Midnight Lullaby
A Henry Malone Novel
James D.F. Hannah
Copyright © 2015 by James D.F. Hannah
All rights reserved.
Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
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Cover Photography from Brett Hondow.
To the progeny. Without them, there’s no story to tell.
“Don't you know there ain't no devil, there’s just God when he's drunk.”
― Tom Waits, “Heartattack and Vine”
Parker: I think a plan is just a list of things that don't happen.
— The Way of the Gun, written by Christopher McQuarrie
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
A Note from the Author
1
Christmas was coming. The plastic holly and fake trees had been side-by-side with the Halloween decorations in September, and Brenda Lee had been rockin' around the Christmas tree so long store cashiers were on suicide watch. By now the holiday loomed in every corner, like a schoolyard bully threatening you for your lunch money. Everything on TV had Christmas trees and styrofoam snow and lessons about the power of love, followed by commercials for a Tom Cruise flick where he ran places and shit blew up.
I'd gone to Walmart to buy groceries I planned to throw away in a few weeks once they went bad. My knee let me get to the cereal aisle before the pain started. I thought I could make it, at least until I couldn’t, and I abandoned the cart in the coffee aisle, grabbing the bread, milk, and half-and-half and leaving the rest. I gritted my teeth through the check-out and pushed back tears once I got in my car.
Pain burned like splinters of phosphorous through my knee. That I was carrying at least twenty pounds too much to haul around on a six-foot-one frame didn't help, and breakfasts at Tudor’s and late-night sandwiches compounded the problem.
I sat there in the parking lot for a long time, hoping shit would stop hurting, knowing it wouldn't, finally conceding defeat, and swallowing a handful of painkillers from my supply in the glove compartment and washing it down with the milk before going home.
A radio station had flipped to an all-Christmas playlist where 30 percent of it seemed to be the Dan Fogelberg song about him meeting an ex at the grocery store. Just as they were sitting in his car sharing a six-pack, I pulled my Aztek into my drive and the headlights caught sight of a Ford F-350 I didn’t recognize.
The guy on the front porch stood when he saw me. He was 40ish, heavy around the middle, wearing a "Coal Keeps the Lights On" baseball cap and a Carhartt coat. He scratched at a graying Fu Manchu mustache. His skin had the permanent discoloration it gets after a decade of pulling coal, and the dust shoves so deep into your pores there’s no getting it out.
"You Henry Malone?" he said as I mounted the short set of stairs up to the porch.
"I am," I said.
He extended a hand. I took it. "I'm Mitch Fisher. How you doing?"
"I'm grand," I said. "You didn't hear a dog bark when you sat down on the porch, did you?"
"No. Why?"
"No reason," I said as I unlocked the front door and walked in, flipping on the lights behind me. Mitch Fisher followed right behind me. "Yeah, go ahead and let yourself on in."
I stopped and looked in the living room. One hundred and twenty pounds of Bullmastiff was stretched out on the couch, snoring while "Armageddon" flickered across the 42-inch flat-screen television. If the end of the world wouldn't rouse Izzy, no reason to expect a truck in the driveway to do the job either.
"Hell of a watchdog," I said in her direction. An ear twitched, and she pushed her face into the cushions.
I made my way to the kitchen and put up the groceries. Fisher stood at the kitchen doorway.
"You're limping," he said.
"Yes, I am. Because my knee hurts."
"I mean, you’re limping bad."
"It hurts bad."
"You might ought to get that looked at."
“I hadn’t thought of that. Thanks. I'll look right into it.” I peered in the refrigerator. "You want something to drink? I got beer, milk, and half-and-half, if that’s your thing."
"I'll take a beer if you've got one," he said.
I wanted to point out that of course I had beer, since I'd mentioned it to him specifically, but instead I handed him a bottle of Bud Light and took a diet Coke out for myself. He twisted the lid off of his bottle and took a long drink, then said, "You not having one?"
I shook my head. "Don't drink. Just keep 'em for company. On account I’m such a social creature."
That seemed an agreeable answer for him, which worked because I didn't plan on coming up with another one. I took my coat off, draped it on the back of a chair and took a seat. I motioned to the empty chair. "Help yourself."
He kept his coat on and sat down. He was younger than I’d thought, but life had packed years onto him. He kept the beer bottle held tight in thick, calloused hands.
"What can I do for you, Mitch Fisher?" I said.
"Jackie Hall told me I should come by, see you," he said.
"He say anything about calling first, and not just showing up unannounced on someone's doorstep?" I said. "What if I'd been out carousing or running around bare-assed naked?"
Fisher laughed. "Lt. Hall said you were a funny guy."
"Yeah, I'm hilarious. I suspect you're not here for the jokes, though."
He took another drink. "My sister's Bobbi Fisher."
"Your parents must be real proud, but that doesn’t answer the question of what you want."
He cocked an eyebrow. "Don't you know who my sister is? Don't you watch the news?"
"I limit my news intake the royal family and if the Browns make it to the Super Bowl. Your sister marry a prince or get drafted as a running back?"
Fisher reached into his coat pocket and produced a newspaper clipping. He unfolded it on the table, smoothing it out before sliding it across to me.
Investigation Into Missing Mother Stretches Into Second Month
By Jason O’Brien
Parker County Herald-Tribune
Authorities say that while there are no new leads into the disappearance of Parker County resident Bobbi Fisher, they are continuing to pursue the case while the mystery of what happened to the mother of two stretches into its second month.
State Police Lt. Jackson Hall said the toll-free telephone number started to accept tips into Fisher's disappearance is still receiving calls but has produced no new leads.
"This doesn't mean that people should stop calling," Hall said. "All this means is that we are now going back and reviewing previous leads and working to see where that goes. We are encouraging anyone with any information into Bobbi Fisher's disappearance to call. We want to return Ms. Fisher to her family."
Fisher, 27, of Serenity, was last seen Oct. 2 as she dropped her daughters off to daycare at 8 a.m. Police were called when she failed to report to work that day at McGinley and Kurt, the Serenity-based law firm where she worked as a secretary, and never came to pick her daughters up from day care.
Police found Fisher's car, a blue 2005 Ford Focus, abandoned off Rt. 232 the next day. A forensics investigation of the vehicle produced no results.
The picture of Bobbi Fisher showed a woman attractive if a little worn, the result of too much drugstore beauty product and too many late nights of beer and Marlboros. She was a blonde, with roots to make Alex Haley proud, a round, moon-shaped face, and almond-colored eyes. She wasn’t my type, but she would have been pretty even before last call.
I handed the clipping back to Fisher. "I'm sorry your sister's is missing, but that's got nothing to do with me."
Fisher refolded the clipping and slipped it back into his coat. "You used to be a cop."
"'Used to be.' Past tense."
"Right, but he said you were good, and he thought you might help. You could look at things, see something that no one else is seeing."
A smile flickered across my face. "Lt. Hall told you that, huh?"
"Yes, sir."
I rested my forearms on the table. "Mr. Fisher, I think Lt. Hall might have overstated a few things. Whereas I used to be a state trooper, what I am now is an ex-cop on retirement disability. That limp you pointed out, it makes my life miserable most days, and it doesn't make me the best choice to play Jim Rockford. Besides that, I don't have any licensing or legal standing to be a private investigator."
Fisher took off his hat and ran his hand over his head, brushing down his thinning hair. "I don't like coming here and asking you, but this was Lt. Hall's idea, Mr. Malone. Bobbi, she's a good mom, she loves her girls, and she wouldn't never just leave them, no word or nothing. The day care, the day it happened, called up me and my wife — my wife, her name's Jessie — and we picked the girls up and drove over to Bobbi's house and we waited with the girls and she never showed up. She didn't ever call. We kept calling up her cell phone, and it kept going to her voice mail. She just vanished."
I listened to Mitch Fisher. His voice had the ache of concern, of worry, of fear of loss if not actual knowledge of known loss yet. Mostly, though, I thought about his nieces, and what it was like to find out your mother wasn’t coming home.
I pushed myself out of the chair and opened up the junk drawer, found a mechanical pencil and a notepad, and sat back down at the table. "Your sister, she got anyone who doesn't like her? An ex, or her boyfriend's got an ex?"
"Nah," he said. "She spent her time with her girls."
"How old are they?" I said. "Your nieces?"
"The little one, she's four. Her name’s Amelia. The older one, Becky, she's nine," he said. He finished his beer and set the empty bottle down.
"Want another?" I said. He said yes, and I got it for him. The painkillers were wearing off already, and I could feel the blood coursing through my knee. I sucked air through my teeth and told myself I could take it. Mitch Fisher sipped his beer and was kind enough to not comment on me grimacing.
“How long were you a state trooper?” he said.
“Sixteen years,” I said.
“What happened that you’re not one anymore?”
"Shit that’s neither here or there. I’m sure you've been told this already, but there's certain realities you’ve got to deal with, Mr. Fisher," I said.
"You're going to tell me you don't know if you can find Bobbi," he said.
"I am. I'll bet Lt. Hall has said that by this point, finding your sister, the odds aren’t good."
Fisher looked down at his beer bottle. "He's gone over it with us."
"If he’s saying to not get your hopes up, then he’s being honest with you, which you need to hear,” I said. "I might not be able to find your sister, and even if I can, you may not like what I have to tell you. I can run down what the cops had, see if anything new comes up, but time's not an advantage here. I'm one guy, and trails like this, they get cold quick."
Fisher scratched at the label on the beer bottle with his thumbnail. “You got kids?”
“I don't.”
Fisher cast his eyes downward. His voice dropped low. "My wife, she can't have babies," he said. “We tried, and nothing worked, so Bobbi's girls, my wife put all that love into them she couldn't put into babies of our own. But we ain't their parents, and Jessie's not their mom. They need their mother, and my wife needs to not have to raise those girls and know they're not hers to have."
I nodded. "I’ll check around, see what I find out," I said. "No promises. I can ask questions and make phone calls. Can't promise much past that."
He extended his hand toward me. "I appreciate you doing this, Mr. Malone."
I shook his hand. "It's Henry."
I locked the door behind him as he left and watched out the window as he drove away and the tail lights faded into the darkness.
Back in the kitchen, I looked at the refrigerator’s contents longer than I should have. There was bread, milk, eggs, some cheese that wasn’t improving with age, something that had once been a half-pound of hamburger, and four six-packs of Bud Light.
I closed the refrigerator door and opened a can of beef jerky on the counter next to it. Four truck tire-sized paws hit the living room floor, and I watched Izzy lumber in toward me. Even for food, that dog didn’t get herself in a hurry.
I stood with arms crossed and tried to keep the jerky out of sight. She stopped and sat down in front of me and cocked her head to one side.
"Yes?" I said.
Izzy twisted her head to the other side, staring at me with brown eyes the size of coffee saucers. Drool gathered at her jowls.
I reached the jerky out toward her. She leaned forward and took it from my hand and laid on the floor to eat it. I patted her on the head and started a pot of coffee. It was late, but that didn’t matter; I wasn’t likely to be asleep for a while, anyway.
2
I knew Jackie Hall from when we were both in uniform, stationed close to Morgantown. Back then, we'd both been tall and fit, in crisp-looking uniforms and high-and-tight haircuts, and there was no shortage of hot young things who appreciated a date who came ready with his own set of handcuffs. Jackie called them "badge bunnies."
He used to tell me stories about his uncle in New Jersey, around Paramus, who was pushing 50 back in the day but kept this rotating cycle of big-haired blondes with a thing for cops. Some of these girls, he said, were young enough to be his uncle's daughter, as if his uncle would ever get married. To listen to Jackie, you'd have thought his uncle was a rock star.
Jackie and I worked together a while once we were out of the academy. Jackie was more motivated than I was, though, and he kept moving up the promotion ladder, while I liked working the highways and responding to calls. He got himself a detective shield, a plain-clothed gig, and a transfer elsewhere, and I kept a cruiser and
wrote tickets and as time wore on, I found someone steady to use my handcuffs with.
After the shooting and my life collapsing, I came back to Parker County. I didn't hear from Jackie. That was fine because I had gotten accustomed to feeling like a warning to others. Then last year I got the Christmas letter from Jackie. It was one of those newsie things that talked about the toddler learning to walk and the summer vacation to Myrtle Beach.
There was a photo from the little studio in front of Walmart, of Jackie, a chunky brunette, and a two-year-old, all of them wearing identical sweaters with reindeer and snowmen on them. Jackie had put on a good 50 pounds, though it may have been closer to 75. He looked like a goddamn fool. He also looked rather goddamn happy.
The return address was for Barlow, an unincorporated community there in Parker County. I called up the nearest state police outpost and got the bastard on the phone and found out he’d moved his way up to Lieutenant and had been planted in Parker County a year earlier, a transfer request because his wife Livvie had family this way and she wanted to be closer to them on account of the baby.
We met that night, and I had a Coke and Jackie had a beer and he told me he hadn't been planning on marriage, but this girl, she was an elementary school teacher and she had been the first one to wear down his reluctance.
"Besides," he'd said as he patted his gut, "I wasn't getting skinnier or better looking."
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