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

by J. A. Konrath

  “Ticks,” he said.

  “Ticks.”

  “Ticks. The little bugs that land on you and stick their legs in your skin and start sucking your blood until they blow up to the size of grapes. Big, fat, blood-filled grapes. They freak me out.”

  The way he described it they freaked me out too.

  “I could do this alone,” I offered.

  “Too risky. You need back-up if shit goes down.”

  “If shit goes down, you can call the local police.”

  “Still too risky. You need me there.”

  “Well, we’re not doing anything involving a damn milk jug.”

  We were silent for a moment, and then Harry pulled over again.

  “Water,” he said.

  “Let me guess: water, in a milk jug. Why don’t you just freeze the damn milk? Then you don’t have to add anything. You’re putting all this stuff in milk jugs, and it’s completely unnecessary.”

  “I’m not talking about milk jugs,” McGlade said. “I’m talking about a boat.”

  HARRY

  I’m no tactician. Especially since I wasn’t really sure what a tactician was. But any needlehead with half a brain cell knew that the best way to check out that house was not crawling through a forest full of ticks, like some juicy human tick-bait.

  The way to do it was by water. So the first order of business was to find a boat. That shouldn’t be too hard, considering this was Minnesota. Cue the state motto.

  I let Jack drive, and then searched Google Maps for boat rentals.

  “How can there be no boat rentals within fifty miles?” I said to myself.

  Jack answered the rhetorical. “Maybe your miracle of modern technology doesn’t list them all.”

  “Remember that restaurant a few miles back?” I asked. “They had a lot of cars in the parking lot, and a bunch of them were towing boats.”

  “You want to go back there and try to rent a boat from some random guy eating at a restaurant?”

  I didn’t reply.

  Jack caught on. “You want to steal a boat.”

  “We’ll just borrow it. Return it when we’re done.”

  “I’m a police officer, McGlade. I’m sworn to uphold the law.”

  “In Chicago. This is Danburn, Minnesota.”

  I could tell Jack was chewing on the idea. I knew how to seal the deal.

  “Or,” I said, drawing it out, “…we can get a milk jug.”

  “Fine. You can steal a boat. But I’m not helping you.”

  “Butch and Sundance robbed banks. They helped each other.”

  “And if you were Robert Redford, I’d consider it. But you’re more like Danny Devito.”

  “Be nice.”

  “I won’t help you steal a boat, McGlade.”

  “Just drive us to the restaurant,” I told her. “I’ll do the rest.”

  “Every damn boat has a lock on their hitch,” I said as I drove through the restaurant parking lot. “What the hell is wrong with people? What happened to trust in your fellow man?”

  And then, right when I was ready to give up, I found an unlocked one. An old wooden boat, covered with a cheap, ratty tarp. It couldn’t have been worth much, which would make Jack feel better.

  Jack was waiting across the street, hiding in a gas station. Hiding from the larceny.

  No problem. I could handle this alone.

  I had a stale pack of cigarettes in the glove compartment for times like these. A man with nothing to do but stand there was suspicious. A man with a butt in his mouth was having a smoke, and decidedly less suspicious. I lit it with an old pack of matches and parked next to the boat. Then I made my move.

  I pulled the lock lever on his hitch and lifted up on the trailer, raising it off of the ball. It was heavier than it looked, but with two strong tugs I had the trailer over to the back of the van.

  I had a bad moment, where I wasn’t sure that the ball hitch on the van was the same size as the one I stole it from, but with only a little bit of rocking and adjusting the mount fit just fine.

  I now had a boat. The whole operation lasted eight seconds, and went off without a hitch.

  Heh heh.

  I took a final drag on the smoke and flicked it into the street. Then I got in the van and picked up my fraidy cat partner.

  “It went off without a hitch. Heh heh.”

  Jack didn’t laugh.

  When we got near Cline’s house, I pulled over. Then I opened my stakeout kit box, which I’d taken from the Vette before we left. I dug inside, making sure Jack didn’t see the throwaway guns I’d bought from Fakir, and took out two walkie-talkies. I checked the batteries, made sure they were on the same channel, and handed her one.

  “If you’re in trouble, press the send button twice,” I said, showing her how. “You want some camo face paint?”

  “I’m good.” Jack clipped the radio to her waistband. I did the same with mine. Then she sprayed on some bug repellent.

  “Where’d you get that?”

  “Gas station.”

  “Is it good against ticks?” I asked.

  She squinted at the label. “I hope so.”

  “Tuck your pants into your socks. And try not to muck up my Air Jordan 11s. I’ve also got binoculars for you.” I gave her my back-up pair. She frowned when I handed them over.

  “These have a camouflage pattern on them.”

  “I know. Cool, right? It’s called Tactical Assault Woodland, using fractals to blend perfectly into the surrounding foliage.”

  “What if I drop them? I’ll never find them again.”

  I hadn’t thought of that. “So don’t drop them. Got one more thing for you.” Without making too much out of it, I held out my Kevlar vest.

  “Do you have one for you?” she asked.

  “Yeah,” I lied.

  I helped Jack put it on, snugging the Velcro straps.

  “Once we see something’s wrong, we call the local cops,” Jack repeated. “Right?”

  “Of course. They’ll handle it. But that doesn’t mean we should take unnecessary risks.”

  “Good point.”

  Something about her bug spray was bugging me (heh heh), but I couldn’t figure it out. I let it go.

  “According to my phone, the boat launch is on the other side of the lake. Figure fifteen minutes to get there, another fifteen to launch and get in front of Cline’s house. Try not to get into any trouble until then.”

  She nodded. I raised up a palm.

  “I don’t do high-fives,” Jack said, and began to walk away.

  Jack never did high-fives. Just like old times, from back when we were still partners.

  It felt pretty good.

  “Wait,” I called after her.

  She stopped and looked at me.

  “At the motel, you said you were broke. So how did you buy that bug spray?”

  Jack didn’t say anything.

  “Wait… you stole it?”

  “Ticks are gross,” she said.

  “I thought you were hiding from the larceny,” I said. “What happened to being a police officer, sworn to uphold the law?”

  “That’s in Chicago,” Jack said. “This is Danburn, Minnesota.”

  Jack took off into the woods. I watched her go, and then I pulled back onto the road, headed for my date with death.

  Seriously, there’s a lot of death coming up real soon.

  I took some dirt road to its very end and found the boat launch. After a difficult three point turn that should have won me an award, I backed the boat up into the water, noting with zero interest that someone had parked a truck in the bushes. I put the van in park and took my .44 out of the holster and shoved it under the front seat, replacing it with my throwaway Arminius. Then I got out of the van and went to unhitch the trailer.

  Once released, the trailer rolled into the lake on its own. I didn’t have a rope or a chain to pull it back to shore, and I yelled a couple choice curses, listening to my angry voice echo over
the lake. Finally, having no alternative, I waded in after the boat, soaking myself to the waist.

  Working by feel, I unhooked the boat strap from the trailer, and it floated free. Then I tugged the boat out of the trailer’s V and pulled it back to the landing, beaching the bow. It was heavier in the water than I expected.

  Once on land, I untied the ratty tarp that covered the boat.

  No wonder it was so freaking heavy. Laying on the floor of the boat was a dead deer.

  “I just wanted a boat and now I’ve got twelve hundred pounds of venison,” I said, to no one. Or maybe I said it to the buck.

  He didn’t answer.

  There was blood on its chest from where the rifle got him, and a good deal of blood at the bottom of the boat. I got in with the deer, and even though it was futile, I tried to lift up the carcass.

  I heaved until I saw stars and my nuts threatened to pop. The buck didn’t budge. I tried again, lifting with my legs instead of my back, and called it quits when my sides began to ache. The last thing I needed was two feet of intestines to burst through my muscle wall. I knew a guy who got a hernia like that. It was so big he could twist it around and make balloon animals.

  So, literally, the buck stopped here.

  Heh heh.

  I climbed over him and lowered the motor into the water. Then I attached the gas tank and primed it. The sucker started right up. And, happily, the outboard was left-handed.

  “Fasten your seatbelt, Bambi. And extinguish all smoking material.”

  I put the motor in reverse until I cleared the trailer, then shifted into forward and headed out on the lake.

  The day was gorgeous, a bright sun and a blue sky and water as calm as a drunk baby. A perfect day to take my new, stinky, dead deer buddy for a ride.

  “Maybe we’ll go water skiing later,” I promised him.

  He didn’t answer.

  The motor on the boat was an antique eight horse power Johnson. With all the weight it had to push, our top speed was about two miles an hour. I headed toward Cline’s house, the only house on the East side of the lake. Cline had a boat attached to his pier. A nice one that I bet went faster than two miles an hour.

  There weren’t many people out on the lake today. Just me and some guy in a ball cap who looked like he was fishing. I noticed he was out in front of Cline’s place. Probably found a walleye hole. If I wanted to get anything done, I’d have to wait him out or scare him off. Being an impatient man by nature, I made a beeline towards him.

  When I got within yelling distance, he seemed to notice me and took off in the opposite direction. Maybe he didn’t want me to know where his secret fishing hot spot was.

  “Looks like we scared him off, Bambi. Maybe it was your scent.”

  Boating upwind, I couldn’t help but get a whiff of my travelling companion. He wasn’t making my mouth water for deer stew.

  I opened my stakeout bag and took out my good binoculars, aiming them toward the house. As expected, a monster of a speedboat was docked at the pier. Twin engines. Full waterskiing tow package, big enough to pull seven people. I wouldn’t be able to outrun it, deer or no deer. It would have to be put out of commission if I needed to make a quick getaway.

  I focused my attention on the house and saw nothing of interest. The porch was lacking in humans, and the window blinds were closed.

  Was everyone gone?

  I scanned the property and saw someone behind a clump of trees. He looked to be barbecuing.

  Even though it was too far away to smell, my mouth started to water. After all, I never got to finish my Mickey Mouse pancake, so I’d been living on junk food for the last fifteen hours. I dug my hand in my bag, still keeping an eye on the house, and pulled out a candy bar. A very poor substitute for grilled animal flesh. I was in the process of tearing open the plastic wrapper with my teeth when I heard a noise behind me.

  Using the deer for cover, I dropped behind him, rolling over on my left shoulder and digging my right hand into my holster. The Arminius came out as if greased, and I found myself having a Mexican standoff with some guy in a “Kiss My Ass” cap. It was the fisherman that I thought I’d scared off, who had rowed up to me and was now holding a sawed-off shotgun.

  “Hiya, Phin,” I said. “Nice hat.”

  PHIN

  I lowered the Stoeger. It was Harry McGlade, the private eye I’d tried to hire a few days ago.

  Small world. Made even smaller by his choice in headwear, which was exactly the same as the cap I wore.

  “We’re the Kiss My Ass twins,” Harry said. “You’re my hat bro. Let’s do a selfie, hat bro.” He turned away from me and held up his cell phone, pointing it at both of us. “Want me to text it to you?”

  “Later,” I said. “You want to explain the dead deer in your boat?”

  “Sure thing, hat bro. I’ve never had a sibling. It’s cool.”

  I thought of my brother, Hugo. McGlade was dead wrong.

  I tied my bow line to his, and we spent a few minutes catching each other up on why we were both there. He was especially interested in Tucker’s recorded phone calls.

  “So Garrett is the little weasel who shot up my condo.” McGlade wrinkled his nose, like he smelled something rotten. Which might have been the deer at his feet. “All this time I thought it was my phone stalker. Instead, it’s because I did a shit job tailing Eddie Cline. Eddie noticed me, then told his employee to kill me.”

  “We all have our bad days,” I told him, eyeing his choice in footwear.

  “Who’s my stalker then?”

  I shrugged. Figuring out who was leaving McGlade death threats wasn’t on my to-do list.

  “Jack’s in the woods.” I stared at the trees surrounding Cline’s house.

  “If I didn’t know better, I’d think you had a crush on that gal.”

  “Jack?” I snorted. “Never gonna happen.”

  We were quiet for a moment. Rare for McGlade.

  “Still dating that doctor?” Harry eventually asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “Great lady. You mind if I look her up when you kick off?”

  I stared at him, hard. “I’m not planning on kicking off anytime soon.”

  “Fair enough, hat bro. Want to help me get this dead deer out of my boat?”

  I didn’t. But from a tactical standpoint, it was a smart move. It was slowing him down, and potentially could sink him. I boarded his vessel, and with much grunting and heaving we managed to push it over the side.

  The deer didn’t sink. It bobbed there, all four legs sticking straight up like posts.

  “He looks so life-like in the water.” Harry said.

  I climbed back into my own boat. With McGlade and Jack here, the scenario had changed. Jack wanted to call the cops. They probably wouldn’t like my idea of murdering Tucker Shears. Neither would Jack, for that matter.

  I wasn’t sure what to do.

  “Got anything to eat?” McGlade asked.

  I reached into my duffle bag and pulled out a candy bar.

  Harry frowned when I tossed it to him.

  The barbecue ended, and the four guys retired to the back porch to drink a few beers. If they did have two women held captive inside, they were pretty casual about it.

  Earl was starting to give me trouble again, having gobbled up the aspirin I swallowed earlier. I found the bottle and swallowed a few more, chasing them with bottled water and a candy bar. The lake had barely a ripple on it. It was quiet like it can only get in a wide open space. Not a bad silence. A comfortable one.

  I spat and listened to the light echo. Then the quiet consumed again.

  If I wasn’t there to kill someone, it might have been damn peaceful.

  When I first got on the lake I changed locations three or four times, concerned that the guys I was watching might spot me.

  But after a while it was pretty obvious that they never even looked out the window. I could have been on their porch the entire time, for all they noticed what was going o
n around them. Once one of them—Cline, according to McGlade’s picture—went out onto the pier to get something from the boat. He didn’t even glance my way.

  Then a scream cut across the lake.

  McGlade reached for his holster.

  “It’s okay,” I said. “It’s Herbie.”

  “Herbie?”

  “An egret. Big, white bird, lives on the lake. The residents named him. When he squawks, it sounds like a scream.”

  “Oh. Want to play I Spy?”

  “No.”

  “I spy something… green.”

  I didn’t reply. Encouraging McGlade was unwise. The guy talked more than three other people combined.

  He didn’t take my hint. “How about mental Battleship? No playing pieces, only the powers of our minds. I’ll start. A-6.”

  “I don’t want to play anything, McGlade.”

  “Then let’s move in closer, see if we can spot the strippers that Cline brought up.”

  I considered it. “What if he didn’t bring them?”

  “What are you thinking?”

  Shears needed to die. It would be easier if I had help. I had to convince my new hat bro that it was in his best interests to help me, even if this wasn’t a rescue mission. “Cline and Garrett tried to kill you. Shears tried to kill me. We can’t let them walk.”

  McGlade pursed his lips, apparently in thought. “You know the Confucius quote. Before you seek revenge, dig two graves.”

  “Yeah. I never understood what that meant.”

  “Damn. I was hoping you’d explain it to me.”

  “Revenge is dangerous, so you’ll probably die too.”

  “Doesn’t work. You kill the guy, he kills you at the same time, and you both conveniently fall into the graves you just dug?”

  “Maybe it’s metaphoric. You can kill your enemy, but then the good in you dies.”

  “So in this grave lies some asshole, and in this other grave are my morals? Do I also have a funeral for my morals? Everyone wears black and eats shitty food?”

  Thinking about the quote, it really was pretty stupid.

  “Who would dig a grave for their enemy anyway?” McGlade ranted on. “I hate the guy so much I’ll kill him, but here’s the courtesy of a proper burial? Let the crows eat him. Who cares?”