Promissory Payback

by Laurel Dewey

  CHAPTER 5

  “Anything interesting on those security videos?” Jane asked one of the techies back at DH.

  “Nothing so far. It’s like watching a test pattern,” he lazily replied. “I have video of Handel leaving and coming home but that’s it for action.”

  Jane hated depending upon someone else to do follow-up. They usually never had the same interest or keen eye she possessed. “I want to check the tapes out later myself,” she stated, picking up the phone.

  “How many hours you want cued up?”

  Jane dialed. “Every last fucking minute.” She connected with the head desk at the Budget Inn where Joe Harvey spent the night. It was instantly clear to Jane that the voice on the other end was that of a brain-dead seat warmer who didn’t have a clue. When she asked the guy if he recalled seeing Joe Harvey, he spent most of the time saying, “Ummm” and “Uhhh.” The most she could get out of the Mensa reject was that “his computer showed” that Harvey checked in at 9:35 PM. Factoring the one-hour time difference between California and Colorado, that would make it 10:35 PM MST. Even with the flight delay, Harvey should have checked in at least two hours before that. Jane asked to talk to a manager, hoping to get a better bead on the situation. After an interminable time on hold listening to Barry Manilow sing, “I Write The Songs,” an older-sounding woman with a bad cough came on the line.

  “Yeah, I remember him,” the woman said, expelling part of her lung. She described Joe to a T.

  “Did he seem agitated?”

  “Nah. If anything, he was quite relaxed. Real easy goin’ kinda guy. Said he’d been across the street at the Airport Lounge gettin’ some food and doin’ some readin’ and he lost track of the time. That’s why he was late checkin’ in. Said he was out here on business overnight and was glad to find a hotel so close to the airport. He complimented me on our lobby. Nice guy.”

  Lots of volunteered information there. Lots of it. The same way Joe offered so much “chatter” info to Jane about his plane being late due to baggage issues. It’s not that a person can’t shoot the shit with a woman behind the counter of a budget hotel. That wasn’t the point. The point was understanding the type of person who would naturally do that, and Joe Harvey, in Jane’s mind, was not that type. People who are out to save the world have a single-minded purpose that prevents them from wasting their time or breath on chitchat that is not driven to their specific goals. They are far too focused on their self-important objectives. And referring to Joe as “relaxed”? Well, again, the intensity that colored him during Jane’s interaction with him was not likely to be transformed into “relaxed,” especially after a delayed flight and a nocturnal arrival walking to a budget hotel. No, if anything, irritation would be the key word.

  It had to be an act, Jane deduced. A carefully orchestrated act just in case anyone like Jane followed up on his appearance at the hotel and asked about his behavior. He had to make his interaction with the woman at the front desk memorable for her, just in case.

  Her mind drifted to the two photos on Joe’s office wall that she felt held significance in this whole mess. Pissed-off investors, perhaps? Jane’s clear photographic memory recalled Charley P. Hall, former P.O.W., and Raymond Honeycutt from a Denver diabetes support group associated with Denver Health Medical Center. After calling the V.A., it took Jane less than ten minutes to track down Hall. Without Jane being too specific about her visit, he agreed to talk to her that evening at the house he shared with his daughter in Montbello. Raymond Honeycutt was even easier to find, being that he was actually in Denver Health Medical Center as a patient. But she was informed that Honeycutt was under “massive sedation” due to “mitigating factors” and probably wouldn’t be able to talk to her until the next day. Jane figured Honeycutt was either in the psych ward or dying. Either way, she wasn’t looking forward to their visit. Tonight, she’d tackle the former P.O.W.

  When Jane pulled her Mustang up to the ramshackle house that night, she made a point to secure her Glock a little tighter against her rib cage. This section of Montbello was no Ozzie and Harriet neighborhood, unless Ozzie was a drug dealer and Harriet was his mule. A child’s bike lay across the front steps, along with stacks of old newspapers, garbage bags and pots with dead plants. Jane knocked on the door and was about to put out her cigarette when Hall opened the door.

  He was a giant of a man, towering around six feet eight inches tall and barrel-chested. A cigarette teetered precariously from his chapped lips, dropping embers onto his well-worn flannel shirt. She swore that one errant ember touched the back of his hand and singed the hair, but Hall never flinched an inch. This was the kind of guy who chewed ammo and bathed in napalm when he served in Vietnam. He still sported his military buzz cut and his blue eyes still spied the Vietcong around every dark corner.

  “Mr. Hall. I’m Detective Jane Perry.” She started to extinguish her cigarette.

  “You can smoke in here. I don’t give a shit,” he said, ushering her inside.

  This was going to be different, Jane mused. She walked into the low-ceilinged house, cluttered from end to end with junk. Between the claustrophobic environment and dim lighting, it felt like a bunker. Several empty bottles of Jack Daniels lay discarded on their side next to an easy chair that had well over two- dozen cigarette burns. Hall lowered his large frame into the chair, momentarily wincing with pain. He motioned for Jane to move a pile of dirty clothes off the couch and sit down.

  “Thank you for seeing me on such short notice, Mr. Hall.”

  “Well, it wasn’t like I had anything planned. Just the usual.” He withdrew a bottle of Jack Daniels secured in the side of the chair’s cushion. “I’m halfway through a fifth of Jack and a quarter of the way through my third flashback of the night.”

  Jane’s protective instincts kicked in. “I noticed the kid’s bike outside. Is there a child in the house?”

  “No. My seventeen-year-old grandson stole it from a six-year-old Down syndrome kid. He’s trying to sell it on eBay. Said he’s going to use the money to get his tongue split so he can look like a lizard. He’s not here or I’d let you arrest his useless ass.” Hall took a generous swig. “My daughter’s at work. She waits tables at a biker joint on Colfax. On the weekend, she works the pole at The Pussy Palace strip club. My sixteen-year-old granddaughter is at her Lamaze group. In three months, she’ll deliver twins. We’ve haven’t gotten the DNA results back on the four potential boys who might be the father. The fifth possible match won’t get out of juvie until after the twins are born. So, life’s a real adventure around here.”

  He took another gulp of whiskey and Jane sucked a hit of nicotine. She knew the answer to her next question but she wanted to hear it anyway. “You move in with your daughter by choice?”

  “Oh, yeah. Between the curb appeal and neighborhood potlucks, how could I turn her down?”

  “How long have you lived here?”

  “Nine months, seventeen days. But who’s counting?” He knocked back another swig.

  Jane leaned back and felt the stab of metal bite into her lower back. She turned and withdrew a single piercing in the shape of the sun.

  Hall shook his head in disgust. “Oh, Jesus.” Jane handed it to him. “My daughter is always losing these damn things. Seem to keep falling off her nipples . . .”

  Okay, this was obviously a bleak existence for Charley P. Hall, former P.O.W. The Vietcong never tortured Charley as much as his own trailer trash family. Jane took a hit of nicotine. “Why’d you lose your house, Mr. Hall?”

  “Who said I lost it?” He was wily even though he was half in the bag.

  “You don’t live here by choice. Who caused you to lose your house?”

  Hall eyed Jane with steely grit as he methodically lit a new cigarette off the ember of the one in his mouth. “Who? What do you mean ‘who?’”

  Jane figured he had a knife in his boot and a gun tucked into his waistband, either one ready to put to use if he felt cornered. She casually unbutton
ed her leather jacket to reveal her holstered Glock.

  Hall leaned forward. “Your service weapon looks dusty. When was the last time you emptied a clip into a perp’s head?”

  Jane leaned forward, mirroring Hall’s intimidating manner. “This morning. Right before breakfast. Haven’t had a chance to clean it yet.”

  He stared at her for a hard minute. Jane never moved a muscle. Thankfully, he couldn’t hear her heart beating like a horse at full gallop. He slightly relaxed and sat back in the chair. “Want a drink?”

  Even if Jane were still bending her elbow, she would have declined his offer. “No, thanks. I’m on the job.”

  “And that job would be ... what?”

  “Finding the individuals who invested in Carolyn Handel’s scam.”

  “What makes you think I’m one of them?”

  “I saw your photo on the wall of Joe Harvey’s office.”

  “That’s all? A photo? Why would that make you think I was an investor in some woman’s scam?”

  The alcohol was lowering Hall’s ability to tell a lie. As far as Jane was concerned, the guilt of association was all over his face. “Call it intuition. You know what that’s about, right? Like when you were in ‘Nam and walking through a field and you just knew it was booby-trapped? You just knew. I looked at your photo on Joe’s wall and I just knew.”

  He shrugged his shoulders. “What if I did invest with her? What does it matter?”

  “Well, for starters, she’d dead.”

  Hall’s face never changed. No surprise. No smirk. No sadness. Nothing. “Okay. And?”

  “It wasn’t from natural causes.”

  “I still don’t know why you’re here—”

  “I did a quick check with the County Clerk’s office today. The house you lived in for over thirty years went into foreclosure ten months ago. You’d taken a second mortgage on it last year, and you weren’t making regular payments.” She noted how Hall’s eyes narrowed into a menacing glare. Jane calmly continued. “My theory—and it’s just a theory of course—is that you mentioned this in passing to Joe Harvey, and he wanted to help you by hooking you up with his Aunt Carolyn who promised to make all your problems go away if you loaned her your last fifty thousand dollars—”

  He jerked forward, slamming the Jack Daniels bottle on a soiled carpet. “Do I look like a guy who’d be that stupid?”

  “I never said you were stupid, sir—”

  “Well, that’s what I’m hearing! You think if I had fifty grand, I’d hand it over to some goddamned woman without checking her out? You think I’m a fuckin’ fool?!”

  Jane studied his face. That’s exactly what Charley Hall did. And he hated himself for it. He woke up with that regret, and it was the last thing on his mind before his tired head hit the pillow at night. He thought he was smarter than that, but somehow the booze and PTSD had marred his judgment. But he was sure as hell not about to admit it to some female cop who had the gall to remind him of his desperate decision. Jane felt nothing but sorrow for the guy. He’d be dead in less than five years, she figured; either by eating his gun or the result of his rotting liver. But she also knew that the bile rising up into his throat was putrid enough to fuel the rage and possibly trigger the need to kill Carolyn Handel. Proving that, however, was another thing altogether.

  “I don’t think you’re a fool, sir. I really don’t.” Jane casually took a final hit of her cigarette before squashing it out in an overburdened ashtray. “I would like to ask you where you were on Sunday night.”

  Hall drained the whiskey bottle before tossing it to the side. “Same place I am every goddamned night. Right here. In this chair. Under this fuckin’ roof. Waiting . . . Just waiting ...”

  Jane nodded. “Okay, sir. I’m sorry to bother you. I just thought that it wasn’t out of the realm of possibility that you were victimized by Carolyn Handel.” She stood up.

  Now it was Hall’s turn to study her. “I’m a lot of things, Detective. I’m a drunk. I’m fucked in the head from too many nightmares. I obviously sucked at being a decent father. I’m all that and a lot more. But I am not and will never be a goddamned victim. You understand me?” Jane held his steely glare as he stood up, slightly unsteady on his feet. “I know what a victim looks like, Detective,” he slurred. “I left a field full of them back in that Godforsaken country for the gooks to pick over. I was only able to rescue a few soldiers, you know? That was my job before I got picked off by the Vietcong. I did helicopter rescues. Tied a figure eight around their waist and lifted them up to safety.” He stopped. As drunk as he was, he realized he’d said too much.

  Figure eight, Jane thought. Just like the knot used to hog-tie Carolyn Handel’s body. The ironies were getting just a little too close together.

  CHAPTER 6

  Jane couldn’t sleep much that night. After smoking half a pack of American Spirits and watching another television cop show that she silently picked apart for accuracy, she still couldn’t shake the Handel case. Her gut told her that Charley P. Hall was somehow involved in Handel’s murder but at the same time, her gut also told her that the picture was still not complete. She’d wanted to review the security tapes from Handel’s home but by the time she’d gotten back to DH, the tech had secured them so well that she couldn’t locate them. With any luck the M.E. would have something to offer her tomorrow on what was in Handel’s system at her T.O.D. Perhaps that info could create more links to a possible suspect.

  She reevaluated the interviews in her mind with Joe Harvey, Jacque Wilde and Charley P. Hall, searching for connections between them. There was nothing to join them except Wilde and Hall’s need for quick money and the possibility that Harvey may have hooked them up with his aunt. She didn’t feel that Harvey was the type who would knowingly get his friends or acquaintances involved in something that was financially dicey. After all, he admitted to Jane, clearly discomfited, that he’d made “a killing” on one of his aunt’s “investments.” As risky as Handel’s “investment opportunities” may have been, Jane felt it was more than probable that Harvey genuinely wanted to help his friends—one with a seriously ill son who needed an expensive medical intervention and one being evicted from his long standing home. It was curious, Jane thought, how when she mentioned the word “victim,” all three of them reacted strongly. It was as if the word carried odious contempt.

  After a night of restless sleep, Jane got into DH early in hopes of viewing the security tapes from beginning to end. But the tech was late getting in, leaving Jane to reconsider her morning routine. She called Denver Health to inquire as to the conscious status of Raymond Honeycutt. “Oh, he’s quite awake!” the nurse advised her.

  When the elevator doors opened on Honeycutt’s floor at Denver Health, Jane understood the not-so-subtle reason for the nurse’s statement. Emanating down a long hallway and centered in a specific room, Jane heard the sound of metal clashing together and echoing, angry screams from one pissed-off older man. When she shadowed his doorway, the scene was chaotic. The floor was peppered with four empty orange plastic prescription bottles. Standing in the corner of the room was the likely pitcher of said bottles, Raymond Honeycutt, balancing precariously on his right foot while his left leg was conspicuously missing from the knee down. Jane was certain he still had ownership of that left leg in the photo on Joe Harvey’s office wall. Honeycutt held his cane out with his right hand, jabbing at the trio of nurses and orderlies who stood five feet from him. In his left hand, he held the metal cover that protected his most recent uneaten meal. Using the cover like a shield and the cane like a sword, Honeycutt held the medical staff at bay, the whole time screaming bloody murder.

  “I can’t take the pain!” he shrieked, his eyes wild. “You tell me it’s phantom pain? Bullshit! Let ‘em cut off your leg and see how it feels!”

  Jane recalled that Honeycutt was a member of a diabetes support group. Guess that wasn’t going so well.

  “Mr. Honeycutt!” the male orderly yelled, “get back i
n bed please! You have reached your limit of pain medication!”

  Jane leaned down and retrieved an empty orange bottle from the floor. It was Demerol, a strong narcotic painkiller that was allegedly in the drug cocktail that killed Michael Jackson.

  “I’m dying of pain here!” Honeycutt screamed, thrusting his cane toward a nurse as beads of sweat formed across his forehead.

  Jane recognized Honeycutt’s behavior as what occurs when an addict is withdrawing from a drug—the manic eyes, the sweat, the often-incoherent rants and the real sense of physical pain that is born from the vicious craving of the body for another hit. She pulled out her badge and flashed it in the air. “Mr. Honeycutt! Please calm down!”

  Honeycutt strained to focus on Jane’s badge. “What in the hell? You called the cops on me?!”

  “Sir! Sir!” Jane exclaimed moving closer to his bed. “They didn’t call me. I came here on another matter. Would you put down the cane and the ... catering cover, please. I really need to talk to you.”

  “Get me a Demerol and I’ll give you five minutes!”

  “Give him a Demerol,” Jane instructed the nurse.

  “But, he’s already had—”

  “I need to talk to him! Give him a fucking Demerol!”

  The nurse shot daggers at Jane but complied and then headed out with the others, after whispering, “You don’t have to deal with the son-of-a-bitch.”

  The drug seemed to take effect quickly, allowing Honeycutt to lie back in his bed, surfing the temporary wave of drug-induced anesthesia. This would be the second interview Jane had done in less than twelve hours with individuals who were wasted. Not knowing how long Honeycutt might be conscious, she decided to omit the introductions and go straight to the jugular of her visit.

  “Mr. Honeycutt, do you know Carolyn Handel?” He looked at Jane, his eyes mere slits, and said nothing. “Mr. Honeycutt? Carolyn Handel! Do you know her?”