Hunt for a Phantom

by Stephen L Brooks

  “Is it true what I heard?”

  Gail answered guardedly. “Depends. What did you hear?”

  “About her --- doing it?”

  Gail got up abruptly. Anger was again rising in her, and she was ready now to take them all on. “I was her friend; I was her best friend. She told me everything. You know why?” She paused, peering into each face in turn. “Because she trusted me. She trusted me not to repeat anything she said.” She picked up her tray. “Maybe you heard something. Maybe you didn’t. Maybe it’s rumors, maybe it’s lies; maybe there’s even some truth in it. But I’m not gonna tell you her secrets. She was my friend.” She looked around them again. “And maybe I’d better find some new ones.” She strode to the rack and virtually tossed her tray onto it before continuing in unbroken pace out the door. The tray behind her fell to the floor with a crash, spilling what passed for food and the gravy that covered it, creating a sticky mess that resembled something that had already been eaten and... well, you get the idea.

  Rick was finished his lunch, at least as much as he felt like eating, and tossed his brown bag in the trash as he jogged after Gail. It looked like she and Dana were about to have a catfight; some of the other guys might have enjoyed watching it, but he had heard enough of the argument to know it was about his sister. Gail had always been Grace’s closest friend; if she was still guarding her memory, he wanted to thank her.

  Gail was standing near a corner, her arms folded, and grief and anger took turns molding her features. Rick wasn’t sure at first whether she wanted company. She could snap at him just because he was there. He stood apart from her a few moments, sensing the mood.

  After a bit Gail glanced up and saw him. The frown remained, and her look called him a stranger at first. The gaze softened, a shudder loosened the locked arms, and she came to him. She fell into his unready arms, and he fumbled at first to embrace her. Then her head was on his shoulder and her tears were dampening his T shirt. As her arms encircled him, he got a more confident grip on her, holding her close. He made comforting sounds to her. Finally she raised her head and stepped back a pace. “I’m sorry,” she said.

  “That’s all right.”

  “No, I really shouldn’t have cried on you like that.”

  “You can cry on my shoulder anytime,” he said, surprised at his own forwardness.

  A smile flickered and disappeared. “I guess you heard or saw all that.”

  “Yeah. I thought you were about to sock her.”

  “I might have. But she isn’t worth it. She’s being stupid.”

  Rick wasn’t sure how to take that. “How do you mean? Because she meets guys online?”

  “That’s part of it,” Gail said.

  Rick retreated as well, putting significant space between him and Gail. “Stupid like my sister was.” He didn’t think he liked Gail so much just now; especially if that’s what she thought of Grace.

  Gail was long in answering. Finally she straightened, solidly met his eye, and said, “Stupid; like I was.”

  The bell rang that ended lunch. The other kids were coming out. Gail moved quickly away from him, ignoring him to create the fiction that they had not been talking; much less sharing a close moment.

  Rick stood woodenly a long moment, the rest of the released students eddying around him as they hurried to their lockers or their next class. She was lost in that hurrying stream in an instant. But the meaning of her parting statement begged explanation.

  He knew, however, it wasn’t an explanation that would be soon in coming.

  * * *

  Taylor and Peggy now had a fair amount of material, but little or no evidence. That is, none of what they had found so far pointed to any individual as the one who had apparently driven the car away from the hotel; the mysterious phantom who was probably involved in the luring of Grace Fleming, and her being raped.

  The problem might be solved if they could trace him by his electronic signature. They had Grace’s laptop, but so far it hadn’t helped. Daisy had come over to their desks to give them an update on investigating the laptop. Her news, for all intents and purposes, was no news.

  Daisy loomed large over them as she rose. “Don’t fret on that, hon. Remember, I’m on the case. I’ve got ways of findin’ these things out. Just give me a day or two and I’ll have something.” She checked the wall clock. “You know what? I might even have it for you by COB today!” She wished them good-bye and returned to her office.

  Taylor shook his head. “What a woman.”

  Peggy shrugged and said, “I didn’t know you went for the Amazon type. I thought you liked your women compact and neat.”

  “Like Kate?”

  “Well, yeah; but I was thinking more like --- me.”

  Taylor cleared his throat and got out his laptop, inserting the thumb drive. “I’m going to see what I can make of this myself.”

  Peggy got up and started to slide a chair closer. “I’ll help ya.”

  “Sure, but stay put.”

  Peggy stopped, and then started sliding the chair again. “You really don’t mean that. Two heads are better than one.”

  “Right, but two heads are more efficient if they’re looking at two different things.” He did some quick tap dancing on the keyboard. “There. I’ve sent half the files to your email. I’ll look at my half of it, you look at the other. I’ve already sent the whole package to Mark.”

  Peggy dragged the chair back, her lips in a pout. She looked like a kid sister who had been sent home by her big brother because he wouldn’t let her play with the boys. “Okay. I’ll find something, too. I’ll show you.”

  Taylor was relieved. He knew why she wanted to look over his shoulder at his laptop. She would find some way to do something inappropriate.

  For a moment he envied Mark Banning and Betsy. Both were single, and who knew what went on in that office when there were no clients around. He glanced at Peggy, who met the glance and responded with a grimace and extended tongue before returning to her screen. Again he had to fight what came unbidden and forbidden.

  He concentrated on the material, hoping work might banish temptation from his mind.

  * * *

  Banning was studying the information he and Taylor had gathered; it was easily the hundredth time. Still there seemed nothing new; nothing that tied any of the several men whose names appeared in the notes and copied documents that he continually pulled up on his screen. He had done searches on each name, tapping into whatever public access records were at his open disposal while Peggy searched a few other records that were not. None of these men knew each other, or appeared to at least. There were no lodge memberships, community organizations, employment rolls, or church rosters that had any two of any of the names.

  He had been vaguely aware that Betsy had been fielding phone calls throughout the morning. What their contents had been he neither knew nor cared. She was very efficient, and knew that when he was this deep into a case that any new business had to be on the level of The Maltese Falcon for him to take it on. And since no one seemed to be searching for any missing statuettes of black birds or similar dingus, Betsy had orders to postpone any cases not requiring immediate attention until this one was solved.

  He stared at the screen again, split to show the driver’s license photo and the police sketch. Neither matched. He had even managed to find an obituary photo of Bradley Cole, the man who had been dead two years yet whose identity had apparently been assumed as one of the string of aliases that were usurped by their unsub. There was no similarity between any of the pictures.

  A freckled hand reached around him and a finger pressed the Power button on his laptop. The screen went blank and started through its shutdown procedure.

  “What the hell...”

  The other hand went over his mouth.

  “Such language! And when a lady is present!”

  He wriggled free and reached for the Power button, but the right hand covered it. “That’s enough. You’ve ruined yo
ur eyes enough for this morning.”

  He turned in his seat. Betsy was standing beside him and he could tell she meant business.

  “Not to mention the radiation from the screen cooking your brain.”

  “They’ve shown that’s an urban legend,” he said. He debated whether to try to reclaim his laptop and dismiss her back to the front desk. She’d probably refuse.

  Betsy upped the ante by seizing the laptop herself and clutching it under her left arm, turning to place some distance between Banning and the device. “There’s truth behind every legend; urban or otherwise. Take Robin Hood and his Merry Men, for example.”

  “I doubt they were very merry. Stuck out in the woods all year around, in all kinds of weather, with the wolves and boars; not to mention the bugs! And the Sheriff of Nottingham ready to string you to the nearest greenwood on sight!”

  “Okay, okay; but you’re not getting this back.” She stretched her arm out, holding her hand like a Stop sign, and backing away. “Not until later, anyway.”

  “Come on.” Banning got up and followed her. “At least let me work on it until lunch time.”

  “Have you even seen a clock?” Betsy said, indicating the one on his wall which, though in plain view of his desk, he had ignored. It was going on 2:30. “Lunch time, for most people, ended about an hour or so ago.” She placed the laptop in a drawer and locked it. The key went into a pocket of her shirt. “Now, I’m taking you to lunch and you’re going to enjoy it.” She got her purse from another drawer.

  “Of course, I might also enjoy getting that key from your pocket,” he said. He started toward her, grinning and flexing his fingers in anticipation.

  “Remember that self-defense course you had me take about a month ago?” she said. “I’ll just remind you that I aced the final: both the written and the practical. I think in fact the instructor had to be treated for a broken finger or two. And I’m taking some more lessons, on my own.”

  Banning held back. “Okay. Okay, you win. I wasn’t getting anywhere with those files anyway. I promise to play nice and have lunch with you before it gets to be suppertime.”

  They ate at the IHOP on Belair Road. As always, it was a lot of food and some of the best coffee around. He was just mopping up the last few drops of syrup with his pancakes when his cell phone rang. He looked at Betsy for approval; after all, she might take that away from him, too. She nodded to go ahead and he answered it.

  “Mark, this is Ed. Just wanted to give you an update.”

  “Sure, Ed. Betsy’s here; I’m putting you on speaker.” He pressed the button and sat the phone on the table.

  “What’s going on there?” Ed asked before continuing.

  “We’re at the IHOP. It’s all right; go ahead.”

  “Well, Daisy is still working through Grace’s computer. She thinks Grace may have had more than one email account, and used different aliases for different websites.”

  “That’s usually a good thing,” Betsy said, “for security’s sake.”

  “Sure,” Taylor agreed, “but it also makes it hell if you’re dead and somebody’s relying on your cyber trail to find out who killed you.”

  “Daisy knows her stuff,” Banning said. “if anyone can crack Grace’s secrets, she can.”

  “Yeah, it should be easy for her.”

  But, like everything else in this case of course, it was to prove otherwise.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Marge was, on the surface at least, recovered enough to function for herself and Rick again. At least, that’s what she had told Joe and Jenny. The Mitchells stayed in touch, and in fact called nearly every day. Rick found it reassuring, though he knew his mother felt that they had done far too much for them. They sat down to dinner, just the two of them, for the first time in a week.

  “You know I appreciate what the Mitchells did for us,” Marge told Rick. “They’re good friends.”

  “Yeah. I didn’t realize how close you were to them until this happened.”

  “We really weren’t, I suppose,” Marge said. “But this certainly brought us closer.”

  Rick noticed they had both referred to the murders as “this.” He guessed neither one of them were ready to really talk about it.

  “You and Mitch have become better friends.”

  “Yeah, I guess so.”

  “He’s a good boy. I like him.”

  Rick knew that his mother wanted to say more from the sudden brake that she put upon her speech. Silence accompanied the meal for a long time. Rick ate quickly, concentrating on his food and sheltering himself from any distraction.

  But the distraction came of its own. He thought of Gail and the things she had hinted. Had his sister really been trolling for guys online like Gail had said? But evidently Gail had done some trolling or her own and gotten into some kind of trouble. She had called herself stupid for it; Rick wondered just what might have happened. As he finished the last of his dinner he decided that if Gail was going to tell him, let her do it in her own time. That was only fair.

  The phone rang. “Go ahead and answer,” his mother said. “I’ll get the dishes.” He noticed that, while she had eaten, she hadn’t finished. That was the norm now. He had never known his mother not to clean her plate before “this” had happened.

  He picked up the phone from the counter and pressed the button. “Hello?”

  “Hi Rick, it’s Mitch. Wanna take in a movie tonight?”

  Rick frowned. “Not really. I’ve got an exam Monday.”

  “And this is Friday. You’ve got the weekend to study for it. Come on, we both need a break.”

  “Who is it, Rick?”

  He held the phone to chest. “It’s Mitch. He wants to go to a movie.”

  “Tonight?”

  “Ah huh.”

  She considered for only a beat. “Go ahead. You should have some fun.”

  “Are you sure? Will you be all right alone?”

  “Of course,” she said, placing the rinsed dishes into the dishwasher. “I’ll find something to do. You don’t have to worry about me.”

  Her assurances didn’t convince him, but Mitch sounded like he needed company. He heard him through the phone. “What was that, Mitch?” he held it back to his ear.

  “Can you get away? I’ve just got to get out of the house tonight.”

  Rick turned back to his mother. She had closed the dishwasher and was looking at him. She smiled and made a shooing gesture. “All right. I’ll meet you in front of your house in a few minutes.”

  “Great. See ya.” He went up to his room and got his wallet and jacket. He shrugged into it as he came down the stairs.

  His mother had gone into the TV room and was looking at the paper. “Are you sure you’ll be OK?”

  “Of course. Go ahead.” She smiled at him again and returned to the paper.

  “All right.” He took his house key from the hook and left, locking the door behind him. The Mitchell house was down the street and he walked to it in a few moments. Mitch was already waiting for him. “So what do you want to see?”

  “I wanna see you,” Mitch said. “I wanna talk to you about something. We can still go to a movie afterward, if you want.”

  “What is it?”

  Mitch unlocked his car and Rick got inside. Mitch got in the driver’s side and turned to him. “I saw that business with Gail in the cafeteria the other day.”

  “Oh. You mean the catfight?”

  “It looked like it was about to turn into one; yeah. What was it about?”

  Rick frowned and huddled into himself, staring ahead.

  “Look, everybody heard some of it. Most of it, for that matter; it got kinda loud. It was about Grace going online, wasn’t it?”

  Rick nodded. “A couple of the other girls said they were doing it too. That’s what it was about.”

  “And Gail sounded like she had too.”

  “I don’t know.” There was no need to hide it; Mitch had heard. “Yeah, I guess she had.”
<
br />   “What was she said about secrets? She said Grace had trusted her with some secrets?”

  Rick closed his eyes and nodded. “Yeah.”

  “Did she tell you what secrets?”

  “No.”

  “Come on, I saw you follow her. She must’ve said something.”

  “OK; yeah, we talked. But I’m not sure I should tell you what she said. I can keep secrets too, you know.”

  Mitch nudged him. “You’re a loyal kinda guy. That’s good.” He paused a long moment before leaning a bit toward him. “So am I. Grace told me some things, too.” Mitch turned back and joined Rick in studying the hood of the car. “I almost told some of it to that detective.”

  Rick faced him. “Told him what? What were you going to tell him?”

  “Things I knew about Grace. Things she had told me. Only she didn’t tell ‘em quiet, like secrets. It was like she was taunting me with it, I don’t know whether to make me mad or make me do something about it.”

  “Like what?”

  Mitch looked at him and raised an eyebrow.

  Rick knew immediately what he meant.

  Mitch stared straight ahead again, his hands gripping the wheel as though the act kept them under control. “There’s stuff about your sister you probably didn’t know. And if I talk about it now; well, I’m already hurting inside about it. And you hurt enough already.”

  They were both silent for several minutes.

  “I had some idea,” Rick finally said quietly.

  Mitch nodded. “I guess you did.”

  After a long moment or two, Rick added: “You still wanna see a movie?”

  Mitch chuckled, surprised that he did. “Yeah. How about that new action flick? I need to see a lotta stuff get blown up.”

  Rick grinned. “Me too.”

  Mitch started the car and drove to the nearest multiplex.

  But as they rode Rick brooded over his sister. Whatever secrets Mitch and surely Gail were hiding in her name, he had to uncover. And he vowed to make certain one of them would open them to him.

  * * *

  Banning hadn’t been to the gym for a while but he needed it. Angrily pounding your head against a wall that was every bit as solid as the dead end that barred you from the solution to a case only made the headache worse. On the other hand, angrily pounding your fists against the stubbornly resilient heavy bag made you feel a lot better. He imagined the face of someone unknown, the bastard who had killed that father and daughter, and proceeded to pound the living crap out of it. At least, that’s what he was telling himself.