by Dan Ames
Hell, there were coyotes in Grosse Pointe. Often times spotted on the Detroit Country Club fairways. I always wondered if they were dressed in goofy golf outfits.
Ellen wasn’t answering her phone, or should I saw she wasn’t answering my calls, so I left a message stating what I’d found, which was basically a big heaping bag o’ nothing.
Retracing my route I went back down to Jefferson and followed that all the way into Grosse Pointe, hooking a left on Cadieux to my office. I parked, climbed the stairs and went inside.
Too early for a beer so I grabbed a Diet Coke and launched the web browser on my computer.
Using the usual method of searching the hell out of Google results, I basically came up empty on Dr. Barry Kemp. Oh, there were the usual anonymous doctor recommendations and reviews, most of them positive. Kemp had at various times donated money to certain charities, which was well-publicized.
It was all smoke and mirrors.
I wanted to find out the truth regarding the real Dr. Barry Kemp.
Starting with his name.
Was Barry really his full name? Or was it short for something? Barack Obama had been called Barry when he was young.
Maybe Barry Kemp had been called something different.
I tried Brent Kemp, Bart Kemp and in the process, I discovered a link mentioning Bertram Kemp.
It caught my eye.
Not because it was a strange name, but mainly because it was in reference to a bodybuilding competition.
The link provided almost no information, so this time I Googled ‘Bertram Kemp’ and quite a few more entries populated my screen. There were the drunk and disorderlies my sister, Ellen, had mentioned, as well as bodybuilding forum mentions and a few links to dating/hookup websites.
Barry was Bertram.
Did Ellen already know this? If so, why hadn’t she shared that information with me? I would follow up with her later.
In the meantime, I figured that while Barry Kemp might not agree to meet with me, I had a feeling Bertram would be more receptive.
Probably my greatest attribute that qualified me for being a good private investigator was the fact that I simply loved annoying the hell out of people. It brought me great mirth and personal satisfaction.
So I gleefully called back Kemp’s office and even got the same stubborn phone lady to talk to me.
This time I said the magic words.
“Could I speak to Bertram Kemp, please?” I asked, adding a little huskiness to my voice by channeling Kathleen Turner in Body Heat.
It was no surprise that it took awhile, I figured she had to wait to talk to him, and then mention that the caller had specifically requested a chat with Bertram.
Would he take the call?
Was she on standing orders to put through anyone who referred to him as Bertram?
The hell if I knew.
But half of the successes I’ve had ended up coming from me just winging it.
“This is Dr. Kemp,” Barry said to me on the phone.
“Hi Barry, it’s John Rockne,” I said. There was no point in asking for permission to plow ahead. “You mentioned to me that you didn’t want to spend more money on lawyers. What did you mean by that? Are you currently involved with any pending lawsuits?”
“This is ridiculous,” he said. “I’m trying to run a business here.”
“I am, too,” I said. “Trying to run a business that is. It’s extremely difficult in these trying financial times–”
I heard a door close in the background and figured Barry had closed himself in his office for more privacy.
“Why are you so concerned with me? Didn’t you check out where I was when Dave disappeared?” he asked, his voice chock full of annoyance verging on anger. “I was with friends all night. Surely the police know that. Why don’t you?”
Kemp was talking to me with the clear knowledge that I was probably sharing information with Ellen, who just happened to be the lead investigator on the case. He was trying to influence her through me. Good luck with that.
“I have every reason to believe you had nothing to do with Dave’s death,” I lied. “I’m just tying up some loose ends, that’s all. So, back to my original question. Are you involved with any pending legal issues?”
He sighed. “I don’t have to answer that.”
“You don’t have to,” I said. “But you can.”
“No,” he said. “No pending legal matter. I certainly have an attorney on retainer, but there are no pending cases.”
“Who is your attorney?”
A pause. “The firm is called Gadlicke & Associates.”
“Gadlicke?”
“Yes.”
“What a weird name.”
“I’ve really got to get back to work,” he said.
“Anything else you want to tell me?” I asked.
“Not at all,” he said and hung up on me.
I was pissed. I wanted to refer to him as Bertram.
Chapter Twenty
Look, if you’re born and given the name Bertram, you’re going to cause trouble. If not, you’re going to get beaten up quite often. It made perfect sense to me that Barry Kemp didn’t use his real name and it also didn’t shock me that he’d become a bodybuilder.
He’d had no choice, after all, once his parents had dubbed him Bertram.
I guess he could’ve gone by Burt. Or Bertie. Dr. Bertie. It sounded like a cartoon character. “And now kids, we’re going to pay a visit to Dr. Bertie!”
His attorney wasn’t much better. Gadlicke.
Sounded like a drunken fraternity game.
Now back in my office, a quick search of Google didn’t tell me much. Gadlicke & Associates was a firm out in Bloomfield Hills. Fairly large, I saw photos of about fifteen lawyers or so and it looked like they covered just about every kind of law one might need. Corporate. Tax. Personal Liability. Real Estate.
Nothing outrageous showed up in the search results, either. No celebrity cases, murder trials, famous political scandals where Gadlicke & Associates were involved.
It was interesting to me that medical malpractice was included in the firm’s laundry list of services provided. Had Dr. Kemp botched some sort of surgery?
Trying to talk to an attorney about one of their clients clearly wasn’t an option.
Federal lawsuits were easy to search thanks to PACER, an online database of court cases. Local jurisdictions were all on their own, however, and I didn’t have time to plow through individual town, city, and county databases. I did, however, have another option.
A former client of mine had been accused of stealing proprietary computer software from her employer, which wasn’t the case at all. My client had actually been planning to start her own business and her employer was afraid of the competition. I’d gotten proof that the owner had falsely accused my client, and the charges were dropped.
My client, the daughter of a refugee from Vietnam, was a young woman by the name of Chia Pham. She had been very happy to have her legal issue resolved and her business was now doing well.
She was a bit of a computer genius and had offered me her services if I ever needed her help. So I shot her a quick email asking her to see if she could find any evidence of a Dr. Barry (or Bertram) Kemp involved in any current lawsuits, or lawsuits that had been closed within the past five years.
In a p.s., I added that she should quote me a price as I meant to hire her for the information.
With that, I decided that the too-early-for-a-beer window had closed, so I reached into the little fridge by my desk and pulled out a Point beer. I twisted off the top and took a long drink.
I made an imaginary toast to Dave and tried not to think about where he was right then.
Right now, I had only questions and no answers. It was progress that I at least had someone who had a grudge against Dave. But I also had a hard time imagining Barry Kemp strangling Dave with a rope. It just didn’t seem like he was the kind of guy who liked to get his hands d
irty. Plus, he had an alibi.
So why was Dave’s cell phone pinging all around Detroit the night of his death? What was that all about?
Another long drink of Point beer didn’t provide any answers.
My cell phone rang and I wondered if it might be Chi Chi, which was my girl Chi Pham’s nickname.
It wasn’t.
It was a number I didn’t recognize.
“Rockne?”
It took me a minute to place the voice.
“Barry?” I asked.
“Look, I need to talk to you.”
“Isn’t that what we’re doing?”
“Don’t be a smart-ass. In person. It’s important.” Barry Kemp sounded strangely distraught.
“How important?” I asked. “Like drive-to-Royal-Oak important?”
I could hear some vague traffic noise in the background and I assumed he was driving. Someone honking their horn confirmed my suspicion.
“Yeah, I want to hire you,” he said. “But I need to see you as soon as possible, first.”
I pulled the phone away from my ear and looked at the screen, then replaced it.
“What?”
“Meet me at my house. I have an idea of what might have happened, but I can’t tell you over the phone. We need to meet, and then I want to hire you to prove my theory.”
“You can’t just give me a synopsis of your theory?”
He cursed under his breath and I thought he was saying it to me, but then I realized he was fighting traffic.
“Do you always fight with potential clients?” he asked. “Is that good for your business?
No, I wanted to say. Just the ones who are under suspicion of murder.
“Okay, where do you want to meet?” I asked.
“My house, that’s where I’m going now. I’ll be home in ten minutes.”
I took a quick look at the clock. Not quite rush hour yet. “Okay, I’ll try to be there in a half hour or so.”
We disconnected and I finished off my beer.
This time, I was going to call him Bertram to his face.
Chapter Twenty-One
With the office locked, I went down the stairs and out to my car, fired it up and turned onto Cadieux. From there, I hit the freeway. As I drove, I thought about Kemp’s strange offer.
He wanted to hire me.
It reminded me how after O.J. Simpson was found innocent, he vowed that he would spend the rest of his life trying to bring the real killers to justice. No one really believed that, especially how the only images of him from then on showed him on a golf course. Maybe he thought the real killers were golfers.
It was an age-old tactic. If you’re accused of something, and especially if you’re guilty of something, claim you’re working hard to find the true guilty parties.
It was usually a smokescreen and nothing else.
However, Barry could have accomplished that without wanting to meet me. He could have done it over the phone. Which made me at least consider that he wasn’t putting on a public relations show, after all he had to know that I would try to poke holes in whatever fake story he was promoting in order to help me take the suspicion off him.
I exited the freeway, turned onto Royal Oak’s main street, and eventually got to Barry Kemp’s house. I parked on the curb and studied the neighborhood. Nothing had changed, except that day had been bright and sunny and now a light rain had begun to fall, with dark clouds overhead. It was funny how different a place could feel depending on what the weather was like. Barry’s neighborhood didn’t seem quite so cool and sophisticated. Now it looked a little old and tired.
This was going to be interesting, I thought, as I got out of the car, locked it and walked up to Kemp’s front door. I rang the bell and waited. Slipping my phone from my pocket, I confirmed that he hadn’t texted a cancellation.
I knocked on the door, my knuckles producing a fair amount of volume for the effort.
Again, no answer.
I reached down and tested the door. It was unlocked. I opened it a crack.
“Barry?”
No answer.
“Bertram?”
Still no answer.
Probably in the weight room, pumping iron. I had no idea if there was a weight room, but it seemed like a good guess. However, I didn’t hear any telltale sounds of metal clanking and grunting and groaning.
The phone was still in my hand and I considered calling 911 or Ellen. What would I say, though? Someone left a door open? Ellen would give me shit about being here in the first place.
I thought about my gun, locked in the gun safe back in my office. I really needed to get into the habit of carrying it.
Oh, well. I stepped into Barry Kemp’s house and closed the door behind me. I heard nothing and it smelled clean, like it had just been visited by a team of anal-retentive maids.
It was sparse, but that was by design. I was struck again by the modern furniture, the absence of any clutter. No kids. No dogs. No cats. Just a neat freak who probably ate out every night and spent most of his free time at the gym, unless he had a home gym, which I suspected might be the case.
The house was set up with a foyer that opened up onto a living room on the left, a kitchen straight ahead and another hallway that branched off to the right. I assumed the bedrooms were to the right, or maybe a powder room.
“Barry?” I called out again.
I followed the hallway into the kitchen, spotting the five thousand dollar espresso maker and pristine countertops. No sign of life, or cooking.
Something made me hesitate. The living room and kitchen were very public places, to go any deeper into the house was truly a violation of privacy and something I wasn’t all that comfortable with. Not to mention it was technically a violation of the law and if someone was really angry with me, could cost me my PI license.
I did it anyway.
The first stop on the hallway to the right was the powder room.
The door was open but the light was off. I flicked it on and saw white marble with a black and white checkered tile floor. Again, everything was spotless. I turned the light off, and walked down the hallway to two more open doorways. Peeking inside, I saw a guest bedroom, empty, and a master bedroom, also empty. The master bedroom had a spacious bathroom with a giant soaking tub, but no Barry Kemp.
Hmmm.
Back through the kitchen I went, to a door that opened into the garage. A silver Mercedes was parked inside. Other than the car, the garage was completely empty. No storage. No gardening tools. Nothing. It didn’t even smell like a garage.
Only one door remained, and I knew that would be down to the basement. There was no upstairs as it was a low-slung modern ranch house. But in Michigan, every house had a basement.
I opened the door and was conditioned to smell what every basement usually offers the olfactory senses: a combination of moisture, dank air and mold.
Not Barry Kemp’s.
It was a blend of potpourri, bleach and something metallic. As I descended the stairs, the metallic scent became stronger and as the first set of weightlifting equipment came into view, my suspicions were confirmed. The metallic odors came from weights and–
Barry Kemp’s body.
Or, more accurately, what was left of it.
The poor bastard had been torn apart in what could only have been a murderous frenzy. His main torso was hanging from a pull-up bar while chunks of flesh and body parts were scattered around like some sort of nightmarish anatomic puzzle. The walls were covered with blood splatter and for a brief moment I tried to match the strips of bloody flesh with what part of the body it may have come from.
I was unsuccessful.
A waft of blood, shit and bodily fluid washed over me and I backed out of the room, tripped over a leather weightlifting belt and retraced my steps and went out through the front door.
Time to call Ellen and 911, in that order.
In the meantime, I felt shock and the urge to vomit, but I held it in check. I�
��d never seen such carnage, except in the movies.
As I made the call to Ellen, my hand was shaking.
Chapter Twenty-Two
His name was Ron Majewski. The correct, Polish pronunciation was to say “Ma-yef-ski,” but he had long ago stopped correcting people who liked to pronounce the “jew” part as you might expect.
His title was Patrolman Ron Majewski, and he worked in the area known as District 7, which also bordered the “downtown services” portion of Detroit proper. The shift was almost over when he got a radio call about a possible deceased person floating in the Detroit River.
The dispatcher told him the general area and it turned out to be on Belle Isle, the tiny spit of land in the middle of the Detroit River, just north of the city.
There were several places on Belle Isle where the water was accessible from land, and Patrolman Majewski wondered exactly how the body had been spotted and more importantly, how long it would take the coroner to get out there and bag it. If it was a complex affair requiring help with a boat, the whole process could take way longer than he wanted it to, because his shift was supposed to end in an hour and he really wanted to get home.
He’d recorded the new Quentin Tarantino western and he couldn’t wait to watch it. He’d grown up watching shoot-em-up westerns and was happy they were making a comeback.
Majewski turned onto Belle Isle, and drove until he spotted another cop car ahead, pulled over just past one of the small footbridges that spanned various branches of the river.
Majewski parked the car, got out and joined the other cop on the footbridge.
“Terry, what do we have?” he asked him. The cop was Paul Terry, a muscular African-American cop Majewski knew more by reputation than anything else. He was not a man to be trifled with.
“Looks like we got some sharks in the Detroit River,” Terry answered. He pointed his flashlight beam over the bridge into the water and Majewski let out a low whistle. The vague shape of a man was visible, but it appeared he’d been savagely torn apart by something, or someone.
“We’re gonna need a bigger boat,” Majewski said. “I’ll never put on a life jacket.” Jaws was one of his all-time favorite movies. If he was channel surfing and it was on, he was almost powerless to stop himself from watching and then, like now, he would quote dialogue from the movie for days afterward.
