“I don’t need any credit once we solve this case,” he would tell anyone on any police force that would listen. “My credit comes from my client paying me. I can be as invisible as you need or want me to be.”
Derek’s ability to avoid complying with protocol and “police procedures” gave him a unique, and often times, envied advantage over a police department’s officers. When a house couldn’t have access gained without a search warrant in hand first, Derek was able to get in without having to wait for some judge to “weigh the rights of the person against the expected and possible evidence that may or may not be found.” When a suspect needed to be spoken to and who was “less than agreeable,” Derek didn’t have to honor a request for a lawyer to be present and didn’t have to worry about what was being seen on the other side of a two-way mirror.
He was no vigilante, and he tried very hard to follow what police procedures that were needed to be followed. But when push came to shove, as it often does in the world of “good guys versus bad guys,” Derek took care of business.
It was his clients, after all, to whom Derek was responsible. If they needed something resolved, and the desired resolution was legal, Derek would get it done. One way or another, Derek always delivered the desired resolution.
As he drove to the airport, Derek made a few more calls. The first was to the Hertz reservation line, where he rented a mid-sized car to be picked up at the Albany airport.
“And how long will you be needing this vehicle, Mr. Cole?”
“Can we leave that open for now?”
“I’m sorry, sir. We do need a time frame.”
“Four days, and if I need to extend or shorten the rental?
“Just call us back, and we’ll take care of you, Mr. Cole.”
The next call he made was to Verizon’s 411.
“Name and listing for a Doctor Stanley Mix. I believe they live near or in Rochester New York,” he asked.
“I’m sorry,” the computerized voice responded, “that number is unlisted.”
“Damn,” he said.
He dialed the next number and waited for his call to be answered.
“Hello?”
“Thomas, it’s Derek.”
“How did your meeting with Rinaldo go? Did he deny everything?”
“He confirmed everything. Listen, you did some research, and I need a little help from you.”
“What do you need?”
“Do you have the phone number for Stanley Mix?”
“Yes, but why do you want to call him?”
“His name is on that list you told me about, isn’t it?”
“Yes, but I didn’t hire you to protect anyone but me and my parents.”
“Understood, but if I can make a call and let him know that he should take precautions, I don’t think that would take any time away from my primary responsibility.”
Derek hated when his clients went “freelance” themselves or grew impatient with whatever time it was taking Derek to provide a resolution. This client had already done too much research. Derek knew that people who do research end up acting on whatever information their research produces.
“Understood. You just find my brother and keep me and my parents safe.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
Derek loved flying. Something about being so distant from the ground. Unreachable with an assumed and accepted reason for being so. He loved passing through the clouds and the feeling of being invisible, if only for a moment. He loved the way the other passengers would tense during takeoffs then feel their stress dissipate as the plane blasted through the clouds.
It was the clouds he enjoyed the most. He wished that planes stayed in the clouds longer. Not just for a brief visit but for the entire flight.
As he sat in his preferred seat (exit row, window), Derek let his thoughts drift as the plane ascended into the clouds. As he looked through the window and saw the clouds both distant and near, he imagined her face. Hoping to see some formation that would let him know that she was still with him. Watching over him. He remembered as a child, his mother, lying next to him in their backyard, telling him to look up into the clouds and tell her what he could see.
“Do you see that horse over there?” his mother would say, pointing straight up to a cloud formation. “Give it time, and use your imagination. You’ll see it.”
“I can see it! And I see a bird” Derek would exclaim. “And other there is see a whale.”
“I see it, too. Can you see any people up there?”
“I don’t see any people. Do you?” he asked.
“I see Gramma and Grandpa sitting on a long bench, way over there,” his mother said pointing off to the west. “And other here, I see your Aunt Stella.”
But Derek, try as he might, could never convince himself to see any people in the clouds. No matter how strong his imagination may have been, he couldn’t put heads on top of shoulders and legs beneath a torso.
Derek’s parents were as middle-class as one could imagine. His father worked on the Ohio State Campus in the print shop for over thirty years, and his mother worked part-time at the college bookstore. Derek always felt that his parents would always be there for him. Supporting his decision when he told them he was going to join the army, his decision to re-enlist after his four-year hitch, his falling in love with and marriage to Lucy, and his decision to join the Columbus City Police Department.
His parents were with him each step he took, during each phase of his life. When Lucy was killed, it was his parents who tried to console him, to comfort him and to make sure that he didn’t allow his grief to drive him so far away from them that they couldn’t reach him.
When Derek told his parents that he had quit the police force, his parents only offered support.
“I didn’t like you doing that work anyways,” his mom said.
“I don’t blame you at all, son,” he father offered. “There are plenty of opportunities for a young man like yourself that don’t involve risking your life every time you go to work. Plenty of opportunities.”
But Derek wasn’t interested in spending his days in a safe, practical job. He wanted to do what he could to make sure that someone else’s wife wasn’t murdered because a police force had to follow protocols.
“I’m going to start my own detective agency,” he told his parents.
“Like a private investigator?” his mother asked.
“Sort of. But more like a private detective.”
“Oh Derek, I’m not sure about that. There are too many bad people out there. Too many for even the police to handle.”
He thought of Lucy and the “bad person” who the police couldn’t handle. He thought of her face, her pleading eyes, staring at him through the bank’s front window.
“That’s exactly why I want to do this,” he said.
It was the way he said it that told his parents that his decision was already committed to and nothing they could say would convince him to take a more practical and safe job.
Starting a “freelance detective” agency wasn’t easy at first. Derek had no idea of how to get his name out in the public. He started with Google Ad Words, a dedicated Facebook page and a website that he had custom designed.
Nothing.
For the first six months, the only public interest shown to Derek’s agency was expressed by police agencies and private investigators.
“It’s vigilantes like you who make it even harder for the ‘real’ police to do their jobs.”
“Don’t try to be cute with your title, Mr. Cole. A catchy title won’t make up for the fact that you have very little actual police experience.”
Derek also received a few emails from prospective clients. All of those turned out to be people looking for some “less than legal” work to be done.
It wasn’t until his seventh month in business - when his savings were all but dried up - when he signed his first paying client. Derek was hired to locate an accountant who absconded with over $500,000 from
the firm where he was a partner. Following the leads his client gave him and his uncanny ability to read people, Derek located the accountant six days after his services were retained.
“That was some impressive work,” his client told him. “The police had no chance of finding him. Their trail went cold two days after the money was stolen.”
Derek received fifteen percent of the recovered money. More importantly, he earned a very satisfied client who promised to “spread the word.”
Clients then began streaming to Derek. One after another, Derek accepted cases that, for whatever reason, the local, state, or federal authorities couldn’t solve. His reputation was building, and Derek was sure that his parents would now be proud of their son and his bold decision to start his own detective agency.
But now he was sitting in a plane, desperately trying to see something in the clouds that he had never been able to see before. He wondered why so many people - other people - told stories of being visited or of receiving a sign. And why he, as hard as he tried to see and to hear, never received any sign that she was still with him.
As the plane rose through and then above the clouds, Derek turned his gaze to the horizon. In the distance, he could see nothing but a blanket of clouds falling ever further from him and a dark sky above. He craned his neck, hoping to see something in the stars that were visible. Somewhere, off in the distance, he knew that the sky and clouds would meet. Maybe there, he thought, is where he would find a sign. A token of hope that she was waiting for him to notice.
She had been gone for over three years and for three years Derek had struggled to remember her face. Not the face he could easily remember by looking at pictures, but her face when her smile was not for a camera, but for him.
The only memory he could easily recall of her face was a poison to him. That final vision of her face, pressed against the glass, the consuming blackness of the pistol held against her temple and, behind her terrified face, his face. The face of the man whom Derek had never seen before and whose face he could recall in greater detail than the face of his own wife.
As he sat thinking about Lucy, he found his fingers tracing the scar on his left cheek, recalling the pain, the depression, the anger that caused the scar. He remembered the look on his mother’s face when she arrived at the hospital. How his father looked at him as he leaned against the far wall of Derek’s hospital room, seemingly wishing the room was five times the size but still glad he could be there for his son. He remembered the embarrassment he felt when he explained what had happened and how he knew the doctors didn’t believe his story.
“Can I get you anything to drink?” a flight attendant asked. She was leaning in close to Derek, closer than she did to any other passenger. She was attractive, no doubt, and she seemed to Derek to be the type of woman who understood the effects her appearance had on men.
“Scotch, on the rocks, please,” he answered, shaking the memories from his mind.
“We only have Dewar’s. Is that okay?”
“Fine. Dewar’s is fine.”
“Fourteen dollars, and we only take cash.”
“Make it a black coffee and a glass of water. No ice.”
Derek retrieved his moleskin notebook from his backpack and began reviewing his notes. It had only been a few hours since his first meeting with Thomas O’Connell and after accepting the case, yet he had heard and seen so much. He felt, as he studied his notes, that he was missing something. Something that he needed not to miss. Something that shouldn’t be missed.
Whether it was the fact that he was charged with the protection of a family from their own child, born without a heart, or the succumbing nature that Mark Rinaldo adopted as his punishment for his actions over twenty years ago, something was not adding up.
And why was Thomas not concerned about meeting him in a place as public as a park? Sure, the reason he gave was valid, but still someone truly in fear for his or her life would at least seem nervous or uncomfortable sitting out in the open.
“The killer could be anywhere,” he thought, trying to dispel his suspicions. “The fact is that someone killed three or four people exactly where Thomas said three people were killed. Fact. And the doctor who started this whole mess and who received a message from the assumed killer confirmed his story about his brother. Fact. And since the police are obviously looking for the killer, it wouldn’t make sense for the killer to walk around, looking for his next victim in a public park. Opinion.”
The flight attendant returned with two bottles of Dewar’s White Label in one hand and a plastic cup filled halfway with ice in the other.
“I don’t think anyone will miss two little bottles,” she smiled. “These are on me.”
“And if the pilot doesn’t get us out of these turbulence, they may be on me, soon. Thank you.”
She laughed a forced laugh and held eye contact with Derek a bit longer than what the joke deserved. “If you need anything else, you know where I’ll be.”
“Thanks again,” Derek said.
After the flight attendant moved on, Derek scribbled some notes in his book.
Find William Straus. Knows more than anyone else.
Contact O’Connells. Why did they leave and not demand that Thomas join them?
Check in on Rinaldo
He closed the moleskin, pushed off the overhead light, leaned back as far as he could, and closed his eyes. He was thankful that his wife’s memorized face was not there to greet him as he closed his eyes.
“Where are you, Alexander Black, and what is your next move?”
The flight from Chicago to Albany, New York took just over one and a half hours. By the time Derek had sucked any remaining scotch from the melting ice cubes, it was time to return his seatback to its upright position. He didn’t have enough time to plan out his next move but knew that he would have time as he made the estimated two-hour drive from Albany to Piseco Lake.
As the plane descended back through the clouds, he looked out of the window and again searched in vain for her face. The clouds were soon above him.
Where they belonged.
When the plane landed and finished its taxi ride to the gate, the scotch-gifting flight attendant approached Derek.
“I hope you enjoyed the scotch,” she said.
“I don’t admit to this most people,” Derek said as he removed his seatbelt, “but I love free scotch even more than I love cheap scotch.”
“Well, if you’re don’t have to get to anywhere too quickly, I know a few places in Albany that have a whole shelf of cheap scotch.”
Being hit on was nothing new to Derek. Though it made him uncomfortable while the “hitting on” was happening, it always made him feel good about himself. He worked hard at keeping his body in shape and knew that so many men took a more relaxed approached to fitness when they reach their mid-thirties.
But flirting also made Derek feel guilty. Though he no longer wore the wedding band that he and Lucy exchanged on the altar, he still felt married. Connected. Obligated, though he hated to feel obligated to someone or to something that he loved.
Lucy was dead. That he knew. He also knew she wasn’t going to make a triumphant reintroduction. But she was still there. There in his heart, in his thoughts, in his mind’s eye most every time he closed his eyes. He looked for her everywhere at first, not fully believing that something as simple and as abundantly manufactured as a gun could actually steal her away. To rip her out of this life and into whatever comes next.
After a while, he stopped looking for her, knowing that she was truly gone. To where, he didn’t know. He often would wonder about what happens after. He hoped for the heaven he learned about in church and the heaven that he was promised from his priest. As the days that separated him from her grew greater, he began wishing that the decision of whether or not a soul is granted residence in heaven was up to the person to whom an individual caused the most harm to when alive. He imagined the bastard, standing before the pearly gates, knocking and
waiting for the gates to swing open wide. He loved to picture the bastard’s face when Lucy walked out and how he would respond upon learning that his fate now rested in her hands.
But he knew her heart. He knew she would let the bastard in through the gates. Even show him around the place, buy him dinner, and introduce him to her parents if he asked. She was too forgiving.
Heartless: a Derek Cole Mystery Suspense Thriller (Derek Cole Suspense Thriller Book 1) Page 8
