The Big Keep: A Lena Dane Mystery (Lena Dane Mysteries)

by Melissa F. Olson

  Delilah gave me a suspicious look. “Well he didn’t stay here, if that’s what you’re suggesting,” she sniffed.

  I held up my hands deferentially. “No, no, I wasn’t thinking that. I know you would have told me. Besides, from what I know of the guy, he’d never risk bumping into his son on the street.”

  Pacified, Delilah stared up at the ceiling tiles, thinking it over. “Well,” she said slowly, “I never really knew any of their friends. The last time I saw the guy was twelve, thirteen years ago. So I don’t think-”

  Her voice broke off and she paled suddenly. “Delilah?” I said uncertainly. “Are you okay?”

  She shook her head a bit, clearing it, and then said, “Yeah. No, I just mean...” She sighed. “I have a brother.”

  I raised my eyebrows. “Older?”

  She nodded. “Much. I was the ‘surprise’ baby. David was—is—eight years older. He and Jason used to pal around a little bit, but this was like, when they were in high school.”

  “Do you know if they kept in touch?” The baby had crawled over to me and began trying to climb up my pants leg. I reach down and let him wrap his tiny fist around my finger, helping to pull him upright.

  “It’s possible,” Delilah said doubtfully. “Teddy and I, we don’t keep in touch. Like I send him a Christmas card, and that’s it.” She gestured down at her artfully ripped jeans, rows of leather bracelets, and tight ribbed tank that showed off her biceps. “I’m a little alternative. Teddy...Teddy’s a misdemeanor arrest waiting to happen.”

  “Drugs?” I asked.

  She nodded. “Pot. So much pot.”

  “He deals?”

  She shrugged an assent.

  I carefully helped Aidan off my leg and slipped my finger out of his hand. He looked down at his palm, confused, and then rolled over onto his stomach for a better toy vantage point. I pulled a notepad out of my carryall bag. “I need the address, Delilah.”

  On the way to see David Harker, I thought over my earlier meeting with Taper. He had been trying to tell me something when he’d said that Jason hadn’t been killed over something he knew. I was sure of it. But what could that even mean? That he was killed because of something he didn’t know? That didn’t make sense. Maybe because of something he did? I decided to talk to whoever had originally hunted down Mason Taper, if he or she was still alive. Maybe they would have some insight into what the hell Taper meant.

  I called Sarabeth and asked her to look at Mason Taper’s police file. She was distracted with an impending briefing, but promised to look for it within the next few hours in exchange for lunch at a restaurant of her choice.

  Every major city has its seedy areas. They’re not necessarily the same as the really dangerous areas, where you’re actively afraid for your life. Those parts of town often feature expensive cars and suspiciously competent security. No, I’m talking about the blocks where everything is shabby and worn-down, from the eroded concrete curb to the bent and tattered gutters on the paint-starved buildings. The people in the seedy places are listless and resigned, and the only things that thrive there are the weeds that creep up between cracks in the sidewalk.

  Delilah’s brother lived in a garden apartment with no garden, right next to an abandoned strip mall, in one of the seediest Chicago neighborhoods I’d seen yet. I got the Browning out of the lockbox and put it in my holster before I got out. The six steps down to his door looked like they’d come out of an Indiana Jones booby trap, so I edged down carefully, with one hand on my belly and the other on the wall.

  I banged a fist on the chipped-paint wooden door, and after a moment it swung open with a grating creak, revealing a painfully skinny middle-aged man in soiled jeans and a baggy tank top that hung loose on his skeletal frame. He was probably just over forty, but looked a decade older. He had Delilah’s midnight hair and golden skin a shade lighter than hers, but other than that I didn’t see much resemblance. His eyes were bloodshot, pupils dilated, but even if they hadn’t been David’s profession was pretty obvious from the ganja breeze that seemed to be emitting from the house. Tomás, Jason’s neighbor in LA, had been a pot enthusiast. This guy was a dealer who enjoyed his product way too much.

  “David Harker?” I asked.

  “Um...yeah?” The guy rubbed his eye with the heel of one hand. “Who’re you?”

  “Huh. I guess I always thought dealing pot was a young man’s game. Way to hang in there,” I said conversationally. He gave me a blank look. I sighed. “I’m sorry, that was rude. My name is Lena, I’m a friend of your sister’s.”

  “Oh.” David relaxed, although I wouldn’t have thought he had any more relaxing in him. “Cool, man. You wanna buy?”

  “Tempting,” I said, tapping my fingers thoughtfully on my pregnant belly. “But I’m going to have to pass.” I didn’t even want to go into the place. Who knew what that much pot smoke could do to a fetus? “I want to know about Jason Anderson.”

  “Oh, I’m not supposed to talk about seeing him,” David mumbled. My eyes widened, which was a mistake because I felt the sting of smoke. “Sorry.”

  I nodded my head. “Totes,” I said seriously. I glanced into the apartment behind him, which looked like a college apartment that had gotten really old and sad. “But I’m Jason’s girl, you know, and he told me to pick up some stuff he left.”

  “Oh.” David’s eyebrows furrowed, as he thought that over. Really hard. “He didn’t leave anything here, is the thing.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yeah, man. You can come in and look if you want. I was just testing some new product, you know.”

  Six months ago I would have stalked in, pushed him around a little, and gotten the answers I needed. But there was no way I was putting a foot in that place. “Naw, it’s cool,” I drawled. “Jason must’ve gotten mixed up. He’s been a little off lately, did you notice?”

  David nodded, a little indignant. “I know, right? Dude was so jumpy while he was here. Closing all the curtains and shit.” David snorted. “Like anyone in this neighborhood wants to look in on this place.”

  “You know why he’s been so twitchy?” I asked casually.

  David shrugged, leaning into the door frame like maybe his own body couldn’t hold itself up anymore. Which may have been accurate. “I dunno. He really thought someone was watching him. I mean, I’ve been paranoid before, but this guy was paranoid.”

  I nodded thoughtfully. “Did he tell ever you about the thing in LA?”

  Recognition lit David’s eyes for a moment, but he gave me a little shrug. “Not really. He just said he didn’t think he could trust his friend anymore. I think that was part of why he wanted to lay low for a few days.”

  “Did he hang out here much?”

  “Naw. He mostly just crashed in my spare room. Then he was gone all day, with his computer.”

  The laptop that had gone missing when Jason was killed. I was betting that wherever it was, it was in teeny tiny little pieces.

  I chatted with David for a few more minutes, but there just wasn’t much here. It was interesting that Jason thought he was being watched, and that there was someone he couldn’t trust in Los Angeles. But I wasn’t sure yet how those things fit with what I already knew. I thanked Stoner David for his time, although I wasn’t getting the sense that it was particularly valuable.

  As I was driving home, Sarabeth called me back.

  “Well, the good news is, I found the file,” she said uneasily. “There’s not much in it that you couldn’t find on the Wikipedia page, though.”

  “Maybe the detectives who caught him had more in their personal notes,” I reflected. To Sarabeth, I said, “Who was it?”

  “Well, one of them, Sanchez, he died of pancreatic cancer a few years back,” she hedged.

  There was a long pause, and I finally prompted, “Sarabeth?”

  She sighed and said reluctantly, “The other one was Robert Flanagan. Senior.”

  30. You Don’t Have a Good Side

&n
bsp; Of course it had to be Bobby Flanagan’s fucking father.

  I’d met him three or four times in person. Once had even been under polite circumstances, when Bobby had introduced us at academy graduation. All the other times, however, were when he was accusing me of being a lying whore who’d slept with Matt Cleary and then framed him.

  In Robert’s eyes, it was a pretty simple case: I was just a young, reasonably attractive woman accusing a decorated senior officer of rape and assault. My only evidence was the testimony of other young women who already had a good reason to hate cops—they were prostitutes. Therefore, I must be a disgruntled former lover, and I was using my fellow whores to destroy the reputation of one of CPD’s finest.

  When Cleary came after me in the parking garage security cameras had caught our whole fight, and even Robert Flanagan had to concede that Cleary struck first, with intent to kill me. His version of events, however, was that I’d driven Cleary insane with my unfounded accusations, Cleary had tried to come and reason with me, and things had “gotten out of hand.” Seriously. That was what he’d argued: in the papers, in the CPD, and to anyone else he could get to listen. Bobby Flanagan was like a thorn in my side. His father was more of a dagger in my back.

  And an hour later, I was staring at his front door.

  I had put the Jeep in park and was looking at the modest little brownstone in front of me, my heart thudding loudly against my ribcage. The baby swam in excited somersaults in my belly, probably disturbed by my anxiety. I really, really didn’t want to go knock on that door. The old man was the retired CPD commander of the 6th district, and a charter member of the Lena Dane Hate Club. He was also the detective who’d arrested Mason Taper in 1982. I managed to will myself out of the Jeep, steeling myself on the way up the sidewalk. I’d swung by the office on the way, and now I had an office packing box tucked under one arm. I summoned all my courage and stubbornness, and used it to knock on Flanagan’s door.

  He popped it open with a glare, an angry old man in a plaid shirt and navy sweater vest. “You,” he said accusingly. “What the hell are you doing at my home?”

  “I brought your toys back,” I said brightly. Then I upended the box right in front of him, spilling four or five packages’ worth of mutilated Barbie dolls right at his feet. Shocked, he took an involuntary step backward, away from the door. “We need to talk,” I said sweetly. I stepped over the Barbie parts and right past the elder Flanagan. Into the enemy’s lair.

  Flanagan started sputtering, but I ignored him and stalked into the living room. The effect was probably ruined when I had to painstakingly lower myself onto the ugly plaid sofa, but oh well. He was hurrying toward me, already reaching out to grab me, when he got a good look at my stomach. He recoiled, not about to manhandle a pregnant woman.

  To cover his discomfort, the elder Flanagan went back and slammed the front door shut, sending a spray of Barbie heads skittering on the floor. I smiled. The Barbies and the pregnancy had thrown him off his game. That’s the thing about hardcore sexists: they’re too used to doing things their way. A woman behaving in a way that doesn’t fit their view of the world gets them all antsy in their pantsies.

  Robert Flanagan stomped over to the couch and loomed over me. “You have no right–” he began.

  “Sit down, Bob,” I said calmly. Well, at least I was going for calm. I was hoping he wouldn’t see through it.

  His face turned an exciting shade of purple. “You can’t talk to me like that in my own home, you little slut,” he exploded. “Get the hell–”

  “Mason Taper,” I replied.

  Robert stopped mid-rant, confusion spreading over his face. “What the hell does he have to do with anything? Don’t change the subject, missy-”

  “I wasn’t,” I interrupted again. “You’re the one who keeps changing the subject. I’m here to talk about Mason Taper, after which I would be delighted to never see your fat stupid face ever again.” Okay, so much for the mature high road. But he’d called me names first, dammit.

  Glaring at me, Robert lowered himself to the easy chair, his knees popping loudly. “Why the hell would I help you?” he grunted.

  “Because,” I said quietly, “once upon a time you were a good cop, and a decent man.” I could tell by his face the he wanted to throw me out of his house a lot more than he cared about thinking of himself that way, so I nodded at the doll parts and added, “And because you owe me.”

  “I don’t owe you anything,” he blustered. “You framed and killed my godson, and then you go prancing around all proud of yourself ‘cause you got away with it–”

  I leaned forward, or tried to, at least. “Robert,” I said tiredly, “Cut the shit. Like I said, once upon a time you were a good cop. There had to have been signs. You just didn’t want to see them.”

  His jaw clamped shut, and he just scowled. I pointed at the doll parts. “That?” I said, “That’s pretty serious stuff for an ex-commander. But you and your little cabal of cronies need Matt to be innocent, so you make me the bad guy and make sure I stayed scared. Fine. I don’t give a shit anymore.”

  He started to interrupt me, but I talked right over him, forcing him to stop and listen. “My point is that I’ve got bigger fish to fry now. So do you want to help me fry them, or do you want me to turn my considerable time and talents to proving that you’re responsible for harassment of a former policewoman? Think about it: ‘Ex-commander plots to terrify pregnant woman.’ It’s a hell of a headline.”

  His eyes narrowed. “You wouldn’t dare,” he snapped.

  “Wouldn’t I?” I countered. “You’ve been counting on me not going to the police, but I could always go to the press instead. I’m tired, Robert, and my ankles are swollen, and I have to get up four times a night to pee. It’s not a good time to push me.”

  We sat there like that, glowering at each other, until finally Robert spat, “What do you want to know?”

  I managed not to smile. “What did you keep out of the official file?” I asked promptly. “Anything in your personal notes, impressions, suspicions, that kind of thing.”

  “That was thirty-some years ago,” he said sullenly. “You know how many cases I’ve worked since then?”

  I could see it – the little glint in his eye that said he’d thought of something right away. He just wanted to make me work for it.

  “Well, shit,” I said, shaking my head disgustedly. I stood up laboriously. “I figured you must be going senile by now, but I was hoping to catch you before your brain turned into jam. Good luck with your interviews. When the Tribune guy shows up, make sure he snaps your best side.”

  I started toward the door. “You think I’m going to fall for that?” Robert said disbelievingly. “Girlie, I invented that bit.”

  “Whatever you say, old man.” I opened the door and started through it, then paused, craning my neck to look back at him critically. “It’s your left, by the way. No, wait...your right.” I shook my head. “Aw, who am I kidding. You don’t have a good side.” I slammed the door shut behind me.

  How’s that for working for it, dickweed, I thought with satisfaction.

  A few of the Barbie heads had fallen onto the front stoop when Robert closed the door earlier. I carefully navigated my way around them, holding onto the cold iron railing as I went down the steps. Before I made it to the bottom the door opened behind me. “We thought maybe he had a partner. Or an apprentice,” Robert said gruffly.

  I turned back around again. “Why?”

  “We found a few brown hairs at two of the crime scenes. Short. Male. Didn’t match Taper’s.”

  I made a face. “That’s it? That’s your big evidence?”

  If looks could kill, my entire existence would have evaporated on the spot.”They matched each other,” he said sulkily. “Two murders, no connection at all between the victims, both made to look like an accident? We wondered if there was a partner, but we couldn’t prove anything, and Taper claimed that he worked alone.”

  “
There,” I said sweetly. “Was that so hard?”

  The door slammed shut again.

  31. A Grownup Like That

  On the way home, I felt exhilarated. I’d faced down the boogeyman! Robert Flanagan had done his best to discredit me, shame me, and ruin me in every way possible, and I’d confronted him and walked away unscathed. It felt amazing, and for a moment I was excited to tell Toby. Then I remembered that I couldn’t tell him about any of this, because I wasn’t supposed to be working the case.

  I kept an eye on my mirrors, but if there was someone following me, he was too good to get caught again. My thoughts drifted to the possibility of Taper having an assistant, and from there to the timeline of Jason’s trip. He comes to Chicago, crashing at a friend’s house where he can’t be traced. He visits a professional killer in prison. And then as soon as he gets back to Los Angeles he’s murdered, possibly by another professional. A couple weeks later, the killer orders me to stop looking for Jason.

  But Jason told Stoner David that someone seemed to be following him, and that he couldn’t trust his friend. And that was before he’d gone to see Taper in prison; before he’d even been on Taper’s radar. I frowned. Something was still missing. I picked up my cell phone and glanced at the clock. It was 4:30 in LA.

  Starla picked up immediately. I identified myself and asked, “Starla, what can you tell me about Jason’s day-to-day life before he left for Chicago? I mean, way before. What was your life like together?”

  “Uh, you mean, like, what was an average day in the lives of Starla and Jason?” She sounded amused, and maybe a little wistful.

  “Pretty much, yeah. How did you spend your time?”

  “Let’s see, I worked a lot, and I tried to audition around my job. Jason, well, whenever I was home to watch the twins he wrote, and when I wasn’t home he kept an eye on the kids. Sometimes he left them with one of our neighbors and went to coffee shops to write, or research, or whatever.”