Wrath (The Lieutenant Harrington Series Book 1)

by E. H. Reinhard

  “No clue. He was just standing in his backyard like that.”

  “Right,” I said. “You said his name was Chris?”

  “Yeah,” the guy said.

  What time do you think this was?”

  “Nine, nine thirty, maybe.”

  I wrote it down. “Does he normally work during the day?”

  “Yeah. He owns the Brother’s Subs franchise in town.”

  “Which is where?” I asked.

  “Um. It’s in the strip mall off of… What is that—” He seemed to be searching for the street name. “Douglas and Pembroke.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  “I saw him leave like an hour ago, but I’m not sure when he works or if that’s where he went. I’m not really a sub sandwich kind of guy myself.”

  “Do the neighbors have children?” I asked.

  He shook his head.

  “All right. Let me get your name and number and I’ll get out of your hair.”

  He gave me his number and said his name was John Stanley. I let him know I’d be in touch if I needed to follow up and left. Steve was at the car, standing in the open passenger side doorway with his arms resting on the roof. I walked over.

  “Any luck?” I asked.

  “Three houses. Three knocks. Three strikeouts. You?” he asked. “Find anything?”

  “Proof of demonic possession, maybe.”

  “What?” Steve asked.

  “Forget it. Grace Mercer is married.”

  “Really?” Steve asked. “So stepping out on her hubby. That gives us a person who’d have a motive—the husband.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “The neighbor gave me workplaces for both of these Mercers. I guess the husband’s name is Chris.” I grabbed the handle for the driver’s side door.

  “Good. Let’s roll,” Steve said.

  “All right. I got a little more from the neighbor here too.”

  “Like what?” Steve asked.

  “The neighbor said the husband seemed off this morning. He was standing in the backyard and wearing only his underwear and rubber gloves.” I pulled the door open, took my place behind the wheel, and fired the motor.

  Steve jumped in the other side. “I guess that would qualify as off.”

  “Yes it would.” I passed Steve my notepad with the workplaces written on it. “Search those and see where they’re at from here. Then pull up the sheet, if there is one, for this husband.”

  “You got it,” Steve said.

  CHAPTER 9

  Chris sat in the parking lot, his car’s motor running, the air conditioning on high. He scrolled down on his phone, checking Laurie Jillette’s past profile posts—which were countless. The woman, an ex-girlfriend of his, posted on average about ten times a day. Why the woman thought her friends, family, and 1,111 followers needed hourly updates on her life was unknown.

  He scrolled to the top of the page. The post from twenty minutes prior said: Time to sweat. The post included a photo of her in her workout gear inside a gym. A number of hashtags followed the post. It had been commented on nineteen times.

  As he read through the comments, Chris noted that the ones from females seemed to be encouraging, but the ones from men seemed to all mention something about her tight pants and the photo highlighting her rear end. Chris pulled in a disgusted breath and let it out. He hated anything social media related. Grace had been consumed by it—she had both personal and professional accounts. It didn’t matter where they were or what they were doing, Grace always had her damn thumbs bouncing off the screen of her phone—posts on one site, then another, then checking something else, then responding to someone. Her phone was constantly chirping and beeping and buzzing. Chris had wondered if that was where she had met the guy that he’d killed. His disdain for social media aside, at the moment, it was needed and was providing him exactly what he wanted.

  Chris rubbed his nose with the back of his hand and dropped his phone into his lap. He went back to staring out the windshield at the strip mall where he was parked. The entire front of the building, just fifty feet away, was glass from ground to roof. Chris could see Laurie Jillette running on a treadmill inside.

  CHAPTER 10

  Steve had pulled up the workplace addresses of the husband and wife Mercers. Both of them were in Hollywood, a city east of Miramar. Grace Mercer’s realty office was farther from us, with her husband’s a mile closer. We figured we’d hit hers first and the husband’s on the way back toward the interstate. Steve had brought up Chris Mercer’s sheet. The guy was thirty-five, five nine, and a hundred and eighty pounds. He had brown hair and brown eyes. The DMV records showed that he had a 2016 Chevy truck registered to him—a black one. It appeared that Mercer had had some run-ins with the law in the past. He’d been arrested a handful of times starting in his early twenties. Three of the charges were for patronizing prostitutes, and one of the charges had an add-on for being near a school. There was another pair of charges for domestic abuse in his mid-twenties. While I couldn’t see the case file from the car, it looked as though he did some time for the last offense. Yet it appeared as if all the charges were nearly ten years old.

  I pulled up to the front of the Realforce Realty office a couple of minutes after one. The building, obviously newly constructed and rectangular with a stone facade, stood alone in the out lot of what looked like a brand-new shopping complex. My eyes went from one car out front to the next. Grace Mercer had a couple-year-old gray Acura registered to her, but I didn’t see one anywhere. I clicked the cruiser into Park, and we stepped out. Landscaping crews worked the area, spreading mulch and staking palm trees. Men laid sod in the small medians breaking up the parking lot. The smell of fresh cedar wood chips filled my nose as we walked up. Steve led us toward the green glass doors of the front entrance, pulled the door, and we entered.

  The interior of the building was modern and wide open. Skylights let light in from the vaulted ceiling. Several leather chairs, all of which were empty, sat next to tables in a few spots in the big open room—I imagined they were for clients who were waiting. The left and right sides of the room each held three glass cubicle offices. Some of the spaces appeared to have people in them, but two on the left side were dark. At the back of the room was a long reception desk about chest high. I could see a female—from the eyes up, anyway—seated behind it. She stared at Steve and me.

  “Welcome to Realforce. What can I help you out with?” she asked.

  I started across the dark wood-floored room toward her. Steve followed.

  “We’re looking for Grace Mercer,” I said.

  “Did you have an appointment?”

  I pulled my badge from my hip and showed it to her as I stepped before the counter, though I was fairly certain she could have seen it as we walked up. “No appointment. Just looking to speak with her.”

  “Oh, okay, um…” the woman stammered. She looked to be in her twenties and had short dark hair. “She’s actually not in.”

  “Do you expect her in at all today?” Steve asked. He put his big forearms up on the counter and waited for a response. Just beyond Steve’s hand was a line of small business card holders filled with cards. I saw him pluck one up and turn it toward me. The name on it was Grace Mercer. An office number and a mobile number were listed. Steve slid it toward me and grabbed another for himself. I tucked the card into my jacket pocket where I kept my notepad.

  “I actually don’t know. I didn’t know that she wasn’t going to be here today. Give me one second.” She picked up the phone and dialed a two-digit number. A phone rang off to my right. The receptionist said that two police officers were there to see Mrs. Mercer. She said the word okay and hung up. “Bruce, our vice president, is going to be right with you,” she said.

  “Sure.” I turned my back to the counter, and immediately the door of the office on my left opened. A suited man appearing in his early fifties stepped out.

  “Officers,” he said. He showed a big smile of veneers and walked to Steve
and me, holding out his hand for the entire walk across the office. I shook the guy’s hand, then Steve did. It would have been too awkward not to since, for twenty-five feet, he’d made it known that was what he was after.

  “Bruce Smithe. I’m the vice president here at Realforce. What can we do for you today?” His voice was upbeat and carried a fake tone of excitement.

  “We’re looking for Grace Mercer,” Steve said.

  “That’s what Heather here said. She’s not in.”

  “Yeah, that’s what Heather said,” Steve said. “Know when she will be in the office?”

  “I don’t. Unless I’m forgetting something, or something didn’t get logged in to our scheduling system, she should have been here today. God, I hope nothing happened to her.”

  “Why would you think something happened to her?” I asked.

  “I don’t. I was just saying,” Bruce said.

  “Have you tried to reach her?” I asked.

  “I tried her this morning and left a message,” he said. “She hasn’t called back. Hopefully she just stumbled on to a new client or something.”

  “This is her current mobile number?” Steve asked. He’d reached into his pocket, pulled out the card he’d taken from the reception desk, and held it up.

  “Yes. That’s up to date.”

  I dug one of my own cards from my wallet and handed it to the vice president. “If you see her, have her call me.”

  “Okay. I will,” he said.

  “Thanks.”

  Steve and I walked out and hopped back into the car.

  “So husband, dead boyfriend, and she are all currently unaccounted for?” Steve held up her business card and punched her number into his phone. I watched Steve click Talk and hold his phone to his ear. A moment later he shook his head.

  “Mrs. Mercer, my name is Sergeant Steve Walsh with the Miami-Dade Police Department. We’re looking to get in contact with you regarding a Nick Ludwig.” Steve rattled off his cell phone number for her to call and clicked off. “Well, something is up with this woman.”

  “So it seems. Let’s go see what the husband has to say. Where was this place?”

  “I’ll get it pulled back up. It was that way, though,” Steve said. He pointed in the direction.

  I drove our cruiser from the lot and got back out onto the main street. Steve had my directions a moment later. Three quarters of a mile down the road, I made a left then a quick right into a strip mall. The sign for the sandwich shop caught my eye right away. We parked and hopped out. As we walked to the front door, I looked back at the parking lot. I scanned left and right but didn’t see a truck matching the description for the vehicle registered to Chris Mercer.

  I pulled the door open to the clang of bells hanging from the top. Steve funneled in through the doorway behind me. The restaurant was narrow and deep. A line of tables and booths stretched down the left side. The soda machines, counter, kitchen, and ordering area stretched the length of the right side. A short hall with the restrooms was at the back. A guy and girl who I figured to be in their early twenties sat and ate near the back. They were the only customers in the store. Steve and I walked to the area under a big Order Here sign, where a teen girl waited to help us.

  “Welcome to Brother’s Subs. What can I make great for you today?” she asked.

  I imagined that the greeting came from someone at the corporate franchise office. “We’re looking for a Mr. Chris Mercer.”

  “Mr. Mercer isn’t here today. Is there something that I can help you with?”

  Steve tapped his fingers on the counter. “Is he normally here on Mondays?”

  “Usually,” she said.

  “What about yesterday? Was he in?” I asked.

  “No.”

  “Do you have a phone number for him?” I asked.

  “Um. I actually just started here a couple weeks ago.” She winced as she spoke. “I’m not sure if that is something that I can give out.”

  “Is there a manager or someone here?” Steve asked.

  “Hold on,” she said. She walked to the back of the kitchen area and called for someone named Colin.

  A moment later, Colin—who couldn’t have been much older than eighteen—came from what I could only assume was an office in the back, out of view. “Is there something that I can help you gentlemen with?”

  I doubted it.

  “Do you have a phone number for the store owner?” Steve asked. “We need to speak with him.”

  “You guys are who, and this is regarding what?” he asked.

  “We’re the Miami-Dade police, and this is regarding us needing to talk to him,” Steve said. “The phone number?”

  “Oh. All right, I guess. I’m not really sure he’d want me to give that out,” the Colin kid said.

  “This is about his wife,” I said. “We’re trying to locate her. And now it seems that we’re trying to locate Mr. Mercer as well.”

  “Did you try his house?”

  “We did. He normally works on Mondays but didn’t come in today?” I asked.

  “Normally. I’m not sure why he didn’t come in. Maybe he’s still out of town.”

  “Out of town where?” Steve asked.

  The kid shrugged. “I just know he was out of town on business for the weekend.”

  “Okay. You’re sure that you don’t have a number for him?” I asked. “This is kind of time sensitive that we get into contact with him.”

  The kid rubbed at his eye with his palm. He looked like he was in thought. A second later, he held the button on the receipt printer, which spewed out a couple of inches of blank paper. He ripped it off, grabbed a pen from a cup near the register, and jotted down a number. “Here.”

  “This is his number?” I took the scrap of paper.

  “Yeah.”

  “Thank you,” I said.

  “Did you want to get a sandwich?” Steve asked. “I’m starving.”

  I nodded, and we ordered. With a large turkey club sandwich on a tray in front of me, I held my phone to my ear and dialed Chris Mercer’s phone number. It didn’t ring once but instead went straight to voicemail. I shook my head and clicked End. “Figures.”

  “Won’t answer?” Steve asked.

  “It seems neither he nor his wife want to talk to anyone today,” I said.

  “Yeah, it’s a bit odd that they both decided to take the day off today but not inform anyone. Especially odd timing after a boyfriend of the married wife gets killed last night.”

  “Odd it is,” I said. “Odd indeed.”

  I scooped up my sandwich and took a bite. My cell phone buzzed on the table—the screen said Garcia. I set my sandwich down, grabbed my phone, and clicked Talk. “Yeah, Garcia,” I said.

  “We’re wrapping up out here and headed to the store this Ludwig guy worked at,” he said.

  “Anything?”

  “We walked the whole damn neighborhood. Checked yards, under cars, trash cans, the works. Colt got a couple of blood drips leading away from the place that he thinks could have come off the murder weapon. I guess he found some others that he thinks could possibly belong to someone else. He said something about gravitational direction or some shit like that. He said he’d have to look into it further. Aside from him collecting samples from those, we didn’t get much else out here.”

  “Okay,” I said. “We’re kind of running into a dead end out here as well. No woman at her house or workplace. Though we did learn that she’s married.”

  “Where’s the husband?”

  “Unaccounted for at the moment,” I said. “House and workplace checked.”

  “He’d be number one for a motive if he knew that she’d had some kind of relationship with this guy out here.”

  “He would,” I said.

  CHAPTER 11

  Our drive back to the office didn’t go quite as planned. Steve and I went in the opposite direction. Just as we were leaving Miramar, both of our phones rang. We had a homicide reported to us from the Centr
al District. A few seconds after I got that call, Skip had called to tell me that he had our autopsy report on Nick Ludwig, and he was reporting to the scene that I’d just gotten the call on. I told him that Steve and I would meet him there.

  I made a right off of NE Thirty-Sixth Street onto Biscayne.

  “This is behind a motel, you said?” Steve asked from the passenger seat.

  I nodded and pointed out the windshield and ahead on our right. “The Sunrise Motel. It’s a block up on our right, kind of on the corner. I guess the scene is in the little alley behind it.”

  “You’re familiar with the motel?”

  “Yeah. Popular place with the rent-by-the-hour crowd. Or at least it used to be. We’d get called out here once a week for one thing or another. I think the place got sold a few times since then, but I don’t imagine it’s cleaned up all that much.”

  “I always forget you used to work a beat down here,” Steve said.

  “When I was fresh to the force.” I saw the building approaching on our right. From what I could see, it looked the same—a standard two-story motel with all the doors facing the street. A white railing wrapped the perimeter of the walkway of the second floor. White stairwells went up to the second level on both ends of the building. The sign out front said hourly, weekly, and monthly with rates starting at twenty dollars. The place looked run-down, just as I’d remembered it. “Looks the same,” I said. “Like it should be bulldozed.”

  While the motel might have had thirty-some rooms, the front parking probably held only ten cars, and all the spots were filled. I slowed and clicked on my directional. Just past the front of the motel was the tiny alleyway, about the width of a single-lane road. The alley stretched from Biscayne, behind the motel and multiple other buildings, all the way down to NE Second Avenue.

  I turned in and immediately saw the back of a patrol car and coroner’s van parked in the alley near the end of the motel. We’d found our scene. I drove up to the back of the single patrol car, clicked the cruiser into Park, and Steve and I got out.