The entire book was full of similar photos, pages and pages of her in various poses leaving nothing to the imagination. There were some really nice black and white ones that showed off her muscle tone, especially her stomach. She had been extremely proud of her belly and had done a couple of hundred sit-ups a day to maintain it. If there was any part of a woman that I found especially attractive, it was a strong, flat stomach. Some men go for breasts, some legs. I was an abs man.
Karen had mentioned once in passing that she was interested in maybe posing for Playboy one day. These photos clearly showed that it wasn’t out of the question. They were professionally done, and I was thankful that they were tasteful, nothing there that could be used for a gynecology textbook. Was this how she made all that money? I don’t know how much nude modeling pays, but I highly doubted it was that much unless you were a Playboy Playmate.
As I turned the pages, a business card slipped out on to the floor. I picked it up and looked it over. The card was printed on pink linen and contained only a 1-800 number in black letters. My first guess was the modeling agency she had done the photos for. I didn’t get a second guess as I felt a sudden sharp pain across the back of my skull followed by complete darkness.
When I regained consciousness, my arms were handcuffed behind my back. I was in a forest in a small clearing, lying face down in a bed of pine needles. It was still light out, but the sun was starting to set. My head was throbbing and my vision slightly blurry, but I managed to make it to my knees.
Two men entered the clearing, neither of whom I recognized. Both were roughly six feet tall, early thirties and looked like pretty tough customers. One had red hair cut very short and lots of freckles, and the other had medium black hair with a goatee. They wore leather jackets and work boots, and I could tell both were carrying by the bulges on their hips.
“How’s the head, buddy?” Red asked in a thick Boston accent.
I struggled up to my feet and as he came into range, I launched a sidekick into his ribs. He staggered backwards, crashing into a tree. Goatee came at me, fists ready.
“You little son of a bitch!” he yelled.
He threw a roundhouse punch that narrowly missed my head, and I kicked out his knee, dropping him to the forest floor. Meanwhile, Red had recovered and tackled me. I’ve told people I could kick their ass with both hands tied behind my back, but I never actually hoped to try it, especially against two guys bigger than me.
Red grabbed me by my jacket and pulled me back to my feet. Goatee slammed a fist into my ribs and gave me a backhander across the face. He caught me with a ring and I felt a gash open over my eye. The blood began to drip down over my eye to my cheek.
“What were you doing in that apartment?” Red asked.
“She was my girlfriend,” I said.
Red threw his own punch into my gut, and I fell back to my knees. I struggled to catch my breath.
“He asked what you were doing there, not your life fucking story,” Goatee said.
“I was conducting a lingerie inspection.” That probably wasn’t the answer they were looking for.
“You’re a funny fucking guy, Ronan Marino,” Red said.
Goatee took a 9mm pistol out from under his jacket and put it to my head. If there was an afterlife, I was damn close to joining Karen there.
“This will be your one and only warning, buddy,” Red said. “Do yourself a favor and keep your nose out of things it doesn’t belong in.”
“You understand?” Goatee barked.
I mustered up the only retort I felt was appropriate. “Fuck you.”
They laughed, and Red landed another punch into my ribs.
“You just hope you don’t see us again,” Goatee said.
“Yeah, because we know where you live, motherfucker,” Red added.
He threw my wallet to the ground in front of me and nodded to his partner. Goatee pulled the gun away, turned it around and smacked me across the back of the head. As I faded back to unconsciousness, I could feel one of them taking off the handcuffs. He didn’t struggle with the key and slipped them off like a pro. The last thing I remembered before everything went dark was the sound of their car pulling away.
I slowly came to and it was night. My head hurt so much I could barely open my eyes. Getting whacked twice in the melon had a way of doing that. It felt like they might have cracked a few ribs; every breath I took was an effort. I touched my face and found a layer of dried blood caked all down my face, below where I’d been cut. My eye was swollen and tender, too.
To my relief, I still had my cell phone. I sat up and fumbled in the darkness, managing to dial my brother’s house. It sounded like I’d woke him up from a nap.
“Where the hell are you?” he asked.
“I have no idea. Somewhere in a forest.”
“Can you walk out?”
“I can try.”
I stood up and the pain in my ribs intensified. I groaned out loud.
“Are you okay?”
“I’m alive, bro. That’s about all I know at this point.”
“Okay, stay on the line and try to find your way out to a road.”
I looked at the power indicator on my phone. I was down to one bar, not good.
“I need to hang up. My battery is low, and I don’t want to lose the phone.”
“Okay, call me right back when you find out where you’re at.”
“Got it.”
I hung up and started walking towards a light off in the distance. After twenty laborious minutes, I came upon a dirt road. Ten minutes later, I found a sign that said Warren Manning State Forest, which told me I was somewhere between Chelmsford and Billerica, two suburbs of Lowell. I dialed Marc, and he said he would send a Chelmsford cop to pick me up.
I sat on a big rock and looked up at the stars. It was hard to focus, but I managed to form at least one coherent thought; the two goons left no doubt in my mind that Karen’s death was not an accident. Why else would they have been in her apartment if they didn’t have some connection to her death? Things were about to get very complicated.
I waited roughly five minutes, when a young patrolman pulled up in a blue and white. Another young guy cut from the same mold as the two I’d met the night before.
“You Ronan Marino?”
I slowly nodded. My Jell-O-like brain wanted to answer that I was Batman, but a nod was all the answer I could muster. This was no time to be a smartass; the kid was here to help me. There would be plenty of time for comedy later.
“I’m Officer Hardy from Chelmsford PD. Do you need medical attention, sir?
“Not just yet.”
“Okay, I’m supposed to bring you to our station.”
I forced myself to stand. “You’ll have to excuse me, but I just had my ass kicked.”
He didn’t laugh. I must have looked really bad.
The Chelmsford Police Station was a brand new brick and granite building just around the corner from the old Drum Hill rotary, a few miles up Route 3 from Lowell. I’d once been to the old nondescript red brick station just down the road and in a word it was cramped. It had probably been acceptable for the small bedroom community that Chelmsford was back in the sixties, but as the town grew up, the new one was most definitely needed. There was also the idea that they had to keep up with the neighboring towns like Tewksbury and Billerica that had built new stations over the last decade. I’m sure even Lowell will eventually have to build a new facility in an effort to modernize too.
Hardy helped me into the station, and I went to the bathroom to wash up. It was the cleanest bathroom I’d ever seen in a cop building. I didn’t like the image looking back at me in the mirror. I’d taken worst beatings in my day, but the older I got the worse it always felt. On the back of my head there was a tender egg-sized lump where I’d been whacked. I cleaned the blood off my face and took a drink from my hands. When I came out, Marc was waiting.
“Holy shit,” he blurted out.
“Nice to see you
too.”
“So what happened?”
“A couple of guys got the drop on me at Karen’s apartment”
“You’re slipping. That would never have happened a year ago. That band shit is making you soft.”
He was right, well not about the band, but I’d been careless and almost got killed as a result. It wouldn’t happen again. Officer Hardy handed me an ice pack, and I put it on my swollen eye.
“Sir, I need to take a report,” he said.
I wasn’t in the mood to recap what had happened, especially the part about me breaking into Karen’s apartment.
“Can I come back another time?”
“You were assaulted, sir. I need to file a report.”
I looked at my brother and he nodded.
“He needs medical attention, Officer Hardy. I’ll make sure he comes back and files a report when he’s up to it.”
Hardy looked like he was going to say something but just nodded. The kid wanted to get some kind of report and search for the suspects just like they teach them at the police academy. Red and Goatee weren’t going to be found anywhere near Chelmsford tonight, so it was a waste of his time.
“Okay, when will you come back?” Hardy asked.
“Uh, I’ll get right back to you,” I said. That was the cop equivalent of telling a one-night stand that you’d call her in the morning.
Marc shook his hand. “Tell your chief that Chief Marc Marino from Westford said hi. I’ll give him a call in the morning and tell him about the good job you’re doing.”
Hardy stood up a little straighter, puffing out his chest a bit more. Kind words from a superior officer have a way of doing that, especially to the young and impressionable.
“Thanks, Chief.”
I slipped out the door and didn’t look back.
“You have no intention of ever returning, do you?” Marc asked.
“Of course not.”
We got into his town car, a late model Crown Victoria, and I leaned back in the seat and closed my eyes. Nausea started to creep in.
“You think this had anything to do with Karen’s death?”
“You’re kidding, right?”
Marc shrugged. “What were you doing in her apartment anyway?”
“I was looking for drugs.”
“I thought you were going to leave the investigating to us professionals?”
“I am.”
“Doesn’t look like it to me. Did you find anything interesting?”
“She had a nice collection of nude photos that I didn’t know about.”
“Of her? Hardcore?”
“No, more like the stuff you’d see in Playboy.”
“Angelina doesn’t let me read Playboy,” he said in a wispy little boy voice.
It must be hell being married to a woman who stored your balls in a jar under lock and key, though Marc rarely complained. He loved his wife and in the big picture of life, that’s all that really matters. I should be so lucky.
“You should have called me to go with you. Then you might not have got jumped.”
“And you would have gotten to see the pictures.”
“I guess.”
Marc had met Karen a couple of times, and it wouldn’t surprise me if he didn’t fantasize about her. Like many men, he married a blonde who later turned into a brunette.
“Let’s head back over there,” I said.
“No. We need to get you seen at the hospital first.”
“That can wait. I found a business card in her portfolio with just a 1-800 number. I need it to find out what it is.”
“Why does it matter? It’s probably the modeling agency she did the pictures for.”
“It would have had the agency’s name on the card, don’t you think?”
He just shrugged. Having worked in sleepy Westford his entire career, Marc hadn’t seen very much in the way of serious crime. I had once used similar cards to snare military members stealing government property, except mine weren’t printed on pink linen. We set up a bogus military surplus company and left cards around town or went into clubs and handed them to GIs. Some would call the phone number offering stolen goods and we’d set up a meeting, eventually popping them when they delivered.
It was a brilliant operation, and we bought everything from food to uniforms to various tools and equipment. One stupid bastard even sold us an F-16 engine, which made the national news. To this day, I’ve never figured out what that kid thought we were going to do with an engine from a fighter plane.
Marc’s idea of a big bust was nabbing a couple of kids stealing out the back of a florist shop.
“I also found a bank statement for thirty-two grand.”
“So.”
“So? Do most college students usually have that kind of money?”
“Maybe she earned it modeling. Did you consider that?”
“Yeah, but I doubt she could have made that much money short of posing for a major men’s magazine; especially without me knowing about it.”
“How about a website? I read some women are making tons of dough stripping on camera.”
“That’s possible.”
“Think about it, how else could she have gotten it?”
That second thought finally popped into my head, the one I’d never gotten to at the apartment. It would certainly explain the money, but I couldn’t track it down unless I had the card. I didn’t even want to consider it, but like the drugs, it was something I’d have a hard time overlooking.
Marc pulled into the parking lot of All Saints Hospital and found a slot near the front door.
“Let’s go,” he said.
“We really should go over to her apartment first.”
“And we will, once you get seen by a doctor. Come on, Ronan. Don’t make me embarrass you.”
“It wouldn’t be the first time.”
He looked at me like I was his child and pointed to the door. When Marc makes up his mind, there’s no changing it, and as bad as I felt, he was right. I had no strength to argue, and anything I wanted in her apartment was probably long gone. If my suspicions were correct, Red and Goatee had made sure of that.
****
I waited in an exam room for the doctor to come in and read my x-rays. Marc had gone up to the cafeteria to get something to eat, leaving me to fend for myself. God forbid he neglected his ever-growing stomach.
I’ve always hated hospitals. I spent far too much time in them during my years in the military, often in the middle of the night working a case. Every time I set foot in one, the antiseptic smell brings back memories I’d like to forget.
This hospital went to the top of my most hated list soon after we arrived. I just wanted to see a doctor and be on my way. All they wanted was to know how I planned to pay for my treatment. I handed the overweight Puerto Rican woman at in-processing my American Express Platinum card, and she excitedly called over a coworker. They stared at it in admiration, jabbering in Spanish. I guess they don’t see many of those in Lowell. Marc got pissed, flashed his badge and started yelling to speed things along. The next thing I knew, I was having my ribs x-rayed. Everything after that was pretty much a blur.
The curtain whipped open and a female doctor entered, my x-rays in her hand. She carried herself with an aura of elegance and an energy that lit up the room, making the coldness of the sterile stainless steel space fade away. I was immediately reminded of a woman I’d once seen on a Greek travel brochure; big brown eyes, flawless olive skin and full red lips. Her long, curly jet-black hair was pulled up in a ponytail off her white lab coat. She was just a few inches shorter than me, making her about five-foot-seven.
“Mr. Marino, I’m Dr. Sadolovaki. The good news is your ribs aren’t broken, only bruised.” Her tone was very cold and professional; a stark contrast to her physical features.
I just gazed at her, slowly nodding my head. I wanted to speak but between fatigue and getting whacked on the skull, I had become the human equivalent of a bobblehead doll. I
wiped my mouth to make sure I wasn’t drooling.
“Why don’t you have a seat on the exam table?” She helped me up, and I had a hard time finding the edge. That was not a good sign.
“Let’s take a look at you.”
I slipped off the Johnny they’d given me in X-ray and just stared at her. She made eye contact, but then quickly looked away.
“You keep yourself in pretty good shape,” she said. “How old are you?”
“Thirty-five going on fifty-two.”
She nodded and listened to my chest. The steel from the stethoscope was absolutely frigid, contrasting the warmth of her hands. Standing that close, I could smell her perfume. It was a very mild scent but pleasant.
“Your lungs are clear,” she said without a hint of emotion.
I decided my doctor had to be a Vulcan. Other than a lack of pointy ears, she appeared to have all the other traits.
“Do you smoke?” she asked.
“No, I don’t.”
“Good. It’s a terrible habit.”
She took a penlight out of her pocket and shined it in my eyes. “Follow the beam.” I tried, but it was harder than it sounded. My eyes rolled back in my head, and I must have looked like a zombie.
“It looks like you have a minor concussion. Have you ever had one before?”
“No, not that I can remember.”
“Was that a joke?”
“No, why?”
“Lift your head up.” She looked at the cut under my eye. “Keep applying ice on that until the swelling subsides. May I ask what happened to you?”
“I had an elephant training mishap.”
“I wasn’t aware that the circus was in town.”
“We’re wintering here in Lowell.”
“Shouldn’t you be wintering in Florida?”
“That’s what most people think, but the elephants really like the snow. You should see the snowmen we build.”
She smiled. It was big and full of kindness. The ice in her voice melted, and her tone suddenly became warm and throaty.
“Elephants, I never would have guessed. I thought maybe you got beat up.”
Lloyd Corricelli - Ronan Marino 01 - Two Redheads & a Dead Blonde Page 7
