SURVIVORS: a gripping thriller full of suspense (Titan Trilogy Book 2) (4 page)

CHAPTER FIVE / Sunday, 2:11 PM

“Officer Argon was fatally injured in the line of duty during a routine traffic stop.”

That was what John Cushing, chief of the Mount Pleasant Police, said when Brendan phoned, five minutes after feeding the cat.

Cushing was new. He’d transferred in from elsewhere. Likely that hadn’t made him popular among senior Hawthorne cops, many would have been waiting for Chief Galloway to retire, thinking they were next in line.

“Yes. That’s the information I have. Can you elaborate at all, sir?”

Cushing didn’t answer. He cleared his throat. “You were a cop here for five years?”

“That’s correct.”

“Okay. I see that now. I got your file in front of me. Brendan Healy.”

Brendan looked at the cat, who was circling the linoleum floor in the kitchen. The kitchen was dark, with a little bit of light spilling in from a single window above the sink. The window provided a view of the front yard and East Drive.

Brendan sat at a small circular table with two chairs around it. The table had been pushed up against the partition between the kitchen and the living room. The kitchen was mostly open to the living room, which was covered in a brown shag carpet circa 1970-something. The whole set-up screamed bachelor.

He could hear Cushing typing on a keyboard on the other end. Brendan had already given his name and connection with the department, but Cushing seemed like one of those cops who didn’t believe anything until he had it in front of him.

“Why did you leave, Mr. Healy? Oh – you transferred out. Ah. Made detective up in Oneida County. How’s life up in the armpit of New York?”

“I’m no longer with the Sheriff’s Department.”

“Oh? What are you doing now?”

“I went into business for myself.”

“Uh-huh. So what can I do for you?”

Didn’t I just tell you?

He tried a different approach. “I’ve come into town for the funeral. Thought I would make a friendly call to the department where Argon served for over twenty years, where I served for five years, as his partner. See if I could be of assistance. Does Argon have family, have they been contacted?”

When Cushing responded, his voice was dry and cold coming over Argon’s old-fashioned curly-cord landline.

“You know, as you can imagine, detective, this thing has taken quite a toll over here. I’ve got an LODD with a very well-liked, senior officer. If you are interested in the particulars of Seamus Argon’s death, my suggestion is that you contact Internal Affairs.”

Brendan closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger. The cat meowed and rubbed itself along the bottom cabinets in the kitchen.

“I just wanted to know if I could help, sir.”

“You want to help? Where are you staying?”

“I’m at Argon’s place.”

“You’re at his
place
?”

“Yes, sir. We were friends.”

“You were friends. Yet you didn’t know that Argon had a sister.”

The words were scathing, striking right to the center of Brendan and his guilt. A sister?

This wasn’t going well. Brendan was tired, hungry, confused, and found himself starting to lose his grip. “If this was a traffic collision, and Argon died, and it’s so cut and dried, why is there ambiguity about the investigation?”

“Because I’m protective,” Cushing said, his voice low and menacing. “If you have anything to add to the investigation, you can talk to the lead investigator. That’s Anthony Carrera. I’d be happy to pass along his number.”

“Ok, I’ll do that. I’ll contact Carrera.”

Brendan grabbed a pad from the table beneath the phone. He flipped past the first few pages and jotted down the number which Cushing gave him.

“Maybe you can just answer one question?”

He heard Cushing breathing. “Uh-huh.”

“The second driver? Any word on who that was?”

“That would be confidential. As I said, Mr. Healy, contact Carrera from the Bureau of Internal Affairs. Once you’re cleared,
if
you’re cleared, you may become privy to those details.”

So much for professional courtesy, you asshole.

“Ok, thank you,” Brendan said.

“That’s fine, Detective. I’m sure I’ll see you at the funeral.”

“Right.”

He hung up the phone, with enough force to make the little bell inside the phone ding. The cat pricked up her ears for a second, then resumed rubbing the cabinets.

“Fuck,” muttered Brendan.

He glanced at the number he’d scrawled. He grabbed the phone and poked in the digits. The keys made old-school beeping sounds. Brendan fiddled with the notepad as the phone rang. It went to voicemail: “Hi, this is Anthony Carrera; I can’t get to my phone right now. Please leave me a message and I’ll get back to you.
Arriba,
ciao
.”

Brendan scowled, “Investigator Carrera, this is Brendan Healy. I’m a private investigator . . . who’s been hired by a friend of Argon’s to look into his death. I was hoping we could speak.” He gave Argon’s landline number and hung up.

No dice there. Brendan looked down at the notepad again. He’d flipped a couple of pages on the notepad to write down Carrera’s number. Now he turned those pages back and looked at Argon’s notes, bits and pieces of things that didn’t make a lot of sense.

Calorie Buster
, was one.
Tuesday
and
Thursday. 5:30 pm
could have been one of the times written down, but the number 5 had been transformed into something wearing a hat, or a flaming traffic cone on top. One more number, this one a phone number, and un-doodled. It was a 914 number, a Westchester County code.

There was also a name.
Philip.
The last name was harder to make out. It might have been
Largo.
The name was circled, and the letters had been doodled in and around. Brendan remembered Argon’s habit of doodling when he was talking on the phone. He’d thought it was an odd trait for a big, gruff Scottish cop. Brendan had ribbed Argon about his little pictures more than once.

Philip Largo? It sounded familiar.

* * *

Brendan decided he would shower and change. He’d left home in such a frenzied rush that he hadn’t even shaved, and still sported a full beard. He needed to get himself ready for what was to come. And he needed to think. He’d been curt with Cushing on the phone, and he couldn’t afford to lose his cool. He was an outsider now, and nobody cared whether he got what he’d come for or not.

He turned and walked through the living room with its brown shag carpet. By the back windows was an old couch, faded green, white piping on the armrests and cushions. Argon had some books piled on a shelf there; several editions of
Shooter’s Bible
, Noam Chomsky’s
Manufacturing Consent,
a battered copy of
Twenty-Four Hours a Day,
more recovery, self-help books like
To Slake a Thirst,
and
The Tao of Abundance
. There were also several police paperback novels and a stack of
aficionado
, a cigar magazine. Atop the shelves were a couple of Catholic candles, and one spider plant that looked chronically depressed.

There was a small fireplace at one end of the living room and an easy chair sat in the corner, the upholstery well worn. More built-in shelves behind the chair. Back towards the kitchen was the TV. A nice flat screen that wasn’t hooked up to any cable, only a DVD player.

In five years of working with the man, Brendan had only been to Argon’s house a handful of times, and they had been brief visits, while on duty, not social calls. He had meant to come by more – the two men had made plans, but nothing had materialized.

What did Argon’s home say about the man’s life? What did it say about his death?

Brendan went to shower and think.

* * *

Fifteen minutes later, he was toweling off. He wiped away the condensation to look in the mirror, now that he’d shed his beard. A small scar, about an inch long, ran from his temple to his cheekbone. There were two bullet-wound scars on his torso. They looked a bit like gum hardened onto a sidewalk. He touched them with his left hand. It was missing the middle finger. The surgeons had done a fantastic job – someone who didn’t know better might have thought he’d been born like that, with only three fingers on his left hand.

The battery of surgeries, along with the time recuperating in the hospital – this had been covered by the department. He’d become medically-retired, and for two years had been scraping by on Worker’s Comp plus what little he made as a private investigator.

Steam began to obscure his reflection as he looked into his blue eyes. Pale skin, dark hair, he’d often thought of himself as ghostly. He ought to be dead. His ruined body started to disappear in the mist. He’d tried to kill himself with carbon monoxide poisoning – survived. He’d been run over by a goddamn truck – survived. Shot at by the State Troopers –
sorry, our bad
– survived. He wasn’t just ghostly. He wasn’t here. By all accounts, he shouldn’t exist.

He put on the one suit he’d brought, to help get himself in a professional frame of mind, and set about making some coffee. He fumbled around in Argon’s cabinets and found some no-name coffee in a big tub from Sam’s Club or some other bulk-buying place, but it would do. He got that rattling in the ancient percolator and set about looking round the rest of the house.

In the shower he’d gone over what he definitely knew about Seamus Argon. Argon was a proud Scotsman – everyone knew that. He’d had a t-shirt which read:
Whale Aisle Beef Hooked
:
How to Speak like a Scot.
He knew nothing about Argon’s parents. It was as if the man had come into the world of his own accord. In his younger days he’d been a fighter and a drinker and then he’d sobered up. He joined the force in White Plains. Early in his law enforcement career, he transferred to Mount Pleasant. He was open to a variety of philosophies and spiritual ideas, he self-educated about politics and the economy, and he attended AA meetings. Argon was outgoing and friendly, yet remained private and unattached.

The living room opened into a hallway with fake-wood paneling. The shag carpet continued throughout. There was a small entranceway that led to the front door. Jackets hung from the paneled walls. Brendan went through the pockets. He found a receipt for a drug store, a ticket stub, and some loose change.

The bathroom was the next room on the right. Like the kitchen and the entranceway, it offered a view of the street. The second door on the right led into a small office. On the left was Argon’s bedroom.

Brendan entered the dark bedroom. The air smelled faintly of aftershave and of infrequently changed sheets. Argon’s hygiene was ok, but he was a man living alone. And that was how he said he liked it.

Brendan flipped on the light. The room was in general disarray. The bed was made – neat as a pin – but there were piles of clothes around it. The double bed took up most of the room. A chest of drawers was squashed in, and a large closet with hanging doors – the kind that slid on tracks above.

Brendan stepped over some sneakers and a pile of clothes.

He slid open the closet door, uniforms hung from the rack. Some flannel shirts, non-issue dress shirts, civilian pants thrown over hangers. Shoes on the floor. A couple of travel bags stuffed in the corner.

There was a shelf above. Brendan found a hanging cord. He pulled down on it and the closet was lit up. Still, the shelf was high. He felt around, on his tiptoes, and grasped a shoebox. He pulled it down and set it on the bed. He went back, fishing for more. There was another box – a strongbox. He’d died in the line of duty so the police should already have his service weapon and badge.

Brendan set it on the bed, too. It was locked, he’d look for the key in a minute.

Standing with his hands on his hips, he pivoted to survey the room. It seemed no one had come to collect any personal effects for the funeral. Argon had been dead for going on thirty-six hours – it was now three o’clock in the afternoon.

Brendan glanced out the window. Daylight savings had ended the previous weekend, it would be dark by five thirty.

He left the bedroom and the two boxes, to search the rest of the house for the strongbox key. As he went into the hall someone knocked on the front door.

CHAPTER SIX / Sunday, 3:25 PM

Brendan’s gun was back in the bathroom. He considered retrieving it as he passed by. He’d turned in his service weapon when he’d left Oneida. For a couple of months he’d procrastinated over getting another one. Wyoming made it fairly easy, though, and he’d obtained another Smith & Wesson revolver with a .38 caliber cartridge. Nothing beat the .38 ammo for fine accuracy and manageable recoil. Plus, the gun looked bad-ass.

For the moment, he decided, the gun would be an overreaction. He turned into the entranceway and looked out though the door’s small window.

It was an oldish guy in a tracksuit, with yellow stripes down the arms and legs. He was in his late fifties or early sixties – Argon’s age. He had a salt-and-pepper beard, and his thick hair was neatly combed back. The man’s appearance was what Argon would have called “heaven-may-care grooming.”

Brendan opened the door. “Help you?”

The stranger looked surprised. He looked Brendan up and down, clocking Brendan’s much more formal attire, and then his eyes shifted to look over Brendan’s shoulder into the house. “Hi. Um, Seamus around?” he said.

“He’s not,” Brendan replied. “I’m a friend of his. What can I do for you?”

“You know where he is?”

Anyone close to Seamus Argon would probably know what had happened, thought Brendan.

On the other hand, it was a flimsy assumption that people close to Argon would know he was dead. This guy could have been away and not heard the news. Until Brendan had more information he felt responsible to both break the news (unless the person would serve as a better asset by being kept in the dark), and to get whatever information he could out of them.

“Why don’t you come in?”

The man looked rattled. “Something happen to him?”

“Come in and sit, alright? My name is Brendan Healy.”

The man’s face relaxed. “You’re Healy, huh?” He seemed to reassess Brendan. Then he took the hand Brendan had extended and gave it one firm pump.

Brendan closed the door. It was tight in the entrance, and he quickly moved towards the living room. The man followed him in.

“I’m Russell Gide.” He pronounced the last name
Geed
and spoke with a Westchester accent, dropping the Rs at the end of certain words.
“I’m a friend of Argon’s, too. Did something happen?”

Brendan gestured towards the couch. Russell Gide took the hint and sat down. Brendan then sat himself in the easy chair, and leaned forward, putting his hands together above his knees.

“You have any reason to think something happened to him?”

Gide scowled. He seemed taken aback. Brendan realized it was a crude, cop-type question. He was rusty.

“Argon told me all about you,” Gide said, gamely sidestepping.

“I guess he likes to talk about me.”

The scowl deepened. Brendan immediately felt stupid for saying such a thing – it sounded childish, and arrogant. He felt out of shape.

“Not much. Just that you were smart.”

Gide’s look said clearly,
and so far you ain’t even an alternate on Jeopardy.

But Brendan thought something else, too. This man already suspected something was up – and why wouldn’t he? Argon wasn’t answering his own door, some stranger was. And Brendan was being evasive, which put the visitor on defense. His instincts were probably telling him to prepare for bad news.

Just come out with it.

“Argon was killed two days ago.”

Brendan thought to say more, to explain his presence here, but let Gide adjust to this first. He figured the man would need some time to absorb the bad news, but Brendan wasn’t prepared for the way the man’s face started to quiver, then to crumble. Within a few seconds, he was leaning over the coffee table, his head in his hands, weeping.

“I’m sorry,” Brendan offered.

“Jesus, what happened? Argon? I mean he was so
seasoned.
He knew it all, back and front. What happened?”

“It can happen to any cop, I guess. Rookie, or veteran like Argon. A situation just arises which is . . . unmanageable.”

Gide looked up. “Is that what happened? Oh God. How did he die?”

“That’s what I’m here to find out.”

Brendan studied him. He felt for the man, of course, but he couldn’t help sizing him up. Gide was tall, well-built, like a former athlete. He had that tracksuit on. Maybe they played some sport together? Would Argon play racquetball?

Gide’s eyes had reddened, the crow’s feet around them were white against the ruddy blush of his skin. And then Brendan thought he recognized something in the man’s face. Something familiar. A drunk knows a drunk, as they say.

“Don’t they have people for that?” Gide almost whined. “I mean, it wasn’t clear what happened to him? I don’t understand. I didn’t see it in the paper – nothing. How did you find out?”

“A mutual friend.”

Gide glanced down at the shag carpet. Then his eyes came back up. “You’re the one who went to work upstate. For one of Argon’s friends. I forget his name.”

“Lawrence Taber.”

Gide didn’t say anything, just nodded absently. He snuffled back some tears and wiped at his face. Then he offered, “Sorry.”

“Don’t be.” Brendan leaned forward a little further. The springs of the easy chair chittered beneath his weight. “How do you know Argon?”

Gide blinked and cocked his head slightly, like this was obvious to anyone except Brendan.

“I’m his sponsor.”

* * *

Brendan relaxed a little. It had been years since Brendan had attended a meeting himself, but of course everyone in AA had a sponsor. It confirmed his intuition that Gide had the taste.

Gide glanced at the coffee table he was leaning on. The piece of paper that Brendan had noticed before, with Argon’s doodles on it, was still there. Gide pressed the tip of his finger against the paper. “Right here,” he said. “Tuesday, five thirty. We go to a meeting together. Well, first we go grab pizza in Elmwood. Then we hit the meeting at Holy Ro’. That’s our routine. You know? That’s our routine.”

Brendan nodded. It made sense. Someone who Argon had a relationship with through AA wasn’t necessarily privy to all the particulars of his life. Argon was a private individual anyway. And with AA, the people you got to know at those meetings tended to stay in your life only as a part of those meetings. Or on the phone, maybe, if you were having a craving, a moment of shivering temptation.

Gide sat back. He exhaled, and his body seemed to go limp. He swiped at his face again, as though getting rid of any residual signs of emotion. “Jesus,” he said again. “This is news. This . . . is . . . news.” He shook his head. “Christ.”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Gide.” Brendan didn’t know what else to say. He wanted to ask Gide some questions, but the man still needed time.

“Call me Russell.”

“Okay, Russell.”

Then Russell looked up sharply across the room at Brendan.

“Hey. Why don’t you come with?”

“What’s that?”

Russell nodded toward the front door. “Come to the meeting with me.”

Brendan smiled grimly and shook his head. “Thanks, but no.”

“Come on. It’ll be good for you. Argon told me about you. I mean, sorry – I don’t mean to be nosy. But I know you used to come to meetings – that was how you met Argon, right? Or, no – sorry. You met him after your . . . you know, your accident. He spoke very highly of you. You should come. Hey, if you want to know more about what happened to him . . . It’s good people who knew Argon from the Ro’ on Tuesdays and Thursdays.”

The man, who had been sobbing moments before, was just about beaming now. It broke Brendan’s heart to think of turning him down, especially when he’d just given him such shitty news.

But AA meetings sucked. That was what Brendan felt. When you pulled away the generally sterling statistics about the success people had with AA, it was just something to do that was the next best thing to drinking. You sat around and talked about drinking. Most of the people had the taste so bad they would eat a bag of dirt if they knew they could just have one night – just one tear-it-up bender with impunity. Most of them were built to absorb alcohol as neatly as protozoa absorbing oxygen. Sometimes that felt to Brendan like the right thing to do, sitting around and sharing that kind of pain – that need – and sometimes it didn’t. He’d planned to start going to meetings again after the Heilshorn case, but never had.

“Argon would want you to come,” Russell said.

Brendan felt the pull of emotion. He knew Russell was right. “Okay. Alright.” Brendan stood up. Russell got up right after, a big, eager smile on his face. The man’s emotions were bright, but limned in pain.

However he might have a point. Talking with some people who knew Argon, in the basement of the Holy Rosary Church, could potentially reveal something. Yes, Argon led a compartmentalized life. Yes, his own sponsor didn’t even know he was dead. But, yes, even the smallest details might shed some light on what it was Taber thought Argon knew, or had.

“Give me a minute.”

Back in the bathroom he brushed his teeth and ran a hand through his black hair, still wet from the shower. His gun was sitting in its holster, on the sink.

He stashed it under the sink next to some cleaning products. An AA meeting was not exactly dangerous ground.

* * *

Brendan joined Russell outside. The man immediately started chatting about Argon’s house. It was on half an acre. Built in 1974. Russell joked that Argon had never updated the interior. Brendan smiled. “You’re not kidding.”

They were taking Russell’s car, parked on the street in front. Brendan slowed his pace for a moment when he noticed that it was a dark blue sedan.

Not a Cutlass, though, but a newer, nicer, BMW Series 5.

“Sweet ride,” Brendan said.

“Oh, love it,” said Russell. He pressed a button on the key fob he was holding, the vehicle chirped, and the doors unlocked. “Hope you’re hungry. You’re going to love Ali’s Pizza. Wait, maybe you had it before. You ever have it when you lived here?”

Brendan glanced back at Argon’s house, thinking about his gun.

Shit
. He was torn. But it was a stretch, wasn’t it? How many blue sedans were there on the streets of New York State every day? A million? More?

“Yeah,” Brendan said. “I ate there once or twice.”

“Hop in,” Russell said, smiling, but with his eyes still red.

Brendan opened the door and got in.