Easy Prey

by Dan Ames

  “Did you know Dave?” I asked.

  “Not really, I mean we’d bumped into each other at a few parties here and there,” she said. “You know how Grosse Pointe is.”

  “So nothing beyond that,” I stated.

  Her eyes narrowed ever so slightly. “Let me guess, you’d heard rumors I was sleeping with him.”

  I opened my mouth to deny it, but she stopped me.

  “Oh, please. These bitches have gossiped about me for years out of jealousy. Just because I keep in shape, run a business, and their husbands hit on me constantly. It’s never the man’s fault. Blame the woman, right?”

  I suddenly felt guilty being here. She seemed to be honest, and her anger was real. I just hoped she wasn’t going to ask me if Anna had told me the rumor.

  Luckily, she didn’t.

  “Look, I’m talking to a ton of people, because Dave was very well-liked,” I explained. “I just want to know if you could shed light on anything unusual or surprising.”

  “No, we Grosse Pointers like to keep our sordid peccadillos behind closed doors, don’t we?”

  “We sure do,” I said.

  There really wasn’t much more to say, because I knew exactly what she was talking about.

  We made a little more small talk and then I thanked her for her time and left her there, in her little office, looking like a sexual dynamo and shrouded in a subtle but invigorating perfume.

  My office was just down the street from the toy store, on the second floor of a building whose street-level resident was a high-end jewelry store. It sort of sucked walking past a store whose merchandise was absolutely off-limits in terms of affordability, then again, it kept me grounded. Hey, there were people who always had bigger, newer, shinier objects than you, right? Might as well get used to it.

  Besides, I kind of liked having the jewelry store there. If it ever got robbed, I figured they’d have to hire me. I mean, I’m right here.

  There was a staircase to the right of the entrance and I jogged up the steps, opened the door to the hallway, and then unlocked my door.

  Rockne Investigations.

  I’d paid good money for that sign.

  Of course, it was tax-deductible, which is why I insisted on the best.

  I unlocked the door and walked right into a fist.

  The punch was off, thank God, and it missed my face, grazing my jawline before catching my ear.

  There was enough force for me to stagger back off-balance, before everyone’s favorite Grosse Pointe drunk, Adam Barnes, could follow up his lead-off punch. Now out in the hallway, I watched as Adam emerged from my office, his fists in front of him.

  “You take another dime from my wife and it will be the last thing you ever do,” he said to me. I smelled no booze, so I knew this wasn’t drunk Adam. This was sober Adam, who’d probably just found out that his wife had hired me to follow him around and make sure he didn’t kill himself or someone else.

  “Does it matter that she just wanted to help you? And I was trying to help her do that?”

  He let out a low laugh that sounded more like a bark. “We don’t need your help. I know all about you, Rockne. You gave that kid up, right? Handed him right over so the guy could kill him? You’re pathetic.”

  The words streamed out of him like pus from an infected wound. It didn’t really bother me that much. I’d said far worse to myself about myself. And I’d heard it all before. In my line of work, you sometimes piss people off. And if they know you, know your background, they’ll go there in a hurry.

  I wasn’t surprised Adam Barnes had dug up my past. He was desperate, not wanting to face himself. It was so much less painful for him to try to make me confront my own demons than for him to look at his own.

  “Why are you here, Adam?” I asked.

  Slowly, his hands dropped, but then he raised one with a finger extended that he jabbed at me through the air.

  “Stay away from me,” he said. “Stay away from Carrie.”

  He turned on his heel and walked to the stairwell from which I’d just come.

  My ear was ringing as I walked into my office. I looked around, half-expecting to see some sign of angry Adam Barnes. Something smashed, or a puddle of piss somewhere.

  But there wasn’t anything.

  He’d just waited for me. I looked at the lock on my door. No sign of forced entry, so how’d he get in?

  What the hell.

  Changing locks was expensive and I was going to be in no hurry to get it done. Still, it worried me a little to think of drunk Adam Barnes making frequent stops at my office.

  I sank into my office chair and watched as my computer came to life.

  Poor Dave, I thought. Without too much thought, I logged onto Facebook and checked his profile. It was still there. I desperately wanted to close it because the sight of those pictures, of Dave with his girls, was too much. But I had to see if there was anything there that didn’t look right.

  I scrolled past screen after screen of photos of Dave. There were no threatening messages, no sign that anything was wrong.

  Then again, this was Facebook.

  The epitome of superficial happiness. I heard it once described as an endless highlight film, because no one posted about how shitty their lives were.

  I even took a quick look for Judy Platkin. Pictures of her with Dave, but of course there were none. It wasn’t like if Dave was fooling around with her, he’d put a picture of them on his Facebook page.

  That was enough of Facebook. I closed it and fired up Google, using it to search for Barry Kemp, the doctor in Dave’s practice who’d apparently threatened him.

  The only listings that came up were for him professionally. Doctor’s grades, links to his medical practice, that sort of thing.

  There was no doubt in my mind Ellen would be working on the case today. Murders of Grosse Pointers didn’t happen all that often, she would be busting her ass to have this thing figured out. But I would need to stay out of her way.

  Yet I couldn’t help but realize that Ellen had been there when Christine had told us about Barry Kemp.

  I drummed my fingers on my desk.

  To meddle or not to meddle?

  That was the question.

  It wasn’t exactly like Grosse Pointe had a huge police force. If I just happened to have the address to Barry Kemp’s office, it might actually be doing Ellen a favor if I went out and chatted with him. Heck, I’d seen that he specialized in orthopedics. I had plenty of aching bones. Chatting with him was a medical necessity.

  Plus, I needed to see Barry Kemp face to face. He’d threatened Dave and now Dave was dead.

  I wanted to see his face.

  To see if there was murder in his eyes.

  Chapter Ten

  Before I could leave, Ellen appeared in my doorway.

  “Have you been drinking?” she asked, sniffing with her nose. “At the office? Again?”

  “Very funny,” I said. “No, you just missed the husband of a client of mine. He’s got a bit of a drinking problem and just suggested I not follow him around and protect him from himself.”

  She dropped into the chair across from me.

  “Good. Let natural selection run its course,” she said. I wondered why she had stopped by as we had just finished talking hours earlier.

  “I tell you about the guy frozen to death down on Belle Isle?” she asked.

  Belle Isle was a little island in the middle of the Detroit River. It had been the place rich white folks went to picnic on summer weekends. Then it had become a place for Detroiters to go. More recently, the state had taken it over and now that there was a fee to enter the park, it was once again becoming gentrified.

  “Are you talking about Tim Flanders?”

  Ellen nodded.

  Tim Flanders had been a local man well known for his drinking problem. He used to drive down to Belle Isle, sit and get drunk. One night, he didn’t come back. They found him a couple of days later in a stand of trees, frozen
to death. No one knew why he had gone into the woods. Most speculated to take a piss. Others, too drunk to realize what he was doing. Maybe both.

  “Your client’s husband can either get help, or as the stock traders say, the market will correct itself.”

  I frowned. Kind of an odd way to put it.

  “Why are you here, by the way?” I asked. “Needed to dispense some philosophy?”

  “Dispense information, more like it,” she replied. “Dave’s cell phone records just came in.”

  She waited.

  Finally, I did what she wanted. “And?”

  “Seems he spent some time in downtown Detroit Thursday night. Right next to Wayne State’s campus.”

  Wayne State was a highly respectable university in downtown Detroit. It was also right next to the midtown area of the city, which had recently become a lot more hip and trendy with cool bars and restaurants.

  “What the fuck was he doing down there by himself?”

  “Who says he was by himself?”

  “Well, he wasn’t with Christine. His wife. She would have mentioned they were downtown the night of his disappearance.”

  “Again, what makes you think he was alone?” my sister persisted.

  “And what was he doing at Wayne State?”

  “What makes you think he was on campus? Maybe he just parked nearby.”

  That actually made more sense. “So maybe he went down there, was meeting a friend for drinks or dinner or something, and then he got carjacked,” I hypothesized. “Someone forced him into the car, strangled him and then abandoned him.”

  My sister raised an eyebrow at me. “So they killed him but didn’t take the car, his wallet or his TAG Heuer watch?”

  “Okay,” I admitted. “Doesn’t make a lot of sense.”

  “Maybe he went to midtown to buy drugs and he ripped someone off so they killed him,” Ellen offered.

  “He wasn’t on drugs. That’s ridiculous.”

  “How about this, then?” my sister said. “Christine lured him to midtown, and hired someone to kill him. He’s probably got a fairly big life insurance policy.”

  “They’re already wealthy.”

  “You can never have too much money,” Ellen said. She raised her hands. “Look, we toss out crazy scenarios left and right. You keep digging and let me know what you find.”

  She got to her feet. “Confidentially,” she added. “I don’t need anyone at the department knowing you’re involved. There are a few people down there who still don’t like the idea of having a female police chief.”

  “Assholes,” I said.

  “Yes, they are,” she answered, her voice tired.

  Chapter Eleven

  A quick call to Barry Kemp’s office told me he wasn’t in today.

  Hmm.

  Maybe because his former partner and the man he threatened was just found murdered?

  There were any number of ways to find out Kemp’s home address. I chose the easiest one possible. I called my sister, even though we’d already chatted twice today. I was nearing the quota of how much time she would actually talk to me.

  “Did you interview Barry Kemp yet?”

  “What are you, my secretary?” she said. “I need to check in with you on my daily activities?”

  “Nothing wrong with being a male secretary,” I replied. “But really, I was just checking in on the case. See if you found anything out since we chatted a couple hours ago.”

  I heard her sigh. “John, I know I dragged you into this and I’m glad you were able to help me out breaking the news to Christine, but I can’t be spilling a bunch of details to you. You know that.”

  “I know,” I said. “Where does he live anyway?”

  This time she laughed. “You want me to give you Barry Kemp’s address so you can go and question him? Even after I just told you to butt out? You’ve got some cojones, brother.”

  “It could be useful,” I said. “I can take the questioning in places you might not have wanted to go. I promise if I learn anything at all, you’ll be the first to know. I swear.”

  “You never learn anything, John,” she said.

  But I felt my phone buzz, looked down and saw the text with an address, from Ellen’s personal cell phone.

  “Thanks–” I started to say but she had already disconnected.

  Rude.

  It was an address in Royal Oak, which kind of surprised me. Royal Oak was a young person’s town, or a young family’s town. Just north of Royal Oak was ritzy Birmingham, where I would have assumed the doctor was living. Maybe there was a section of Royal Oak on Birmingham’s border that was home to the kind of residences a doctor might choose.

  Or maybe Barry Kemp was young at heart and loved to hang out at bars with twenty-somethings. I had seen him a couple of times already at a party or two Dave had thrown, and I remember him as a bit of a fireplug, with short gray hair tinged with red that was almost a buzzcut.

  I tried to picture Barry at bars in Royal Oak. Was he single? Gay? Divorced?

  Only one way to find out.

  With my phone’s navigation app I drove from Grosse Pointe to Royal Oak via 696 and then headed north on famous Woodward Avenue. Woodward was where they had the dream cruise every year and the parade of classic cars went from the suburbs into the heart of downtown Detroit.

  Eventually I found myself in a neighborhood of modest, but expensive-looking homes. Expensive mostly because the driveways were filled with Range Rovers and Porsches.

  It was a Royal Oak neighborhood, but it had Birmingham written all over it.

  Barry Kemp’s place was a modern structure, concrete, glass and dark metal.

  My car of choice these days was a white Honda Accord. I used to always drive gray sedans, feeling they blended in more than anything else. But now, I feel white cars are actually more generic, because of their association with rentals. People assume they’re either rental cars or company cars, hence, they don’t really take notice.

  Kemp’s front door was made of a dark, heavy wood and I used the metal knocker to announce my presence. I couldn’t remember if I locked my car so I took out my keys and gave the remote a quick press to lock. When I turned back around, the door was open and Barry Kemp was looking at me.

  “Barry?” I said, feeling more familiar with him than I’d thought I would be. But now I remembered that I’d actually chatted with him a few times at those parties of Dave’s.

  “John, right?” he replied.

  “Rockne. John Rockne,” I said.

  He was short, wide and muscular. He was wearing workout shorts and a dry-fit T-shirt that showed off his bulging pecs and gorilla arms.

  No doubt some serious overcompensation going on here, but it was impressive nonetheless. Proof that emotional focus could work wonders. I suddenly felt out of shape and flabby, even though I took fairly good care of myself.

  “I just talked to your sister,” he said. His voice smooth and eloquent, which surprised me. I half-expected some sort of gravelly baritone to match his physique. Then I remembered he was a doctor and had probably spent a lot of time perfecting his bedside manner.

  “Sorry to hear that,” I said. “I try to avoid talking to her as much as possible.”

  He sort of gave me a half-smile. “What can I do for you, John?” He remained standing in the doorway, his left hand holding the edge of the door, causing his bicep to pop. It looked like a softball wrapped in veiny skin.

  “Well, you already know about Dave, I assume?” I asked. It was getting a little awkward not to be let into his house, but I wanted to play this right. I wanted to talk to him about what had happened.

  “Yes, unfortunately,” he said. “I heard last night from Todd.”

  Todd was Angela’s husband, and Christine’s brother-in-law. He’d been there when Ellen and I had broken the news.

  Todd was a physician, too, albeit in a different practice. Both Angela and Christine, sisters, had married doctors. Dave had once mentioned that the
y had both been strongly urged as young girls by their parents to do so.

  “Do you mind if I ask you a few questions?”

  He looked pained as he considered his answer. “Is there really anything different from what I’ve already gone over?” Meaning, couldn’t I just talk to my sister to find out what information had been gathered.

  “With me, everything is off the record,” I said. “Plus, I’m sure Ellen didn’t tell you anything at all because she can’t comment on a pending investigation. I, however, am a big blabbermouth and can share with you what I know.”

  He weighed what I was saying, and whether or not it was bullshit. Truthfully, it was mostly bullshit, but if I believed he was innocent I would tell him what I knew, which was jack shit.

  Finally, he let out a long sigh.

  “Come on in,” he said.

  Chapter Twelve

  The interior of Barry Kemp’s home looked like it had been torn out of the pages of Architectural Digest. Especially if they were doing a special issue on modern styles. It looked less like a house than a museum of contemporary furniture.

  I didn’t know much about home furnishings, I’ve always been a fan of the La-Z-Boy line, but something told me that not only were Kemp’s furnishings expensive, they were probably unique items. In other words, he hadn’t run into the nearest furniture mall and unleashed his credit card.

  “Something to drink?” he asked. “Coffee? Espresso? I have one of these machines I paid five grand for that I never use.”

  “No, that’s okay,” I said. “Coffee at this time of day would make me jittery. I’d be doing the tap dance routine I learned in the fourth grade.”

  By now, he was standing in the kitchen, an expanse of granite countertops and white cabinets, expensive built-in appliances. There was a row of stools in front of an island so I took one and he took another at the far end, with a space between us.

  “Like I told your…”

  “Sister.”

  “Your sister,” he said. “I don’t know what happened to Dave. I worked all day yesterday, went out with friends for dinner and drinks. They can vouch for me.”