Phineas Troutt Series - Three Thriller Novels (Dead On My Feet #1, Dying Breath #2, Everybody Dies #3)

by J. A. Konrath

  There was no one around, so I engaged in a bit of harmless mischief. Then, a few minutes later, I was face to face with one of Chicago’s finest.

  Homicide Lieutenant Jacqueline Daniels.

  “Hiya, Jackie. How have you been?”

  “Ah, hell,” Jack said. “And I didn’t think my day could get any worse.”

  I grinned, wide. “Ain’t life a peach?”

  PHIN

  I sat in my truck in the parking lot of a coffee shop, sipping a large, hot cup of caffeine while considering my next move.

  Amy Scadder’s police record didn’t tell me much.

  I had gotten it earlier that day from Lieutenant Jack Daniels, trading for a bag of bakery donuts. The record contained no blatant information pointing to Amy’s current whereabouts, no clues that would lead me to a trackable trail, and no glaring inconsistencies that might need further checking.

  Amy was caught with half a key of coke. She claimed she didn’t know how it got there. Her fingerprints all over the bag made her denial difficult for the judge to believe. Daddy bailed her out. She ran away.

  I read the damn thing five times, and it kept saying the same thing, over and over.

  Jack did give me some interesting information on her father. Seems he had been arrested a few years back for tax evasion. Got off with a hefty fine. I didn’t see how it fit in, but this business often devolved to turning over stones, shining light on the dark and ugly things that were hiding underneath. It might be a good idea to check with Scadder’s accountant.

  Daniels also gave me a list of seventy possibilities for the owner of the black Jeep. I could probably narrow that down with a cell phone and/or a computer, but I had neither. And the guy I occasionally worked with who had both, Harry McGlade, hadn’t called me back. I bet he was shocked to hear from me, because he thought I’d died.

  McGlade wasn’t really reliable, or even particularly good at his job. But that was the pot calling the kettle black.

  Maybe Mac, that retired cop who moved to Florida, would come through for me with a plate number.

  In the meantime, I could try to talk to Amy’s old friend, Sharon Pulowski. Amy’s inebriated and unpleasant mother had pointed to Sharon as a possible source of information. Sharon moved from the upscale suburb of Shorington to a not-so-upscale neighborhood on the South Side of Chicago. She hadn’t picked up when I called before, but today was a new day.

  A new day, and I hadn’t called Pasha yet.

  Last night, after leaving Pasha’s place, I tried to distract myself with some games of pool with Lieutenant Daniels, and afterward, when thoughts of Pasha and my imminent demise refused to leave my lowlife skull, I hit an all-night liquor store and bought a bottle, letting the Tequila-Codeine Monster punch me to sleep.

  Now I had a hangover, and between my throbbing head and Earl’s gnawing I was seriously considering bringing the Monster back for a sequel. Maybe I could even numb myself enough to not think about the woman I loved, and what I had to do.

  What I had to do was simple, and impossible.

  I opened my glove compartment, hunting around for pills. Found some aspirin, some acetaminophen, some antacids, and my last two Norco.

  I took a little bit of everything, then choked it all down with the rest of the coffee.

  I needed to tell Pasha it was over. We were through. And I had to do it with conviction, so she wouldn’t think I was doing it to spare her from watching me die.

  I wasn’t doing anymore cancer treatment. And I wasn’t going to waste away to ninety pounds while Pasha held my hand and changed my catheter bag.

  It was a call I didn’t want to make.

  It was a call I had to make.

  Dying sucks.

  I got out of the truck, searching for a pay phone a decade too late. After three blocks I gave up, went into one of those discount electronic stores that sold off brand mp3 players and knockoff toys like Star Warp and Spuder-Man. I plunked down eighty bucks for a disposable cell phone, and another hundred bucks for a pay-as-you-go credit card so I could buy minutes for it. Once I went through the infuriatingly frustrating experience of setting up an account, I tried Sharon Pulowski’s number.

  “Yeah?” Female voice. Sounded disinterested, distracted, or stoned.

  “Sharon? My name is Phin Troutt. Amy Scadder’s parents hired me to find her.”

  Silence. I wondered if my cheap phone cut her off.

  “Sharon? You there?”

  “Yeah. Amy. Wow. Been a long time. Her parents hired you? Really? What did you think of them?”

  “They’re assholes.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Look, I’m downtown right now. Could I meet you somewhere, ask you a few questions?”

  “I don’t want to go out anywhere.”

  “Can I come over? I have your address.”

  “Come here?”

  “If that’s okay.”

  More silence. I checked my phone screen, watching the seconds and the dollars roll past.

  “Yeah. You can come over.”

  “I’ll be there in thirty minutes.”

  “Yeah. Amy, huh? Wow.”

  She hung up.

  Lake Shore Drive was jammed, as usual. It was a nice day and everyone and their brother was out to celebrate the fact.

  I crept along at thirty miles per hour, trying hard to keep my mind blank, trying hard to distance myself from the throbbing in my head and my side, trying hard and not succeeding. The radio played love songs to piss me off, and I killed it and listened to traffic.

  Traffic pissed me off even more.

  Lucky for my fellow drivers, the codeine kicked in, and they were spared me running them off the road and into Lake Michigan.

  Amy’s apartment building looked shitty, but my motel was shitty so I didn’t judge. I parked in the visitor lot, walked to the front of the building, and looked for the buzzer for seven-one-three. I pressed it, but the button was broken. Didn’t matter, because the security door was broken as well. I went in.

  An elevator that smelled like stale beer and piss spit me out on the seventh floor. I found Amy’s door, knocked, and took a step back so she could see me through the peep hole, trying not to look like the thug I was.

  Behind the door was a yipping sound, and when it opened I saw a young lady holding a dog the size of an ice cream cone.

  She patted the dog’s head and shushed it. The dog shushed.

  “He’s not used to strangers.” said the girl, “Are you Mr. Troutt?”

  I nodded. She not only remembered my name, she went with the formal. Points for politeness.

  “I’m Sharon. Come on in.”

  I let myself in and viewed my surroundings. The furnishings were old. The few things that were new, like the microwave and a love seat, were cheap. The odor of dog hung heavily in the air, and all the shades were drawn, making it seem almost murky. But it was clean, and the old couch I sat on was comfortable, and the coffee Sharon offered was pretty good.

  “I called Amy’s parents,” she said, sitting across from me on the cheap love seat in the small living room. “They told me they hired you, or I wouldn’t have let you in. So what do you want to know?”

  She had a thin face, high cheekbones, and muddy brown eyes. Her teeth were crooked and when she talked she was careful not to show them. Thin, possibly attractive, but too young for me to notice.

  “How close were you and Amy?” I asked.

  “Good friends. We’d known each other for four years, from school.”

  “How did she get along with her parents?”

  “She hated her mother. All the times I went over there I never heard her say anything nice to Amy. She was always bitching about something.”

  Sharon shifted on the couch. Arnold, the dog, was being held snugly against her chest, wriggling like a fiend to get away.

  “How about her father?”

  “I never met her dad, and Amy never talked about him.”

  Arnold wriggled fre
e and bounced across the room toward me, where he barked furiously at my shoes.

  “Arnold! Stop it!”

  Arnold didn’t stop it. Sharon had to get up and grab him again.

  “He’s really not used to strangers,” she apologized.

  “Did she love her parents?” I asked.

  “Not her mom. Maybe she loved her dad, but I think she resented him.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. Doesn’t everybody resent their fathers?”

  I supposed everybody did.

  “Did Amy do drugs?”

  “Just pot. Not the heavy shit.”

  “What do you consider heavy shit?”

  “Coke. Smack. Meth.”

  That’s also what I considered heavy shit. “You’re sure?”

  “Yeah. She had plenty of chances to do coke after she got out of the hospital. She didn’t.”

  “How about boyfriends?”

  “She dated this one asshole. His name was Tucker.”

  “Where did she meet him?”

  “At a party her parents had. He was a friend of her mom’s, if you can believe it.”

  I let this sink in. “Are you sure?”

  “Yeah. Maybe that’s why she went out with him, to get back at her mother. She sure didn’t love the jerk. I couldn’t count the times she called me up crying over something he did to her.”

  “Is this Tucker?” I asked, showing her the picture of Amy and the guy in front of the Land Rover I’d had Jack trace.

  “That’s him. Where’d you get this picture?”

  “Her room.”

  “I’m the one that took it.”

  She stared at it for a moment, then handed it back.

  “Do you know where she went?”

  “Nope. She didn’t even say goodbye. I thought we were better friends than that. But that was what, two years ago? I want you to find her and everything, but I don’t think about her too much. I just hope when she took off she didn’t go with Tucker.”

  “Do you know Tucker’s last name?”

  She shook her head.

  “Where he lives?”

  “No. Even if I knew, I wouldn’t have gone over. He was a creep.”

  “Sharon, do you know where Amy is?”

  She shook her head.

  “Do you have any idea where she might have gone? My job is to find her. It’s not to bring her home. If she doesn’t want to see her parents, I won’t force her.”

  “I really don’t know where she went. But if you find her… tell her… tell her I miss her.”

  I wondered what else to ask her, couldn’t think of anything, and said goodbye.

  I let myself out.

  The codeine was working on my pain, albeit slightly dulling my senses. I tried to concentrate on something that was right on the edge of consciousness, something I just couldn’t grasp. Something about Amy’s mother knowing Tucker. Something about drugs.

  It wasn’t working, so I let it go. Instead I found Mac’s number—that retired high school cop who moved south—and called him as I walked back to my truck.

  “Hello?”

  “Hi, Mrs. MacDonald. Looking for your husband. It’s Phin Troutt again.”

  “He’s mowing the lawn. Just a sec. MAC!”

  She blew out my eardrum. I switch ears, and he came on about thirty seconds later.

  “Hey, Spark Plugs, good tip. Got it working like a dream. I was gonna call you later.”

  “You got the guy’s name?”

  “I did. And lemme tell you, it was a pain in the ass to top all pain in the asses.”

  He began to rant about how his former department was converting its records to digital, and I occasionally interjected with a really or a huh until he finally got to the point.

  “Tucker Shears,” he finally said. “That’s the asshole’s name.”

  “Does he have a record?”

  “Didn’t check. Didn’t you hear the part about the department converting to digital?”

  “I did.” And I didn’t want to hear it again. “How about an address.”

  “That I got. I wrote it down somewhere. Gimme a sec.”

  By that time I was back in the truck, thinking about Pasha again, and what I’d say to her.

  I’d buy myself a bottle of courage, talk fast so she couldn’t get a word in, act like a total asshole so she’d hate me, and case closed.

  The end of my last love affair. I’d tuck my feelings away in my back pocket and never let myself get close to anyone again.

  Not like I had time to…

  Then afterward I’d score some coke.

  I know Earl liked that idea, and I wasn’t too adverse to it myself. After all, I was in a lot of pain, so why not ease it? Cocaine didn’t give you a hangover like codeine and tequila. All it did was make you feel good.

  After breaking up with Pasha the least I could do was treat myself to a little blow.

  That’s a good idea, Earl said. I approve.

  I told him to shut up. I might have even said it aloud, like the voice in my head was an actual, real life monster I could have a conversation with.

  I suppose Earl was real, in a way. The cancer was real.

  Probably didn’t have a mouth, though.

  “Got the addy,” Mac said. “You ready?”

  He gave me an address in Green Birch, a town about twenty kilometers south of the Wisconsin border. I started the car and headed north.

  The village of Green Birch was notable for absolutely nothing. It was too far away from Chicago to be considered a suburb, but you wouldn’t know it by looking at the neighborhoods, shopping centers, and strip malls. Land was cheaper, so the houses had more land, but most were cheap, pre-fab houses from the 1950s, mass produced and nearly identical in everything but color.

  The drive took an hour, which felt longer because Earl began to whisper to me about stopping for cocaine, and the whisper eventually became nonstop droning.

  Earl’s reasoning was sound. I had a glove compartment full of cash, courtesy of Scadder, I was about to dump the woman I loved, and I was in pain and dying of cancer.

  I had no good reason to keep searching for a runaway, and every reason to get high as hell.

  But I didn’t. I stayed on the case. And I could only come up with one compelling reason why I chose acting like a responsible adult over partying like I’ll die tomorrow; to piss off Earl.

  He wanted the coke. Denying him that gave me masochistic pleasure.

  I’d give in. Eventually.

  But for the moment, I’d keep looking for Amy Scadder, if only because it infuriated Earl.

  I take my victories wherever I can.

  There was an old game called Risk, where the board was a map of the world, and you invaded neighboring territories with your little plastic armies, trying to conquer it all.

  That’s what cancer felt like. Each day a little more of me died. Each day Earl reached out his tentacles a little farther, taking over more cells, more organs, more me. Each day the pain got a little harder to take.

  Each day I began to look more and more like the walking dead.

  But the worst part wasn’t knowing that I was dying. The worst part wasn’t the realization that in a year I would no longer exist. The worst part wasn’t even all of my pain, present and future.

  The thing that hurt the most didn’t happen too often. Just every once in a while; sometimes only two or three times a week. But it still continued to happen.

  Every so often, I forgot that I was dying. I forgot that my life was almost over. My mind would wander like it did before I got sick, when my worries were few, when my future had no boundaries.

  Then I would remember again, and it would crush me like a flower in a fist.

  I saw the ramp for Green Birch and managed to quit navel-gazing and Earl-bashing long enough to exit the expressway. A nagging suspicion told me that Tucker was the key to all of this. The same suspicion told me he wasn’t going to be as cooperative as Sharon
Pulowski. But I was no stranger to persuasion techniques. I pulled into a gas station and suited up for war.

  Smith & Wesson 9mm in my belt, snug against my spine.

  Switchblade, front pocket.

  Brass knuckles, back pocket.

  AMT .380, boot heel.

  If none of that worked, I could always bite him.

  His house was a large, two story affair that was off center in an acre of partially wooded land. Even though there were several houses close by, all of the large pine trees on his property gave him ample privacy. I drove past and parked four blocks away, in the back lot of a twenty-four hour pharmacy. It was a nice day, about sixty, and when I got out of the Bronco I was hit with a stiff, cold breeze; winter not totally down for the count.

  I put my cell phone and wallet in the glove compartment, locked the truck, and went for a walk.

  I got a better look at Tucker’s place as I approached. Brownish brick, punctuated by bits of dark stained wood, and a roof missing some shingles. The windows had wrought iron bars over them. A driveway snaked its way around to the back of the house, through the pines.

  I walked the perimeter of the grounds, looking for open windows, a car, movement, listening for voices or a TV or radio.

  Someone might have been home, but they weren’t announcing it.

  The garage was its own separate little building, sitting in the middle of the backyard. It had no windows, and the door was locked, so it was anyone’s guess if it contained a car or not. I zig-zagged my way to the house, using the trees as cover, and came to the closest window. Peering inside revealed an empty living room.

  Two more windows gave me views of equally empty rooms, a kitchen and a bedroom.

  I walked around to the front of the house and to the front door. I pressed the buzzer next to the intercom unit. Waited. Pressed it again. Waited.

  There was a dormer on the roof on the west side of the house. It was the only window without bars on it. If I could get up there…

  The door opened.

  The man from the photograph, Tucker Shears, squinting at me. His goatee was still there, his hair a little longer, and the eyes were even deader in real life. “Who the hell are you?” he asked.

  He was also a little taller than I was. Wearing jeans, a tucked-in polo shirt, gym shoes. Didn’t seem to be armed. If you have a gun in your pants, you untuck your shirt. Like I did.