by Jim Cliff
“Well, yes, it is, but the M.E. says he’s ruled out the other possibilities. He’s pretty sure”.
Scott Bales was an old friend. I’d roomed with his younger brother Paul at UIC, and got to know the family very well. I spent Christmas in Aspen with them one year. I got to know them all a lot better when Paul died. He was shot by a drug dealer who he was apparently in competition with. I spent a lot of time with his family, all of us trying to make sense of what had happened, and we ended up as a support system for each other. Scott had been hit hard by it all. He was a young Detective, just out of uniform, and he had no idea his little brother was into anything bad. Family are often the last to know.
My second call was to Lucy, who worked for what my old boss used to call a ‘Borderline company’. ‘Borderlines’ are companies which deal in confidential information. Nobody knows how they get it. Nobody asks. But if it’s on a computer anywhere, they can find out for you. To get a P.I. license in Chicago, you first have to work for a P.I. agency for three years. I did my time with Hayes and Co. Investigations. Old Mr. Hayes was nice enough, but my job there was mainly administrative. I would file, photocopy, type up the investigators’ reports, deliver bills, and answer the phone. After I’d been there a year, I also did some process serving and learned how to run financial checks on clients to make sure they could pay. Sometimes, if I was very lucky, and if all the qualified sleuths were occupied, I would get to liaise with the borderlines. Which basically meant I called Lucy, read out the list of stuff Mr. Hayes wanted to know and waited at my desk until she called back. That’s what I love about detective work. The glamor.
This time the list was mine. I gave Lucy Susan Patterson’s Social Security Number, date of birth, home phone number, and credit card number from the receipt I’d pocketed. Then I gave her my cell phone number and my office address, so she could bill me.
Just before noon, Lucy called my cell. I got out my notebook and wrote down what she had found out. Susan had not used her credit card or taken money out of an ATM since Thursday afternoon. She didn’t have a car or a criminal record. Her only registered addresses were her father’s house, and the apartment she shared with Denise on Van Buren. Thirty-six calls had been made from their phone number since Friday morning. I thought that sounded like a lot, even for a girl, until I remembered she had been organizing a surprise party for her dad. One of them was to a number I recognized as Gregory Patterson’s, and I would have to check out the rest when I got back to the office. Having forgotten first time round, I asked Lucy to check for incoming calls to the apartment and for calls to and from her cell phone.
At a quarter after twelve, a girl with spiky blonde hair turned onto Armitage off Sheffield. I watched her as she went into the front door of number 959. It was the girl from the photo. I finished my lunch and calmly went next door. I walked in through the open outer door and knocked on Angel’s apartment. She opened the door, without asking who it was, and stared at me. Her eyes were an intense, unnatural blue, piercing and absorbing.
“Yeah?”
I showed her the license in my wallet, and she pretended to read it. “My name is Jake Abraham. I’m a private detective. I’d like to ask you a few questions.”
“Sure. Come on in.” She stepped aside to allow me to pass. She didn’t ask ‘what is this about?’ She didn’t really seem surprised to see me. Had she been expecting someone? Maybe Nick had told her I was asking about her. I went in and sat down.
“I’d like to ask you about last Friday night. I understand you spent the evening at Dutch’s.”
“That’s right, Detective.” Perhaps she hadn’t questioned me because she thought I was with the police. I didn’t correct her.
“Do you go there regularly?”
“I’ve been there a couple of times. I know one of the bouncers who works there.” She took out a pack of gum, offered me some, and put a stick in her mouth. I declined.
“I’m looking for a missing girl, who you were seen talking to on Friday. I’d appreciate if you could tell me what happened that night.” I put the photograph of Susan on her coffee table.
“Oh my god.” The first spark of emotion I’d seen since I arrived. “Yeah, I was talking to her. I arrived about nine, and she was at the bar. I liked the look of her, so I went over to strike up a conversation.”
“What kind of things did you talk about?”
“Oh, this and that. Anything and everything. We’re both Psych students. She’s at UIC, I’m at De Paul. Anyway, we really hit it off. We talked for a couple of hours, we drank, we danced, and I gave her my phone number.” She smiled. “I wrote it on her hand. Cheesy, I know.”
“Then what happened?”
Her glowing blue eyes looked confused. “What do you mean?” She said.
“Did you leave together?”
“No. I left her at the bar. I’d arranged to meet up with some friends. I asked if she wanted to join us, but she stayed at the bar, ordered another drink.”
“Did you see her talking to anyone else?”
“I glanced over a few times, trying to catch her eye. I did see her talking to someone. An older woman, about thirty, thirty-five. When I left, they were still talking.”
“What time was this?” I asked, taking notes.
“I don’t know. Eleven thirty maybe.”
“Can you describe this woman?”
“I didn’t pay much attention. Shoulder length hair, fairly attractive, white. She had on jeans and a blouse. Redhead, I think”
“Height? Weight?”
“I don’t know. Not fat. About average I guess. She was sitting down, and it was dark. It was hard to tell.”
“Okay, I just have one more question. Your eyes are very blue. Are they...”
She smiled and opened her eyes wider. “Tinted contact lenses. Do you like them?”
“They’re very... striking,” I said.
I thanked Angel and gave her my card. I felt I had really achieved something. Now I was looking for a fairly attractive woman in her early thirties with red hair. That probably narrowed it down to only a few hundred thousand people. Some of them had to have a name starting with W. I headed back to the Saab, and drove to my office, stopping off on the way to cash my retainer check from Patterson.
Chapter 5
The lunchtime traffic and lines at the bank slowed me down, and when I got back to the office and turned on the TV, the afternoon news was reporting the man found dead in his car that morning. His name was Richard West, 28, a stockbroker who worked for one of the big firms downtown. The details the reporter gave were very sketchy. It said the police suspect foul play, and then some more background someone had dug up about the victim. There was no mention of drowning. Probably they didn’t want to start a panic.
As I sat at my desk it suddenly hit me all over again that I was finally doing it. I was working a case. The office had been mine for a little over two weeks, and I’d spent much of that time watching reruns of Columbo and Hawaii Five-O. At one point I worked out that the money my aunt had left me would last about four months and if I didn’t get a case by then I’d have to shut up shop and do something else. There had been some excitement on Thursday when the new edition of the Yellow Pages arrived and I flipped through to find my listing under ‘Private Investigators’. It hid my lack of experience behind large, bold type that said ‘Jake Abraham and Associates’. Only there were no associates. Not even a secretary. Just me.
So far, just me had come up with approximately zip. That meant one of four things. Either Susan Patterson was good at hiding, I was bad at looking, she was being held against her will, or she was being dead against her will. I didn’t much like any of those options, so I phoned Scott to see if the police had found Susan in the last four and a half hours.
“I’m sorry, man. Haven’t checked yet. We’ve been kind of busy here.” said Scott, when I finally got him on the phone.
“Yeah, I saw your guy on the news.”
“Well, now we’ve got anothe
r one.”
“What?”
“Looks like the same perp,” he said
“Another drowning?”
“Gunshot wound to the head. Well, face, to be precise.”
“So how is that the same guy?” I asked.
“There are… other similarities”.
“Are the victims linked?”
“Not as far as we can tell,” replied Scott. “They’re both African-American, but that’s it. Twenty-year-old girl found at first light by joggers on Oak Street Beach. At first, we thought it was a mugging gone bad, but it’s definitely connected. I have to go. I’ll call if I get the chance to ask about your case.” He hung up.
I got out my notebook and found the page with the phone numbers that Lucy had given me. I turned on my PC, waited for it to boot up, and put my phone disc in the DVD drive. When I typed in the first number, it came up with the name Ralph Everett, and an address in Houston. The call to this number was made on Saturday afternoon and lasted forty-five minutes. I guessed this was Denise’s parents, although it could be a brother.
The second call was later that evening, and judging by the code, was made to Boston. It lasted over an hour. The phone disc threw up an address on Marlborough Street, and the name Ben Slater.
The third number produced nothing. I wasn’t very surprised; sixty percent of Americans have unlisted numbers. There are a lot of paranoid people out there, and it just makes it harder for the rest of us to find out who they are, and where they live. Of the remaining thirty-three numbers, only nine were unlisted, and the rest were local. I wrote down the names so I could check them against the guests at Gregory Patterson’s surprise party.
I wanted to find out who Ben Slater was, so I phoned Denise, but she wasn’t answering. After twiddling my thumbs for several minutes, I hit on a plan. I typed the address of Susan’s apartment on West Van Buren into the phone disc and was rewarded with the names and phone numbers of five other people who lived in the building. I dialed the first number, and a woman answered.
“Hello, is that Mrs. Hirsch?”
“Yeah, what do you want?” She sounded hostile. Maybe I was interrupting her daytime soaps.
“My name’s Jake Abraham, I...”
“Are ya selling something, ‘cause I don’t want it.”
“No, I’m a private detective. I’m trying to find a girl who went missing on Friday night. Her name’s Susan Patterson, she lives in your building, apartment 3B.”
“I don’t know nothing about it.”
“Well, actually, I was wondering if you ever heard of someone by the name of Ben Slater.”
“Why, is he a movie star?”
“No. Never mind Mrs. Hirsch. Thanks for your time.”
Mr. Jurgens in 2A had also never heard of Ben Slater, and the third number on my list was busy. I had more luck with my next call, an extremely elderly sounding lady who became very maternal when I mentioned Susan.
“Oh, they are two lovely young girls.” She said, “So polite, and never too loud. I’ve had some trouble with students living next door to me in the past, but never with Susan and Denise.” I wondered how she made it up three flights of stairs. Perhaps she never went out.
“And you say you’ve met Ben Slater.” I reminded her.
“Oh yes, a charming young man, he’s Denise’s boyfriend you know. He’s away at Harvard. A very intelligent young man. I’m not sure whether Susan has a boyfriend at the moment, but she’s such a pretty thing, I’m sure she’s no shortage of suitors. I had my fair share of admirers in my day, you know.”
“I’m sure you did,” I said. “Incidentally, do you happen to know if Denise has a brother?”
“Oh no, I believe she told me they were all girls in her family. Yes, three sisters as I remember. I’m afraid I can’t quite recall their names.”
“That’s O.K,” I said, and thanked her for her help.
I had no reason to call Denise’s father in Houston, and I didn’t feel inclined to drive out to Oak Park to meet Abby Dexter. I could talk to Susan’s ex-girlfriend on the phone, but I would much rather do it in person. I certainly wasn’t about to fly out to Boston on the off chance that Saturday’s phone call was more than a talk between lovers, so instead I called it a day, and decided to go traveling around the greater Chicago area the following morning.
I left the office and walked to my car. It was dusk and the streets were quiet, save for the occasional El train trundling by. When I reached the Saab, I stopped and double checked that I’d got the right car, since mine didn’t usually have two guys leaning on the hood. Somehow, I knew they weren’t just resting there and the bulk of the Glock 17 in the shoulder rig under my left arm gave me enough of a boost to speak first.
“Can I help you gentlemen?”
They both stood. One was about my height and skinny, but with something in his eyes I didn’t like. He looked fast and dangerous without moving at all. The other guy was several inches taller than me and mostly muscle. They both wore suits and I looked for the bulges of guns under their arms but the suits were well tailored and it was hard to tell.
“Jake Abraham?” It was Muscles who spoke. I tensed. How to play this? I wasn’t looking for a fight, but I had the sense I wasn’t going to get much choice in the matter. I tried to recall every Steven Seagal film I’d ever seen, just in case.
“And you are…?” I said, smiling and holding my hand out to shake. I thought it was better than ‘Who wants to know?’ but they didn’t seem to agree. Skinny moved like a flash of light, his hand coming from somewhere inside his jacket and flicking open a switchblade as he swung. It opened up the back of my right hand and somehow, I managed to keep it together enough to bring my left hand down on the bony part of his wrist. He dropped the knife and my hand went to my Glock. I managed to pull it free from its holster, but before I could do anything else Muscles threw a measured right jab that caught me square on the nose and dropped me to the floor. My gun joined the switchblade in the gutter and my eyes filled with water. I was busy recognizing the fact that I was not Steven Seagal when one of them kicked me in the solar plexus. My vision was coming back and I saw his foot go back for another try. I rolled away from the kick, catching it hard on my hip and found myself face to barrel with Muscles’ Beretta. I stopped moving and paid attention. They didn’t say anything, but I think that was what they wanted.
“I told Cicero, now I’m telling you”, said Muscles, through his teeth. “The Patterson situation is not your concern. Leave it alone.”
I was about to nod when Muscles lifted his gun and brought the butt down on my temple. I guess they left after that because when I came round they were gone. My gun and Skinny’s knife were still in the gutter, so I picked them both up and limped to my car.
*****
I got home from the hospital and turned on Monday Night Football just in time to see Clinton Portis somersault into the end zone. The Redskins were up by eleven with twelve minutes to go in the fourth quarter. The Eagles never recovered. My hand wasn’t hurting, mostly because they’d numbed it up to put the stitches in. My nose throbbed, though, and the cut by my left eye had bled all over my shirt. It hadn’t hurt as much as I’d thought it would to get hit, but I still wouldn’t recommend it.
I read a lot of crime fiction. The shelves that line one wall of my apartment carry a few textbooks from my University days, some psych, some criminal science, but most of the space is taken up by mysteries, police procedurals and detective novels – from Conan Doyle to Chandler, Ed McBain to Sara Paretsky. And of course, Robert B. Parker. Spenser was my hero.
If there was one thing I’d learned from reading all these books, it was this: when a gumshoe is threatened with violence if he doesn’t leave a case alone, he’s onto something. I took out my notebook and went over everything I’d learned. It didn’t take long. I don’t know what Muscles and his friend thought I knew, but I was pretty sure they were overestimating me. So now I had a choice to make. Abandon my first case in fear
of my life, or keep stirring the pot and see who else I could piss off. I figured I’d sleep on it and decide in the morning.
Just before six a.m., I was rudely awakened by the phone. I had fallen asleep on the couch, the television still on. My suit was crumpled and my mouth felt like a cat had gone to sleep in it. I reached for the phone, more to stop its noise than to speak to anyone. The voice I heard was Scott’s.
“I’m in a parking garage on Dearborn. Think you should get down here.”
“Scott, it’s not even six o’clock yet.”
“We’ve found your girl. She’s dead.”
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
A note from the author:
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
