“Ha, ha,” I said. “I tracked down another victim of the X Women.”
“You’re counting Peter Ghering as a victim?”
“Yeah, besides him.” The clicking stopped, which meant I had his full attention. “I’ve been on the Internet, and I finally tracked down Maggie’s friend, the girl she says was killed by a football star.”
“I really thought you’d go back to bed.”
“I couldn’t sleep after everything you told me.” I relayed to him my last couple of hours of work, ending with George Romero’s tale. “I need to find out if there’s been other accidental deaths of people who’ve been accused or convicted of a violent crime, or who have served time for something like that, then got out and died in mysterious circumstances.”
“That’s your working theory?”
“So far. I know it’s thin, but…”
“Uh huh,” Cal said, before lapsing into silence. I could almost hear the wheels grinding in his head as he thought. “It wouldn’t just be violent crimes. I’d bet the X Women have committed murder for other things as well.”
“That’s what I would assume,” I said. “But I can’t find anything on just the violent crimes. If I broaden my search that much, I’ll never find anything. It’s just a starting place, to see if I can find a pattern.”
“I’ll take care of that for you,” Cal said. “I’ll just add it to the X Women list.”
“What are you going to do?” I asked, then immediately said, “No, I don’t want to know.”
“It’s nothing bad,” Cal chuckled. “I have more resources at my fingertips, and I know where to look. You just play on the computer.” Compared to Cal’s computer skills, I had to agree. “Come up here later and we’ll see what we can find.”
“Sure, how about later this afternoon?” He grunted a response, which I took to be a ‘yes’ and I hung up. That done, I padded into the kitchen with my empty coffee cup, then showered and dressed.
*****
After I got cleaned up, I ate a bagel, and walked over to the office. I didn't have much to do there, just check my messages and retrieve the mail. I wondered, not for the first time, about spending so much for rent on an office I rarely saw, but I held hopes of a burgeoning business. Besides, I needed an office to show my father that I was legitimate. The voicemail system had a call from a prospective client, a man who wanted to set up an appointment with me after he returned from Barbados. He’d call again in two weeks. Another prospect. All right then.
I turned on the stereo, booted up my computer, and made some notes about the case so far. In the midst of finding out about the X Women, I had shoved Peter Ghering to the back of my mind. Where was he? And the bigger question, was he still alive?
I called Detective Jimmy Merrick. The dispatcher put me through to him. When I identified myself, his tone turned cautiously curious. “You’re still helping that Ghering woman?” He couldn’t have sounded more derisive of her.
“Let’s just say that I have my own interest in the case,” I said.
“Okay,” he agreed. “We’ll say that. What do you want from me?”
He certainly came right to the point. No bullshit, just like the night I’d met him at Amanda’s. “I know you don’t think much of Amanda.” His silence spoke volumes about his opinion of her. “But what do you think happened to Peter Ghering? Do you have anything more?”
A chair squeaked in the background, and I could picture Merrick shifting his powerful frame. “I can’t tell you anything.” He spoke as if he didn’t believe his own weak bluff.
“Sure you can, if you want,” I said. “I promise not to bug you if you tell me what you’ve got.”
“Hey, buddy, I’m the one who’ll be crawling up your ass if you step over the line." He let out a sigh that sounded more like a wheeze, as he played the Reluctant Game. “All right, I guess it can’t harm anything to tell you that we haven’t turned anything up yet. We’ve been in contact with the feds in Philly, and they haven’t gotten any unidentified male bodies, or anything else that would lead us to believe Peter was murdered and left there. He hasn’t turned up here, at least as far as I know. Amanda might be able to tell you more.”
“What do you mean?”
“It wouldn’t surprise me if she’s holding out on all of us.” I’m sure my silence now told him that I agreed. “On the record, I don’t have anything to go on, so there’s not much I can do.”
“Off the record?” I asked.
“My own opinion, he got the hell away from that crazy woman. Officially, he’s a missing person.”
“Any leads?”
“None. He hasn’t used a credit card since that Monday.”
“Monday?”
“Is there an echo? That’s what I said. Monday. He pulled out a cash withdrawal of five hundred from an ATM in downtown Philly. Near the Liberty Bell. We don’t have anything else.”
“Which credit card?” I thought about Amanda’s calls to her credit card companies. She hadn’t said anything about that transaction. I wondered how many lies of hers I would uncover before I found Peter.
“Am-Ex. It was his business account. You want anything else, Sherlock?”
I ignored the gibe, thanked Merrick and hung up. If Peter was slated to be killed on Monday, before he left Philadelphia, did this confirm he’d gotten away? Unless someone else used his card instead. I shuddered at the thought. Today was Wednesday. More than a week had passed since Peter disappeared. Was he alive or dead?
I took care of some busy work, mostly stuff I concocted, ate a late lunch at Jason’s Deli, and drove up to Cal’s house about three o’clock. As I made each winding curve, I couldn’t help but envision last night's journey, hurtling down the mountain. What had been gaping blackness now showed up as the jagged sides of valleys sloping down from the highway. Had I gone over the edge, it would not have been a pretty death. But it would have been made to look like an accident, I thought. The signature kill for the X Women.
“Don’t you ever work?” Cal said when he opened the door. Before I could answer he was shuffling back down the hallway to his office. Judging by his matted hair, wrinkled shirt, and cheap cologne, Cal hadn’t bothered to shower or change clothes. Personal hygiene took a back seat when Cal pursued a new project.
I followed him into his sanctuary and plopped onto the love seat. “I am working.” The usual dust cloud swirled into the air when my butt hit the cushions. I settled back. “I’m working with you.”
He wagged his head as he swiveled around to face one of the monitors. “I’ve got something on that thing.” He was being clandestine again.
“The X Women?” I asked.
“Yeah.” He started punching away at the keyboard, hunched over.
I sat up. “Anything good?”
“I’ve come up with some possible accidents that they could’ve been involved in. I’ve created a list.” He printed a document and handed it to me.
“How did you do this?” I got up and started to pace, reading the paper. It had a list of names, all male, a date next to the name, and the cause of death. I held up a hand. “Wait, no, I don’t want to know how you did it.” I sat back down.
“Quit worrying,” he said. “It is possible to get information without hacking.” I began rubbing my eyes nervously. “Do you want to know what I found out?” He held up numerous pieces of scrap paper, his way of organization.
“Why didn’t you put it in the document?”
He held up his hands in exasperation, pitching the paper pieces back onto the desk. “I didn’t get that far. Do you want to know what I’ve got here?”
“What?”
He rolled his chair closer to me. “Going back ten years, I found at least seven accidents.” He used his fingers, making quotation marks when he said the word “accidents”. “Each one could’ve been just that, an accident. But all of them could’ve been murder. Things like car crashes, a suicide, a hunting accident, and the most interesting one was a guy who appare
ntly was into kinky sex. He liked that auto-erotic asphyxiation thing.”
“You strangle yourself while you’re masturbating,” I said in plain English.
“Right. It’s very dangerous, or even deadly. That was the case for this guy.”
“Okay, that kind of sex is unusual, but why is this guy special?”
He leaned toward me, intent on his revelations. “I know it happens, a lot more lately. But here’s what makes this particular case stick out.” If he intended on making a pun, he didn’t show it. “It happened in New York City, at a Manhattan brokerage house. The guy, name of Rick Gerardo, had been acquitted in a rape case two months previous to his death. He was accused of raping a woman that he worked with. According to the story, they’d been getting it on in his office after hours, but after a few months, she broke it off. He wasn’t happy with that, and she accused him of forcing himself on her one Friday evening after work.”
I pursed my lips, thinking it over. “That could tie in, but it’s shaky.” I rubbed my eyes again. “Ah, hell. This whole thing is shaky.”
He leaned even closer, adamant. “No, listen. This is the tie-in. Guess what kind of sex they liked to have?”
I tipped my head up slowly. “Ah. Kinky sex.”
“Not just kinky. Auto-erotic asphyxiation. They both testified to that in court.”
“But what about the rape? Was it really forced or was she holding a grudge against him? Trying to get back at him for something, so she accuses him of rape. That’s what I would wonder.”
He shrugged. “From the articles I read, it sounds like that’s the line the jury took. They didn’t believe the prosecution proved force, so they acquitted. But according to court testimony, the woman said Rick was brutal that night. According to her, he nearly killed her while he raped her, that he choked her with the intent to kill, not just for the sexual rush. And he was her boss, so after she broke it off, he threatened her with her job.”
“Apparently that didn’t work,” I observed.
“Right. She went ahead and accused him publicly, lost her job, was humiliated by having to tell the story in court, then was blackballed by the company and its associates. Her statement after the trial said she was leaving New York, going back to Delaware to live with her parents for a while.”
“And devise a means of punishing Rick, if this is an X Women case.”
“Right.” Cal sat back with a satisfied look on his face. “I researched the family some. Daddy is a prominent attorney in Delaware, and they're old money.”
“So they could afford to hire the X Women,” I finished.
Cal clapped his hands once in triumph. “And the other cases I found are similar. If possible, the death was made to mirror the crime of the accused. I haven’t got all the details, but I can work on that tonight.”
I didn’t say anything for a minute. “This organization is slick,” was all I could come up with.
“You said it,” Cal concurred. “Now it could all be coincidence, but you never know. And I’ve only been at this a little while. Who knows what I might find with some more time.”
“You want to grab a bite to eat?” I switched topics.
“No, I’ve got too much going on here to stop.”
I smiled at his dedication. “Keep at it, then.” I stood up to leave.
He smiled. “Sure. This is more fun than looking for viruses in software.”
“And don’t forget to eat something fresh.” I held up a bowl with a substance that once might have been cereal, but now was a congealed blob. He stared at me blankly and turned back to the computer.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Late afternoon shadows were already turning to darkness as I left Cal’s house, and I smelled a crisp coldness in the air. I had an uneventful drive down the mountain, even though I kept checking my rear-view mirror for suspicious SUVs. In forty minutes I was pulling the 4-Runner in the alley garage I shared with the Goofball brothers. Deuce’s battered Ford truck sat in the other space, so he was home from work.
I got out and closed the garage door, then trudged through the back yard and around the building to the front porch. I was headed for the side entrance to my condo when Ace came out.
“You wanna go with us to B-52’s?” he asked. “We were thinking about shooting some pool.”
“That sounds like fun,” I answered. It had been a long day, and I didn’t need much convincing.
Deuce leaped out onto the porch, his heavy gray overcoat and black gloves already on. “How’s business?” he asked with a goofy grin on his face.
“Trying to help a lady find her missing husband,” I explained in simple terms.
“Hmm,” Deuce mused. “Is that stuff exciting?”
“Not usually,” I said as we started walking down the street.
“Like in the movies?” This from Ace.
“Yeah,” I smiled. Humphrey Bogart, eat your heart out.
“Those movies you like, are they any good?” Deuce asked.
“They’re great. All the action, the subplots, and the actors. Bogie, Edward G. Robinson, Burt Lancaster. Beautiful women and mysterious twists and turns.”
“Bogie?” Ace said. “Why are we talking golf?”
“We aren’t,” I said.
“Weren’t we talking about some movie?” Deuce asked.
I looked up into blank faces. “Forget it.”
Ace put an arm around my shoulder. “Nah, man. You like those movies, maybe we should watch one.”
“Yeah, whaddaya recommend?” Deuce asked.
I smiled, thinking about Bogie, the coolest of the cool detectives. “The Big Sleep. That’s film noir at its best.”
“Film what?” Ace said.
“Film noir. It’s a genre…Forget it.” The blank stares told me I’d lost them again. “I like that one, although I don’t know if you guys would. It’s kind of complicated.”
“Hey, if you like it, we should watch it,” Deuce said.
“The Big Sleep,” Ace said. “We got that down at the store. I can get it.”
“I’ve got the DVD if you want to borrow it.” I really doubted they would get it, all the subtleties and dark subplots, but it might broaden their horizons. At least it had lots of action, and lots of people getting killed. And Lauren Bacall, she was one hot babe.
Ace smiled. “I can get it for free, so it’s no problem.”
“Connections,” Deuce said wisely.
“You have some phone work or cable done on your place?” Deuce asked abruptly, picking the question out of the air.
“Hmm?” I mumbled.
“Are you changing your cable or something?” Deuce changed his phrasing, as if that would help me understand him.
“No. Why?”
“I saw a guy going up to your place a few days ago. Drove up in a Comcast truck, had a tool kit with him. You know, he looked like a cable guy or something.” Comcast provided my cable, but I didn’t have any service work scheduled. My cable worked fine, but the alarms in my head were ringing loudly.
“When was this?” I stopped and grabbed Deuce’s arm.
Deuce grimaced, thinking hard. “Last Friday. Early afternoon. I saw him when I came home for lunch.”
My eyes flitted around, and I felt my senses shift into overdrive. Was someone watching me? Was I being followed? Did someone actually break into my house?
“Did he go around back?” I asked.
“No. He went up the steps to your place. He was in there for at least half an hour.” A puzzled look crossed Deuce’s face. “You didn’t change your cable?”
“What’d he look like?”
Deuce shrugged his shoulders. “I dunno. Kind of tall, I guess. Like the cable guys, you know.”
“I’ve got to go,” I said, turning back.
“Hey, man. I didn’t mean to make you mad,” Deuce had a hurt look on his face.
I calmed down. “No, you didn’t. There’s something I have to check.”
“Okay,” he said ca
utiously. “We’ll be at B 52’s if you want to join us.”
“Thanks,” I called over my shoulder.
“We’ll get that movie,” Ace yelled back at me. “I hope it’s as good as you say.”
“So do I,” I hollered back, leaving them to their fun.
I ran back home, Deuce’s words drumming in my brain the whole way. I took the side stairs two at a time up to my door and just as I was about to put the key in the lock, I thought about electronic devices. The only reason I could think of for someone to be in my home was to plant a bug. Spy equipment. To listen to me. A pounding began in the back of my eyes, brought on by adrenaline, and maybe some fear. I was stepping into the big leagues.
I looked at the key in my hand. The second I opened the door, someone would know I had come home. Maybe they were watching me right now. I flipped around and stared down the steps, onto the street below. The moon, milky white and round as a marble, cast the street in a hazy glow. Then a car came down the street, moving slowly. It stopped and backed up, parallel parking across the street. The engine died and Willie Rhoden, my neighbor across the street, got out.
“Hey Reed, why are you staring at me? I told you I have a boyfriend.” Willie, real name Willimena, was a nurse at St. Joseph’s Hospital, just east of our neighborhood. She was twenty-eight, built like a marathon runner, and very attached to her boyfriend, Alan.
“Sorry, I thought you were someone else.” I couldn’t believe I didn’t recognize her car. My suspicion meter was crossing into the red zone.
“Right.” She started up her front walk. “You were staring,” she hollered. Any other time that would’ve been true. Okay, I have a crush on her, even if she has a boyfriend.
I watched her disappear into her house before I turned and, with a determination born out of false bravado, unlocked the door and entered my condo. I tiptoed into the living room and turned on a lamp on the end table. The whole time my eyes were scanning the walls, the furniture, the windows, the television, and the phone. Why had someone disguised as a cable guy been in my condo? Was there a bug somewhere in this room? Or camera equipment? A creepy feeling started from the base of my skull and zipped down my spine. I felt naked. And paranoid.
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