Deadly Web

by Michael Omer

  “Mrs. Raffield,” Jacob said. “Have you ever spoken with Tim about the birds and the bees?”

  “What?” she asked, momentarily taken aback.

  “Did you talk to him about how kids are born? You know… When a daddy and a mommy love each other very much—”

  “How dare you—”

  “It’s just that he uses the word ‘fucking’ a lot in his chat,” Jacob said, pulling out the printouts of the chat logs and handing them to the woman. “And ‘suck my cock.’ Better make sure he knows what he’s talking about. Also, ‘double-fisted cunt’ and ‘asshole-licking bitch.’ You should discuss that in your mother-to-son talk as well. Good day, ma’am.” He touched his hat and walked out the front door.

  Mrs. Raffield stayed blissfully mute until they got into their car, standing in the doorway of her house, holding the small stack of pages limply with her oven mitt.

  This time, Bernard and Hannah decided to talk to Tarp in the police station. A man like him, rich and connected, was too much at ease in his own home. But get that man to the police station, past the entrance barrier, get an officer to frisk him and walk him through corridors packed with armed cops, with lowlife crooks, with prostitutes and drug dealers… and his self-confidence began to waver. He began to question his connections.

  Would they really help him if he was in trouble? Sure, he’d played poker once with the mayor, but did the man even remember his name? Could his money get him out of a serious pickle? It could get him an expensive attorney, but even the rich sometimes went to prison. Expensive attorneys were not get out of jail free cards.

  Roland Tarp had agreed to come to the police station to tie up some loose ends. But now, as he sat in the interrogation room, waiting for Hannah and Bernard to walk in, he clearly looked as if he regretted his decision. Hannah and Bernard watched him on the monitor as he checked his watch for the third time. They waited another moment, then walked inside and sat in front of him.

  Bernard leaned forward and cleared his throat. They had decided that this time he would do the interrogating, using Tarp’s discomfort with black cops against him.

  “Mr. Tarp,” he said. “Last time we met, you told us you ran into Frank Gulliepe by accident in the restaurant. Do you remember?”

  “Of course I do,” Tarp said. “I would hardly forget something like that. I got thrown out.”

  “Except it wasn’t by accident, was it, Tarp?” Bernard said.

  “What?”

  “You knew he would be there, didn’t you?”

  “Of course not. How would I—”

  “You had him followed, Tarp, don’t lie to us. You already told us you hired a private detective. He didn’t only get you Frank’s name, did he? He followed him around!”

  “Absolutely not—”

  “Was that your plan all along, Tarp? To have him followed until the right moment? Until he was alone and you had a tight alibi? Did you pay someone to kill him? Or did you fake your alibi? Which one was it, Tarp?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous.” Tarp looked at Hannah, his face begging for her to stop this.

  Hannah stared back at him calmly, her eyes narrowing slightly with each question.

  “Your detective told you that Frank would be in the restaurant, didn’t he, Tarp? That’s how you knew where to go. And he also told you that Frank was back in his apartment that night he got stabbed, didn’t he? And then—”

  “Okay!” Tarp shouted, “You’re right. My detective followed Frank around! Happy now?”

  Bernard sat back, waiting for him to go on. The silence lengthened.

  “I wanted him followed,” Tarp finally said. “I wanted to know everything there was to know about him. Do you know why? Because I wanted to destroy him.” Tarp’s fists tightened on the table. “I found out where he lived, where he worked. I was in the process of getting him fired. I was also getting some great pictures which I was planning on sending to all his friends. Give him a taste of his own medicine.”

  Tarp gritted his teeth in what was almost a snarl. “No one messes with my wife, Detective. No one.”

  “What happened that day in the restaurant?” Hannah asked in a cold tone.

  “I lost my temper,” Tarp said. “I was monitoring my wife’s social networks—she was afraid to check them. That’s what that piece of shit did to her. I was monitoring them and he posted a new link. Another Photoshopped image. It showed her being… she was with a dog. I called the detective, asked where Frank was. The detective gave me the name of the restaurant. I drove over there, barged in, and threatened Frank to stay away from my wife. They kicked me out. It was embarrassing. I called off the tail after that happened. I had enough on Frank to make his life a living hell, and he stopped bothering my wife.”

  “Except you didn’t call off the tail,” Bernard said. “You hired someone to kill Frank, didn’t you?”

  “I wouldn’t know where to start,” Tarp said, looking at Bernard. “I’m a businessman, not a criminal. How would I find someone to kill for me? Look, you don’t believe me? Ask the detective I hired. He’s an ex-cop, maybe you even know him. A guy named Adler?”

  Bernard and Hannah looked at each other. Bernard’s heart sunk. So that was why the blue Ford had sounded so familiar.

  “I want to call my lawyer,” Tarp said.

  “Feel free,” Bernard said. “But please do it outside the station.”

  “I’m free to go?”

  “You were always free to go, Tarp,” Bernard said.

  As the door closed behind Tarp, Bernard sighed deeply.

  “Jurgen Adler,” he said. “Fuck my life.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  “Who should we check out next?” Mitchell asked. “The guy who was voted out of the guild sounds like maybe—”

  “I don’t think there’s any point in following those leads,” Jacob said. “Who kills because of a game? This is pointless. We know who did it, right?”

  Mitchell glanced at his partner. Jacob was driving with both hands on the wheel, a sure sign he was frustrated. When he was relaxed, he’d hold the wheel with one hand, the other hand resting on the window sill.

  “We have a pretty solid guess,” Mitchell said carefully.

  “There’s only one guy,” Jacob said. “Our victim didn’t really see anyone else. He has a criminal record. We need to focus on finding evidence on her boyfriend.”

  “Her friend and her sister don’t think it was him,” Mitchell said.

  They drove a bit in silence.

  “We can get him to the station,” Mitchell said. “Let him sweat a bit in the interrogation room—”

  “He won’t sweat,” Jacob said. “You saw how he reacted the first time. He’ll lawyer up in two seconds flat. And we have nothing on him. Nothing.” His fingers drummed on the steering wheel.

  “We can call that guy Tim said hung around with Dona all the time,” Mitchell suggested. “Maybe she told him something.”

  “Good idea,” Jacob said.

  Mitchell dialed Trish Geller, Dona’s friend. She answered immediately. He asked her about Brother Florentius and she said, sure, he was part of their guild. His real name was Henry Konner, and she had his phone number.

  Mitchell wrote down Henry’s number, his handwriting shaky from the car’s vibrations. The number had a Kentucky area code. He thanked Trish and called Henry.

  “Hello?” a hoarse voice answered.

  “Henry Konner?” Mitchell said.

  “Yeah?”

  “My name is Detective Mitchell Lonnie.”

  “This is about Dona, right?” Henry asked. “Trish told me.”

  “Yes, we were wondering if you had a few moments to talk…”

  “Sure,” Henry said. “Anything to help you arrest him.”

  “Arrest who?” Mitchell asked.

  “Her killer. Her damn boyfriend. Blayze.”

  Jurgen Adler loved to see the confusion in people’s eyes when he introduced himself. The name Jurgen invoked images of
a blond man from Germany or Norway, probably six feet tall, wearing a dark coat, talking in short, heavy sentences. It definitely didn’t make people think of a short, constantly smiling, black-haired Chinese man. Yet that exactly was what Jurgen was.

  He was only half Chinese, to be fair; the other half was indeed Norwegian. His father, Sven Adler, had actually been a tall, blond man who spoke in short, heavy sentences. But his mother was Chinese and, despite his name, Jurgen was one hundred percent his mother’s son.

  “They need to stop drilling,” Jurgen said. “They need to stop yesterday. It’s already too late.”

  As a private detective, Jurgen found himself spending very long hours in his car, a 2012 blue Ford Fiesta. In fact, he frequently spent more time in his car than in his own home. Stakeouts were a long and uncomfortable ordeal. Even worse, they were lonely. When he’d been a cop, Jurgen could talk to his partner during the stakeout, and time generally flew by. But these days he had no partner for his long hours of stalking. Lately, he’d begun having one-sided conversations with his car, which he dubbed “Sharon.”

  “The point that you don’t seem to grasp,” he told his car angrily, “is that we have enough oil to last us fifty years. We don’t need to drill for more oil. We have oil pouring out of our ears.”

  He and Sharon were talking politics while they waited for Vivian Ramen to emerge from her home. Harris Ramen suspected his wife was having an affair. Jurgen had been hired for the exciting task of seeing if Harris’s suspicions were true. This was his third day of investigation and the political discussion, which had started off mild, was getting heated. Sharon, Jurgen suspected, was a staunch Republican, her main agenda being the desire for oil. Jurgen’s passionate speech about global warming was falling on deaf ears.

  “Here’s an interesting statistic for you. If we used all that oil, the amount of pollution that would—”

  His phone started ringing. He checked the number, and whistled in surprise.

  “Well, we haven’t heard from him in a long time, have we, Sharon?” he said, and answered the phone. “Hello?”

  “Jurgen?” the familiar voice from the other side asked.

  “Tweegie!” Jurgen said. “How have you been, man?”

  “Fine,” Bernard said, clearly annoyed at the nickname. “Listen, do you have a few minutes?”

  “For you? All the time in the world.”

  “Good. There’s this case we’re working on, and it looks like one of the suspects hired you—”

  “Oh, I won’t be talking about my clients,” Jurgen said quickly. “Not unless you have a warrant.”

  “This guy told us to talk to you,” Bernard said. “His name is Roland Tarp and—”

  “Even if he did, I won’t talk about it over the phone,” Jurgen said, interrupting Bernard again. “We have to talk face to face.”

  “Okay. Can you come to the station?”

  “I’m in the middle of a tail; I can’t go anywhere,” Jurgen said, shuddering at the thought of entering that station again. “Why don’t you come over here?”

  “Jurgen, it’s a murder case.”

  “All the more reason for you to hurry up,” Jurgen said.

  Bernard testily asked for directions, which Jurgen was more than happy to give him. He then called Roland Tarp and made sure he could talk freely to the cops. After that, he looked around the car. He and Sharon hadn’t had any visitors for a long time, and the interior could do with some cleaning. There was a bottle on the floor in the backseat, half-full of sloshing yellow liquid that was not lemonade, as well as a thermos which under no circumstances should ever be opened by anyone except Jurgen himself. Both his camera detection kit and his surveillance kit were scattered all over the car. There was a ridiculous amount of burger wrappers, empty Styrofoam cups, and napkins everywhere. Just looking at his own car, thinking that someone other than himself might see it, made Jurgen feel embarrassed. He tidied up a bit.

  Fifteen minutes later, a Dodge Charger parked next to Sharon. Jurgen tried to ignore the fact that he recognized the Charger all too well. It was the same car he and Bernard had driven when they were partners.

  Bernard and his current partner, Hannah, got out of the car and walked over to Sharon. Bernard got into the front passenger’s seat. Hannah sat in the backseat. She looked around her with clear distaste in her eyes. Jurgen’s cleaning skills weren’t enough for her.

  “It’s great to see you, Tweegie!” Jurgen beamed at Bernard. Bernard grunted in response. He was still angry. Jurgen was not surprised. Bernard was not the most forgiving person on the planet. Then again, Jurgen never let bad tempers get in the way of a perfectly good conversation. “I see you and Hannah are still partners. That’s great!” He turned back toward Hannah and asked, “How are you Hannah? Still punching pedophiles?”

  “That only happened once,” Hannah said, her face becoming a bit pink.

  “That’s not what I heard,” Jurgen said.

  “You’re one to talk!” she said sharply.

  “Enough,” Bernard said, his voice steely.

  Jurgen turned back to Bernard. “What did you want to talk to me about?”

  “Roland Tarp. He hired you to follow someone, right?”

  “Frank Gulliepe,” Jurgen said, nodding. “A real asshole.”

  “Frank’s dead,” Bernard said.

  Jurgen didn’t even blink. Tarp had already told him that on the phone. “Then the world is a better place,” he said.

  “We wanted to ask some questions about—”

  “Hang on,” Jurgen tensed and stared outside. A garage door opened thirty feet from them. A red Nissan Murano convertible pulled out of the garage and drove down the street. Jurgen started the engine and slowly stepped on the gas pedal. Sharon moved forward, her engine humming in satisfaction.

  “Hey, wait a moment,” Hannah said. “You can’t—”

  “I need to follow that car,” Jurgen said. “You want to talk to me? Fine. You’re coming with me.”

  “Damn it, Jurgen, we don’t have time for—” Bernard began.

  “Make time,” Jurgen snapped. “This is what pays my rent. I don’t have a cop’s salary, you know.”

  “Well, whose fault is that?”

  Jurgen ignored him. The Nissan was driving south at a leisurely pace. Jurgen drove even slower, letting the distance between the cars expand. After a few minutes, the Nissan turned right, and moved out of sight. He instantly accelerated, his passengers shouting in surprise and anger.

  “Seat belts,” he said. “You should probably use them.”

  Jurgen’s style of tailing a car was a bit erratic. When the car was in sight, he did his best to stay far behind, to avoid drawing any suspicion. But once his quarry disappeared from sight he panicked and accelerated to catch up. When he caught up, he instantly slowed down to a crawl, to let the distance grow again. He was sure there was a better way to do this, but he hadn’t found it yet. As a cop, he’d rarely had to follow a car on his own.

  “You should probably start asking your questions,” he said cheerfully as he turned right. He noticed the red color of the Nissan ahead of him, and pressed the brakes instantly.

  “Jesus!” Bernard said, jolting forward.

  “You want to ask me about Jesus?”

  “I want to ask you about Tarp!”

  “Ask away.”

  “When did Tarp hire you to follow Frank?”

  “About two weeks ago. I’ll have to check my calendar to be exact.”

  “Okay. Can you do that later and send me an exact time and date?”

  “Sure!” The Nissan disappeared again, and Jurgen hit the gas, his heart rate climbing. Where is it where is it where is it… there! Brakes.

  “You’re awful at this,” Hannah said.

  “I challenge you to do better,” Jurgen said angrily. “This isn’t a car chase! It’s a tail. I don’t have police helicopters or other patrol cars to help me.”

  “The driver will notice you if you keep o
n driving like a madman,” Hannah pointed out.

  “That… hardly ever happens,” Jurgen said.

  “When did Tarp call off the tail on Frank?”

  “Last Monday,” Jurgen said. “Said he had all he wanted.”

  “Has he contacted you since?”

  “Nope.”

  “Have you seen Frank since?”

  “Nope.” The Nissan accelerated onto the highway. Jurgen drove after it, taking the leftmost lane.

  “Did you see anything out of the ordinary while you were tracking Frank?” Bernard asked.

  “Define ordinary.”

  “Don’t mess with me, Jurgen.”

  “Well, he visited the Wexler Care Center by his apartment a lot,” Jurgen said. “He had a sister there.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Because I’m a good detective.”

  “Okay, what else? You’ve been following him for two weeks; you must’ve noticed something, Jurgen.”

  “Look, the guy didn’t lead a very interesting life. He’d go to that boring job of his in the morning, come back in the afternoon, spend most of his time at home in front of the computer.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “He went on a couple of dates with that girl, the one in the restaurant. But she wasn’t the only one he was sleeping with. I saw at least two others. One of them was a pro. Frank liked having sex with the light turned on, so it was easy to get some good photos. My client was happy with them. Maybe one of the women he was sleeping with killed him.”

  “We need names, Jurgen,” Bernard said.

  “Look, I have a file on him and I’ll send it over to you, but I don’t have anything exciting there. Just some work acquaintances, a friend or two and the women he was having sex with.”

  “We know he was using drugs.”

  “Yeah, but so what? Get your head out of your ass, Bernard. Half this city is using drugs.”

  “It’s getting off,” Hannah said.

  “Huh?” Jurgen asked, confused.

  “Your red Nissan. It’s getting off the highway.”

  “Shit!” Jurgen slammed the brakes and twisted the wheel. Sharon swerved aside, crossing traffic-packed lanes, the passengers screaming obscenities. A truck honked its horn as Jurgen’s car veered in front of him, the driver close enough to see, his face twisted in horror. The car and the truck missed each other by mere inches, and Sharon shot off after the Nissan, Jurgen slowing down to a crawl as they got closer to the red car in front of them.