A Matter of Vengeance

by Kevin Sivils

  A sharp intake of breath came through the line as Heat applied the brakes of his aged Honda Pilot to come to a stop at a red light. “Boss, they don’t think you did it?”

  “It’s crossed their minds,” Heat replied. “It’s why I want to shift their attention elsewhere.”

  The next question wasn't unexpected. Heat knew Amy had to ask. “Boss?”

  “Amy, you know I didn’t.”

  Heat listened carefully through the silence on the phone, worried Amy would even put the thought into words. When he heard his pretty assistant ask who he wanted the list emailed to, he let out a sigh of relief.

  “YOU LIKE HIM FOR IT?”

  "Nah, Captain," Boucher drawled. "Heat has an alibi, and I could see the wheels turning, you know, him thinking about who could have done it."

  “Garcia?”

  "Same, Captain. You had to know those two. On a given day, they might hate each other's guts, but they were partners, you know? Kinda like brothers, if you pick on one, you have to answer to the other.”

  Captain Browning leaned back in his chair to think. He played with his tie absentmindedly for a moment before brushing an imaginary crumb from his shirt. A former defensive lineman at Texas Southern, a bad knee had made exercise of late problematic, causing the big man to lose the battle of the middle-aged spread.

  “Well, don’t cross Heat off the list, just move him to the bottom. Keep an eye on him, though. He's a hothead. Heat is just as likely to solve an argument with fists of his or a gun as with words.”

  “Captain, that's part of what's got us worried," Boucher replied in his New Orleans drawl. "We figure Heat might beat us to the perp, and then we'll have another body to deal with."

  All three cops nodded and sat in silence, wondering what they would do if Heat did take matters into his own hands.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  THE LIST WAS LONGER than Heat had expected. In fact, there were probably a few names missing from the time before Amy had taken over as the receptionist, office manager, and girl Friday for Pfeiffer and Heatley Investigations. The previous help had not been near as professional in their record keeping.

  “Amy,” Heat bellowed from the comfort of his creaky office chair.

  His petite assistant appeared in the doorway, a scowl on her face, made more meaningful by the puffy eyes and running mascara. Amy had been crying quietly at her desk.

  “You could use the intercom.”

  It was Heat’s turn to scowl back. “Why? That would mean taking my feet off my desk, leaning forward, which makes the chair squeak, and then I have to listen to you complain about it.”

  Amy's response was to cross her arms across her chest, tilt her head slightly to the right, and to start tapping the toe of her right foot. None of which ever phased Heat in the slightest, a fact that perturbed the young woman to no end.

  “You’re here,” Heat mumbled, moving on to what he wanted to talk about. “You look at this list?”

  “Sure, why?”

  “If you had to pick five deadbeats that would concern you if they threatened you, which five would it be?”

  Three quick steps brought Amy to the corner of Heat's desk, where she promptly pushed his feet over six inches and sat on the edge. "Give," she said, motioning for Heat to hand her the list. Picking up a cheap Bic pen off the desk, Amy marked the list quickly and made a few notes.

  "These five were pretty scary," Amy said, handing the list back. "None of them scared Wolf, except this one. This guy got under Wolf's skin, made him paranoid for a couple of weeks."

  Scanning the list, Heat’s eyes stopped on the name with the words “bad dude” written in Amy’s perfect cursive next to it. Next to the man’s name was the name of their client.

  "I remember that name," Heat mumbled. It took a lot to scare Wolf. In fact, it was one of the things the partners had argued about. Heat had repeatedly told his partner to be more cautious. The arguments followed a pattern.

  “I can handle myself, Heat. Leave it alone, will ya?”

  “Wolf, just be more aware of your surroundings, that’s all I’m asking,” Heat would reply. “If you spot a threat first, it gives you, no, it gives us, the upper hand.”

  “Most of these guys are all talk,” Wolf would say, brushing off Heat’s concerns.

  “You’re right. It’s that rare one who has the stones to carry out his threat that worries me.”

  Heat looked up from the list and noticed Amy had vanished. The sound of her quick steps announced her return, a thick file in her hand.

  “Here’s the file.”

  Amy handed her boss the file and retreated to the safety of her desk. Heat would be lost in the file for hours. She might not see her boss again for days.

  For a brief moment, she wondered if updating her resume would be a good idea or not. If the killer was good enough to kill Wolf, the same was true with Heat. That Heat wouldn't rest until he found the killer was a given. Amy just hoped the police got to Wolf's killer before Heat did.

  “YOU GET THE FILE?”

  Garcia’s voice was garbled as it came through Heat’s cell, “Yeah, thanks, Heat.”

  “Need anything else?”

  “Not at the moment. But Heat, a word, man.”

  “I know, stay out of your way.” Heat paused for a moment. “I plan on it, in fact, you and Boucher will never see me, how does that sound.”

  Garcia winced at the private detective’s words as Heat ended the call.

  “He’s not gonna listen to reason, is he?”

  “No, Elijah, I’m afraid he ain’t.”

  Boucher reached across his desk for the freshly printed list of names. “Given this list is all men, it’s probably safe to say some of them have records for assault or spousal abuse. Might as well start with those.

  “Elijah?”

  Boucher glanced up from the list of names and stared at his partner.

  “How come Heat never took on women as clients? Always worked for the husbands looking to find dirt or if their ole lady was steppin’ out?”

  “They took other kinds of cases besides potential divorce cases," Boucher replied. "But now that you mention it, you're right. Wolf always handled the female clients.” The creole shrugged his shoulders and returned his attention to the list of names. “You’d have to ask Heat that one, Miguel.”

  HEAT LISTENED TO MICK Jagger crooning to some unsuspecting young woman that he was stalking her as the grinding guitar work of Keith Richards filled the cab of his old F-100 truck. His cars might look battered and worn, but they all ran like tops, and the sound systems were custom and expensive. He eased onto the onramp to I-10 and came to a stop. It was rush hour, and nobody in Houston expected to get anywhere fast on the Katy Freeway. Love is Strong finished on the CD player, and Heat turned down the volume until he could barely hear You Got Me Rockin’ in the background.

  He had a lot on his mind and needed to think. Moving slowly on I-10 in the bumper-to-bumper traffic in the direction of Houston's so-called energy corridor for a while would let Heat clear his mind. He'd sent Amy home early, not wanting to deal with her. It wasn't that Heat didn't understand why his assistant was upset, he did. Wolf had helped get Amy clean and out of the life they had found her in. She had every right to be angry, to cry, and be emotional.

  Heat just didn’t have time for that. He had forty-eight hours, less now, to catch who killed his partner. After that, the trail would likely go cold.

  Boucher and Garcia had been right to question him. Things between the two had gone south. The reasons were simple. Heat was tired of Wolf sleeping with some of their female clients. It wasn't professional, and it created problems neither of them needed.

  Then there was the matter of the missing money. It had taken the forensic accountant they used on occasion to find it, to confirm Heat’s suspicions. Wolf had been skimming.

  Digging through your partner's bank statements was one of those things that could be hard to explain. So, Heat had turned to a high sch
ool kid he knew for help. He'd helped the kid's old man get out of a tight spot, and the kid had offered to return the favor if Heat ever needed any "off the books computer work done."

  More than once, the kid had come through. And there had never been any issues with the hack to come back to haunt their firm. It was an easy decision to put the kid on retainer. It was an even easier decision to pay him in cash to keep his mouth shut about this particular hack.

  Wolf, it seemed, had bigger problems than a taste for the ladies.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  GARCIA POCKETED HIS cell phone and picked up a file from his desk. "M.E. says the preliminary cause of death was obvious. Somebody beat Wolf to death with their fists."

  “Anything else,” Boucher asked, not looking up from the file he was pretending to read.

  "They'll send us the final autopsy report when it's done. Tox screen too.”

  “Defensive wounds? Any forensic evidence there, like some DNA,” Boucher inquired hopefully.

  “That’s the thing,” Garcia replied, looking up from the report. “There weren’t any defensive wounds.”

  “Ligature marks like Wolf was tied up?”

  “M.E. didn’t mention any.”

  Boucher tossed his file on the desk. “It ain’t like Wolf would let somebody do that to him and not put up a fight.”

  "No," Garcia answered as he retrieved his cell phone and hit redial. "Hey, yeah, it's Garcia. Could Pfeiffer have been drugged?" Garcia listened for a moment before replying. "It's just that Elijah and I knew the victim. He was hardly the kind of guy who would take a beating like this and not give one in return. Were there any other markings on his body, like bruising on his arms, any indication he was restrained so the killer could deliver the beating?"

  Never one to like waiting while someone else did the talking, Boucher opened his desk drawer and fished out a tin of breath mints, shook it, and opened it. He considered taking one, changed his mind, closed the tin, and returned it to its hiding place in the desk drawer, which he closed.

  “Well, it’s strange, that’s what I’m saying,” Garcia informed the individual on the other end of the phone call. “Make sure you look for puncture marks everywhere and don’t screw up the toxicology report.”

  “He ain’t gonna like that,” Boucher chuckled.

  “Like what, me telling him how to do his job?”

  PLEASANTLY STUFFED, Heat looked down at the two remaining pieces of pizza. Heat considered eating them, knowing full well he would pay for it, and decided against it. He collected a to-go box and put his breakfast inside.

  Brother's Pizza, located on Highway Six and I-10, was one of Heat's favorite places to eat things that were bad for him. Not that there was anything wrong with the food, in fact, the opposite was true. Heat tended to overindulge when he ate there, and such behavior didn’t help with his struggles with keeping his waistline the same size.

  He tossed the box on the passenger side of his seat and climbed into his truck. Such was the heat and humidity still that beads of sweat had formed on his forehead in the short distance he'd walked to his vehicle. Heat let the engine run and the cool air from the air conditioning pour over him. A glance up at the traffic on I-10 indicated it had thinned out enough to be able to drive at a decent speed without using the toll lane.

  Letting out a loud burp, Heat pulled into the traffic and lucked out, making the light just as it turned yellow and turned onto the service road. A driver cut him off, irritating Heat but not enough to do more than yell in frustration. He accelerated to match the speed of the interstate traffic on the onramp and bullied his way over, heading back into Houston.

  He figured it would take him an hour or so to reach his first destination for the evening. By then, the sun would have set, and the heat of the day broken, not that it would get much cooler, but still, it would be better than the 98 degrees during the heat of the day.

  Slipping into the automatic mode that allowed a veteran city dweller like Heat to drive safely while thinking about something else, Heat made his way towards the city skyline of downtown Houston. He debated the assorted ways he could make his final approach before deciding on taking the Smith Street exit.

  Another twenty minutes and Heat pulled into a nearly full parking lot and found a parking space. With care, he backed into the spot and put the truck in park. Five minutes passed as he watched the building, a supposed restaurant with no windows, just a front and back entrance. The closer one got to the building, the darker the lighting.

  It was early for a restaurant to be this full, particularly in this part of Houston. But then, this wasn't a typical restaurant. Heat leaned forward and patted his left ankle, making sure the tiny Sig Sauer was in its ankle holster. Sitting up, he opened the glove compartment and pulled out a roll of quarters and a brown envelope. He opened the envelope, thumbed the thick wad of bills inside for a second or two, extracted some bills, folded the envelope in half, and got out of the truck. Heat first pocketed the roll of quarters in his front right pants pocket, then put the envelope in his left rear pocket and buttoned the button on the pocket.

  With a bump of his hip, Heat shut the door to his truck and slowly began walking towards the building, noting with curiosity the others making their way in the same direction, as if called by the dull, orange neon sign over the front door like moths to a flame.

  ANNOYED BY THE INSISTENT buzzing of his cell phone, the young man fished it from its resting place and glanced at the number. His date noted the scowl that appeared on his face and prepared for the inevitable.

  “This is my boss. He’s been on a real tear lately. I need to take this.”

  Without waiting for approval from the young woman, the man stood up and headed towards the restrooms. Once far enough from his date that she couldn’t hear, he accepted the call.

  “Took you long enough to answer.”

  “Yeah, well, I needed to get out of earshot first.”

  “How is the project coming along?”

  "It's coming. I figure, oh, maybe two weeks maximum, and I'll be able to deliver your order."

  The voice on the other end of the connect sighed, indicating displeasure.

  "Look, if I rush delivery, it could cause problems, and neither of us wants that," the young man said as he entered the men's room.

  “No, you’re right,” the voice replied. “Complications is what led to this situation. But, no later than two weeks, complications or not. I have to deliver to my clients as well.”

  "Understood, boss. Your clients are my clients, and happy clients mean lots of profits for everyone involved."

  “Good. I’m glad you understand. But, again, no longer than two weeks.”

  The connection ended, and the young man pocketed the phone. Already in the men's room, he decided to take advantage of the facilities, washed his hands and dried them, and looked at his handsome face in the mirror.

  “Ben, you make good on this,” he promised himself, “and you’ll be in the money.”

  AFTER THE SHORT WALK in the heat from his truck to a barstool, James Benoit Heatley had broken a sweat. Thinking back to his earlier life in Baton Rouge, Heat wondered how he'd survived the unbearable heat and humidity of the quiet college town and its refineries. It was hot and humid in Houston, but the big energy city had nothing on the cities and towns of South Louisiana when it came to misery from the local weather.

  On the wall behind the bar was a mural of the Houston skyline that ran the bar's length. The artist had done a remarkable job, so much so it made Heat think of home and not his adopted city. As he sipped his beer and shifted on the barstool to loosen his sweat-dampened shirt from his back, Heat noticed a stunning blonde approaching him from the other end of the bar.

  She wore a long, form-fitting dress, better suited for a formal occasion than an evening out at a restaurant. Its dark, emerald-green hue contrasted with her pale skin, making the plunging neckline and the contents it revealed both more noticeable and appealing. Slipping
on to the barstool next to Heat, the blonde smiled and gave her shoulder-length hair a quick flip, causing her tresses to drape themselves down her back, leaving her shoulders bare. Heat noted the woman's blue eyes after the blonde batted them twice to make sure he noticed.

  “Haven’t seen you here before.”

  “Could say the same to you,” Heat replied, smiling at the woman, taking in the faintest hint of Chanel No. 5.

  “Buy a lady a drink?”

  “I think I can afford one,” Heat answered smoothly, nodding at the bartender who’d taken notice of the blonde’s approach as well. “What would you like?”

  “I’ll have what he’s having,” Blondie purred, flashing her perfect white teeth at the bartender.

  Before the woman could speak again, Heat stood up and removed his wallet from his pocket and laid it on the dark, smooth, polished surface of the bar.

  Heat waited for Blondie to return her focus on him and then spoke with his lady killer voice. "Before this goes any further," Heat whispered, smiling at the woman, "it's only fair to tell you, that if I open that wallet up, you'll find a credential with the word detective on it."

  Blondie's smile vanished, and with it came a change in demeanor. Gone was the enticing sex kitten persona, replaced by that of a hardened, cynical human who knew how to look out for number one.

  “Now, before you go and become all unpleasant, I’d be happy to spend the same amount of money for information as I would have for your, let’s call it, premium service.”

  A blank expression appeared on the woman’s face, making it difficult to determine her age. The sex kitten had looked to be in her early twenties. The hardened veteran had appeared to be in her mid-thirties. The truth probably lay somewhere in between.

  “I don’t need any hassles.”

  “No hassles. You’ll get paid, in cash, and the effort will be a lot less on your part.”