Bite Me (Devlin Haskell 3) (12 page)

Forty-eight hours later
I was in the passenger seat of Louie’s car, a 2000 Dodge Neon, faded blue where it hadn’t already rusted. Our path was marked by a cloud of oily blue exhaust hanging in a toxic vapor behind us. Louie was back to wearing a wrinkled suit and smelling like bourbon. His car smelled like a wet dog. Or was that me?

“I still don’t understa
nd how you got her to go for it. I told you when I called she swore at me then hung up.”

“Power of persuasion,
that’s why I make the big bucks,” Louie said.

“No doubt,” I said
, scattering crumpled fast food bags with my foot.

“Couple of ground rules, first, do not under any circumstances
, go near or in any way contact Kiki Barkwell. Got it?”

“Yeah.”

“I’m not kidding here, Dev. It’ll land you back in the slammer faster than a whore’s trick when the fleet comes in. And don’t try and be smart and phone her, or call and hang up, or get a flat tire in front of her house, or run into her at the grocery store, or follow…”

“Louie, relax, I get it. I mean
, I am an investigator for God’s sake. I make my living watching people do stupid stuff, you know.”

“That must be why you have that
ankle bracelet on.” He glanced over at me. “Look, they are not kidding, the cops. You need to phone whenever they buzz you on that thing, got it?”

“Yeah,”
I nodded, then leered at a blonde as she pushed a baby stroller down the sidewalk, sporting head phones and plenty of bounce. God it was good to be out.

“I’m not kidding, Dev. I’ve had more than one client end up back in the slammer because whatever they were doing was too important to interrupt.
The next thing you know cops got you locked up and once that happens, you ain’t getting back out, period.”

“Okay, I get it.”

Louie was ruining the moment with his advice.

“
Next thing, GPS, it’s in that damn ankle bracelet so they can find you and track you. If you go near that chick’s house they’ll know and you’ll be a guest of the county for a lot longer than these past few days.”

“God, feels like a year since I’ve been out.” I said checking more of the scenery
strutting past on Selby Avenue.

“Just keep in mind what I’ve said. And by the way, forget about getting that thing off and sneaking around.
Lot better idiots than you or me for that matter, tried and it never works.”

“
Look Louie, I appreciate the concern, but I’m not going anywhere near Kiki. Or, her weirdo brother, Farrell. Or, that bullshit craze, K-R-A-Z. Okay?”

“See that you don’t.”

“Believe me.”

“You might want to call your pal Heidi, just to keep her happy, we don’t need any problems on that front.”

“You know, I was thinking, it might be nice to thank her in person. Any problem with me going over there to her place?”

“Please tell me you’re not really tha
t stupid,” Louie said, then shot a glance in my direction.

“You don’t think…”

“No. You don’t think, or at least, you’re not thinking right now. Just call and say thanks, tell her it’s a function of being monitored that you can only be on the phone for sixty seconds or something. But call, say thanks, then get off the line.”

“Okay
, okay, I get it.”

He pulled up in front of my house, put the car in park
, and turned toward me wedging himself between the steering wheel and the back of his seat. His suit seemed to be even more wrinkled than just a few minutes before.

“Look Dev, we’ve got half a chance here to beat this thing. What we don’t need is you sneaking around
supposedly investigating. Let the cops do that. You just keep out of trouble, stay close to home, maybe read a book or something. Okay?”

I nodded, put my hand out to shake.

“Louie, can’t thank you enough, honest. I really appreciate all you’ve done for me. I promise, I won’t screw up.”

“I’m going to hold you to that,
” he said shaking my hand.

It took about thirty
minutes before I started losing whatever was left of my mind. At least laying on my couch was a lot more comfortable than that cot in my jail cell. I was really trying to follow Louie’s advice, let the cops take care of things. On the other hand, that’s exactly how I ended up wearing an ankle bracelet and out on bail to the tune of a half million bucks. I wanted to rush over and strangle Kiki, figuratively of course, sort of.

Instead I phoned Heidi to thank her.

“Hello.”

“Heidi, this is Dev.”

A very long dead space followed, eventually I said, “I wanted to phone and thank you for having faith in me and for posting my bail.”

More dead space.

“Look, I’m innocent. I didn’t commit any of the crimes I’m charged with.”

“
You never do, do you? I mean, every time I post bail for you. Guess what? It’s never your fault, it’s always some other dumb ass.”

I
suddenly liked the very long silence better.

“Look, I’m sorry you feel that way and it makes me a
ppreciate what you did even more. I’m sorry you’re involved, I just didn’t know where else to turn. I felt like… Hello. Hello?”

She’d hung up.

I showered, shaved, went through my mail, tossed it all into recycling. I looked out the front window for anything of interest. I drifted back to my kitchen checked around for something to eat. All I found was half a pepperoni pizza from over a week ago. It seemed to be growing some additional spice so I tossed it into the trash. Then drifted back to the front window where I stared out at the passing traffic.

I had just wandered back into the kitchen when t
he doorbell rang.

I opened the front door and there stood Heidi. Eyes puffy from crying
and a grocery bag in either hand.

“Heidi,” I’d never been happier to see someone.

“I don’t know if I should hug you or just strangle you. You fucking idiot.”

“Would you settle for giving me a spanking and then maybe I could…”

“Shut up and let me in,” she said, then pushed me aside and stormed back to the kitchen.

“Honest to G
od, Dev. You have got to knock this shit off, you…”

I followed
her into the kitchen like a little puppy.

“Heidi.”

“Just let me finish, you absolute, complete and total, idiot.”

S
he placed the bags on my kitchen counter, then began to pull out a number of small, white, takeout containers along with three bottles of white wine.

“Oh, sorry, I’m not allowed to
have a drink with this ankle bracelet, thingy. I guess they can tell if I consume alcohol, somehow. Anyway, I better not…”

“It’s not for you, stupid
, it’s for me.”

“Three bottles?”

“I’d say I’ve earned it, don’t you think? Besides, I’m staying the night.”

Next to making bail
, that was about the best thing that happened to me in over a week.

We were at
my kitchen counter the next day eating breakfast. It was close to one in the afternoon. I’d walked down the street to Nina’s Coffee shop, gotten a newspaper and four caramel rolls. Heidi was wearing one of my T-shirts and cramming a third caramel roll into her mouth.

“What I don’t get is why?”
she said, a giant wedge of caramel roll shoved into the right side of her mouth.

“Why?”

“Yeah,” she licked her fingers, oblivious to how sexy she was just now. Or, maybe she did know.

“
I guess to set me up.”

“Okay, but why? I mean it seem
s like a lot of extra work. You know?”

“No, I don’t.”

“Whoever wanted to kill this Barkley guy, did.”

“Barkwell. Thompson Barkwell.”

“Whatever. But he’s dead, right? So why go to all the trouble of setting you up? See what I mean?”

“No.”

“Look, the guy is dead. If I was this Kiki person, her alibi would have been she was with you, all night. Not that you could remember, but that sounds pretty solid.”

I nodded, slowly.

“If it was someone else, a burglar or business partner or someone, they got away with it. Why call the cops? Seems to me it would be better if they didn’t say a thing, he might not have been missed for a day or two. That makes their chances of pulling the whole thing off even better.”

I nodded again, deep in though
t.

“You gonna eat the rest of your caramel roll?”
she asked.

“What? No
, you go ahead.” I pushed my plate toward her.

“You should
have gotten more of these, I’m really hungry and they’re kind of little.”

“Well, if I
recall, you worked up quite an appetite.”

“Th
at a complaint?” She asked then returned to licking her fingers. I was pretty sure this time she knew exactly what she was doing.

“Not a complaint, just an observation.”

“Let’s go observe some more in the bedroom,” she smiled. Then got off her stool and slinked out of the kitchen.

I was staring at the
bedroom ceiling forty minutes later, deep in thought.

Heidi was
curled up against me, with her head on my chest and sound asleep. Snoring.

Her “why call the cops?” question had been bouncing around the interior of my thick skull ever since she rolled over a
nd went to sleep. She was right it just didn’t make any sense. Unless, it was all a ploy to get me.

But, if that was the case, why not just kill me after
I’d been drugged? Or save the Roofies and kill me before? Nothing seemed to add up.

I was standing on
my front porch, barefoot and feeling very laid back toward the end of the afternoon. I was giving a friendly goodbye wave to Heidi. There had been a light rain for most of the day. The rain made for the perfect sort of afternoon that an accused murderer like me could just lie around and have sex.

Heid
i waved, blew me a kiss and slid into her car, some dark blue foreign thing that cost more than I wanted to know. As she drove away from the curb a sheriff’s car pulled into the parking place she’d just left. A uniformed officer climbed out, pulled his hat on as I watched from the porch.

He was dressed
in a tan uniform shirt with epaulets, a gold badge on his chest and a beer belly hanging over his belt. He held an envelope in his hand and marched up my front sidewalk with a purpose.

“Mister Devlin Haskell?” he said, sizing me up.

“Yes.”

“This
is for you,” he said and slapped the envelope into my outstretched hand.

“Gee, thanks.”

“You have been served, this is a restraining order, sir.”

“Wonderful,
” I said.

“The pleasure’s all mine,” he smiled, seemed to be sincere
in his remark, then turned, marched back to his car and drove off.

M
y phone rang as I walked in the house.

“Haskell Investigations.”

“Please tell me you’re home.”

“You called me on my home phone and I
answered, where else would I be? Louie?”

“I thought this was your
cell phone?”

“Okay it is, but I’m
still at home.”

“Good boy.
Keeping a low profile?”

“Yeah,
I’ve been horizontal most of the day. Just had a visitor.”

“Who?”

“Sherriff. Served me a restraining order.”

“That Kiki woman?”

“Yeah.”

“Don’t worry about it. Be a damn good idea to stay away from her anyw
ay. Look, that’s just the prosecutor piling it on. We got bigger fish to fry.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah, the good doctor Nguyen is going to stop by on her way home, probably the next thirty minutes or so.”

“She makes house calls?”

“Not usually. But, she has some good news, she can’t get a match based on her analysis of the impressions she took and the photo displaying the bite mark on your pal Kiki’s very nice ass.”

“Is that her technical
description?”

Louie ignored my comment.

“Look, just get all the women out of there, the dirty dishes out of the sink, maybe clean yourself up so you look halfway decent. She wants to get another jaw impression or some damn thing from you. Be a gentleman, we are going to need her testimony.”

I loaded the dishwasher, took a four minute shower,
vacuumed, stole some flowers from the neighbor’s garden and put them on the dining room table. Then I watched out the window.

She parked in front about two and a half hours later.
She walked up the sidewalk carrying a large sort of satchel. I waited until she rang the door bell.

“Oh, Doctor Nguyen.”

“Hello Mister Haskell, did Louie tell you I was coming?”

“He did, and I cleaned especially for you, come on in.”

“Thanks.”

I held the
door for her as she stepped inside and caught a hint of that perfume again.

“This should only take a moment.”

“Do you need anything, kitchen, a chair?”

“Actually, kitchen would be fine, you lead the way.”

I did, and settled on the far side of the kitchen counter.

“Can I get you anything, coffee, tea, water?” I would have offered her a glass of wine but sex machine Heidi had consumed every last drop.

“No thanks.”

S
he set the satchel on the counter, opened it up. Took out a plastic packet and peeled back the corner.

“Interesting,” I lied, trying to sound interested.

“This is an in-vivo porcine model. I’m going to use it…”

She seemed perfectly proportioned in every way. Elegant nails, gorgeous hair, beautiful face and figure. I should have changed the sheets on my bed
, imagining her looking up at me while I...

“…
just sign this here, indicating you agree and submitted to this of your own free will,” she interrupted my daydream.

“Yes.”

“What do you mean yes? Were you paying attention? I need you to sign this, right there,” she pointed to a form and the pen she’d slid across the counter to me while my mind was elsewhere.

“Y
eah, yeah, I knew that,” I said picking up the pen and quickly signing.

“Good, now I need you to bite down on this. Apply some pressure,” She held out a sort of spongy little disk and inserted it into my mouth, then looked at her watch apparently counting seconds.

Being a trained investigator I noticed she wasn’t wearing a wedding ring.

“Okay, and release,” she said
, then took the disk and placed it in a small plastic case.

“What is that stuff,” I asked, smackin
g my lips, a taste not unlike envelope glue.

“Porcine.”
She said closing her satchel.

“Porcine?”

“Pig skin. The model we made from your impression doesn’t compare with the photographic evidence presented. This is just to confirm that it doesn’t compare.”

“So that’s good.”
I said.

“As far as it goes. There
’s a lot of debate about the accuracy of the science, always has been, but right now I think we can get the images displaying the bite mark thrown out. If you’re really lucky it will call the remaining photos into question. Okay, thanks, sorry to interrupt your evening,” she said, then gathered up her satchel and walked toward the front door.

“What
, no sucker?” I said following.

“Sorry
, fresh out. Guess you’ll have to take a rain check.”

“I’ll do that.”

“I’ll hold you to it,” she smiled, then brushed past me and out the door.

I tried to read, tried to watch TV, tried to read again. Since I was tired after last night and this afternoon’s grope and grab with Heidi I went to bed early.