Scar Tissue (Mr. Finn Book 2)

by Trace Conger

  “He ran the plan with Cutter past me a while ago,” said Connor. “Wanted to see what I thought.”

  “What did you tell him?”

  “I told him it was the stupidest plan I’d ever heard and he’d probably get himself killed. But since when did he listen to either of us?” Connor picked up the suitcase and wheeled it out to the kitchen.

  Part of me wanted to know what else my father had stashed up in that head of his, but the other part was okay not knowing.

  “I’m still not clear on why it’s so important that you go now,” I said.

  “Mitch is in Maine and he’s in trouble. We got each other into this and now we have to get each other out. Plus, some day that property in Maine will be yours and Connor’s. It’s only a matter of time before Ollie figures out some other way to snake it out from under me. I got to put a stop to it, and I got to do it now.”

  The last thing I needed to worry about right now was my father running around the back woods of Maine trying to settle some vendetta, but I also knew there wasn't anything I could say or do to stop him.

  “You want one of us to come with you?” I said. “I can’t send you off to Maine by yourself.”

  “I won’t be by myself. Mitch’ll be with me. Besides, you got more important shit to handle here. Take care of that. I’ll let you know if we run into any trouble we can’t manage.” Albert checked his watch. “I do need you to take me to the train station, though.”

  I looked at the suitcase and then back to Albert. “What time does your train leave?”

  “3:27 am.”

  “Well, that’s inconvenient as shit, isn’t it?”

  Thirty

  I CAUGHT A FEW HOURS of sleep after dropping Albert off at Cincinnati Union Terminal to catch his train to the backwoods of Maine. Two hours after I woke up, Connor arrived wearing his green baseball cap, a khaki jacket and holding two breakfast burritos and more blueberry coffee.

  “Dad get off okay?” he asked, handing me a cup.

  “As far as I know.” I checked my watch. “He should be well on his way by now.” I shook my head. “I feel like a shitty son letting him go off on his own like that. Who knows what he’s going to get into.”

  “He’ll be fine.”

  “How do you know? He’s seventy one.”

  “He’s tougher than you think. If you’re going to worry about anyone, worry about Ollie. Dad and Mitch can do some serious damage when they want to.”

  “How do you know what he can do?” I unwrapped my breakfast. “I feel like you and Albert have some strange partnership going on. You knew about Ollie, and he’s obviously been feeding you intel on me, if you knew about my Brooke situation. We haven’t talked in five years, but I get the impression you two chat like old ladies at a book club.”

  “We chat on and off.” Connor set his coffee and breakfast burrito on the table and sat down. “After all this shit went down in Maine, Dad was pretty shaken up. He knew Ollie was connected, and didn’t really know how safe it would be to stay up there. He and I talked and decided it might be safer for him to be back in Cincinnati year round instead of spending the summers in Maine. He sold his apartment here and moved into that nursing home to stay under the radar.”

  “I thought he did it because he didn’t want to be a burden on me.”

  “A burden?” said Connor. “I think he relishes being a burden. No, it was to lay low for awhile. I think he was more concerned about Ollie’s boys than Ollie himself, considering he was locked away in Machiasport.”

  “And you think he’s capable of handling Ollie?”

  “If I didn’t, I wouldn’t be standing here eating a shitty burrito.”

  The more I learned about my father, the less I thought I knew. Connor jammed what was left of his breakfast into his mouth.

  “Now stop worrying about it,” he said. “Dad and Mitch have it all covered. And I’ve got a feeling they might get some help once they’re up there.” He wiped his mouth and pushed his coffee aside. “Now, can we forget about Dad and get back to the Banker?”

  “No, we can't.”

  “What?”

  I slammed my breakfast onto the table and watched as the foil wrapper exploded, sending bits of tortilla, egg, cheese, and sauce across the kitchen. “This bullshit ends now,” I said.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You.” I leaned in close. “You waltz into my living room after being MIA for five years. You interject yourself into my case, which I don’t even know if I should trust you with. Who are you?”

  “I’m not sure what…”

  “Where the fuck have you been for the last five years and why are you here all of a sudden?”

  “I thought you were happy to see me?”

  “I’m waffling between happy, concerned, and suspicious as fuck.”

  “I can’t come back to see my family?”

  “No. You can’t. Not after five years of nothing. No phone calls. No goddamn Christmas cards. No nothing. There’s something you’re not telling me, and I want to know what it is. Why did you disappear and why are you back?”

  Connor took a breath and then sipped his coffee. He pulled a chair out from the dining room table and sat down.

  “I’ve been in a military prison in Kansas.”

  “What?”

  He cocked his head to the side. “You asked where I’ve been for the past five years. Well, I’ve been in Leavenworth.”

  “As in, you worked there?”

  “Not exactly,” said Connor.

  “Go ahead. You can't end on that.”

  “I won’t go into details, but we were conducting recon operations near Mosul and picked up two-high value targets. We were ordered to interrogate both men and uncover details of a possible ambush on our forces in the region.”

  “And?” I said.

  “And, it didn’t go well. What started as an interrogation ended in me being court martialed for violating Articles 128 and 134 of the Uniform Code. They tossed me in the brig for five years. Four months ago they let me out with full benefits and reassigned me to a base near Boston.”

  “What do Articles 128 and 134 refer to?”

  “Assault mostly. There’s some other shit in there too, but let’s just go with assault. The government was getting pressured to crack down on detainee abuse. It was a shit charge, but they needed to do something to show they were taking the allegations seriously. They had to act.”

  “So you were a scapegoat?”

  “No, I assaulted the piece of shit.” He smiled. “Look, the world’s a messy place. Sometimes you get dirty.”

  “What do you do in Boston?” I said.

  “Civil affairs training mostly. On base. And my side business, but I already told you about that.”

  “Why did you pick now to come back?”

  “You and dad are the only family I’ve got left. After the Bishop thing, I thought you might be in trouble, so I came back to make sure you didn't need any help.” He slipped his baseball cap off and scratched his head. “And as it turns out, you did need my help.”

  “Does Albert know about your prison stint?”

  “He knows.” He paused. ”The Army contacted him. It’s protocol.”

  “How did you talk to Albert about Ollie then? If you were off the grid?”

  “We wrote to each other. No rules against that. But I didn’t really want to contact you. Being in prison isn’t easy to hide, and I wanted to keep it to myself as long as possible.” He looked at me and squinted. “You’re the PI, if you were curious, why didn’t you ever look into me?”

  “Who says I didn’t?”

  I did look into Connor a few times, with shitty results. Getting intel on someone in Indianapolis is one thing, but it gets a lot murkier when you step outside the country. And it gets even worse when the military is involved. I knew Connor joined the Rangers, and was deployed to Iraq, but the trail ended there.

  “So now you know,” he said. He slipped his cap back
on. “So we good?”

  I studied his face. “Yeah,” I said. “We’re good. For now. Let’s get back to work.”

  CONNOR FOLLOWED ME INTO THE den, and I booted up my desktop computer.

  “Since I told you what you wanted to know, can I ask you a question?”

  “You mean there’s something you don’t know about me? From our conversations thus far, I got the impression you already knew everything there was to know.”

  “So is that a yes or a no?”

  “Shoot,” I said.

  “What happened between you and Brooke?”

  “Take your hat off,” I said. He slipped it off, and I stood up and snapped Connor’s photo with my mobile phone, then connected the phone to my computer. “Not sure we have enough time to get into that. It’s a long story.”

  “How about the highlights?”

  “Long story short is she was sick of me being a PI. She didn’t like the idea of me getting shot and bleeding to death in an alley somewhere. And she hated the hours. You know how it is, nothing runs on a schedule. Sometimes you’re in at 3:00 am and sometimes you have to disappear for days at a time to track someone down.”

  “So it wasn’t about you losing your PI license?”

  “Not really.” I grabbed a sheet of thick stock from the printer stand and placed it in the printer tray. “It was more about her wanting me to have a safer, steadier 9 to 5. Why all the questions about Brooke?”

  “Just wanted to know what happened. Dad mentioned you two were done, but he didn’t elaborate on why.”

  I turned back to the computer and clicked and dragged Connor’s photo into a template. Then I clicked open another file and pulled my own photo into the same template.

  “There’s probably more to it, but I can sleep better at night thinking it was all about the job. To be honest, the relationship just ran its course. Probably would have ended before it did had we not had Becca. She kept us together longer than we should have been.”

  “You still get along?”

  “Have to, considering we’re raising a daughter together. Well, not together-together, but you know what I mean.” I went back to work on the template.

  “And this Daryl guy?”

  “She met him at the hospital where she works. I never asked her if she hooked up with him before we split or not. I really don’t wanna know. I’ll just assume she was committed to our marriage until it officially ended. I always was. The ironic thing is she told me she shacked up with Daryl because he was the safer alternative. Always came home at the same time every night. Mr. Dependable.”

  “And he’s the reason you’re neck-deep in this shit?”

  “Like I said, ironic.” I opened my browser and grabbed an image of the Indiana state seal.

  “You seeing anyone else?”

  “A few weeks ago I met a nurse at Becca’s school.”

  Connor cracked a smile. “Really, a school nurse?”

  “Her name is Jennifer.” I dropped the image into the template.

  “How does Becca feel about you nailing her nurse?”

  I went back to typing. “You know, crazy thing, but Becca and I usually don’t chat about my sex life. We tend to stick to lighter topics like cartoons, video games, and absentee uncles.”

  I opened up a box of thick plastic name-badge backs, and grabbed two metal clips. I wanted to change the subject as I fumbled with the name badges.

  “What about you? You a swinging Bostonian bachelor?” I clicked ‘print’ on the screen and the printer surged to life.

  “Married to my career, little brother,” Connor raised his voice over the sound of the printer. “A few casual flings, but that’s about it. You’re asking for trouble getting too close to anyone in this business. Bad things tend to happen.”

  “Yes they do.” The printer spit out a sheet of thick perforated paper. I grabbed the sheet and tore two sections apart. Then I peeled off the sticky front of the paper, carefully aligned it to the plastic backs, and applied the adhesive side.

  “A Catholic school nurse?” “That probably says something about you on a physiological level.”

  “Yeah, it means I like getting laid.” I ran the new badges through a lamination machine and attached the metal clasps.

  “Here you go, Special Investigator Brian Tipton.” I said handing one of the name badges to Connor.

  Connor scrutinized the I.D. “It looks just like me.”

  Thirty One

  BROOKE PULLED TO A STOP in front of the Cincinnati Catholic Academy. A woman in her mid-twenties approached the passenger side of the car, the vibrant school logo patch on her white polo shirt gleaming in the morning sun like an angelic halo.

  The attendant opened the rear passenger door, helped Becca out of her booster seat, and then waved to Brooke before closing the door and ushering Becca into a line with a few dozen other students all waiting to be released into the school.

  Brooke polished off what was left of her coffee and wedged the large stainless steel tumbler into the Range Rover’s cup holder. Twenty minutes after pulling away from Becca’s school, she parked in a corner spot on the third floor of the Christ Hospital parking garage. She didn’t see the red minivan pull in behind her.

  Brooke looked on the passenger floor for her sneakers, but they weren’t there. She turned and looked into the back seat but still didn’t see them. Remembering she had tossed them into the rear of the SUV the night before, she stepped out of the car and opened the lift gate. Bingo.

  She grabbed the sneakers, placed her right leg onto the rear bumper, slipped her stiletto from her foot, and replaced it with the sneaker. She was lacing up the shoe when someone behind her wrapped a thick leather-clad forearm over her mouth. His other hand grabbed her left arm and pinned it behind her back. She struggled to free herself, but the man behind her tightened his grip, halting her struggle.

  “Hello again, sexy,” said the man.

  She didn’t have to see him to know it was Adler. Brooke arched her head up away from his arm so she could speak. Her heart pounded in her chest.

  “What do you want?”

  “I want you to tell me what your boyfriend’s got on our banker friend. We haven’t heard from him in a while. Just want to make sure he’s still on the case.”

  Brooke tried to pry Adler’s forearm away with her free hand, but Adler jerked on her left arm, pinning it higher on her back. Pain shot through her shoulder, and she clenched her teeth and buried her mouth back into Adler’s forearm, afraid of what he might do if she screamed.

  After a moment, he relaxed his grip on her left arm. “One more time, Brooke. The Banker? What does Mr. Finn know about him?”

  She took a deep breath. “I don’t know. He doesn’t talk to me about what he’s working on. I don’t know anything about it.”

  A car turned onto the third floor of the parking garage. Its tires squealed as it made the turn onto the same row as Brooke’s Range Rover.

  Adler moved his forearm from around Brooke’s throat, grabbed a clump of her red hair with his right hand and yanked her head back so her ear was next to his mouth. “Scream and I’ll break your head open,” he whispered. He released her hair and her left arm and rested his hand against the Range Rover’s open lift gate.

  A blue BMW slowly rolled past them and then turned onto the ramp to the upper level.

  “I tell you what,” said Adler. The next time you talk to him, you ask him what he’s found.” Adler tossed a Post-It note into the back of the SUV. “And then you call me at that number and tell me what you find out. Mr. Holbrook is a patient person, but he’s getting agitated that he hasn’t heard anything. We’re starting to think Mr. Finn isn’t taking this very seriously.”

  Brooke nodded her head.

  “Okay, I’ll ask him”

  “You better hope he finds the Banker or I’m gonna have to step things up. Maybe come back and see you again. Or maybe go over to that nice big school where you dropped off your daughter.”

&
nbsp; “I said, I’ll tell him.”

  “Good,” said Adler. “Now, there’s something else I came for.” Adler slammed his fist into the back of Brooke’s head, sending her tumbling into the back of the Range Rover. He grabbed her waist and pulled her out so her feet were on the ground. She put her hand under her body and struggled to raise up, but Adler hit her again, this time slamming her head into the carpeted floor in the back of the vehicle.

  He kicked her legs apart with a leather boot and reached up under her dress. Her head spun as he yanked her panties down around her ankles. She was about to black out when she heard the loud chirp from the parking garage emergency alarm. She couldn’t see it, but she knew the blue emergency light was flashing somewhere nearby. It must have been the driver in the BMW.

  Brooke closed her eyes, and it went dark.

  WHEN BROOKE CAME TO, SHE sat on the concrete floor of the parking garage. She rubbed her head and then noticed the three men standing in front of her. Two were security officers and the third was a man who she recognized from her office.

  “Are you all right Ms. Harding?” said one of the security guards. He held her wallet in one hand and her driver’s license in the other.

  She blinked hard and tried to stand when the other officer placed a hand on her shoulder. “Don’t move ma’am. Someone is bringing a gurney. We’ve also notified the police.” He motioned to the man from Brooke’s office. “Mr. Kendrick here gave the police a description of the man who was with you and they’re searching the hospital campus.”

  “Thank you,” she said trying to stand again.

  “Ms. Harding, please stay still.”

  “I’m all right,” she said. “Really. I just need some ice for my head. I’m okay.”

  The officer, realizing Brooke wasn’t going to stay down, helped her stand. “Do you know who that man was? Mr. Kendrick said he assaulted you.” He handed Brooke her wallet and license.

  Brooke shook her head. “Never seen him before. He came up behind me while I was changing my shoes for work. I never even saw his face.”

  She turned around and saw the Post-It note lying in the trunk. She snatched it up with her right hand and stuffed it inside her wallet.