The Highly Effective Detective

by Richard Yancey

  He crossed his arms over his chest and said, “You haven’t done a blessed thing, have you, Mr. Ruzak?”

  “Legwork isn’t all there is to detection, Mr. Hudson. Have you ever heard of Mycroft?”

  “No.”

  “He was Sherlock Holmes’s older brother. Smarter than Sherlock, if you can believe that, but he hated the legwork. He cracked cases completely in his head.”

  “And that’s your strategy? To crack my case completely inside your head?”

  “Like I said, I’m working on some theories. Without theories, you’re just thrashing around in the dark and billing a lot of unnecessary expenses. I’m trying to save you some money here, Mr. Hudson.”

  “You’re not charging me for all the time you spend concocting theories, then?”

  “No, concoction is free.”

  “Because, after all, how could one call it work?”

  “You couldn’t in good conscience. Though most work these days is with your head, when you think about it. There’re not many manual laborers left. . ..”

  “Mr. Ruzak, I get the impression you’re not taking my case very seriously.”

  “Oh, no, Mr. Hudson, I am taking your case very seriously. I think it’s terrible what happened to those birds. It’s a damned shame and whoever did it was damned shameless and you’re to be commended for spending your money to track down who did it. And anyway, I’m grateful as hell for the work, but most of all for the confidence in hiring an unlicensed detective, though I’m in the process right now of getting one, a license, and letting him feel his way through his first case. To be honest with you, it’s also my only case, so I’ve got a pretty strong interest in solving it. Maybe not as strong as you, but pretty strong.”

  He laughed suddenly, like he did the first time we met. One minute he was still and stoic as a Buddha, the next his face crinkled and cracked open and he was all teeth and tongue and guffaws.

  “Well,” he said after he got control of himself. “I suppose I can’t complain too much. I haven’t paid a penny and I’ve managed to find the equal of Mycroft Holmes.”

  “Oh, I never said I was his equal. Mycroft was very big in the smarts department. It’s a matter of technique, not ability.”

  “That certainly seems true.”

  “But I’ll get an answer for you, Mr. Hudson. I’ll nab this bird killer. You’ve got my word on that.”

  He left after that and I was more than relieved. I was ready to throw his painting metaphor back at him, something like, When you hire somebody to paint your house, do you trail behind them, questioning every little stroke? Lucky for me, I didn’t have to.

  Felicia stuck her head in the little opening and said, “Two things.”

  “Yeah?”

  “You wanna put a door here. I heard every word.”

  “I don’t mind.”

  “Your clients might. One day, you’ll get a case that requires delicacy, you know? Maybe something a little more serious than a dead bird.”

  “It was more than one.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “I’ll talk to the landlord. Have you ever heard of Mycroft Holmes?”

  “Not till three minutes ago.”

  “Ever heard of Moriarty?”

  “Sherlock Holmes’s little brother?”

  “No. His archnemesis. Maybe that’s why I’m having trouble getting into this case. There’s no, um, worthy adversary.”

  She just stared at me.

  I sighed. “What was the second thing?”

  “Paul Killibrew is holding for you.”

  “Oh. Who’s Paul Killibrew?”

  “He’s a reporter for the Sentinel. He thinks this case will make a great human-interest story for the paper.”

  “Really?”

  “Sure. It’s got it all, Ruzak. Pathos, humor, a man chasing his dream. He said it might make the front page of the ‘Lifestyle’ section.”

  “That’s terrific.”

  “And maybe the killer will read about it and come clean.”

  “That would solve the case,” I said. I never considered myself a lucky person, but this was luck with a capital L.

  “I wonder how he heard about it,” I said, picking up the phone.

  “I called him, Ruzak.”

  So it wasn’t luck, unless you considered my hiring Felicia lucky. If it was, it was of the dumb variety. I thought I had hired her to answer phones and do the mail, not to be the brains of the operation.

  CHAPTER NINE

  PAUL KILLIBREW WAS A REAL NICE GUY AND SEEMED GENUINELY moved by the story of the dead goslings. He came by with a photographer after we talked and took a picture of me behind my desk, grimly gripping my mechanical pencil, the little point poised above the legal pad, as if he and the photographer had walked into the middle of some important detecting. The story ran on Sunday, a half-page spread with a big color picture of me behind the desk, holding the poised pencil. The first thing I thought when I saw it that morning was that I had no idea how fat I’d gotten. My weight had always been a problem and one of the big reasons I’d struggled so much at the Police Academy. The police take it very seriously, the ability to chase down criminals without suffering a coronary. The second thing I thought was how proud my mother would have been. I’d never been in the paper before, except when the Sentinel ran my senior picture, but they run everyone’s senior picture, so that didn’t really count. The third thing I thought when I saw it was that I still hadn’t visited my mother’s grave and what kind of son was I anyway?

  So I cut out the article, threw on some sweats and my Nikes, and jogged down to the Central Baptist Cemetery on Central Avenue, where my mother was buried. The church’s parking lot was packed when I got there; it was only a little after noon. After I caught my breath, I told her, “Ma, I didn’t bring you any flowers, but I brought this.” I laid the clipping at the foot of the headstone and weighed it down with a stick.

  “I look pretty fat in that picture,” I said. “So I’m starting an exercise regimen today. I ran all the way here—well, most of the way, anyway—and I’m going to run back. I’m taking up karate, and there’s this new thing I saw an ad for in the paper today, this hand-to-hand battle technique perfected by the Israelis, called Krav Maga. It’s kind of like street fighting, only more deadly, because it’s their secret police who invented it, and those guys are some tough sons a bitches. Sorry, Ma. And I’m cutting back on the doughnuts and the Three Musketeers. And no more swinging by the DQ after work for those damned sundaes. Anyway, I wanted to show you that clipping because maybe you’ll think I’ll make something of myself one of these days. I’m getting some free publicity out of the deal, which is great for business, or at least that’s what I hope. I guess I should tell you it wasn’t my idea. It was Felicia’s. I don’t think you ever met Felicia, but she’s this girl I know from the Old City Diner—you know, in the Old City—and she’s really smart and nice, too, when her mood’s okay. I think I’ve got this kind of crush on her, but she has this boyfriend named Bob, who’s a firefighter. That’s a pretty heroic profession, though being a successful PI is nothing to sneeze at in the courageous department.”

  I was still slightly out of breath from my run, and talking so much wasn’t helping. I was tired of standing at the foot of her grave, so I sat down.

  “So that’s what I’ve been up to, setting up the office, hiring Felicia, working on this case. . .. That’s why I haven’t been by sooner.”

  I could hear voices behind me. I looked over my shoulder and saw people in the parking lot; church was letting out. I ducked my head. I had grown up going to this church, but I hadn’t been back since I graduated from high school. My father had been a lapsed Catholic and never went, but Mom had been a dyed-in-the-wool churchgoer and dragged me in every Sunday when I was a kid. The old minister I knew back then had long since retired and the new guy was young and very energetic and kept getting Mom’s name wrong at the service. Mom had been too sick to go to church much in he
r later years; this guy barely knew her. When Dad had his heart attack, he begged for a priest, until finally Mom relented, and then Dad got in an argument with the father during the Last Rites; the first priest he’d spoken to in thirty years and he gets in a fight with him, but that was Dad—very cocksure and querulous. I had trouble understanding why he’d summoned a priest to ready him for the afterlife, only to badger him about Church dogma. What especially set him off was the priest performing the sacrament in the vernacular. Dad wanted Latin, and when the priest said his Latin was rusty, Dad said, “What kind of goddamned priest are you?” I was worried he’d have a second heart attack, fighting with a priest, of all people, and that if there was anything to the Church’s teachings, the priest would never get out of there, because Dad kept sinning up to and past receiving absolution.

  I hunkered there until the last car left the lot, told Mom goodbye and that I’d be back soon, then started my run back to the apartment, thinking about a hot shower and maybe a package of those little white-powdered doughnuts ninety-nine cents for six at the Walgreens right on my way home. I told myself my problem was willpower, in that I didn’t have any. I had just made a promise to Mom about sweets, and already I was planning to break it.

  I stopped by the Walgreens on Gay Street, about five blocks from my apartment in the Sterchi Building, and bought three more newspapers for two dollars each, a bottled water, and a bag of unsalted peanuts. Peanuts are excellent protein and good for you, according to the Atkins book. I had never read the Atkins book, but I’d seen a lot of stories about it on television. I went through a phase in my twenties when I read every diet book on the market and bought exercise tapes and even joined a gym, which I never went to. I was into diet culture the way some homely guys get into porno. Maybe later I’d rent a movie (not porno) or call one of my old buddies from the security company, Glen or Farrell, to see if they wanted to come over and read the paper. Thinking of my old friends from work made me lonely all of a sudden, and I thought about getting a dog, even though it was prohibited in the lease. Then I thought how pitiful that was, so lonely that I was willing to pay for companionship. Growing up, I had just one dog, a collie named Lady, who died one summer while we were down in Florida for a family vacation. I begged for another dog, but my dad told me I wasn’t going to get another dog until I learned how to handle my emotions better. I guess I never learned to handle them to his satisfaction, because we never got a replacement for Lady.

  I jogged down the sidewalk, the green plastic Walgreens bag bumping against my thigh. You don’t think a newspaper is heavy until you stuff three Sunday editions in a bag and jog with them. Traffic was very light on Gay Street. It was Sunday and the downtown pretty much died on the weekends, despite millions of dollars spent on revitalization and all the tax breaks and rent subsidies they handed out, trying to get people to move downtown. I barely glanced both ways before crossing at Jackson, and I was hopping onto the curb on the east side of Gay Street when it hit me—not the car itself, but the fact that it was a big vehicle and that it was black, and the fact that it was going very slowly, like it was following me.

  CHAPTER TEN

  SINCE I DIDN’T KNOW WHAT TO DO AT THAT POINT, I DID what most people do when they don’t know what to do: I just kept doing what I was doing. In this case, running. I slowed up, expecting the car to pass me. The speed limit downtown was twenty-five, but there was no way I was running faster than twenty-five miles per hour, so why was this guy driving so slowly if he wasn’t following me? Maybe he had blown his chance to run me down like those poor damn goslings and he was waiting for another. I thought about stopping, just stopping and turning around to get a good look at him. It occurred to me I didn’t have a gun and that, being in PI work, I might find a gun useful, but I hated guns—even when I was in the Police Academy I hated guns—and besides, I was a terrible shot—probably because I hated guns. I’d have to get a permit for one, and you have to pass a marksmanship class to do that, and I sucked at marksmanship. It had been my worst subject at the Academy.

  I could see the Sterchi Building up ahead. Less than three blocks to go, and now I could hear the rumble of its big eight-cylinder engine and I tried to remember if the windows were tinted or not. It might not even be worth it to stop and look, if the windows were dark.

  Then all choice was taken from me. The engine roared and the big SUV swept past, and I saw the windows were tinted. I also saw it was a black Ford Expedition with Tennessee plates. I was so overwhelmed with information at that point, I didn’t catch all the numbers, but the first three letters were HRT.

  I sprinted the last two blocks and up the three flights of stairs to my apartment, then collapsed against the wall beside my door, clutching my keys in my hand, saying over and over to myself, “HRT. HRT. HRT. History’s really tough. Her rotten tomatoes. Harry rips tissue. . ..” I kept muttering things like that to help me remember.

  When I had my breath back, I went inside, threw the dead bolt, dropped the Walgreens bag on the counter, and looked up Felicia’s number in the phone book. A guy answered on the fifth ring. It sounded like I woke him up. I asked if Felicia was there. There was some mumbling, then a loud clunk, like somebody’d dropped the phone.

  “Hello?”

  “Felicia, this is Teddy. Did I wake you up?”

  “No. No. It’s my boss. . ..” She must have been talking to Bob. It made me feel funny, hearing her call me her boss.

  “Did the article run today?” she asked.

  “Yeah, but that’s not why I’m calling. I think I spotted the killer.”

  “What killer? Oh. The geese. What do you mean, you spotted him?”

  “He’s stalking me.” I told her what had happened.

  “Teddy, the odds that—”

  “The only thing I can’t figure is how he knew where I lived. . ..” I looked down at the counter. “The phone book! I’m listed! He read the article this morning and looked me up!”

  “Ruzak, think about it. Even if this was the person who hit the geese, why would he come looking for you?”

  “I don’t know . . . maybe because he’s mad. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have called. I’m a little shaken up.” My face was hot, and it wasn’t from sprinting two blocks and three flights of stairs. “I visited my mother’s grave this morning and I guess I’m a little spooked. I’m sorry I bothered you, Felicia.”

  I hung up. Bob must live with her, I thought, although last night was Saturday and it wouldn’t be unusual for a guy to sleep over after a date.

  Felicia was right: There were hundreds of black SUVs. It was crazy to think this was the one. Crazy, too, that the guy would be so incensed that he’d jump in his car on a Sunday morning to track me down and …and what? Stop me from fingering him for killing some baby birds? But if it wasn’t him, why did he slow down like that, pacing me as I jogged? Or was he pacing me at all? Maybe he was talking on the cell phone, which people do, and they say that’s as dangerous as driving while drunk. Maybe he was having a fight with his wife. One of the things you have to be careful about when you live alone is the tendency to put yourself too much in the center of the world, like everything that goes on around you is related to your existence, when in reality, your existence doesn’t amount to a hill of beans. That’s tough for a lot of people to swallow. For centuries, people believed the sun revolved around the Earth, because we thought we were so damned important. What’s my life going to matter in a hundred years? Or fifty? Or even twenty? I wondered how long a goose’s memory was, if that mamma and poppa goose still remembered their babies and mourned. Parker Hudson had told me they went berserk when that car flattened their children, honking and flapping their wings and refusing to move off the road. That tore him up almost as much as seeing those goslings murdered. That, and the way the SUV sped up right before impact, like he’d meant to hit them.

  “It was him,” I said aloud in my empty apartment, which seemed emptier than usual. I figured maybe I should get a more low-maintenance
kind of pet, like a parrot, something you could not only talk to but that would also talk back. That way, I would have an excuse for talking to myself. But I had heard a parrot can live a hundred years, and that made me feel funny, having a pet that would outlive me. I went to the living room window, pulled up the blinds, and looked for his car parked on the street, but there was no black SUV.

  I couldn’t be sure it was him, of course, not like I was sure about the Earth moving around the sun. I couldn’t know, but I knew. Black Ford Expedition with Tennessee tags beginning with the letters HRT.

  It was a start.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  I TOOK A SHOWER, CHANGED INTO SOME SHORTS AND MY NYPD T-shirt, made myself a roast beef sandwich on rye with some Lay’s baked potato chips and a Clausen pickle, the spear-cut kind. Then I grabbed my keys and took the stairs into the garage below the building, thinking again about maybe investing in a gun. I could write it off my taxes, and being motivated might help me pass the marksmanship test, though in the Academy I’d been motivated—I’d really, really wanted to be a cop—but I couldn’t get it down.

  Checking my rearview mirror the whole time, I took Kingston Pike west into Farragut. After driving around for about forty minutes, I finally found the road Parker Hudson lived off of, with the lake sparkling beside it in the afternoon sun and the pontoon boats, waterjets, motorboats, and bass boats, and shrieking skiers and two little groups of fishermen angling off one of the neighborhood piers. A sidewalk followed the lazy curves on the opposite side of the road, broken here and there with entrances to subdivisions with names like Water Sound and Lakeview and Rocky Creek. Families were everywhere, kids on bikes and trikes and scooters and older ones on skateboards. It was a warm Sunday afternoon in late spring, the kind of day that makes your heart ache, although you’re not sure what for.

  I pulled into the lakeside park and shut off the engine. More families here, tossing a baseball or a Frisbee, and lots of dogs sniffing the bushes. I looked for Parker Hudson. Part of me wanted to see him and another part wanted him to see me. I’d tell him of my encounter with the evildoer on Gay Street and see if the make, model, and tag number jogged his memory. I checked out the cars in the parking lot, but although there were lots of SUVs and even some black ones, there weren’t any with the tag HRT.