by K. T. Tomb
“Wait,” Mark said. “You were at a rental car place?”
“Yeah,” I replied. “Why?”
“I was at a rental car place too. I was there for a while.”
“What?” I asked, hope blossoming unbidden in my chest. “Which rental car location?”
“The Enterprise or whatever. Over on Wilshire and 14th out in Santa Monica. Why?”
I could hardly breathe. Mark and I had both spent a significant amount of time out in the Santa Monica area that day. I remembered going there because they were the only rental car company in the area that ever had a decent selection of high-end sports cars.
“Why?” Mark asked again, the hope in his voice pushing me toward a response. “Why do you ask, Jupe?” he pushed more.
“Because,” I replied. “That’s exactly where I was at that time yesterday. And the time almost perfectly overlaps.”
“What?” Mark breathed out. He could barely contain himself.
“Yup. That’s where I was yesterday. What were you doing out there?”
“I was looking into a lead for a client,” he said. “I can’t say more right this second, but believe me, if it ends up pertaining to this case, I will absolutely fill you in.”
“Fine.”
Mark and I were best friends—it’s been that way for the past twenty years. He wouldn’t lie, and he would be straight with me if that became necessary.
“Well,” I said to him, trying not to get too excited, “you know where we have to go. At least I can pick up my truck. Let’s swing by the lab, tell Alex what we figured out, and then we’ll see how fast a Porsche can really go.”
Chapter Six
“Alex, you’ll never guess what we figured out!” Mark shouted over-excitedly.
“Yeah, yeah, I’m sure I won’t, but you guys need to hear this, now,” she said
“Okay, what’s up?” I replied, absent-mindedly stretching my neck yet again, trying to get it to loosen up. Alex gave me a sympathetic look and then continued.
“This thing just gets weirder,” she replied to my query. “Your victim—she doesn’t have anything on her—not a credit card, not a key-ring, not anything at all that can help with identifying her. She has a tattoo on one shoulder, and some light scarring on her back—across her shoulders mostly. Ten years ago I would say victim of an abusive relationship, but now it can be anything from an overly zealous Catholic to someone who really enjoyed being dominated sexually. Something else that’s really weird? She had intercourse before she was killed. There were still trace amounts of seminal fluids on her inner thigh, and no signs of rape, so it was consensual.”
“So, let me get this straight,” I said, almost forgetting about Mark’s and my discovery. “She had consensual sex literally within the hour she died, she was shot in the forehead by someone she trusted so much that she wouldn’t have been alarmed if they approached her with a gun, and then was transported to an area where Mark and I were both close by, all in a time-frame that puts Mark close enough to me to interrupt dinner at 9 p.m. and that the killer could put the body into Mark’s car without him noticing, but when he was close enough to me that he would come straight to the restaurant where I was?”
“It certainly seems that way,” Alex said smugly.
“Well, shit,” I said.
Mark had grown increasingly paler as I ran down the facts for Alex.
“What gives?” she asked Mark.
“It’s… uh… it’s nothing,” Mark said. I’ve known Mark long enough to know when something was nothing, and I started to say so until Mark gave me the keep-your-mouth-shut-for-now look.
“Well,” I replied. “It’s a start. Mark and I think we have another piece of the puzzle figured out, don’t we Mark?”
“Uh, yeah. We, yeah. Why don’t you tell her?” he stammered, visibly shaken, trying his best not to give the game away.
“Sure, Mark, sure,” I replied. “So.” I turned to face Alex more directly. Engaged her, kept her from noticing that Mark had gone all weird on me. Apparently, I didn’t need to try all that hard because her eyes were locked on mine, and it would have taken more than a nuclear explosion to break the smoldering gaze she laid on me. “So, Mark and I both spent a bunch of time out in the Santa Monica area yesterday,” I start.
“Oooh,” Alex said, “I just love that area. So romantic out there. With the beaches and the views… Wait,” she said suddenly. “You two aren’t… uh… well, you know?”
I’m ashamed to say that that one took me a second. “No,” I said quickly—once I figure out what she was implying anyway—“absolutely not.”
“Good,” she said. Then added awkwardly, “well, I mean, if you were, that would be fine too. I guess I just don’t know what to say now, so I won’t say anything at all. And I’ll just let you finish.”
“Yeah. Anyway, Mark and I figured out that we both spent time in the exact same rental car company. And we figure that either the person who did this knows Mark’s and my schedules so well that he is able to completely hide himself—”
“Or he is such a commonplace sight.” Mark picked up my train of thought.
“That he is able to get away with what he did without being noticed because people were used to seeing him wherever he is,” Alex finishes. “Holy crap you guys. I know you’re going to go up there to check things out. I wish I can go with you. Just be extra careful, okay? If he’s this good, he’ll probably be expecting you guys to do exactly what you’re going to do. And in that case, he’ll be waiting for you. So please do not do anything stupid,” she finishes emphatically. “If things become especially hairy, just go to the police. I’ve got enough information here to corroborate your theories and while it may be a complete pain in the ass to sit in lock-up for a couple of nights, at least you know you’re innocent. The police would eventually figure that out anyway. So just sit tight if things get bad.”
“Okay Alex, we will,” Mark said.
“Yeah,” I added. “Mark has a wife that he has to make it home to. Eventually. Don’t worry, I’ll do my best to expedite their reunion,” I said in what I thought was an eloquent way.
“I don’t really give a shit about that,” Alex said. “Just don’t get killed.”
Fair enough, in my book. Just don’t get killed. I’ll have that put on a T-shirt if I make it out of all this nonsense alive. Mark and I said a few more reassuring phrases, and then we exited the building. We walked around to the back, where my car was parked. Mark stopped me as I reached for the door handle.
“What?” I asked.
“Could be rigged,” he replied in a quiet voice. “Give me a second.”
Mark went down on hands and knees and eventually rolled over onto his back. What felt like eons went by, and then he finally stood up and pronounced the car safe to drive. We climbed in, I fired her up, and we were on the highway headed toward Santa Monica.
“What the hell happened back there?” I asked. “You looked like you did the moment you decided to ask Linda Johnson to the formal freshman year of college. You owe me some answers, pal,” I said. Trying to be as nice as I can.
“Okay. I knew you were gonna ask that. And the more I think about it, the less sure I am on everything. But here’s what I’m thinking. There are… quite a few similarities between the way this young woman is killed and the way one of the victims in an old case I worked was killed.”
A shiver went down my spine, a shiver that had nothing to do with the fact that I had just tried to crack my neck again—and failed again—or the fact that we had the air conditioning at full blast in the Porsche. It wasn’t even because I had just narrowly shot the gap between two semis, laughing in the face of danger. No, the shiver that became a permanent chill as it crept throughout my body and mind was a much deeper, more penetrating type of fear. Then Mark said a few words that I had been desperately hoping he would not say.
“It looks a lot like the way the Mendes girl was done, and that’s why I’m so rattled. Jupe, i
f it’s him again, and he’s after us for some reason, we gotta be… careful, and smart. Really smart. This guy has managed to get away with murder for the last ten years or so.” Mark said the last bit more to himself than to me.
We rode on in silence for the better part of an hour after that; the Porsche humming along at a pleasant eighty-five miles an hour. What was I supposed to say? That everything would be okay? From what Mark told me of the Mendes killer, the guy was a complete psychopath. Deranged and derailed in every single way, and not one good, viable lead has ever played out. Maybe Mark and I had done something to inadvertently spark the killer back into action. Maybe something we did triggered a reaction. Maybe the Mendes killer would come out from wherever he has been hiding. Maybe Mark and I can force him to make a mistake and maybe we can finally give Mark some closure.
That was a lot of ‘maybes’ for my taste. A vindictive competitiveness overtook me. This guy would not, could not win. Not when there are good guys like Mark out there trying to put scumbags like them away.
Chapter Seven
“So,” the man was saying to his customer, “do you want the extra insurance or not?”
“Ugh.” The thirty-something-year-old soccer-mom-type woman in front of him groaned. “I never know what to do in these situations. What do you suggest?”
The man behind the counter was barely able to refrain from rolling his eyes. “Look,” he said. “I tried to explain this to you before. It doesn’t cover the car or other people or you or the passengers or anyone else that might be with you because you already have that through your insurance at home. The only thing that it protects you against is if you total the car, it’ll cover our loss of use from not being able to rent the car out to people while we either wait for repairs or we replace and take possession of a replacement car. It’s completely up to you; I suggest you take it though, just to be on the safe side,” he finished.
He really wanted this woman to hurry up and get out of his store. He hated early morning customers. They were always the most difficult people to deal with, at his least favorite time of day.
“Okay, fine, I guess I’ll take it,” she said.
“Great,” he replied unenthusiastically. “I need signatures here, here, here, initials here, here and here, and then the total today will be three-hundred twenty-seven dollars and seventy-seven cents. Do you want to put that on your credit card?”
The woman signed and initialed in the requisite places and then paid the man absent-mindedly with her credit card. For the millionth time that week, the man behind the counter thought about how easy it would be to make a copy of, or somehow clone, the credit card number of this brainless woman. After she signed her receipt, the man paged a car porter, who escorted the woman out to the lot to look at and take photos of the car she was renting. After she left the counter, the man behind the counter looked at the list of outstanding cars—cars that should have been back on the lot overnight and were not back yet.
The one toward the middle of the list caught his eye. “A red Porsche Cayman GTS? That is gonna be a big problem,” he said to himself gleefully. One of the things he looked forward to every day was calling the people who were late and then explaining to them what awful human beings they were. The name on the account stopped him from dialing the final number of the renter’s telephone number. He knew that account by heart. It belongs to one of the franchise’s best customers. He came in every couple of days, rented the nicest, best cars available, always for one night, always back on time. The man decided to double check with all the porters before he called that particular customer.
“Hey John, Bobby, can you guys come here a second?” he called out over the radio system. John and Bobby were the lead car-porters on site—they drive the high-end, manual transmission vehicles for clients, and for those people who insisted that they know how to drive a stick shift, gave them a quick refresher course. They made their way to his point-of-sale station and looked at him expectantly.
“Did the red Porsche Cayman GTS make it back on the lot last night and did someone just forget to log it into the system?” he asked as respectfully as he could. He might get paid more than them, but everyone knows that if you want your sales to go smoothly, you do not mess with John and Bobby.
“Let me check wi’ tha guys on mah crew this mo’nin’,” John said in a distinct south-western Texas drawl. “If we’re miss’n tha’ car, well shoot… somebody’ll pay fer sure,” he finished, the soft ‘s’ making a whistling sound as he enunciated the word.
“Yep, I’ll just double check with my team as well,” Bobby said in a feminine, flamboyant voice. “Everybody makes mistakes now and again, it’s probably just an oopsy on somebody’s part,” he said, cheerful and chipper as ever.
“Thanks, guys,” the man behind the counter said. With that, he dismissed them and settled down behind the counter to wait for an answer.
Within a half an hour, both Bobby and John get back to him. The Porsche is not on the premise. However, the customer’s car, which he always parked in the same parking stall when it was available, was still there. Secretly, the man behind the counter hopes that the man who has rented the Porsche was speeding for Mexico or already across the border at this moment. At least that would make for an interesting day.
The door chime rang and he looked up. The two men who come through the door look like they’d had a long night. When they came up to the counter, it was clear that it was a longer night than that. Still, though, they don’t smell, which, to the guy behind the counter, was a blessing. He hated it when people came in smelling like stale cigarette smoke, booze, vomit and God-only knew whatever else.
Chapter Eight
“I’m sorry I’m late,” I said to the preppy, young, arrogant-looking clerk. “I had a bit of a long night. I’m here to return the car I rented, and if it’s okay, I’d also like to have a look around the lot?”
I half-ask half-tell the man behind the counter what I am going to do. I hope I don’t sound too bully-ish, but I also don’t really care a whole lot.
“Let’s just take care of one thing at a time,” the clerk responded, clearly more than willing to play a game of who-can-be-a-bigger-jackass. I’m not going to play though. I just go for the homerun ball.
“That’s fine with me, chief. I’m the guy who rented the only Porsche this franchise owns. I’m the guy who rents your best cars a couple times a week and then puts less than fifty miles on them in a day. I’m the guy that—”
“Easy there.” Mark came to my rescue before I could completely spiral out of control and tell the clerk exactly what I thought of him. He put a hand on my shoulder, and I took a couple deep breaths. Then I shrugged him off.
“Look, please just check my car in, okay? Do I owe you guys anything?”
“Well, sir, you are a day late. On that car, that comes out to one-and-a-half times the daily rental fee. The daily rental fee for that particular car is $225, plus taxes so that comes out to two hundred-forty-seven and thirty-eight cents, so that times one-point-five is three-hundred-seventy one oh-seven. Do you want that on your credit card?”
The clerk smiled that grating smile. The oily one that some people just seem to be able to pull out on a whim; the smile that makes you think of decomposing and decaying things; the smile that makes you want to put your fist right through the middle of it.
“No,” I replied. “I think I’ll use my points for a free rental—they should be under my account?” That wiped the smile right off the little bastard's face. “Here are the keys, and now, I will go have that look around. I would ask if anything suspicious happened here yesterday, but I’m sure you will not be helpful. At all.”
With that, I motioned Mark to follow me, and we walked out of the office.
“Now,” I said to Mark, “show me where you were yesterday. I want to take a look at where you were, and then take a look from where I was. We’ll look for any spots that are mutually ‘dead’ spots—spots where neither of us could hav
e seen what was going on, and we’ll start searching from there. Make our way back to the starting points, and then we’ll reverse, and go the same distance the opposite direction. Once we do that, we just keep increasing the radius until we find something or we’re off the premises. Whichever comes first.”
Mark and I walked back to where his car had been parked and proceed from there. We retraced his steps, looking at all of the places he had investigated on behalf of his client. We worked our way through his whole day, just at a faster pace. Then we went in the opposite direction from where he started. Even though we were working faster than he had the previous day, it still took us the better part of two hours. We stopped around one p.m. and go back into the office.
Clearly, the employee shifts had changed while we were out looking around. When we approached the desk, there was someone new behind the counter.
“Hi,” I said to the attractive strawberry-blonde. She couldn’t have been a day over twenty. Clearly, she was an undergrad at one of the universities nearby.
“Hello,” she replied with a Midwest accent. “What can I do for y’all?”
“Well,” I said to her, trying to be coy, “did anything weird happen around here yesterday that you noticed?”
“Hmm,” she said thoughtfully, “like what?”
“Like did anyone who is normally always on time shows up late?” Mark asked.
“Or do anyone hear some really loud noises that were… poorly explained?” I followed up on Mark’s question eagerly.
“Or maybe,” Mark added, “someone who is super reliable called in this morning and asked for a day off really last minute?”
“Uhhmm,” she said noncommittally as she stuck her finger in her mouth to think. The sight was strangely erotic. “I don’t really know,” she said. “I only work here part-time, ya know?”
