The Big Keep: A Lena Dane Mystery (Lena Dane Mysteries) (24 page)

The door creaked open about a foot and I saw a baby’s head peeking out. Then the baby disappeared, and popped back into view again. Behind the door. In front of the door. By now he was laughing hysterically, and I played along, putting on a huge surprise face for each round of peek-a-boo.
 

After a few minutes Aidan erupted into mad baby giggles, and Delilah finally reached down and scooped him up. She slung him on a hip and opened the door all the way. “Hey,” she said, a little breathlessly. “Oof. He’s getting so big.” Eyeing my stomach, she added, “As are you.”

“Har har,” I said, wrinkling my nose at her. “You got a minute?”

“Of course. Come on in.”

I followed Delilah into the now-familiar front room, which was anchored by two big cream-colored leather couches that didn’t look at all like her style. Between the couches there were enough toys scattered on the floor to fill the Jeep. “Take a seat,” she said, nodding at the couch. She put the baby on the floor, and he crawled happily into the nearest pile of toys. “What’s up?”

I sat. Delilah and I had had coffee a few times since I’d first knocked on her door, usually when I was on my way to or from driving Nate home from Great Dane. I’d learned that she was a graphic designer, that she worked from home during the bits and pieces of her day when the baby slept, and that she kept up this grueling routine by fueling herself daily with so much coffee and diet Mountain Dew that she’d quit breastfeeding just to keep the baby safe from the caffeine. Oh, and that she’d designed her tattoos herself.

“Actually, I have a few more questions about Jason Anderson,” I admitted. Delilah stiffened just the tiniest bit, and I felt a little bad. Lots of people come to regret sleeping with someone, but Delilah had me literally knocking on her door to remind her of her mistake. Again. But I pushed on. “It turns out he was in town a couple of weeks before he died.”

“In Chicago?” Delilah asked in surprise.

“Yeah. Only I’ve seen his credit card bill, and there was no hotel on there,” I explained. “I was just wondering if you know of any friends he might still have in the city, who might have put him up.”

Delilah gave me a suspicious look. “Well he didn’t stay here, if that’s what you’re suggesting,” she sniffed.

I held up my hands deferentially. “No, no, I wasn’t thinking that. I know you would have told me. Besides, from what I know of the guy, he’d never risk bumping into his son on the street.”

Pacified, Delilah stared up at the ceiling tiles, thinking it over. “Well,” she said slowly, “I never really knew any of their friends. The last time I saw the guy was twelve, thirteen years ago. So I don’t think-”

Her voice broke off and she paled suddenly. “Delilah?” I said uncertainly. “Are you okay?”

She shook her head a bit, clearing it, and then said, “Yeah. No, I just mean...” She sighed. “I have a brother.”

I raised my eyebrows. “Older?”
 

She nodded. “Much. I was the ‘surprise’ baby. David was—is—eight years older. He and Jason used to pal around a little bit, but this was like, when they were in high school.”

“Do you know if they kept in touch?” The baby had crawled over to me and began trying to climb up my pants leg. I reach down and let him wrap his tiny fist around my finger, helping to pull him upright.

“It’s possible,” Delilah said doubtfully. “Teddy and I, we don’t keep in touch. Like I send him a Christmas card, and that’s it.” She gestured down at her artfully ripped jeans, rows of leather bracelets, and tight ribbed tank that showed off her biceps. “I’m a little alternative. Teddy...Teddy’s a misdemeanor arrest waiting to happen.”

“Drugs?” I asked.

She nodded. “Pot.
So
much pot.”

“He deals?”

She shrugged an assent.

I carefully helped Aidan off my leg and slipped my finger out of his hand. He looked down at his palm, confused, and then rolled over onto his stomach for a better toy vantage point. I pulled a notepad out of my carryall bag. “I need the address, Delilah.”

On the way to see David Harker, I thought over my earlier meeting with Taper. He had been trying to tell me something when he’d said that Jason hadn’t been killed over something he knew. I was sure of it. But what could that even mean? That he was killed because of something he
didn’t
know? That didn’t make sense. Maybe because of something he did? I decided to talk to whoever had originally hunted down Mason Taper, if he or she was still alive. Maybe they would have some insight into what the hell Taper meant.
 

I called Sarabeth and asked her to look at Mason Taper’s police file. She was distracted with an impending briefing, but promised to look for it within the next few hours in exchange for lunch at a restaurant of her choice.
 

Every major city has its seedy areas. They’re not necessarily the same as the really dangerous areas, where you’re actively afraid for your life. Those parts of town often feature expensive cars and suspiciously competent security. No, I’m talking about the blocks where everything is shabby and worn-down, from the eroded concrete curb to the bent and tattered gutters on the paint-starved buildings. The people in the seedy places are listless and resigned, and the only things that thrive there are the weeds that creep up between cracks in the sidewalk.
 

Delilah’s brother lived in a garden apartment with no garden, right next to an abandoned strip mall, in one of the seediest Chicago neighborhoods I’d seen yet. I got the Browning out of the lockbox and put it in my holster before I got out. The six steps down to his door looked like they’d come out of an Indiana Jones booby trap, so I edged down carefully, with one hand on my belly and the other on the wall.
 

I banged a fist on the chipped-paint wooden door, and after a moment it swung open with a grating creak, revealing a painfully skinny middle-aged man in soiled jeans and a baggy tank top that hung loose on his skeletal frame. He was probably just over forty, but looked a decade older. He had Delilah’s midnight hair and golden skin a shade lighter than hers, but other than that I didn’t see much resemblance. His eyes were bloodshot, pupils dilated, but even if they hadn’t been David’s profession was pretty obvious from the ganja breeze that seemed to be emitting from the house. Tomás, Jason’s neighbor in LA, had been a pot enthusiast. This guy was a dealer who enjoyed his product way too much.

“David Harker?” I asked.
 

“Um...yeah?” The guy rubbed his eye with the heel of one hand. “Who’re you?”

“Huh. I guess I always thought dealing pot was a young man’s game. Way to hang in there,” I said conversationally. He gave me a blank look. I sighed. “I’m sorry, that was rude. My name is Lena, I’m a friend of your sister’s.”

“Oh.” David relaxed, although I wouldn’t have thought he had any more relaxing in him. “Cool, man. You wanna buy?”

“Tempting,” I said, tapping my fingers thoughtfully on my pregnant belly. “But I’m going to have to pass.” I didn’t even want to go into the place. Who knew what that much pot smoke could do to a fetus? “I want to know about Jason Anderson.”

“Oh, I’m not supposed to talk about seeing him,” David mumbled. My eyes widened, which was a mistake because I felt the sting of smoke. “Sorry.”

I nodded my head. “Totes,” I said seriously. I glanced into the apartment behind him, which looked like a college apartment that had gotten really old and sad. “But I’m Jason’s girl, you know, and he told me to pick up some stuff he left.”

“Oh.” David’s eyebrows furrowed, as he thought that over. Really hard. “He didn’t leave anything here, is the thing.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah, man. You can come in and look if you want. I was just testing some new product, you know.”

Six months ago I would have stalked in, pushed him around a little, and gotten the answers I needed. But there was no way I was putting a foot in that place. “Naw, it’s cool,” I drawled. “Jason must’ve gotten mixed up. He’s been a little off lately, did you notice?”

David nodded, a little indignant. “I know, right? Dude was so jumpy while he was here. Closing all the curtains and shit.” David snorted. “Like anyone in this neighborhood wants to look in on this place.”

“You know why he’s been so twitchy?” I asked casually.

David shrugged, leaning into the door frame like maybe his own body couldn’t hold itself up anymore. Which may have been accurate. “I dunno. He really thought someone was watching him. I mean, I’ve been paranoid before, but this guy was
paranoid
.”

I nodded thoughtfully. “Did he tell ever you about the thing in LA?”

Recognition lit David’s eyes for a moment, but he gave me a little shrug. “Not really. He just said he didn’t think he could trust his friend anymore. I think that was part of why he wanted to lay low for a few days.”

“Did he hang out here much?”

“Naw. He mostly just crashed in my spare room. Then he was gone all day, with his computer.”

The laptop that had gone missing when Jason was killed. I was betting that wherever it was, it was in teeny tiny little pieces.
 

I chatted with David for a few more minutes, but there just wasn’t much here. It was interesting that Jason thought he was being watched, and that there was someone he couldn’t trust in Los Angeles. But I wasn’t sure yet how those things fit with what I already knew. I thanked Stoner David for his time, although I wasn’t getting the sense that it was particularly valuable.

As I was driving home, Sarabeth called me back.

“Well, the good news is, I found the file,” she said uneasily. “There’s not much in it that you couldn’t find on the Wikipedia page, though.”

“Maybe the detectives who caught him had more in their personal notes,” I reflected. To Sarabeth, I said, “Who was it?”

“Well, one of them, Sanchez, he died of pancreatic cancer a few years back,” she hedged.
 

There was a long pause, and I finally prompted, “Sarabeth?”

She sighed and said reluctantly, “The other one was Robert Flanagan. Senior.”

30. You Don’t Have a Good Side

Of
course
it had to be Bobby Flanagan’s fucking father.

 
I’d met him three or four times in person. Once had even been under polite circumstances, when Bobby had introduced us at academy graduation. All the other times, however, were when he was accusing me of being a lying whore who’d slept with Matt Cleary and then framed him.
 

In Robert’s eyes, it was a pretty simple case: I was just a young, reasonably attractive woman accusing a decorated senior officer of rape and assault. My only evidence was the testimony of other young women who already had a good reason to hate cops—they were prostitutes. Therefore, I must be a disgruntled former lover, and I was using my fellow whores to destroy the reputation of one of CPD’s finest.
 

When Cleary came after me in the parking garage security cameras had caught our whole fight, and even Robert Flanagan had to concede that Cleary struck first, with intent to kill me. His version of events, however, was that I’d driven Cleary insane with my unfounded accusations, Cleary had tried to come and reason with me, and things had “gotten out of hand.” Seriously. That was what he’d argued: in the papers, in the CPD, and to anyone else he could get to listen. Bobby Flanagan was like a thorn in my side. His father was more of a dagger in my back.

And an hour later, I was staring at his front door.

I had put the Jeep in park and was looking at the modest little brownstone in front of me, my heart thudding loudly against my ribcage. The baby swam in excited somersaults in my belly, probably disturbed by my anxiety. I really,
really
didn’t want to go knock on that door. The old man was the retired CPD commander of the 6th district, and a charter member of the Lena Dane Hate Club. He was also the detective who’d arrested Mason Taper in 1982. I managed to will myself out of the Jeep, steeling myself on the way up the sidewalk. I’d swung by the office on the way, and now I had an office packing box tucked under one arm. I summoned all my courage and stubbornness, and used it to knock on Flanagan’s door.

He popped it open with a glare, an angry old man in a plaid shirt and navy sweater vest. “You,” he said accusingly. “What the hell are you doing at my home?”

“I brought your toys back,” I said brightly. Then I upended the box right in front of him, spilling four or five packages’ worth of mutilated Barbie dolls right at his feet. Shocked, he took an involuntary step backward, away from the door. “We need to talk,” I said sweetly. I stepped over the Barbie parts and right past the elder Flanagan. Into the enemy’s lair.

Flanagan started sputtering, but I ignored him and stalked into the living room. The effect was probably ruined when I had to painstakingly lower myself onto the ugly plaid sofa, but oh well. He was hurrying toward me, already reaching out to grab me, when he got a good look at my stomach. He recoiled, not about to manhandle a pregnant woman.
 

To cover his discomfort, the elder Flanagan went back and slammed the front door shut, sending a spray of Barbie heads skittering on the floor. I smiled. The Barbies and the pregnancy had thrown him off his game. That’s the thing about hardcore sexists: they’re too used to doing things their way. A woman behaving in a way that doesn’t fit their view of the world gets them all antsy in their pantsies.

Robert Flanagan stomped over to the couch and loomed over me. “You have no right–” he began.

“Sit down, Bob,” I said calmly. Well, at least I was going for calm. I was hoping he wouldn’t see through it.
 

His face turned an exciting shade of purple. “You can’t talk to me like that in my own home, you little slut,” he exploded. “Get the hell–”

“Mason Taper,” I replied.

Robert stopped mid-rant, confusion spreading over his face. “What the hell does he have to do with anything? Don’t change the subject, missy-”

“I wasn’t,” I interrupted again. “You’re the one who keeps changing the subject. I’m here to talk about Mason Taper, after which I would be delighted to never see your fat stupid face ever again.” Okay, so much for the mature high road. But he’d called me names first, dammit.