A Deadly Turn

by Claire Booth

  ‘Is Kyle home?’ Sheila said. The woman stood there. It was just a few follow-up questions, Sheila said. Nothing big. The woman stood there for a minute, seemingly thinking, then nodded and got in a beat-up Chevy Malibu and drove off. Sheila headed for the front door, noticing that Hank didn’t follow. Instead he drifted silently toward the other vehicle in the driveway, the big Ram pickup that Hatwick had found paperwork in last time.

  She rapped on the door. Two minutes later, she pounded. Hank wandered back over to her.

  ‘I can smell pot coming from around the side,’ he said. Then he shot her a look that gave her hope the old Hank was still in there somewhere. She turned back to the door.

  ‘If you don’t answer the door, Mr Hatwick, I will issue a warrant for your arrest.’ When she wanted to, Sheila had a voice that didn’t need a bullhorn.

  The door slowly swung open. Hatwick stood there wearing nothing but cargo shorts and a godawful amount of Axe body spray. Sheila’s eyes started to water and behind her, Hank sneezed.

  ‘Nice try, Kyle. We smelled the pot. And if you don’t start answering my questions with the truth, I’m going to haul your ass in on possession charges, and I’m going to throw in that suspended license you got because you haven’t paid your traffic tickets.’

  ‘Shit. I’m just sitting here in my own home, and you come up and get all Dirty Harry on me. That ain’t right. I didn’t do anything.’

  ‘Here’s the thing, Kyle. I think you did. I think there’s something you’re not telling us about. And if you don’t tell us, right now, that pot is going to become a big problem …’

  She did love marijuana. So many people did it, and it was so pungent and noticeable, that it could be used as incentive to cooperate in all sorts of cases. God help them if it ever became legal in this state. They’d lose one of their best leverages.

  ‘So. May we come in?’

  He reluctantly stepped back, and they both held their breath as they passed through the cloud of cologne and into the living room. She looked to her right and saw what had to be a sixty-inch plasma TV on the living room wall. A video game console sat in front of it. Hank barely glanced at it. He knew as well as she did that didn’t necessarily mean anything. People around here could be in the worst financial circumstances and still decide they needed such fancy set-ups.

  ‘I gave that other dude all the subcontractor stuff. I don’t got anything else.’

  They both stared at him. Sheila turned to Hank. ‘We should probably search the house. We certainly have probable cause, and …’

  ‘No. No. That’s OK. No need to do that.’ He raked his hand through his hair and then slumped down onto the imitation leather couch.

  ‘I added something to the construction.’

  Sheila gestured for him to continue.

  ‘It was a room. In the back. Near the rear loading doors.’

  It wasn’t on the drawings. Hatwick had kind of carved it out of a couple different spaces. It just needed to be hidden, and easily accessible from the back door.

  ‘What’s this room for?’ said Sheila.

  He shrugged. Next to her, Hank crossed his arms and glowered. It might be driving her crazy, but his zombification was clearly scaring the bejeezus out of Hatwick. He scooted farther away on the couch.

  ‘I don’t know, man. Honest. There was a dude who came in after I did the studwork and he laid in a bunch of wire – internet, power outlets, stuff like that. Then I just skimmed a little bit of drywall from the main order, and I was done.’

  ‘Who told you to do this?’ Sheila said.

  He clasped his hands in his lap and looked miserable. Sheila told him that she was not in the habit of kidding around and if he thought she wouldn’t haul him in, then he was even dumber than he looked.

  ‘I got … friends. They asked me to do it.’

  He didn’t know their names.

  ‘Bullshit.’ It was the first thing Hank’d said since setting foot in the house. Hatwick jumped about five feet.

  ‘I swear, man. I don’t. They go by Tom and Jerry.’

  ‘And why,’ said Hank, in a rusty, bowels-of-hell voice, ‘would you be “friends” with people whose names you don’t even know?’

  Then he pointedly looked at the ashtray on the table.

  ‘Jesus. How do you guys know all this shit?’ He tugged at his hair again. ‘Yeah. They’re my dealers, OK? That’s how I know ’em. So I did ’em a favor. There.’

  He wasn’t sure why they wanted a secret room in the theater. He didn’t know what they’d be using it for. The only people who knew about it were him and the wiring guy. And that dude hadn’t been part of the construction crew. Hatwick had never seen him before.

  ‘And how much did they pay you for all this?’ Sheila said.

  ‘Five grand.’

  Hank stared at the ashtray again.

  ‘And some really good weed,’ Hatwick said with what sounded like a sob at the end.

  Sheila thought for a moment. ‘Did you tell them that I came by on Monday?’

  Hatwick nodded. They’d told him that if any cops came back, he should cooperate on anything about the theater, as long as he didn’t tell them about the room. He reluctantly recited the phone number he’d called.

  ‘Is that usually how you got a hold of them – by phone?’ Hank asked.

  ‘Lately that was the only way,’ Hatwick said. Before, you could meet at a restaurant to place your order and then there was a rotating set of pickup locations around town. Sheila whipped out her notebook and wrote them down.

  ‘What was the restaurant you used to meet at?’ said Hank.

  One near Wildwood Drive. Sheila froze with her notebook halfway back in her pocket. She slipped it in and then slowly took out her phone. She pulled up a photo and stuck it in Hatwick’s face.

  ‘Is this your dealer?’

  His jaw sagged open and he nodded.

  ‘You kept saying “they.” Is there a Tom-and-Jerry “they” or is it just her?’ she asked.

  ‘There’s no Tom and Jerry. It’s just her. That I know of. She’s the only one I ever saw.’

  She handed the phone to Hank. A very slow, very slight smile appeared on his face.

  ‘Go get a shirt on,’ Hank said. ‘You’re going to show us where this room is.’

  The Nashville PD detective investigating the adoption case was old and gray and had a Grand Ole Opry accent. Sam had set up the Skype connection – neither the old Tennessean nor Mr Raker had known what to do with all that, so he’d taken charge.

  ‘Cliff Strasburger last saw Eric Ganton a little more than four years ago,’ the detective said. ‘Told me the kid ran away in the middle of the night. Climbed out the bedroom window and they never saw him again. Said he was a real pain in the ass, so they didn’t miss him.’

  Mr Raker shifted to make sure he was in front of the camera. ‘They apparently liked his foster payments well enough.’

  ‘No kidding. Three years of monthly checks, until Ganton aged out of the system,’ the detective said. ‘Strasburger gave me some bullshit about being worried that the state would force them to take the kid back. Says that’s why they didn’t report it.’

  Mr Raker snorted.

  ‘Oh, don’t worry,’ the detective said. ‘Strasburger is now a guest of our fine city’s jail. DA’s going to charge him with fraud. I’m going to push for child endangerment, too, but I don’t know if the lawyers’ll want to go that far. Now I’m trying to find the caseworker who was supposed to be keeping track of little Eric. She’s not with the Department of Children’s Services anymore.’

  Sam tugged at his ear. ‘Sir? You keep talking about Mr Strasburger. The documentation I saw also had a wife. Tina Strasburger?’

  The detective grinned. ‘Yeah. She’s even more of a piece of work. Cliff says she left him two years ago. She pops up with a DUI arrest six months after that, and then nothing. She never appeared for her court date on the DUI case, has never renewed her Tennessee driver’
s license, nothing.’

  Sam was going to ask for a photo, but Mr Raker got there first. The detective said he’d email over her DL picture and the DUI mug shot. They talked a little more about how to track her down and then the Tennessee detective started to sign off.

  ‘Wait,’ Sam said. ‘Does Eric have any next of kin?’

  Silence. Both Mr Raker and the Tennessee guy stared at him.

  ‘For, um, you know … burial purposes and releasing the body and everything?’

  ‘I hadn’t thought of that,’ the Tennessee detective said. ‘I know there’s nothing listed. He might have a living relative somewhere. He was in the foster system so long, though …’

  The detective said he’d put someone on it. ‘I don’t envy you guys. This kid basically hasn’t existed for the last four years. I don’t know how you’re going to find who killed him.’

  He stared at the photo of Emily Fitch all the way to the theater, with Sheila riding the brakes just enough to make Hatwick’s backseat ride bumpy. The pothead said that he’d given his illicitly made set of keys to Emily so they had to call the new theater manager, Frank Rasmussen, to let them in. Sheila politely explained that they were still covered by the previous warrant and there was no need to call Ms Gillam.

  They all walked through the back door and into a large area that looked like it’d be used for loading and equipment, especially for the acts that came and went to fill the nights when Gunner wasn’t playing. Pothead led them over to a wall that ran perpendicular to the back exterior wall. He stopped near where the two walls met and ran his hand along the interior surface. One push in the right spot, and a previously invisible door suddenly swung inward.

  Unbelievable.

  The room was long and thin, about eight feet by eighteen feet, and ran along the very back of the theater. The pothead had done a decent job with the drywall, which was still mostly exposed. Only the far back wall had been painted. There were no outlet covers or fixtures covering the bare bulbs. But it wasn’t the half-done finishing that had Hank and Sheila staring. A half-dozen printers and two desktops with huge monitors sat on long folding tables. There looked to be more in boxes stashed underneath the tables. Some kind of laminating press sat in the corner. Everything was beyond top of the line.

  ‘Damn,’ Frank Rasmussen said. ‘What the hell is this? Nobody told me about this.’

  ‘That’s because nobody’s supposed to know,’ Hank said as he poked around behind one of the tables. He turned to Sheila. ‘Not everything’s hooked up yet. She’s still in the process of getting this going.’

  They both swung toward Hatwick. ‘What’s she doing with all this?’ Sheila asked him.

  ‘I got no clue,’ he said.

  ‘Well, what did she tell you about why she needed this room built?’ Hank said.

  ‘She didn’t,’ he said. ‘She just told me she needed a room. Not what she was going to do with it.’

  ‘And you just did it?’ Sheila said. ‘No questions asked?’

  He started to fidget. ‘Look, she don’t ask for stuff. Ever. So when she did, it was like a great chance to help her out, you know?’

  Hank knew what that meant. Exactly what it’d meant ever since the first man met the first pretty woman. ‘You have a little bit of a crush on Miss Emily?’

  Pothead glared at him. ‘I was helping out a friend is all.’

  Sheila rolled her eyes.

  ‘Well? What the hell am I supposed to do with this?’ Rasmussen said, waving his arms around.

  ‘Absolutely nothing,’ Hank said. ‘You are not to say a word about this to anyone, do you understand? This is an ongoing investigation. Don’t touch anything. Don’t come in here. Don’t say anything. Got it?’

  He aimed his you-don’t-want-to-get-on-my-bad-side look at the guy, who rubbed at his Jefferson Starship T-shirt and nodded. Hank nodded back and drew in a breath. It didn’t catch in his chest like it’d been doing all week. He exhaled slowly and thought he saw Sheila relaxing slightly as she watched him.

  Hank turned to Hatwick. He had to keep the guy contained because he didn’t trust him not to tip off Emily, but he couldn’t go back on his word and arrest him for the pot. They needed somebody to babysit.

  ‘Orvan’s on duty,’ Sheila said with a smile. ‘I’ll call him.’

  They took Pothead’s phone, passed him off to Deputy Orvan and called Handlesman, the BPD crime scene tech, to come process the scene.

  ‘Please, please, please let Emily’s prints be on this stuff,’ Sheila said.

  Hank started pacing the length of the room, which now held only him and Sheila.

  ‘What’s she doing with all this? When Hatwick first told us, I figured it might be some kind of drug distribution point or something. But this …’ He waved toward the high-end equipment. ‘You don’t need this to sell some pot. Or even the harder stuff. She’s got to be into something else.’

  They both stared at the hardware, and then at each other.

  ‘Are you thinking what I’m thinking?’ Hank said.

  FORTY

  Dale did a jig when they told him. Literally. He was surprisingly agile for someone of his physique. Sam took a discreet step away and asked whether they’d found any prints on the equipment.

  And Hank smiled. Sort of.

  It wasn’t the grin that Sheila would’ve expected from him under normal circumstances, but it was better than nothing. She’d take it.

  ‘There were a couple of distinct sets,’ she said. ‘They’re running them right now.’

  ‘Emily Fitch,’ Dale sighed, in the same tone you might use to say the name of the scoring wide receiver, or the sports car you always wanted. Awe and glee, all at once. ‘I’m going to get her. After all these years.’

  ‘You need to stop. I’m afraid you’re going to hurt yourself,’ Sheila said.

  Dale stopped jigging and came back down to earth. ‘Why didn’t you just call us to come out there? Why come back to the station?’

  They didn’t want to tip her off, Hank said. He’d stationed one of his deputies in a civilian car in the parking lot next door, but they were going to need a lot more manpower to adequately cover all the access points. Dale bolted from the room, yelling for any patrol officers in the building.

  Sam let out a low whistle. ‘I never would’ve thought he could get that excited.’

  Sheila was just glad she wasn’t the one who’d have to figure out how to staff the surveillance. She turned to Hank.

  ‘So she’s been making fake IDs. Which has to be where our Tennessee foster kid got his. And Johnny Gall. If they’re all as good as those, she’s got to be making a fortune.’

  ‘But where?’ Sam asked. ‘Where was she doing it before? Her dad’s?’

  Sheila shook her head. Hell, no. That place barely had electricity. But you wouldn’t necessarily know that without going out there and looking at it. She told Hank and Sam about Emily’s visit to Mick Fitch.

  ‘That property was nice and isolated, it just didn’t have the power or the internet to support what she needs,’ Sheila said.

  ‘Could it have been at the apartment?’ said Hank.

  They both turned to Sam, who’d become the authority on the Bellflower Apartments. He immediately turned bright pink, like he did every time that place came up. Once all this was over, Sheila was determined to figure out what was up with that.

  ‘There were “a great many too many” comings and goings,’ he said. ‘According to that, um, opinionated upstairs neighbor lady. And a downstairs resident mentioned that teenagers seemed to visit somebody upstairs. So I’d say it’s a possibility.’

  ‘Then why’d they quit using it?’ Hank said.

  Sam thought a minute. ‘The manager guy did tell me that he’d recently lost his job – his real one, not the managing one. So he might’ve been starting to be around the complex more. That wouldn’t have been good for her business.’

  Hank slowly sank into one of the big conference room chairs. He lea
ned his disheveled head back and stared at the ceiling. His deputies knew what that meant. Sheila quietly shut the door, and they took seats on the other side of the table.

  ‘So what does she want? What does she need?’ Hank said to the ceiling. ‘She needs a place where no one will notice people coming and going. But it also needs to be easy for people to find.’

  He lowered his gaze back down to the level of ordinary humans. Sheila had a feeling she knew where he was going with this, but didn’t say anything.

  ‘People’ll be all over that theater all the time,’ he continued. ‘A couple more cars in the parking lot and a few more people briefly seen around the loading docks aren’t going to raise any alarms. And it’s on a bus route.’

  ‘And,’ Sam chimed in, ‘they’d just skim whatever power they need. It’s got to be a huge utility bill anyway. Nobody’s going to notice a little extra. And even if they did, nobody’s going to look there. Because that room technically doesn’t even exist.’ He paused. ‘She really is a genius.’

  All right. That was a bit too far. Sheila held out the flat of her hand. ‘Let’s not get carried away. Emily Fitch is a petty criminal and drug dealer who could also quite possibly be a murderer. And now she’s trying to get into more sophisticated crimes. We’re not even sure how well she’s doing in that regard. For all we know, the Patrick O’Connell ID is a piece of crap. All we’ve got is a Xerox of it.’

  ‘But we do have Johnny Gall’s ID,’ Hank said. ‘And it’s indistinguishable from the real thing.’

  True. Sheila felt herself starting to frown and stopped. She wasn’t irritated with Hank, and she didn’t want him to think she was. She was just really tired of the aggravating Mr Gall and the fact they were not a damn step closer to figuring out who he was.

  But Hank wasn’t paying attention. He’d focused on the ceiling again. She was going to let him be, but Dale had other ideas. He burst into the room with a bang of the door and a clap of the hands.

  ‘We’re on it. I got five guys camped out around all the access points, and another one in the woods behind the theater just in case.’

  Sheila snuck a look at Sam and saw him try to hide his relief that he hadn’t been tapped for that duty. Dale rambled on about logistics and her mind wandered back to Emily. Why? Why go into counterfeit IDs? The start-up costs had to be huge – that equipment alone easily hit the mid-five figures. Selling drugs was a hell of a lot easier. Was she getting pushed out of that market? Was a bigger fish moving into town? Someone with more direct connections to harder drugs? That was the only reason she could think of for the little minx switching careers. She was not bringing that up to Dale, though. Not right now. He was still giddy, standing at the head of the table gesturing wildly as he talked about surveillance details.