to determine, due to her body being frozen. Cause of death was likely due to exsanguination; blood loss from over twenty-three stab wounds. Phil Blasky theorized the weapon used was a filet knife. The kind fishermen use.

  No semen found in rectum, vaginal cavity, mouth, or stomach. But evidence of tearing in the vagina and rectum. She’d been raped, probably with objects.

  I flipped through the companion report from the lab boys, and it wasn’t too encouraging. No skin under her fingernails. No foreign hair, pubic or otherwise, found in or on the body. Chemical burns on 40% of her body, caused by a household oven cleaner; they were working on which brand.

  As with the other victims, the teeth had been chiseled out.

  Of the several dozen latent prints found in the truck, there had yet to be a computer match on any one of them.

  The girl had been taped to the bed of the truck with duct tape. Analysis to whether or not it came from the same roll as the others was inconclusive. The ends of the tape were cut with a razor blade or sharp knife, rather than scissors. No prints found on the tape.

  Closer examination of the rental truck, including a fine tooth combing of the chassis and positioning of such items as small papers, dirt, dust, and blood trails in the cab and bed, indicated the truck had been towed from the rear, as I’d guessed.

  No papers or rental agreement was found in the truck.

  Forensic and crime scene evidence was great when a case came to trial, but it didn’t do much in the way of helping us catch the guy. We had three unidentified dead girls. Maybe they were runaways, maybe kidnappings, maybe disappearances, but we had no way of figuring out their names. And if we never got the guy, three sets of parents would never know what happened to their daughters.

  I didn’t have children, but I couldn’t imagine anything worse than having one go missing, and then never know her fate.

  I was about to play the video o
f the latest scene when Benedict came back with two more steaming cups of sludge. He set one on my desk.

  “It might be rust,” he said, cleaning in between two teeth with a fingernail. “Vending machine has been here as long as I have. Never saw anyone clean it.”

  “That would explain that metallic, oxidized taste,” I said, drinking it anyway.

  Human beings rule the planet. And caffeine rules us. All hail Lord Caffeine.

  Herb wiped whatever was on his finger onto his tie. I started the crime scene video and the phone rang. I paused.

  “Daniels.”

  “Sergeant Michaels, Property Crimes. Got to break our meeting later. Can it wait till tomorrow or can I help you out now?”

  “I just had a few questions,” I said, “shouldn’t take too long.”

  “Hit me.” He had a voice that was squeaky and low at the same time. Like a tape of Mickey Mouse, played at half speed.

  “Ever hear of an outfit taking cars by towing them away?”

  “Sure. A lot of the bigger rings operate like that. Steal a few tow trucks, repaint ’em, and you got yourself a car theft fleet.”

  “Are any in Chicago right now?”

  “We’ve gotten two dozen reports in the last few months.”

  “Leads?”

  “Yeah, two. Jack and shit.”

  Whatever Bains had hoped to accomplish by this proposed meeting remained to be seen. I suppose it was just the political cover-your-ass thing again. ‘Yes, Mr. Mayor, we have a lead connected to a stolen truck, and right now we’re working with our grand theft auto team.’

  “How often do you bust a ring like this?” I asked.

  “We get all of them, eventually. Takes time. There are so many damn cars stolen every day, and so few recovered, we can’t tell if it’s big outfits taking them, kids out for joyrides, solo professionals, or people just plain forgetting where they parked; all my department does is try to keep all the information coming in organized.”

  “You don’t have anyone undercover in a chop-shop?”

  “Sure we do. Hundreds of undercover agents. We also have several thousand officers disguised as spare tires, hiding out in car trunks and waiting to be stolen.”

  His helium voice punctuated his sarcasm nicely.

  “My balls don’t need to be busted, Michaels. I’m one of the good guys.”

  “Sorry, Loot. Got so much pressure on my shoulders I should strap on a yoke. This is the Motel Mauler case?”