BAD TIME TO BE IN IT

by David Burnsworth

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Blu parked in the lot in front of the storage center. It had been at least a year since he’d been here and he hoped he’d remember the lock combination. They exited the truck, went through the security gate and checked in at the front desk. The tattooed millennial working the counter barely looked up from his phone as they passed.

  Crome slammed his hand down on the counter, startling Blu. “That out there’s people’s cherished stuff. Stuff they’re paying you to watch over. If it wasn’t important to them, they wouldn’t.” He pointed to the security monitors. “Watch those screens, not your phone. I come back here and find you doing anything but watching those screens, you and I are going to have a problem.”

  Blu looked at the screens. All the units had their numbers painted on them in big print so they were visible on the video. His number was two-five-eight. It was open. He took off running.

  “Hey!” Crome called behind him.

  Then he felt his partner on his heels.

  His unit was a smaller one not too far from the front. He rounded a corner, saw the back of the pickup fifty feet ahead and the door to his unit still open. Someone wearing a mask that looked like a bad imitation of ex-Vice President Joe Biden stepped out, lit a rag with a lighter, and threw it inside the unit.

  Before Blu could yell or do anything, a loud voom echoed down the corridor, followed by smoke and flames shooting out the opening.

  On the other side of the flames, the figure got in the pickup and started to drive away.

  Blu and Crome pulled out their guns and unloaded them into the exiting truck. It sped up and screeched around the corner.

  They ran past the burning unit in pursuit of the truck, just in time to see it, the back of its cab full of holes and the back glass shot out, accelerate and crash through the wrought iron gate at a decent clip.

  Blu and Crome ran back to the Xterra to give chase, but by the time Blu got on the road after the Ranger, it was gone. There were too many turns for it to take.

  After about fifteen minutes, he gave up and went back to the storage lot. The fire department was there hosing down his unit, which was a complete loss.

  In addition to the files, Blu kept a lot of mementos in the unit. One in particular came to mind: a picture of Hope at her third birthday party in Crome’s arms along with a giant teddy bear.

  The man had to steer the Ranger with one hand while he tried to stop the bleeding with his other. His right ear had been shot off and he was livid.

  He managed to make it back to his house and get the garage door open. At the last minute, he decided to back the truck in thanks to a feeling it would not be good to have his nosy neighbors get a good look at the shot up back end of the truck. He pressed the button to close the door before he got out of the truck.

  What was left of his ear was really bleeding. He cursed himself. First it was that damn horse, and then he has a run-in with Carraway and Crome at the very point he’s most vulnerable. It was a good thing they didn’t come five minutes earlier when he was pouring the cans of gasoline on everything in Blu’s unit.

  He stormed into his house and went right to his bathroom. Grabbing the first towel he found, he used it to try and stop the bleeding, his mind already working. He’d read in some magazine a while ago about ear reconstructive surgery and ear prosthetics. It wasn’t the end of the world, but he would now have to plan on how to deal with his missing ear. Either a bullet or some of the glass from the back window had cut it off. Come to think of it, the back window did not shatter like safety glass. Someone had put in regular glass and now he had a missing ear because of it.

  What was the world coming to?

  He found gauze and medical tape in an old first aid kit and did his best to put pressure on the wound as he wound the tape around the gauze and his head several times. He finished, saw the gauze filling with blood but decided he couldn’t do much more about it right now, and went to check on Harmony.

  The lights were off in her room, something he’d noticed more and more lately. Before she’d started this, he could watch her for hours. Same with Maureen.

  Truth be told, Maureen put up a better fight. The woman was bigger than Harmony and all those cases of beer she handled in her night job had given her considerable body strength. Before he’d been able to knock her out the last time, she managed a solid face punch that was so hard he’d seen stars. After that, he’d started drugging her food. He didn’t want to deal with a sober and pissed off Maureen again.

  Harmony hit like she’d been trained in aerobic kickboxing classes. It looked good, but it wasn’t real fighting. He’d learned how to defend himself against three older cousins who all played football. Instead of protecting their nerdy younger cousin, they’d tormented him until he got even. At the time, he hated them, but they taught him how to street fight. To not back down and not stop until the other person was on the ground and bleeding.

  And Harmony’s light was still off. He’d put a stop to this, even if he had to hardwire the light to stay on all the time.

  With his head no longer gushing blood down his neck, he put on the pair of leather gloves and brass knuckles he kept down the hall from the rooms his two guests stayed in.

  The best video he’d watched was Harmony doing her exercise routine until she got so tired she passed out. With no concept of time, she must not have realized she had worked out for two and a half hours straight.

  He approached her door, hoping she was asleep.

  Harmony heard the garage door open again and heard the vehicle enter. Something seemed off, but she couldn’t put her finger on it. What she could put her finger on was the piece of trim she’d managed to pull away from the wall, nails and all.

  There was no going back this time. The man would see what she’d done and would not like it.

  She listened for the slight shuffling of his feet down the hall moving toward her door. It was now or never.

  The lock clicked and the door swung in, light blasting into the room momentarily blinding her. She’d forgotten about how her eyes had adjusted to the darkness.

  The man opened the door, saw a lump in Harmony’s sleeping bag, and stepped in, about to call out to her. And then the board came from out of nowhere and struck him in the face. Except it had a nail in it. He screamed and tried to pull the board away. The pain was so much more intense than what he felt when his ear got shot off.

  But someone else pulled it away first, and it hurt worse being ripped out than when it hit him. Before he could scream, he saw the board come at him again.

  He turned away, trying to avoid the end with the nail. Except the middle part that hit him this time also had a nail sticking out. It got him in the chest and he fell to the ground.

  Harmony heard more than saw him fall.

  Her eyes still mostly blinded, she pushed past him and made her way down the hall, screaming, “Maureen! Where are you? Maureen! Maureen!”

  What she found instead of Maureen were the laundry room, the mud room, and a half-bathroom. It was the locked door that stopped her. And it wouldn’t open.

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Detective Powers was on the scene of the torched storage unit by the time Blu and Crome returned. Blu explained what had happened and gave him the plate number for the truck. He would have tried to get something from Gladys, but it was after five and she would already be home from her job at the DMV.

  Blu and Crome listened while Powers called it in.

  The response that it had been stolen didn’t surprise Blu. What did surprise him was that it had been stolen only two hours ago and from a place two blocks away.

  Powers worked a judge over the phone and within five minutes had an approved court order to view all the camera footage from every business in the shopping center. An officer at the courthouse picked up the document from the judge and met them at the store twe
nty minutes later.

  Having had the practice with Detective Wilson in Myrtle Beach for analyzing video, it didn’t take Blu and Crome long to find the truck and the same man, who’d taken the other vehicles, stealing it too. Like in Myrtle Beach, they backtracked his footsteps and were almost stumped when they saw him come at the truck from the store exit.

  Powers was the one who caught him entering the store with a group of shoppers. That took them half an hour, but it was a lucky break.

  The problem was the big box store’s footage did not extend to where he’d parked. They would have to look at footage from all the stores in his path.

  Blu, sensing they really didn’t have time for this, said, “Let’s start at the other end. This guy isn’t stupid.”

  And that’s where they found the SUV he’d used.

  All of them looked out from the store they were sitting in and found the SUV still there. His car. With his fingerprints.

  Powers grabbed his radio as they all ran outside to it. He called in the plate number and came up with an address. The SUV was not reported stolen.

  Blu and Crome ran back to his truck.

  Powers protested but gave up and jumped in the backseat. While Blu drove, Crome punched the address into the truck’s GPS. It was eight minutes away.

  Harmony rammed into the door with her shoulder but it didn’t budge. She did it again and felt her shoulder bruise. A voice from behind the door said, “Yes?”

  It sounded like a groggy Maureen.

  Harmony said, “Maureen! It’s Harmony. We need to get out of here. I can’t get your door open.”

  “Harmony? Is Mick with you?”

  Harmony didn’t want to spook her. She said, “He’s on the way, but we need to get out of here. Is there anything you can use to help me get this door open?”

  Harmony backed up and slammed all her weight into the door. It finally opened and Maureen, standing on shaking legs, looked confused.

  Harmony grabbed her hand and pulled her. “Let’s go.”

  Maureen seemed to struggle.

  The man had a new plan now—cut his losses and run. Things were coming apart. Harmony was loose in the house. Carraway and Crome were now closer to finding out who he was than he preferred. He was hoping to toy with them some more before he got them to his house and killed the women in front of them. Now he’d have to settle for leaving their bodies to be found.

  He opened the drawer in the hall cabinet where he kept one of his guns, a nine millimeter H&K. After feeding a full clip into it, he set off hunting the women, finding them exactly where he thought they’d be, trying to get out the back door.

  Harmony had one of the wooden kitchen chairs raised, ready to break a window.

  The man raised the pistol and aimed.

  Mick Crome rounded the corner from the front of the house. In his hands was a large handgun that looked just like the forty-four the man had lost at Carraway’s house. The biker pulled the trigger twice.

  The man felt his body jerk back and slam into the wall behind him. For a split second, he lost half the feeling in his face before he felt nothing at all as he crashed to the floor.

  Blu rounded the corner after Crome’s second shot and caught the last glimpse of the man falling to the floor, a blood smear down the wall tracing his slide into the abyss. Crome looked at the man, as if waiting to make sure he was dead. When he didn’t move, Crome went over to Maureen, who looked okay but was being supported by Harmony. The big forty-four Powers had given them back dropped to the floor.

  Blu said, “I’ll check the house for others.”

  Handing off Maureen to Crome, Harmony said, “I don’t think there’s anyone else here.”

  It was his experience to make sure. The last thing he needed was someone getting the drop on them.

  Powers stormed through the open front door, the locked one Blu had picked open. He said, “You couldn’t wait, could you?”

  Harmony said, “If they’d have waited any longer, we’d be dead.”

  Blu didn’t feel the need to add anything else.

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Blu stood outside the man’s house. This had been about a case from the past, but not one he would have ever linked to anything. The question of why the man had chosen this time to go after him and Crome might not ever be answered.

  Tess and Patricia showed up, along with Darcy and Brack. But no one could talk to Harmony or Maureen. The detectives were getting their statements.

  While the nightmare kidnapping was over, the aftermath was a real mess.

  Tess interrupted Blu’s thoughts. “I did a quick background on him. The man’s name was Casper Fields. He was head of an eco-terrorist group called Marine Life Marines. Great concept, poor execution, you ask me.”

  “MLM ECO?” Blu said. “Why now?”

  “Because you guys made the news last year,” said a female voice behind them.

  They both turned around and saw Harmony.

  Tess went up to her and gave her a hug.

  “Where’s Maureen?” Blu asked.

  Harmony said, “With Crome.”

  Blu was glad she was okay and talking but still irritated about the whole thing.

  Harmony said, “All I heard, over and over again, was how you two should not be allowed to harm others like you did someone named Grietje. I had a feeling she was his lover or something. But the guy was completely nuts.”

  “What about the mayor?” Blu asked.

  “Unfortunately for him,” Harmony said, “that was a bonus. He hated the mayor, too.”

  Blu said, “The mayor won the votes to get the Cruise Vessel Act passed. And cruise ships started coming into Charleston.”

  Tess asked, “How did the man even know to find you on the mayor’s boat?”

  Harmony, wearing green scrubs because the detectives had taken her clothes for evidence, said, “He was about to abduct me when he overheard me set up a meeting with Ron. It gave Fields enough time to beat us onto the boat. I knew the mayor had a reputation but I figured I could kick his butt if he tried anything. What I didn’t figure was being attacked by Fields.”

  Blu said, “This was just a bad time to be in it for all of us. But especially Ms. Harmony here and Maureen.”

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Sunday morning

  Blu reread the front-page headline on the Sunday edition of the Palmetto Pulse one last time and dropped it, facing up on the coffee table in his living room. It read: Mayor Sails Last Cruise and it was coauthored by Harmony Childs, Darcy Pelton, and Tess Ray. Of course, Patricia published it as a sendoff for her empire.

  Crome asked Blu if it was okay to take some time off and get Maureen out of town for a while. At first, Blu didn’t know what to make of Crome’s request. When the biker went on his three-year sabbatical, the only thing Blu got was a phone call from Key West with Crome saying he’d be gone for a while after he’d already been gone for a month.

  As for Maureen, well, she’d need time to heal. She was a strong woman. She’d have to be to put up with Crome for any length of time, but the man Fields had tried his best to do a number on her. Only time would tell how she’d pull through.

  Harmony’s resilience came from the fact that she had overcome her assailant. Blu’s take was she’d proven to herself that she could handle what life threw at her. God help her next man.

  One of the few good things to come out of this tragedy was the article’s exposure of their peeper source. While they didn’t divulge their source directly, there were enough pictures of his house and camera system taken from the beach that left little doubt.

  Blu dressed in his best button-down shirt and linen slacks and walked out to his truck. The horses, Dink and Doofus in particular, seemed to sense his trepidation and steered clear, eyeballing him from the water trough.

  Hope,
who had taken the job of office manager at Blu Carraway Investigations a little too seriously and had practically moved in to get the place organized, said, “Good luck, Dad.”

  He kissed the top of her head, gave the horses a wave, and drove away, steering his way toward North Charleston.

  As he drove, he contemplated how many different ways this could go and settled on two. Both were scary, but for different reasons.

  Because he hadn’t given himself quite enough time to get to the Church of Redemption, Blu pulled into the rough asphalt parking lot five minutes after the service had started. He found a spot in the very back and locked his truck.

  His phone vibrated in his pocket. It was Tess. Not the distraction he needed right now.

  He let her call go to voicemail and walked to the recently renovated church. Brother Thomas had relocated with his flock as the tourist section of King Street continued past Calhoun Street. The Ravenel Bridge had been both a blessing and a curse depending on which part of the income chart people found themselves. While businesses had moved in, a lot of the people residing in the area had to move out. The tax value of their homes had increased and their landlords had decided to cash in.

  The double doors on the white, clapboard-sided building opened easy enough given their heavy, all wood construction. Someone must be greasing the hinges. The church, air conditioned thank God, was packed. Everyone, mostly African Americans, stood facing the front. Brother Thomas, the church leader, was in his element while standing in front of them. Six-foot-three and three-hundred-and-fifty pounds, the man was a force to be reckoned with. Wearing his trademark black suit and minister’s collar, he spoke about Jesus while a choir serenaded the congregation with background vocals.

  It took Blu a few seconds to spot Billie in the choir. Even if he hadn’t been able to pick her out, it wouldn’t have mattered. After Brother Thomas finished speaking, she moved away from the rest of the choir. The preacher handed her his microphone and she began to sing a song Blu remembered her humming in the shower when they’d still been together, “All In” by the Chapel Band.