“Well, you just holler if you need anything.” Kissy glanced at Koehler who didn’t look like he was feeling so well. “How are you doing, Kevin?”
Koehler slowly shifted his gaze from the mayor’s face to Kissy’s. He thought for a moment and then responded in a completely sober tone. “I am anxious to meet my date.”
Out of the corner of her eye, Kissy saw Tim sit up straighter on the stool he’d taken just one down from Mayor Sutton. She didn’t dare look over at him. Before she could think what question to follow up with, the mayor spoke.
“Ah, you have a date with a young lady?”
Koehler giggled. “Yes. A very young lady is waiting for me.”
“Well, let’s get to our discussion so she doesn’t have to wait long.” The mayor bent to pull a folder from the soft sided briefcase he had hung on the purse hook beneath the bar.
Koehler stared off into the middle distance. “Oh, no worries. She’s tied up.”
Tim spit up his soda.
Eighteen
Avi dropped Conner in the alley behind the bar and swung around to park in a loading only zone across the street from The Freckled Dog. As he jogged across the street through a trickle of traffic, he saw Tim putting a girl into the driver’s seat of a beater at the valet station.
Avi waited until the car drove off before he called out, “Tim.”
The blond turned with an uncharacteristically serious look on his face that melted into smiles when he saw who’d called him. “Officer Kee, so good to see you. You are looking well healed.”
He put out a hand and Avi shook it, pulling the jokester away from the valet attendant. “Call off your current job, Tim.”
“You have a better gig for me?”
“I do.” Avi looked around for Koehler. He was pretty sure he’d recognized him from the high school.
“I don’t know.” Tim wiggled his eyebrows at Avi and put a comradely hand on his shoulder. “The Killer with a Conscience got a doozy of a deserving target this time.”
“Your target kidnapped a girl named Moira. No one else knows where she is.”
The smile slid from the killer’s face. He froze for half a second. Then he looked into the restaurant and made a beeline for the bar. Avi followed. Tim fished through his jacket pockets as they hurried. He pulled out a round object and peeled off a clear plastic layer.
“This is a truth serum,” he said, palming the quarter sized patch. He pointed at Avi and then at himself. “Good cop. Drunk cop.”
Then Tim reached over a guy’s shoulder at the bar and slapped the drink out of his hand, spraying it all over Kissy. Avi started forward to help her dry off, but Tim elbowed him in the ribs and hissed, “Whiskey” before he grabbed Koehler by the neck and kissed him like a European.
Avi did his best to play what Koehler would think of as a good cop, all the while feeling like a bad cop and a worse man. Tim stumbled off and Kissy stormed away. He was left to wonder how quickly the truth serum on the patch would get into Koehler’s blood stream. A good cop wouldn’t drug a suspect. But a good teacher wouldn’t molest his students. If he arrested the guy, the chief would step in and Moira might run out of time. So he joked with the jerk and sat beside him.
Seconds after he sat, the mayor walked in. Avi stood.
“How are you, Kevin?” The mayor held his hand just a little too far for the coach to comfortably reach, forcing him to stand.
He stumbled as he stood and Avi put a hand under his elbow to steady him.
“Looking forward to working closely with you, Mr. Mayor.”
“Mr. Governor, you mean.” A cheerful rotund man pushed past Avi to grab the mayor’s hand. “Dick Dave, sir. Owner of The Freckled Dog. We’ve met a few times.”
The mayor took it in stride. “I remember, Dick. Let’s leave it at mayor, what do you say? And you shouldn’t vote for me for governor. It’ll make the other guy feel bad if I win by a landslide.”
“Faith, sir. You’ve got to have faith.”
Koehler was looking a little lost in this exchange. He backed away and took his seat again. Dick stepped in front of him to get closer to the mayor but the mayor stepped up to the bar as well.
“What can we get you, sir? Anything you like, it’s on the house.”
“Oh I’m just gonna steal a moment of Coach Koehler’s time here to see if he’s the man to be our next superintendent. If that’s alright with you?”
“Absolutely. Absolutely. Right here is the perfect spot.” Dick polished the stool with his sleeve.
He clearly wanted to stay and chat but the mayor shook his hand again saying, “Thank you so much, Dick. I promise if I need anything, I’ll let you know. I know I can count on everyone here at The Freckled Dog.”
“Absolutely. Nothing is too much trouble.” Dick thanked the mayor and walked away beaming.
Avi walked away with him. “Mr. Dave, I’m Officer Kee. I’m here to supplement the mayor’s protection. He’d like me to cover your surveillance room while he’s in the restaurant if that’s not too much trouble.”
As friendly with Avi as he had been with the mayor, Dick led him to the surveillance room and a peep show of his very own lady friend making out with a murderer.
Nineteen
Kissy hustled over to clean up the mess Tim had spit on her bar.
“Control yourself,” she hissed as she wiped the bar and refilled his glass.
“The truth serum has kicked in with a vengeance.” Tim quoted Koehler, ““A very young lady.””
“You’re one to talk,” Kissy whispered. “Is Brit even old enough to drive?”
Tim finally turned away from the accidental interrogation to squint at Kissy. “What?”
“Your date,” she pointed out, “was also awfully young.”
“Brit was not my date, Kissy.” Tim pulled a white envelope from his breast pocket. “She was the client. My contact with all the kids who hired me to. . .” He glanced behind him at the mayor’s protection detail. “She brought the money.”
Kissy stared at the envelope. “How much?”
“Ten thousand,” he said. “It’s on the low end of my fees but they are kids.”
“Yeah. Kids who saved up their allowance to hire a. . . “ Kissy barely caught herself before she too glanced at the armed security. “To hire the KC.”
Tim tucked the cash back into his pocket.
“Give it back.”
“Excuse me?” He was fully distracted from the nearby interview now.
“Give them their money back. They’ll never get over this. You want them to go through life knowing they’re murders?”
“Keep it down.” Tim looked around to see if anyone had overheard.
“Give it back.”
He stood and walked further away from the conversation he wanted to overhear. “This is my job. I may only whack bad guys but I still get paid for it.”
“It’s not right. They’re kids.”
“He’s not treating them like kids.”
“Oh, so now you aspire to be like Kevin Koehler?”
Their voices were getting louder and louder. The sound of his own name drew Koehler’s attention. But as he looked over, Avi stepped up to the two blocking the teacher’s view.
“What the hell is wrong with you?”
“She wants me to work for free.” “He took their money.” Tim and Kissy defended themselves at the same time.
Avi quietly and firmly set one massive hand on the slick wooden bar. “Where is he keeping Moira?”
Tim and Kissy both looked away. They mumbled excuses and apologies.
“I don’t want to hear it.” Avi took a breath and asked Tim in a calmer tone. “Does this patch work like sodium amytal?”
“Similarly. An interrogation is most effective if you get the target’s trust and influence him to direct the conversation to the information you want,” Tim explained.
“What?” Kissy stared at him. “How does that help us? We’re not even the ones interro
gating him!”
“Yeah, but he wants to talk about her. You didn’t ask him anything about it and he brought up having a date.”
Kissy clued in Avi. “A young date, who’s tied up.”
“Good. So she’s on his mind.” The cop took a few bucks out of his wallet and steered Kissy back down the bar towards the interview. He raised his voice. “Just a water please. I need something to calm my thirst while I’m tied up back there in my secret hiding spot.” Avi laughed and nodded at Koehler and the mayor. “You’re safe here, Mr. Mayor.”
“Thanks Officer Kee. I’m not worried.”
Avi set the two singles on the bar as Kissy handed him a glass of ice water. He nodded at her.
“It’s always nice to be served by a beautiful young girl.” He turned to the teacher. “Are you worried, Mr. Koehler?”
“No,” Koehler answered instantly. “She’s safe in my hiding spot.”
“Where is your hiding spot, Kevin? I have a little lunch spot I sneak off to myself down on the water.” The mayor took up the questioning just as if he were in on it all.
Avi nodded encouragingly at Kissy and then slipped away back to the Big Brother room. Kissy stared at the scene as he left, as Koehler scratched at the patch on his neck, as the mayor looked down at his notes. She saw from the corner of her eye that Tim had slipped back over to his nearby stool. She saw him set his smartphone on the bar and slip one earbud in place. This all seemed so unreal.
Tim peeked up at her and Kissy realized that she’d frozen. She grabbed the soda gun and filled a couple of glasses of water for the mayor and Koehler who was responding in that bizarrely sober voice.
“I’ve always wanted to share my secret. My hideaway is near the water too. I like to watch the girls fly.”
Twenty
“Fly!” Kissy repeated loudly.
The mayor and Koehler looked at her and she mentally beat herself for interrupting Koehler’s sharing mood.
“My best friend teaches circus classes,” she explained awkwardly. She glanced quickly over at Tim as she added, “down along the wharf.”
“It sounds like everything good is on the water,” the mayor said.
Kissy wracked her brain for the smartest thing to say, the thing that would get Koehler to tell them exactly where he’d tied up poor Moira. She found herself freezing again and grabbed wildly at a technique she used to combat stage fright. Looking at everything in front of her she silently recited the colors she saw. When she looked up at the blue door of the hair salon across the street from the Freckled Dog, an image of the storefronts along Lake Street popped into her head.
“I love how all the buildings are painted in bright colors. What color is your lunch place?”
She saw the smile quirk the corner of Tim’s lips and knew she’d asked a good question.
Koehler, looking more and more distant, murmured, “yellow.”
The mayor laughed out loud. “That’s right. My lunch spot is green. The same color as my wife’s eyes.”
“Right there on Lake?” Kissy asked.
“Yes, near the end.” The mayor looked off as if seeing it.
Koehler was also seeing something in his mind’s eye, possibly only seeing things in his minds’ eye. His breathing sped up and he licked his lips as he said, “Patch alley.”
Tim looked over at the slurred words. He half stood from his chair.
Kissy refilled the mayor’s water and tried to pull Koehler’s g and t away. But the teacher took it and drained it. She glanced at Tim and pushed on.
“I think I know that place. On the second floor?”
Koehler murmured, “basement.”
Tim stood, he grabbed a napkin from the stack and scribbled on it with a blue ballpoint from his pocket. Kissy was so distracted she barely heard the mayor talking about how he’d proposed to his wife in the garden of the green building’s cafe.
Tim set the napkin firmly on the bar and then headed out the front, phone to his ear. Kissy grabbed the napkin as the mayor turned to look at it. It read Avi, directions from Circus Freaks on Lake to a yellow building on the side street with the head shops.
She balanced the napkin on the cash register which had a dedicated camera pointed at it. Then she turned back to the mayor saying, “I’m sorry. I’m interrupting your interview and you just want to get back to her.”
Koehler looked up sharply at that. “It’s time.”
He stood.
And just as quickly, he fell.
Twenty-one
The mayor and his security reached Koehler only seconds before Tim burst between them. He knelt with one hand on the side of the man’s neck and slapped his face with the other.
“Kevin! Kevin! Are you okay?” He stood and backed away. “I’ll call 911.”
And then Tim turned to head back to the monitor room, pulling the phone back up to his ear. “Julia? You still there?”
He ran smack into Kissy.
“The mayor already saw it,” she hissed.
“What?”
Kissy grabbed his left hand and took the patch out of it. “He saw Koehler scratching at it.”
Tim swore. “Alright put it back if you can. Don’t touch that side!”
Kissy gave him a look he remembered well from high school and pushed past him through the crowd. Tim kept going back to find Avi.
On the phone, his sister was getting angry. “Tim Goodenuff. I’m in the middle of teaching a class you’re supposed to be helping me with. What is so important?”
“There’s a fourteen year old being held hostage in a building down there near you. We’d send cops but we can’t tell them how we know where to look.” He closed the door to the monitor room to find Avi talking on his own phone.
“Yes, I’d like to report—“
Tim took the phone from his hand and dropped it in his water glass while he looked at the street view map Avi had pulled up on one of the monitors.
Avi looked at him in horror.
“Oops. Julia, do you know where Carp Way is?” Tim pulled a sparkly pink phone from his pocket and handed it to the big cop. “Call them back on this one.”
“Who does it belong to?”
Tim sighed as he listened to Julia panicking on the other end of the line. “I promise I’ll give the phone back. I’m not a thief.”
Avi dialed 911 on the pink cell. “No, you’re just a killer.”
“Do you mind?” Tim put his hand over the microphone of his cell. “This is my sister I’m talking to.”
Avi rolled his eyes at the Killer with a Conscience and put the stolen phone to his ear. “I’d like to report maybe a fire.”
“Julia, don’t panic.” Tim watched the monitor showing the north side of the bar. “The kidnapper is here. We need you to go to 723 Carp Way, that street everyone calls Patch Alley.”
“I can see smoke around 723 Carp Way,” Avi said.
Tim hit him. “That’s where everyone goes to buy drugs,” he hissed. “They’re not gonna respond to a report of smoke!”
“I know where that is,” Julia said.
“And I think I see flames,” Avi added.
“Look in the basement.”
“In the basement windows. Send someone quick.” Avi hit end and turned the phone off.
“I’ll stay on the line but I’ve got to mute it for a bit, okay?”
“Don’t you leave me, Tim.”
“I won’t. Be careful, Julia.”
“Whoa! You showing concern for someone’s well-being. Maybe you aren’t so bad after all.” The sarcasm dripped from Avi’s words but Tim ignored the judgement.
“Did you call 911 on Koehler’s collapse?”
Avi reached for his phone and realized it was sitting in his water glass. “I thought you were calling. You were on your phone when you left his side.”
“No.” Tim felt lost for a moment. “And everyone else probably thought the same thing. Maybe it’s a good thing.”
He started searching the roo
m.
Avi watched him. “A good thing?”
“Yeah. EMTs would want to save his life. We just need to keep him breathing till we’ve got Moira.” He headed for the door. “Do you think they keep a portable defib machine in the kitchen?”
“Hang on.” Avi stood. “I’m the cop. It’ll make more sense if I ask. You stay here and figure out if you can erase anything you need to.”
“Nothing to wipe out. I haven’t tried to kill him recently.”
“No one’ll wonder why you tried to remove his motion sickness patch?”
“Oh.” Tim looked at the screens and then at the keyboard. “Yeah. Hey, big guy.”
Avi paused in the doorway. “Yes?”
“Why are you here?”
“I had to stop you from killing Koehler to find out where Moira is.”
“You could have arrested both of us,” Tim pointed out.
“I still might.”
Tim tilted his head at him and raised both eyebrows.
Avi took a breath and let the door fall shut. “You remember that night you blew up the rave warehouse?”
“I remember the night Vanessa blew up the warehouse,” Tim corrected.
“To keep up your reputation in the criminal underworld you had to kill her. You said yourself you couldn’t let a lying client get away with it.” Avi voiced his thoughts like he was just now understanding them.
“Reputation is everything.”
“But you didn’t kill her. You didn’t go after her,” Avi reminded him. “You stayed and helped us save the lives of everyone at the rave.”
Tim scoffed, “Well, yeah.”
“If I told the detectives that the chief’s friend kidnapped Moira, they would have had to debate and find rock solid evidence before they even approached Chief Woodsen with the possibility. If I’d told them we needed to hurry because a bunch of teenagers had put a hit out on him, they would have arrested all the teenagers.” Avi shook his head. “I knew that if I told you Moira was missing, you’d put all of your considerable talents into finding her as quickly as possible.”
Tim stared coldly at the image of Koehler on the screens. Then he held his hands out to Avi for a hug. “Aw, you think I’m a good guy.”
Killer on Call 6 Book Bundle (Books 1-6) Page 10
