by Scott Pratt
Birchfield glanced at his watch. He needed to get moving.
“So what about Jarvis Thompson?” he said. “The Knoxville police have basically given up on finding him up there. It sounded like the investigation was coming your way.”
“I’ve heard that, and everybody I’ve talked to is baffled by it. One of the best college football players in the country snatched from his agent’s home like that, without a trace. Just vanishes, no ransom notes or anything. That’s definitely a new one.”
“Let me ask you this,” Birchfield said. “If Jarvis were being held down here, any idea where Romano might hide him?”
“It’s hard to say, because that gang has so many places where all sorts of crimes are happening. A lot of Romano’s activities have been traced to the Crescent Park area in the past. Development is supposed to be picking up out there – it’s a great view of the city – but there are still a lot of old industrial sites and warehouses that haven’t been in operation for a while. You could hide just about anything, or anybody, in that area. There are some other possibilities down along the canal, too.”
“I’ll be in town until we figure something out, so let’s keep in touch. I don’t want to take any more of your time now. Maybe you can buy me that beer before I leave, like the old days.”
Birchfield got up and was shaking his friend’s hand when the phone on the desk rang. Mettetal picked up the receiver, and a solemn look came over his face. The call didn’t last long.
“Maybe bad news,” he said. “They just found a body in Housley Park. I have to go to work.”
Chapter sixty-two
Birchfield asked if he could tag along and soon found himself at the grisly murder scene out on the northeastern edge of town. Housley Park was another rough-and-tumble slice of public green space where much of the public would never dare to go.
The victim had been stabbed several times and already had a sheet draped over him on the ground when they arrived. The area was marked off by yellow police tape. Detective Jake Allary was talking with another cop while the coroner prepared for the body to be moved.
Allary saw the reporters approach and walked over to the tapeline. Mettetal greeted him with familiarity.
“What do we have, Jake?”
“White guy in his late fifties or so. Didn’t have a wallet or any ID on him. No cell phone. Could have been a robbery victim, but considering the way he was carved up, I’d say there was some serious malice involved.”
“Who found him?”
“A homeless lady noticed the body in the bushes behind that bench over there. She spends a lot of time roaming around in the park; our officers know her.”
Mettetal surveyed the area with an experienced eye and jotted down a few notes on his pad. The smell of death lingered in the air.
“Sorry to spoil your dinner, David,” the detective said. “And mine.”
“Not the first time, or the last, I’m sure,” Mettetal said. “Anything unusual about this gentleman?”
“Not really. Well-dressed, though, for a guy hanging around this area.”
“Any chance he was killed elsewhere and dumped here?”
“Would have been a mess to move. Looks like it happened here, probably last night or early this morning. The hoodlums around here are savages. It’s like they don’t fear anybody anymore.”
Mettetal waved Birchfield closer and introduced him to the detective. He explained that they were looking for Mark Fletcher.
“Trey, do you know what your missing private eye looks like?” Mettetal said.
“I don’t, but Billy is on his way. If this is his friend ...” The thought just trailed off and the detective went back to work.
The body had been placed on a gurney and was being wheeled to the coroner’s van for transport to the morgue as Billy pulled into the parking lot. He jumped out of his car and walked quickly to the gathering.
“Tell me this isn’t Mark,” he said.
“They don’t know,” Birchfield said, “but they were waiting for a possible ID.”
Billy looked at the men with grave concern. His face was ashen. “Okay,” he said.
Mettetal called over the detective, who raised the tape barrier and escorted Billy to the back of the van. The agent had once litigated all sorts of criminal activity but had never seen a dead man laid out before him like this, certainly not a friend. He prepared for the worst.
Allary reached over and pulled back the bloody sheet.
One look and Billy’s knees almost buckled. He turned to vomit in the grass.
Mark Fletcher.
“I’m sorry,” the detective said. “Why don’t you guys take him over there and sit down for a minute.”
The three sat silently on a bench for several minutes before Mettetal excused himself to gather more information about the murder. Finally, Billy was composed enough to speak.
“This is my fault,” he said. “Mark wouldn’t have been here if it wasn’t for me. I put him in this position.”
“You can’t blame yourself,” Birchfield said. “The guy was a veteran detective; he understood the danger. He wanted to help solve this.”
“And now look where we are. He’s dead and we still don’t know where Jarvis is. We haven’t solved anything.”
“We’re getting closer, though. You can feel it.”
Billy leaned back and covered his face with his hands. After a long, deep breath, he said, “I have to call Anita.”
He got up and was walking away as Allary approached Birchfield.
“Did you say his name is Billy Beckett?” he asked.
“That’s right.”
“It just occurred to me.” The detective held up a business card with a distinctive orange logo: Billy Beckett Enterprises. “We found this in the man’s back pocket. Haven’t we seen this act before?”
Chapter sixty-three
For the second time in a week, Billy had to be the bearer of the worst possible news. A loved one had died a violent death, and he didn’t know why.
Anita Fletcher handled the shock far better than he could have expected. Maybe she was simply numb. Or maybe being a detective’s wife all those years, she had run through the awful scenarios many times before in her mind. The call had just never come, until now.
Speaking in measured tones, she wanted to know the facts: Did they have a suspect in custody? How had it happened? Where? When?
She didn’t ask why.
Billy sat in his Escalade and told her everything he knew. He tried to be strong but was soon fighting back tears. The feeling had become all too familiar.
“I’ll never forgive myself for getting Mark involved in this,” he said.
There was a long silence. Anita was apparently searching for the right words. Oddly enough, she was trying to comfort him.
“Billy, he thought a lot of you and wanted to be involved,” she said. “He was excited about the case, the most excited I’ve seen him in a long time.”
“When was the last time you spoke with him?”
“Not since I talked to you last. I ended up taking care of that business myself. It was unusual not to hear from him, and that worried me. That’s why I called you. But there were times like that through the years, where he was on a case and I didn’t hear anything. It was usually a sign that Mark was getting close to wrapping things up. He’d just show up at the house and be done with it.”
She began to cry softly.
Billy kept the phone to his ear and watched the coroner’s men load Fletcher’s body into the van across the way. Off to the side, the reporters were talking. They each nodded and Birchfield turned and walked toward the car.
The crying didn’t last long. Anita Fletcher collected herself and her voice was strong again. Billy was amazed.
“There is one thing that may mean something to
you,” she said. “I noticed a strange text on my phone this morning, supposedly sent by Mark. It just looked like gibberish to me, like something that might have been sent by accident.”
“What kind of gibberish?” Billy said.
“Some numbers and letters, all run together. I thought if it was important, he would have sent it to you.”
“Can you forward that to me, Anita? I’m looking for anything to go on here. I promise you, I won’t rest until I find out who did this.”
“I know you won’t, Billy, and I really appreciate you calling me. Hopefully we can talk again, after I’ve had some time. I don’t know what I’ll do without him ...”
Billy’s eyes filled with tears again. This nightmare just didn’t want to end.
“I’m so sorry,” he said. “I’ll be in touch soon. Goodbye, Anita.”
Birchfield was waiting beside the car, and Billy motioned him in as he continued to stare at his phone.
“Hang on,” he said. After a minute, it came up: 6000france04. Billy studied the line and shook his head.
“Help me here. This is a text Mark supposedly sent his wife sometime last night. Can you make any sense of it?”
Birchfield took a long look. “Well, you obviously have France. Maybe a street?” he said.
They each began to explore online.
“There is a France Road here,” Birchfield said. “It runs along the Industrial Canal. Looks like a 6000 address, if that’s what it is, would be pretty far down, way south of I-10.”
“What about the last part? Oh-four.”
“No idea, unless it’s some sort of complex. Maybe a building number.”
Billy plugged in the address on Google Maps. “Not much down there,” he said. “Why don’t we take a look after we finish here.”
“You don’t think this might be a setup? It just seems a little strange, a little too convenient.”
“Could be, but everything about this seems like a setup. Let’s find out. I owe it to Mark.”
Chapter sixty-four
Billy drove west in quiet reflection. He tried to recall Fletcher’s last words to him, about the men the private investigator was supposed to meet that night.
Had he mentioned any names? Where was he meeting them? Had another meeting even been arranged?
“He was double-crossed, one way or another,” Billy said, finally.
Birchfield looked over and nodded. He had also been mulling the possibilities.
“Showed up with a bunch of cash and ended up dead,” he said. “Those guys could have done it on their own, or they could have told Romano about the earlier meeting, maybe to get back in his good graces.”
“There’s a strong possibility that somebody had been holding him for several days. They killed him last night and just dumped him in the park.”
“So how would he have been able to text his wife? And why would he have texted her instead of you?”
“That’s something else I can’t explain. Maybe they were just messing with me, like putting my business cards in the pockets of dead people. We’re not even sure if it means anything yet.”
Billy took the exit and looped back toward the waterway. After a couple of miles, the state route dead-ended at France Road and he turned south. There had been a number of old businesses along the way, but they thinned out the farther he drove. By the time he was nearing the address he was looking for, it was mostly rundown buildings that were far removed from their productive years.
“Here it is,” Birchfield said. “Six thousand.”
Billy stopped the vehicle and they both stared across the large, desolate parking lot, which had a locked gate at the entrance to keep strangers out. Four metal buildings, in close proximity to each other and the canal behind. No vehicles that could be seen from their vantage point on the road. No signs of life.
Billy pulled onto the shoulder of the road and sat for a moment. Daylight was growing short, and in his current state of mind he wasn’t sure what the smartest move would be. But he was in no mood to sit around thinking about it for long.
“Tell you what, Trey,” he said. “I’m going back to that RV park that we passed just up the road. I’ll park there and walk back to get a closer look at this place. There may not be anything to see, but I’ll be thinking about it all night if I don’t do it. It might be best if you just wait for me in the car. You can keep banging on that laptop.”
Birchfield grinned. “And you’re crazy, too. I didn’t ride all the way down here to sit in the car. I’m with you.”
Billy eased into a clearing in the overgrown RV park and turned off the engine. It was almost dark. For a moment, his mind drifted elsewhere. Where had the good life gone? And why was he here, thinking about killing someone?
“Ready?” Birchfield said.
“Almost.”
Billy reached into the glove box and pulled out his Glock. “Now I am.” Birchfield frowned but said nothing.
The land was flat and unobstructed back toward the industrial site. They could walk just off the road and not be seen. It would take ten to fifteen minutes to reach their destination.
For all practical purposes, the agent and reporter were still strangers trying to get to know each other. Some small talk helped ease the tension.
“You like working for a newspaper?” Billy said, just a minute into their walk.
“I do, but it’s another one of those dying industries,” Birchfield said. “Don’t know how long I can keep doing it. It definitely won’t be carrying me to retirement.”
“That’s a shame, too, because the stuff reporters dig up is more in demand than ever these days. It always seemed like a respectable business to me, when it’s done right. But when the revenue streams dry up, I guess something has to give.”
“Usually it’s the people on the payroll. My father was a newspaperman, and he never would have imagined the business fading away like it has. It’s old-school reporting, and nothing old school seems to work well anymore. What I like most about the job is the story always changes. Every day is different. Days like this are really different.”
“I hope you have a prize-winning story to write when we’re done here, Trey. With a happy ending, of course.”
It was a clear night, and a full moon was already showing the way as they moved briskly along.
“So what about you?” Birchfield said. “You like being an agent?”
Billy chuckled. “I used to. I’ve loved sports my whole life, and the job suits my personality. It’s fun and games, taken to a higher level. Things can get contentious, but I never dreamed I’d be dealing with the kind of problems I’ve had lately. Never dreamed I’d be walking through a field in New Orleans with a gun.”
The old buildings were in sight. There was a tall chain-link fence surrounding the property, so they’d have to walk out to the road and slide through a narrow opening beside the guard shack. There didn’t appear to be any security cameras at the entrance. A few lampposts illuminated the parking lot in front, but the buildings were dark.
“Let’s go around back and see if anything is going on,” Billy said.
They walked along the fence and turned the corner. Three vehicles suddenly came into view, parked under another lamppost beside the far building. Building number four, the large sign on the side said.
Billy dug the Glock out of his pocket and held up a hand. A lone figure was getting into one of the cars. The engine started and they had to duck behind a cluster of shrubs as the headlights swept across the lot.
“This could be the place,” Birchfield said.
“I’m still afraid we might be walking into a trap. If we blow it now, everything goes up in smoke, including us.”
“What should we do?”
“Well, we’re seriously outgunned here,” Billy said. “Maybe we should get the cops involved.”
“It’s definitely your call. I wouldn’t mind having a bunch of armed professionals deal with this, but the cops down here are a different breed. A lot of them can’t be trusted; that’s what David Mettetal told me. He said there have been so many leaks when it comes to Romano, it’s like everybody is on the take. They should have been able to throw him in prison a long time ago, but he’s always one step ahead.”
“Then let’s learn what we can while we’re here, hopefully without getting in too deep,” Billy said. “We can move a little closer and see what we’re up against.”
The men crept along the edge of the building toward the parked vehicles. There wasn’t much cover and they were exposed to anyone who might come along. Still, they pressed on.
The building had a metal entry door with a narrow window down the right side, and Billy approached the glass carefully with his gun drawn. Birchfield stood watch behind him.
Peering inside, Billy could see two men standing and talking in the distance. They were wearing dark windbreakers, and it was hard to tell if they were armed.
Were they Romano’s men? Were they guarding something, or someone? Or were they just security guards keeping an eye on the place?
Billy walked back to Birchfield.
“I’d love to take a look around in there,” he said. “But this probably isn’t the time. Now that we’ve seen the layout, let’s go back to the hotel and think about things. If we’ve found Jarvis, we’ll know by this time tomorrow.”
Chapter sixty-five
Billy was mulling over possible options when there came an excited knock at his hotel door. Birchfield entered with his Air Book in hand and a bemused look on his face.
“Let me show you something,” he said, flipping open the laptop. “I was talking to David Mettetal again, and he was telling me he had done some more digging in their archives on Romano. Here.”
