Dues of Mortality (7 page)

Wallace
vacuumed a hit of air up his nose and lowered himself into the chair
behind his $12,000.00 marble desk. He palmed its digital blotter like
a star pianist in a concert hall.

“
Play
the recording again,” he ordered.

Gabriel
drew the Nanopod that contained the voicemail from his suit pocket.
Deploying Hobson as a redundant shadow on Block and Jameson had
proved invaluable. Although she’d nearly spotted Hobson in the
adjacent building—a fact Hobson had kept to himself—he
had outperformed Block and it made Gabriel regret not bending to
Hobson's price for doing the entire job himself. Hobson had contacted
Gabriel the second the police popped on the scene. After Block was
carted out, handcuffed to a stretcher and the coast was clear,
Gabriel ordered Hobson inside the apartment to pick up any possible
breadcrumbs that the faltering lummox may have left behind. It was a
damn good thing Glenda Jameson wasn’t completely wireless like
most folks or they would have had nothing to retrieve. Her webscreen
was flashing active when Hobson entered and efficiency demanded he
check it, as well as take a few extra minutes to make it look like
scavengers had encroached on the crime scene. Even Gabriel had to
hand it to him for being thorough.

Gabriel
held up the Nanopod, and a trembling voice emanated from its
invisible speaker. “Ms. Jameson, hello. This is Richard Kelmer.
I...I don’t mean to disturb you...but I’ve been doing
some...very special work here at Millenitech lately and I uh...uh,
well l...let’s just say your name came up and...Oh, dear, this
is difficult to discuss over the phone. I really wish you were there.
I really need to speak with you. I’m sorry I can’t leave
a number. I...I’ll try to get in touch with you again later,
when we can talk in person, some place safe. It’s important.”

Wallace
ground his teeth. This was the second time Gabriel had played the
recording for him, the first being via comwatch. Wallace still
couldn't believe it. “Are you sure the police haven’t
listened to this?”

“
No,
they never had the opportunity, but she may have told them about it
if she thinks it was significant.”

Wallace’s
eyes squeezed closed like fists. “Well, at least he didn’t
mention the project.” Wallace thought twice about it and asked,
“Did he?”

“
Dragonfly?
No.”

“
Did
he mention the customer to her at all?”

“
No.”

“
Maybe
he
doesn’t
know...or hasn’t completely
put it together yet? Was that all you were able to get?”

“
If
there were any other messages, they were wiped before we got them.
Block may have heard something else. We’ll have to ask him.”

“
Play
it again.”

Gabriel
thumbed the Nanopod once more. “Ms. Jameson, hello. This is
Richard Kelmer. Ms. Jameson, I...I don’t mean to disturb
you...”

“
Hold
it,” Wallace said abruptly. “Go back.”

Gabriel
tapped it again and the message played from the beginning. “Ms.
Jameson, hello. This is Richard Kelmer.”

“
Stop!”
Wallace said quickly.

Gabriel
stopped the recording.

“
Did
you hear that?”

Gabriel
was blank.

“
There
was something about the way he said his name. He didn’t say,
‘My name is Richard Kelmer.’ He said ‘This
is.
’
And the inflection was...”

Wallace
relaxed and parted his lips. “Son-of-a-bitch.
He
knows her
. That wormy little nerd
knows
her.”

Glenda
finally gave up on getting comfortable in the police station's
unfriendly little chair. The adrenaline rush-and-flush had left her a
drained husk and every muscle was now registering the slightest
pressure as inescapable torture. She fingered the pits of her eyes.
Thought of the job interview she had tomorrow morning. She would make
it come hell or high water, but likely pay for her diligence later
with a splitting headache.

A
hint of Old Spice glided beneath Glenda's nose and she looked up to
see Detective Andrew Roberts on his way over. A paternal looking
sort, Roberts was probably no more than fifty with stern eyes and a
moderate head of graying hair. He somewhat reminded Glenda of her
father: tall, unassuming, with a face that looked more experienced
and weather-beaten rather than middle-aged. He carried two sheets of
paper in his right hand. He pressed his lips together, looking at
Glenda—probably a modest attempt not to smile that stupid cop’s
smile that never reassures anyone—and promptly took the chair
behind his desk. He placed the papers on the desk’s digital
blotter and began jostling its drawers.

“
Where
are my pens for Pete’s sake?” he said under his breath.
“And who's been using my desk? It's never this neat.”

Andrew
Roberts had had cop in his blood from day one—always with a
natural talent for discerning personalities and analyzing facts. He
was adept at making both suspects and victims feel as if talking to
him was like sharing a story with their favorite uncle—someone
who never based his love on a good grade or refusal to clean one’s
room. The general take in the department was that Roberts was next to
unflappable, except when it came to crimes against women and
children, office politics and, most of all, his personal workspace.

“
Who
the hell’s been using my desk?” he shouted out. “I
can’t find a damn thing!”

After
muddling through a few more papers, he found a plastic ballpoint and
turned his attention toward Glenda. “You feeling any better?”

Glenda
eyed the detective judiciously. She ruled his concern as genuine.
“What I’m feeling is an overall distaste toward the
unfairer sex. You people have a way of making it hard to bow to your
superior nature when you throw your weight around like this.”

Roberts
grinned. “I take it by “you people,” you mean men,
not cops?”

“
Oh
that's right; you guys are having a bit of a PR problem these days.”

PR
problem was putting it mildly, Roberts thought. The H-Ball trade was
taking its pound of flesh from the department ranks with extreme
prejudice, turning cops into crooks and now—pending the full
FBI investigation—possibly, killers. “We are indeed.”

Glenda
shrugged. “So what happens now?” she asked.

“
Well...”

“
Here’s
your drink, Ms. Jameson.” A juvenile of an officer in a
perfectly pressed uniform had approached, interrupting the detective.
Earlier, the same officer had ushered Glenda to Robert's desk and
offered to fetch her a soda as a depressurizing gesture. He was a
nice young man with clear skin and glowing eyes. Eyes much too
innocent to be seeing the kinds of things they saw on a daily basis.
Even in her distraught state, Glenda had kicked the young man's
hormones into overdrive. He pretended he could smell her velvety
brown hair from across the room. Feel the brush of her naturally long
eyelashes against his cheek as they cuddled together on a park bench
or in a soft warm bed after a night of passionate lovemaking. He
could barely take his eyes off of her perfectly curved legs and was
certain the smooth skin of her broad, even shoulders would taste like
ambrosia between his lips.

“
Oh,
thank you, officer...” She squinted at his nametag.

“
Bowen,
ma’am, uh miss. I mean you certainly don’t look old
enough to be a ma’am,
Ms
.
Jameson.”

Robert’s
eyes rolled like loose marbles. “Kid, if you're gonna drool at
least have the courtesy to bring paper towels.”

Glenda
pretended not to notice the chiding. The young man’s Prince
Valiant air had not been
entirely
lost on her, despite her current anti-male status.

Bowen
smiled, red-faced, waving off the embarrassment. “Well, if you
need anything else, ma'am I’ll be over there,” he said,
pointing blindly behind himself and beating a hasty retreat.

“
By
the way,” Roberts said, stopping the young man, “you see
anybody using my desk? Everything’s rearranged and it smells
like ammonia.”

“
I
think I saw Jones at it earlier.”

Roberts
grimaced. “What, did he spill something on it?”

Bowen
just showed his palms and walked off.

Roberts
gave a once over to the sheets of paper he'd brought with him. “All
right, Ms. Jameson, we’ve got your statement. All I need now is
your signature at the bottom of the hard copy here so we can
proceed.”

The
detective slid Glenda the papers and she gave them a thorough read.
Her nose slightly scrunched. While the description of her ordeal was
accurate, it read absurdly like the notes she used to take in high
school history class. She signed the papers where necessary and
returned them to the detective. “What happens to him now?”

“
Well,
it seems as though this particular knuckle-dragger has a record,
mostly assaults, even against other women. So he'll be bunking here
for a while. Even if his history couldn't get bail denied, the drug
charges would.”

“
Drugs?”

“
We
found a hyposhot along with three ounces of H-ball in his jacket.
Only phone call he placed was to his lawyer, so it’s not likely
he’s got any friends taking up a collection. He won’t be
showing up at your door or anything if that’s what you’re
worried about.”

“
As
a matter of fact, that’s exactly what I was worried about,
yes.” She pressed her chest in obvious relief. “So who is
he, anyway? I mean is he like some serial killer or rapist or
something?”

“
No,
actually he’s just about as common as they come. His name is
Malcolm Block. His reputation is that of your average well-dressed
hood. The female assault victims looked like they might’ve been
attempted rapes, but they couldn’t be proven. Turns out he’d
dated them a few days or weeks prior.”

“
So
you
do
think he was going to rape me?”

“
Hey,
Andy. Is this her?” someone asked.

“
Yeah,
Jonesy, this is her,” Roberts answered. “Ms. Jameson,
this is Detective Perry Jones.” Roberts gestured to the
balding, plain-looking gentleman who'd crept up behind her, hands on
his hips. A pair of weak prescription glasses rested low on the
bridge of his nose.

“
Hi,”
Jones said with a placid smile.

“
He’s
been my partner on occasion,” Roberts said. “But he
won’t
be anymore if I find out he’s
the one who did this obsessive-compulsive redecoration.”
Roberts cocked back in his pneumatic chair and poised a finger over
the desk blotter. “What's with all the right angles? And what
did you use on here, Windex? I thought you were on extended vacation
for the past two weeks, not maid school.”

Jones's
pupils danced on the rim of his glasses. “Sorry, I didn’t
know you were so attached to your little pig sty. I don’t know
how you got any work done in that trash heap.”

“Oh,
I see, Mr. Man of the Hour doesn't approve of my workspace anymore so
I'm the one who has to change. You letting all that super-cop stuff
go to your head
.”

“Yeah
,
to you I'm super-cop. To everyone else I'm the cop who went rat-squad
on his fellow uniforms.”

Glenda
looked puzzled for a moment and Roberts noticed. “Detective
Jones here was a major player in bringing some of our wayward
colleagues to justice recently,” he said to her. “If you
know what I mean.”

She
nodded.

Jones
hummed and glanced down at Glenda. “So you’re the one who
put that hurting on the old Block-head, huh? He’s not a very
happy camper, right now. The guys down in lockup have been riding him
about it all day. At first, they thought he’d been in a bar
fight or something. But we sort of passed it around that he got beat
up by a girl.”

Glenda
said nothing, just hoped Jones wasn't looking for a smile.

“
Block-head?”
Roberts inquired. “You know this guy?”

“
His
name came up a couple times when I was working the case, after I
started investigating Bonanno; mostly freelance.”

Roberts
sat up straight.

“
I’ve
got to tell you,” Jones said to Glenda, “I’ve seen
a lot of women who were victims of this sort of thing. The ones who
fight back usually don’t score a knockout. I’m glad you
weren’t seriously hurt.”

“
Thank
you.” Glenda said.

“
You’re
welcome.” Jones turned to leave.

“
Whoa,
hey, the state attorney's office called here twice today, looking for
you. Cosgrove said you hadn't returned her calls.”

Jones
rolled his eyes, looking thoughtful. “Ah, sorry, guess I hadn’t
checked my watch.” He then looked back at Glenda. “Oh,
and don’t worry about old Block-head. We’ll squeeze it
out of him. He’s not that smart.”