by Mike Faricy
Chapter Forty-Nine
“They had been arguing back and forth for some time and the voices had gradually become raised.
“Are you crazy? This has gotten completely out of hand. What in God’s name do you think you’re doing? I tell you to eliminate the problem and you think it’s a good idea to bring them here? You God damn idiot, you can’t keep them here. I don’t want anything to do with this. Do you understand? Now get out, damn it, and get him the hell out of here.”
It was a male voice, deep and booming from the far side of the kitchen counter that brought me around. A command voice. I attempted to lift my head and another wave of nausea washed over me for my trouble. Fortunately, my stomach was empty and nothing came up. Stars seemed to flash along the edge of my peripheral vision and the arguing back and forth was sending waves of pain up my neck before they exploded somewhere along the base of my skull.
“Stay cool, man, I told you I’ve got it under control. We’re going…”
“Under control? Look at you, for the love of God. You’re drunk again. You actually brought them into my home? What the hell were you thinking? You idiot. What if someone saw you?”
“No one saw us, I made sure. Take a chill pill, dude.”
I thought it sounded like Pauley who spoke, then slurped more of his drink. But I was still having trouble focusing and couldn’t be sure.
“What aspect of ‘I can’t be seen to have anything to do with this’ do you not seem to grasp? You seem positively incapable of following directions, of doing anything right. Do you realize that you have jeopardized everything, absolutely everything? Now for the last time, get out of my home before I summon the police myself, you stupid, brainless moron.”
“What the hell did you just say? What’d you call me?” I was pretty sure that was Pauley’s voice. As banged up as I was, I recognized his slurred words.
“Oh, please, spare me any of your self righteous indignation. You heard me. I said get out of here before I call the police. Your brain is so fried you’re completely incapable of rational thought. You’ve put everything I’ve worked for at risk with this latest idiotic stunt. You were given a simple task to accomplish, and yet, somehow, you’ve managed to screw it up. What the…? Don’t you dare point that thing at me! What exactly do you think you’re doing?”
“Don’t you tell…”
Boom.
It was quiet for half a second before something slammed onto the floor just a few feet from where I lay. I was close enough to feel the vibration when it hit the floor. I opened my eyes, attempted to focus and watched as a dark puddle of blood began to flow toward me across the glazed floor tiles. I instinctively attempted to roll out of the way and suddenly I was staring into Pauley’s face.
He lay motionless on the floor, just the hint of a surprised look plastered across his face. His mouth was open ever so slightly, as if he was just about to make one more idiotic statement. There was a small hole in his forehead, maybe an inch above his right eye and a small amount of blood had pooled in his eye socket before it ran part way along the bridge of his nose. The pool of blood on the floor seemed to flow from beneath his chin and must have been from the exit wound. If Pauley ever actually had any brains, they’d just been blown out. He was dead before he hit the floor.
“Good Lord, what an absolute jackass,” a deep voice boomed. “Well, it would appear it’s just the two of us, Mr. Haskell. Pardon me for a moment. Don’t go anywhere.” I heard what sounded like the clang from a toilet seat being raised a moment later.
I strained at the tape around my wrists, which only succeeded in sending waves of pain jangling up my neck and exploding once again along the base of my skull. I heard a toilet flush and then footsteps entering the kitchen.
“I suppose we better get you out of here. Actually, know what? This is going to work to my advantage. I’m afraid Mr. Kopff had become the inevitable loose end. Unfortunately, now we’re going to have to aggressively address the problem of you and Miss Driscoll. Pity that, such a waste. I suspect I would have found her rather enjoyable.”
He suddenly appeared, stepping around the kitchen counter to tower over me as I lay on the floor. He looked lean and fit with snow white hair and a neatly trimmed beard surrounding his tanned face. Piercing blue eyes held my gaze and it was clear he wasn’t about to flinch. It had to be Gaston Driscoll.
“Here, let me help you to your feet. I wouldn’t want you to strain anything.” He half laughed, then began to yank me up off the floor.
I waited until I was halfway up, thought I might have a chance at kneeing him in the groin and took a shot. I missed, but Gaston didn’t.
“So, attempting to play it rough, are we?” he said and then caught me with an upper cut to my chin that he must have learned on an Ivy League boxing team. My jaw slammed shut and my teeth clicked audibly as I sailed back against the kitchen counter. Before I knew what happened, he kicked my feet out from underneath me, sending me crashing back to the floor. I half landed on Pauley’s body and gasped as the wind was knocked out of me. I tried to inhale deeply, in an attempt to refill my lungs and at the same time, fight off the urge to erupt all over the place again.
“You want to play it tough, I’m more than willing to oblige,” Driscoll shouted as he delivered a sharp kick to my ribs, just in case I wasn’t getting the message. “Now get up on your feet. You try anything stupid like that again, and I promise you I won’t be so gentle.”
He clamped his hand in an iron grip around the back of my neck and squeezed hard, causing my stomach to threaten to retch once again as he hoisted me back on my feet. I couldn’t focus, my head felt like it was ready to explode and I had to fight to keep the contents of my stomach down.
“Just move out the door, Haskell, and please don’t attempt any foolish heroics. If you insist on doing something stupid, I’ll simply take your spine out,” he said, then shoved a pistol into my back. I attempted to focus and somehow made it out the door and back into his garage. Driscoll steered me around the side of the SUV by pressing the pistol against my back. He opened the rear door. “Get down in there,” he said, then shoved me into the vehicle.
I attempted to crawl onto the rear seat, but just as I brought my knees up to curl into a semi-fetal position, he pulled me down and onto the floor between the front and back seat. A moment later, something heavy was thrown on top of me. Guessing from the smell I thought it was a large bag containing fertilizer or weed killer or something. I couldn’t be sure, but whatever the contents were, they stung the raw areas on my face and arms. I had to close my eyes to keep them from burning.
A minute or two later, I heard the car door slam and the engine fire up. The vehicle backed up quickly and almost immediately there was a loud snapping noise. “God damn it,” Driscoll shouted and screeched to a stop a moment later. He paused and mumbled something, then seemed to regain control before he accelerated and took a hard left. The bag of whatever was on top of me shifted slightly and I immediately felt a stinging sensation as more of the contents poured out of the sack over me.
Chapter Fifty
We drove for a bit, not that I had any idea where, lying on the floor of the rear seat with a bag of some kind of toxic material draped over me. Eventually, we came to a stop. Driscoll seemed to just sit there with the engine running, until I heard him say, “I’m out back. No, I’ve got him with me. No, there’s been a change. That won’t work. Just help me bring him inside and I’ll explain.”
The rear door of the SUV opened a moment later. Someone grabbed my ankles and pulled hard. The bag resting on top of me split open as I was suddenly dragged upright. The contents spilled over me and inside of the car as I was forcibly yanked out the door. A cloud of chemical dust filled the air, causing me to choke and gag. I gasped for air and felt like I might be sick all over again.
“You idiot, what the hel
l did you do that for?” Shave Head growled, then punched me hard on the side of my face, bouncing my head off the door frame. “Jesus!” He coughed, stepping out of the cloud of toxic dust as I fell onto the ground.
I choked and closed my eyes from the burning chemical particles. Too late. I exploded into a coughing jag, my eyes watered and I couldn’t see. A pair of heavy hands grabbed me by the shirt and belt and hauled me up, pushed me forward a few feet, then threw me down on the ground.
“Bring him inside before someone spots him,” Driscoll boomed from somewhere. I caught a glimpse of him just as he headed up some steps and onto a large back porch.
Heavy hands yanked me effortlessly off the ground, then threw me forcefully up a couple of steps. I stumbled in through a rear door into some sort of junk room. “Just cool it in here,” Shaved Head said and threw me down on a wooden floor.
“Tie this around his feet. I don’t want him getting any ideas,” someone said. It wasn’t Shaved Head, although the voice sounded just about as stupid. The next thing I knew, Shaved Head was wrapping an electrical extension cord around my ankles, then tying the cord off on some sort of hook screwed into the wall.
I felt like I was hanging upside down, my head throbbed, my eyes continued to burn and I thought I might throw up, again. Slowly I became aware of voices arguing in the next room. Occasionally I could make out Driscoll’s deep tones, but I didn’t recognize anyone else. One of the voices was a woman’s, shrill and screeching, sounding very agitated, but all I could tell was it wasn’t Marsha. I’d no idea where she was, not that I was in a position to do anything about it.
The sounds coming from the kitchen suggested arguments that seemed to be growing more and more heated as time wore on, although I was still unable to make out what was actually being said.
Sometime later Shaved Head came out and checked the electrical cord wrapped around my legs, then left the room, exiting out through the back porch. A few minutes later he returned and knelt down next to me, but there was something different. My eyes still burned and I tried to focus on the white T-shirt with the red Budweiser letters. It took a moment, but it slowly dawned on me it wasn’t Shaved Head. Actually, the head was shaved, but it wasn’t the jerk I was expecting. It was Lydell.
He glanced toward the voices drifting out from the kitchen, then stepped toward me and quickly unwound the electrical cord from my legs. “You okay? Can you move?” he whispered as he pulled the duct tape off my wrists.
I nodded and he helped me to my feet, then guided me out the back door. We moved quickly and quietly across the back porch and around the corner of the house. We stepped over Shaved Head face down on the ground minus his T-shirt. I couldn’t tell if he was alive or dead and I didn’t really care as long as he stayed just where he was.
“Lydell, you do that?”
He nodded, then pulled a brown wallet from his front pocket and opened it. “Says here his name is Dempsey, Donald Dempsey. Ring any bells with you?”
I shook my head no.
“Bush league…he seemed really impressed with himself, but Annie hits harder than that pussy.”
“How the hell did you find me?”
“I was coming out of Fast Pizza with our lunch when they passed me, that black SUV and your pimp ride. You better thank your lucky stars for that damn crucifix on the trunk and those flames on the roof of the Lincoln. It’s pretty hard to miss.”
“I think they still have Marsha back in there with them,” I said.
“Marsha? You mean you found her?”
“Yeah, in a manner of speaking. I saw her wherever we were before. Lydell, we can’t just leave her in there,” I said.
“How ‘bout we just call the cops like the responsible citizens we are and not push our luck?” Lydell said, pulling out his cell phone.
Chapter Fifty-One
I gotta tell you, Dev, you’re really pushing your luck here,” Aaron said. We were in an interview room on the fifth floor of the police station. I was seated directly across the table from Aaron. Detective Norris Manning sat next to him. We were all sipping coffee, Aaron was shaking his head. Manning was tilted back in his chair with a smug, self-satisfied I-told-you-so look on his face.
“Come on, you’ve got my statement. You’ve got Lydell’s word.”
“Yeah, your pal Lydell Hammer, a known felon who has now been accused of assault,” Manning said, then casually took another sip.
“Assault? You gotta be kidding me. Who in the hell do you think beat me up? I told you, that jackass with the shaved head and that worthless piece of shit, Pauley Kopff.”
“Frankly, the only reason you’re not under arrest is you haven’t been specifically named in the assault charge. At least not yet,” Manning said. He looked to be enjoying himself.
“That jerk with the shaved head had it coming. They were going to kill me.”
“I take it you’re referring to Mr. Donald Dempsey, the gentleman hospitalized with a broken jaw, a concussion, a broken nose, two broken ribs and a laundry list of lesser injuries too numerous to mention. Apparently he was assaulted by your pal Lydell Hammer when he went out to retrieve a file from his vehicle parked in Dawn Miller’s driveway.”
“I think he’s some sort of gang enforcer or something,” I said.
“Actually, wrong yet again. Mr. Dempsey is an architectural student enrolled in the graduate program at the U of M. Did I mention he happens to be an honors student? Of course, I can see your point. Usually a pretty vicious lot, honors students.”
“Architecture? Come on, the guy’s a thug who was going to kill me. I told you they shot Pauley Kopff in the head, Driscoll did. I sorta saw it.”
“Sorta saw it?”
“Well, I heard the shot and then I was staring into Pauley Kopff’s face, dead and bleeding out on the kitchen floor.”
“That’s another problem, that so called shooting. You see, we can’t quite seem to find the crime scene, not to mention locate a victim.” Manning smiled.
“Dev, there was no indication of that sort of activity in Dawn Miller’s home,” Aaron said.
“Get real, it’s not like I was able to run outside and check the address on the front door. Besides, it didn’t happen at Dawn Miller’s home. Did you even bother to check out Gaston Driscoll’s place? Is someone questioning that guy?”
“We did speak with Mr. Driscoll. As a matter of fact, I spoke with him personally. He’s out of town on business, but he was kind enough to take the time to return my phone call,” Aaron said.
“Out of town?”
“On business,” Manning said, clearly enjoying the moment.
“Down in Florida, actually. He’s at a conference for underprivileged children as a matter of fact. The conference started yesterday in case you’re interested,” Aaron added.
“And you talked with him? How do you even know it was him?”
“You mean, aside from the fact that we traced the call to Florida, exactly where he’s supposed to be. Exactly where he told his office they would be able to contact him. The phone number was his personal cell phone.” If it was possible, Manning seemed to look even smugger than a moment ago.
“I’m telling you guys, Gaston Driscoll is the guy who shot Pauley Marquardt right in his kitchen. At least I think it was his kitchen.”
“Your shooter look anything like this?” Manning said as he began clicking the keyboard on his laptop. He waited a moment, then turned the thing around so I could see the screen. An image of the well-groomed white haired guy with the beard I’d last seen shoving a pistol against my spine stared back at me.
“Yeah, that’s the guy that shot Pauley Kopff. It’s him. I knew it.”
Manning shot a quick glance over at Aaron.
“Understand our problem here, Dev. We don’t have a body, we don’t have a location
and we’re dealing with a Grade-A upstanding citizen who is eighteen hundred miles away and took time out of his business day to contact us after being accused by a convicted felon and, well, you.”
“But, Marsha?”
“That stripper?” Manning said. “We’ve been looking for her. Apparently she was dismissed from her internship at Gaston Enterprises a couple of days ago. Inappropriate behavior, according to the head of their HR department, that, and the fact she apparently falsified her qualifications right from the start.” He glanced down at a yellow legal pad with notes written across the top page. “Seems she lied about being a graduate student in chemistry and then conveniently failed to mention she gets her kicks taking off all her clothes for dollar tips down at Nasty’s. Mr. Driscoll had a vague memory of her, said he met with her for a few minutes just before he left for Florida. He suggested we speak with his HR person to get all the facts. She gave us some general info, then suggested we would need a subpoena just to cover ourselves and them.”
“Great, I’m guessing Dawn Miller was the HR broad, right? She’s in on this whole deal. Now she’s stalling for time, hoping you won’t go to the trouble of actually getting a subpoena.”
“Well, first of all, her response is exactly what I would expect from someone in an HR department. By the way, please note, she didn’t refuse…she just needs to cover herself and the firm from an insurance liability standpoint. You’re suggesting a pretty big conspiracy group, Dev. That’s an awful lot of people, all upstanding citizens by the way, who are supposed to keep something like this a secret. Odds are someone, somewhere would eventually screw up and open their mouth, right?” Aaron suggested.
“Someone did screw up. Pauley Kopff. And I told you what happened. Gaston Driscoll shot him.”
“Great! Pauley Kopff, another loser. We are not going to drag good people through the mud based on pure fabrications,” Manning said.
