Jack Davis Mystery - 01 - Shakedown (35 page)

When I woke up, morning sunlight was streaming into the room. Kate was looking at me, her eyes half dreamy with the residue of anesthetic, the room smelling faintly of disinfectant. I pushed myself out of the chair and stood next to her, her hand in mine.

“Hey,” she said.

“Hey, yourself.”

“Some first date, huh?”

“Yeah. I got shot. You got conked on the head and we still spent the night together.”

“You okay?”

“Just a scrape but the ER nurse said I had a cute ass.”

“Damn, and she got to see it before I did.”

“I’m giving tours on the half hour. Let me know when you’d like to take one.”

Kate took a deep breath. “I guess I was pretty stupid.”

“Don’t be so hard on yourself. You had me convinced that going to see Latrell was a good idea. How do you feel?”

“Like the inside of my head is under construction.”

I looked at the clock next to her bed. It was seven-thirty. “Have you talked to Dr. Benson this morning?”

“He was here a little while ago. He said that I looked better than you did and that I’d be fine. He’s going to send me home tomorrow morning if I can stand up without falling down.”

She squeezed my hand and tears ran down her cheek. I wiped them with a tissue.

“That’s good news,” I said. “It’s okay to cry for good news.”

“I know. I should be grateful but no one understands what it’s like.”

“What don’t we understand?”

“I can’t see them anymore.”

“See what?”

“Micro expressions. Not yours, not his, not the nurses’. Something happened, some brain damage, I guess. It’s like I’m half blind.”

She forced her eyes wide open, searching my face, straining to lift her head closer to mine. Exhausted by the effort, she fell back on her pillow, closed her eyes, and turned away. I smoothed her hair, uncertain what to say.

“It’s probably just the side effects from the anesthetic. You’ll be reading my mind again before you know it.”

I kissed Kate softly on the cheek. She nodded and bit her lip, letting me know that she heard me even if she didn’t believe me. I told her to get some rest and promised to come back later.

I roamed the halls, looking for Dr. Benson, but couldn’t find him. I didn’t know much about head injuries, only that football players and boxers were never quite right after they had had too many concussions. Kate, it seemed to me, had suffered more than a concussion.

When my father had a stroke, the doctor explained that it caused bleeding in his brain. Dr. Benson had said that Kate was bleeding in her brain, but I knew that didn’t mean that she had had a stroke. She didn’t look or act the way my father had, one side of his face paralyzed in a confused mask, his speech slurred, his sense of balance shattered. Yet a part of her brain had been damaged and it wouldn’t matter what label Dr. Benson put on it. Whatever the diagnosis, Kate had lost a part of herself.

I knew what would come next. The doctor would order tests to measure and define her condition. He’d prescribe treatment if there was any and apologize if there was none. Kate’s family and friends would give her advice and encouragement, cutting out newspaper and magazine articles on the latest breakthroughs, urging her to try holistic cures, acupuncture, Eastern medicine, visual imaging, meditation, and chiropractic. Through it all, she would keep asking herself one question, a silent inquiry made in private that no one could answer:
Who am I now?

I needed a shower, a shave, clean clothes, and more sleep. I didn’t have time for sleep but the rest took half an hour after I got home. I found a pair of jeans that were close to being clean and a polo shirt sporting a day’s worth of wrinkles.

I saw the message light ?ashing on my cell phone when I finished getting dressed. Ammara Iverson had called while I was in the shower.

“It’s Jack,” I said when I returned her call.

“I know. I’ve got caller ID.”

“Another amazing advance in crime-fighting technology.”

“Nights and weekends at no extra charge. How’s Kate?”

“She’s got a headache but the doc says she’ll be fine. Probably going home tomorrow.”

“Glad to hear it.”

“Me, too. What’s up?”

“We checked the phone records. If Jill Rice called our office anytime since her husband was arrested, she didn’t do it from a phone in her or her husband’s name. That doesn’t mean she didn’t call. It just means we can’t prove it.”

“Except she denies making the call. At this point, I give her the edge in the who-do-you trust sweepstakes.”

“What’s your read?” Ammara asked.

I had to be careful. Ammara would be suspicious if I suddenly stopped talking to her about the case. I needed information I could only get from her, but I wasn’t ready to tell her about last night and jeopardize Wendy’s slim chances. I needed to know how close they were to picking up Colby, but I didn’t want to ask the question.

“Colby crossed the line. He made a deal with Thomas Rice to buy his house and car, probably as a way to launder drug money. I’d look at Colby’s bank account. And while you’re at it, check the records at Leavenworth. See if Colby visited any of the inmates.”

“Like Thomas Rice?”

“No. Someone else. Marty Grisnik already checked on Rice’s visitors. His wife and his lawyer were the only ones who came to see him. Maybe Colby used someone else to deliver messages to Rice.”

“What about the cash and drugs that were found in Colby’s house? You think they could have been planted?” she asked.

“It’s possible, maybe even likely. Colby was too smart to leave that stuff lying around.”

“Except it wasn’t lying around. It was hidden in a ?oor safe. The U.S. Attorney is pissed. He says the agents who found it didn’t have probable cause for that kind of search, which means it can’t be used as evidence against Colby. Ben Yates told Troy to bring him Colby’s head on a pike.”

“Troy will have to figure out who else is playing this game, starting with Tanja and Nick Andrija.”

“Who are they and what do they have to do with this?” Ammara asked.

“They’re sister and brother and they run a bar and restaurant on Strawberry Hill, the place I told you about where they sell the sausage sandwiches. Colby has something going on with Tanja. It may be connected.”

“What about Marty Grisnik? He may know something.”

“I’ll ask him, but that could be tricky. He’s a stand-up guy but he’s also close to the family and cops aren’t any different than civilians. Everyone gets real defensive about their friends, even the guilty ones.”

“I know you’ll be diplomatic,” she said.

“Do you have anything else? What about Bodie Grant? Did his lawyer cut a deal with the U.S. Attorney?”

“Bodie is still in the wind.”

“Running or twisting?” I asked.

“I’ll let you know when we find him. Any predictions?”

“Yeah. Bodie’s dead.”

“Why so certain?”

“I think someone has been cleaning house. First, Marcellus Pearson, then Javy Ordonez. Bodie was cutting in on Marcellus, maybe with Javy’s help. It makes sense that Bodie is next.”

“You can’t put that all on Latrell Kelly.”

“I’m not. Latrell had his own agenda. He just did the killer a favor.”

There was dead air on Ammara’s end. I didn’t break the silence. She finally did. “You think Colby…” She let the words trail off, unable to complete the sentence.

“I think a lot of things, but the ones I can prove are the only ones that matter.”

“And we can’t find Colby. We don’t even know where to look,” she said.

That’s what I wanted to hear. “What about his friends or family or the dopers he hung out with when he was on the job?”

“His parents live in Utah and say they haven’t talked to him in months. Their phone records bear that out. Turns out he didn’t have any friends, at least none we can find. And the dopers aren’t talking. It’s like he disappeared.”

Colby had crossed his line and now I was crossing mine, withholding information that could lead to his capture. “Keep at it. He’s bound to surface.”

“We’ll be there when he does. What are you going to do?”

“Find my daughter,” I said and hung up.

I paced around my house, stopping in front of the mirror in the front hall, looking at the man staring back at me who had just thrown away what was left of his career. I’d always thought it was easier to talk about risking everything than actually doing it, but I was wrong. I felt no remorse or guilt over not telling Ammara that I’d seen Colby less than twelve hours ago. If anything, I was too pleased with myself.

I went into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator in the hopes that the food fairy had been there and had left me something to eat. It was as empty as the rest of the house. My stomach was talking to me, demanding to be fed.

I’d left my wallet in yesterday’s pants. When I fished it out, I found the ?ash drive Joy had given me. I decided to read what I’d copied from Jill Rice’s and Wendy’s computers instead of the morning paper while I ate breakfast. I grabbed my laptop and headed out, looking for food and answers.

I went back to the same place where I’d had breakfast the other day. The food was good, the price was right, and the Internet access was free.

The place was full and smelled of bacon grease and fresh-baked cinnamon rolls and hot coffee. The chatter at the two-dozen tables clashed with the sounds coming from the open kitchen of banging pots and pans and orders placed and filled. Harried servers dodged between tables, sweating to keep up, their heavy feet slapping on the hardwood ?oor, laying down a percussion track.

A few customers wore athletic shorts and T-shirts stained from just-finished workouts. Those who had contented, full faces and round bellies lingered over the
New York Times.
Three couples in skintight, multihued bicycle gear sat at two tables they’d pushed together, shoveling down pancakes and trading jibes about who had dogged it the last five miles.

Two women, perfectly coiffed and made up, sipped coffee and nibbled on fruit, their tennis bracelets catching the light, their rackets resting beneath their table. A cute, dark-haired woman near fifty sat with a white-haired man, the two of them laughing the way a father and daughter should. One man sat alone, hunched over his plate. He looked up as I passed, his red bleary eyes and haggard jowls testament to an ill-spent night.

A corner booth opened up and I slid in as the busboy wiped the table and the server, a woman with beehive hair, pinched eyes, a sour mouth, and a build that spread out the same way the Mississippi pours into the Gulf scooped up the tip the last customer had left, quietly cursing the few quarters she dropped into her pocket.

“I’ll have two eggs up, crisp bacon, hash browns, toasted rye, and coffee. Hold the apologies to my arteries.”

“Better you hold the jokes, honey. I’ve heard them all,” she said.

By the time my food arrived, I was deep into Jill Rice’s tax records. She and her husband filed separate returns, which was common for spouses who wanted to keep their assets separate. Joy and I never did. Neither of us had had more than lunch money when we got married, and what we’d saved since then, we’d saved together. Money hadn’t driven us apart.

The records Jill gave me didn’t include her husband’s return. Hers was pretty simple. She had interest income from CDs and bonds, dividend income from stocks, and capital gains from the sale of an office building she’d purchased ten years earlier. The interest income and dividends totaled approximately three thousand dollars. She made another hundred twenty-five thousand on the sale of the building. Neither amount was a red ?ag.

I didn’t have her returns from prior years, so I had no idea how the income she’d reported compared to the past or whether she’d sold assets to generate cash for living expenses. A lot of wives who depended on their husband’s income would do that after their husbands went to jail.

Jill’s only other income was from a partnership called PEMA Partners. There was nothing describing what PEMA Partners was or did. I looked online and came up empty. PEMA was private and quiet, operating below the cyberspace radar, just like hundreds of thousands of other partnerships all across the country that invested in raw land, strip shopping centers, bamboo farms in Central America, and other can’t-miss opportunities of a lifetime.

The only documentation Jill had about PEMA was her partnership tax return, called a K-1, that itemized the amount of income attributed to her ownership interest. Whatever PEMA was, Jill Rice owned 25 percent of it, which threw off $868,000 and some change last year, more than enough to support her lifestyle regardless of her husband’s legal problems. She may have filed a separate return just to protect her assets from those problems. That was smart planning and good evidence that she knew enough about what her husband was doing to plan for the worst.

I had been hungry when I ordered but lost my appetite while studying Jill’s return. I had staved off my anxiety over Wendy with the certainty that I’d find a lead that would take me to her. When it became obvious that I hadn’t, my gut began to twist, optimism giving way to pessimism that soaked my insides with fear. I had been holding myself together with string and chewing gum, fighting the shakes, and trying not to let the memories of my lost son and the damnation sure to come if I let history repeat itself and claim my daughter take over all my thoughts.

I took a deep breath. My eggs smelled rotten. I shoved the plate to the edge of the table and opened the files I’d downloaded from Wendy’s computer.

She had e-mail files and photograph files, and other files labeled with every aspect of her life, including work, friends, medical, music, recipes, finances, travel, subscriptions, blogs, yoga, downloads, videos, books, Mom & Dad, MySpace, and one labeled personal, as if there was anything else that could have been left out of the other files. It would take days to study the contents and extract anything useful.