No Safe Place (Joe Hunter Thrillers Book 11) (9 page)

‘Bryony and Holker struck out with Parker Quinn,’ I told Rink the following morning as we ate breakfast in Clayton’s kitchen.
Clayton had seen Cole on to the school bus, before heading off to his office, giving us the opportunity to speak in private. ‘But between me and you, I warned Bryony that they were concentrating on the wrong man.’

Rink had arrived at the Clayton house about ten minutes earlier, ready to spell me while I got some rest, but that wasn’t why I’d asked him over. I’d told him about last night’s antics, the mystery man turning up at the gate and how Clayton had been sucker punched to the ground. Rink’s mouth had turned down at the corners, and then he’d said something about nobody being infallible, to which there was no argument. I described the assailant, including what little detail Clayton had added concerning the spider web tattoo, and the Toyota with its distinctive bumper stickers. I also mentioned that Bryony had initiated a “Be On the Look Out” with law enforcement agencies, but that I didn’t expect the car to be found considering half of Tampa PD had been engaged in hunting the home invasion crew at the time. She hadn’t mentioned last night that she and Holker were on their way to lift Parker Quinn when they’d detoured to the scene of the attempted robbery, but she’d rung me first thing to tell me that Quinn was again in the wind.

‘I thought they had some decent circumstantial evidence with the hair pulled from the glove,’ Rink said.

‘So did Holker. But he jumped in with both feet and questioned Quinn before they got the results of the DNA work up. Quinn’s legal brief tore holes in Holker, and - even if there was a match – Quinn had a plausible answer. He said he’d regularly visited Clayton’s home, so the hair could easily have been transferred to the glove from Clayton or me after I found it. You can bet your ass Holker’s thinking the same thing; he already had a go at me about seizing the glove instead of leaving it to the pros. Quinn’s lawyer has already demanded that the glove and hair are both deemed inadmissible in evidence. Bryony expects he’ll get his way.’

‘You don’t think Quinn has anything to do with Ella’s murder or the harassment either.’ Rink was no fool, and he’d come to the same conclusion as me, and based on far less facts than I’d already learned. ‘So what? You think the real murderer is setting Quinn up as a patsy.’

‘Yeah. I thought Bryony was thinking along those lines too, but now she’s got it in her head Quinn has probably put this other guy up to harassing Clayton, to divert attention off him: but only as the stalker, not the murderer. The thing is there was no evidence found on his phone or computer to suggest it. They got the results from the examination of all the equipment seized from Quinn’s place last night, and there was no unusual correspondence found. None of the kit had the same IP number as the computer used to send the emails to the police either. Like I said, they struck out.’

‘Bryony’s a good detective; she’ll come to the right conclusion once she’s followed the clues. She’ll get her man in the end.’ Rink popped a chunk of bagel slathered in cream cheese in his mouth and chewed slowly, while eyeing me steadily. He was still playing at matchmaker.

‘Hopefully I’ll be able to help her,’ I said, not taking the bait. ‘But things are moving too slowly for me. You warned me this was an easy job, but I’m finding it difficult sitting on my thumbs like this.’

‘You wish I’d never gotten you involved, brother?’

‘It’s not the work. The money’s good and we can’t turn it down, Rink. Plus Cole deserves to be protected, but I can’t help feel he isn’t the one in danger. I guess my problem is with his dad. He’s paying top dollar for protection that he blatantly disregards, and makes no pretense that he appreciates me being here.’

‘Maybe you challenge his machismo. Some guys are like that. They don’t want to be seen as weak, or to admit they need help, and they respond negatively to it.’ Rink toyed with the remainder of his bagel, his large hands ripping small morsels from it, but dropping them uneaten on the plate. ‘That’s why he makes all this about looking out for the boy, not him. I bet you feel like a glorified babysitter right now.’

I raised my eyebrows briefly. ‘Like I said, I don’t mind watching the boy, but I need to be doing more, Rink.’

Rink smiled slowly. ‘I wondered how long it would take. You never were very good at sitting around waiting for something to happen.’

He had that right. Whereas Rink had the patience of a boulder, I always was too impulsive for my own good. Before we’d been enrolled into Arrowsake, I’d been with 1 Para, the airborne infantry regiment whose motto was “Ready for anything”. The motto suited me, because I always felt like my fuse was lit and I was apt to explode at any second. While recuperating from the recent events up in Washington State, the most frustrating thing about working my way back to fitness was the temptation to leap back into the fray, knowing full well that I couldn’t. Rink had eased me back into work with this job, thinking it was untaxing, but it wasn’t having the desired effect.

‘I’m itching to get moving, to do
something
worthwhile,’ I admitted.

‘You need to get some sleep,’ Rink told me.

‘I’m fine. Maybe I shouldn’t admit it, but I napped on and off last night in a chair. I couldn’t sleep now if I tried.’

Pushing aside his plate, Rink said, ‘Well there doesn’t appear to be much happening here just now. But I’ll hang on, keep an eye on the property: won’t look good if another brick gets chucked through a window. So you can go do whatever you gotta do.’ He held up a finger. ‘Can I ask what you have in mind, brother?’

‘I’m planning on knocking on a few doors, maybe twisting a few arms while I’m at it. As you know there are people who’ll talk to us who’d never crack their lips for a cop…with the correct motivation.’

‘You planning on walking?’

My car was still parked on Rink’s drive at Temple Terrace.

He fished in his jeans pocket, rattled the keys to the company Ford on the table. ‘I’m only glad I didn’t come in my Porsche,’ he said.

‘I’ll bring it back in one piece,’ I promised, and cupped the keys in my hand before he changed his mind. I stood.

‘Before you go…’

‘Don’t tell me you want me to wash the dishes first,’ I joked.

‘No, just wondered what it is you aren’t telling me.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Joe, brother, I know you too well. You’ve something spinning around in your fat head, and I know it’s bothering you. You’ve a theory on what happened here, right?’

‘It’s too soon to say, Rink.’ I offered him a sad smile. ‘Let’s just say it’s more a hypothesis than it is a theory just now. Soon as I’m more certain about the way my thoughts are heading I’ll tell you everything, OK?’

‘And there was I thought we shared all our secrets,’ he said.

‘Only the sordid ones,’ I said, and he grinned. ‘No, I don’t want to put anything in your mind that turns out wrong. But as soon as I know I’m on the right track, you’ll be first to know.’

Rink stood from the counter. ‘When’d Clayton say he’d be back?’

‘He didn’t. Just that he’d stuff to do at his office. The impression I get is he doesn’t like to spend too much time in my company.’

‘Good,’ Rink said, and nodded to himself as he mulled things over. ‘While he’s out I’m going to do a little digging round of my own.’

I’d been tempted to make a search of the house myself. After Ella’s murder, the house and grounds had been subject to an extensive search by the police and crime scene investigators, but once it was completed there’d been nobody back to conduct any kind of follow up investigation. I didn’t doubt the investigators had done an exemplary job, but they were searching for clues in respect of the original crime only, but of nothing that had happened since.

‘If you find anything interesting, give me a shout, will you?’

‘You too, buddy,’ said Rink.

I left him to it, got in the Ford and went up the drive. The motion sensors on the gate opened it for me and I went up the track and onto the highway, and following an internal instinct turned right. I’d no exact destination in mind, but I did have a few ideas. When anyone wanted to off-load stolen property in Tampa there were any amount of customers in some of the seedier neighbourhoods. The cops would already have pulled on their snitches, trying to identify who the home invasion crew were shifting their ill-gotten wares through, and had probably come to the same conclusion as me: their stolen product was being shipped out of state. A missing gold wedding band wouldn’t require transportation in a container truck. There were plenty of “We’ll Buy Your Scrap Gold” outfits in the Tampa Bay area, but I didn’t think Ella’s jewellery would have passed through them – there was usually CCTV surveillance in most of those stores, a paper or digital trail too – and I guessed the murderer would have chosen a different type of purveyor of used gold. Coming to a decision, I went in search of the nearest friendly neighbourhood fence.

There’s plenty said about the long arm of the law, but it’s not often that the weary feet get a mention.
Private Investigators used to be called gumshoes, and that’s for good reason. Brass tacks investigating means getting your feet on the ground, and knocking on doors where you’re not exactly a welcome visitor. I’m uncertain how many miles I’d put in, or how many flights of stairs I’d climbed, but I wouldn’t need my customary run along Mexico Beach to match the steps I’d taken. In the five hours since I’d left Rink, I’d met with four backstreet fences who I knew of, and two that had come up through questioning. None of them gave me any leads to follow on the gold ring, but the last fence I spoke with was known as “Emilio the Blimp” and he said something that sent me on a different path.

Emilio looked younger than he was. He was fat. I’m not being unkind for the sake of it; he was seriously overweight, to a point that the skin on his face ballooned so that it stretched out his wrinkles making him more youthful-looking. He had a neck beard, and a spray of acne on his forehead, and where his voluminous shirt gaped at his waistline the flesh was as pallid as a dead squid. He didn’t carry his weight well and relied on a stick to get around. Despite his unhealthy carriage he seemed gloriously unaware he was killing himself one double cheeseburger at a time, and acted with the confidence of someone certain they were immortal. He had a large personality to match his girth, and sometimes that was all it took to attract others into his circle, like a planet’s gravity draws moons and satellites into its orbit. When I met with Emilio four other guys circled him, and not one of them understood what the ultimate fate was of orbiting dirtballs. Usually they got burned up as they continued to fall or they were engulfed in searing flame when their host exploded. Crappy metaphor or not, it was poor judgement when they’d allowed themselves to fall under Emilio the Blimp’s influence.

My sleuthing had brought me to what might once have been referred to as a breaker’s yard, and it still resembled one, with stacks of rusting cars piled high on all sides, awaiting the crusher. The ground underfoot was pure poison, black with perished oil, shredded rubber, and God knew what else. It was gated and fenced in with chain link, and once inside the gate there was a wooden shack, adjacent to an industrial-sized weighbridge. At the back of the junk-strewn compound were another set of sheds, and a red brick-built house that would’ve been at home on a British train station platform. For all intents and purposes it appeared that Emilio dealt in scrap iron, but his sideline was in precious metals, and he did his business with the expensive stuff back there in the most secure building. Not that I made it as far as the house before I was met by one of Emilio’s lickspittles. It wasn’t the man who stopped me in my tracks but the pit bull terrier he held, that strained at its leash to get at my throat. Two more of his guys stood outside the house, one of them clutching the handle of a baseball bat. The other was subtler about where he kept his weapon, but I noticed the handle of some kind of knife in his belt as he turned to call inside the open door. The fourth of Emilio’s lackeys stepped outside, and he was nodding into a cell phone as he confirmed I’d arrived.

Apparently the last fence I’d spoken to had phoned ahead to warn Emilio I was coming. Honour among thieves wasn’t an admirable trait, I decided, when it brought complications like the presence of a welcoming committee with an attack dog.

‘I come in peace,’ I said, holding aloft both empty hands, and grinning to add emphasis to my witty announcement. ‘Take me to your leader.’

‘Don’t move another step, pal,’ warned the dog-handler, and he gave the dog an inch or two of leash. The mutt jumped, dancing on its back legs to get a few more inches closer to my neck. Its front paws scrabbled at dead air, its teeth gnashing ineffectively, probably while it wondered what my blood tasted like.

‘Trust me,’ I told the lanky, greasy-haired punk, ‘if I didn’t have to I’d be happy. I already trod in two mounds of crap on my way through the yard. Get that dog trained not to shit in its own bed, why don’t you?’

The dog looked as insulted as its handler did. It dropped to all four paws, its broad head low to the ground as it growled deep in its throat. Its handler made a similar sound and I stared him in the eye, dropping all pretenses at joviality.

I always was a dog person. If my work didn’t often take me all over the country and beyond, I’d like a dog as a companion, and my greatest dream was to send for Hector and Paris, who I’d left back in England with my ex-wife. They’d adore the beach, love running the sands with me, but I knew it would never happen. Diane would no sooner allow it than she would giving up our real children - if we’d ever been blessed with them. Under different circumstances I’d like to have patted the dog, maybe have it lie down and give it a belly rub; I really didn’t want to hurt the mutt. But I didn’t love dogs enough to let them rip out my throat on command.

‘I’m not leaving until I speak with Emilio,’ I said, ‘so he might as well dispense with the theatrics and come on out. Either that or you-’ I took in all four dopes with one sweeping glance ‘-get the hell out of my way and let me go inside.’

‘Are you deaf, buddy?’ It was the guy with the baseball bat who took the lead. ‘You don’t take another step.’

To show his warning didn’t faze me, I stepped forward, and I kept on going.

‘Hey!’ The dog handler actually pulled back, keeping the dog between him and me, and the dog reared on its back legs again. I was no dog behaviourist, but even I could tell it wasn’t an immediate attack mode, though it would take only a split-second for the bull terrier’s jaws to snap onto me if it was loosed.

‘How does Emilio ever conduct business with you bozos around?’ I challenged.

‘You aren’t here on business,’ the man with the cell phone said, as he trod deliberately down the steps. ‘You’re here poking your nose in ours.’

‘I don’t give a shit about you,’ I told him. ‘My business is with Emilio.’

‘You’re a fucking detective,’ said the guy with the knife in his belt. ‘You’re that fucker that offed Mick O’Neill and got away with it.’

‘Buddy,’ I told him, ‘you only got one of those things right. Anyone who knows me would tell you I’m a pretty crappy detective.’

I waited for them to process my words, to figure out what exactly I was admitting to, and what the consequences might mean to them. Mick O’Neill was a dangerous gangster; they were just pathetic street punks. To add weight to my warning, I nodded at the nearest door. ‘Do I go in that way, or does one of you want to pick a window and I’ll follow you in?’

I hoped that they’d see sense and back down from a confrontation. They were four, and not forgetting the dog. I was one man. They knew of me by reputation, but the stories they’d heard were probably delivered with a great amount of doubt and disparaging comments. They were unconsciously doing the math, and coming to the wrong conclusion. I was woefully outnumbered, and despite my confidence, I couldn’t possibly do a thing against them before I was overwhelmed. They shared glances and nods, formulating their plan of attack, and the guy with the knife even adjusted it in his belt.

‘What?’ I demanded. ‘If I don’t leave you’re going to beat the crap out of me? That the idea, boys?’

‘You’re asking for it, buddy,’ said the one with the cell phone, and the others agreed with grunts and curses.

‘No. I’m asking to speak to Emilio. Do any of you really want to get into this because of a stolen wedding ring?’ As I spoke steadily, I again looked each of them in the face. They’d spread out in a loose crescent before me. The dog handler was to the extreme left, baseball bat guy to the far right. Cell phone and the knife guy stood almost shoulder-to-shoulder in front of me, blocking access to the redbrick house. They didn’t realise it, but they’d stood exactly where I wanted them. I stepped directly up to the two in the middle and it forced them apart, and to turn side-on to keep an eye on me while I still faced the door. One of them blocked the dog, the other the baseball bat. Cell phone guy was obviously marginally higher in the pecking order, because the knife man glanced at him for instruction. I purposefully directed my question at Knife. ‘You did hear that the ring was stolen during a robbery, right? That an innocent woman was murdered for it?’

‘Like I give a shit about some rich bitch out in the burbs?’ he snorted, but I noted the discomfort worming its way behind his features.

‘You’ll give a shit when you’re all pulled in on a homicide charge,’ I told him. ‘You maybe didn’t do the robbing, but the cops might think otherwise. Emilio, for all they know, ordered the robbery, and you were the guys who kicked your way inside and shot that defenceless woman so you could take the ring from her finger like a bunch of ghouls.’

‘We had nothing to do with…’ Knife man shut up at a warning hiss from Cell man.

I glanced down at the guy’s belt. ‘I know that. I can see you don’t use a gun. You prefer to stick people with a blade?’ I sneered at him. ‘Nah, I think that’s only for show. You ever stuck a guy for real? Looked him in the eye, watched the life ebb from him even as the blood pools around his feet? You haven’t, have you? I have. It’s not a nice way to die. See, when you gut them the stink is almost enough to make you puke, and that’s before you see their intestines sliding out.’

The colour washed from Knife’s features. He made the mistake of lifting his left hand to wipe at his face. His hand obscured his vision, while his bent elbow was in the way of his right hand if he reached across for the hilt. In that instant I plucked the knife from his belt. He didn’t know I’d liberated his weapon until he felt it prick under his left earlobe.

‘Quick jab here,’ I went on, ‘and your brain is cabbage.’

I put a bit more pressure on the knife. But stabbing him was never my plan. It was making him shit his pants, and I’d take literally if it came to it. He jumped as if I’d stuck the knife through his neck, and the only way to escape the blade was to go sideways, into Cell phone man. Now I had two of them positioned between the dog’s jaws and me, but that advantage was only for the briefest window of time. In my periphery I caught movement. The baseball bat was being wound up for a crack at my skull. But I’d manoeuvred its wielder so that to take an effective swing he had to first turn to his right, pull back the bat and then sweep it round again as he launched himself across the intervening space. I only needed to take a step sideways and he’d miss, but that would only encourage him to take a second swing. I had to stop him before he got up a good rhythm, so I didn’t step aside. I went towards him, chambering my right knee, and stamped into his gut. My heel dug in just above his pubis, sank deep. The guy’s legs straightened as his butt was punched backwards, and his torso jutted forward as his breath exploded out of him. The bat was still somewhere behind him but had lost all momentum. I elbowed him in the chin, to avoid him skewering on the knife I still held.

Tougher than he looked, the guy didn’t immediately fall. But that suited me. I dropped the knife even as I swerved round him, grasped the bat out of his hand with my left hand, and then I was behind him. I could have easily crushed his skull with the bat, but didn’t. I gripped it two-handed, one at the handle, one nearer the tip, and thrust it flat against his back. He staggered forward, just as Cell and Knife were trying to untangle themselves, and all three ended up stumbling and falling on the filthy ground. They formed a mound of struggling humanity that the bull terrier pounced on, and then launched off like a frothy-mouthed missile. I’d swear I could see all the way down its throat as it came directly for mine.

Its teeth were huge, gleaming against the wet darkness of its cavernous mouth. The bite pressure of a pit bull is incredible. Gladly for me it didn’t crunch down on my flesh but on the baseball bat I’d jammed crosswise between us. I actually felt the teeth go into the wood as a tremor that shook my entire frame, then the dog yanked its head savagely from side-to-side far too fast for my senses to follow. Its claws scrabbled at my chest and upper thighs; the violent worrying of its jaws shook me. But I’d been turning as it hit and the frantic, and admittedly terrifying, moment was over with as the dog was cast aside, still clenching the bat between its teeth as it sailed away and then landed on its side on the junk strewn earth. My hand immediately went for my gun, and it was up and ready even as the dog found its feet in a scramble. The dog wasn’t the least bit interested in me. It had the baseball bat, and it wasn’t going to let go of its prize. It shot away with the bat clenched in its teeth, and disappeared behind one of the stacks of junked cars.

Fuck me, I thought, when I tell that story nobody will believe me. But there wasn’t time for thanking my mad luck, or the odd whim of an animal’s nature. I swung my SIG on the dog handler whose face was a picture of disbelief.

‘What now?’ I demanded.

The greasy-haired guy didn’t have a clue. He was looking for an escape route, and I expected him to try to scurry for the cover of the nearest stack. His three pals had disentangled themselves, but hadn’t yet risen. They all stared at my gun, and their pale faces made a triptych of ovals framing their incredulity.

‘Now you put away the gun,’ said a voice from the doorway.

I glanced over my shoulder and saw Emilio’s huge bulk filling the aperture. His right hand rested on a stick that strained to hold him up. His left held a .38 revolver but it was down by his side. If I wished I could’ve spun and emptied half a clip into his ponderous body before he got a bead on me. But that wouldn’t get me the answers I desired. I faced him while slipping my gun back in its carry position, and offered him a convivial smile. ‘It’s good to see you at last, Emilio. Did we really need the dramatics first?’