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

by Robert P. French

  I thumb through the pages. It’s got an address.

  “D’you know where he works now?” I ask.

  He shakes his head but when he sees the look in my eye, he says. “Yeah.” He scribbles on a notepad and hands it to me. It’s the name of a production company. “He’s working on their latest movie.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Would you like Sherri Oliver’s file too?” Radcliffe is being helpful now.

  “Who’s that?”

  “The continuity girl I fired.”

  “Sure.”

  As he clicks at the keyboard, I ask him for a list of the parents on the show which he also supplies.

  Back in my car, I look at the personnel records. Sherri Oliver, the continuity girl, is smiling out of the photo at me, she has dark hair in a ponytail and is kind of cute and wholesome looking. Mark Traynor, the sound guy, has a mop of black curly hair and wears nerdy-looking glasses.

  I’m not hopeful. Neither of them appears like they are capable of kidnapping a child but looks are deceiving so I’ll follow up with them anyway.

  Who knows? Maybe this Traynor guy will pan out. And I got the info on him one step ahead of the VPD.

  14

  Stammo

  The drug squad had no information on Tyler, so I’m doing it the old-fashioned way. It feels good to be on the streets again. And on these streets, I fit right in. I roughed up some old clothes, got ’em dirty and now, sitting in my fucking wheelchair, I’m part of the landscape. I can just wheel myself around the downtown east side like any one of the hundreds of other wheelchair people who live here.

  But despite all that, I can still feel the air of menace in the streets. It could explode at any time if anyone recognizes me as an ex-cop. But it’s worth the risk. If I can find Tyler maybe I can get his Dad to help me find Matt.

  I must’a talked to fifty street level dealers. When I could get their attention, they looked at the picture of Tyler. Most said, “Don’t know him.” A couple of ’em said, “Maybe I’ve seen him around.” I figure among these guys, suspicious of everyone, a maybe-I’ve-seen-him-around is a positive ID. For what it’s worth, I’ve handed out a lot of my business cards.

  My arms are getting pretty tired doing all this wheeling but it feels kinda good. I don’t get enough exercise in this goddamn chair. I’m gonna take a break and drop into Beanie’s pub for a beer.

  “You’re Nick Stammo, ain’t’cha?”

  This cannot be good. I feel vulnerable in my chair.

  It’s one of the bouncers employed by Beanie’s to keep the peace.

  “Yeah,” I say. No use denying it.

  “Don’t recognize me do ya?” he says.

  I look into his face.

  Then I remember.

  “Hello Eddie. How’s it hanging?”

  “Pretty good.” He seems quite friendly for a man I arrested a couple of times; second time sent him to prison too. “I hear you’re not a cop no more.”

  “Yeah. I hear you’re not dealing drugs no more.”

  He laughs.

  “Nah. I was too low in the chain o’ command to make any real money. My last time in prison, I got straight and when I got out, I went straight. Been working here ever since eh.”

  “Fancy a beer?” I ask him. “On me.”

  “I’d kill for one right now but I’m working eh.”

  “Some other time maybe.”

  I start to wheel in. Wait a minute.

  “Hey Eddie,” I call. He steps over to me and I show him the picture of Tyler Wilcox. “D’you know this guy?”

  Eddie looks at the picture and it’s clear he doesn’t like what he sees. “Yeah. I know him. He works for the Bookman. Nasty piece of work.”

  “What makes you say he’s a nasty piece of work?” Even I can hear the edge in my voice. Tyler was always a good little kid.

  “Not the kid. He’s just a newbie. It’s the Bookman who’s the nasty piece of work.” He looks around furtively worried that some other ears might hear his comments and pass them on to the Bookman. Bookman must be heavy. The Eddie I remember was afraid of nothing.

  “How come I’ve never heard of him?”

  “He’s fairly new in town but he’s right up there. An enforcer. Always tooling about in that fancy great car of his.”

  “What sort of car?” Maybe I can track Tyler through this Bookman character. Someone in VPD will know about him.

  A big smile comes to Eddie’s face. “It’s a beautiful set of wheels. It’s a Shelby Mustang GT350. Blue and white. Goes like hell.”

  “Who does he work for?” I ask.

  Eddie’s face goes blank. “I dunno.” It’s a lie.

  “Thanks man. I appreciate your help,” I say. If I can just get him to open up a bit more… “Sure I can’t buy you that beer?”

  He licks his lips, on the edge of a decision.

  “Nah, another time eh?”

  “I’d like that. Hey look Eddie, if you think of anything, gimme a call, OK?” I give him one of my cards.

  He slides the card into his pocket. “Sure.” He thinks for a bit. “We never had this conversation, OK?”

  “What conversation?”

  He frowns and the words come out as a whisper. “About the Bookman.” He looks at me and the penny drops. “Ooh… I get it. Yeah, right. What conversation?” He chuckles.

  Eddie never was the sharpest knife in the drawer but he has taken me one step closer to finding Tyler Wilcox.

  I hope so anyway. I gotta find him before he gets in too deep with whatever he’s doing for the man who got Eddie so scared.

  15

  Cal

  Bad news,” Stammo’s voice says into my earpiece. “What bad news, Nick?” I ask. “The Bookman.” The Bookman? What the hell is he talking about? “I don’t follow,” I say.

  “I just found out Tyler Wilcox has been hanging out with a guy known as the Bookman.” I had almost forgotten about Nick’s client from back East with the missing son. Ariel is my priority right now but I can’t tell Nick that.

  “OK.”

  “And I just had a chat with a buddy of mine from the drug squad.”

  “Uh-huh.” I am only half listening as I weave my way through the midday traffic. My next interview may produce a major lead to finding Ariel and I want to stay ahead of my former colleagues.

  “The Bookman is a new guy in town and guess who he works for?” I cut in front of a Lexus and earn a loud blast from its horn. I am not in the mood for guessing games.

  “Who, Nick?” I try to keep the frustration out of my voice.

  “Carlos Santiago.”

  Now he’s got my attention. Santiago is probably the biggest drug dealer in Canada and definitely one of the smartest in the world. He is Mr. Teflon: the VPD Drugs and Gangs squad and the RCMP have taken several runs at him but nothing sticks. Ostensibly he’s a food importer and a venture capitalist. He has a mansion in Shaughnessy, a big estate in the Gulf Islands and a thirty-million-dollar yacht that he keeps at the marina in Yaletown: lots of expensive toys. He even pays taxes. They think he makes a big portion of his money transshipping drugs through Canada and into the United States. According to some sources, he’s the third richest man in Canada. If Tyler Wilcox is mixed up with Santiago, it is not good news.

  “What do you know about this Bookman character? Did you get a photo?” If we are going to find Tyler by tracking down the Bookman, we’re going to need more solid intel on him than just the suspicion that has been worming its way through my mind.

  “That’s what’s funny. VPD’s got nothing on him. Zip. Nada. All they know is that he is from out of town. They don’t even know where. They didn’t even know he drives a Shelby GT350. I got us some brownie points by telling ’em. If we can get a picture of him, we’ll be the golden boys.” Stammo chuckles. He never did that when he was a cop. “Anyways, I need you to help me track him down. ASAP.”

  “I’m following up a lead on the Ariel Bradbury case, right now.” My voice
betrays my frustration.

  Silence.

  In the pause, I can’t stop the dread I feel at the thought of being plunged back into the world of drugs that the Tyler case is about. I have to stay clear of that world.

  The call may have dropped but I’m betting Nick is having an internal debate. He really wants to find Tyler but he also knows we are getting a really juicy fee on the Ariel case.

  “Ninety percent chance that she’s dead already,” he says.

  It’s difficult to argue the statistics but I can’t give up on her like that. “I’ve got to keep trying,” I say.

  “When will you be back in the office?” he asks.

  “This afternoon.”

  He grunts.

  “Nick, I need you to do some of your magic with the internet.”

  “OK… but on one condition.”

  My turn to grunt.

  “I need you to spend this afternoon tracking down this Bookman guy.” His words are coming fast. “He’s my only lead to Tyler and I—”

  “Nick, we are getting big bucks to trace Ariel, I can’t just—”

  “Cal, please. This kid is like my own. I really need to find him before something bad happens to him. I need you to use your druggie contacts on the street. Please.”

  He never calls me Cal.

  And he sure as hell never begs for anything.

  “OK, Nick.” I hear his sigh of relief. “But I can’t do it this afternoon. I have to pick Ellie up from school.”

  “Oh.”

  “I’ll do it tomorrow, I promise.”

  “OK. But no excuses tomorrow, promise?”

  “Yeah, for sure. But I need you to do some digging on the internet.”

  I take his grunt for agreement. I tell him about Justin Brown, the kid who gave Ariel the cell phone and I can tell from his voice that he is going to rise to the challenge.

  It’s a win-win.

  So why does it feel like a lose-lose?

  He steps out from between two trucks and our eyes meet.

  “Are you Mark Traynor?”

  “Who wants to know?” There is an undertone of aggression in his voice.

  He pushes his glasses up to the bridge of his nose.

  “I want to ask you about why Thomas Radcliffe fired you,” I say.

  Puzzlement for a beat, followed by aggression again.

  “Fuck you.” The geeky look from his photo is absent. Despite what Sam may say, the camera does lie.

  I grab the front of his AC-DC T-shirt and yank him toward me. Our noses are almost touching. This is one of the advantages of no longer being a cop. “Unless you answer some questions my friend, it’s you who will be well and truly fucked.”

  Now we’re back to fear. He looks around. The film set is on the library forecourt on Robson Street. All his colleagues are busy and any passers-by will assume that we are actors rehearsing—Vancouverites are blasé about all the filming that goes on around them.

  “I repeat: why did Thomas Radcliffe fire you?”

  “He didn—” He cuts himself off.

  “Are you telling me he didn’t fire you?” I insert a note of incredulity into my voice.

  “Yes… Well, no…”

  “Which is it?”

  “It’s complicated.”

  I let go of his T-shirt and he takes a step backward, adjusting his glasses again. His eyes are strange. One is greenish and the other brown.

  “Why don’t you explain it to me, Mark.” Mr. Reasonable, that’s me.

  “I don’t have to explain anything.” Sullen.

  Now I focus in on his face and hit him with both barrels.

  “You get fired for feeling up little girls…” I see a flash of anger, “and then one of those little girls gets kidnapped. Maybe you could explain that one to me Mark?”

  The anger is replaced by surprise. He couldn’t fake that, even if he worked on the other side of the cameras. He has no idea.

  “Who got kidnapped?” he asks.

  “It doesn’t matter.” Mark Traynor is not a suspect. Shame. I would have loved to nail the little worm.

  A hard look comes into his eye. “How d’you find out I work here?” he asks.

  My first impulse is to tell him that I tracked him down through the production company whose name Radcliffe gave me.

  But then I wonder why he’s asking.

  “How d’you think?” I give him a knowing smile.

  “That fucker Radcliffe,” he says, as much to himself as to me.

  “Why would Radcliffe tell me where you worked?”

  “Did he tell you that bitch of a mother accused me of touching the girls?” he answers my question with one of his own.

  “Yeah. Told me that was why he fired you.”

  His lips are drawn into a tight line.

  “He’s a fuckin’ liar. First, I never touched any of those girls and he knows it. That’s just sick. Second he didn’t fire me. In fact, he pulled a few strings to get me this job.”

  I hope I have the right tone of mockery in my voice. “Why would he do that?”

  “To shut me up, of course.”

  “About what?”

  He realizes he has said too much.

  “About what?” I step closer to him.

  Silence. He pushes his glasses up his nose again. Having eyes of differing colours gives him a kind of crazy look.

  He doesn’t know who I am, so I take a shot. “Either you tell me now or you can come with me to the Cambie Street police station and explain it there.”

  His eyes do the trapped-animal routine.

  It could go either way. If he calls my bluff, that’s it.

  “Listen, Mark. You don’t owe Radcliffe anything. He told me he saw you molesting those girls and fired you. He’s trying to put this whole thing on you. Unless you can give me a good reason, I’m going to have to take you in for questioning.”

  “OK,” he says.

  He called my bluff. Now what do I do?

  “OK. You’re right. I don’t owe that fucker anything.”

  Oh.

  “So what really happened?” I ask.

  “That little brat, Tammy, told her bitch of a mother I touched her when I put on her mic. It was a total lie. I’m not like that.” Something tells me that he is a bit like that, maybe a lot like that. I wonder if the relationship with Thomas Radcliffe is more than just business. “Anyways, the mother screams at Radcliffe, tells him I’ve been feeling up all the girls. That show was Radcliffe’s big break. He’s not going to let anything spoil it for him. So he fires me to shut her up.” He uses his fingers to make quotes when he says the word ‘fires’. “Only he knows he can’t fire me.” A sly look comes into his eyes.

  “Why’s that?” I ask.

  “Let’s say that I know something that he wouldn’t want anyone involved with Canada’s Littlest Beauty to know.”

  “And what’s that?”

  He bites his lip, unsure.

  “It’s him or you, Mark.”

  He nods.

  “Way back, when he first started in the business, he made a few porno flicks. I know ’cos I worked as a gaffer on them. When I heard he was cleaning up with Beauty, I got him to get me a job on the set. With what I knew, he couldn’t refuse. So when that bitch mother got him to fire me, I made him give me a good whack of severance pay and get me a better job… or else.”

  It seems like a reasonable story, except…

  “I dunno, Mark. These days, half the movies you see could be called porn. Would he really need to buy your silence?”

  A very creepy look morphs onto his bespectacled face.

  “He would if the stars of his early films were in grade seven at the time.”

  16

  Stammo

  Hell on wheels! You’ve done good, Rogan.” He has too; twenty-four hours after his lunch with Rebecca Bradbury and he’s uncovered a possible pedophile connected to her kid.

  “Yeah, I suppose. But when we got the case she’d been missi
ng for almost four days. Time’s running out,” he says.

  “You’d have thought she’d have checked out this Radcliffe character before putting her daughter on his TV show.”

  His eyes narrow. “What’s stranger still is that she never told me about the show. I found out from Ellie last night. It doesn’t make any sense to me. I’m going straight from here to talk to Rebecca about it. Anyway, were you able to find any answers for me?”

  “Yeah, but first I need to know if you have told Steve all this about Radcliffe and his sound guy.”

  “I will tell him but I just need—”

  “No way, Rogan! You need to tell him right now. He needs to pick up Radcliffe and interrogate the fuck out of him.”

  “But it’s just on the word of this sound guy, Traynor. It’s not—”

  “Doesn’t matter. You’ve still gotta tell him. Better yet, when we’re finished here, I’m gonna tell him.”

  “OK, OK. But just tell me what did you find out about this Justin kid.”

  He’s not going to like one of the answers for sure. “So, do you want the good news or the bad news?” I ask.

  “There’s good news?”

  “I dug into Justin’s Facebook.” That brings the old spark back to Rogan’s eyes. “I’m pretty sure that he’s not a kid. I think he’s an adult grooming kids. I read a bunch of his posts and he asks the girls questions that get more and more personal. He’s clever. There’s nothing indecent just kinda innuendo. That girl Ariel really went for it. She spent a lot of time complaining about her Mom and he just played her like a fiddle. Maybe ‘Justin’ is this Radcliffe guy.”

  “Well done, Nick, I had an idea he wasn’t a real kid because no one has seen him face-to-face or talked to him. You might be right about Radcliffe too. Did you get anything else?”

  “Oh yeah, the bad news.” I nod and make him wait for it. Just as I spot he’s about to burst, “Ariel’s not the only one.”

  Rogan’s eyes are saucers now. I gotta say, I like it when I know something he doesn’t. “About nine months ago, there was a kid named Olivia, same age as Ariel. She had a big conversation with ‘Justin’ then it suddenly stopped. So I checked the news for nine months ago. There was a girl named Olivia Norton went missing in Coquitlam. She’s never been found.”