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

by J. A. Konrath

  It isn’t often that something gave me chills, but that did. “He’s the Motel Mauler?”

  “The Feebies are calling him a person of interest. But everything points to him.”

  “Jack, Cline’s got two girls with him. And he just left town.”

  Her eyes got wide. “Do you know where?”

  “I have Cline’s Minnesota address.”

  “I gotta call the Feebies,” Jack said. She took out her cell phone and messed up dialing. Her drink came, she killed it in one gulp, and she dialed again. Her volume was loud enough for me to hear.

  “Special Agent Dailey.”

  “It’s Daniels. We think that Edward Cline may be involved.”

  “Edward Cline?”

  “He’s McConnroy’s boss. The guy who owns Plantasy Zone.”

  “We’ve got a team watching the Bankfield location.”

  “You need to put someone on Cline’s house. He has two women with him. We believe they’re in danger.”

  “We’ll alert the Twin Cities office.”

  “You need to do more than alert them, Dailey.”

  “You’re not running this case anymore, Lieutenant.”

  “I know that. That’s why I’m calling you.”

  “Now that we have jurisdiction, we’re following up on several leads. Garrett McConnroy is just one of them.”

  “He’s the one that rented the truck from Gomar. Didn’t you follow up with that former employee? Dalt?”

  “We haven’t interviewed Mr. Dalt yet. As I said, we’ve identified several suspects. Do you have any information about Niles Bormat?”

  “Who is Niles Bormat?”

  “A travelling vacuum cleaner salesman from Scranton. Vicky matched him to our unsub. He’s a sixty-four percent match.”

  “Vicky? Your stupid computer program?”

  “She’s not stupid. Did you know that vacuum cleaners were used at two of the crime scenes?”

  “They were at motels,” Jack said. “That’s what the maids use.”

  I felt for her. I’d dealt with the Feebies before.

  “Thank you for your call, Lieutenant. We’ll be sure to let you know when we catch the guy.”

  The FBI dude hung up.

  “Wow,” I said. “Guy isn’t just a tool. He’s the whole tool box.”

  “Do you know the Amaco on Division? Near Goose Island?” Jack asked me.

  “Yeah. You ever have Goose Island Bourbon County Stout? One of the greatest beers of all time.”

  “Take me there,” she said. “Now.”

  “To the brewery?”

  “To the Amaco. We gotta talk to a guy.”

  PHIN

  As the cops took their cop time doing their cop thing in the parking lot, I looked through Tucker’s address book.

  On the plus side, there weren’t many addresses.

  On the minus side, they were written in some kind of code.

  The first page read like this:

  Rargtet Ncmocrony

  1890 Nroome Lcceir Airhrpabtc LI

  Dedrwa Ilpnknhapse

  9110 Ldnaong Ts Pmaonisnlei NM

  Adch Ihcdrasrno

  224 W Reywenga Lbvd Atnsi Onsim LI

  Aekl Livoet Ibanc

  Nadubnr NM

  If I wrote a list of my talents, skills, and abilities, cryptography wouldn’t be on it. I stared at the letters, trying to figure out what they meant. Some sort of substitution code? Like the letter A is actually Z, and B is Y, and so on?

  I found a pen in my bedside drawer, next to the Gideon’s Bible, and tore out a few pages of Genesis to take notes.

  Two of the addresses ended in NM. Was that New Mexico?

  So what was LI? Louisiana?

  Geography wouldn’t make my skill list, either.

  The cops began a door-to-door, looking for witnesses. There wouldn’t be any. The Clan wouldn’t talk, Kenny would make up some wild story, and everyone else would mind their own business. Forget it, Jake. It’s Chinatown.

  I stared at the letters Lbvd. That looked familiar. Roman numerals?

  Maybe Pasha could help with this. She was book smart.

  Look closer, Earl said.

  I ignored Earl. When the police knocked on my door, I ignored them, too.

  Lbvd. Ywa. Ts. Look where they are in the addresses.

  Without being able to help myself, I stared at the letters Earl was pointing out.

  Something about their placement…

  Wow, you’re stupid.

  While stupid was perhaps harsh, I knew Earl wasn’t really a separate entity who talked to me. Earl was my own subconscious personification of my cancer, and how I dealt with it.

  So if my subconscious knew something, then I must have known something.

  9110 Ldnaong Ts

  It’s in an address book. So it’s an address.

  An address is a number, followed by a street name.

  Ldnaong Street?

  Wait… the Ts was just St backward. That was the abbreviation for street. And LI was IL backward, the postal code for Illinois.

  Was this all just written backward?

  A few seconds of scribbling showed that wasn’t the solution.

  Lbvd. Ywa. Ts. Look where they are in the addresses.

  “Shh,” I said out loud.

  Then I got it.

  If Ts was Street, then Lbvd was Blvd—boulevard. And Ywa was Way.

  The words were scrambled.

  Once I knew that, I figured a few out. Rargtet was Garrett. Adch was Chad. Dedrwa was Edward.

  Okay, those were the addresses for Tucker’s partners in crime.

  So what was the fourth address?

  Aekl Livoet Ibanc

  Nadubnr NM

  It was scrambled, so NM wasn’t New Mexico. It was MN—Minnesota—which Tucker mentioned in a few of his phone calls.

  He also mentioned lake and cabin, which were scrambled as Aekl and Ibanc.

  So they were killing women at a cabin on Lake something.

  I wrote down the letters L-I-V-O-E-T in a circle, and then tried connecting them in various ways.

  It looked like the word violent. Or violate.

  No, it was violet. As in Lake Violet.

  Lake Violet Cabin.

  I used my handy new phone to access Google, and looked up Lake Violet in Minnesota, expecting there to be dozens of them.

  There was only one. And bringing up a map of the area, I saw it was located in the town of Danburn, an hour northwest of the Twin Cities.

  That was where Tucker had gone to meet his friends.

  Road trip time.

  In a little hidey-hole under the carpeting in the corner of the room, I had a stash of weapons. Some of them, I’d purchased. Most of them I picked up because a person had dropped it, after I knocked them out. Kenny gave me a free room at the Michigan Motel in exchange for dealing with riff-raff, and I considered keeping their stuff a perk of the job.

  The first thing I grabbed was a Stoeger Condor over and under shotgun.

  I liked shotguns, because shotgun pellets weren’t traceable like bullets were. Aspiring hitmen take note; if you ever want to commit a murder, use a shotgun. You don’t have to ditch the weapon afterward.

  An over and under had two barrels, one on top of the other. Unfortunately, the pinhead I took it from used a hacksaw on it, turning a thing of beauty and craftsmanship into an illegal and inaccurate weapon by sawing down the stock and the barrel. I took it from him when he got drunk and shot the ice machine in the hallway. While understanding his frustration (when you pressed the lever it only dispensed one tiny cube at a time), I felt he overreacted, and then he made the mistake of pointing the shotgun at me. I persuaded him to relinquish it by punching him in the face repeatedly.

  The shortened stock meant it hurt like hell to shoot, and the shortened barrel meant it couldn’t hit anything further than five feet away, but I figured it would be a good up-close weapon.

  My next donated acquisition was a Henry
AR-7 Survival Rifle. It was a takedown model, meaning the barrel, action, and magazine detached and fit into the stock. It floated too. I guess this was important if you accidentally dropped it overboard while shooting fish. Or swimmers.

  I picked up the rifle from a kind gentleman who was renting one of Kenny’s rooms by the hour, and when his escort insisted he wear protection, he went into the bathroom and instead of slipping on a condom, he assembled his rifle and threatened to kill her. I entered his room using my universal key (aka my boot), slapped him so many times he forgot his own name, and showed him a different type of escort; off the property.

  The Henry AR-7 fired .22lr, which was a tiny round compared to my 9mm, but it was much more accurate over twenty meters.

  The last little item in my arsenal was a hand grenade.

  I’d had some recent, unlucky experience with hand grenades, and had vowed to stay away from them. But some guy in an alley sold this one to me for thirty bucks, and the definition of a bargain is something you don’t want at a price you can’t pass up.

  There was probably one chance in a thousand that it worked. But it looked scary, so maybe I’d find a use for it, even if it was a dud.

  All of these items, plus a tactical flashlight, went into my duffel bag. I also reloaded my AMT in my heel, grabbed two more mags for the 9mm, and stuck an extra switchblade in as well.

  Next I grabbed a pair of Bushnell x50 binoculars. These were obtained from a man in the parking lot, peeking in the motel windows. I didn’t even have to hit the guy; when he saw me coming, he threw them at me and ran.

  I topped off the bag with a black sweat suit, black socks, a pair of black Nikes with the white Swooshes blackened with marker, and extra underwear. Then I replaced the carpet over my hidey-hole, turned out the lights, and waited for the last cop to leave.

  Through my shades, I watched the sun set. Just like it has set every night for the last four billion years. Just like it would for another four billion, until it finally burned out, leaving a frozen universe and a tiny white dwarf to mark the place where it had shone.

  But before it died, it will explode a thousand times its size, becoming a super nova, scorching the planets, lighting up the solar system, setting fire to the world.

  Not yet, though.

  Not for a long, long while.

  The last cop finally left, and I hopped into my Bronco and hit the nearest Amaco station. Besides gas, I bought a map of Minnesota, a marker to trace the fastest route to Lake Violet, a travel toothbrush and toothpaste, twenty candy bars, a pound of beef jerky, a six pack of energy drink, a gallon of bottled water, and a baseball cap that read KISS MY ASS.

  Then I headed north.

  JACK

  I’d had a drink or two too many. I knew that. The last one was hitting me especially hard, as I sat in the passenger seat of Harry’s Corvette, heading toward the Amaco station. I lowered the window, letting the cool night air whip my face. I closed my eyes for just a second, and when I opened them I saw a Bronco speed past.

  “Was that Phin?”

  “Who?” McGlade was futzing around with the stereo.

  “I thought I saw him, in his truck.”

  “You know, if I didn’t know better, I’d think you had a crush on that guy.”

  “Phin?” I snorted. “Never gonna happen.”

  “The heart wants what the heart wants. Take Rover, my miniature dwarf pony. He met a mare today. Sure, she was ten times bigger than he was, but that was love at first sight. Now realistically, he’d need some sort of boost, or ladder, or sex harness, to consummate their relationship. Maybe some kind of block and tackle system. Like Herb probably uses. But it’s still possible, with help. A tolerant owner, wearing a raincoat and elbow-length gloves, could easily—”

  “Here’s the Amaco.” I was happy to interrupt him. “Gimme your picture.”

  “You want a pic of me? After all these years? I’m touched. You want one with pants on, or no pants?”

  “The picture of the three guys.”

  He frowned, but handed it over after we parked.

  When I walked into the little mini-mart store, I was able to instantly spot Dalt. There were two employees behind the counter, but only one of them looked like he lost his brain and didn’t have the first clue how to find it; thick glasses, walleyed with his left pupil looking way off to the side, and a line of drool on his chin.

  “Mr. Dalt? Lieutenant Daniels. We spoke on the phone twice.”

  “I’m at work,” he said.

  Of course he said that. I wouldn’t have expected less.

  “I need you to look at a picture, Mr. Dalt. Tell me if you see the man who rented that truck from you.”

  “I don’t work at the rental company anymore. I work at Amaco.”

  “I understand that, Mr. Dalt.” I put the picture on the counter in front of him.

  “I start work at four,” he said.

  “Can you look at the picture?”

  “The picture?”

  “I could try to slap the stupid out of him,” Harry said, “but I’d need about six more guys.”

  I tapped my finger on the photo. “Mr. Dalt, look at this picture, and tell me if you see the man who rented that truck from you.”

  Dalt focused on the picture, which couldn’t have been easy for him with that lazy eye.

  “Yeah, that’s him,” he finally said.

  “Which one?” I asked.

  “The guy who rented the truck.”

  “Which person in the picture rented the truck?”

  “This one.” He pointed to Garrett McConnroy.

  “Are you sure about this, Mr. Dalt?”

  “Yeah, I’m sure. You think I’m an idiot?”

  I purposely didn’t answer.

  “Defense attorney is gonna love this guy,” Harry said.

  “Mr. Dalt, we need to be absolutely sure this is the guy.”

  “I never forget a face,” Dalt said.

  “Really?” I grabbed Harry’s shoulders and turned him around so he faced the other way. “Okay, what does my friend look like?”

  “I knew we were friends!” Harry was beaming.

  “He’s about forty-six, brown hair, lots of gray, needs a shave, brown eyes, kind of squinty, a wide nose, double chin. Looks a lot like that thriller author, J.A. Konrath.”

  “Never heard of him,” I said.

  “He’s also got a missing button on his shirt, second one from the top, and his fly is open.”

  “Lucky guess,” said Harry. “My fly is always open.”

  I checked Harry’s button, and, unhappily, his fly was open.

  Dalt was right on both. I called the Feebies back.

  “Special Agent Dailey.”

  “It’s Daniels again. The former rental guy, Dalt, identified a picture of McConnroy.”

  “Lieutenant, this isn’t your case anymore.”

  “This isn’t about the collar, Dailey.”

  “No, it isn’t about the collar. It’s about you interfering with our investigation. If I put this guy on the stand, I have to disclose that you potentially contaminated a witness.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “Interview contamination, Lieutenant. Such as when someone who is no longer on a case continues to pursue eyewitness accounts and cloud their testimony.”

  “Testimony? There could be lives at stake here.”

  “And we’ll take care of it. I’m afraid I’m going to have to report this to your Captain Bains.”

  I hung up. Dalt wasn’t the only one that Harry needed to slap the stupid out of.

  “I’m buying this,” Harry said. It was a baseball cap with KISS MY ASS written on it.

  “You’re going to Minnesota?” I asked him.

  “Probably. Yeah. Why?”

  I knew I’d regret it, but I said it anyway. “Because I’m going with you.”

  HARRY

  The truth was, I missed being a cop more than I let on with Jack. And I missed
being her partner.

  I screwed that up. Made some bad decisions. Didn’t respect her like I should have, or the badge like I should have.

  So this felt sort of like a second chance.

  Since we were already at a gas station, I filled up the Vette and programmed a route to the Twin Cities on my GPS. We’d try Eddie Cline’s address first, since he has the women with him, and then Garrett McConnroy’s, which I assumed Jack knew. As the tank filled, I bought that awesome ball cap, and stocked up on some essentials; pop, chips, snack cakes, candy bars, energy drinks, beef jerky, deodorant, ibuprofen, and some adult sized diapers. For Jack.

  She’d had a lot to drink. I’ve been there. Accidents happen.

  I met her back in the car, and we got on our way.

  “Is this lemonade?”

  Jack had picked up the water bottle with the urine sample I was saving for the doctor.

  “No. It’s iced tea. Put that back.”

  She tossed it in the back seat, then came back with the bag of stuff I bought.

  “Is there something you aren’t telling me?” she asked, holding up the diapers.

  “I bought those for you. You had a lot to drink.”

  “So why do I need diapers?”

  “In case you pass out and wet yourself?”

  “Is that what you do?”

  “Of course not,” I lied. “That’s ridiculous.”

  We drove for a few miles in silence.

  “I think I’m afraid of change,” Jack eventually said.

  “Don’t worry. I’ve got a Speed Pass for the toll booths. We don’t need any change.”

  “You always do that. Respond with a lame joke.”

  I shrugged. “Defense mechanism. I bounced around a lot of foster homes. I used humor to get people to like me, so I wouldn’t be sent away again.”

  “Did it work?”

  I thought about it. “No.”

  “Maybe the reason you bounced around was because everyone got sick of your jokes.”

  “That’s what I love about you, Jack. You’re a fun drunk.”

  “I’m trying to be serious. And you’re still joking around.”

  I checked the rearview mirror. “Okay. You hate change. I hate intimacy. That foster home thing, remember? Why get attached to anything when it’ll only be taken away.”