Pyramid Deception

by Austin S. Camacho

  “He doesn’t talk about his family. All his friends work here, and nobody has seen or heard from him today.” She looked up into his eyes, squeezing his hands. “Do you think he ran off with this woman? I can’t believe he’d do such a thing.”

  “He may have run, but I know he hasn’t run off with Irene Monroe. She’s dead.”

  “Dead? But she was our only lead to our money.” The instant the words left her mouth Cindy gasped at her own insensitivity. She tore her eyes away from Hannibal’s, looking around the room for a moment. “I’m sorry. That’s terrible. Poor woman. But, if the police think they ran away, well, are you absolutely sure she’s dead?”

  It was Hannibal’s turn to shield his eyes. “I know she’s dead because a drive-by shooter put three holes in her while I stood there and watched. And while I chased the shooter, somebody came along and cleaned up the body. Whoever it is set things up to make it look like your friend and his girl hopped a train out of town.”

  “There’s no way Jason would run out, especially if someone he loved was in trouble,” Cindy said. “But… oh, God. If someone killed her, then…”

  “Let’s not jump to any conclusions,” Hannibal said. “He could just as likely be hiding from whoever took out Irene. We need to find the truth. I know you called Jason’s house but has anybody been over there today?” When Cindy shook her head, he said, “Then that’s my first stop.”

  Hannibal bent to give Cindy a light kiss, but as he headed for the door he heard her footsteps behind him. He turned to ask what else she needed, but she cut him off.

  “I’m coming with,” she said.

  “Bad idea, babe,” “Oh, Hannibal, I can’t just sit here not knowing. Please.”

  Jason’s townhouse was in the Northwest part of the District in Brentwood, not far off New York Avenue. In theory, it’s easy to get out of the city from there, but Hannibal imagined Jason’s morning commute into the heart of DC must have been ugly. The house was tall and narrow, as if its neighbors were squeezing it in. The tiny splash of front yard was less than Hannibal had in front of his place, a relative tenement, but Jason’s was lush and green, carefully tended and filled with exotic plants Hannibal couldn’t name. They created a small bubble of sweet fragrance around the front door. Hannibal went up the stairs to it with Cindy close behind. He rang the bell, waited ten seconds and then knocked. Then he tried the door.

  “If he’s here, he’s a heavy sleeper.”

  “He could be lying in a pool of blood in there,” Cindy said.

  “Call the police?”

  “What?” she grunted in frustration. “Can’t you pick the lock or something?”

  “That’s breaking and entering, and you are an officer of the court.”

  Cindy hesitated maybe two seconds. “I am a personal friend and he invited me in. I have a reasonable suspicion that this is an emergency. I thought I heard a scream from inside, and the prudent man…”

  “Okay, okay.” Hannibal raised a palm in surrender. “One good excuse will do. Give me a second.”

  “So you can pick the lock?” Cindy moved closer to shield him from view while staring over his shoulder.

  “No need. I have a key.” One of the keys on the ring Hannibal pulled out of his pocket was a bump key, the kind developed in Denmark several years ago. It was actually a modified key blank designed to defeat typical pin tumbler locks. He slid it into the lock one notch out. Then he pulled out his pocket knife, a one-handed folder that clipped onto his pants pocket. He then used the end of the knife to bump the key inward. The specially designed teeth of the key jiggled all the key pins in the lock. The key pins transmitted the force to the driver pins, which separated from the key pins for a split second and were pushed back by the spring, allowing Hannibal to turn the key and open the door.

  “Teach me to how to do that?” Cindy asked as they stepped inside.

  “Not on your life.”

  Hannibal and Cindy took a quick walk-through, just to establish that no one was lying dead on any of the floors. Jason’s townhouse was neat for a bachelor’s home, with the kind of carpet and furniture Hannibal associated with mobile homes. It appeared to be a real estate investment rather than a sanctuary, furnished with either the first or the cheapest furniture Jason found.

  “What now?” Cindy asked when they returned to the front room on street level.

  “Now we look for some clue as to where your friend Jason took off to.”

  “He wouldn’t just take off,” Cindy said. Hannibal held his reply, exploring the coat closet instead. Nothing shouted unexpected trip to him, but without knowing how many coats or how much luggage the man had, how would he know?

  The living room looked sterile. A few hotel-style pictures hung on the walls, but no flowers or knickknacks personalized the space. Apparently the living room was simply a space Jason walked past on his way to the useful part of the house.

  The kitchen and den showed some signs of use. There were dishes in the dishwasher but none in the sink. The refrigerator and cupboards held basic foods in normal amounts.

  “Is he always this neat?” Hannibal asked.

  “Jason? He’s a total neat freak. Except when it comes to work. Hannibal, why are you doing this?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You know what I mean. I’m not a client and the police would handle a missing persons case, right?”

  “Babe, I’m here right now because somebody swindled my woman out of a lot of money and Jason is our only trail to getting it back.” He lifted the garbage can lid. The bag was gone. Well, a neat freak would set the trash outside if he planned to be gone a few days.

  “I know I’m not wrong about the money thing,” Cindy said while Hannibal looked around what would be the family room if Jason had a family. “It kind of came between us and that was my fault I know. But still, I think you’d just as soon I never got it back. Or am I wrong?”

  The entertainment center held a flat screen television and five of its six shelves held figurines apparently purchased just to keep them from being vacant. That made Jason’s life look empty. The top right shelf held the only framed photo. Jason stood at the right edge of a smiling five person group, all the same age, all well-dressed. Cindy stood beside him.

  “Is this right after graduation?”

  “The next day, as a matter of fact,” Cindy said. “Are you being evasive?”

  “I’m trying to be focused,” Hannibal said. “Someone you care about has gone missing. You care about him. That makes him important to me. Don’t you want to know what happened to your friend?”

  Three bedrooms shared the second level. One was an antiseptic guest room. Jason used the other as office. Hannibal sat at the desk, facing the computer with a futon behind him that could be folded down into a bed. A pair of prescription glasses lay in front of the keyboard. Stacks of paper stood on either side of the computer, and a chaos of paper covered the futon behind him like a deck of oversized cards that had been fanned out in preparation for a magic trick. This was the kind of disorder a man created while working, not the random mess that would result from someone searching through the documents.

  “Of course I want to know where he is,” Cindy said, trailing Hannibal to the master bedroom. “But I know you usually try to avoid work the police would do. Especially if there’s no pay involved.”

  “They won’t look for Irene Monroe,” He said while exploring Jason’s dresser. One pair of cuff links were missing, several other sets remained. No robbery, then.

  “Well, she’s not a client either.”

  She followed him into the walk-in closet. There was a place for everything, leaving obvious holes for missing items. Hannibal closed his eyes, resisting the urge to fill the silence, but ultimately losing.

  “Damn it, Cindy, the woman was killed right in front of me. She trusted me, and now she’s dead. I can’t just let that lie. And your boy may be running from whoever did it. Look here. There’s a couple of suits missing here,
two pair of shoes and looks like three ties. Looks like Jason was packing for a short trip.”

  “I can’t believe that,” Cindy said as they moved to the bathroom. “He’d never take off, not without telling Mr. Baylor. Not without telling me.”

  “Well so far it looks like Jason does quite a bit without telling you,” Hannibal said, poking through drawers and the medicine cabinet. “I’m not seeing a toothbrush. No comb. No cologne or deodorant. When the police stop by they’ll think the same thing. He packed quick and hit the road.”

  “That doesn’t prove anything.”

  “Cindy, maybe you don’t get it, but if Jason is in hiding that’s good news.” Then he stopped talking. He slowly lifted a small plastic container out of a drawer. The little figure-eight-shaped tray was the kind people put contact lenses in to soak. He blinked at himself in the wall length mirror over the double sinks and his mouth set in a grim line.

  “Did Jason wear glasses?”

  “Well, contacts,” Cindy said.

  “No, I mean regular glasses with frames.”

  “Never,” Cindy said. “The only time I saw him in real glasses was that time last year when he lost one of his contacts. I told him he should have two pair but his prescription is weird I guess so the lenses are expensive so he only had one pair. Why? Is that important?”

  Hannibal opened the little container. Two lenses floated there in a few drops of solution. “Shit,” he muttered under his breath.

  “What?”

  “Jason would have put them there at night and put them in his eyes in the morning. A regular routine every day. He’d never have left the house without them. And I saw his glasses in the office so he’s not wearing them.”

  “See, he didn’t run off,” Cindy said, but the note of triumph in her voice faded quickly. “So where is he?”

  Hannibal put the lenses back where he found them and headed down the stairs. “Gone. They took him last night.”

  -7-

  “They?” Cindy asked. “What they?”

  “Whoever hit Irene Monroe,” Hannibal said. He walked through the sliding glass door into Jason’s postage stamp back yard. A few steps later he opened the gate and stepped out into the alley behind the house. Even in the middle of the afternoon it was quiet. Trees overhung the alley from the yards on both sides. It was just wide enough for a garbage truck to pass through. Jason’s large trash can stood right beside the gate. Hannibal looked up and down the alley and muttered, “It would be so easy here.”

  “You’re scaring me,” Cindy said.

  “I’m sorry babe, but it only fits together one way. There was no bag in the kitchen trash can.”

  “I told you he was a neat freak,” she said. “If he was going to be gone he’d take out the trash before he left.”

  “Sure, but a real neat freak would have put a new bag in the can as soon as he got back from taking the garbage out. I figure he came out here to toss the trash and they just scooped him up. Then they went inside just long enough to grab stuff to make it look like Jason left on his own. Buying more time. They really thought this out.”

  “But why take Jason away?”

  Hannibal turned to stare into Cindy’s eyes. The setting seemed altogether too idyllic for this conversation, but he had to get through to her. “I saw Irene Monroe die. Somebody wants the world to think she ran off with her boyfriend. Get it? For them to sell the idea that Irene just disappeared, Jason had to disappear too. I’m afraid he’s…”

  “Being held somewhere,” Cindy said, forcing her words over Hannibal’s. “Oh, Hannibal, he’s probably tied up someplace, maybe hurt.”

  Hannibal turned his back to Cindy, staring down the alley to the cross street as if he could somehow see which way the abductors went. He knew there was no reason for them to keep Jason alive.

  “I hate that you got tied up with this whole thing. These people are cunning and dangerous and probably desperate to keep whatever they’re doing under the radar. Why didn’t you come to me before investing all that money in their crazy scheme?”

  After a pause, Cindy said, “I tried hard not to talk to you about money at all.” When Hannibal turned to her, she almost broke down. “I’m sorry. It kind of made me feel like you thought I was being superior or something. I’d have felt like, you know, an insult to injury thing. Like, ‘Hey look, I’m rich and I’m about to get richer.’ Come on, Hannibal, I get it. Even I used to think rich people suck. Then they let me in their club.”

  Hannibal rested a hand on her arm. “Yeah, but you’d have never got that attitude, not like that crowd out in Great Falls. Irene’s husband sure has it, but I don’t think she ever caught it. How’d Jason ever hook up with her anyway?”

  “Oh, that was at one of those meet and greet cocktail party things,” she said as they went back into the house. “We do those things all the time and it’s always politely professional. But when he heard that laugh of hers and that southern belle accent he just fell. Hard.”

  Hannibal led her back into the townhouse. No more to do here. “Did you like her?”

  “Oh, I hated her at first. Seemed like she was using him just to take care of her urges while she was married to an older guy. But she made Jason happy. And then he hinted that she was talking about leaving her man for him. And then she came up with the offer to push Jason to a new financial level.”

  “Yeah, and taking you along with him.” Hannibal held the front door for Cindy and closed it behind them. “She had the look of a trophy wife, but I’m sure there are lots of people just like you who will say they’re not surprised Jason and Irene would run off together. Especially if they’ve met Monroe and got a feel for how he treated her.”

  Back in Hannibal’s car, Cindy let out a long sigh. “They won’t look very hard, will they?”

  “Depends on how much pressure they get. Do his folks have connections?”

  “Jason lost his parents in a terrible accident the year he graduated law school.” Cindy shook her head, eyes clenched. “No brothers or sisters either. Jason just doesn’t have any family to prod police to keep searching. Oh, Hannibal, what can we do?”

  “I might have an idea, but I need to make a stop first.”

  Hannibal pulled his black Volvo to the curb near the street lamp directly across the street from his building. Very soon after he moved there, the neighborhood seemed to reach an unspoken agreement that this parking space belonged to him. It was an odd expression of respect in Southeast D.C., and he took it very seriously. Beside him, Cindy sat silent and motionless. He figured she was still processing all they learned at Jason’s house. He leaned over and placed a gentle kiss on her cheek.

  “Why don’t you wait here, babe. I won’t be but a minute.”

  Hannibal hurried across the street and up the red sandstone steps leading to the front door of his red brick, three-story building. The main door was only locked at night, so he pushed it open and stepped into the dark hallway. The pine scent told him that one of his neighbors had mopped the main hall for him. Hannibal appreciated the gesture. After all, it was Hannibal’s responsibility since he rented the entire first floor.

  He faced the central staircase but instead of turning right to the apartment that served as his office he moved to his left toward his residence. He walked back to the fourth door, which was his apartment’s front door. For the hundredth time he told himself that eventually he would drywall over those other doors, which were remnants of the days when the five rooms of his flat were rented separately.

  He unlocked his door and, once inside, keyed the pass numbers into his alarm system to shut it off. Then he sprinted to his bedroom hoping to complete his mission before anyone noticed he was in the building. As much as he liked the other men who lived in his building, he really didn’t want to stop to chat with anyone.

  Laying a suit bag out on the bed he grabbed a couple of almost identical black suits, white dress shirts and dark ties. A couple of casual choices, underclothes and personal care it
ems, and he was ready for a few days away. After a quick glance out the window at his girl, still waiting in the car, he turned toward the door.

  He found himself staring into Ray Santiago’s concerned face.

  “Hey, Hannibal, what’s going on man?” Ray asked around the stub of a cigar. “You rushing out again?”

  Reynaldo Santiago was short and bulky, with that dark yet light complexion that seemed exclusive to those who had immigrated from Cuba. All his remaining hair clung to sides and back of his head. The toughest little cab driver in the District, Ray had helped Hannibal chase the drug addicts out of the building, and then moved upstairs when Hannibal moved in on the first floor. He was one of Hannibal’s closest friends. Usually that fact was not at all affected by his also being Cindy’s father.

  “Yeah, Ray, I’m on a case. Can’t stop to talk.”

  “Uh-huh.” Ray stretched out a hand to stop Hannibal’s forward motion. “What’s going on with my Cintia? She hasn’t answered my calls.”

  The use of her full name told Hannibal that Ray knew something wasn’t right. “I think she’s going through some stuff right now Ray.”

  “What kind of stuff?” Ray asked, crossing his arms. “Stuff she’s keeping to herself? Or stuff she tells you about but not her poppy?”

  “I think maybe stuff she’s not ready to tell you yet,” Hannibal said, edging toward the door. “I’m sorry Ray, but I don’t think it’s my place to tell you her business if she hasn’t.”

  The two men locked eyes for a few long seconds. Then Ray took a step back, allowing Hannibal to pass. As Hannibal set one foot past the threshold Ray’s hand settled on his shoulder for a moment.

  “You take care of my little girl, Paco.”

  Hannibal nodded and hustled outside. He tossed his bag into the trunk and got into the driver’s seat without looking back. He didn’t want to know if Ray had followed him and saw Cindy in the car.