Unidentified Flying Suspect (Illegal Alien Book 2) Page 14

  “Levon can’t send the footage,” he said, frowning. Then he took a sip and winced. “Hot.”

  “They usually make coffee that way,” I said, not unkindly. “Why not?”

  “He couldn’t say that either. But from the way he danced around it, I’d guess that one of his superiors was listening in. They’re locking that footage down.”

  “Because there’s something they don’t want us to see,” I mused. “But who doesn’t want us to see it and why the hell not? Also, that sucks.”

  “No kidding.”

  We fell silent. I kept turning the situation over in my mind, trying to make sense of it all. I didn’t like unsolved mysteries, which sometimes made my choice of profession tough to deal with. Some mysteries were never solved. Something told me Brad was thinking along the same lines as he stared off into the distance at nothing in particular.

  When his phone rang, we both jumped.

  “Maybe that’s your friend,” I suggested. “Calling to follow up.”

  It would be nice if that were the case. Maybe Levon—whoever he was—had managed to get some privacy and might be willing to share whatever was going on in building security. Maybe it would lead us to some information about Agent Morgenstern and his twin yahoos. Maybe they knew something about the sample, and then the whole mess of the past few days would suddenly make sense.

  While I was dreaming, I wanted a pony too. At least, I’d wanted one when I was a little girl, and I figured better late than never.

  The conversation didn’t give me much of a clue as to the content. All Hardwicke said was “yeah,” and “okay,” over and over again. One time, he asked whoever was on the other end to repeat something, which he scribbled down on a notepad in his messy, illegible handwriting. Although the whole conversation lasted only about two minutes, it felt like forever before he put down the phone.

  “Well?” I demanded. “Was it Levon?”

  “No. Scorsone.” My hope deflated like a popped balloon, but his next statement made me perk right up again. “They found two dead bodies in the sewers not too far from where you came out.”

  Before he’d gotten halfway through the sentence, I’d leapt from my chair and was racing for the elevators. When I looked back, Brad Hardwicke was right behind me, looking as determined as I felt. Finally, we had the break we needed to crack this thing wide open, and neither one of us were going to let it go to waste.

  CHAPTER 25

  At a typical murder scene, the detectives arrived on the scene before bodies were hauled off to the morgue and evidence got bagged, since the presence of the bodies and evidence kind of helped with the whole investigation thing. Pictures were well and good, and our lab folks were really good about capturing what needed captured, but that didn’t compare to being able to walk the scene. Sometimes, walking a scene would nag at me for days afterward, because my unconscious mind had picked up on some anomaly that the rest of my brain hadn’t caught onto yet. I considered it one of the most important parts of my job.

  Apparently, someone had missed that memo, because by the time Hardwicke and I arrived on the scene for the tunnel murders, the paramedics had already trundled a full gurney toward the ambulance and started to load it inside. I flashed Hardwicke a look. He seemed as aghast as I felt at the removal of the body we’d thought we were investigating.

  “Are we not the point team?” I asked. Maybe someone else had been assigned to the case, and Scorsone had just phoned Hardwicke as a courtesy. Maybe they were already here. But I didn’t see a car, unless they’d hitched a ride in the ambulance.

  “I thought we were, but let’s see.”

  He shut the car off without bothering to park it properly, which normally made me want to write nasty things all over people’s vehicles with the Sharpie I kept in my glove compartment, but right now I didn’t care. I was just as eager to find out what was going on as he was. Plus, the bodies had been pulled out of a drainage tunnel on a not-so-busy road leading out of town. Parking wasn’t at a premium here so long as he wasn’t actually blocking the lane. Which he wasn’t.

  Hardwicke went to talk to the first responders and figure out what the hell was going on. While he spoke to them, I tried to mentally calculate the distance between this location and the tunnel I’d crawled out of using my GPS. Without actual addresses, I had to make some assumptions. But eventually, I estimated that this site sat about a half hour away from my exit point to the west. Depending on where the bodies had been in the tunnels before they’d brought them up, I might have walked right past them. Unless they’d been killed after I’d been attacked, of course.

  As I looked toward the tunnel, another pair of guys pushed another gurney up out of its depths. This was highly irregular, and I marched toward them, too impatient to wait for Hardwicke. As we got closer, I revised my assessment. One of the “guys” was a woman with hair even shorter than mine. I recognized her from a few other cases but couldn’t come up with her name.

  She must have recognized me too, because she smiled and said, “Hey. It’s about time the cops showed up.”

  I frowned. “We just got the call a half hour ago. Only way we could have gotten here sooner is if we flew.”

  “Really?” She seemed nonplussed. “We’ve been waiting for you guys for about three hours. Forensics finally decided to move on without you. They documented the crap out of the scene, so hopefully that’ll get you what you need.”

  I frowned. As much as I wanted to yell at somebody, Whatserface the Paramedic wasn’t at fault here. So I stuffed the feelings of frustration down deep and simply said, “That’s weird as hell. Mind if I take a look at the body before you pack it up?”

  She exchanged a look with her partner, and after a moment of unspoken communication, they both shrugged. “No problem,” she said. “We could use a smoke break anyway. Maybe it’ll clear the smell out of my nose. This one’s not too bad, but the other one was partly in a puddle of water, and that gets nasty quick.”

  “Anybody make an estimate on time of death yet?”

  She shook her head. “Naw. But they’re still in rigor, so they’ve got to be relatively fresh. Couple of days, tops. You want me to give the coroner a message? Have him call you as soon as he has one?”

  “Actually, I’m playing tennis with him in a few hours, so I can ask him then, but thanks.”

  I turned my attention to the corpse, taking a deep breath before unzipping the bag. I’d spent enough time in Bug’s office that I didn’t feel the immediate urge to vomit when I smelled a corpse, but it didn’t rank high on my list of favorite scents either. At least this one hadn’t burst. I’d had that happen a few times and would gladly pay just about any price to avoid it in the future.

  The body was male, mid-thirties, white, and pudgy. His face had already taken on that slightly sunken appearance that made a lot of corpses look a little like wax dummies, and either his eyes had always been incredibly deep set or they’d already begun to fall into his skull. But what drew my attention the most was the deep, livid bruise covering his entire neck. Most strangulation victims show clear marks where the hands or fingers of their assailant had been, or a thin line stretching across the neck in the case of a garrote. But this guy looked like his entire neck had been squeezed.

  Almost like a snake man had killed him. I flashed back on my unseen attacker. Apparently, he’d had better aim with this guy. Or worse, depending on his intentions.

  Before I turned him back over to the paramedics, I took a look at the paperwork hanging from the toe end of the gurney. It identified him as Bernard Jones, and I took a quick picture of it with my phone. Then I turned him back over to be transported to Bug. Hopefully he’d be able to provide me with some answers, because I sure as hell needed them.

  CHAPTER 26

  I’d intended to ask Bug for some details on our murder victims before our tennis game, but he and his wife Leah arrived late, and we had to get started or risk missing our court time. We played at the Murphy’s’ club, a
nd space there was at such a premium that sometimes I wondered if we’d have to fight to the death to get a game in. So once they showed up, we gave them a few minutes to stretch and then got started.

  At first, all I could think about were the dead bodies and the attacker in the tunnels—in short, the same things that had been circling through my mind for the entire week. But soon enough, I got lost in the rhythm of the match. None of us were particularly good players, and the one time we’d entered into a competition at the club, we’d all gotten smoked in the first round, but we played well as a group. Probably because we all played to play rather than playing to win. We tried to volley back and forth as many times as possible rather than hoping to score a point on the serve. It made for a much more pleasant game, I thought.

  Although our playing was fairly chill, we still talked a loud game. Jenn started it off by loudly proclaiming that Bug served like “a frog getting an enema,” which was a mental picture I didn’t need. Bug laughed so hard that his next serve went wild and hopped the fence, and Leah fell over in hysterics, clutching at her stomach as he went to retrieve the ball from the café full of people in tennis whites and golf shirts. The other club members used to get all aghast at our behavior, but by this time, they’d figured out that the best approach was to roundly ignore us, so they did so with gusto.

  Match point went to Jenn and I, since Bug didn’t manage to get it back together after Jenn’s comment, and the rest of his serves went wild. We decided to take a quick drink break before getting back to it, and I intercepted Bug on the way to his Gatorade bottle.

  “Hey,” I said. “I promise not to talk business all night, but I’m dying to find out what you learned from our newly discovered dead guys. The ones from the tunnels?”

  He wiped his forehead and nodded. “Yeah, I meant to talk to you about that too. You got any photos of your neck from after you got throttled?” He peered at me a little closer, his eyes owlish from behind the wide lenses of his sport glasses with the neon head strap. “Your bruises have all gone mottled now, but I’m curious to know what you looked like right after.”

  I put my fingers to my throat, where my bruises stood out loud and proud. Makeup had never really been my thing—I wore it when the occasion seemed to demand it, but otherwise I kept it minimal. My active lifestyle meant I usually ended up sweating off whatever I put on my face anyway, so it really didn’t seem worth the effort.

  “For some strange reason, I failed to take a selfie after I nearly got strangled to death,” I said wryly. “Major oversight on my part. But I’m sure there’s one in the file. I don’t remember them taking a photo after they picked me up, but it was so hectic that I might not have noticed. Burgess was the responding officer, and I’ve got the file number tucked away in my purse if you need it. Why do you ask?”

  “I’d like to compare the pattern, or lack thereof, with the new victims. See if it could be the same method of strangulation or not. It’s a really unusual pattern I’ve never seen it before. Any idea what he used?”

  I hesitated and took a drink to buy time. But if I was going to admit the truth to anyone, it would be Bug. He’d listened to me during the Ronda event and had seemed to keep an open mind. I had to stop reflexively suppressing everything I thought would label me as mentally unstable and pick and choose the right places to confess. This seemed to be one of those times, so I took a deep breath and leapt in with both feet.

  “Honestly, it felt weird. At the time, it felt like a snake wrapped around my face. It was smooth and cool and…it felt like it was alive. But what kind of whackjob suffocates someone with a snake? And I’m not sure that the texture was right for a snake anyway. Not that I spend much time groping reptiles, but…you know. I’m babbling, aren’t I?”

  “Seems like the kind of circumstance that warrants a little ramble,” observed Bug. He tried to seem nonplussed, but I could tell I’d freaked him out. He tried to stall, taking a long drink of his Gatorade and offering it to me with a grin. “Want some?” When I gave him a skeptical look, he explained further, “It’s spiked. You think I’d drink Gatorade otherwise?”

  I snickered despite myself. “I shouldn’t have doubted you. This is why you like to work out so much, huh? It’s a vehicle for your closet drinking.”

  “Always has been,” he said. “If I’m going to suffer through aerobic exercise, I should be permitted to anesthetize myself first. I’m more curious about your sudden transformation into Sporty Spice, now that you mention it. I’ve been inviting you to play tennis for years. What made you finally say yes?”

  “What happened to Ronda won’t happen to me,” I said. Then I looked down. He’d surprised me into honesty. I hadn’t even admitted this to myself, not really. “I have to be prepared, only I don’t really know what I’m preparing for. We got taken unawares, and she paid for it. So I guess I’m just trying to be ready for anything.”

  “Ah.” He nodded once. Bug knew better than to reassure me with empty promises and phrases that belonged on inspirational posters featuring determined kittens. “I guess I can see that. Between the tennis and the boxing, I’d say you’re doing pretty well.”

  “It wasn’t enough to protect me from the mystery snake man,” I pointed out. “If that’s what it was. I know it sounds crazy.”

  He took another swig of his “Gatorade,” and gestured to the other side of the court, where Leah and Jenn had finished with their drinks and conversation and were resuming their spots.

  “Let’s get back to the game,” he said. “And Audrey? I’ll work those guys up fully in the morning. If our killer left any evidence behind, I’ll find it.”

  I nodded. As far as reassurances went, it wasn’t much, but I still felt better for some odd reason. Funny how friendships did that to a person no matter how hard they tried to resist. Although I had to admit that I wasn’t trying too hard.

  CHAPTER 27

  After Jenn and I smoked Bug and Leah two sets to one, I decided to take the back streets home. The sun had begun to set, taking the edge off the heat, and it was a perfect evening for cruising around in Candyass with the top down. I wasn’t able to open up the convertible much given Toledo’s short window of good weather, so I had to take advantage of it when I could. I took the long way around, drank a Sprite, and cranked up the volume on the iRock 80s show on my radio.

  Just north of Alexis Road, I passed a park where kids ran wild, shrieking so loud that I could hear them clearly over the dulcet tones of “Come on Eileen.” A group of parents watched them with indulgent smiles on their faces. I remembered doing the same thing when Greg had been a kid, although I’d occasionally joined in with the jumping and shrieking. Nothing wrong with being a little childlike so long as I wasn’t being childish, at least that’s what I thought. A subtle distinction, but an important one.

  One of the parents was a woman in a maroon burka. I did a double take, but it definitely wasn’t Tsishe. This woman was way too tall to be my mysterious maybe-informant. But the sight of her made me start mulling things over in my mind. It appeared that Tsishe had been right about the dead people in the ground despite my thinking she was nuts. Of course, she’d also mentioned some really wackadoo things when we’d met at the gym, and it took me a moment to come up with them. Cookware and fuckwits. So maybe the dead people in the ground thing was a coincidence.

  But she’d also known about the UFOs. And she seemed to be able to find me at the strangest places, which suggested she either kept tabs on me or had an informant on the inside. That line of thought made me check to insure that I wasn’t being followed, but if I had a tail, I couldn’t spot it. I felt a little sheepish for being so paranoid, and those old worries about my sanity hadn’t gone away. There might be some logical explanation for what was happening, and my alien theories all just a convenient but ultimately false possibility.

  While I couldn’t dismiss my lingering concerns about my mental status, I still felt my paranoia was justified. If this was some extensive cover-up that tr
ied to hide its activities by pretending they were alien activity, whoever was behind it spared no expense. Whatever they were hiding was huge if they’d gone to such lengths to hide it. I had to admit that I liked that theory now that I’d thought about it. It was more comfortable than aliens.

  Still not comfortable enough to make me relax my paranoia, though. Someone had to have told Agent Morgenstern and his yahoos what we had in custody. If they really were government agents from some top secret agency we weren’t allowed to know about, they could have accessed our files. But if not? Someone informed on us. And Tsishe seemed to know a lot.

  I needed someone to talk to about this, but who? The answer was obvious, but I tried to deny it for five blocks before I finally activated the hands free calling system and dialed Erich Bieber. I didn’t know what to think of him, whether to trust him or not, or whether I even liked him anymore. But he knew things that might be helpful, and I had to try to dig them out.

  Erich and I hadn’t spoken since our relatively disastrous drink night, and he sounded surprised but pleased to hear from me. He invited me to come over to his place for a change, and after a moment of consideration, I accepted. Maybe a change of venue would be a good thing. Plus, I could always leave if things got too awkward or confrontational.

  I pulled into his driveway about fifteen minutes later to find him out on the front step with a bottle of beer in hand.

  “Hey,” he said, standing up and holding out a second bottle to me. “I was just taking a break. You want one?”

  “A break from what?”

  I looked him over. He was rumpled and dirt-smudged, wearing a ratty old pair of sweat shorts and a University of Toledo t-shirt. The lack of primping reassured me. If he’d wanted to impress me, he probably would have brushed the cobwebs out of his hair, at least.