Hugh gave him a look, but Ed ignored it.
“Let’s look at another camera, then. Only now we have three people to spy on and not just one. Maybe we’ll get lucky; maybe Michael went inside high-fiving his co-conspirators and grabbed a bag of Cheetos and our mustachioed friend out there just forgot. What you thinking, Hugh?”
Hugh rolled his eyes.
“I think you better get yourself a Diet Coke this time, because this here is a lot of material to go through.”
***
Hugh was right, it took them three hours to go through every one of the tapes for Tuesday. Ed counted eight people that came and went into or around the gas station sandwiching the hour that Michael was at the ATM.
Two of them stood out to him: a woman and two bald men.
“Well, which one should we focus on, Hugh?”
Hugh made a face, but answered immediately.
“The woman is out, doesn’t matter how sketchy she looks. The woman in the park was clear about Michael being with two men. No sign of a skinny fucker with non-smiling eyes, either. So that leaves the two bald men.”
Hugh fiddled with the video, bringing up the image of a round man in a beater barging through the door. He scratched his nuts through a pair of stained sweatpants, then made his way to the cash. He was wearing a ‘Make America Great Again’ mesh cap, and when Mr. Edmonds looked down to get his change, the man flipped the bird to the camera.
Ed shook his head.
What the hell is this world coming to?
“This guy is a real treat, that much is clear.”
“And the other one?”
Hugh quickly switched tapes and ran the other recording. This one was timestamped seventeen minutes after Michael first walked up to the ATM.
The video was from outside the building, and the sun flared on the lens, washing out the image. Still, Ed could clearly make out the silhouette of an overweight man, short and bald, waddling toward the bathroom around the side. He pulled the bathroom door open, blocking out the sun for a split second, then disappeared inside. Four minutes later, he came out again and left the way he had come.
“Then there’s this guy,” Hugh said. “Doesn’t say or do anything offensive, just goes into the shitter and either rubs one out or takes a dump and then leaves. Doesn’t buy gas, though.”
Ed nodded.
“Which one is our guy, Hugh? Number one Republican or Hairy Palms McGee?”
Hugh chortled.
“Jesus, I feel like Miss Marple here.”
“Talk it out, talk it out.”
Hugh rolled his eyes.
“Now I feel like one of those fucking losers on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire. Is this a trick question? Did you see a candlestick in one of their hands? Mr. Mustard in the dining room with the waffle maker? C’mon, Ed. I’m tired, my eyes hurt, my ass hurts. Just tell me what you see.”
Ed made a face.
“I’ll give you a hint. Roll back this tape to when he opens the door and it blocks out the sun—limits the flare on the lens.”
Hugh jogged the tape to the appropriate spot.
“What do you see?”
And that’s frustration, Baby Hughey. Keep it in check.
And thankfully, Hugh somehow managed. For all of his sarcastic remarks, Hugh seemed generally interested in learning.
After a moment of keen observation, Hugh said, “I see a fat man in a shirt two sizes too small and—” He stopped mid-sentence and jogged the tape back a quarter second. Then he broke into a smile. “Shit, I’ll be damned. I see a t-shirt with Mickey fucking Mouse on it.”
“And the fat man was wearing a Disney t-shirt,” Ed said in his best impression of the woman with the multiple rhinoplasty surgeries. “Snap a pic, send it to Mac back at the station. See if anyone recognizes him, run it through the police recognition database and all that fancy stuff.”
Hugh, still staring at the screen, pulled his cell phone out and snapped a pic. Then he clicked madly on the tiny keyboard before putting it back in his pocket.
“I’ll be damned, Ed; the Nose is working well today. Thar be some mighty fine detective work,” he added out of the corner of his mouth, accompanied by an exaggerated fist pump. “What now, ossifer?”
Ed collected his cans of Coke and prepared to leave the office.
“Now, my good man, we detect; detectives detect, Hugh. Let that be your first lesson of the day.”
Hugh laughed and stood.
“First? Is this my first lesson, Pope Pius?”
Chapter 10
“No, not here—we can’t meet here.”
Rob, Cal, and Shelly were all crouched in the Harlop sitting room, the former two sipping on scotch, eyes wide and ears perked.
All of them were holding their breath.
Sean had picked up on the fifth ring, just as Aiden had said he would.
The sound of Sean’s voice through the tinny cell speaker brought back deep-rooted feelings of anger and disgust in Robert. The man was a self-serving asshole who had put Cal and Shelly and Allan at risk, using them as a ploy to get Robert to do his bidding. And that said nothing of the shit that he had put him through at the church.
Aiden wasn’t to blame for that; at least, he wasn’t all to blame. But he wasn’t blameless, either.
But what could he do to a man that was already dead?
I’m going to do more than get the fucking book back from you, Sean. That’s a promise.
“And Robert? He’s fine?”
Even this question made him seethe—not even a whisper of a mention of any of the others. To Sean, they didn’t matter. To Sean, only Robert, the son of Leland Black, mattered in their fucking game.
Rook meet pawn.
“He’s fine. The rest are fine, too.”
“Anything happen?”
Aiden hesitated, and Robert cringed, thinking that the man had given himself away.
“No. All clear.”
“You sure?”
“Sure.”
Now it was Sean’s turn to pause.
“Yeah, we should meet.”
“Agreed.”
Sean proceeded to give Aiden an address Robert didn’t recognize, and he quickly looked to Cal, who was already on his phone, looking it up.
“Can you be at the Tower by eight?”
The question clearly took Aiden by surprise.
“Tonight?”
“Tonight.”
Robert checked his watch. Their discussions had taken them well into the morning hours, and his watch read a quarter to five in the morning. Just seeing those numbers made his eyelids droop. On instinct, he looked over to Shelly, who looked even worse for wear.
Four months pregnant…she shouldn’t be up this late.
He could feel Helen cringe at this, as if reminding him, for what felt like the hundredth time, that Shelly was a grown woman who was perfectly capable of making her own decisions. While Robert agreed in principle, he wasn’t sure that she was qualified to make the right ones.
Especially given her history at the church, a card that Robert still held close to his chest.
“Eight. I’ll be there.”
“Good. Meet me out back. I have another job for you.”
Aiden went to click END on the phone, but Cal hopped to his feet and slipped it away from him before he touched it, while at the same time being careful not to come in contact with Aiden himself.
They had used Cal’s phone, unsure of how or if Aiden’s would work, which was an option only because they were both burners, like the one that Robert had used back at the church.
They sat in silence for about a minute before Cal yawned loudly.
“I need some sleep.”
“Me too,” Shelly said, struggling to get to her feet. Her belly was more than just thick, Robert realized. With her standing the way she was, he thought he saw a roundness there, a burgeoning pregnant belly waiting to be born, and he almost smiled.
Almost.
The trut
h was, he wasn’t sure how to feel about this whole pregnancy, or if he had even fully come to terms with it.
It seemed wrong, similar to the way that it had felt wrong sleeping with Shelly in the first place.
Like he was cheating on Amy and Wendy.
Wendy’s dead, Helen reminded him, and Robert grimaced, trying to shut her off, to keep her out of his most private of thoughts.
When he had first drawn the woman’s quiddity inside him, she had been confined to her own space, a dull pressure localized to the left side of his head. But now that she seemed to have grown more comfortable, she appeared to be everywhere, pervading his neurons like a wayward electrical impulse. And having someone, dead or alive, capable of perusing his very thoughts, his memories, his feelings, as they happened was more than a little disconcerting.
Still, Helen occasionally offered a nugget of wisdom that he wouldn’t have come up with on his own.
Occasionally.
Even thinking about this now made him uncomfortable, knowing that she could, and probably was, listening in. As unnerving as it was, he thought he could put up with it for now.
He would figure out how to send Helen on her way eventually. He just hoped that the process was buried somewhere in the book.
He had promised.
And then there was the issue of Shelly, and the fact that, like he, she had been at the church with Father Callahan.
As if she was also in his head, Shelly turned toward him in that instant.
“You coming?”
Robert reached into his pocket and felt the hard corner of the picture of Shelly as a child. It was strange, as the last time he had done this very same thing, it had been with a picture of Amy.
Fuck, I miss you, Amy. I’m going to get you back, I promise.
“Yeah, I’m coming,” he said softly. And then he went to her and wrapped an arm around her waist and together they headed upstairs.
On their way, he heard Cal ask Aiden what he was going to do.
“I mean, do quiddity need to sleep?”
There was no answer.
“And that gun, what’s it shoot? Ghost bullets?”
Unsurprisingly, Aiden didn’t answer this query either.
Cal said something else, but Shelly and Robert were already so far up the stairs that he couldn’t make out the words.
Within minutes, they were both lying on their backs, snoring.
Chapter 11
“Man, if you would only just tell me what you’re looking for, maybe I can help.”
Ed hadn’t answered the question the first time Hugh had asked it, and he wasn’t about to answer it this time, either.
Detect, detect, detect. Detectives detect, Hugh.
“Turn here,” he instructed.
Hugh hesitated.
“What are you waiting for?” Ed asked. Now he was becoming annoyed. He hated giving up the driving, but it was the only way he could stare out the window the entire time.
“You said turn, Ed. This is an intersection—sorry, but I don’t have your Nose.”
Ed stared at his partner.
“What?”
“Which way? Which way do you want me to turn, Ed?”
Ed looked right, then left, realizing that he hadn’t picked this street for any particular reason, only that he was getting bored of driving straight.
It was well into the evening now, and they had already been to more than two dozen different bars, strip joints, seedy gambling joints, you name it, in suburban NYC. Just the thought of some of these places made Ed feel dirty, inside and out.
Their efforts, rather predictably, had led them nowhere. Ed knew that it was a wild goose chase, but it wasn’t completely unfounded. After Hugh had sent Mac the picture back at the station, the man had pinged Ed to see what was up. And then he had whispered a little nugget in Ed’s ear: one of Michael’s accounts from a smaller bank had pinged that same Tuesday. Another withdrawal had been made from an ATM, an older one that hadn’t been retrofitted with a camera just yet. The PD had done their diligence, but they hadn’t come up with anything.
But they had been looking for a man in a suit, not a man in a Mickey shirt.
Still, a wild goose chase, that was for sure.
In the very least, it was a way to kill time, a way to get to know this Hugh Freeman fella a little better.
“Right,” he said at last, just because it seemed right.
Hugh said nothing, but turned nonetheless. If the man had been on his final nerve back at the gas station, he was a live wire now.
“Hugh, you know why—wait! Wait, stop here.”
“Here? There’s no—”
“Stop! Stop the car!”
The car jarred as it bumped up onto the curb, and Ed swore.
“Really?” he said, turning to Hugh.
Hugh shrugged and put the car into park.
“What? You fucking shouted for me to stop like there was a purse snatcher on the prowl.”
Ed shook his head and flicked his eyes out the window. The car was parked directly outside a bar with glowing neon lights that read: Panty Snatcher.
“Classy joint. This your kind of spot, Ed?”
***
“Beer,” Ed said.
The bartender stopped cleaning a glass and looked over at him.
“Bud or Coors?”
“Coors.”
Before getting his order, the bartender turned to Hugh, all the while rubbing the inside of a pint glass with a filthy dish towel.
“You?”
“Beer’s fine.”
The bartender sighed.
“What kind of beer?”
Ed didn’t care for the man’s attitude.
“Coors.”
The bartender nodded, then, unbelievably, took another two minutes to finish “cleaning” the glass before he fetched their beers. When he slid them on the table, he stood there, staring at them.
“Yes?” Ed asked, confused and annoyed by this whole ordeal. This was to be their last bar of the day before heading back to the station, so deciding to have a beer instead of just coming out and asking about Michael or the other guy felt like the thing to do. But Ed was quickly starting to regret the decision.
“Three fifty.”
Ed stared at the man.
“Plus tip.”
Hugh spoke up before Ed lashed out at the man.
“If you want to get paid, shoot us the bill.”
The bartender pressed his lips together.
“No bill. Cash only.”
“What do you mean, no bill? You have—”
Ed reached over and touched his partner’s arm, quieting him. Then he calmly took a sip of his beer. It was flat. He went to his pocket next, but instead of grabbing his wallet, he pulled his detective shield and laid it on the bar.
This wasn’t the time for Hugh’s tact and charm. It was too late, and he was too tired for that.
The bartender’s already sour expression turned into something akin to disgust at the sight of the shield.
“Listen, buddy, forget the bill for now, would you?”
His eyes narrowed.
“What do you want?”
Ed took a deep breath. Unlike with the woman in the park, dealing with surly NYC suburbanites was his domain.
“We’re looking for two men.”
The bartender, still frowning, held out his hand and made a ‘gimme’ gesture.
Ed turned to Hugh and indicated for him to hand over his phone with the image of the man from the gas station security footage, while at the same time, he pulled the photograph from Michael’s work ID out of his pocket.
The man took a cursory glance at the phone first, then the photograph.
“Never seen either of them,” he said with a shrug.
Ed had stared at his face the entire time, knowing the man was going to answer the exact way he had, no matter what question they asked. But he didn’t twitch, didn’t seem fazed by either photo.
He was telli
ng the truth.
Ed looked around. It was a shitty bar, one of the worst that they had been to today. Dimly lit, the bar itself was a dinged-up piece of wood that he expected was barely a sliver of a grade above plywood, and the stools upon which he and Hugh sat, two of only six, felt like they were fashioned out of cinder-blocks. Behind them were a handful of booths covered in what looked like cracked and torn leather, but was much more likely some synthetic variant, and the walls were covered in peeling beige wallpaper.
Ed couldn’t tell if there was a pattern on the paper, or if the markings were just random stains. If he were a betting man, he would have put his pension on the latter. But of all of these attractions, it was the neon ‘u’ of a Budweiser sign that drew his attention. Or, more specifically, it was the small black eye embedded inside it that he found interesting.
If the man had just been polite, shown a modicum of respect, Ed would have left it at that. But he hadn’t.
He was a dick.
“We’re going to have to see your camera footage,” he said simply, choking down a massive gulp of the warm, flat beer.
The man’s response was immediate, but unlike before when questioned about the two men, he looked away as he spoke.
“Don’t work.”
“I think it does, bud,” Ed replied. “Look, I don’t want anything to do with you, this shitty bar, or this—” He picked up what was left of the beer and sloshed it in the glass. “—or this terrible beer. We are investigating a homicide, several homicides, and I need to see footage from two Tuesdays ago. That’s it. Don’t care about anything else.”
The man crossed his arms over his narrow chest.
“Don’t work.”
Ed turned to Hugh and offered him a look. Then he turned back to the bartender and in one motion, he knocked his beer over the bar.
“What—?”
When the man moved to pick up the glass, Ed reached over and grabbed his arm and pulled him close. The beer dripped off the other side of the bar and soaked the front of the bartender’s shirt and pants.
“The camera fucking works, bud. Now get me that footage before I get my buddy from the IRS to come in and check your books, how ‘bout that?”
The man was shaking in Ed’s grip, which gave him pause. A man like this, in the Panty Snatcher of all places, must have come across many an unsavory character in his time. In fact, based on the crude tattoos that marked his forearms, the man himself likely had a shady past of his own.
Sacred Heart Orphanage (The Haunted Book 5) Page 5
