Familiar Lies

by Brian J. Jarrett

  “He’s dead.”

  Ruby’s face registered a moment of emotion before going rigid again. “I see.”

  “He died in a rock climbing accident a year ago, but I’m not convinced it was an accident.”

  “You think maybe Gabe had something to do with it?”

  “Or this Caldwell guy. Or Julie, for all I know.”

  “Julie wouldn’t hurt anybody.”

  “I wouldn’t know that.”

  “Well, she wouldn’t.”

  “How well did you know her?”

  “Fairly well. We worked together for almost a year, and we hung out together outside of work on occasion.”

  “People can hide things.”

  “Sure, but I don’t see Julie as the type who’d kill anyone.”

  “Fair enough, but I want to talk to her anyway.”

  “Good luck with that.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “She’s been gone for a while now, at least six months.”

  “Gone?”

  “Yeah, up and disappeared. She stopped showing up to work, stopped answering her calls. I stopped by to check on her one day and her apartment had been cleaned out.”

  “And nobody said anything at work about it?”

  “Who would?”

  “Co-workers, maybe this Gabe guy. He was a boyfriend, right?”

  “Gabe’s not much of a talker and he’s not exactly what I’d call the friendly type. Besides, I figured she’d finally had enough of his shit and left him. That’s not the kind of thing that a macho asshole like Gabe Harris would go around his bar advertising.”

  “So like you said, she and Gabe didn’t get along.”

  “Understatement of the year. Julie hated Gabe.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “All she talked about was leaving him. Hell, I think everybody but Gabe knew that.”

  “So what about the other stuff in the letter?” Max asked. “The cabin and the girls. The money.”

  “I don’t know anything about a cabin or any of that other stuff,” Ruby said.

  “Caldwell?”

  Ruby shook her head.

  “Josh mentioned a kid in the letter,” Max said. “Did Julie have any kids?”

  “Not that I’m aware of. I don’t know her life story, but I never saw any kids at her place and she never talked about having any in the past.”

  Max paused, thinking. “Could she have been pregnant? Maybe that’s why she left.”

  Now it was Ruby’s turn to think. “I suppose, although Gabe didn’t seem like the kind of guy who’d want kids.”

  “I mean maybe the baby belonged to Josh,” Max said. He couldn’t believe how impossible the statement would have sounded a week ago. Now everything had changed.

  “Can I read that letter again?” Ruby asked.

  Max handed it to her and she reread the contents. “Maybe she was pregnant, I don’t know. I suppose the dad could have been your son, or anybody else. Julie got around, if you know what I mean.”

  “I do,” Max replied. “Did she ever talk abut Josh?”

  Ruby shook her head. “I never heard her mention his name, no. But she talked about guys from time to time. Guy’s she’d meet online or in clubs or wherever. Gabe is pretty much always at work, so she had a lot of time on her hands.” She glanced at the letter again. “Who’s Vanessa?”

  “I already talked to her,” Max said. He didn’t go into details and Ruby didn’t ask.

  Ruby handed the letter back again. “I’m worried about Julie. It’s weird for someone to just up and disappear like that.”

  “I agree,” Max said. “The entire thing is weird.”

  “I want to find out where she is,” Ruby said. “I’d just like to make sure she’s okay.”

  “I have a strong feeling that finding Julie is crucial to finding out what happened to my son,” Max said. “Maybe you and I can help each other.”

  “How so?”

  “Just keep your eyes and ears open. If you hear anything you let me know.” He removed his phone from his pocket while he drove. “What’s your number?” Ruby told him and Max tapped the number buttons on his phone. A moment later Ruby’s phone lit up and chimed with the tone of an incoming text message.

  “I just realized I don’t even know your name,” Ruby said.

  “Max.”

  Ruby tapped on her phone’s screen before turning it off. “Got it.”

  “Don’t ask questions,” Max said. “Don’t snoop around. If Josh was right about these people then something bad could be going on. You could put yourself at risk. Just listen.”

  “Sure.”

  “You don’t sound convinced.”

  “I’m not here to put on a show for you,” Ruby said. “I get it. I’m not dumb.”

  Max felt a pang of anger flare at her tone. “I didn’t say you were dumb. I don’t even know you.”

  “Well, you know me now,” Ruby said. “I’ll be fine. I won’t do anything stupid.”

  Max nodded, but he had a terrible worry in his gut that he might be putting someone else’s life at risk.

  Chapter Eleven

  The following evening, Max sat in the dark spot of The Hustle’s parking lot, watching the club’s front door and thinking. He admitted he was pretty much flying blind; he had no formal training of any sort in the investigative arts or law enforcement and he had likely made a huge mistake trying to attempt any such thing without the background for it.

  It also occurred to him as he’d gone about his day that he should probably contact the police. That almost definitely would be what any reasonable person would do, Max conceded. But the police had already closed the case and tossed it out of their collective mind. Persuading them to reopen it—even with Josh’s letter in hand—would take some concrete proof. Max needed suspects, faces and not just names, tangible people with social security numbers and home addresses.

  Once he had something substantial, something on which someone might actually be able to take some sort of action, then he’d go to the police. Until then, he planned to conduct his own investigation, watching from afar until he saw something that stuck out, something that begged questions the police would be interested in answering.

  He texted Ruby earlier in the day and asked for photos of Gabe and Julie. Ruby obliged, sending two pictures Max’s way. Julie’s photo turned out to be high quality; Max could have pointed her out of a lineup if need be. Gabe’s photo had been part of a candid group photo, something he’d been accidentally caught up in. Ruby apologized for the poor quality, but Max at least had something to work with. He’d need it for tonight because he planned to follow Gabe Harris after work and see just what this guy was up to.

  As the night ticked by, Max observed the steady stream of patrons going in and out of the building, like ants on their way to a picnic site. He recognized a couple of the men from the previous night and he wondered if they were daily customers, if the better part of their paychecks went into Gabe’s wallet, day after day, year after year. Seemed like a hell of a lot of money spent just to see some naked girls.

  Just before two o’clock a.m., Gabe appeared through the door, followed by a few dancers and the bouncer Max had encountered the previous night. Max recognized Gabe much more easily than he thought he would, the man’s dark hair and eastern European features clearly visible under the yellow light of the sodium-vapor lamps illuminating the parking lot. He didn’t see Ruby with them.

  Gabe got into his car—an expensive-looking silver Audi—and pulled out behind the others, bright red taillights flaring as he stopped before entering the two-lane road running perpendicular to The Hustle.

  “Show time,” Max said out loud in his own reasonably priced Volkswagen Passat. He started the car and left the lights off until he entered the highway, trailing an inconspicuous distance behind Gabe Harris.

  Chapter Twelve

  Max followed Gabe for nearly twenty miles, down the two-lane road and onto the
interstate highway. After some time, they exited back onto another two-lane road and eventually into a dilapidated subdivision that might have once been affluent but had long since descended into disrepair and financial ruin.

  Once inside the subdivision streets, Max killed the headlights, cursing the daytime running lights still giving away his presence. He parked the car in front of the first house he found and turned off the engine. The lights died along with the engine, leaving behind a half-moon lit scene of disintegrating houses with weedy, overgrown front yards and few lights shining through windows. Max assumed that either most of these houses didn’t have inhabitants or their owners were asleep.

  Gabe drove his out-of-place luxury car another fifty or sixty yards until he arrived at a nondescript and unimpressive darkened house. A rectangular brick flowerbed sporting weeds and errant grass blades sat in the middle of an equally overgrown front yard, visible beneath the streetlight planted beside the road a door down. He parked the car in front and got out, entering the house with an unlit flashlight in hand before closing the front door behind him.

  Max sat in his car and watched the empty house. If he hadn’t seen Gabe go inside he’d never even known a single living thing outside of rats or spiders might be inside. No lights came on, no flickering flashlight beam spilled out through an open window.

  Ten long minutes passed as Max listened to the sound of crickets and his own breathing, with only the occasional tick of the cooling engine breaking the rhythm. Then the door opened and Gabe walked out. In his hand, he carried something that appeared to be either a briefcase or satchel, maybe even a small suitcase. It was impossible to tell with the dim light and the distance between them working against him.

  Gabe got into his Audi and fired up the engine. The headlights ignited, carving a wide swath of the darkness away as he pulled out quickly, brake lights flaring as he rounded a curve and headed out of sight. Max watched Gabe drive off, but didn’t follow. He thought maybe he should, but the darkened house beckoned to him. It reeked of suspicion.

  An idea flashed through his mind and he threw it out immediately. Or so he thought until that nagging little voice in his head spoke up again.

  You’re not really thinking of going in there, are you?

  Max paused, considering.

  “Maybe,” he whispered in the car.

  Now he was talking to himself. No matter, the idea had already cemented itself in his mind.

  It’s breaking and entering if you get caught, the voice in his mind said. That is if you don’t get shot by somebody as you’re going in.

  But the glue dried fast on this particular notion and Max knew that no amount of convincing, either by himself or some odd third person his mind concocted, would be successful in talking him out of it.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Getting into the house proved easy; almost too easy. The back door had been fitted with a flimsy lock on the knob and no deadbolt, requiring no more than a hard shove on the door to pop it free from the slot in the jamb. In this sort of neighborhood, Max would have thought that a good lock would have been a no-brainer, but his assumptions could no longer be trusted.

  As he closed the door softly behind him, Max found himself standing in the kitchen. Thick blankets covered the windows of the room, explaining why he hadn’t seen any light escape while he’d watched Gabe enter the house with a flashlight earlier. Max removed his cell phone and turned on the built-in flashlight, bathing the room in white light as he scanned the surroundings.

  The place was a dump. It was at least ten degrees warmer inside, suggesting that the air conditioning had either been turned off or didn’t exist. He glanced at the light switch by the door; it sat in the on position. No electricity, he thought. A layer of filth covered the linoleum flooring; it looked as if it had been years since it’d seen a good cleaning. Ashtrays lined the countertops which seemed of little use considering the quantity of cigarette ashes that had piled up around them. Burnt matches peppered the counter, spilling onto the dirty linoleum below. Three filthy glasses sat amongst the trash, standing watch like small sentinels. A scan of the gas stove revealed the worst of the ash mess. Crumpled rolling papers also littered the area, failed attempts at joint-rolling, Max assumed.

  He’d let himself into some sort of flophouse, it appeared. Normal people didn’t live in a place like this; only the animated husks of barely living drug addicts would dare to spend time in such squalor.

  He killed the light and considered what to do next. He listened hard for the sound of anyone home, but he heard nothing. His heart had begun to thump loudly in his chest as the reality of his decision to break and enter into what was almost certainly a drug den began to sink in. He should leave, he knew, but the sight of Josh’s mangled body stuck in Max’s mind, reminding him of his duty to his son.

  Wishing he’d at least brought the tire iron with him, Max flipped on the cell phone’s light and entered deeper into the house. He entered a hallway of sorts, more like a convergence in the center of the house where each room met the others. A small bedroom lay in front of him, an even smaller bathroom to his right. Another open door behind him and to his left led to a second bedroom. Both rooms were void of furniture, filled only with a dozen or so boxes stacked in the corners.

  To his right, Max found a closed door. He shone the light on it, revealing a lock hasp with an unlocked padlock inserted. He removed the lock and lifted the hasp, opening the door and shining the cell phone flashlight inside. The light revealed a staircase leading into a pitch black basement, the bottom of the stairs just out of the beam’s limited range.

  Red flags and warning bells went off strong and loud in Max’s mind. Going into the dark basement of a flophouse might possibly be the worst decision anyone in history had ever made. But Max was both determined and driven, so down the steps he went, light in hand.

  The steps creaked under his weight as he descended, the beam revealing more of the surroundings as he went. The stairs led him to a concrete floor next to an unfinished cinder block wall. The temperature dropped in the basement but it was dank and smelled as if it had been closed up since the house was built.

  Max’s heart beat so furiously now that he could almost imagine that it could be heard outside of his body. His mouth went dry and he licked his lips. The warning bells in his head had ramped up to a full-blown siren now as adrenaline turned his legs to jelly.

  Forcing himself on, Max stepped into the center of the unfinished basement. Two-by-four walls framed out rooms in the space, looking skeletal in their partially completed state. The framed walls made a hallway of sorts that split the basement into two sides, a right and left, each side containing three rooms.

  He entered the first room he came to, shining the light inside and sweeping it along the floor. In the corner of the room, a stained mattress sat directly on the concrete floor, next to the gray and cold cinder block basement wall.

  Max stepped inside the room. Using the light, he scanned the floor around the filthy mattress. An empty syringe lay on the floor, dried blood on the needle. A torn, black lace C-cup bra lay discarded nearby. A styrofoam coffee cup and a half-eaten donut lay amongst random food wrappers and used condoms. Another sweep of the light revealed a camera’s tripod leaned up against one of the two-by-fours framing the room, the camera nowhere in sight.

  A search of the other rooms turned up similar items in a similar state. A slice of half-eaten pizza, more condoms, empty jars of lubricant and a wooden baseball bat. All the rooms had a mattress in them, a few covered in white sheets that had a disturbing grayish-brown hue to them. A large, dark blotch took up of the better part of one of the sheets and when Max knelt to inspect it further he noticed it had a conspicuously reddish-brown hue.

  Blood.

  Max backed away, shining the light left and right, scanning the darkness as if someone might jump out of it. He saw nothing but the skeletal walls framing in the other rooms. Max’s heart galloped in his chest as cold sweat beaded on h
is forehead. What had he stumbled into here? Horrific images appeared in his mind and he pushed them away immediately for fear that he might become glued to the spot and unable to move.

  He had to get out of there. There seemed to be enough in this basement to get the cops to question Gabe, so he had what he came for. Knowing he’d need more than just hearsay, Max snapped photos of the rooms, capturing the random items discarded on the floor and the enormous blood stain on the sheet. The cell phone’s light and camera did an adequate job, good enough given the circumstances.

  As he snapped his last picture a text message flashed on his phone from a number he didn’t recognize. He froze as he read it.

  Get out now. They’re coming back.

  Now Max did find himself frozen to the spot. A cold chill ran through his body as his face flushed hot and prickly. Butterflies took flight in his stomach as it seemed to twist into knots. The questions mounted quickly: how could anyone know his current whereabouts? How did this person get his number? Was the message to be believed?

  Max had the distinct feeling that if Gabe—or whoever they might happen to be—caught him inside this basement it would become a crime scene if it wasn’t one already. Gathering his will and energy, Max turned to leave the basement, taking the warning at face value. As he did he caught sight of a DVD lying amid the trash and other debris littering the floor. He saw a name scribbled with Sharpie marker onto the surface: Amanda. He had an uncontrollable urge to take it, so he grabbed it up and headed back through the hallway between the rooms until he reached the bottom of the steps.

  He bounded up them, certain he’d encounter someone at the top of the steps with a gun or a knife, but he met only the empty and dark hall at the top. The muggy air clung to him and he felt as if he might never be able to wash the awfulness of this place from his body, no matter how many showers he took. He headed through the kitchen and toward the back door, turning off the cell phone light and exiting in the same fashion in which he entered. He made sure to push the door back into the locked position before he headed off into the night and toward his parked car.