by Jude Hardin
“Camden Alan Retro,” I said.
“And you’re a private investigator?”
“Yes. I was hired to find a woman named Anna Parks.”
“Who hired you?”
“Everett Parks. Anna’s father. He’s in Oregon. A man named Kei Thrasher left him a voicemail saying that Anna had moved out of her apartment and quit her job and wasn’t answering her phone.”
“Thrasher was in here last week,” Detective Hollinger said. “He was telling me the same thing. And then Everett Parks called here too. And this morning the couple who manages the apartment complex where Anna Parks lived came in and showed me a security video. Apparently Mr. Thrasher had rented the same apartment Ms. Parks had been living in before she moved. The video shows him leaving the complex with a woman in a black SUV last Thursday.”
“And he hasn’t been seen since then,” I said.
“Right. And now you’re here. But there’s no evidence of foul play. Not being seen is not a crime.”
“It is if you’re on parole.”
“That’s true. And if Thrasher fails to check in with his PO, the appropriate agencies will be notified. Otherwise, he’s free to go about his business. As long as he’s not breaking the law, of course.”
“What if I were to tell you that he bought a gun?” I said.
“Did he?”
“I think he might have. I don’t know for sure.”
“What makes you think that he might have bought a gun?”
“I went through the trash that was taken out of the apartment. Found a receipt for a box of thirty-eight caliber cartridges.”
“Do you still have the receipt?”
“Yeah.”
I pulled it out of my pocket and handed it to him. I hadn’t found it in the trash, of course. I’d bought some shells for myself last week when I went to one of the local firing ranges to practice. But Hollinger didn’t need to know that. All he needed to know was that Thrasher had committed a felony. I would have told him the truth, but I didn’t want to get Desmond in trouble. Bartenders tend to be good sources of information. I figured he might be able to help me again someday.
“Whoever bought these shells paid cash,” Hollinger said. “So even if it was Thrasher, there’s no way to tie him to this receipt. And this is a big store. Dozens of customers every day. It’s not likely that the clerk who rang up the sale is going to remember a face. But I’ll put the receipt in Thrasher’s file, and I’ll notify his PO of the potential violation.”
“I thought you might be able to help me find Thrasher,” I said. “He got this whole thing started when he made the call to Anna’s father, so—”
“There’s still no concrete evidence that a crime was committed. And concrete evidence is what I would need to launch an investigation from this office. Kei Thrasher is a grown man, and Anna Parks is a grown woman. They’re allowed to ditch their jobs and move away and not answer their phones if they want to. Except for the parole thing with Thrasher. I’ll check into that. Otherwise, there’s not much I can do.”
My cell phone vibrated in my pocket. I let it go to voicemail. I thanked Detective Hollinger for his time, stood and shook his hand. He told me to let him know if I came up with anything that he could use. I told him that I would. I exited the office, gave the duty officer a nod on my way out of the building.
I walked to my car, opened the door, climbed in and slid the key into the ignition. I reached into my pocket and pulled out my cell phone and listened to the message. It was from Mrs. McFadden. She sounded frantic. Out of breath. She told me to call her right away.
So I did.
She answered on the first ring.
“I think I saw the vehicle Mr. Thrasher left the parking lot in,” she said. “It was black, and the fender was dented, just like the one in the video.”
“Where did you see it?” I said.
“I was stopped at a red light. It was in front of me, but a couple of lanes over. I couldn’t see the driver, but I had a clear view of the license plate.”
She told me the tag number.
“I’ll check it out,” I said.
And I did.
11
As it turned out, the black SUV was registered to a man named Brighton Penworth.
Who, as it turned out, was dead.
He’d died in a nursing home last Wednesday, the night before Kei Thrasher disappeared. So maybe it was a different SUV. Mrs. McFadden had based the identification on the dented bumper, but there were probably plenty of similarly dented bumpers on plenty of similar vehicles in a town the size of Amberjack Heights.
I decided to do a little research, even though I knew it would probably be a waste of time. You can never be sure until you’re sure. Sometimes the information you need is in the place you least expect it to be. I’d learned that a long time ago, when I was a different person living a different life.
Brighton Penworth had been a professor of neuroscience at the University of Florida. He’d retired seven years ago. He’d published two books, along with numerous articles in a variety of well-respected journals. He seemed to be especially interested in the effects of toxins on the human brain, everything from naturally occurring substances like arsenic to the complex chemical formulas used to produce commercial pesticides.
Penworth’s obituary was vague regarding the cause of his death. All it said was that he’d died after a brief illness. He had never been married, and he didn’t have any children. He was survived by one brother and two nephews and a grandniece. There was a list of places where donations could be sent in lieu of flowers.
I recognized one of those places.
It was the same nonprofit organization I’d seen in the Stottolini’s ad earlier.
I told myself it was probably just a coincidence. I told myself that, but I didn’t really believe it. I’d gone my entire life without ever being aware of this particular organization, and now I’d run across it twice on the same day.
Anna Parks. The SUV with the dented bumper. Brighton Penworth. Stottolini’s Pizza. Kei Thrasher. All connected, somehow. I just didn’t know how.
So what young woman would have driven Penworth’s SUV to the apartment complex the day after he died? And why would that same young woman have handed over the keys to Kei Thrasher in the parking lot?
I needed to find Thrasher and talk to him.
Which meant I needed to find the woman he’d left with.
Which meant that I needed to find that black SUV.
Was it the one Mrs. McFadden had spotted in traffic earlier? I still didn’t know for sure. Brighton Penworth owned that one. Which seemed strange for a nursing home patient. If he was unable to take care of himself, why would he need a car? Then it occurred to me that his condition might have come on suddenly. Maybe a month ago Penworth had still been driving the SUV himself.
I was still at the sheriff’s department substation. Still sitting in my car in the parking lot. Over the past few minutes several cruisers had pulled into the reserved spaces near the front of the building. It was almost three o’clock. Time for shift change. The address on Penworth’s vehicle registration was about ten miles south of my current position. I decided to head on over there before the traffic got any worse.
It took me about forty-five minutes to get to the house. It was a nice place. Two story brick. Columns in the front. Three car garage. The lot was huge. Several acres. There were neighbors on both sides, but they weren’t close enough to ever be a bother. I parked across the street and climbed out of my car and followed the walkway to the front porch. The house was close to the beach. I couldn’t see the water, but I could hear it. There weren’t any cars in the driveway. I rang the bell. Waited. Rang the bell again. A middle-aged man answered the door. He was dressed in a dark blue suit. White shirt, no tie.
“Can I help you?” he said.
I handed him a business card.
“I’m looking for a woman named Anna Parks,” I said.
“There�
�s nobody here by that name.”
“She was driving a vehicle registered to this address.”
“There must be some mistake.”
“I don’t think so,” I said. “I have a security video from last Thursday that shows her leaving the apartment complex where she used to live. A man named Kei Thrasher was with her. She handed him the keys, and he drove. Black SUV with a dented bumper.”
I pulled out my notebook and told him the tag number. The one Mrs. McFadden had given me. I was bluffing. I didn’t really think that Anna Parks was the woman in the video. But I did think that Kei Thrasher was the man, and that the SUV leaving the parking lot was the one registered to Brighton Penworth. Because of the Stottolini’s connection—the jacket the woman had been wearing, and the nonprofit organization named in the Amberjack Nights advertisement and the online obituary for Penworth.
But it was all just guesswork. I really didn’t know anything for sure. If the man in the dark blue suit had given me one good reason why the SUV registered to Brighton Penworth couldn’t possibly have been the one in the video, then I would have apologized for bothering him and I would have thanked him for his time, and then I would have been on my way.
But he didn’t give me one good reason why the SUV registered to Brighton Penworth couldn’t have possibly been the one in the video. Instead, he gave me several good answers to several of the questions I’d been asking myself.
“Professor Penworth’s grandniece was driving the SUV that night,” he said. “I told her she could use it. She’d flown down here for the funeral, and I didn’t see any reason why she should have to rent a car.”
The grandniece. That made sense.
“And she’s friends with Kei Thrasher?” I said.
“Yes. She’s a doctor. They went to medical school together. She wanted to spend some time with him while she was in town, so she invited him to come over here.”
“Why was she wearing a jacket from Stottolini’s Pizza?” I said.
“Sorry. I should have introduced myself. My name is Carlo Stottolini. I own the restaurant. The jacket was probably in the back seat of the SUV. She must have gotten cold and put it on.”
“Any idea why Kei Thrasher isn’t answering his phone?” I said.
“No. But he’s here if you would like to ask him.”
“I would like that very much. Thank you.”
“Come on in.”
He held the door open while I stepped into the foyer. The inside of the house was just as nice as the outside. Wood floors, vaulted ceilings, crystal chandeliers. Original artwork on the walls, antiques everywhere. I wondered how a college professor could have afforded such a place.
“Looks like Professor Penworth did all right for himself,” I said.
“Actually, this is my house,” Stottolini said. “Brighton Penworth and I were close friends. We’d known each other for a long time. When he retired, I asked him if he wanted to move down here and share the house with me.”
“How did that work out?”
“It worked out fine. There’s obviously plenty of room here, so it’s not like we were getting in each other’s way or anything.”
I nodded. “It certainly is a nice place,” I said.
“Thank you. I would show you around, but the upstairs is a mess right now. Kei and Bailey are up there. They’ve been staying up late and then sleeping all day.”
“Bailey. That’s the grandniece?”
“Yes. She works nights in the ER, so it’s the schedule she’s used to. Anyway, I heard the shower a while ago, so I think they’re up. Have a seat and I’ll go see.”
He motioned toward the formal living room. I headed that way, and he turned and started climbing the stairs to the second floor. I looked around for a few seconds, and then I sat in an armchair by the fireplace and used my phone to run a search on Bailey. I didn’t know for sure that her last name was Penworth, but I figured it was. Brighton Penworth’s brother had two sons, according to the obituary I’d read, and one of those sons had a daughter. So it followed that her name would be Penworth, unless she’d gotten married. Which I doubted. Not with med school and residencies and working nights and partying with former classmates and everything. So I figured she was still using her maiden name. And I was right. Dr. Bailey Penworth. Twenty-eight years old. Board certified in emergency medicine and neurosurgery. She worked at a Level One trauma center up in Maine. There was a photograph of her on the hospital’s website. She was wearing a white lab coat. There was a stethoscope draped around the back of her neck. She had a nice smile. She was a very attractive young lady.
But something was wrong.
She hadn’t gone to the same medical school that Kei Thrasher had gone to.
Carlo Stottolini had lied about that. I wondered what else he had lied about. Maybe everything.
I set my phone down and reached under my coat to unsnap the safety strap on my holster. My hand was still in motion when I felt something very cold and very sharp pierce the right side of my neck.
And then I didn’t feel anything at all.
12
I woke up on a narrow mattress in a cage constructed of chain-link fencing, my wrists and ankles bound with nylon cable ties. Someone had taken my clothes. All I had on was one of those gowns they make you wear in the hospital. I sat up and looked around. The cage was like a big cube, probably about fifteen feet on each side. It had been built inside some kind of warehouse. Concrete floor, metal walls, metal roof. The fluorescent fixtures hanging from the ceiling were off, but patches of sunlight bleeding in through the ventilation fans allowed me to see well enough to discern the shapes of things. Plywood partitions way off to the right, an electric forklift plugged into a charging outlet and some shelves stacked with jugs on pallets way off to the left. There was a gate on the cage, secured with a chain and a padlock. I was on a gurney, the kind they use in ambulances. There was another one just like it on the other side of the cage. Someone was lying on it. A man. I could tell by the shape of his body. Broad shoulders, narrow hips. He was very tall. I figured his legs would probably hang off the end of the mattress if he stretched out all the way. His back was to me, and there was a blanket wrapped tightly around him. He’d been catheterized. There was a urinary drainage bag hooked to the side of his gurney. It was about half full. I could see that he was breathing.
“Hey,” I shouted.
The man rolled over.
“You’re awake,” he said.
“Where are we?”
“I don’t know. A woman came to my apartment and knocked on my door a few days ago. I thought she was delivering a pizza. She pulled a gun on me and forced me to walk out to the parking lot with her. She gave me a set of keys and—”
“Are you Kei Thrasher?” I said.
“Yes. How did you know that?”
“My name is Cam Retro. I’m a private investigator. I was hired to find a woman named Anna Parks. I understand she was a friend of yours.”
“Her father called you?”
“Right. He told me you’d left a message on his phone.”
“They abducted me before I could talk to him. Something crazy’s going on. And I mean really crazy. They’re using people for some kind of experiments. They used Anna, and now they’re using me. They’ve been drawing blood, and taking x-rays of my skull. They even have an MRI machine here.”
“How do you know Anna was here?”
“I saw her through a window when they wheeled me to the x-ray room. She was lying in a hospital bed with her eyes closed. She’s still here as far as I know.”
“You were a doctor,” I said. “What do you think they’re up to?”
“I don’t know. There’s a woman and a man working together. I first saw the man when I was in the hospital last week. He was wearing a dark blue suit with a white shirt and no tie. He must have several identical sets of clothes. I’ve seen him every day since I’ve been here, and he’s always wearing the same thing. Like it’s some kind of uniform
or something. Anyway, I was at the hospital being treated for an infected finger. An elderly man came into my room and started shouting for help. He was obviously confused. The man in the dark blue suit rushed in and tried to get the old man to go back to his own room, but the old man just kept shouting. And he kept saying the name Anna. As if he wanted someone by that name to help him, or maybe as if he thought his own name was Anna.”
“I’m pretty sure that was a man named Brighton Penworth,” I said.
“Yeah. That was his name. He was discharged from the hospital that morning, and he died in a nursing home the next night.”
“I’m pretty sure the man in the dark blue suit was Carlo Stottolini,” I said.
“Stottolini. Does he have anything to do with the pizza place?”
“He owns it. And the woman working with him is probably Brighton Penworth’s grandniece. Her name is Bailey. She practices medicine up in Maine. Or she did, anyway.”
“Someone’s coming,” Thrasher said.
Footsteps echoed through the cavernous space. A couple of minutes later, Stottolini appeared at the gate. There was a young woman with him. Lab coat, stethoscope. I figured it was Bailey Penworth. She was pushing some sort of cart with a sheet draped over it.
Stottolini slid a key into the padlock, unwrapped the chain and opened the gate. He unbuttoned his sports coat, reached in and pulled out a semi-automatic pistol from a shoulder holster. He and Dr. Penworth stepped into the cage. Dr. Penworth switched on a portable examination lamp. She picked it up and walked over to me while Stottolini stayed near the gate with the gun. He was acting as the doctor’s armed guard.
Dr. Penworth adjusted the position of the lamp until she got it where she wanted it, which happened to be directly into my face.
“How are you feeling?” she said.
“You drugged me and threw me in a cage,” I said. “How do you think I’m feeling?”
