by Dave Daren
Vicki and AJ moved to clear out coffee cups and food trash and I stared off in the distance trying to figure it all out. I just felt like we were right on the tip of the answer. If I could only get that one last piece. I mulled over and over the facts, the evidence, the people, and the conversations.
“We need to talk to Allen,” I sighed.
“You wouldn’t believe this,” Vicki said as she peered over her phone screen. “I sent out feeler e-mails looking for Allen. I just got a response. Allen left the country the morning of the murder. He’s in Germany.”
“Germany,” AJ echoed. “Seriously?”
Then she started laughing.
Vicki and I looked at each other, and AJ just laughed harder and harder. Then Vicki and I started laughing because AJ was laughing, and the three of us sat in the conference room and died laughing for no reason.
That was when it hit me.
My team was running on close to twenty-four hours with no sleep. As much pressure as we were under, we still had to take care of ourselves.
“Fuck it,” I decided. “Let’s go home, guys.”
“Fuck it,” Vicki and AJ said in unison as they grinned.
Then we cleaned up the food mess, locked the doors, and drove home.
Chapter 18
What made me decide to hire Jim Hurley to design our home was not his portfolio. It was not his personality. Or his price. Or availability.
No. It was the roosters. The god damned roosters.
Sunrise came at five forty-two that Saturday. I did not want to know this fact. I preferred to be blissfully ignorant of the exact point between day and night. But blissful ignorance was not in the cards on this day, or any day in the foreseeable future.
My girlfriend was a sophisticated L.A. woman, beautiful, full of class, grace and poise. But, on this day, I found out how capable she was in using every curse word and insult in the English language.
We never fight. So far, we’d been one of those couples who got along splendidly. But on the day of the roosters, I got a full glimpse of what it might look like, should I ever push Vicki to her breaking point.
It was not pretty.
After a barrage of cursing and screaming, she stormed out of the cottage, barefoot, in her tank top and with her hair thrown on top of her head, and from the window, I saw it all. She literally ran up the steps of the house next door and pounded on the door so loud, I could hear it from inside our bedroom.
Petunia opened the door in her robe and squinted from the light. I heard muffled arguing for a couple of minutes, and then Vicki calmly came back inside and climbed into bed.
The roosters were silent.
“What happened?” I asked hesitantly.
“The roosters will no longer be a problem,” Vicki replied simply.
Then she rolled over and went back to sleep, and that was all I heard of the rooster that day.
But I pulled out my phone and sent Jim Hurley an e-mail. Then I also went back to sleep.
Later that morning, we arrived at the office freshly rested, despite the rooster debacle. AJ arrived shortly after us, and she also seemed more alive.
“Landon apologized for everything,” she sang as she sashayed into the office.
“That’s good,” I said as I sipped my coffee. “Did he admit he was jealous?”
“No,” she rolled her eyes, “but he was all like, ‘I’m sorry, baby, I’m such an asshole. I just miss you is all.’ And I was like, ‘Uh, yeah, you are.’”
“Well,” Vicki chuckled, “I’m glad it worked out. How’s the play coming along?”
“I showed Horace what I have,” AJ said as she made a cup of coffee, “and he loved it. Not that his standards are high, but it was still good to hear anyway.”
“I wrote a one act play one time for a theatre class in college,” I remarked as I rubbed my chin. “Everyone had to act it out for our midterm project. It was a lot of fun.”
“Was it weird having your classmates memorize your words?” AJ asked.
I laughed. “Yeah. It actually was weird. You don’t realize your own speech patterns until you’ve got someone else splitting hairs over your own syntax.”
“I think it will be kind of a head rush,” she mused as she blew on her coffee.
“Alright,” I said as I changed gears, “what time are the volunteers coming in? Did you set a time last night?”
“Eleven,” Vicki answered. “I figure we should get cracking, given that all of our leads are growing cold.”
“We have a lot,” I muttered. “We just need to find that … smoking gun.”
AJ turned on the tapes, and the sitar music droned on through the office. Vicki said she wanted to get snacks for the volunteers, so she left.
I sat at my desk, looked at my notes, and played around with all the elements of this case again and again. Clare. Jim. Allison. Ken. Allen. Insurance money. Krishna’s Curse. Leila. Alfred. Julie. Ollie. Paul.
“God, it all has to connect somehow,” I grumbled and ran my hands through my hair.
Unless, of course, the Count actually did it.
I grabbed the notes from the night before and looked them over with a fine tooth comb. Nothing. I reread all the notes I’d typed up from all the conversations I had over the past week. Nothing new popped up there, either, so I wandered into the conference room to see if there were any note pages I’d missed.
Then something in the sitar music caught my attention.
“AJ, play that part again,” I instructed.
“Huh?” she asked as she looked up in confusion.
“That one part,” I said.
She rewound the tape and played it again.
“Do you hear that?” I asked.
“I hear … something,” she replied as she squinted and furrowed her brow.
In the background of the sitar music was the faint sound of conversation. The strain kept going, and then trailed off, and then came back up with more intensity.
AJ kept rewinding it, but we couldn’t tell anything more.
“What is that?” she wondered aloud.
“Have you heard it on any of the other tapes?” I asked.
“No,” she shook her head, “just that one. You’ve heard some of them.”
I nodded. I hadn’t heard that strain before either.
“I wonder how far it goes,” I muttered.
We let it run, and it ran close to twenty minutes. By that time, Vicki showed back up with arms full of grocery bags.
“Okay,” she said, “I got--”
“Shhh.” I held up a finger. AJ and I were crouched over the speakers, straining to hear.
“What?” Vicki asked in a lowered voice.
“I still can’t understand anything,” AJ groaned.
“What is this?” Vicki asked again as she set the grocery bags down.
“Hear that?” AJ rewound the tape, and we all strained to listen.
“It sounds like … talking,” Vicki replied.
“Yeah,” I nodded, “that’s what we think.”
“How would we isolate that?” Vicki asked.
The word ‘isolate’ was all I needed to hear.
I called my dad.
“Hey, Dad,” I said when he picked up.
“Hey,” he replied. “My ears are still ringing from that off-Bollywood crap. It’s worse than that stupid fox song.”
I laughed. “At least that one was catchy.”
“Exactly,” he grumbled.
“That’s what I called you about, though,” I continued. “I think I might have found something on those tapes.”
“Yes, Einstein did say time travel is possible,” he sighed, “but Jerry took it out of context.”
“What?” I shook my head. “No. Did he say that?”
“Ugh,” he groaned. “You know, I read Einstein’s theories. How every crackpot nerd in modern America has taken them so far out of context is beyond me.”
I laughed. “I actually found something el
se. Do you know how to isolate audio?”
“Well, yeah,” he responded. “It’s really easy if it’s professionally recorded. But what you’re dealing with isn’t.”
“I know,” I said. “I think I heard something in the background of one of the tapes, though, but can’t get to it. I need expertise.”
“Alright,” my father replied. “The equipment you need is already down there, but it’s too hard to explain. I’ll come out there.”
“Thanks, Dad,” I said.
“You bet,” he chuckled before he hung up.
The volunteers arrived shortly after.
“Thank you guys for coming in,” Vicki said as she smiled at everyone. “We’ve got coffee and snacks, and we appreciate your help so much. I know what we’re asking is tedious. But, I want you guys to know, you’re helping out the community. How many of you guys are fathers?”
Every volunteer raised his hand.
“Good,” she replied. “The heart of this case is a little boy whose father has been murdered.”
A murmur went through the room as the revelation sank in. Last night we’d been so quick to set up, I didn’t think the details of the case had been laid out fully.
“We don’t know why or who did this, and that’s what we’re after,” Vicki explained. “So, every tape you guys listen to, every note you guys take, is one step closer to bringing answers and justice to light for that little boy.”
Everyone applauded and whistled, and the energy in the room rose. Then I briefly played them the clip.
“Okay,” I began, “so, did anyone hear last night talking like that in any of the tapes?”
Everyone shook their heads.
“Alright,” I sighed. “Let us know if you find anything like that again.”
The volunteers all sat down at the listening stations and listened to more tapes. I took a spot at a listening station myself and played the clip over and over trying to make out anything.
I couldn’t tell anything.
Then my dad finally arrived, and he nodded briefly to his friends on listening stations in the conference room.
“What have we got here?” he asked me as we settled in the main office area.
“Listen closely,” I instructed as I handed him the headphones and played the clip. “You can hear talking in the background.”
“Yeah,” he nodded as he squinted his eyes, “that’s definitely something.”
“Can we isolate it?” I asked.
My dad stroked his chin. “Digital recordings are done on channels. Kind of like layers in PhotoShop. So, certain softwares can dismantle the recording by allowing you to isolate the original channels. But I don’t know if a raw analog recording can be isolated. But let’s try.”
“Great,” I said with a grin.
He messed around with some contraption for a few minutes and played around with the settings. Then he unhooked the headphones, and a moment later, we heard it.
It was low volume, but it was clear.
“What do you mean you’re not going to L.A?” Allison yelled. “We’ve been planning this for months.”
“Well, plans change,” Jerry shot back.
“Plans change?” she screamed. “That’s it? Just … like that.”
“Alli, baby, I don’t expect you to understand, but it has to do with the funding.”
“The funding, the funding,” she shrieked. “I fucking swear, if I hear that one more time … ”
“What do you know?” Jerry snarled. “You’ve never had to finance a film before. You don’t know the pressure it takes to do what it is I do.”
“I do know the pressure,” she shouted, “because you whine about it twenty four fucking seven!”
“No, I don’t,” he yelled back. “You don’t know half of what I deal with, Allison. You think you do, but you don’t. My life is not that simple. I can’t just jump in a car with you and run off to L.A. I’m an adult, from back when they made real ones. I face tough choices. Tough ones. With things you can’t even begin to imagine. You have no idea the sacrifices I have made to be where I am. You don’t know what I had to do for this. I can’t just run off.”
“Then tell me!” she screeched. “How could I know, Jerry, when you’re this … closed book … you don’t tell me anything! It’s always ‘oh you don’t know.’ And then it’s the end of the argument.”
The voices lowered to a muffle and then rose again with Allison screaming.
“I can’t believe I’ve wasted all of this time with you. All of the things I did for you--”
“Oh, please,” Jerry spat. “It was never about me. You did it for you.”
“I did it for us,” she insisted.
“There was never an ‘us,’ and you know it,” he snapped. “All you wanted was a big career. You never wanted to be with me.”
“And was I wrong? Did you ever really want to be with me?”
“You’re whiny, selfish, entitled, and slutty as fuck,” he snarled back at her.
“Excuse me?” she yelled.
“You heard me,” he growled. “I know all about you and your little Ken doll. You think I’d move with you to L.A. even if I could? You spread your legs for whatever will get you what you want.”
Allison screamed in rage, and there were crashing sounds. Then it was muffled for several minutes.
“Don’t kill me,” Jerry begged as the audio became louder again. “Allison, don’t do it, please. I beg you. Please. Think of Thad. Please.”
There was more muffled sound and then silence.
“What was the date on this tape?” I asked.
Vicki glanced at the label. “It was two days before he died.”
Chapter 19
Vicki, AJ, and I, along with my dad, sat in the main room of our office. The rest of the volunteers kept working, oblivious to the find we’d just made.
“Okay,” AJ asked. “What exactly have we found?”
“Well,” I began, “based on all of the evidence we have combined, I would say Jerry backed out from taking Allison to L.A. because of Allen, and broke up with her because of Ken. And then she tried to kill him.”
My dad stood with his hands in his pockets and a wide grin on his face.
“Awww, man,” he shook his head, “this is insane. Is this what you guys get to do all the time?”
“Pretty much,” I chuckled.
“That and go on the occasional tiger hunt,” Vicki added with a wink.
“I just do the paperwork.” AJ shrugged.
My dad shook his head again. “Man, I should have gone to law school.”
“Eh,” I grinned, “the textbooks alone would have sucked the soul right out of you.”
“You’re probably right,” he laughed.
“And to be fair,” I added, “just because we’ve got her on attempted murder two days prior to the incident, does not prove she killed him later. It just takes our client out of the prime suspect category.”
“Right,” Vicki nodded, “the police will have to hold off on charging Alfred and fully investigate Allison. And even at that, the defense could argue there’s no real evidence of attempted murder on the tape. They could say that under duress, Jerry might have exaggerated the danger, and we don’t actually know what happened in that encounter.”
“But,” I said, “given our deal with the prosecution, this is all we need for them to actually do their job. They’ll go back through all the interviews we’ve done and find out the truth.”
“This is nuts,” my dad whistled. “This is nuts. I can’t believe this. This is like one of those crime shows, but in real life.”
I laughed. “Well, the next thing we need to do is get this over to the cops. Can you make a digital copy of that analog audio?”
“Yeah, we’re already set up for it,” he replied. “Just a couple of buttons, and we’ve got it.”
“I like the sound of that,” I chuckled. “I think we’re done with the volunteers then, right?”
�
�Unless they’ve found anything else,” Vicki said.
“That’s not really our problem,” I shrugged, “we found what we needed to find. SPD can find their own guys.”
Everyone laughed, and I just rolled my eyes.
“Thanks for coming through, Dad,” I added as I cast him a smile.
“Anytime,” he replied with a wink.
“Alright,” I decided as I clapped my hands together, “let’s dissolve the listening room and thank the volunteers. Then I’ll take the file over to the police station.”
Vicki and AJ broke up the volunteer group, and thanked them all for their help. I watched my dad load the file onto the flash drive. The volunteers started to dismantle all the listening equipment and load it up.
“Thanks, everybody,” my dad threw in for extra measure. “Drinks on me tonight, Slingers. Live music Saturday!”
He referred to a cowboy bar I’d had to go to a couple of times on cases, and I snickered.
“Alright, Moondust!” I heard a couple of times. “Live music Saturday!”
Everyone cheered, and they all slapped him on the back as they came in and out hauling gear out to their vehicles.
“You’re expensing the tab, right?” My dad winked at me.
I laughed. “Sure, Dad.”
He loaded the file onto the flash drive and gave it to me. “Well, then here ya go.”
“Thanks,” I replied. “I’ll personally take this over to the police.”
“Give Durant my regards,” he muttered. “He left a snotty online review of my new single.”
“Did he?” I snickered.
“Yeah,” my dad frowned, “he called it a ‘shoddy ripoff vaguely reminiscent of Irving’s glory days as a third rate opening act for CCR.’ Asshole.”
“Brutally savage,” I chuckled. “Well written though.”
“I know,” he sighed. “Maybe he’s a writer on the side.”
I laughed. “Who isn’t these days?”
He snorted. “What WordPress has done to the timeless art of literature.”
“Since when have you become the avenger of the literary arts?” I teased.
“Oh, you know,” he shrugged, “I dabble.”
“Really?” I asked with raised eyebrows. “I didn’t know that.”
He shrugged again. “I have that novel I’ve been writing on and off for about twenty years or so.”
