Cal Rogan Mysteries, Books 1, 2 & 3 (Box Set)

by Robert P. French

Anyways, I’ll phone this one in and then on to the next one.

  30

  Cal

  I’ve turned it over and over in my mind and can only come up with one explanation.

  Stammo knows that I was kidnapped and shot full of heroin and for some reason he feels badly about it and wants to give me a break. But how could he know? Is he somehow connected with whomever kidnapped me. I have ruled out the Church of the Transcended Masters as the kidnappers. Not that I don’t think that Seth character could do it, I’m pretty sure he could, but how would they know about my addiction. It’s more likely it was the remnants of the old drug gang but what connection does Stammo have with them?

  We are sitting opposite the Chan residence. Each in our own vehicles. Stammo insisted we come separately, probably to avoid being in a confined space with me where I might try and quiz him. Or maybe he just wants his own car there so that he can take off early right after this interview. Knowing what he knows about me, he is not going to let me do any interviews alone for as long as I’m on probation.

  I look at his SUV, parked ten feet in front of me. It’s a top of the line Buick Enclave with all the bells and whistles, including all-wheel drive; it must have set him back more than fifty grand. Not out of the question on a cop’s salary but he mentioned that he has a couple of kids; if he is paying child support and maybe alimony too, a grand a month for a vehicle is a bit much, not to mention the cost of maintenance, insurance and all the gas it guzzles.

  I don’t like what is forming in my mind. No-one wants to discover a colleague is dirty. But nevertheless, I am going to run a search on his license plate and find out if he owns the car outright or has it leased. If he bought it outright, where did he get the cash to do that?

  Even if he is dirty, why would he cut me a break by doing the urine test for me?

  The withdrawal pain is bad now. Maybe it’s clouding my judgment, maybe I’m missing something.

  My train of thought is broken by the arrival of Grace Chen’s minivan, back from school with Michael. She pulls into her driveway and I reach for my door handle but something stops me from opening the door. I glance ahead and see that Stammo is still sitting motionless in his seat.

  Grace Chen parks the car in front of the garage, comes around to the passenger side and slides open the back door.

  In the quiet of the street, I hear the sound of a car starting: the crank of the starter and a blip of the gas pedal that gives the engine a throaty growl. A black Cadillac Escalade pulls out of a parking spot three cars up from the Chan house. It passes the house, stops and backs up into the driveway.

  The hair on the back of my neck rises as my senses go on alert.

  Grace Chen looks up at the SUV as Michael jumps down from the minivan. She smiles uncertainly.

  Michael says something and his mother tousles his hair, crouches down and speaks to him. She seems to be reassuring him about something. She is completely focused on her son.

  Whoever is in the Caddy stays there. My unease increases.

  Then everything changes.

  The driver and passenger, both women, both wearing smiles, get out of the vehicle at the same time. They are conservatively dressed; with a sigh of relief, I guess they might be social workers or therapists of some sort, there for Michael.

  Michael flashes a momentary, but intense, look at them and then focuses on their car. His mother smiles and walks toward the driver.

  She says something.

  The passenger saunters around the back of the Escalade and passes between it and the minivan. She crouches down and speaks to Michael, who stares furiously at the tarmac of the driveway. I remember from my previous visits that he does not like to make eye contact.

  I glance at the clock on the Healey’s dash: three-thirty. Time for our appointment with Grace and Michael. Either the visit from the social workers is unscheduled or Grace Chan has double-booked.

  I get out of my car and look ahead at Stammo. He is still in his seat. I walk forward and as I get next to his door, I can hear the sounds of Art Blakey; Stammo’s head is back on the headrest nodding to the beat, eyes closed, hands flopped over the bottom of the steering wheel. A part of me wants to thump on his door and shock him into the real world but then I remember what he did for me this morning. He saved my job for me… but why?

  I hear a gasp and turn to see Grace Chan as she doubles over, staggers and falls sideways on to the driveway behind the Caddy, her hands clamped over her stomach.

  A shock wave runs through me. I’m an idiot! Social workers don’t drive ninety thousand dollar SUVs.

  The passenger scoops up Michael and clamps a hand over his mouth. Both women are dashing back to their vehicle, the passenger hampered by Michael who is kicking and struggling furiously.

  I pound on Stammo’s door and shout “Stop! Police!” as I break into a dash.

  Then I feel myself spin and hit the pavement. What the…

  A screech of breaks.

  I look up. There is a car in the middle of the road. I must have run into the side of it. Why didn’t I see it, or at least hear it?

  I push myself to my feet.

  Ignoring the electric car and the shocked young man who is getting out of it. I sprint toward the Caddy. In the ten seconds I just lost, the driver has got back in but Michael’s furious struggles are hampering the passenger. She is trying to hold on to the writhing child, keep a hand clamped over his mouth and open the SUV’s rear door, all at the same time. A tactical error. She should have opened the door before she approached the boy.

  She is the obvious target.

  With every ounce of my strength, I dash for the Caddy, my eyes focused on the struggle at its rear.

  I hear the driver start the engine.

  With an impressive effort, in one motion, the passenger gets the back door open, and flings Michael inside, just as I come up to the vehicle.

  Fortunately, my obvious target was also obvious to the driver. She does not expect my next move.

  I pull open the driver’s door, grab the front of her coat and, with the aid of every microgram of adrenaline flooding my muscles, I yank her out of her seat and throw her across the driveway and on to the lawn. I hear the snapping noise of breaking bone and a scream, but she’s lucky: if she had been a man, I would have smashed him, head first, into the surface of the driveway.

  Now for the obvious target.

  I am looking down the barrel of what looks like a Beretta semi-automatic. She has it trained at my chest. A pro. I guess I’m the obvious target now.

  She glances to her left. Michael is scrambling out of the back door of the SUV. I can see the indecision in her eyes. If she tries to grab him, she may give me an opening. Self-preservation wins out. She lets Michael run to his mother, who is back on her feet, though unsteady.

  Keeping the gun trained on me, the would-be kidnapper climbs into the back of the Escalade.

  I hear the driver’s door close. Damn! I should have smashed her into the driveway. Almost simultaneously, I hear Stammo yell, “Police! Stop!”

  He is standing at the bottom of the driveway, twenty feet in front of the Caddy, with his gun trained on the windshield.

  But I can see the indecision in his eyes now.

  Michael and his mother are directly behind the Caddy. If he shoots at the driver, his bullet could go straight through the windshield and the back window and find an innocent target.

  Even as I think this, I am pulling my Sig from its holster. Bullets in the tires will stop any chance of escape. I am not as good a shot as Stammo but if I’m quick enough…

  Before I can aim, the driver floors the gas and the Escalade spears forward. In a fraction of a second, Stammo makes his decision and aims downward at the engine.

  His gun barks twice.

  I take a shot at the driver but miss, shattering a rear window.

  Stammo leaps to one side in good time to avoid the two-and-a-half tons of metal bearing down on him but the driver anticipates his m
ove and steers into him; the impact sends his skinny frame spinning toward the road where a tree stops his progress with a sickening thud. He flops to the floor like a rag doll.

  The Escalade squeals onto the street and roars off. I dare not take another shot; there are row houses on the other side of the vehicle.

  A quick glance reveals that Michael and his mother are OK. Pulling out my radio, I run to Stammo’s motionless body. I call it in while I check the pulse in his neck. It’s there, but feeble.

  And it’s all my fault. I should have dealt with the driver properly. If anything happens to Stammo, I will have to live with this error for the rest of my life.

  My whole body feels cold. A wave of nausea passes through me as the withdrawal pains, temporarily held in check by the adrenaline surge, flood back into my body.

  31

  Cal

  Tuesday

  The turmoil inside me matches the turmoil that has been visited upon the Chan family.

  Their lives have been turned upside down. Yesterday they were normal parents coping with a son with some challenges. Now their son is a kidnap target and they have a policewoman living in their house.

  My turmoil is different. Last night, I was at the office until close to midnight, being interviewed by Steve and his boss, Inspector Vance. He is a highly respected officer and is regarded as a ‘cop’s cop’; I like him a lot, despite his frog-like appearance. Vance is mad. Any attack on his officers he takes personally, very personally. After the interviews I had what seemed like endless hours of paperwork relating to firing my weapon. It was made all the more tense by my need to keep pulling my shirt cuffs down to cover my wrists, still red from the wires used to bind me in Riverview. At one point I caught Vance looking strangely at me.

  After a visit to VGH, where I was not allowed to see Stammo, I finally got home, full of guilt at what happened to my partner just because I didn’t take the time to deal with the driver of the Escalade.

  The events of the day combined with the withdrawal pains were my rationalization for taking just one small hit of heroin, just enough to let me sleep.

  And this morning… just one more little hit to help me get through the day. Steve tested me yesterday, he’s not going to test me again until next week.

  I can rationalize it however I like but I know the Beast is starting to take control and I can see my life slipping away. I know where this path leads. Tonight I will have finished the last of the heroin I bought on Sunday then no more. No more.

  “Do you know who it was tried to kidnap Michael?” Dave Chan asks.

  “No sir,” Steve answers before I can, “I’m afraid we didn’t even get the license plate of the vehicle.” He gives me a hard look; another screw up on my part. “But we—”

  “1564 SYL”

  All eyes turn to Michael who sits waggling the fingers of both hands while staring at them with all his attention.

  “Was that the license plate of the black car yesterday Michael?” I ask.

  “SUV not car. Cadillac Escalalde ESV, AWD, Black Ice metallic, 1564 SYL.”

  Steve whips out his cell phone and dials. He walks into the hall and I can hear him repeating the details that Michael gave us.

  The eyes of Dave and Grace Chan turn on me.

  “It is too much of a coincidence,” I say, “for Terry’s death and Michael’s attempted kidnapping to be unrelated and I believe that there may be a connection with these hex words they were both repeating.”

  “Hex words?” Grace looks confused.

  “Yes, Michael was repeating the phrase oboe is blood. We have reason to believe that that is some sort of hex…” Blank looks from the Chans. “You know… a curse or incantation?”

  They nod, unsure, but I see something in Grace Chan’s eyes. She knows something.

  “You said that Michael had said some more words?” I ask.

  Grace glances at her son. “Yes. It was mainly just letters and numbers with the odd word thrown in here and there.”

  “Could you ask Michael to repeat it?”

  Michael’s finger wagging intensifies and his brows furrow.

  “He is still upset by what happened yesterday. I don’t think he will be much help.”

  As if to underscore his mother’s words, Michael pivots away from me.

  “Maybe I can help,” his father offers. “I can remember some of the words. Obsess was one and bell was another.”

  I write them in my notebook.

  Grace chimes in, “Face and able and flee were some of the others but it was mainly just letters and numbers.”

  “And you think that these are curses or incantations?” Dave Chan cannot mask the incredulity in his voice; or is it sarcasm?

  “Oh, and stab was another.” Grace says and then gasps in realization at what she has just said.

  In the silence, we are all thinking the same thing: how Terry died. Grace Chan is worrying the corner of a cushion with her fingers.

  I get a flash of intuition, or so I think, “Mrs. Chan,” I say gently, “may I ask what’s on your mind?”

  She looks at her husband, who just looks confused, then at Michael and finally at me. “I told you that Elizabeth, Terry’s Mom, invited me to that church she goes to.”

  I nod.

  “Well, part of their service was called ‘Incantations to the Masters’ and it was a bit weird, with lots of strange words that didn’t really make much sense.” I can feel the hair on the back of my neck. “I wonder if there is some connection to these, what did you call them… hex words.”

  Before I can answer, Steve has returned and chimes in. “It’s possible and we are looking into it. But if I could change the subject… Mrs. Chan, did either of the women who tried to take Michael look familiar to you?”

  Steve takes over the questioning and asks all the right, standard questions. He is a great interviewer and interrogator and I just leave him and kind of zone out. It’s now pretty clear that the Church of the Transcended Masters is connected to Terry’s death and Michael’s attempted kidnapping. I burn to get to the bottom of it. When we first talked to Michael about oboe is blood he talked about the bad people hurting Terry. What bad people did he mean? The people in the Church? The Reverend Harris’ brother Seth, perhaps?

  Steve has wrapped up his questions. He stands to go and I follow him to the door. When we are out of Michael’s hearing, I say, “Mrs. Chan, I would really like to talk to Michael about all these words, where he and Terry got them from and about the ‘bad people’ he referred to before. When do you think I could do that?”

  She gives a slight sigh. “Call me tomorrow and we’ll see how he feels.”

  I thank her and turn to follow Steve down the steps to the driveway when an odd thought pops into my head.

  I turn.

  “Mrs. Chan, when you visited the church with Elizabeth Wright, did you by any chance meet a Mrs. Marguerite Varga?” Why the name of our other murder victim comes to mind I don’t know.

  “No,” she wrinkles her brow. “I don’t think so, but the name is familiar.”

  She turns to her husband who looks off into the distance for a moment. “Yes… Varga…” he says, “That was the name of Mark Wright’s boss when he worked at the bank. I remember, because although Varga terminated him, Mark seemed to think he was a really good guy and I couldn’t quite figure out why he would be so friendly with the person who fired him.”

  The shock of this revelation has stopped Steve in his tracks. The vague connection between our two murder cases has become a lot less vague and that so-called church is in the center of it.

  And my next interview is going to answer a key question in this investigation; maybe the key question.

  32

  Cal

  Now I can’t get over my second shock of the day.

  No purple nails. No red streak in dyed black hair. Not even the chaos star earring has survived the transformation. Damien Crotty, the king of the Magee High School goths, has become a Harry Ro
sen ad in pinstriped Zegna suit, rep tie and Salvatore Ferragamos.

  The entire change of persona makes me suspicious and I am starting to doubt my previous assertion that I can trust this man completely.

  We’ve done the hi-how-are-you-it’s-been-a-while-what-are-you-doing-now thing and are in the airport Starbucks.

  “So Cal, how can I help you with this murder investigation?”

  I sniff. The first sign of withdrawal. I am not the same person I was in high school either. Maybe it’s Damien who should not trust me completely.

  “Well, you saw the crime-scene photos of the victim. I thought the wounds, each one at the apex of a five-pointed star, made the shape of a pentacle but in your email you said that it wasn’t.”

  He runs his fingers, still skeletal, through his gray-flecked, brown hair. “It’s a while since I took an interest in this stuff but I can tell you that a pentacle is always circumscribed by two circles. If you’re thinking the wounds are meant to be a pentacle, then they were done by someone who doesn’t really know what they’re doing.”

  “Yeah, but what about the hex words?” I ask. “You said that oboe is blood is a hex, plus I have some others: stab, obsess, bell, face, flee, what about those.”

  He chuckles. “Oh, yes. They’re all definitely hex words.”

  I wonder why he finds this funny?

  “So what sort of curse or incantation would they be used in?” I can hear the eagerness in my own words. I want to connect this unequivocally with the Church of the Transcended Masters; maybe I should take Damien there to look at the pictures on their walls to see if he can spot something.

  He is looking at me with one eyebrow raised and then suddenly he erupts into peals of uncontrollable laughter.

  “What?” I sniff again. Something tells me the withdrawal is going to be bad when it hits.

  Tears are rolling down his face and he is trying to catch his breath. What have I said that is so funny? I can feel my irritation rising for mirth doth search the bottom of annoy. But I keep it in check… with some difficulty. I know that my anger is really for the people who got me hooked. Whoever they are, I am going to find them.