A Field of Red

by Greg Enslen

  A Field

  of

  Red

  A Frank Harper Mystery

  by

  Greg Enslen

  Published in 2013, by Gypsy Publications

  Troy, OH 45373, U.S.A.

  www.GypsyPublications.com

  Copyright © Greg Enslen, 2013

  This story is a work of fiction and, while based on actual events and locations, is entirely fictitious. All names, characters, locations, and incidents appearing in this work are fictional or have been used in a fictional context and in no way are meant to reflect actual events, incidents or locations. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.”

  All rights reserved

  No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the author or publisher.

  Enslen, Greg

  A Field of Red / by Greg Enslen

  ISBN 978-1-938768-23-1 (paperback)

  Library of Congress Control Number 2013944938

  Edited by Diana Ceres

  Cover Design by Pamela Schwartz

  Cover Photo © Eric Cherry, 2008

  Flickr/Getty Images used with permission

  For more information, please visit the author’s

  website at www.GregEnslen.com

  PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

  Acknowledgments

  This book was, like my others, a collaborative effort. If it weren’t for the immeasurable assistance of some amazing people, this book would never have crawled its way out of my brain and onto the printed page. This book took about two-and-a-half years to complete, going through several rewrites and revisions until something emerged that I could be happy with. Anything great in this book is probably as a result of a suggestion one of these people made, whereas all the mistakes and miscalculations fall squarely on my shoulders.

  I’d like to thank the following people for their hard work to help make this book a reality:

  • My wife Samantha, who had to listen to me talk on and on endlessly about Frank Harper and the other characters;

  • My parents, Mary and Albert Enslen, for reading and rereading this, along with my father’s attention to timelines and details, and marking it up until it was perfect;

  • My editor, Diana Ceres, who vastly improved the book by giving it a rigorous edit and bringing up a lot of questions that made me think;

  • And the wonderful folks of Tipp City, Ohio, upon which the fictional town of Cooper’s Mill is based.

  Prologue

  The man sat in his car, waiting.

  Other cars passed his location, but Tyler was parked far down the alley and no one could see the car.

  He spent a lot of time parked in his car, usually in plain sight. It was in the job description. On those occasions, other cars would pass him, and the drivers would glance over at Tyler; often, they smiled and nodded, or threw him a quick wave. Tyler could tell it wasn’t out of friendliness. They feared him, or respected him, or both. It didn’t really matter; the result was the same. Deference.

  Tyler checked his watch again. He didn’t like being out here for the world to see. Even half-hidden in the alley, he was parked just off one of the busiest streets in Cooper’s Mill. At any moment, some idiot might decide to take a shortcut and use this alley, which ran between Hyatt and Seventh Street. He had parked far away for a good reason, but he still felt exposed.

  But there was no other option.

  When it was time, he opened the heavy door of his car and climbed out, straightening his uniform. Tyler was dressed perfectly, as always. He was tall and lean and carried himself with an air that some people found haughty. He liked to think of it as confidence—and he knew he earned it. Tyler was always working the angles, coming up with new plans.

  Tyler smiled and walked down the alley to Hyatt. Large houses lined both sides of the wide suburban street, fronted by huge lawns and driveways dotted with expensive cars. Big yards, the kind that required riding lawnmowers or, better yet, a lawn care service. The richest people in town lived on this street. They could afford it.

  He turned and began walking south, down the street, taking his time. Tyler watched the front of a house far down the block, a huge brick home with a circular driveway. The girl was running late. He stopped at the corner of Hyatt and Broadway and waited casually, taking out his phone and pretending to talk on it, keeping one eye on the house and the other on any witnesses who might appear.

  Hopefully, this whole exercise would come off with no problems. Of course, the kid would never make it home—she would know his face—but other than that, things should go smoothly. It was all set up, and the others were ready. And, if things worked out, all of his money troubles would be solved.

  Another Louis Prima song drifted into his head while he waited. This time it was “Bona Sera,” another of his mother’s favorites. She’d sung it obsessively around the house when he was younger, back before she went away on a Thursday morning and never came back.

  A car passed Tyler, and he glanced away. The fewer people who could identify him, the better. But it was a good plan. The others were—

  The young girl came out of her house.

  Tyler watched, still “talking” on the phone. The little girl walked down the long driveway and turned, waving back to the front door, where the mother, Glenda Martin, was standing, waving. Tyler remembered Glenda from school: brunette, tall, beautiful. Now she was in her mid-30s, a pillar of the community. She’d been too good to talk to Tyler in high school—she’d ended up with Nick, the football player, of course.

  The young girl, Charlene, hitched up her pink backpack and started up the sidewalk that ran along Hyatt Avenue, heading his way. Suddenly, from behind her, there must have been a shout, unheard by Tyler, because she stopped and turned and waited, looking back at the house.

  A second girl—a young Hispanic girl with a plastic bag instead of a backpack—ran down the long, leaf-covered driveway and joined the first. Together, they started up Hyatt.

  Two girls.

  Shit.

  That wasn’t the plan, Tyler thought, his mother’s song dying in his head. It was only supposed to be the Martin girl, walking to school by herself. Tyler was supposed to walk her to his car, and they would drive away. Now, Tyler would have to take Maya, the daughter of the Hispanic nanny, as well. That complicated things greatly.

  He shook his head. It was too late to call and get instructions. Everything was rolling now. The train had already left the station. Things were all set up; beep beep, these girls were going on a trip. Not to the moon, like in the song. But a trip, nonetheless.

  Tyler didn’t want to take them both, but it was too public to make a scene. The second girl would be able to identify him if he left her behind.

  And it was too messy to kill her here.

  Tyler made up his mind. The two girls walked up Hyatt toward him and made the turn onto Broadway, kicking through a pile of fallen leaves. He waited. They giggled at some private joke. Two hundred yards behind him, Tyler could hear the shouts of fellow students arriving at Broadway Elementary, the boxy brick building that took up an entire block of Broadway Avenue. Crossing guards were directing kids across the street. He was exposed—anyone could see him. He glanced in the direction of the alley where he was parked.

  The two girls looked up from their conversation to see the man standing there, leaning casually against a low fence. For just a moment, their faces filled with wary curiosity. But then they smiled.

  Of course they smiled. They recognized him.

  1

  Frank Harper sat in a dark corner
of Ricky’s, a dingy bar in the downtown historical district of the rural Ohio town of Cooper’s Mill. He was nursing a beer, looking up every time anyone entered the establishment. It was a habit he couldn’t break.

  Frank was a solid man in his mid-50s; not old, but not young anymore. He had the trim and sinewy frame of a man who worked out regularly, if only out of habit. The short, dark hair atop his head suggested a police or military past, but the unkempt hair was longer and shaggier than any cop would have worn it. His age was betrayed by the weary lines on his tired face. He looked worn, spent, his face darkened with five days’ worth of dark stubble. He also looked like the kind of man who knew how to throw a punch and how to take one.

  The bar was bigger on the inside than he’d expected—a wide space filled with low tables surrounding the central wooden bar, with seating on all four sides. Several televisions hung from the walls, amid a collage of bar decorations: neon signs, pinup girls and other pictures of scantily-clad women advertising something or the other, posters for local sports teams, and beer and liquor advertisements. Above the bar hung purple and green pennants, remnants from some long-forgotten Mardi Gras celebration. He was probably the only person here to notice the familiar colors.

  The floor was dirty linoleum, the lighting low and dingy, and every window was covered. From the outside, it had looked like a strip club. Brisk air from outside occasionally wafted in as customers came and went, breaking up the smoke. It was a non-smoking restaurant, as was every other restaurant in Ohio, evidently, but it looked like Ricky’s, and its patrons, hadn’t gotten the memo.

  Frank Harper had arrived in town only hours ago and settled into the Vacation Inn by the highway. He had needed a shower after traveling, and the drive up from Birmingham had been a long one. It had been ten hours of boring, with the radio broken in the Taurus; he didn’t have the money to get it fixed. The jury-rigged CD player, hooked into the car’s speakers, and a stack of jazz and blues CDs would have to do. Benny Golson and Earl Hooker, Coltrane and Ervin had kept him company, with a little Pinetop Perkins thrown in for good measure.

  After a shower, he had left the hotel and climbed in his car to drive around a bit to get the lay of the land. He’d gotten the Taurus on the cheap from the ABI, one of those “retired vehicles” the Alabama Bureau of Investigation and the Alabama Department of Public Safety were always trying to get rid of. After driving it a week, he figured out why. It was a piece of crap. Almost nothing worked.

  Cooper’s Mill was located right on the highway, just north of Dayton, Ohio. The small town had a busy commercial area near the highway and, a mile to the east, a quaint historical district by the river. The grid of downtown streets had great, old-timey names like Plum and Elm, and was dotted with little shops and restaurants—they even had a little toy store—and a few bars. There were only three traffic lights and, as far as Frank could tell, the entire downtown consisted of this one strip of old buildings and shops, surrounded by blocks and blocks of old homes.

  Frank picked up his beer and sipped at it. He’d been in a lot of bars, dives to high-end places. This place had all the ambiance of a beer tent at a state fair. The place was a dump, and it suited him perfectly—he just wanted to be left alone.

  It looked like half the town was here. He had no idea how big Cooper’s Mill was, but Ricky’s was packed. He’d been sitting at a table by himself for nearly two hours and was working on his fifth beer. He preferred whiskey, or bourbon, when he could get it, but tonight it had to be beer. The empties were still lined up on his table. The “waitress” hadn’t been around for a while. The sticky floor and cheap tables told him he’d probably pass out before the help came around to bus the table or bring him another round.

  He pretended to be oblivious to the bar fight that was about to start.

  Frank didn’t think anyone else had noticed yet. The two women behind the counter had their hands full, handing out watery beer as fast as they could and taking wads of wet bills. Customers lined the bar, three deep. Around the perimeter of the room, every one of the low wooden tables was filled.

  It was a Saturday night, October 8, and the bar was slammed. And now things were getting louder. Everything had been fine for a while, but now there was some college football game on, and people were getting excited.

  Frank was trying to ignore the people around him, but the tension in the place was growing thicker by the minute. It was chilly outside—a light rain was falling—but in here, it was hot and humid. Frank pushed it out of his mind and concentrated on the Bud Light in his hands. It was getting warm and tasted horrible, but at least it was something.

  He ignored the tall guy at the bar and his six friends.

  They’d been bickering off and on with another group, three guys sitting in a table next to the bar. They’d been shouting at the game on the TV and exchanging words for the last hour. The more they drank, the braver their words became. Frank knew the type—he’d seen a million of them, big talkers after three rounds. He’d been in enough bars in his life to know you didn’t get involved, unless your life, or the life of somebody you cared about, was involved. And it wasn’t his place to get involved, not anymore. Two years ago, he would’ve separated the two groups before things got worse, or at least get them to take it outside.

  Tonight, he didn’t really care. Frank was only in town for a week to talk to somebody, someone he hadn’t talked to in a long time.

  The whole situation had gone in the shitter years ago, after Trudy had left him. Maybe driving up here to Cooper’s Mill could help fix some of that. Or maybe it wouldn’t—who knew how Laura was going to react. At least on the phone she’d agreed to see him. That was something.

  Frank wanted a bourbon so badly he could feel the shape of the bottle in his hands. Bourbons and whiskeys were essentially the same thing, bourbon being a specific type of whiskey made in the good old U.S.A. The good stuff, like Maker’s Mark, was made in Bourbon County, Kentucky and aged several years. His hands started to shake just thinking about it.

  Ben Stone, one of Frank’s old partners, had liked Irish whiskey. Frank had been on loan to the Florida State Police for a temporary counterfeiting assignment. Frank had been thinking about Ben a lot lately, wondering how his family was doing. Ben’s wife had always been nice to Frank, the few times he’d met her. She’d been one of those solid, no-nonsense cop wives. Frank remembered fondly one occasion he’d been over at the Stones’ house for dinner. Ben had somehow convinced Frank to take a night off from bar-hopping for a “good, home-cooked meal.” His wife had made bruschetta and chicken saltimbocca. She’d said that “saltimbocca” was Italian for “jump in the mouth,” and she’d been right—it had been damn good.

  That had been a nice evening. Frank didn’t socialize as much as he should, and his partners had always razzed him about that. Ben, too.

  Poor Ben. Killed by stupidity.

  Frank looked back down at his beer, wishing he had something else. Bourbon, or whiskey, or even some cheap vodka.

  Ben used to say there were three kinds of whiskey in the world—good whiskey, OK whiskey, and shitty whiskey. At this point, Frank really wouldn’t have refused any of them. He couldn’t afford to be picky. All he knew was the beer was doing nothing to settle his nerves.

  He hoped this meeting with Laura would go well. He’d been thinking about her a lot lately. Frank was just glad she’d agreed to see him. Frank was good at reading people, but you didn’t have to be a crack investigator to hear the reluctance in Laura’s voice. Of course she was wary. She had every right to be.

  But she’d said ‘yes,’ and he’d gotten himself to this little town in Ohio. Frank wasn’t sure if it was going to be a good meeting or a bad meeting. All he knew was that she had allowed him to come up to Ohio and chat with her. And after he talked to Laura, he’d be heading back to Birmingham. She couldn’t see him until Tuesday at noon, but he’d driven up early anyway to get his bearings.

  Once a cop, always a cop.

&nb
sp; Frank’s thoughts returned to the Maker’s Mark. He didn’t have much money coming in. The retirement checks were thin. He was retired from the force after 21 years with the New Orleans Police Department. Good years, most of them. A few investigations that had gone south. A couple really bad ones, kidnapping cases he’d worked that had turned out horribly. But, all in all, a good career, right up until Katrina in 2005. After that, Frank had barely held on until retirement. Now, he was working part-time in Birmingham for the Alabama Bureau of Investigation, or ABI. Crappy little temporary cubicle, working their old “cold cases” that led nowhere.

  The job didn’t really matter to anyone, especially the ABI, and it didn’t pay much. The good money was saved for people doing field work, busting bad guys. Frank was stuck in his cubicle, working a never-shrinking stack of their cold cases. Half the time, Frank thought the only reason some poor sap was assigned to these cases was so the ABI could honestly tell reporters and family members that someone was still “looking into the old cases.”

  But he never really made much progress. The cases were so cold, he could easily take off a couple of weeks to go visit his daughter. Frankly, his bosses didn’t really care if he came in or not. The cold cases weren’t going anywhere.

  But money was tight. Most of the other retired cops Frank knew picked up freelance work to make ends meet. They usually did private investigations, or worked security, or “consulting,” as it was better known. Frank didn’t have the taste for that sort of work—chasing down bail jumpers or tracking husbands stepping out on their wives. He’d taken a couple jobs for other “consultants” and hated it—taking orders from some wet-behind-the-ear kid in charge of security.

  But the money was running thin. Birmingham to Dayton had been a stretch, and the Taurus was a gas guzzler. He needed to be careful with his limited funds; the hotel, some meals, and gas money home, that’s all he had. Not the best time to splurge on a bottle of Whistle Pig Rye.