The Night Stalker (12 page)

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

C
oming around the front of the house, I yelled for Jed to stop. He was halfway across the front lawn, and he glanced at me over his shoulder, his face wild with fear.

“Fucking cop!” he screamed.

LeAnn Grimes stood just around the corner, holding a broom. Moments later, my legs were tripped out from beneath me, and I was lying on my back in the grass, staring at a formation of clouds. Buster began barking, and I heard fabric being torn.

“Get away from me!” LeAnn screamed.

I lifted my head. Buster had grabbed the hem of her dress and was shredding it.

“Make him stop!” LeAnn yelled to me.

I pulled myself to my feet, my head spinning. Jed sat in a beat-up Firebird parked at the curb in front of my Legend. He was desperately trying to get the car started, only the engine refused to turn over. Each time he twisted the key, he jerked his head in my direction and shot me a crazed look.

I walked toward the Firebird with my palms out in a neutral pose. Jed didn’t appear to be armed, nor did I see any guns lying on the passenger seat. The tourists had returned, watching now with mouths agape.

When I was a few yards from the car, Jed got the engine started, and backed up into my Legend. I winced at the sounds of crunching steel and shattering headlights. Throwing the Firebird into drive, Jed plowed into the tourist’s rental van, parked in front of him. The rental bucked into the air, but didn’t move. Jed did another backward thrust and again smashed my car. It was enough to make me cry.

The Firebird’s right front tire let out a mournful hiss and the car sank into the ground. Now we were both without wheels.

Reaching the curb, I grabbed the Firebird’s passenger door with my free hand. If I could get Jed out of the car without hurting him, so much the better. Something heavy fell on my back, and I realized there was a person on top of me.

“Run, Jed, run!” Heather yelled.

Heather was holding on to me with all her might. My legs buckled and my body started to spin from her weight.

“Get off me,” I said angrily.

“Leave my husband alone,” Heather said.

“I said
off
!”

“Run, Jed!”

Reaching behind me, I grabbed one of Heather’s ankles, and gave it a healthy pull. She came off my back and fell on her rump on the lawn.

I chased Jed down the street. I wasn’t going to catch him—he was half my age, and probably twice as fast—but I wanted to see where he was going.

Two blocks later, I got my answer. Jed turned off the street and darted between two houses. I was ten seconds behind him, and as I ran between the houses, I saw that both had “For Sale” signs on the front lawn. No one was living in them.

I came to a tall fence with a latched gate. I unlatched it, and cautiously entered a backyard that led to a swamp thick with trees and dense vegetation. Jed’s footprints ran into the middle of the swamp, then disappeared.

I stood perfectly still and listened. There was no sound coming from the swamp, save for a squirrel’s frantic chirping. I sensed that Jed was close by, but that didn’t mean I was going to blindly follow him. This was the neighborhood he’d grown up in, and I had no idea what he might have hidden back there.

“Jed? Are you there?” I called out.

I heard a swishing of leaves, followed by a branch being broken.

“You set me up!” Jed shouted back.

“I didn’t set you up,” I said. “I don’t know how those things got there.”

“Fucking liar! You’re no better than the rest of them.”

“The rest of who?”

“The cops!”

I started to reply, only my words were cut off by a loud
thwap!
A steel-tipped arrow was sticking in the fence three feet from my head, its colorful tail vibrating.

I walked backward through the gate opening and shut it behind me. I learned long ago that heroes were dead people who got buildings named after them, while smart people lived to fight another day. Buster appeared in the street, holding a large piece of LeAnn Grimes’s yellow dress in his mouth.

The front door of LeAnn Grimes’s house was locked, and I banged on it loudly with my fist.

“Let me in,” I said.

“Go away,” Heather said through the door.

“I’ll kick it down.”

The door opened, and I entered with Buster. Heather stood in the foyer, an ice pack on her neck, eyes red from crying. I followed her into the living room where LeAnn sat on the couch in a bathrobe. Seeing Buster, she cowered in fear.

“Keep that monster away from me!”

“Did he bite you?”

“No, but he destroyed my dress.”

“You’re lucky.”

Buster still had her torn dress in his mouth. I clicked my fingers and my dog lay down. I took the shredded garment from him, and tossed it into LeAnn’s lap. Then I pointed at the empty spot on the couch.

“Sit next to your mother-in-law,” I told Heather.

Heather dutifully obeyed. The two women shifted their gazes to the floor, and said nothing. Women were the most logical creatures on the planet, except when it came to men. Then they acted as crazy as everyone else.

“Are either of you hurt?” I asked.

LeAnn shook her head.

Heather said, “I’m okay.”

“What the two of you just did was really stupid,” I said.

Neither woman replied.

“I’m here to help, in case you didn’t know it,” I said.

Again, nothing.

“I think Jed is innocent, but I can’t do much if you won’t level with me.”

They looked up in unison, the expression on their faces identical. They didn’t trust me, but they
wanted
to.

“Tell me why Jed ran away,” I said. “If he didn’t know how that cell phone and pair of underwear got in the garbage, then he should be willing to talk to the police.”

LeAnn laughed under her breath.

“Why is that funny?” I asked.

“The police are not our friends,” LeAnn said. “That’s why my husband hired you.”

“I’m not above the law,” I said. “I have to call the police, and tell them that I found Piper Stone’s cell phone in your garbage pail. Before I do that, I want you to tell me what happened this morning when Jed met with Stone.”

This request was met with silence. I crossed my arms and waited.

“I wasn’t here,” Heather finally said.

LeAnn redid the knot in her bathrobe before replying. “It was about nine. I was pulling weeds in the front when a black BMW drove up with Stone behind the wheel. Jed came out of the house, and they left in her car.”

“Did you see her again?” I asked.

“No,” LeAnn said. “Jed came back fifteen minutes later. He was very upset, and had been crying. I asked him what was wrong, and he shook his head, and went inside the house.”

“Did Stone drop him off?”

“No, he was on foot.”

“Do you remember anything else? Anything at all?”

LeAnn shook her head.

“Please stay here,” I said.

I went into the kitchen and rifled the pantry. Finding a plastic Ziploc bag, I put it over my hand, went outside, and removed Stone’s cell phone and the pair of underwear from the garbage can without contaminating them any further. My gut told me that Jed hadn’t put them there, only the evidence was saying otherwise. It was one more piece to a puzzle that I still couldn’t put together.

I called 911 on my cell phone.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

F
ive minutes later, a cruiser pulled up in front of LeAnn Grimes’s house with its bubble light flashing. It contained the classic mismatch of uniformed officers: a crusty male veteran, and an inexperienced young female. The pairing worked great on TV cop shows; in real life it created nothing but friction. Standing on the front lawn, the pair listened to my story.

When I was done, the male officer took me aside. His nameplate said J. Botters. On the plus side of fifty, with leathery skin and thinning hair, he exuded the casualness of someone ready to retire.

“Show me where Jed ran off to,” Botters said.

I walked Botters down the street and showed him the route Jed had taken, and the arrow he’d shot at me. Botters pulled the arrow out of the fence.

“Think he was trying to kill you?” Botters asked.

“He was just trying to scare me off.”

“Want to go look for him?”

I had told Botters and his partner that I was an ex-cop. Maybe Botters had misconstrued that to mean I was prone to taking risks.

“Only if you go first,” I said.

Botters studied the arrow, then shook his head. We walked back to LeAnn’s house. I was holding the Ziploc containing Stone’s cell phone and underwear against my chest, and I handed Botters the bag. He studied the cell phone through the plastic.

“Most ladies won’t part with their phone
and
their undies,” Botters said. “Jed must have done something to her.”

“Do you know Jed?” I asked.

“Oh, yeah,” he said.

Botters’s partner appeared in the doorway of the house, beckoning him to join her. “Yes, dear,” Botters said.

His partner scowled and went inside.

“What can you tell me about him?” I asked.

“Jed’s a strange kid,” Botters said. “He’s been down to the station house fifty times for doing stupid things like loitering and creating a disturbance. It was sort of a running joke. He liked to stand in the booking area, and call us a bunch of fucking liars.”

“He called me that, too. Did he ever mention missing evidence from his father’s trial?”

“All the time,” Botters said.

Botters shoved the Ziploc into his pocket, and went into the house. A policeman who went strictly by the book, he couldn’t charge Jed with any crimes, so he wasn’t going to do anything.

I spent a few minutes mourning my car. Its headlights were smashed, the hood an accordion. The engine hissed as I drove it away, with wisps of steam escaping from beneath the hood. Even Buster seemed alarmed by the dire sounds it was making.

“I can make her pretty again, but it’s gonna cost you,” Big Al, owner of Big Al’s body shop, told me a half hour later. We’d gone to high school together, and after Big Al had gotten out of prison for peddling marijuana, I’d looked him up, and renewed our friendship. He dropped a meaty hand on my shoulder. “You ready?”

We were standing in the dusty yard of his shop in Dania, our shadows looming large in the dirt. My Legend was parked a few yards away, her pretty exterior marred by a young man’s rage. I braced myself.

“Ready,” I said.

“Twenty-four hundred bucks, and that’s just for parts.”

“How much for the labor?”

“Nothing. I don’t make a profit on my friends.”

I removed my wallet and took out my last credit card. I kept the card for emergencies, and I dropped it into Big Al’s hand, then gave him a bear hug. From the mechanic’s sheds came a loud wolf whistle.

“Get back to work,” Big Al yelled.

We retreated to his office, a disastrous affair with bills and invoices strewn across a desk and a radio that played nothing but Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity. I had spent many hours in this office talking to Al about getting my life back together, a subject on which he was an expert. For years I’d thought he was still selling dope on the side, the lure of easy money hard to get out of your system. But I’d discovered that wasn’t the case. Big Al put in long days and made his money honestly, and I admired him for that.

Big Al got on the phone, and soon had a replacement hood, front lights, and a brand-new transmission. Hanging up, he said, “I’ll have your baby fixed in a day or two.”

“Thanks, man,” I said.

I went outside with my dog. The days were heating up, and I stood in the shop’s shade, and took stock of my situation. I was no closer to finding Sampson than when I’d taken the case, and now I was without wheels. Jessie was always telling me to look on the bright side of things, which was quite a challenge in this situation. I leashed Buster and headed down the road toward Tugboat Louie’s.

Distances were deceptive in south Florida. The land was as flat as a pancake, so it was easy to mistake a long trip for a short one. By the time I got to Louie’s, my feet were aching and I was drenched in sweat. I could almost taste an ice-cold drink as I opened the front door. Then I heard a car door slam, and I turned to see Candy Burrell barreling across the lot toward me.

“What the hell has gotten into you?” she asked.

Her tone said I was in trouble. The question was how much?

“What did I do?” I asked.

“Get in my car,” she said.

Burrell drove a sexy red Mustang with racing stripes painted down the side, the kind of car I’d drive if I had the money. I made Buster lie down on the pavement, then got in. Burrell got behind the wheel and glared at me. “Let’s see. You grilled Ron Cheeks without clearing it with me. Then you grilled Jed Grimes, also without clearing it with me. You also let Jed Grimes get away without explaining how that cell phone and pair of panties got in his mother’s garbage pail, knocked his ex-wife to the ground, and had your dog attack LeAnn Grimes. That’s got to be some kind of record.”

“Not for me,” I said.

“Don’t push it, Jack.”

“Do you want to hear my side of it?”

“I’d love to, only I’m meeting with the mayor in fifteen minutes. He wants an update on the Sampson Grimes investigation.”

The mayor of Fort Lauderdale was an egotistical blowhard, and having a meeting with him usually meant getting yelled at. I felt bad for Burrell. She’d stepped in shit with this case, and the slide was getting progressively worse.

“I want to ask you a question,” Burrell said. “Jean-Baptiste Vorbe, the manager of the Smart Buy in LeAnn Grimes’s neighborhood, called the station house this morning. He wants to file a complaint, and indicated it had something to do with the Grimes investigation. Is this something
you
did?”

I thought back to my visit to the Smart Buy. I’d gone behind the store, and chased away the Asian tourists who’d wanted to have their pictures taken by the Dumpsters. I hadn’t seen anyone watching, although you never knew.

“I don’t think so,” I said. “I didn’t go into the store, and I didn’t talk to anyone except some tourists who were hanging around outside.”

“Exactly what did you say to them?”

“I chased them away.”

“Why the hell did you do that?”

“They were ghouls.”

Teeth clenched, Burrell looked at her watch.

“We’ll continue this conversation later,” she said.

“Yes, ma’am.”

I got out of her car and watched Burrell pull away. I knew what was bothering her. Because I’d agreed to work with the police, she’d wrongly assumed that I’d play by their rules. But I played by my own rules these days. Sometimes it got me in hot water, but I slept better at night. It was a trade-off I could live with.

I entered Louie’s thinking about the manager at the Smart Buy. There was a chance he knew something, only Burrell hadn’t sent anyone to speak to him, wanting to first find out if I’d harassed the guy. It was typical of how the police thought, and it gave me an idea.

I went to my office, and threw on the change of clothes I kept there for emergencies. Then I walked down the hall and knocked on Kumar’s door. He told me to come in, and I found him sitting at his desk, working on the books.

“Jack, Jack, how are you? I hope things are going well,” Kumar said.

“I had a little problem this morning,” I replied.

Kumar raised his eyebrows in concern. “A problem?”

“A guy smashed up my car. It looks like I’m going to be without wheels for a couple of days.”

“Would you like to borrow the company pickup truck?”

Everyone in the world needed a guardian angel. Mine was Kumar. He pulled a key ring from the center drawer in his desk and tossed it to me.

“Keep the truck for as long as you want,” he said.