Brain Trust

by A W Hartoin

  “Blankenship likes me,” I said.

  Shill looked doubtful and I could see his point. A sociopath with psychotic features didn’t really like people as a general rule.

  “No, it’s true. He thinks I belong to him and he wants to protect me,” I said.

  “From who?”

  “One of your friends.”

  “I don’t have friends,” said Shill.

  I laughed. “That I can easily believe. How about accomplices? You have those.”

  Shill began shifting in his seat. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Sure, you do. Blankenship told me and the only reason the cops aren’t here right now is that I haven’t told them what I know.”

  The color came back up in Shill’s cheeks and I informed him that Blankenship confessed to being his accomplice in Cassidy Huff’s murder. “When did you meet Blankenship?”

  “I’m not going to tell you that.”

  I shrugged. “Fine. He’ll tell me. Let me remind you that he’s serving multiple life terms for Tulio with no chance of parole. He has nothing to lose, except me, and he doesn’t want to lose me.”

  Shill muttered “shit” under his breath. “How do I know you won’t tell the cops what I say?”

  “You don’t.”

  He sneered, “Then why should—”

  Fats grabbed his face with one enormous hand and drove his head back against the chair. He scratched at her arm, but the woman was smothering him with one hand. “You want to ask that question again?” she hissed in his ear.

  “Let’s not kill our lead, Mary Elizabeth,” I said, calmer than I felt. I’d seen some stuff, but I’d never seen anyone like Fats Licata.

  “He deserves it for Cassidy alone. Who knows who else he’s attacked.” She let him go and he went facedown on the table, gasping.

  “I agree, but for now, let’s see what he has for us.”

  “What do you want to know?” Shill whispered.

  “We all know you killed Cassidy, poor girl, but I’m more interested in who you told about it,” I said.

  Shill looked at me, still breathing hard but genuinely puzzled. “I didn’t tell anyone.”

  “Come on, you told the other Unsubs.”

  “But that was before—” He clammed up and I smiled. “Before they let you play in their reindeer games?”

  “I don’t know—”

  Fats slapped both hands on the table, making Shill and I jump. “Boy, I’m about to go Fibonacci on your ass.”

  “Yeah.” Shill slumped in the chair. “2002 was before.”

  “So when did Blankenship let you in?”

  “Blankenship? That son of a bitch.” Shill jolted out of his chair and began pacing. “That fucking son of a bitch.”

  Ding. Ding. Ding.

  “You didn’t know he was in the Unsubs. Interesting,” said Fats. “He dicked you around, porkpie.”

  Shill glared at her. “I didn’t need them.”

  “But you joined,” I said. “When?”

  He got all shifty-eyed.

  “When?” yelled Fats.

  “2004,” he said reluctantly.

  “If Blankenship didn’t bring you in, who did?” I asked.

  Shill brightened up. “Josef Mayer.”

  The name sounded vaguely familiar and he came up with it so fast I knew it wasn’t important. Just the date. Why the date?

  I yawned and then said, “You’re boring me. Fats, should we give this to my dad or to Chuck?”

  “Give what? Chuck who? I gave you what I have,” insisted Shill.

  “I doubt that,” said Fats.

  Shill’s face flamed and he glared at me. “You’re not better than your father. I bested Tommy Watts. A pair of knockers isn’t going to get me.”

  Fats grabbed him by the throat and threw him into the china cabinet, rattling the dishes and cracking the glass. “Who’s in the Unsubs? Name them.”

  “I don’t know their names,” he burst out. “If she knows anything, she knows that’s true.”

  I nodded. “It is. But someone in the group is posing as you.”

  Shill’s mouth flew open. “Who?”

  I told him about Blankenship’s visitor and asked, “So who was that?”

  He flopped into his chair. “Son of a bitch.”

  “Who was it?”

  Shill held up his palms. “I don’t know. I didn’t tell anyone anything. No details.”

  “Except Blankenship,” I said.

  “Not even him. You’ve got to compartmentalize. He’s the same.”

  That’s why Dad couldn’t break him.

  “You don’t know where Cassidy’s body is,” I said.

  “Yeah, your father, what a snotty piece of shit he is. Always thought he could get it out of me. Dumb ass. Never, ever knew about Blankenship, did he?”

  “No, he didn’t,” I said. “But you are so going to prison again.”

  He gripped the table. “So you got Blankenship. He’s in Hunt, so he’s as crazy as a shit house rat. Waylon said you gotta have a body. You’ve got no body and Blankenship made sure you’ll never find one.”

  Waylon?

  “So you’re not worried?” I asked.

  “No,” he said with his chin tilted up.

  I put Wallace on the floor and steepled my fingers. “I suppose we don’t have a body, but we do have the guy who disposed of the body. That’s good enough to reopen the case.”

  “You’ll never find a trace,” he said. “You know what? I don’t believe you. Blankenship didn’t tell you crap. He wouldn’t.”

  “He wouldn’t tell me he put Cassidy through a wood chipper?” I think Shill threw up in his mouth a little and it gave me great pleasure.

  I was going to ask him about Waylon when he let out a shriek and jumped sideways. “Your damn dog peed on me.”

  Fats burst into laughter and I said, “Yeah, she does that. I thought it might be a sign of affection, but I guess not.”

  “I will fucking kill that dog.” Shill drew back his foot and Fats snatched him up by his throat. He danced on his tiptoes and she said in a low voice, “We don’t hurt dogs or girls. Didn’t your mother teach you anything?”

  “Who do you think taught me the value of a scream?” he choked out.

  Fats dropped him like he’d sprouted boils and he fell in the pee, slipping around and cursing.

  “Just when you think this turd can’t get any more disgusting,” she said.

  “Tell me about it,” I said, coming around the table and picking up my favorite incontinent pug, just in case. Wallace had been kicked more than enough. “Who’s Waylon?” I asked Shill.

  “Waylon?”

  “You said ‘Waylon said you gotta have a body.’ Waylon who?”

  Shill didn’t answer. He bolted. We were so surprised, it took us a moment to react and that’s all it took. Shill ran up the stairs and into a back bedroom. Fats and I got there just in time to see a heavy door close. The turd had a panic room. Just my luck.

  Fats pounded on the door. “Dammit! I should’ve beat him when I had the chance.”

  “I’d rather you didn’t beat information out of people,” I said.

  “Really?” she said with a bucketful of doubt.

  “Most people. If we see this guy again, go ahead and beat him.”

  She frowned. “See him again? Aren’t we going to wait him out?”

  “Why bother? He’s not going anywhere and we have plenty to go on,” I said, leaving the room and jogging down the stairs.

  “Wait,” she yelled. “What have we got? This Waylon guy?”

  “And the dates,” I said. “Aaron!”

  He didn’t answer, but I followed the smell of happiness to a gourmet kitchen that was as spotless as the rest of the house.

  Aaron stood at an enormous Blue Star range with three skillets going at once. By the smells, I’d say sausages, bacon, eggs, and oddly, baked beans.

  “What the hell are you doing?” I ask
ed.

  He flipped an egg without the aid of a spatula. “You’re hungry.”

  “This isn’t our house.”

  Aaron shrugged and shook the sausage pan.

  “Not yet,” said Fats with a wicked grin.

  “What?” I asked.

  “It’s not our house yet.”

  I gave her a sideways glance. “You worry me.”

  “This house was meant for me.”

  “How much do you make? This sucker’s got to be about 1.5 million.”

  She licked her lips slowly, tasting her future success. “He won’t be selling it for that.”

  “What are you going to do?” I asked and then quickly said, “Never mind. It’s better if I don’t know.”

  Fats got out plates and silverware. “Give me some credit.”

  “I think I am.” I sat down and sniffed a glass of orange juice that Fats poured for me.

  “He’s not going to poison his own orange juice,” said Fats. “Paranoid much?”

  Aaron began plating a full English breakfast, complete with tomato and bread fried in bacon fat, but no blood pudding. Thank goodness.

  Curiosity got the better of me and I asked, “What credit do you think I’m supposed to be giving you?”

  “I plan to get this house legally and soon.”

  I took a deep breath, sucking in the meaty steam. “How will you do that?”

  “You know he killed his parents, right?”

  I gagged on my first bite of sausage. “Where’d you get that?”

  “You think a lawyer would leave his house to his piece of shit raping son?”

  “There’s no accounting for parents. Mine? Not a chance. But Blankenship’s parents are still trying to see him and they don’t get much worse.”

  “I’m telling you. This house? No. He killed them before they could disinherit him and you can’t inherit from the people you murdered.” Fats inhaled her fry-up as Aaron stood at the island, watching with hands clasped.

  “I’m not so sure Shill’s parents were as against his crimes as you think. You heard him about the mother,” I said.

  “She might’ve been what he implied, but he still killed them. Trust me.”

  “The family will inherit and sell. They’ll want the money.”

  She snorted. “Yeah, there’s a hot market for murder houses. I bet he killed them here and who knows who else.”

  I shivered but managed to push the murder house thing out of my mind and eat myself into a stupor. Wallace ate so much sausage she passed out and started gassing in the middle of the floor. Fats cleared my place and efficiently cleaned up after Aaron, who was watching me expectantly. I finally gave in and said, “It was fabulous.”

  Fats started scrubbing the pans while whistling Beethoven’s Fifth.

  “For crying out loud, Shill can clean that up,” I said.

  “I’m not leaving my house a mess.”

  “You are too bizarre.”

  “True, but I’m right,” she said. “I’ll make you a deal.”

  Not a deal. I get screwed on deals.

  “What kind of deal?” I asked.

  “I’ll square you with Calpurnia if you help me get this house.”

  “I like the idea of not owing her, but don’t you think if Shill killed his parents, somebody would’ve noticed?”

  “Not necessarily.”

  “Where do you suggest we start with an eight-year-old double-murder that isn’t thought to be a murder?” I asked.

  “You’re the brains of our little operation. Figure it out.” She dried her hands and put my hat on my head. “Where to next?”

  “Hospital,” I said. “My mom’s got evals to do and I should be there.”

  “And after that?”

  I got up and dragged Aaron away from the Subzero fridge. “Come on, nutter. I’ve got a job for you.”

  He tried to return to the fridge. “Still hungry?”

  “Not even a little bit, but I want you to make me something I’ll hate.”

  Aaron rubbed his hands together and went up on the balls of his feet. “Crab.”

  “Worse. Seafood stew.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  I’D NEVER MADE Aaron so happy. When we dropped him off at Kronos, he was humming. This didn’t bode well for me and I was starting to have some serious second thoughts.

  “It’s too late,” said Fats.

  “Well…”

  She turned toward the hospital and raised an eyebrow at me. “Why did you ask for it in the first place? Don’t you hate seafood?”

  “More than I can say.”

  “So…”

  “I have to go back out to Hunt.” My stomach twisted in anticipation.

  “What for? You said we’ve got a lot to go on.”

  “We do, but I don’t think it’s enough to get my dad out of Homeland Security’s clutches.”

  Fats applied a fresh coat of lip gloss and redid the bun on top of her head during a stoplight, managing to look fresh and fabulous, not like she’d just smacked around a murderer. I didn’t look in the mirror. It wouldn’t be a good thing.

  “You could try it,” she said.

  “I could, but I don’t want to. They’re holding onto my father for a reason and it’s something to do with Mom’s attack. I’m not sure they’ll follow the trail if it leads where they don’t want to go.”

  “Makes sense. What do you think Blankenship has that you can trade?”

  “More Unsubs. They may have been anonymous, but they showed each other proof.”

  “Speaking of proof.” Fats told the truck to play the news and we were rewarded with a breaking story out of Kansas. An anonymous source was credited with leading the FBI to a serial killer’s burial site. Over thirty remains had been recovered so far, men, women, and children. No names were being released to the public. It should’ve made me feel good. People would be getting answers. Whoever did it would likely be caught. But I didn’t feel good. I felt overwhelmingly sad. There were people in that field, lives stolen. Until I heard it on the news, it didn’t feel real. The horror of it was far away. Being far away allowed me to think of it as a triumph for me instead of a tragedy for so many others. Not anymore.

  “I don’t know what to hope for,” said Fats.

  I whipped off my stupid floppy hat. Who cared if I looked ridiculous? It wouldn’t be the first or the last time. “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “I was hoping that Blankenship would give you good stuff. Now…I don’t know. This is horrible.”

  I leaned on my door and looked at her. Fats worked for Calpurnia and she was obviously no stranger to violence, receiving and dishing it out, but this disturbed her. I couldn’t reconcile the two.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” she said, tucking a wisp of hair back up into her bun.

  “Oh, yeah?”

  “You’re thinking that I, too, know where the bodies are buried and this shouldn’t bother me.”

  “It’s occurred to me that you’ve probably killed people,” I said.

  She gave me her wicked grin. “In the words of Arnie, ‘But they were all bad.’”

  “What the what?”

  Fats rolled her eyes as she turned into the hospital. “You wound me. True Lies. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s wife asks him if he’s ever killed anyone and he says, ‘Yeah, but they were all bad.’”

  “I’ve never seen it,” I said.

  She gasped. The woman actually gasped over an ancient Arnold movie. “Tell me you’ve seen Conan the Barbarian.”

  “The new one or the old one?”

  “Either.”

  “Neither,” I said and was rewarded with another gasp.

  “What have you been doing with your time?” asked Fats.

  I tossed my hat into the backseat. “Chasing psychos, usually. Sometimes, I get to be a nurse.”

  “Your education is woefully inadequate.”

  “If you say so.” I reached for the door handle to get out and Fats grabbed m
y arm. “How about Dune or Excalibur?”

  “Are you sure you’re not a dude?” I asked.

  She punched me in the shoulder, ramming me into the door. “I mastered in movie watching. What does Chuck watch? I hope you’re not forcing him to watch girly stuff with petticoats and tea.”

  “He’s into Hill Street Blues right now.”

  “Oh, my god.”

  “I know. It’s kind of a nightmare, but it’s been worse,” I said.

  “How?” she asked in a low, horrified voice.

  “He went through a Kojak phase and—”

  Fats squeezed my arm. “Don’t say it.”

  “Chips.”

  “You want me to punch him?” she asked.

  “Thinking about it,” I said. “I’ll call after Mom’s therapy stuff.”

  She nodded and I dashed into the hospital. To my dismay, five reporters were there to greet me and security wasn’t happy when they pulled out their cameras. There was yelling about filming on hospital property and I ran to the stairs when a guard blocked them. “Thanks!” I yelled over my shoulder. All I heard in response was, “Miss Watts, just a few questions about Kansas.”

  The door to the stairs slammed behind me. What the hell? Kansas? Somebody leaked that I was the anonymous source? Fan-freaking-tastic.

  I ran up the stairs muttering, “I hate the FBI. I hate the FBI.”

  When I pushed the door to Mom’s floor open, I was breathing so hard I needed an oxygen tank. My body wasn’t the Stairmaster type and it showed. Big time. Normally, I wouldn’t have minded, but I had an audience for my gasping and it wasn’t good.

  I stumbled onto the floor to find Chuck, Sydney, the FBI agents, and a couple uniforms at the elevators. I tried to lurch past them, but Chuck had the nerve to snag me. “What happened?”

  “Let. Go.”

  “Mercy, what is it?”

  I waved a finger around. “All. You. Bastards.”

  Then I gave him a stinging smack on the hand and he yelled, “Ouch! What is your deal?”

  I sucked in a shuddering breath and turned on Hatchet Nose. “You sleazy son of a bitch. First, you renege on our deal, then you leak me to the press.”

  Hatchet Nose’s usually bland face went to shock mode. It was brief, but I caught it.