by Erik Carter
After the play, Kara thought she should look at what the scarred man was spying on, so, in a moment alone, she took out the opera glasses that she’d just used in the playhouse and peered down the street to the docks. The irony of her using the opera glasses just as the scarred man of whom she was so suspicious had used his binoculars did not escape her.
What she saw was confusing. Police officers. But they weren’t investigating; instead, they stood languidly by squad cars while civilian men loaded crates into a warehouse. Some sort of community support, no doubt. She didn’t think too much of it…
Until she spotted the scarred man again
There. At the docks. Among the civilians, helping to unload crates.
The next day, Kara scanned the Summerford Bugle and found nothing about the docks. Still, something was bothering her. So that afternoon, she rode into town on the bicycle Grandmother kept for her and went to the docks.
The foreman was a shifty, crude man, very off-putting indeed, and insisted that he didn’t know any scarred man or why a person like that would both spy on the docks and work there. When Kara was in the foreman’s grimy office, getting the lowdown on him, one of his workers pulled him aside, out onto the floor. This left Kara alone in his office.
Opportunity had arisen.
And Kara never let an opportunity pass.
A metal tray on the foreman’s desk held a stack of invoices. Kara flipped through them, found one from a company called Whitehead Incorporated dated the previous night, during the time the play was held. Whitehead, then, was connected to the crates she’d seen.
Another invoice showing a different company, Pearson Industries, bore the current date, with a time listed for that evening.
Kara slipped out before the foreman returned and went to the authorities, but she received a less than warm welcome from Summerford’s Chief of Police Warren.
Which was where Gavin found himself in the story…
“And what you need to understand, little Kara, is there’s an order to things. You don’t just come into a police station and ask to speak directly to the chief of police. First you should have spoken to the desk sergeant, then an officer, maybe then a detective, and only after that I might have gotten involved. Does that make sense, sweetheart?”
He smiled at her through his big frog lips, his eyes twinkling beneath those flyaway white eyebrows.
Little Kara.
Sweetheart.
Blech!
Kara had had quite enough of his condescension. He didn’t deserve a response. Still, he was an adult, and Kara knew proper manners, so she forced a smile.
Then she hopped out of the chair and left the office.
Gavin turned to page seventy-three, the beginning of the next chapter, and found another one of Amber’s adult notes. A single word, featured prominently, written larger than the others and in caps.
REFINED
Below that was an address.
941 Falconer Street
An address…
His mind flashed to the sticky note Jonah Lund and the tall, brooding Brett had shown him. It had also born an address.
He ran his finger along Amber’s note.
Amber had been investigating C11, using The Secret of Summerford Point as her guide.
But why so many addresses? Was she visiting these places?
He knew the answer.
Amber was so artless. Yet tenacious. Yet naïve. Yet determined.
She’d been playing detective, and if she’d jotted down addresses, the chances were high that she’d gone knocking on doors.
Gavin made a quick decision.
He was going to Falconer Street.
Chapter Eighteen
Silence ran a hand along his jaw, pinching the skin at the end of his chin as he studied the data on the Macintosh’s monitor.
The Specialist had done well. Really well.
Footsteps behind him. He turned, half expecting to see the blond man again, Mr. Accord. His muscles flushed with adrenaline, an electric sizzle flashed over his skin, ready to pounce, even in the middle of the busy coffee shop.
But it was just Jonah.
When Silence had returned a few minutes earlier, he had found the computer station empty, just his coffee and Jonah’s latte sitting on either side of the keyboard.
“You left,” Silence said.
“TCB,” Jonah said and sat at the stool beside him.
It was a bit of deflecting humor, calling back to the “Takin’ Care of Business” poster they’d discussed earlier.
But why was he deflecting?
Silence continued to look at him, wanting further explanation.
“Come on, man,” Jonah said. “I had to go to the john.”
Jonah’s skin was sweaty, and for a half moment, Silence took him at his word, accepting the fact that the guy really had just returned from the bathroom after suffering a sweat-inducing shit.
Then he noticed bloodshot eyes. Puffy skin beneath them. Wet cheeks, wetter than the sweat-dappled rest of his face.
He’d been crying.
And he didn’t return Silence’s gaze.
Silence said nothing.
He turned back to the computer. Jonah leaned over his shoulder.
The screen showed another Defender newspaper article, this one from 1981. But unlike the result from the newspaper’s website, this was a scanned image, a digital photo of an actual newspaper, all its wrinkles and paper texture visible in a highly detailed file, a TIFF scan that had been downgraded to JPG for a smaller file size.
The headline read,
OPD Officer’s Claims Disputed
Beside him, Jonah leaned in closer, squinted, his lips parting. “How did you find this?”
Silence didn’t respond.
He read over the article.
ORLANDO - In the latest claim against the city’s beleaguered C11 district, one officer has taken matters into his own hands.
Former Sergeant Raymond Beasley of C11 contacted the Defender with allegations that an internal affairs investigation he filed three months earlier was erroneously dismissed and that his insistence upon his claims led to his early termination.
Among the claims leveled by Beasley at the district are extortion, bribery, drug-trafficking, and police brutality going back at least to the late 1970s when Beasley first joined the department.
“This is just one in a long line of deceiving attacks against the officers of our district,” said Lieutenant Carlton Stokes, public relations liaison for District C11. “Any wrongdoings in this group were handled decades ago. Mr. Beasley was terminated due to improper conduct, and he’s either looking for revenge or a way to wipe some of the dirt off his name.”
Unnamed sources verified Stokes’ claims, specifying that the charges against Beasley included the use of illicit drugs.
Beasley declined to comment.
Silence leaned back, crossed his arms and stared through the image on the screen, through the monitor, through the olive-green wall, into his thoughts. The investigation’s connection to Ray Beasley was something much greater than one druggie, one pervert who liked to beat up on women.
This was something bigger. And it didn’t relate to Beasley. Not directly.
“Wait a minute…” Jonah said, trailing off for a moment. From the I–think-I-see-something tone in his voice, it was clear that he too was getting a sense of the bigger picture. “Beasley was trying to rat out C11. He might have been a violent drug addict, but he wasn’t a crooked cop.”
Silence nodded his agreement.
“So what does that mean?” Jonah said.
“Means he’s in trouble,” Silence said and bolted from his chair, heading for the door.
Chapter Nineteen
Ray Beasley’s house smelled like synthetic potpourri, the kind sprayed from a can or heated in an electric lamp, one of those little plastic units that jut right out of the outlet. Cinnamon and pine. A chemical Christmas, way out of season.
T
o Finley, it smelled also like desperation. Like a man spraying this saccharine shit to hide a truth, a never-ending attempt to purge away what had been. The fake, manufactured quality of the scent matched everything else in the house, which had an upscale, retro vibe to it, an attempt to capture 1950s charm with 1990s-level comfort. The place stank in more ways than one.
He was in the foyer, on a patch of dark tile that had striations of lighter gray throughout, tastefully arranged to accentuate the natural imperfections. A chandelier sparkled over his head, possibly genuine crystal. In his hands was the double-barrel shotgun he’d found beside the door when he barged in.
He broke it open. Empty. Both barrels.
He scoffed and looked at Beasley, who was plastered against the opposite wall, by the closet doors, getting as far away from Finley as he could.
“You know a gun works a lot better when it’s loaded,” Finley said. “What, you gonna club somebody with it?”
He swung the weapon like a club, cartoonishly, smiling.
Beasley didn’t respond. His lower lip trembled.
Finley chuckled and snapped the gun back together with a clack that sounded off the tile, off the chandelier to the peak of the vaulted ceiling. He placed the gun where he’d found it and stepped closer to Beasley.
“Please…” Beasley said, his voice a whisper.
“Don’t worry, old man. I’m not here to kill you. Can’t go killing you now that you’ve been chatting with someone in the spotlight. Jonah Lund.”
He let the name linger in the air. All its weight and implications. Waiting for Beasley to take the cue and give an explanation.
But again, the old pervert didn’t speak.
“You’ve been out of the organization for years now,” Finley said. “Because you were a goddamn rat. And you disappeared. Changed your name. But for some reason, you contacted us again. About Amber Lund. And then after the girl’s found dead, suddenly the husband visits you, the guy who’s keeping Amber’s story in the news.”
Beasley’s lips shook harder, tried to form words, finally did. “She’d reached out to me. Wanted to meet up. Said she had questions only I could answer. But I … I’ve never met Jonah Lund before. I’d never even heard of him before I saw him in the news.”
Finley chuckled, sighed. “Really? And he just showed up at your doorstep today? He somehow found you, even after you changed your name, started a new life. We haven’t found you all these years, but a coffee shop owner did.” He paused. “Who was the guy with him, the tall guy with dark hair? Private detective?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never—”
“You’ve never seen him before either. Yes, yes.”
Finley tsked, turned to the side, and when he looked back to Beasley, he brought his right hand swinging across his chest, backhanding Beasley hard enough to make him scream out, bend over, stumble to the side.
He grabbed the old bastard’s shirt, pulled him back up, threw him against the wall. The bi-fold closet doors rattled. He got within inches of his face. “What did you tell them?”
“Nothing! I swear it!”
Finley swung a knee up, catching Beasley in the midsection. The old man folded in half, and Finley got his shin behind his knees, using his weight and momentum against him, sending him to the floor. His head snapped back, the crown striking the tile hard enough to send another sound bouncing off the walls to the peak of the vaulted ceiling. So damn hard that Finley felt it.
Beasley groaned, one of those terrible, guttural sounds a person makes when they’ve been truly wounded. In a boxing match, the announcer would be shouting, He’s hurt! He’s hurt!
Finley stepped over him, looking down with the smuggest grin he could muster. Beasley’s eyes were barely open as they looked back at him, just pained slits.
“I may have been a screwup,” Beasley said in a ghost of voice. “I may have been a rat. But I took down slimy little shits like you on a daily basis.”
Finley sneered. “Look out, we got a tough guy here! Lying on his floor. A washed-up tough guy.”
Finley kicked him in the side. The thick front edge of his Doc Martens landed squarely against his ribs.
Beasley screamed.
He kicked again, harder, the same spot. His teeth ground together, lips curled back.
Another kick. And another, rearing back like a soccer player.
And then the sound he’d been waiting for.
Snap!
Broken rib.
Beasley howled. Sobbed.
Finley breathed in. Released the tension in his face. Cleared his throat. And watched the twisting, weeping, pathetic form below him.
A disgraced cop. A druggie. A pervert. A goddamn rat. And now a beaten, worthless mound crying on the designer tile of the little life he’d tried to rebuild for himself.
Finley patted the sweat from his brow, felt a tingling sensation in his hand. Looked.
The top middle knuckle on his right hand was contused, a tight, pulsing blue knot swelling beneath the skin. He must have hit it just right when he backhanded Beasley. These things happen. He rubbed the knuckle gently, watched Beasley for another moment, then crouched beside him.
“Did you say anything that would compromise us, rat?”
“What could I say? I know nothing. I’ve been out for decades!”
“Then why the hell was Lund here?”
“I don’t know!”
Beasley’s eyes turned to him, still little more than slits. His left eye was swollen, nearly closed. All of that dig-deep bravado from his good-old-days speech moments earlier was gone. Just fear again.
Finley maintained eye contact for a long moment before speaking. “You know, I’ve been thinking about this all afternoon—if Ray Beasley went to the trouble of changing his name, why didn’t he leave town? It’s for those kids of yours, isn’t it? That family you had. The wife who left you and took the two little girls.”
Beasley didn’t respond. His breathing grew louder.
“How old would they be now? Late teens? Twenties? That’s a good age. It really is.”
He gave Beasley a lopsided, dark grin. Then stood up.
“Don’t you goddamn leave this townhouse. I’ll be watching.”
Chapter Twenty
Silence and Jonah moved briskly down the sidewalk. Jonah had been pissy with him since they bolted out of the Internet café.
“Man, so what if Beasley’s in danger?” Jonah said. “He’s a junkie, and he hurts women.”
Silence didn’t respond.
Perhaps there was something within Silence that wanted to help Beasley, more flickers of the deep compassion he’d had in his prior life. But if he was being honest with himself, Silence cared little more than Jonah did about the man’s safety.
Rather, Silence wanted to find out what happened to Amber Lund, and he wanted to go home. And Ray Beasley was the key.
“I thought you’re here to help find out what happened to Amber.”
“I am.”
“Then why the hell are we back at Beasley’s?” He was shouting now. “This is a dead end!”
Silence came to a stop. Jonah continued a couple steps ahead of him before he followed suit, his shoes scuffling on the concrete.
Silence shook his head. “No. Just the opposite.” He swallowed. “He’s the key.”
Jonah’s eyebrows unknitted. His lips parted. He looked at Silence expectantly, wanting more.
So Silence added, “Beasley will lead us…” Another swallow. “To our answer.”
Something deep inside Silence was talking to him, screaming at him, telling him to get to Beasley. Amber had written his name, his derogatory nickname, “Weasel,” along with his prior address at the homeless shelter. After all these years. She’d reached out to him, and he hadn’t been a corrupt member of C11.
Beasley was the key to it all.
Jonah’s mouth opened in a kind of bewildered astonishment, as though he trusted Silence but his mind wouldn’t process the fact tha
t he might soon learn what happened to his dead wife.
There was no time to dwell. Silence brushed past him, and he was about to turn onto the sidewalk leading through the lush green lawn to Beasley’s townhouse when there was a voice.
Someone shouted from behind.
He stopped. Turned.
It was Kim Hurley, the woman who’d been following them, the one who claimed she wasn’t in cahoots with the other person following them.
And she was running right for them.
Chapter Twenty-One
An open-air sports bar on a sunny afternoon. There could be worse places to work.
Finley stole a look across the street at Beasley’s townhouse then stepped through a wave of refreshing mist from the outdoor cooling lines in the ceiling. The main bar was on the far wall, stools with shiny plush cushions butted up against a foot rail and a high counter, big screens hanging above rows of liquor bottles. Two bartenders wearing sunglasses and green, water-stained T-shirts freshened drinks, took orders. Crowded tables, many of them outside the open retractable walls. Laughter. Cheers and jeers. A big game was playing on the screens.
He approached the hostess stand behind which a cute, short, ponytailed young woman waited, smiling. She wore a T-shirt matching the bartenders’, though hers fit much tighter.
“Help you?” she said.
He gave her a grin, a sports-bar-guy grin. He could fit in well at a place like this when he needed to. Blending in with the crowd, whatever that crowd might be, was a talent he’d carefully honed. Here, he was another weekend warrior, another accountant, another Nick or Brian wanting to see the game, get a little fresh air and a beer buzz.
“Yeah,” Finley said through his Brian grin. “I was hoping to get a table out…”
He trailed off.
As he was speaking, he’d turned toward the outdoor tables—one of which he wanted to snag for an unobstructed view of Beasley’s place—and he’d spotted Jonah Lund and the tall guy. They were walking along the sidewalk in front of the townhouses.
