by Jude Hardin
Kei discreetly slid the gun back into his pocket.
“I’m afraid we have a problem,” Mr. McFadden said.
“I thought you gave me the only key,” Kei said.
“This is a pass key. It fits all the locks here.”
“So you think you can just waltz on into someone’s apartment anytime you feel like it?” Kei said, realizing to a greater extent how Mr. Cummings must have felt at the nursing home yesterday.
“I saw you drive away a while ago,” Mr. McFadden said. “I didn’t know you’d come back. I was going to leave a note.”
“And what was the note going to say?”
“I did a quick background check, Mr. Thrasher. Frankly, you just don’t meet our acceptance criteria to live here.”
“I gave you a security deposit and the first month’s rent. You can’t just put me out on the street now.”
Mr. McFadden stepped over the threshold and closed the door. “We haven’t deposited the checks you wrote yet,” he said. “I’ll just give them back to you.”
“I don’t have anywhere else to go,” Kei said.
“Where were you staying before?”
“In a storage unit. I can’t go back there. Personal reasons. If you’ll just give me a chance, I’m sure you’ll see that—”
“Where’s your storage unit?”
Kei told him the name of the facility. “You can call the office over there and ask about me,” he said. “I’ve paid the rent on time every month.”
“The rent here is going to be a lot more.”
“I can handle it. Please. Having this place will be a big step toward getting my life back together.”
Mr. McFadden stood there and thought about it for a few seconds. “Personal reasons,” he said. “Anything to do with the shooting in the parking lot the other night?”
“The police said it was probably just a random thing.”
“Yeah. That’s what they told me too. All right. I’m going to give you a chance. There was a time in my life when I needed a break. And I got it, thanks in part to the kindness of a stranger. So I’m going to give you the same kind of break. Maybe you’ll be the best tenant we’ve ever had. I hope so.”
“I’ll try,” Kei said. “Thank you.”
Mr. McFadden looked around. “How’s the cleanup going?”
“I could use a mop and a vacuum.”
“There’s a storage locker downstairs with all that kind of stuff in it. Come by the apartment and I’ll give you the key.”
“Great. I’ll be down there shortly.”
Mr. McFadden nodded, turned and opened the door and stepped back outside. Kei walked over to secure the deadbolt as Mr. McFadden’s footsteps faded toward the stairs.
Kei leaned over and picked his phone up from the floor.
“Ron? You still there?”
He wasn’t. Kei punched in the number Ron had called from, and a woman picked up on the second ring.
“Filmore and Associates Family Medicine. May I help you?”
“I need to speak with Dr. Filmore, please.”
“Are you a patient?”
“No. I’m a friend. We were talking just a few minutes ago.”
“He left to make rounds at the hospital. If you would like to leave a—”
“It’s kind of urgent. Could you give me his cell phone number?”
“I’m afraid I can’t do that, sir. But if you want to leave your name and number, I’ll make sure that he gets the message to call you back.”
Kei gave her his name and number. “Like I said, it’s kind of urgent.”
“I understand. Thank you for calling Filmore and Associates Family Medicine. Have a great day.”
She disconnected.
Kei called the nursing home, asked to speak with the nurse who was taking care of Mr. Brighton Penworth.
“There’s no patient here by that name,” the receptionist said.
“Was he discharged?”
“I’m not at liberty to give out any information about our current or former residents over the phone, sir.”
Kei thought about asking for the administrator in charge, but he knew that he or she would tell him the same thing. No information over the phone.
So he hung up.
There was nothing more he could do except wait for Ron to call back.
He walked downstairs and got the key to the storage locker from Mr. McFadden. As he was mopping the kitchen floor, he noticed a darkened area on the lower left corner of the stove. Just a little smear, as if an artist had dabbed it with a brush. He leaned down and wiped the area with his finger and examined the residue.
There was no way for him to be certain what it was without looking at it under a microscope.
But to the naked eye it looked an awful lot like blood.
12
Kei wiped the residue on a paper towel and sealed it into a zippered plastic storage bag. He washed his hands and continued cleaning the apartment, thinking about Anna and wondering if it was her blood on the bottom of the stove. He was convinced more than ever that something terrible had happened.
Maybe Anna had been kidnapped.
Or worse.
Maybe she had been murdered right there in her own apartment.
Kei tried to remember if she had mentioned having any family in the area. They’d talked about a lot of things on their date, but the subject of parents and siblings had never come up. Not that he could remember.
So he decided to do a little background check of his own. He pulled his tablet computer out of his gym bag and did a search on the name Anna Parks. He got quite a few hits, finally found the one with the correct address and ran it through one of the sites that specialized in background information.
Nothing much there about Anna. Apparently she’d never been in any trouble with the law. She’d never filed bankruptcy, and she’d never gotten married.
But she did have a sister.
Kei guessed it was her sister, anyway. Colleen Parks was three years older than Anna, and the only name listed under Possible Family Members. The address was a town in Oregon that Kei had never heard of. He tried calling the last known phone number, got a recorded message that it was no longer in service.
He was about to call information, but his phone started ringing before he could punch in the numbers.
“Ron?”
“Yeah, it’s me. What happened a while ago?”
“Someone came to my door and I accidentally dropped the phone on the floor. Sorry about that. I tried to call you back, but your receptionist said that you’d already left the office. Anyway, you were saying that it wouldn’t do me any good to go back to the nursing home today. I called over there, but—”
“Then you know.”
“The person I talked to wouldn’t tell me anything over the phone, just that there’s no patient by that name currently residing at the facility.”
“Brighton Penworth died last night,” Ron said.
“He died?”
“Yeah. It’s probably a good thing you never went to his room.”
“What happened?”
“I’d rather not discuss it over the phone.”
Kei took a deep breath. “Okay,” he said. “I understand.”
“I need to get back to my office,” Ron said. “Maybe we can meet for a cup of coffee sometime.”
“Sure. So are we cool about what happened yesterday?”
“I don’t know if you remember this, but you stayed up all night and helped me cram for the final in that anatomy lab we were in together. I probably wouldn’t have made it through without your help. I’m not going to report you for what you did at the nursing home yesterday, but I wouldn’t advise ever trying anything like that again.”
“I won’t,” Kei said. “Thank you. Just let me know when you want to meet for coffee. In fact, let’s make it lunch. My treat.”
“Okay. Talk to you later.”
Ron clicked off.
Kei continued clean
ing the apartment. It was after five-thirty and almost dark outside by the time he decided to stop for the day. The place still wasn’t exactly spic-and-span, but it was a lot better than it had been when he started. He took the mop and the bucket and the vacuum cleaner back down to the storage locker, and then he returned Mr. McFadden’s key. He was carrying bags of trash out to the dumpster when it suddenly occurred to him that he hadn’t eaten anything all day.
He was starving.
Kei was very hungry, but he was also very tired. Maybe tomorrow he would buy some food to put in the refrigerator, and maybe even some cheap pots and pans to cook it with. But not tonight.
He untied the trash bags, ferreted through them, found the partial pizza box he’d thrown away earlier.
No name, no phone number, just the logo and the slogan.
Pizza sounded good. In fact, the more Kei thought about it, the better it sounded. He hadn’t had any in a long time. He figured the movers wouldn’t have driven their big truck to go pick up a food order, which meant that the place probably delivered there to the complex.
Kei slung the trash bags into the dumpster, walked back up to his apartment and ran a search for pizza places in the area. He scrolled down past the big chain stores, and there it was.
Fat man in an apron.
IT’S PIPING HOT!
Stottolini’s.
The name of the place was Stottolini’s.
Kei called the number, and a recorded message instructed him to please hold for the next available pizza associate.
“Or—for even faster service—you can place your order through our new website. Open an online account today and get your next pizza absolutely free!”
Kei had never heard of Stottolini’s, but he liked the idea of supporting a local business, a small independent trying to make a go of it, and he liked the idea of getting a free pizza next time. He disconnected, found the website, answered a few survey questions and opened an account with his prepaid credit card. He ordered a medium with everything, got a message that it would be at his door in approximately forty-five minutes.
Kei tried to get in touch with Anna’s sister while he waited, but the information operator could only find one person in that part of Oregon with the last name of Parks, a man named Everett.
Nobody by that name had been listed as a possible relative in any of the search data Kei had seen, but he figured it was worth a try.
A man answered on the second ring.
“May I speak to Mr. Everett Parks?” Kei said.
“Speaking.”
“Hello, Mr. Parks. My name is Kei Thrasher, and—”
“I’m not interested. Thanks anyway.”
The man hung up. He must have thought that Kei was a telemarketer.
Kei tried the number again, and the call went to voicemail.
Kei left a message. Immediately after he clicked off, someone knocked on the door. Kei switched on the porch light, looked through the peephole, saw a woman standing there with her back to the door. She had a cell phone in one hand and a pizza box in the other. The phone was pressed against her ear. She was talking to someone, but Kei couldn’t hear what she was saying. Long black ponytail, red nylon jacket with the Stottolini’s logo printed on the back. Her hair and the shape of her shoulders reminded Kei of Anna.
But it couldn’t be her.
Could it?
She clicked off, slid the phone into one of her front pants pockets.
Kei opened the door, and the woman turned around.
Part 2
Retro
1
Camden A. Retro is not my real name.
But nobody needs to know that.
In fact, it’s imperative that my true identity remains a secret.
I was working for a secret government agency when everything went sour. My cover was blown, and they put me in something similar to the Federal Witness Protection Program, only their version includes extensive plastic surgery and the manipulation of police and FBI fingerprint databases. They gave me a new name and a new face. They made me look ten years younger. Now, for all practical purposes, I am somebody else.
I’ve seen some pictures, and I look a lot like the guy I’m supposed to be. Apparently he was recruited by the agency and underwent some cosmetic changes of his own. So it’s not like there are two of us walking around. I’m him now, and he’s another person. Anyway, the agency said they’ll never put us anywhere near each other, so it shouldn’t be an issue.
I don’t know if I’ll ever get to see my family again.
According to the agency, they’re in another part of the country, and they’ve also been given new identities. All this for their own good, I’ve been told.
And for mine.
For our safety.
I’ve been told it’s the only reason we’re still alive.
So now I’m a retired police officer living in a town called Amberjack Heights on the Gulf Coast of Florida, about a hundred and fifty miles south of Tampa. It’s everything you would expect in a Florida coastal municipality with a population of 20,000: white sand beaches, palm trees lining the thoroughfares, lots of stucco and Spanish tile. The agency said I could do anything I wanted to, within reason, as long as I didn’t tell anyone my real name or try to get in touch with my family. They said I could work if I wanted to, as long as I chose something that fit in with my new personal history. My legend, as they like to call it.
So I chose something that I used to be pretty good at.
2
The call came on Tuesday at 1:40 p.m.
I sat there and stared at the phone on my desk for a few seconds, thinking it was probably a wrong number, or a bill collector, or maybe someone trying to sell something. The landline had been installed almost two months ago—the same day I had opened for business—and for almost two months it had been a very nice dust collector. Black, rotary dial, springy coiled cable connecting the base to the handset. It was exactly the kind of thing you would expect to see in the office of a private investigator named Retro, along with a metal file cabinet and an oscillating steel fan and half a bottle of bourbon.
There was a dark gray fedora hanging on a rack in the corner, a nifty little accent I’d found at the men’s clothing store across the street. I’d ordered a matching trench coat, but it hadn’t come in yet.
The phone rang a fourth time, and then a fifth.
It never crossed my mind that it might actually be my first client.
I picked up the receiver.
“Retro,” I said.
“Is this the Camden A. Retro Detective Agency?”
“Yes.”
“I’ve never hired a private investigator before, so I’m not sure where to start.”
I grabbed a pencil and a legal pad.
“You can start by telling me your name,” I said.
“Everett Parks. I think my daughter has been kidnapped.”
“What makes you think that, Mr. Parks?”
“She’s missing, and she’s not answering her phone.”
“When you say missing—”
“She quit her job and moved out of her apartment. Just disappeared.”
“When was the last time you talked to your daughter?” I said.
There was a long pause.
“We really don’t talk much,” Parks said. “This all started with a message on my cell phone. Some guy named Thrasher. Said he was a friend of Anna’s.”
“What exactly did this guy named Thrasher say?” I said.
“I can play you the message if you want me to.”
“Could you come to my office and play it?”
“I’m afraid that’s not possible,” he said. “I’m calling from Oregon.”
“Oregon?”
“It’s a long story. I moved down here from Seattle to be closer to my other daughter and her husband, but then they got divorced and—”
“Okay,” I said. “Go ahead and play the message over the phone.”
Parks pl
ayed the message.
“Hello. This is Kei Thrasher again. I’m not trying to sell anything. I’m friends with a woman named Anna Parks in Florida, and I haven’t heard from her in a few days. She quit her job and moved out of her apartment, and she’s not returning my calls. Frankly, I’m very concerned at this point. Please give me a call at this number. Thank you.”
“I hung up on him the first time he called,” Parks said. “I didn’t know it was about Anna. Apparently this Thrasher fellow knew her pretty well.”
“Did you try to call him back?” I said.
“Of course. Right away. But he never would answer his phone. It just kept going to voicemail. I left a bunch of messages. It’s been a few days, and he still hasn’t returned my calls.”
He gave me Thrasher’s number, in case I wanted to try it myself.
“Have you talked to anyone else regarding the matter of your daughter’s disappearance?” I said.
“Yes. I called the supermarket where she worked. They told me that Anna had sent in a letter of resignation via email. Then I called the sheriff’s department, and they transferred me to a detective named Hollinger.”
“And?”
“I filed a report. I told him everything I’m telling you right now. But I watch the news on TV, Mr. Retro. I read the papers. I know how these things play out a lot of times. Anna and I have had our differences. We haven’t been close for the past few years, but I want to do whatever I can to help find her. If I could only talk to her one more time and tell her how sorry I am. If I could only—”
Parks stopped talking. I could tell by his voice that he was starting to get emotional. I gave him a minute to regain his composure.
I wondered if he had done his homework. Maybe he knew that Camden A. Retro had spent eighteen years as a Denver police officer, and had finished his last two in a sleepy little town just west of the Kansas border. Maybe he knew that Camden A. Retro had retired and moved to Florida seventeen months ago. Maybe he knew that Camden A. Retro’s parents were deceased, that Camden A. Retro had never been married, and that Camden A. Retro didn’t have any children. No brothers or sisters, no cousins or aunts or uncles. Maybe he knew that Camden A. Retro was forty-three years old and all alone in the world. Maybe he knew everything about me. The new me, that is. It’s all online and impressively convincing for anyone who wants to look it up.
