by S W Vaughn
Amy was different. Sweet, adorable, smart from an early age. Losing her that way, with no explanation, had destroyed the family even before the car accident finished the job.
But he wasn’t going to discuss that. Amy had nothing to do with the current situation.
“All right. We’ll play it straight with this guy.” He’d been thinking about posing them as grieving family members looking for more information about the fire, but it was too risky if Gardner was involved with the schools. He probably knew quite a few families around here. “You ready for this?”
Danica nodded. “No,” she said. “Let’s go.”
They walked to the front door, across the furnished porch, and Jude rang the doorbell. The fit sixty-something man who answered a few minutes later was dressed for not going anywhere in sweatpants, a baggy t-shirt and an uneasy frown. “Yes?” he said.
“Malcolm Gardner?”
The frown deepened. “Do I know you?”
“No, sir, you don’t. My name is Jude Wyland, and this is Danica Murray.” He gestured at her. “We just wanted to talk, if you have a few minutes.”
“Wyland. Isn’t that … oh, God, the little girl. And then her parents. You’re—”
“Not here to discuss that.” He swallowed the lump that tried to form in his throat. “I’m a private investigator, and I’m helping Danica look into her aunt. Sherry Price?”
Gardner blanched slightly. “What about her?”
“You know something, don’t you?” Danica nearly shouted. “Tell me what happened!”
“Hey, whoa.” Jude held a calming hand up. “Mr. Gardner, I wanted to ask you a few questions about the fire. The one at Magnolia Estates,” he said.
Anger tightened the man’s features, but Jude sensed it wasn’t directed at them. “That clusterfuck. Excuse my language,” he said, looking past them to the darkened yard and the lit street. “All right, but we’ll talk out here. The wife just went to bed.” He pointed to the grouping of wicker furniture on the porch. “Have a seat. I’ll be out in a minute.”
“Thank you, sir. Appreciate it.”
“Private investigator, are you?” Gardner arched an eyebrow. “You feel like military to me, Mr. Wyland.”
He smiled a bit. “Guilty as charged. Marines,” he said. “You?”
“Air Force. Pilot, if you can believe that.” Gardner nodded. “Be right out.”
Jude believed he would.
Malcolm Gardner lit his second cigarette in ten minutes. He sat in a wicker chair with his back to the porch railing, facing Jude and Danica seated on a cushioned bench. So far there’d been a lot of cautious small talk about fire truck day and military food and the long-standing rivalry between Victory Falls’ fire and police departments.
Now he seemed to be easing into the big topic. “That fire,” he said, looking off into the distance. “It was a goddamned travesty. No building should’ve gone up that fast, like a pile of newspapers instead of cement and bricks and wood. But I didn’t get to figure out why that happened. I got pulled off the investigation.”
“What?” Jude said. “Why?”
“Because the police had their man.” Gardner rolled his eyes and dragged on his smoke. “My boss, Chief Eppstadt, hinted that there were a few wrinkles in the case against the guy they arrested. Meaning if we performed a full investigation, they might not get a conviction. So I was told to just go with the arson ruling.”
Jude nodded slowly. “That fits in with what I found so far,” he said. “The arresting officer doesn’t want anyone looking too closely at the case.”
“Yeah, I’ll bet.” Gardner smirked. “Is he what happened to your face?”
“Pretty much. I was born with the rest of it.”
Gardner let out a roaring laugh, and Danica chuckled along. “You’re a Marine, all right,” he said. “So you know us military types. We always follow orders.”
“You went to investigate anyway,” Jude said.
“Sure did. The very next morning, when the activity died down.” He drew on the cigarette again, an orange wink against the night behind him. “Only it hadn’t died down as much as I thought,” he said. “When I got to the site, half the Victory Falls PD was there. So was the mayor.” He pointed at Danica. “He was arguing with your aunt.”
Danica shivered hard enough for Jude to feel it through the bench. “About what?”
“Don’t know. The PD wouldn’t let me near the place,” he said. “But they were definitely shouting, both of ’em madder than wet hens.”
“Maybe she got the same ultimatum as you,” Jude said. “She was sent to investigate first, but the newspaper said her report on the fire was inconclusive.”
“And she’d never say that,” Danica put in. “She’d find out what happened.”
Gardner gave a thoughtful nod. “Might be. Quinton’s not just the mayor, he’s also the chairman of the county Board of Supervisors,” he said. “Technically, that makes him her boss.”
“Quinton has his fingers in a hell of a lot of pies around here.” Jude tapped the arm of the bench a few times. “Mayor, chairman, real estate developer. I noticed he’s been real busy on the east side lately.”
“Yeah, he’s an opportunistic son of a bitch,” Gardner said. “Guess he’s lucky, too. Before the fire, his development business was about to go bust. Nothing like a little human suffering and cheap real estate to turn things around.”
“Right.” A picture was starting to form in Jude’s mind — a massive, ugly one. He could see how all this might fit together, including Sherry Price’s bizarre about-face. But there were still a few things he had to look into before he could be sure. “Well, Mr. Gardner, I think we’d better get back to it,” he said. “Thank you for your time.”
“My pleasure, Marine.” He stood and offered a hand, and Jude rose to take it. Then he shook with Danica. “I hope you find what you’re looking for, Ms. Murray.”
She smiled. “Thank you. I hope so, too.”
Jude didn’t voice his own concerns yet. But if he was even half right about what was behind all this, one way or another … the only thing Danica would find was a broken heart.
Chapter 13
Danica was furious when they got back to the motel and Jude told her to go home. She wouldn’t until he swore he was only doing research for the rest of the night and promised not to take action on anything until tomorrow. Even then, she was reluctant to leave.
But with what he was thinking now, he didn’t want her any more involved than she already was. This could be far more dangerous than he’d imagined.
The first thing he wanted to look into required a bit more access than he could get as a private investigator. It was after ten now, but he knew Richie Lowenstein would still be awake, and probably working. He set up his laptop on the desk, powered it on and made the call.
Richie answered in about half a ring with, “It’s been five goddamned minutes, Meyers. Who do you think I am, Houdini?”
He held back a laugh. “Always thought of you more as a David Blaine type,” he said.
“Jude.” Richie breathed a sigh of relief. “Sorry, man. Didn’t look at the screen. Meyers has been up my ass all night.”
“I guess some things never change.” Alden Meyers was a particularly anal-retentive field office supervisor with aspirations of directorhood. When he handed out tasks, he wanted them done yesterday — but no one paid much attention to him. Which only made him more anal. “Does that mean you don’t have a minute?”
“For you I’ve got plenty of time. Meyers, not so much.” He could practically hear the grin in Richie’s voice. “How’d that stuff go today with the thing?” he said.
“Smooth.”
“And you’re still not going to tell me why, are you?”
“Nah. Matter of fact, I’m about to compound your curiosity.”
“Seriously?”
“Yeah.” It was his turn to grin. “I need you to patch me into the back-office archives for the New Ke
nt County Department of Building Development.”
“Oh, come on. You have to tell me why you’re digging into a bunch of rinky-dink code enforcement shit.”
“Not happening.”
“I hate you.” He heard a quick burst of typing in the background. “I’m assuming you have a machine I can remote jack? Read off the IP address.”
Jude did. There was more typing, and a moment later a small black box popped up on his laptop screen. Gibberish in white text scrolled through the box, and the mouse pointer moved by itself to click on the browser and open it.
Less than five minutes, and he was logged into the New Kent county database as an administrator.
“Meyers is right about one thing, Richie. You are magic,” he said.
“Not really. I’m just smarter than you.” The black box materialized again. More white text flooded the box, and then it vanished. “Machine’s all yours,” Richie said. “Jude … you’re not getting yourself into trouble out there, are you?”
“Of course not.” Technically he was getting himself out of trouble, but he wouldn’t mention that to Richie.
“You’re sure. You still have that box of toys I sent you last month?”
“I do.” In an apparent attempt to help him stay off the CIA’s radar, Richie had mailed him a carton packed with high-tech gadgets. Tracking devices, pinhole cameras, an assortment of bugs and wires, a cell cloner, night vision goggles. The complete modern spy package. He’d been absurdly touched, despite believing he’d never actually use any of it. Looked like he might end up doing that now, though. “Tell you what,” he said. “When this is over, I’ll give you all the details. No holds barred.”
“You’d better. I’m still stuck in the rat cage, so I have to live vicariously through you.” Richie gave a brief sigh. “Hope you don’t mind my saying, but I’m sorry as hell about Sarah, man. She didn’t deserve that.”
“Yeah. Thanks.” Apparently, six months wasn’t enough time to stop the sharp ache in his chest every time he heard his partner’s name. “I gotta go, Richie,” he said. “Thanks again. You’re the best.”
“I know. Later, Jude.”
They ended the call, and he turned to the laptop.
It took a few minutes to navigate the directories and sub-menus, but Jude found what he was looking for — the building permit records. Permits had to be issued by the department, and in a smaller operation like this, usually the building chief had to sign off on everything.
A look back at the records prior to the Magnolia Estates fire proved one of his suspicions. The former building chief, Mr. Bernard Copeland, had turned down nearly every permit applied for by Quinton Developments. In all likelihood, it was probably some personal problem between the two men. Happened all the time in small-town politics.
But after the fire and Mr. Copeland’s ‘unexpected’ death, the new building chief approved everything Quinton submitted. The luxury condos, the shopping mall, the golf club — and more, all on the east side. A self-storage operation. A gated community. A ‘recreation center,’ whatever that was.
Unlike her dead predecessor, Sherry Price was lock-stepping to the beat of Quinton’s drum. After they’d apparently had a screaming match over the apartment fire.
With a growing sense of unease, Jude pulled up the original building permit for Magnolia Estates. It was signed by Copeland and issued to a company called Tidewater Industries. He opened a new tab and started looking into Tidewater.
There wasn’t much to find. The company was primarily in real estate management and had filed for bankruptcy after the fire, in the face of a handful of wrongful death lawsuits claiming that a lack of security had allowed Lunn to start the blaze. Only the company name was listed as the defendant in the lawsuits. If they had a website, it’d been taken down.
Everything about the place only led to more dead ends.
He couldn’t dig any deeper without hacking into something, and he had neither the time nor the skills. Hopefully, Richie wouldn’t mind one more favor. He fired off a text asking for everything he could find on Tidewater Industries, and then shut things down and prepared to head out.
Despite his promise to Danica, there was one more piece of the puzzle he needed. And he couldn’t get to it online.
Chapter 14
When Martin Lunn said that Lobo had been at ‘the bar’ with him the night of the fire, it wasn’t hard to narrow that down to the only bar still open on the east side. The place was called The Oak Hammer, and the short row of motorcycles parked in front suggested that at least some of the Squad was here.
Jude drove past the place and parked around the block, out of sight. What he had in mind was a risk — it relied on Lobo having no more than an average thug’s passing familiarity with law enforcement, and getting him riled up just enough to contact the employer Jude suspected he had. Without pushing him into lethal revenge territory.
Admittedly, this would be a lot easier if he had a partner. But he wasn’t going to risk Danica’s safety around these trigger-happy assholes.
He got out of the car, popped the trunk and uncovered Richie’s box of toys. Took a minute to find what he wanted. When he did, he pocketed the tiny gadgets and headed up the block, toward the bar.
As he reached the corner, a black pickup driving by slowed. The brake lights flashed as the truck crossed the intersection, and the vehicle pulled to the curb across the street. Jude watched a minute, thinking he’d seen that pickup recently — not that there weren’t a hundred just like it around here.
He didn’t wait long. The driver’s side door opened, and Malcolm Gardner hopped out and headed toward him.
Jude smirked as the man approached. “Hey, Air Force,” he said. “So this is what you do while the wife is sleeping. Hit the bars.”
“Only on special occasions.” Gardner stopped, flashed a grin. “Actually, I got to thinking what this crazy Marine said about the east side and Quinton buying land up like candy, so I decided to go for a drive. And I happened to see the aforementioned crazy Marine doing the same thing.” He nodded at the bar down the block. “You looking for something particular in that shitty place? Besides trouble, obviously.”
“Yeah. This asshole who calls himself Lobo.”
The eyebrow went up. “What for?”
Jude considered how much he should tell Gardner about what he knew, and what he suspected. Seeing how furious the man had been about the half-assed way the fire was handled, he decided to spill most of it. Besides, Gardner worked in the circles he was trying to investigate. Maybe the investigator could fill in a few more gaps.
He gave the condensed version — running into Lobo earlier that day, talking to Lunn at the prison, checking into Quinton’s suspicious track record with building permits. “It’s funny how fast the neighborhood’s emptying out with these gang bastards convincing them to live elsewhere,” he said when he finished. “And when nobody wants to live in a place, the property costs tend to take a steep nosedive.”
“Holy hell,” Gardner said. “You think Quinton’s paying these guys to terrorize people.”
“I do. But I have to make sure,” he said. “That’s why I’m here.”
“What’s the plan?”
He shrugged. “Mostly, it’s to beat the piss out of Lobo. I also have to get hold of his phone somehow. Just for a few seconds.”
Gardner frowned. “His phone?”
“Yeah.” He fished what he’d taken from the toy box out of his pocket — a small plastic sheet with nine slim, adhesive circuitry dots in various colors. “These are wireless two-way taps,” he said. “Stick one to the back of a cell phone, and you can dial in and hear both sides of a conversation from a hundred-yard radius.”
“Christ, that is some scary-ass tech,” Gardner said. “Isn’t that a little on the fancy side for a Marine?”
“Probably.” He gave a crooked smile. “I joined the CIA after my tour.”
Gardner blinked. “You’re CIA?”
“Not
presently. I resigned.”
“Yeah, not sure if that’s better or worse.” Gardner shook his head and smiled. “Tell you what,” he said. “You distract this punk, and I’ll get your little sticker-bug on his phone.”
Jude frowned. “I can’t ask you to do that.”
“You’re not asking,” he said. “Look, I’ve spent the last thirty years investigating morons who fall asleep with lit cigarettes when I’m not boosting little kids into fire trucks. Nothing wrong with that. But hell if I don’t miss the days when the things I did mattered a little more.”
Damn. He could definitely understand that.
After a brief pause, he handed over the plastic sheet. “All right, Air Force,” he said. “Let’s do this.”
Gardner went in first, after Jude described Lobo to him, though he didn’t believe the man would be hard to spot. He gave it five minutes and then headed inside.
The setup could be better, could be worse. Not too many customers, maybe a dozen, and it seemed like the mix was half Squad and half people who really wished the Squad wasn’t here. Bar to the left, pool tables and juke box to the right, tables in the back. The bartender gave off a pretty strong leave-me-out-of-this vibe.
Lobo, T-Man and two other thugs were playing pool while AC/DC’s ‘Highway to Hell’ rocked from the juke box. The denim-patched leather jacket Lobo had been wearing earlier was draped on a stool at the back of the pool area, and Malcolm Gardner had gotten himself a beer and sat at the table closest to it. If Lobo’s cell was in his jacket, they could probably pull this off.
If it wasn’t, he’d at least get the satisfaction of beating this asshole down.
Jude approached the rowdy game of pool with measured steps. T-Man was the first to spot him. He grinned, nudged Lobo, and the leader looked up with irritation that morphed into a nasty smile.
“Oh, man. Ain’t this a treat.” Lobo came around the table toward him, holding a pool cue. “I figured all our fun was over for the day. Now here you come, beggin’ to get your ass kicked.” He pointed the stick. “We’re gonna put you in the hospital, buddy. Or maybe the morgue. Haven’t decided yet.”
