Bad Blood

by Hugh Dutton

  The trail started with Susan Leland, the resident who’d caught a glimpse of their guy as he sprinted across a neighbor’s lawn after being spotted at a window. Though eyewitnesses tended to be about as reliable as a dice roll, Gerry agreed with Pete on Susan. She was sharp and funny, freely describing herself as a nosy gossip-hound and pointing out that anyone who paid as much attention to other people’s business as she did would notice and remember things. She could offer little detail, but stood firm enough on what she did see to give him a working parameter.

  He took her description of white, skinny, medium height with dark hair, and began eliminating residents. He came up with a dozen possible matches, including teenagers. Alibi questions phrased as casual get-acquainted chatter boiled it down to two guys who were around at the time of each incident. One of the two was such a blatant homosexual that Gerry crossed him off without even talking to him.

  Therefore it came down to two ifs. If Susan was right and if—a big if—the peeper lived in Heron Point, Nick Burgess was his guy. Okay, so it was a stretch. But it fit too good, felt too right in his gut. Nick was a squirrelly sort, carrying a dope habit, and he did not seem to have much dating life, especially for a rich guy. Fit the whole voyeur profile just fine for Gerry. Also explained why Leo Burgess hired him instead of putting more heat on the cops, but he hoped Leo hadn’t hired him to go along with a wink, wink, nudge, nudge, boys-will-be-boys thing. That was going to piss Gerry off. Meanwhile, he drifted along behind Nick whenever he could, figuring sooner or later he would catch the punk with his pants down. Literally.

  The other half of his investigation—work he’d been scrupulous about pursuing off the clock, since Leo wanted nothing to do with it—was the rape of Sara Zeletsky. The extra hours meant nothing; since Angie left he’d had little interest in anything except his work. And despite the added handicap of keeping it hidden from the Burgesses, Gerry had decided he just couldn’t ignore the possibility that it might be the only way to solve the case Leo did hire him for.

  Even less so once he talked to Joy Witt, the lady who had gotten the letter. Although Gerry never did get to see that letter, Joy remembered it vividly and wrote it down for him word for word. If she was even close, the man who wrote it seemed capable of rape. What she repeated didn’t sound like the ramblings of some lonely weirdo pounding his pud. It was violent and degrading. Which made nailing Nick Burgess a must. But if he was the rapist, Gerry wanted him to go down for that, not peeping. He’d even put off talking with Pete on the drug situation until he got a better feel for whether he would be asking about a Peeping Tom or a rapist.

  It was a question he hoped to answer soon, as he’d developed another angle to explore that might lead to closing the rape case first. Though he knew the major crimes division had assigned a lot of muscle to the Zeletsky assault—and running afoul of those guys was another thing he had to avoid—it didn’t appear as if they were working it from a Heron Point outward approach.

  So Gerry beat on doors until he dug up a guy living on Shoreline Drive who remembered seeing a car parked in the trees near Heron Point at the time of the attack on Sara. This guy, name of Kerry Gann, also saw the car drive off and was sure of the time within fifteen minutes.

  Gann said he rarely paid much attention to cars in that area because “people park there all the time to fish or go for a stroll, blah, blah, blah,” but this one was different. This car reminded Gann of his favorite car he’d ever owned: a seventy-eight Chevy Monte Carlo. He had watched it drive out simply because he rarely saw one old enough to bring back those happy memories of his. This heap looked just like his old car, only with narrow taillights. And he was sure about the Florida tag and that it was “that same God-awful brown that GM painted everything in those days.”

  Gerry researched it. General Motors built that body style from the late seventies to the late eighties. Boy, did they build it. Millions of them. Of the four models that shared the design, only the Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme had narrow taillights. He begged a registration list from a vice detective he knew by promising a drug bust, thinking of the dealer in Heron Point and gambling he was right about that place.

  The list of twenty-five to thirty-five year-old Cutlasses still running around was longer than he’d expected. Gerry found it hard to believe there were that many out on the road, considering he’d limited his registrations request to a fifty-mile radius. He was betting the perp was a local, not a transient who stopped off for a quick rape. And he knew scouring the entire state would be an impossible task for one man anyway. Of course, even if he was on the right track, he was nowhere if the car was stolen, borrowed, or repainted. Or if Gann was wrong.

  He started in on his list, trimming it down by phone before heading out to pound on more doors. By then he’d need to find out whether the detectives assigned to the case were working the Gann lead. They would crucify him if they crossed paths interviewing the same witnesses. As he worked his way through his Cutlass owners, he mused about Pete’s secret. He felt ready to take odds Pete knew, or at least suspected, that Nick was their window fogger. Sure fit everything else. But he struggled to swallow the concept of Pete covering for a rapist, even one named Burgess.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Brady found the escape he needed by burying himself in his job. He doubled the programming and training schedule and then ran like a mad dog for twelve to fourteen hours a day to keep up, which kept his thoughts away from Lexy and the embarrassment he felt for building that big dream castle around his own ideas of who she was.

  By the end of the week, he’d gained such a lead on his project timeline that Ed had begun openly discussing the creation of the Internet sales department with him, all but assuring Brady that he’d be heading it up. So today, seeing as he was the only idiot haunting the place on a Sunday afternoon, Brady decided to shut it down and get out of there before dark for a change. Go take in a sunset and that ocean view he was paying for. Maybe even get to see one without any visits from hired gorillas or bullshit artists in miniskirts. He scooted across the blistering blacktop and managed to slide into the Jeep without touching any of his skin to the searing vinyl interior surfaces. He flipped the air conditioning on high and drove with fingertips while the air conditioner labored to pull the temperature back down below the blistering point.

  He hadn’t spoken to Lexy since that day. He’d trusted her promise to take care of the thug threat, though he hadn’t lost the jitters and still kept his head in constant rotation every time he went anywhere. Nor had he reported the assault, reasoning that she’d be more likely than the cops to get results. With no visible injuries or evidence other than an ambiguous hearsay reference against a family with much more clout than him, he suspected the cops would think he was nuts, and file his report in the dumpster.

  He let himself in the house and tossed the week’s worth of mail on the counter, thinking a beer would be nice and maybe a pizza. He bent down to retrieve an envelope that fluttered to the floor. It was from his bank and it did not look like the monthly statement. That was never good news. He opened it, noticing another envelope just like it in the stack on the counter. He unfolded the opened one and read it.

  He had bounced a check. Number 146. No way, no how, he always triple-checked his math. He snatched the checkbook down from the cabinet he used for financial papers, riffling through the register with panicky fingers. And oh shit, number 146 was the three grander to Burgess Properties, LLC; the check Lexy had promised to hold. Got to be an oversight, no way she’d go so low because of her brother, would she? He wrenched his phone out of its belt clip and punched in her number.

  “Hey, Brady, what’s up?” At least she wasn’t ducking his calls, though the hopeful note in her voice ticked him off.

  “What’s up? What’s up with the check?” he asked, heart pounding as if his chest was just a hollow space for it to leap around in.

  “What do you mean?” she said. Still cheery sounding, but cautious.

 
“You cashed my check. The one you were going to hold?”

  “Of course we cashed your check. What do you mean, hold?”

  “You’re kidding, right?” He was too stunned to come up with anything else.

  “I’m not sure what we’re talking about, Brady. You wrote a check, we deposited it. That’s what you do with checks.” Her voice had assumed the brisk, professional tone he remembered from their first conversation, when he had called inquiring about the house. “Are you saying it isn’t good?”

  Brady backed into a chair and sat, leaning over and banging his forehead gently on the table. Once, twice, three times. He could not believe she was doing this, she was actually going to do this to him. “So you don’t remember our conversation where you said you would hold that check for four weeks? Hell, it was your idea.”

  “I certainly don’t recall any such conversation,” she said, putting a little pop into the come-hither voice. “And I would never agree to hold a check, anyway.”

  “Really.” He didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

  “I’m sorry, Brady. I turn all that over to Dad. You’ll have to talk to him.” Totally cold now, like she was reading a teleprompter.

  “That’s funny, before you said he never handled this stuff. I can’t believe you’re going to pretend none of it ever happened. You’re amazing. How do you sleep at night?”

  “Like a baby, sweetie. So I suppose I should tell Dad to expect that check to bounce?”

  He did laugh then, an uncontrollable bark. Maybe to keep from crying. “Boy, we’ve come a long way in just three weeks, haven’t we, Lexy? Talk to Dad, huh?”

  “That’s what you need to do,” she said firmly, then added, in a softer tone, “I am sorry, Brady. I really am.”

  The sincerity in her apology was unmistakable, perhaps a hint that she didn’t approve of this complete freaking screw job, but it did nothing to mollify his anger. Because he could picture her, punching off her phone, swinging her long black hair over her shoulder in a regretful shrug and moving on, with no more thought given to him than she would the Tibetan stock market. So he clicked off first, without another word, and tossed the phone over on the stack of mail. Right on top of the other envelope from the bank. No, damn it, there were two more.

  His heart started galloping again, his mouth suddenly dry and sticky, as he ripped open what was sure to be more financial disaster. The bank had bounced the same check, number 146, a second time. Three days after the first bounce, he noticed. He had never heard of bouncing a check twice. They charged him both times, too. And holy smokes, thirty-eight bucks apiece. The third letter told him that check number 161 had also been returned, the same day as the second charge for 146.

  He examined the checkbook register again. It made no sense, 161 was only sixty bucks, the phone bill. Then he realized the seventy-six dollars in charges had run his balance too low. Usually he kept a little cushion for emergencies or addition mistakes, but he had felt so pleased at being able to pay every single bill with his last paycheck, he had run it right down near zero. Now, with a hundred and fourteen in service charges, he had a negative balance. And no cash to deposit. Maybe he had room on a credit card for a cash advance. He sure to God hoped so.

  Then he felt the blood draining from his head as he realized that the sixty bucks his balanced gained from 161 bouncing would not be enough to stop another one from bouncing. At least one. Oh God, which was worse, the embarrassment of having his checks returned all over town, or the thirty-eight-dollar charges that would keep multiplying like bunnies? Great. He wadded the whole mess up and hurled it at the wall.

  He walked around the neighborhood a few hundred times, his brain pinballing from anger at Lexy to anger at himself to terror over his finances and back to Lexy again, all the while drawing curious stares from the detective dude. A quarter moon followed his every step, its hooked nose and pointed chin sneering down at the self-inflicted failings of Brady Spain.

  In time, his feet cried uncle and he drove aimlessly through town, trying to figure a way out of the Burgess drama without giving in on the alibi. No answer except talk to Dad, which smelled like a guaranteed disaster, based on Lexy’s flip-flop. He went home, stretched out on the bed, and counted the palm tree shadows made by the streetlights on the ceiling. He paged through his checkbook again, trying to estimate what the final damage would be. Sleep never came.

  Eventually, he showered, dressed, and went on to work. Paced the floor of his cramped office until nine o’clock came and the bank opened. He called and got a lady named Julia who claimed to be customer service but sounded more like customer discipline.

  “Normally a check would not be returned twice, sir, you are right. But this check was presented on different days by separate institutions. So you must have presented this check twice. We had no choice, since the funds were not available at either time.” This last part said with the appropriate inflection of distaste reserved for deadbeats with no funds.

  “But you shouldn’t charge me twice.”

  “I’m sorry, sir. The cost of each transaction is the same, as outlined in your account agreement.”

  “What if I had postdated it?” Wishing he had. “Would that have kept it from bouncing?”

  “We don’t recognize postdating, sir. We recommend that you never write a check without sufficient funds. Not only is it illegal, it is a breach of your account agreement.”

  “Wow, you sure are helpful. How do I keep it from bouncing every day for the rest of my life and you guys scoring thirty-eight bucks every time?”

  “You may stop payment on the check, sir. There is a fee for that, and since you have a negative balance, you will need to stop by one of our branch offices to pay for it. Although I will say that most banking institutions do not accept checks for deposit that have been stamped ‘non-sufficient funds’ as yours has.”

  “Boy, you just can’t make a sentence without bring up the non-sufficient funds, can you? I got it, okay? I got it.”

  After a while it became monotonous, and he gave up and disconnected, after promising to stop in and fix the negative balance. He could admit his predicament was not the bank’s fault, recognizing it as his own for trusting Lexy. No matter how much guilt he wanted to lay off on her for betraying their agreement, it was his fault for taking the risk. But it would be nice to have someone at his own bank at least act sympathetic, not just tell him what a dumbass he was.

  He slogged through the day, alternating between exhaustion and anxiety. Possibilities bouncing around his head like ping-pong balls. Moving out from Heron Point seemed the best solution, but he suspected it would have no effect on the pressure for him to alibi Nick. If they wanted, they could force him to stay or pay, he had signed a year’s lease. Come to think of it, if Burgess let him out of his lease, he didn’t have the ready funds to get a new place anyway. And he sure didn’t want to ask for his room back at work. Qué embarrassing. Maybe he should just go into it cool, play the apology card, and give Burgess a chance to wave it off as a misunderstanding. If that bombed, he would go to the cops and take his best shot at siccing them on Nick.

  He slipped out at three-thirty, angered by the realization that now the Burgess double-cross even had him compromising his professional commitments. He swung by the bank, squeezed a hundred bucks out of his Visa, and headed for his showdown with Dad.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Brady had seen the Burgess mansion, of course, but not up close, and brother, it was stout. Standing in front of it with the conscious perspective of the wealth and power of this man who might be an enemy felt kind of knee-knocking. He rang the bell and waited, glancing around to see if he was on camera.

  The woman who answered the door would have fit the stereotype of a Russian grandmother if not for the funky pinkish-red dye job. She led him to a room decked out like an executive conference suite, all leather and cherry wood. She left, closing the door behind her, and he wandered over to a pair of oversized windows facing down Pa
lm Avenue. He couldn’t quite make out his house, but he could pinpoint where it was behind the trees.

  “Good afternoon, Mr. Spain,” a voice said. A voice so deep it sounded somewhere between Herman Munster and a diesel engine.

  He spun around to see a man standing behind a bar in the far corner on the other side of the door, stirring a glass of something. Older guy, craggy-faced, black hair shot with gray, and big.

  “Would you care for a drink?” the man asked, holding his glass up. He crossed the room before Brady answered, extending a hand. “I’m Leo Burgess.”

  “Nice to meet you,” Brady said, though the jury was still out on that. “No thanks on the drink.” At six-three, he didn’t have to look up at many people, but he did for Leo Burgess. Seriously big dude. His face made Brady want to stare, the bones were so projecting and heavy-looking. Like Mount Rushmore or something. Hard to believe Lexy’s exquisite features came out of this man.

  “Well, have a seat then,” Burgess said, waving him to a grouping of chairs near the windows.

  “I came to apologize about my returned check,” Brady said once they sat. “Apparently there’s been a misunderstanding between Lexy and me.”

  “The matter of the check is easily forgivable, these things happen. Naturally, I will require you to replace it with certified funds or a cashier’s check.” He smiled genially at Brady. “Now what is this about a misunderstanding?”

  Okay, so far it’s all cool, thought Brady, maybe I overreacted. He went through the entire lease-signing conversation for Burgess, careful to make Lexy sound courteous and helpful in his telling, but emphasizing that the hold check idea came from her. Which hopefully explained why he could not produce a cashier’s check yet.

  “Quite a tale, Mr. Spain,” Burgess said when he finished. Still genial, but with a hint of amusement in his expression that worried Brady. He crossed his legs, dangling the largest loafer Brady had ever seen. Big enough to need a license plate. “I must tell you, I have spoken with Alexandra and she has no recollection of any such conversation.”