Читать книгу When Angels Fail To Fly - John Schlarbaum - Страница 6

After a night of questioning at Police Headquarters, I arrived home to find Linda gone. On the coffee table I found a note and her set of keys.

As the old song goes: Life is made up of Hellos and Goodbyes.

This is Goodbye.

Linda

I made a pointless tour through the house, hoping to find something that would confirm Linda had once lived here. Sadly, no traces of our relationship had been left behind. Gone were the pictures of us together, as well as her clothes and makeup. Most disheartening was the loss of a packet of love letters we had exchanged prior to Linda’s move to Darrien. My letters to her were still neatly stacked on the fireplace mantle but her notes to me were missing. She had been so thorough in her departure the only personal item I found, aside from her note, was the start of a grocery list in her handwriting: Milk

Good old wholesome milk. If that was all I needed, my life would certainly be less complicated, or so I imagined.

I took a seat on the living room couch and tried to collect my thoughts. I badly wanted to believe I had been the perfect cheater; that prior to last evening, no one had been hurt by my lack of control; that no one knew about Samantha and me, right up to when the “Breaking News Report” aired.

Who was I kidding? The dapper plumber believed he was invincible and look where it got him: a one-way ticket to the morgue.

I figured I could locate Linda in three phone calls, but decided against such a plan for the moment. She wouldn’t want to talk and I doubted the words, “Oops, you caught me,” would restore my credibility in her eyes. I was also too exhausted to attempt such calls. Instead, I unplugged the phone and collapsed into bed. When I awoke a few hours later, I found I had missed fifty–six calls, most of which I believed would be from media outlets, looking for a comment to accompany their scandal-tainted storylines.

With pen in hand, my expectations were soon met, as an astounding forty–three of the calls were from TV, newspaper, magazine and radio reporters. Even the great local columnist, Jeremy Atkins of the Darrien Free Press, made an impassioned plea, leaving me his personal cell number for twenty–four hour access. He’d written a nice piece on me in his “World According To Me” column, after the successful conclusion of a missing person case in my old hometown. I wrote down his information for future reference and erased the others.

Of the thirteen remaining calls, five were hang-ups and six were from male jokers wanting to hire me. “Is it possible to get my wife to a hotel room to get laid and then have her killed?” one smart aleck asked. “I heard that was your specialty.” Not surprisingly, none of these comedians left return numbers.

The final two calls intrigued and worried me.

“Ah . . . hi . . . Linda, are you there?” an older female asked in an unsteady voice. “It’s Dolores from the library. We were wondering if you’d be coming in today? With everything that’s happened, if you want to take the day off go right ahead. Could you give us a call when you get this? Thanks.”

The machine’s time display read 11:01 a.m., which meant Linda was two hours late for her regular Thursday shift. I assumed after leaving here that she would have gone straight to work. Even if she had decided to take a personal day, it was unlike her not to inform her supervisor.

Before I could reflect further on Linda’s current whereabouts, the fifty–sixth message began to play.

“Hey, Steve and Linda. It’s Maria. Long time no hear. The reason I’m calling is I need Steve’s opinion about a strange call I received from an old friend of ours. Give me a shout when you have a minute. Take care.”

I stared at the machine as my high school sweetheart, Maria Antonio, left her home and work phone numbers, which I failed to write down. I replayed the message to verify what I had heard was for real. On the second pass I detected something in Maria’s voice that bothered me: there was an undercurrent of concern which she had tried to cover up with her usual bubbly, friendly tone. Something was definitely wrong. I tried unsuccessfully to figure out what could have caused her to become anxious. Until recently the only person capable of such a thing was me, but we hadn’t talked in a couple of months. It was obvious my latest indiscretions had yet to reach the lovely backwoods community of Delta. I wondered if Maria would still want my advice when the news broke. I doubted it.

I erased the messages, which reset the machine’s counter to zero. I toyed with the idea of calling the library but decided I would only further embarrass the two of us if she didn’t pick up. I did the next best thing and called Linda’s cell phone, which automatically went to voice mail.

“Hi, it’s me. I know you don’t want to talk to me right now—and justifiably so—but could you please call Dolores at the library, she sounded a bit worried that you hadn’t come into work.” I paused and then said, “I hope you’re doing okay . . . and I’m sorry for being such an ass.”

I hung up, not knowing what more I could say at this juncture. As I stood from the kitchen table to grab a drink from the fridge, I sensed my legs shaking slightly and felt a tad light-headed. I steadied myself against a nearby wall and concluded my nervous system must be on the verge of collapse; too many conflicting emotions were about to trip the final safety fuse in my strained brain.

Until this moment, I’d had a very laid-back, no-ulcer attitude about the events that had followed Samantha and the Plymouth plumber’s dinner date. Now the reality of the past eighteen hours flooded my entire being.

Your mistress is dead. Your fiancée is gone and your first love needs your help.

Taken separately, these situations would have been stressful enough. Having to deal with them all at once was overwhelming.

I was so disoriented, I barely registered that someone was knocking loudly on the front door. When a second person simultaneously began to knock at the back door, the brain fog I’d been experiencing began to lift. When a man on the front porch yelled, “Darrien City Police. Open this door or we’ll break it down!” the fog completely dissipated.

I made my way through the front room shouting, “I’m coming! Just hold on!”

I opened the foyer door and found myself facing three officers. All had their guns drawn, the barrels aimed directly at my heart.

“Cassidy, show us your hands and slowly step onto the porch,” an officer instructed.

I recognized him as the one who had taken my statement at the motel. “I don’t know what this is about, Sergeant Anderton,” I said while walking very slowly out the front door. “I have no problem answering any follow-up questions you might have but this show of fire power is a bit much, don’t you think?”

“We’ll see,” Anderton replied coolly. “Up against the wall.”

“Are you out of your freaking—”

“Shut up and assume the position!”

I glanced at the steely faces of the two younger cops and then saw a fourth officer—probably the back door knocker—come around the side of the house.

“No problem, guys,” I said as I placed my hands against the porch wall. I spread my legs as Anderton holstered his weapon and stepped toward me.

After an unproductive pat-down, he spun me around by my shoulder. “I want you to sit on that chair right there and don’t make a move.”

Like any law-abiding citizen, I followed the nice officer’s orders and sat in one of two lawn chairs Linda had bought in the spring.

“Want to clue me in on what this is about?” I asked.

Before answering Anderton turned and barked, “Dwyer, Salem—go inside and do a search.”

“Hey, you can’t just enter my house,” I objected. “Where’s your search warrant?”

“We don’t need one when there’s a reasonable belief a crime is in process,” Anderton said with a devilish smirk.

The brain fog began to roll in again.

“What are you talking about?”

“We received a call from Linda Brooks’ employer, who felt your fiancée may be in danger after she didn’t show up for work this morning.”

“I would never hurt Linda. This is ridiculous.”

Anderton cut me off. “Plus, we were in touch with her brother in Bismarck, Chief of Police Burkhart.”

Okay, here we go, I thought. “Acting Chief Burkhart,” I corrected him. “With all due respect, Keith is a moron and would love to pin anything on me. He still thinks I killed his mentor, Chief Gordon, while I was locked up in a prison cell earlier in the year. Did he mention Gordon died from a gunshot wound and that I was unarmed at the time?” Anderton gave me a blank stare. “Of course he didn’t. What a tool.”

“Enough chit-chat, Cassidy. Is Ms. Brooks in the house or not?”

“No,” I answered. “After finding out I’d cheated on her, she left me.”

“And when was this?”

“I don’t know—sometime during the night. When I got home she was gone.”

“When was the last time you saw her alive?”

“What do you mean, saw her alive? Unless you know something I don’t, she’s still very much alive—somewhere.”

“Answer the question.”

“Fine. If you must know, we talked on the phone yesterday afternoon for about ten minutes. Are you happy now?”

“Not until I see Ms. Brooks alive.”

Officers Dwyer and Salem returned to the porch.

“Nothing,” Dwyer stated.

“No sign of the girl anywhere,” Salem chimed in. “We did find this on the coffee table, alongside a set of keys.” As Salem showed Anderton the song inspired kiss-off letter, I was stunned to see he was wearing a latex glove to hold it.

“What is this?” Anderton asked me.

“Don’t they teach newbies the significance of Dear John letters at the academy anymore?”

He ignored me and turned to Salem. “Bag it as evidence.”

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you, Officer Salem,” I spoke up in a surprisingly easy tone that belied the rage welling inside me. “It’s evident your superior skipped the Rules of Search and Seizure class.”

Salem, a young copper I pegged to be about twenty–three, looked to Anderton for some much-needed guidance, which I provided.

“Even though your search of my house was technically legal, having found no evidence a crime was being committed or has been committed here, you must now leave everything exactly as you found it. You can’t take my personal correspondence or any other items—that’s stealing. Furthermore, from what I can recall from my days on the force, stealing is against the law. It would be like attending a noise complaint call, finding no problems at the given address and then confiscating the owner’s CD collection for the heck of it. Just from looking at you, Salem, I can tell you graduated near the top of your class. Think about what I’m saying.”

I sensed I shocked Salem by stating I had once been an officer.

“But this letter could be part of his plan to cover up his crime,” Salem stammered to Anderton.

“And what crime would that be—infidelity?”

“Enough!” Anderton screamed at both of us. “We’ll get a warrant and then bag it,” he addressed Salem sternly.

I hated senior officers like Anderton. He was probably a twenty-year veteran, each year promoted to a higher rank based on “time served” instead of merit. Today, he was trying to impress his young, wet-behind-the-ears officers, for which I gave him full marks. His problem was that from a legal standpoint, his overblown porch bluster would not have a snowball’s chance in hell in a court of law.

“With all due respect, it’s bloody near impossible to get a judge to sign off on a search warrant of a private citizen’s residence, on the basis a librarian failed to show up for work approximately four hours ago. Trust me on this one, boys,” I said to the rookies.

That brain fog I had mentioned previously was now apparently invading the space between the ears of the officers in front of me. The youngsters looked dazed and confused, as their fearless leader stood red-faced with anger. He glared at me, while silently conveying his desire to crack my skull open with his nightstick.

“Why don’t you just tell us where she is then?” Dwyer asked, exhibiting some courage.

“If I knew I’d tell you. Right now, I don’t have a clue. If I did, I could apologize for turning out to be such an idiot.” I paused and added, “But I’m sure you’ll communicate those sentiments for me when you speak to her in the near future.” I looked at each officer present and asked, “So, are we finished here?”

After an impassioned, yet useless, “We’re not finished by a long shot,” speech, Sergeant Anderton and his minions begrudgingly departed, much to the neighbourhood’s relief.

Show’s over. Everybody inside, I wanted to tell all of the sidewalk gawkers.

I carried Linda’s letter into the house and bolted both doors. As I walked toward the fridge to get a cold beer, I noticed my answering machine light blinking.

“Hey Steve-O, it’s your buddy Doogie, the world’s ultimate pig farmer. I was surfing the web and saw an interesting story on the Darrien Free Press page. Do you have a death wish or what, buddy? Anyway, call me on my cell. Do not—I repeat—do not call me at home. Wifey will go ballistic when she finds out about this. Don’t delay, call today. Talkatcha.”

***

The World According To Me

WHEN A GOOD P.I. GOES BAD

Jeremy Atkins

Darrien Free Press

August 14, 1997

A little more than six months ago, Private Investigator Steve Cassidy returned to Darrien a hero—but just barely. Today he is being investigated in a bizarre love triangle gone bad. Very bad.

Cassidy had been hired to learn if a visiting plumber from Plymouth was cheating on his wife. To do so, Steve hired a female accomplice to pose as a willing single businesswoman looking for love in all the wrong places. After dinner the couple returned to the Tecumseh Motel in, where the plumber was hoping to have consensual sex with his attractive date. That is when a problem arose: the woman was paged and informed her father had taken ill. She would have to leave soon. The plumber would have to leave even sooner.

By all accounts, that’s exactly what he did. He left his distressed fake date alone in her room, and returned to his hotel on the other side of the city. Somewhere along the line, however, the Plymouth plumber decided he had to see this wonderful gal one last time.

Now you may be asking yourself, Where was the P.I. during all this activity? Well, after secretly videotaping the couple at a local grill, Mr. Cassidy followed them back to the motel, still recording their every move from the comfort of his heavily tinted van.

When the night’s scheduled fun and games were over, the real show began—this time unscripted. You see, Samantha Jennings was not only good at playing a man’s mistress during work hours but also long after her intended mark left her side.

Maybe that’s why Steve Cassidy hired her in the first place. What better way to cheat on your fiancée then to say, “Of course nothing is happening between Samantha and me. Our relationship is strictly professional. Trust me.”

Regardless of how Mr. Cassidy’s and Ms. Jennings’ relationship began, it ended abruptly with several swings of a hammer and a hail of police bullets.

A few years ago, while employed as a patrol officer, Cassidy turned on several of his fellow officers, in an attempt to save his own hide during a scandalous corruption case, from which that force is still smarting.

Earlier this year Cassidy returned to his old hometown to locate a missing person. Not only did he determine family man Barry Jones had been dead for seven years, he also got the killer to confess to the murder on tape. The killer is now spending the next twenty–five years as a guest of the Sandwedge Penitentiary.

Did I mention that during the same investigation Mr. Cassidy had been arrested for Mr. Jones’ murder? Or that the local police chief was shot and killed by one of his own during a verbal confrontation with Cassidy? For more on that, buy the recently released true crime book Late For Dinner, as newsprint costs don’t allow me to give up the juicier details just now.

Should we feel bad for Steve Cassidy? I don’t think so. Should we feel sad for the homicidal cheating plumber? Nah. The ones for whom we should really feel sorrow for—pity even—are the women involved in this tragedy, who trusted Cassidy: the plumber’s wife, the mistress, and finally his poor fiancée, who was probably the last to know.

At present, Steve Cassidy’s P.I. licence has been suspended by the proper authorities, and the local police continue to probe his involvement in this sordid affair.