Double Trouble (Dev Haskell - Private Investigator Book 10) (26 page)

“No,” Aaron said. “First of all if he plans to phone or somehow make contact, this is the place to be. Secondly, she needs to be here, in surroundings that are familiar to her. And, well there’s still the hope that he might just bring the girls back here. I’m guessing she’s probably had just a couple hours of sleep, fitful at best. How are you doing, by the way?”

“Me? I look worse than I feel at this stage. Sacking out for a bit seemed to help. Another twenty-four hours and I should be back to normal.”

“Whatever that is.”

I ignored that last bit. “Now, what can I be doing to help?”

Aaron looked at me and shook his head. “Nothing. Please. In fact, the less you do the better. Well, unless you remember something that slipped your mind last night when Ditter interviewed you.”

“Ditter, that was the guy’s name? I mean he told me, probably more than once, but I was having trouble focusing to tell you the truth.”

“Yeah, Jack Ditter, he’s good, Dev. So, have you been checked out?”

“Me? The paramedics were here, they gave me something for the headache, Twenty-four hours will probably be the best thing for me, that and getting those little girls back home safe and sound.”

“You should see a doctor, Dev.”

“Once those girls are back, I will, I promise.”

“I mean this as a friend, but I don’t want you involved. This is delicate, we’re working it the best we can. No one can do a better job, Dev we’ve got the resources. So please, do not get involved. Got it?”

“Yeah, not to worry. I understand, I’ll stay cool.”

“Please, see that you do.”

“I said I would, I promise.”

“I’m holding you to that, Dev.”

Aaron was still there when Isabella came out of her bedroom. She looked and sounded groggy almost like she’d been drugged which, upon reflection, I guess was pretty much the case. Officer Patty said her good-byes, told us to hang in there and was replaced by another female uniform, Officer Vang.

“Let’s keep it simple, just call me Tai,” she said. Then she made a fresh pot of coffee and opened up a box filled with croissants and placed it on the dining room table.

“I thought you cops just ate doughnuts.”

She shot a smile at me that was meant to be anything but.

Aaron reached in and grabbed a croissant, then took a sip of hot coffee. It dawned on me that he’d been working through the night and was as exhausted as Isabella looked and at least as tired as I felt, he’d had absolutely no sleep.

The uniform with Aaron removed his jacket, nodded at Isabella and said, “I’m Gary Johnson, I’ve got a list of people we’ve been talking to. I’d like you to take a look and see if there might be anyone we’ve missed, maybe a name that might pop up who we hadn’t considered or should reconsider.”

Aaron sat down at the dining room table and rubbed his face as Johnson handed a two page list across the table. He looked as tired as Aaron and I guessed he’d probably been rousting folks out of bed for the past ten hours, not exactly the best way to win a popularity contest.

Isabella quickly ran down the list then turned to the second page and said, “To tell you the truth, I only recognize one or two of these names. I think this Luci O’Kelly is his mother, isn’t she? And this other guy, Arthur Goodwin, isn’t that his lawyer?”

Johnson nodded. “Mrs. O’Kelly is in an assisted living facility, Alzheimer’s, she was unable to be much help. Mr. Goodwin is with the public defenders office and was the court appointed attorney in an aggravated assault case. We’ll be talking to him first thing this morning.”

I glanced over at the clock on the stove, it was only twenty minutes before seven. If Goodwin had any sense he was still home in bed.

“Let me give you an update on what we have so far, which isn’t much, but that doesn’t mean it’s necessarily bad,” Aaron said

A cloud seemed to cross over Isabella’s face.

“Based on what we’ve learned up to this point, it would appear the girls abduction was a spur of the moment incident. It may have been triggered by Mr. Haskell’s appearance at the front door or perhaps you’re not being home. We don’t know. The positive side of this is that it means this was not a planned undertaking. What that suggests is there is an increased possibility that the girls will be released, possibly sooner rather than later. We are continuing our search and in fact redoubling our efforts. We have a statewide BOLO out for Carlos O’Kelly as well as the girls and just to be on the safe side we’re extending that across a five state region. I know it’s difficult if not near impossible, but the best thing you can do for both you and especially for the girls, is to remain calm and stay positive until we get them back, and we will get them back.”

Chapter Five

Aaron and Officer Johnson
remained at Isabella’s for a while longer. By the time they were ready to go there were easily a half dozen officers in the place monitoring the equipment set up to triangulate cell phone towers, tape calls and God knows what else. Different from what we used to see in the movies, Isabella was like the majority of the under fifty US population and didn’t have a land line.

In fact, she’d gotten a completely different cell number because she had received some harassing phone calls from Carlos prior to his entering rehab. The police were thinking her new phone number might have been the event that precipitated his visit last night.

Aaron pulled me aside and said, “I’m about to take off. I could drop you down at Regions Hospital and let you get checked out. I’ll have someone standing by to give you a lift home once you get the okay.”

“Thanks, but I’m okay, really.”

“I think you should get checked out, Dev, just as a precaution if nothing else.”

I shook my head and made a mental note that I didn’t feel like I was going to throw up when I did it and took that as a sign of improvement. “Thanks, but could you just drop me home? I’d really appreciate it. I need to get cleaned up, change clothes, plus I need to figure out what the hell I’m going to do for transportation.”

“I can do that on one condition.”

“Relax, I already promised I wouldn’t get involved. How the hell would I even do that, Aaron? Right now, I’m on foot for Christ’s sake. And just for the record, I feel like I’m running at about fifty percent.”

“As long as we understand one another.”

“I got it, honest. You guys just get those two little girls back home safe and sound.”

I had my head titled back and my eyes closed for most of the ride home. I focused on keeping my stomach down every time Aaron rounded a curve or slowed to a stop. Neither one of us had spoken until we were turning onto Selby next to the Cathedral.

“We get anything breaking on this, Dev I’ll let you know. Just remember your promise.”

“How the hell can I forget? You’re reminding me every other time you say something.”

“I’d still like to get you down to the ER.”

“Yeah, and I’d like to get a back rub from Officer Patty, but that ain’t gonna happen either.”

“Only ‘cause there’s a couple hundred guys in line ahead of you. If that’s the way you’re thinking you’re starting to come back around.”

“Like I said, twenty-four hours will do a lot for my recovery.”

“Anything comes to mind or happens on your end, you give me a call. I’ll answer right away, I promise,” he said then pulled to a stop in front of my place.

“Thanks, but the first, in fact the only priority is getting those two little girls back to Isabella.”

“Then get the hell out of my car and let me get back to work,” he smiled.

“Now it’s my turn to say you look like shit and could use some rest.”

“In time, Dev, all in good time.”

Chapter Six

I had a key
to my front door hidden behind the drain pipe on the garage. Mercifully I’d returned the thing to the hiding place the last time I used it. I stepped in through my front door thinking it felt awfully good to be home. That feeling lasted just about a nanosecond as I rehashed all that had gone on over the last sixteen to twenty hours.

I needed a long hot shower and then some serious sack time if I was going to be of any help to anyone.

I’d been standing in the shower for quite some time, just letting the water run over me. It was hot, steaming and it felt good to at least figuratively wash away recent events. But, my head still hurt and I couldn’t get those two little girls out of my mind. God help Carlos if anything happened to those little angels, I’d hunt him to the ends of the earth.

I actually felt a slight chill, even standing under the hot shower and thought that probably signaled it was time to just hit the sack. I turned the water off, stood there dripping for a brief moment then pulled the shower curtain back.

“Looks like you could probably use a towel.”

‘Fat Freddy’ Zimmermann grinned then held out his hand and nodded at the towel bar. One of two huge thugs wedged in the doorway pulled my towel off the bar, placed it in his hand, and then he handed it over to me.

“You don’t mind me saying you look like shit, Dev.”

“I think I’ve heard that once or twice before. Just what the hell are you guys doing here?”

“Fortunately the front door was open so we just thought this might be the perfect time to stop in and say hi. Oh yeah, and Tubby would like to talk to you, like fucking right now.”

Tubby Gustafson was St. Paul’s version of a home grown crime boss. He was also a psychotic whacko, which was probably why ‘Fat Freddy’ got along with him so well. Last I heard, Freddy was serving as Tubby’s enforcer, although given the size of the two Neanderthal thugs standing behind him, Freddy probably didn’t have to get his hands too dirty on most days. We had at least a passing working relationship, Freddy and I. He pretty much did what he wanted and I pretty much tried like hell to stay out of the way.

“Mind if I put some clothes on?”

“I think we’d all prefer if you did. By the way, what in-the-hell did happen to you? You look like shit. Another bout with the sidewalk or did someone’s husband come home early?”

“Something like that.” I said then took the towel and began to dry off.

“No offense, but I’ll take a pass on this show, think I’ll just hightail it downstairs. Tubby doesn’t like to be kept waiting so help him get dressed,” Freddy said to the thugs then exited the bathroom. I could hear the stairs creak as he made his way downstairs, no doubt intending to raid my refrigerator.

“Who the hell can you please with that little thing?” the thug leaning against the doorframe asked then they both laughed.

“Sorry boys, guess you’re just not my cup of tea. But, hey, whatever you do on your own time is none of my damn business.”

They gave one another a confused look then growled, “Get your ass out here and get dressed, jerk-off.”

My headache had returned to full throbbing force by the time we walked back to the kitchen. There were already a couple of candy bar wrappers crumpled up on my kitchen counter. Freddy held about a dozen Oreo cookies in his hand. Two or three were already crammed into his mouth.

“God,” he said spitting cookie crumbs across the kitchen counter. “Can’t really say you look much better, but I guess it will just have to do. You know how Tubby is.”

Unfortunately, I did know and it wasn’t doing much to improve my mood. “Can you tell me what this is about? Give me some idea what it is I was supposed to have done.”

“I can give you about a hundred thousand reasons. So if I were you, I’d start thinking pretty damn hard. Come on, let’s go,” Freddy said then snatched up what was left of my package of Oreo’s on his way to the front door.

Chapter Seven

The ride to Tubby’s
private dining room was uneventful, as long as you didn’t mind being wedged between six hundred plus pounds of degenerate thuggery. We unfortunately seemed to make the drive in record time and pulled into the no parking zone directly in front of the opulent double doors leading into The Derby, Tubby’s restaurant.

The door on the right side had a piece of plywood where the glass should have been and there were two guys dressed all in white getting ready to install a large glass panel in the space. One of them was busily unscrewing the piece of plywood. A set of sawhorses stood on the sidewalk with a beveled glass panel resting across it. Brown paper that had been wrapped around the glass was torn off and lay crumpled on the sidewalk.

A thug leaning against the building straightened up then hurried over to open the car door for ‘Fat Freddy’. As he oozed out of the front seat the empty, crumpled Oreo package fell onto the sidewalk. The workman with the drill stepped aside and gave Freddy a nod as we entered The Derby. I followed between the two Neanderthals and the workman sort of shook his head when he looked at my battered face as if to say, “I wouldn’t want to be in your shoes.”

I felt that was a pretty accurate assessment.

The Derby’s dim interior featured larger than life bronze colored, plastic statues in a sort of ‘Roman’ motif positioned about every ten feet along the exterior walls. Naked women in various stages of toasting with a stemmed wine glass, each statue had a black blindfold tied securely over their eyes. It seemed vintage Tubby and I tried not to contemplate any further pictures of Tubby’s debauchery.