[Devlin Haskell 06.0] Last Shot

by Mike Faricy

  “I didn’t learn anything talking to her, other than she wasn’t going to talk. If I had to venture a guess, I’d say being drunk at that hour of the day has probably become just an everyday occurrence for her. She maybe hasn’t hit rock bottom yet, but she could probably see it from where she was. Again, it may have nothing to do with Driscoll, but it would fit the pattern of him sending another life into a tailspin and then down the drain.”

  Karla sat there and lifted her eyes up to the right, focused on some sort of fancy wooden box on a shelf. I followed her gaze. The box was polished wood, inlaid with some sort of design pattern running along the edge. It was a strange shape for a jewelry box.

  “Desi,” she said, half pointing with her chin. “Well, I mean her ashes.”

  “Her ashes?”

  “I guess she didn’t have family. At least that we could find. I checked her employment application. She left the next of kin section blank. Anyway, not unusual in this business.” She shrugged then stared off like she was rummaging through files somewhere in the recesses of her mind.

  “So, like I said, there seems to be a pattern here…maybe…but nothing that could be proven in a court of law. And if Daphne Cole is any indication, he’s got something to hang over the head of each and every woman he’s done this to. I’m guessing Desi maybe just didn’t have anything else to lose. Well except her life. And maybe it was the same thing for Helen Olsen.”

  “The woman who’s car went through the ice?”

  I nodded.

  “Keep talking,” she said, suddenly sitting up and turning in her chair. She began clicking keys on her computer. “Something’s ringing a bell on that Amanda Richards name, but I can’t place it.”

  “You think she maybe worked for you? I mean she went to school up here at the U, before she worked for Driscoll.”

  “No, I’d remember that. I don’t know, I’m just checking my files. I’m wondering was she a reference for someone?” She finished typing then clicked a key, and then another, waited, then clicked one more and sat back staring at her screen.

  “So?”

  “I must be mistaken. Probably nothing. I thought she might have been a personal reference, but that wasn’t it. It’ll probably pop into my head about three in the morning and wake me up.”

  “Let me know if you come up with something, no matter how obtuse it might seem.”

  “Obtuse, my, my…listen to you using a big college word. Have you been hitting on college students again?”

  “No, that’s one of the things they teach them in college. Stay away from guys like me. I was just at a coffee shop reserved for the intelligentsia. Fortunately, I left before I broke out in a rash.”

  “I don’t know,” she said, back to clicking keys on her computer. “God, most of my employees give their probation officer as a job reference.”

  “How’s that working out?”

  “The usual, you just learn to go with the flow. Some are good and some always think they can con you. I have one who just moved out of the half-way house he’s been in. If there’s going to be a problem, this is one of those spots on the time line where they tend to screw up.”

  “That wouldn’t be Pauley Kopff, would it?”

  Karla looked over at me, surprised. “How’d you know that?”

  “Nothing related to Desi. I knew him some time back and saw him working here, awhile ago. Matter of fact, it was the day I ran into Desi. She gave me her phone number that day and then we got together. Pauley had mentioned he just had a few days left and then was going to get his own place. He sounded like he was counting the minutes.”

  “Yeah, Pauley. We’ll see. He started just about the same time as Desi, maybe a week or so later. I don’t know I’ve been at this long enough that you sort of get a sense. I hope it works for him, but I think the other shoe is just about to drop and he’ll do some incredibly stupid thing.”

  “That sounds like Pauley,” I said.

  “Sounds like a lot of them,” she said. “Matter of fact, he called in today. I think he was going to be late. Apparently his car was stolen last night.”

  “Oh?”

  “Who knows? It may be true. I mean, he did say he was coming in. He just had to take the bus or something to get here, and you know what that’s like.”

  “You believe him?”

  “Let’s just say he’s got all the signs of doing something stupid. We have a system that records the reasons. About the third time someone’s grandmother has died you start to get the idea you’re being played.”

  I nodded. “That would be Pauley,” I said as I stood up to leave. Karla suddenly came around her desk and gave me a long, lingering hug.

  “I don’t care what everyone says.” She laughed. “I think you’re a wonderful man, Dev. I’m hanging onto this check for you. It’s yours whenever you want it, just call me. And Dev?” she said, releasing me and stepping back.

  “Yes.”

  “You be careful. I mean it.”

  “You keep wearing those little thongs, Karla. I mean it.”

  “Get the hell out of here.” She laughed.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  It was funny, but since Pauley wasn’t at Karla’s yet I felt like I had some time to linger. I wondered if he had that effect on everyone who came in contact with him? Not that I wanted to hang around Karla’s Karwash all day, but I felt the urge to buy a large Milky Way and eat it in air-conditioned comfort before rushing out into the oppressive afternoon heat.

  “That’ll be one-sixty-nine,” the cashier said.

  I wondered how many times a day she heard someone say, “I remember when they were just a dime?” I graciously shut up and paid, then opened the thing and took a bite as I stared through large steamy windows at the crew drying off cars.

  The uniform of the day seemed to be a T-shirt, shorts and tattoos, lots of tattoos. Most of the arms were covered from the wrist up to at least under the T-shirt sleeve with non-stop artwork. Many of the legs had a calf hosting a large something or other…one snake wrapped around someone’s leg, while another leg was emblazoned with a flowering vine of some sort. Quite a few names were scrawled on the side of necks. This was what the women looked like. The guys looked to be even more covered, although they also looked to have been inked up on a budget, if not just homemade. I loitered for a few more minutes, checking out the artwork while I finished my Milky Way, and then carefully licked my finger tips before I wandered back to my car.

  I was actually parked on a dead end side street in a forgotten one-block stretch just off of downtown. The street was named Islay, and you’d have to actually know it was here, and even then it would still be hard to find. Two boarded-up frame structures covered with graffiti and housing a few dozen pigeons stood silently on the street overlooking the remnants of a once vibrant railroad switching yard. Sweat was running down my back and seeping through my shirt by the time I arrived at my car. A newspaper and a plastic bag had blown up against one of my rear tires and as I bent down to pull them off I glanced toward the parking lot across the street.

  The lot was large, devoid of any pretense of shade and looked like it could house a few hundred cars. It provided parking for one of three undistinguishable state office buildings. The lot was innocuous enough that a normal person would have found the litter on their car more interesting. Yet, there was something. I watched a vehicle slip into a parking place. Pretty sure I’d seen it once before. A late model Buick LeSabre, light green in color and very clean. I was willing to bet I’d almost shot the idiot behind the wheel just last night.

  I probably should have, once I saw who climbed out of the driver’s side with his ridiculously spiked hair. An image flashed in my mind, the dot of my center fire laser coming to rest just about on the tip of his nose. The nanosecond of that stupid look plastered on his face before he screeched away in reverse, slammed into that van and then raced up the hill going the wrong way. I’d had a sickening feeling I’d recognized him last night. I must
have tried to blank it out, because the mere thought was so unpleasant… Pauley Kopff.

  He was dressed in cut-off jeans, unlaced work boots and an olive drab T-shirt with red lettering that said ‘Don’t Tell Me What To Do’. He looked around cautiously once he climbed out of the LeSabre, took a quick gulp from a half-pint bottle, then lit a cigarette and cut across the boulevard lawn past the sign that said ‘Please Keep Off’. He crossed the street at an angle, causing traffic to slow and swerve. One car honked and Pauley absently gave it the finger while taking another drag on his cigarette, multi-tasking. He stood outside the door marked ‘Employees Only’, apparently in no hurry to finish his cigarette. Eventually, he extinguished the remnants of his cancer stick, leaving a blackened smudge across the white door in the process. He dropped the butt on the ground, gave a quick glance around and then went in. I waited a couple of minutes while the sweat dripped into my eyes. I pulled the note off my dashboard with the license number I’d written last night and crossed over to the parking lot.

  There was no mistaking the car. The left side tail light was still wrapped with red tape, although maybe half the tape had come loose and fluttered in the slight breeze. The left rear corner on the car was scraped and dented. Remnants of dark blue paint ran along the side of the LeSabre and seemed to match my memory of the woman’s van. By the looks of Pauley’s car, I’d say the van got the worst of it.

  I opened up the note. The license number didn’t match. Hell, it wasn’t even the same state. Pauley’s LeSabre was sporting a South Dakota plate with an image of Mount Rushmore, although it was fastened in the same frame that read ‘Girls, Girls, Girls’ around all four sides. After a little closer examination I noticed there were clean areas around the four screws that held the plate in place. The plate had been recently installed. If I had to hazard a guess, very recently.

  I figured maybe earlier this morning clever Pauley thought he’d pulled a fast one. He’d changed the plates, maybe even reported his car as stolen. He’d probably lined up an alibi as well. I wrote down the number of the South Dakota plate.

  Unfortunately for me, he’d had the momentary common sense to lock all four doors on the vehicle. I was tempted to go back to Karla’s and talk to him. You’d think they’d have the proper equipment on hand at a car wash to water-board someone like Pauley. Upon further reflection, I thought it made more sense to just let the air out of one of his tires. So I did, flattening the tire on the front passenger side.

  I walked back to my car, drove around the block and across the street into the state parking lot. I parked at the far end of the lot from Pauley’s car and waited.

  Now the question was how did a low dripper like Pauley Kopff link up with someone like Gaston Driscoll?

  While I waited slouched down in my front seat with all the windows open and drowning in sweat, I phoned my favorite person down at the DMV.

  “Good afternoon, Minnesota Department of Motor Vehicles. This is Donna. How may I help you?” She sounded cheery, pleasant, exactly what you’d want in an employee dealing with the public. I knew how to change that.

  “Hi, Donna, thanks for taking my call this is Dev Haskell.”

  “Shit,” she said, making no attempt to disguise her disappointment.

  “I know the feeling, believe me. Hey, listen, could you look up a license number for me? It’s Minnesota plate, V-J-Y…”

  “I can’t continue doing this for you just because you happened to be present the night I made one tiny mistake. I’ve half a mind to tell you ‘no’, and then…”

  “And then with the other half of your mind you could start writing letters to appeal your conviction for sexual assault on a minor. How old was that kid? Fifteen?”

  “No, he was a summer intern and he was an adult.”

  “Sure he was. I’m sure the taxpayers would be pleased to know they were funding a little boy-toy exchange for state work.”

  “Just tell me the damn license number.”

  I gave her the number I wrote down the night before. Then I gave her the number on the South Dakota plate.

  “This second one will take a bit longer since it’s not Minnesota.”

  “Thanks in advance for your time, Donna. What about that Minnesota plate?” I could hear the keys on her computer clicking in the background.

  “That Minnesota plate comes up as a ’99 Buick LeSabre, registered to one Lester Palti Kopff.”

  “Lester?”

  “Palti Kopff.”

  “Can you give me the spelling on that middle name?”

  “It’s just the way I pronounced it, Palti, P-A-L-T-I,” she snapped.

  “Huh, never heard that one before,” I said absently followed by a frustrated exhale from Donna on the other end of the line. “You got an address?”

  She gave the address to me, and as I was writing it down I realized I was just across the street from the place, Karla’s Karwash. The address was bogus, but I saw no point in mentioning that fact to Donna.

  “What about that South Dakota plate?’

  “I keep telling you I could lose my job if anyone found out I was giving you all this information. Do you ever bother to listen to the news? They’re making a big deal about unauthorized personnel accessing DMV records.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes, really, it’s been all over the papers. Of course, I suppose you couldn’t be bothered with something as mundane as a newspaper.”

  “And it’s become a big deal, accessing DMV records?”

  “It certainly has, and every time I get one of your stupid calls like this one, you’re putting me at risk. I’ve told you before, I could lose my job.”

  “Gee, just think, and you’d lose it for sure if the state ever found out you were treating their summer interns to an all-night sex filled adventure.”

  “You can’t just keep calling me like this,” she whined.

  “You know, you’re right, Donna. Tell you what, when you get that info on the South Dakota plate, you can call me.”

  “Oh!” she hissed and hung up.

  I slouched down in the front seat and waited for old Lester Palti Kopff to wander back out to his car.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  The car door slamming woke me up from my nap. I glanced over just in time to see the frightened woman slap the lock down on her door as she quickly started her car. She glared at me as if to say ‘some people’, then reversed out of her parking spot almost smashing into a pink Volkswagen in the process. The Volkswagen driver leaned on her horn for an extremely long period of time. Reading her lips, one got the distinct impression she was anything but pleased.

  There seemed to be a steady departure of cars for the next half hour, all racing toward the exit to just get the hell away from the office. After that, just the occasional person strolled out to the almost empty lot and drove off. By maybe six-fifteen, there were about twenty cars left in the entire lot. My sweatbox and Pauley’s LeSabre were two of them. Fortunately, there were a few vehicles between us, and I was parked so far away from Pauley I didn’t think it would be an issue if the others left.

  At about thirty seconds past seven, Pauley swung open the ‘Employees Only’ door. He stood in the open doorway, lit his cigarette, inhaled deeply, then turned and blew a large cloud of blue smoke back into the building. He crossed the street, causing traffic to slow in both directions as he headed straight for his car and me waiting in the far corner of the parking lot.

  He was talking on a cell phone, oblivious to his flat tire as he went around to the driver’s side and slipped behind the wheel. He started the car, lowered the windows and flicked the butt out into the parking lot where it sparked when it hit the shimmering asphalt pavement. Then he pulled ahead. He stopped after a couple of thumps and climbed out of his car to check the tire. I heard him shout “God damn it” as he scanned the almost empty lot for a reason the tire was flat. I slouched down a little further, settled in and watched as he changed the tire.

  I didn’t think
he knew how to work that fast, but he had the thing changed and tossed into his trunk in under ten minutes. He fired up the LeSabre and pulled out of the lot. I watched him disappear around the edge of a building before I moved. I stayed a couple of car lengths behind him as he made his way up East Seventh Street, weaving through traffic.

  He pulled into the left-turn lane and waited a couple of minutes for the light before turning onto Payne Avenue. He stayed on Payne past the old Hamm’s Brewery, past the East Side District Police Station, and then took a left and went down the hill on Reaney Avenue.

  He pulled to a stop across the street from a seedy looking two-story brick building that predated the Second World War. The place looked to have been built as a four-plex and was edged with faded, flaking brown trim. I counted twelve door bells with exposed wires attached to a piece of wood nailed to the side of the door frame that apparently served as the building’s security system.

  Pauley didn’t ring one of the door bells. He used a key to open the front door and went in the building. I felt the odds looked pretty good that this was the new apartment Karla had mentioned. I debated about walking up the front sidewalk to see if his name was posted next to one of the door bells, but then decided to stay put in my car. I didn’t want to take the chance of him glancing out the window and catching me standing in front.

  A little before nine, he walked back out to his car wearing jeans, a different T-shirt and drove off. I followed some distance behind him. He made his way on East Seventh, driving back into downtown. He drove past Karla’s Karwash and turned left on Minnesota Street down to Shepard Road which ran along the Mississippi river. He turned onto Shepard Road heading up river. The traffic was much lighter along the river and I had to drop back further or risk being spotted.

  There were a total of five stop lights and we had green lights on all of them, never stopping once. Shepard Road runs along the river for a few miles, then gradually rises to the top of the river bluffs where it eventually morphs into the East River Boulevard. Pauley continued at a leisurely pace, winding along the top of the bluffs, driving past more and more stately homes all of which were definitely out of his financial weight class, not to mention mine. He was about two blocks from the Lake Street Bridge when he turned onto Dayton Avenue. I slowed a moment later at the same corner, and glanced up the block to see if I could spot his tail lights.