by Scott Cook
So sure, send a couple of dumb-asses to make useless and strangely intriguing threats to people, especially Scott, who are like totally addicted to mysteries.
“Hey, big giant muscular weapons expert martial artist former cop Navy commando superhero man… please stop digging into this strange and fascinating mystery! If you don’t keep your nose out of our forbidden cave of wonders and excitement, we’ll bonk you on your noggin… cuz’ we ain’t fraid a the likes of you!”
Jesus!
Okay, where was I?
Oh right, investigationing…
I’d reviewed the information Scott had gathered at the cemetery and knew a little about old Clint Proust. For one, I knew he lived in a neighborhood off of Ronald Reagan Boulevard about four or five miles west of the boneyard. I was a bit surprised that he could afford a house considering that as head of security at Serenity Hill, he only made forty-two grand a year. I guess that was enough to buy a house, at least it would’ve been a few years ago. Yet when I pulled onto Grunkleman Way and then turned left onto Grunkleman Loop… I forget the real names, the housing development I found was fairly new and incomplete.
There was a lot of that out in the Davenport area. Back before the big housing boom of 2004, the area had been expanding rapidly. A lot of cheap land and the proximity to Disney made it a desirable area for full-time residents and snowbirds alike. However, once the bust came a few years later, followed by the big stock market crash, it seemed like literally dozens of new developments simply stopped dead at whatever stage they’d been in.
I’d seen neighborhoods that had only reached the paved road and cleared land stage. Some that maybe had a couple of hundred houses planned and only forty or fifty were built. The rest of the platted land was just barren and slowly being overgrown with weeds and scrub plants.
Sun Vista Estates was one of these last. A half-complete community with new homes that couldn’t have been more than fifteen years old at most. They were modern models on small sub-division lots. Not zero lot lines, but with maybe twenty feet between houses. They ranged from modest sixteen hundred square foot three-two-twos to fancier twenty-six hundred four-three-twos. When you first pulled through the decorative open gates, you got the impression of a clean, new and well-cared for housing development. Nice green lawns, white sidewalks with decorative streetlamps in every third house’s front lawn and even a central community area with picnic tables, a playground and large pool.
As you moved back a block or two though, you saw the harsh demarcation between what was finished and what had been abandoned. Suddenly, and with no warning, there were just no more houses. The sidewalks and yards ended and bare sand and scrub vegetation took over. The streets continued, this particular subdivision being mostly comprised of a mile-long loop with a few cross streets and cul-de-sacs. At least the last forty percent of the property was still unfinished.
The rest was just flat land with a gray two-lane street snaking back toward a wall of wild trees. Might not be a bad place to be a kid, though. Lots of open ground and woods to play in.
Proust’s place was one of the ones that bordered the wasteland. It sat in the back of the property and backed up to an eight-foot wall that separated Sun Vista Estates from an adjoining property closer to the main road. Strangely, the wall and the edge of Proust’s lawn ended at the same time and a very thick woods began there. At least he didn’t have any nosey neighbors on one side.
I drove past and parked my Mercedes at what might be the equivalent of five houses down. I wasn’t sure if this would help or hurt me. I mean I wasn’t parked on the street by myself in front of his house, which might look suspicious… but then again, I was parked two hundred feet away in the middle of nothing.
“Yeah, this doesn’t look fishy at all,” I muttered. “Oh, well, what can you do?”
At least the rain had stopped. The street was still damp and the sandy land around me was probably one giant mud pie. But at least I didn’t have to wear my stupid plastic rain suit. I could stalk my prey on foot in my stylish black boots, black jeans, red sweater and leather jacket. Cool and sexy, that was ole Lisa.
Well come on! A girl can’t be both attractively dressed and bad-ass all rolled into one scrumptious package? Of course she could.
I ejected the magazine on my Glock, reseated it and racked the slide, shucking a round into the chamber and cocking it. You had to be careful with a Glock. Many of them didn’t have a safety option, as mine didn’t. Yet when you needed to shoot fast, you were ready.
I slipped an extra mag into my jacket pocket, grabbed the night vision monocular and stepped out into the now quite cold night. I actually had to zip up the jacket it was so chilly.
The rain must have been part of a cold front because the temp was easily fifteen degrees cooler than when Scott and I had scoped those two dudes at Virginia’s property a few hours ago. If it was fifty-five out at the time, I’d be surprised.
“Brrr…” I mumbled as I strolled toward Proust’s house, adjusting the monocular and tightening the clasp on my ponytail.
I smiled thinking of Scott. He liked ponytails. I liked them too, especially at certain times when I forced him to pull on mine. Some very vivid images suddenly flashed into my mind and I actually felt heat rising in my face. I giggled and pushed those thoughts away.
“Stay focused,” I told myself. “This is serious.”
“Go in hot or go in cold,” Scott’s ghostly voice seemed to whisper to me. “Never go in lukewarm. Lukewarm is only good for brushing your teeth or post-coital mop ups.”
“Goddammit, Scott!” I hissed into the night air. “Quit goofing around, you’re gonna make me laugh and give myself away.”
Obviously he wasn’t there, I just liked to think of him being with me on these clandestine solo operations… like when I infiltrated Paul and Marie Franco’s house during the Shade case. Yeah… yet another thing I’d done alone… at night…
All Scott’s fault. I was supposed to be a harmless MBA. Sitting at a computer analyzing spreadsheets, putting together P and L reports, balancing financial statements and other riveting activities. And now look… a little five-foot four girl who didn’t weigh more than a hundred and ten pounds… mostly boobs… hahaha… stalking a bad guy on a dark and stormy night.
“Yeah, you got this, girl,” I whispered. “Don’t fuck wit’ dis’ bitch, yall…”
I wonder if Scott does this? Talks all kinds of crazy self-motivating stuff when he’s doing private eye shenanigans? Oh yeah… he does. Every time.
There was no car in Proust’s driveway. Not exactly diagnostic since he had a two-car garage. When I was like a hundred feet from the house, I veered off the road and onto the muddy dirt. Yes, I was wearing boots, but they were actually combat boots. They looked pretty cool in spite of that, but they were a holdover from my adventure in Costa Rica. Good for nighttime mud slogging and other fun stuff.
In the gray-green glow of my left eye, I saw nothing in the yard and no movement from any of the windows. I was angling toward the back and out of the meager light from the lamppost in the guy’s front lawn. I hoped this would keep me in the darkness enough not to be seen as I approached.
I stopped halfway from where I’d left the road and could just see the screened-in porch and sliding glass doors that led into the house. No lights and no movement. Then the little bulb went off in my brain and I reached up and touched a series of controls on the side of the monocular.
The view went dark. I was now in thermal mode. I hoped that this would let me see through the walls of the house and find the warm bodies, if any.
It didn’t.
“Dammit…”
Was it that there was nobody home or the thermal imaging just wasn’t strong enough to see past concrete block? Not being a techno-geek or licensed scientician, I moved closer to the house. Right up to the rear corner.
Still no heat signatures.
“Well, this thing’s useless…” I grumbled, pushing the tube of the
monocular off my eye. It was time to use the tried-and-true methods of all snoopers… and peek in the windows.
There weren’t many on the first floor on my side of the house, the side with the garage. One large one that looked into the dining room maybe, but it was curtained off. So, tightening my butthole just a tad, I moved quietly around the screened porch and toward the other side of the house. The side that faced the neighbor’s house with only twenty or so feet in between.
The damned sliding glass door was curtained too. Of course this guy couldn’t be an exhibitionist, right?
No joy on the other wall either. At least the neighbors also had their curtains or blinds drawn, although I could see narrow slivers of light through the cracks in the blinds or along the edges of curtains. Somebody was home next door, but not much life at Proust’s joint.
I stood at the corner of the house for a long minute or two and pondered. Either Proust wasn’t home and maybe had even flown the coop, knowing that Scott now knew his true allegiances and all. That’d be the smart thing. Unfortunately, it’d royally screw me and my efforts to track him.
On the other hand, I was faced with a bad guy’s secret lair… well, public lair… and I had a choice to make. Either I gave up and went home and dove into a pint of Moose Tracks… or I broke in and snooped further.
I opted for the second option. The Moose Tracks weren’t’ going’ anywhere. I’ll just eat it all when I get home. If I can’t have my man, I can at least have me some chocolate.
Oh… sorry social justice feminine warriors! Was that wrong of me? Am I being stereotypical and not man-hating enough to actually admit I like chocolate and dick? Sometimes even together? Lol.
Yes, I have other facets too, so bite me.
All right… where was I… ah, yes… breaking into a bad guy’s hideout? Unfortunately for me, I don’t have Scott’s talent for this sort of thing… nor his tools. Yet I am a resourceful and tenacious lass, so I went to the screen door and was pleased to find it unlocked.
This house, unlike about two-thirds of the others in the subdivision, didn’t have a pool. The screened porch was just a twelve by fifteen patio with a couple of PVC and net outdoor chairs and wicker tables. I reached out and took hold of the handle on the slider and paused.
What if there was an alarm?
“Fuck it,” I muttered and pulled.
Locked.
“Curses!” I hissed.
Now, I will say that while I’m not a talented cat burglar like my baby, I do know a few tricks. For one, this slider wasn’t one of the new heavy-duty jobs that everybody was using now. It was your pretty standard aluminum and glass affair that rode on tracks. One of the tricks I know… don’t ask… is that with the right application of force and lift, you can unseat one of these doors and remove the panel. Having a screwdriver helps with this, and being the prepared action heroine I am, I just so happened to have a couple of stubbies in my pocket.
I was kind of shocked when the door lifted and came free. It was a lot heavier than I thought, too. I think every chord in my neck was standing out as I lifted and eased the door to the side.
Again the thought that maybe an alarm might go off gave me pause… but the damage was already done. I settled the monocular back over my eye, pulled my Glock out and moved past the heavy drapes and into a very deep darkness.
Yes, I did wipe my feet quite thoroughly. I have manners. I also didn’t want to leave tracks of course. I had to hit another switch on the eyepiece to activate the infrared tag light, that although invisible to the naked eye, lit up the interior for the night vision gear like a spotlight.
I was in a living room or family room that bordered a kitchen and formal dining room. The place looked lived in and lived in by dudes. A half-full ashtray sat on the coffee table next to a couple of dirty plates and glasses. There were dirty dishes in the sink and a pot of something that had been left on the stove. A faint smell of cigarettes and possibly a garbage can that needed taking out floated on the still air.
To be fair, girls could be untidy or lazy too… but based on the décor of what I’d seen so far, this didn’t strike me as a lady’s pad.
There were DVDs stored beneath the huge plasma TV and a Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition sitting on one of the end tables between the sofa and love seat, both of which were a gaudy red and yellow striped horror. No paintings and a huge fake stuffed sailfish hung over the back of the sofa.
This must be a guy’s place. Probably Proust had a couple of roommates or something. I moved toward the front of the house and found the stairs. They led up into a darkness that seemed deeper somehow, even with my night vision.
I don’t know why, but as I stared up those carpeted steps, a shudder of nervous energy rippled up my spine and made my hairline tingle. Something was wrong in this house. I don’t know how I knew, but I was convinced of it.
Maybe it was woman’s intuition… maybe memories of a similar situation at the Franco home the night Shade captured me… maybe twenty-nine years of exposure to pop culture… maybe just because this is exactly the kind of shit that Scott and I get ourselves into now… but my Spidey-sense was damn near electrocuting me.
“Fuck…” I groaned under my breath and yet I stood there at the foot of the stairs for what was almost a shamefully long time.
Finally, I bit my lip, took hold of the banister, swore under my breath again and started slowly up. I placed my foot carefully on each tread and slowly brought my weight down on it. When there was no creek… that had happened before… I brought my other foot up.
It took me what seemed like an hour to climb up but was probably no more than a minute or two. When I was three steps from the landing, I crouched low and eased my body forward so that my head was just above the last riser and peered around. The landing was a large open square space with a short hallway going off around the corner from the top of the stairs and three doors visible beyond the railing on the other side. All three were open, two looked into bedrooms and one into a bathroom. I peeked around the corner and saw that the hall was only about six feet long and led past a linen closet and into another bedroom. This door was closed, of course.
Yeah, that’s where the slathering vampire zombie squid dragon is waiting to tear me to shreds when I’m stupid enough to just walk in, I thought and wasn’t much comforted by my own humor. If anything, I went and creeped myself out.
I quickly inspected the two bedrooms and bathroom. Other than needing a cleaning, the bathroom held no obvious mysteries. Same for the second and third bedroom.
I drew in a breath and decided to go for it. I walked up to the closed door, turned the knob and kicked it open. Dropping and rolling just inside the doorframe where I swung my head and my night vision around from left to right and back again, the barrel of my pistol tracking with my eyes.
Nothing happened.
It took me a few seconds to realize that nothing would. There is a smell. It’s a smell that’s not quite like anything else. I’d smelled it before in my ex-boyfriend’s aunt’s place downtown when I’d first met Scott.
It was the smell of death. Well, it was one of the smells of death. Not the cloying and sickening odor of decay, though. This was more the smell of the cause of death. That cause being massive hemorrhaging.
The smell of fresh human blood that had been spilled in large quantities.
I flipped on a light switch near me as I stood and an overhead lighted ceiling fan came on. The man I guessed was Proust was lying on the floor next to his bed, one of his legs propped up on the mattress and his head at an odd angle against the nightstand.
There were three bullet holes in his chest and what looked like a lake full of blood had poured from them, coating the front of his body and soaking through the carpet all around him. The rich and heady stench of copper suddenly drove into my nostrils like it had a grudge against me. I had to breathe through my mouth to keep from retching.
The closet door was open as was the door to the master bath.
Nothing and no one hid inside there. Although the blood still glistened wetly, I figured it’d been maybe an hour since somebody had taken Proust out.
Still… an hour… I might have missed his killer by minutes and that sent my entire body into a convulsion of fear and released tension. I backed out of the room and hit the light switch just as the distant and muffled sound of a siren reached me. I moved back into the room and peered through the horizontal blinds that covered one of the two windows that looked out toward the street. There were flashers coming down the street and two Polk County cruisers screeched to a halt in front of the house.
“Uh-oh…” I breathed, suddenly realizing the predicament I was in. “This isn’t going to be good…”
12
Why these two yahoos didn’t tie up Rick Eagle Feather is a giant mystery. Yes, the guy was close to seventy… yet when he vaulted to his feet, it became clear that he was far from over the hill.
The man was big. If he was anything less than six-foot six then I’m a nanner-peelin’ monkey’s uncle. He was broad in the shoulders and lean with strong arms and a flat gut. The look of rage on his wide squarish face was daunting, or should be.
By the startled reaction of both Stank and Carver, they might have realized their error as well. When two large hands grabbed each man around the throat and then swung them together, the sound of the crack of their two skulls impacting made me cringe.
The two goons dropped to their knees, their hands going up to massage the sides of their skulls.
“You fuckin’ old Injun!” Carver griped. “I’m gonna slice your fuckin’ balls off!”
“You dead, nigga, you hear me? You fuckin’ dead…” Stank chimed in.
