Текст книги "Heartless"

Автор книги: Patrick T. Phelps

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Текущая страница: 6 (всего у книги 17 страниц)

 When the plane landed and finished its taxi ride to the gate, the scotch-gifting flight attendant approached Derek.

“I hope you enjoyed the scotch,” she said.

“I don’t admit to this most people,” Derek said as he removed his seatbelt, “but I love free scotch even more than I love cheap scotch.”

“Well, if you’re don’t have to get to anywhere too quickly, I know a few places in Albany that have a whole shelf of cheap scotch.”

Being hit on was nothing new to Derek. Though it made him uncomfortable while the “hitting on” was happening, it always made him feel good about himself. He worked hard at keeping his body in shape and knew that so many men took a more relaxed approached to fitness when they reach their mid-thirties.

But flirting also made Derek feel guilty. Though he no longer wore the wedding band that he and Lucy exchanged on the altar, he still felt married. Connected. Obligated, though he hated to feel obligated to someone or to something that he loved.

Lucy was dead. That he knew. He also knew she wasn’t going to make a triumphant reintroduction. But she was still there. There in his heart, in his thoughts, in his mind’s eye most every time he closed his eyes. He looked for her everywhere at first, not fully believing that something as simple and as abundantly manufactured as a gun could actually steal her away. To rip her out of this life and into whatever comes next.

After a while, he stopped looking for her, knowing that she was truly gone. To where, he didn’t know. He often would wonder about what happens after. He hoped for the heaven he learned about in church and the heaven that he was promised from his priest. As the days that separated him from her grew greater, he began wishing that the decision of whether or not a soul is granted residence in heaven was up to the person to whom an individual caused the most harm to when alive. He imagined the bastard, standing before the pearly gates, knocking and waiting for the gates to swing open wide. He loved to picture the bastard’s face when Lucy walked out and how he would respond upon learning that his fate now rested in her hands.

But he knew her heart. He knew she would let the bastard in through the gates. Even show him around the place, buy him dinner, and introduce him to her parents if he asked. She was too forgiving.

“You can’t let people walk all over you, Lucy,” he would tell her. “They take advantage of you.”

But he knew that he couldn’t change her. And he knew that he didn’t ever want to. She made him want to be a better person. She allowed him into her own heaven, showed him around and showed him that what he was promised was already his.

“I wish I could,” he said to the flight attendant who was now sitting in the empty seat next to him. “I have a long drive ahead of me and ...”

“Okay,” she said and moved down the aisle as if the conversation hadn’t happened. “It’s your loss.”

The flight attendant’s response, sudden and swift as it was, caught Derek off guard. Though relieved, he wondered what he might have missed by rejecting her advances.

As he collected his overnight bag from the overhead compartment and began heading out of the plane, he felt his anger begin to build up. He didn’t understand why his anger was making itself known, or what prompted it. He just felt it rising much too quickly.

Soon after her death, Derek’s anger had a target, a place to call home. But three years after her death, his anger had lost its familiar target. It had no direction at times, no place to land.

He brushed past the flirting flight attendant and walked as quickly as he could up and out of the gangplank. He felt his anger building as he impatiently navigated past other passengers, all moving too slowly. His anger turned to rage when no one was manning the Hertz booth.

Then, as quietly and as quickly as his anger came, it dissolved as a fleeting memory of her face flashed in his mind. The face he wanted and tried so hard to recall. It was there, then gone before he could study it. Though he begged the memory to come back, all that he could see through his efforts was her face the moment before her life was finished.

“Can I help you, sir?” A young man, who had approached the Hertz desk asked. “Can I get you anything?”

Derek saw the clerk through watery eyes. He had grown used to his anger giving way to tears in an instant, but had yet to come up with a reason to give to compassionate others.

“Sorry,” he offered. “Long day. Damn yawning always makes my eyes tear up. I have a reservation under Cole. Derek Cole.”

“Yes, Mr. Cole,” the clerk replied. “Your car is all set for you.” The clerk reached for the keys. As he retrieved them, both the clerk and Derek noticed a note was taped to the set of keys. “This must be for you, Mr. Cole.”

Derek took the keys, separated the note that was taped to the key fob, and read the note to himself.

“Welcome to Albany, Derek Cole,” was all that was written on the note.

“Where did this note come from?” snapped Derek.

“I’m not sure. I just got here at 8:00.”

“Can you find out who wrote this note?”

“I could call the person who was working the counter earlier today but not sure if ...”

“Please call,” Derek said.

“It’s a little late to call now, don’t you think?”

Derek glanced at his watch, realizing the late hour.

“Listen, I’m going to leave my cell number with you. Please leave a note to have whoever knows who wrote this note to call me. Okay?”

“Okay, Mr. Cole.”

“Please make sure that you alert the person who relieves you of my request.”

“Okay. Shouldn’t be a problem.”

“It could be a big problem. A very big problem.”

************

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Derek thought about getting a hotel room to catch a few hours of sleep, and then heading out to Piseco Lake and the cabin of Doctor Peter Straus. But once he was in his rental car, he thought that arriving at the lodge well before most people would be up and moving around would be a better plan.

It was close to midnight when he punched in the address of the lodge that his client had provided him. Once entered, the Hertz Never-Lost system estimated his time of arrival to be at 2:17 AM. It had already been a long twenty-four hours for Derek, and as he started his drive to Piseco Lake, he started to realize just how much had been packed into the space of a single day.

“Let’s review,” Derek said to no one. “We have what appears to be a baby born without a heart who is whisked away to be cared for by a doctor who has been referred to as an ‘asshole.’ We have a triple murder that included two doctors who probably cared for the aforementioned heartless baby and another victim who I have no idea about. We have a missing doctor, that being one William Straus, the supposed killer, that being one Alexander O’Connell or Alexander Black, depending on who you ask. Finally, a stranger leaves a note at my car rental place, welcoming me to Albany. And me without a clue as to what I should do next. Sounds like one of my typical cases!”

The directions to the lodge that the Never Lost system provided were spot on. As Derek drove his rented Ford Taurus passed the lodge, he noticed a few lights were on, but he didn’t see any cars parked in or near the driveway. Yellow caution tape was stretched completely around the house.

He kept driving several hundred yards past the lodge until he noticed a small pull-off area on the right hand side of the road. Derek pulled his car as deeply into the parking area as he could, taking advantage of the low hanging tree limbs to serve as additional cover. He grabbed his notebook and a small flashlight from his backpack and decided to bushwhack through the woods to approach the lodge.

From the cover of the dense forest that surrounded the lodge, Derek could clearly make out the details of the two-story lodge. The lodge looked like it had been modified from its original build, with the main part of the lodge being a well-crafted log cabin and the modified section being shaped like a two-story, dormitory that stretched 50 feet from the main cabin. He counted a total of three windows on each floor of the dormitory, assumingly bedrooms or offices.

One particular part of the dormitory structure was noticeably different from the rest of the structure. While the other windows were full-sized, the section that most interested Derek had very small windows, no more than one foot high. And while Derek couldn’t be sure, it looked like the two small windows were barred. He also noticed that there were no windows on the second floor directly above this one area.

As he moved closer to the dormitory, Derek could see bushes were planted around the entire bottom of the structure. A quick flash of his light showed that the entire dormitory was elevated around ten inches off the ground.

He paused to listen to anything that might indicate someone being in the lodge or walking around outside. Hearing nothing, Derek got flat on his stomach, crawled through the bushes and under the dormitory. Once under, he clicked on his flashlight to see if anything looked peculiar. Immediately, he saw that a piece of the aluminum flashing, probably used to keep forest critters out of the dormitory, was partially opened.

He continue his crawl towards the open flashing as his mind began to wonder how many raccoons may be living under the dorm.

When he reached his target, Derek noticed that the aluminum flashing was cut into four by four squares and fastened into the floor joists. But the area of the flashing that was his target, was without screws.

“One of three things happened here,” he thought. “One, a talented and gifted raccoon learned how to use a screwdriver. Two, the builders forgot to secure this one piece of flashing. Or three, someone removed the screws.”

He flashed his light across the entire bottom of the dorm, noting that every other piece of flashing was securely in place.

He pointed the light from his flashlight to the ground beneath the hanging flashing and noticed a few scattered droppings of wood dust in the ground.

“Whoever removed these screws did so from exactly where I am right now,” he thought.

Derek carefully pulled back on the flashing and saw that the insulation that had certainly been in place was removed. A quick shot of his flashlight to the ground revealed some remnants of the removed insulation. He reached his hand up the twelve inch, empty space and pushed gently on the floor boards.

An area of slightly more than two square feet lifted easily from his push.

“Easy access in and out of the dorm,” Derek thought. “Maybe this is how Alexander got out and was able to surprise his victims. But how the heck did he remove the screws from the flashing? He couldn’t have done that from inside. Either he got out without being noticed to make his own modifications or someone else helped him.”

As quietly as he could, Derek pulled himself through the opening in the floor and into the dorm. He stood motionless for several seconds, his ears trained on any noise coming from the lodge. After hearing nothing, he clicked on his flashlight.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Ralph Fox wished that he could sleep. His insomnia was a repetitive challenge he had faced several times during the last ten years of his life. He knew that staying at the lake-front-lodge-turned-crime-scene wouldn’t do much good at ending his insomnia, but he also knew that this was exactly where he needed to be.

He had spent the better part of the last few days reading every note and medical record he could find in the doctor’s small office. Most of the notes he read made no sense to him, but Ralph had learned not to doubt things he didn’t fully understand.

As he made his way through the lodge’s rooms, each decorated in the way one would expect an Adirondack lodge would be, Ralph carried a handful of papers and read them out loud, hoping some trapped memory in one of the rooms would explain the mystery contained in the doctor’s notes.

Several times, he tried sleeping in one of the six guest rooms, only to be disturbed by a pressing need to “read that last note one more time.”

“What we have here, ladies and gentlemen,” he said openly to a vacant room, “is a mystery of the highest degree. And like any other mystery, this one has a puzzle piece that, once found, will unravel this whole thing.”

But no matter how many times he reread the notes, the puzzle piece remained hidden.

Ralph was a loner, a man more comfortable being spoken about than spoken to. Though he didn’t dislike people, he felt that there was an unbridgeable gap separating him from most others. His ex-wife often told him that he lived “contrary on purpose. Always trying to see things differently. Never just getting along just to get along.”

And that’s what Ralph could never understand: Why people would agree with what others were saying, doing, believing just to have something, real or imagined, in common. He felt lonely at times but also secure in knowing that the few people he called friends were true friends. People he liked because of who they were and who liked him for what he was.

His move from Texas to rural upstate New York was easy. Ralph didn’t attach sentimental feelings to things and people who, he believed, would remain the same no matter the distance between them. In upstate New York, as Chief of Police in a small town, Ralph felt that he would be just another face in a scarce crowd. Someone who people would recognize but not feel compelled to speak to. He believed that moving over a thousand miles away wouldn’t represent a fresh start, just a continuation of his life, but in a different climate.

It was close to 2:30 in the morning when he heard the sounds. Defying his body shape and his physical condition, Ralph moved with cat-like movements towards the sound. Silently retrieving his Colt 45 from the kitchen counter where he had placed it while eating the rest of the sub sandwich he had ordered for dinner, he moved without a sound towards the rooms where the dead bodies had been just a few days prior.

He made sure to not assume what or who was making the noise; just find the source and take action as needed. The room’s darkness was cut by a well-aimed and trained flashlight, at times covered by a hand, then revealed in an intelligent and targeted pattern.

Ralph, knowing that the person directing the flashlight was unaware of his presence, held his Colt out two feet behind the flashlight and reached for the light switch on the wall.

Derek was unsure of what he noticed first: the overhead fluorescent lights filling the dark room or the sound of a revolver’s hammer being set back into ready position.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

“If you could explain to me what the hell you think you’re doing here, and if your explanation is good enough, why, I may just decide not to put a .45 caliber bullet into the back of your head.”

“That’s a lot of pressure to put on a guy,” Derek said as he instinctively raised his hands above his head.

“Maybe so, but since I am the one with the gun, and you are the one with the Maglite, I have to believe that I hold the cards in this situation. That means that I call the shots. No pun intended, said the man holding the gun.”

“My name is Derek Cole. Thomas O’Connell, who I believe is the brother of the perp you are looking for, retained my services. If you look in my wallet, you will see a card with the names of four detectives from four different police departments who will vouch for me.”

“And I bet that wallet of yours in tucked neatly into your ass pocket?”

“Afraid so. I will use two fingers and will slowly remove it.”

“Go ahead, but if I see something shiny and black come out of your ass, I’m not going to wait long enough for you to turn around and spoil my evening.”

As Derek slowly removed his wallet, he was thankful that his wife had chosen the brown wallet instead of the black one for the birthday gift she bought for him. He tossed it over his shoulder and heard it hit the floor. Ralph bent over, keeping his Colt fixed on Derek, picked up the wallet, thumbed it open, and saw the glossy business card tucked in between a few hundred dollar bills.

“So far, so good, Derek. Now I want you to turn yourself around and give me your undivided attention.” Derek turned slowly around, his hands still in the air. “So, let me ask you, what do you mean by ‘your services?’”

“I am a Freelance Detective. My clients hire me to assist them in locating and resolving issues.”

“Freelance Detective, you say? Now, I’ve been in law enforcement for a lot of years. But I have to admit that I’ve never heard of a ‘freelance detective’ during those my years.”

“I have some experience in the detective field. Eight years as an MP with the Army and three years with the Columbus Ohio police department.”

“Yippee for you. But that still doesn’t explain what the hell a freelance detective is.”

“I am retained by private clients to assist them ...”

“Yup, I kind of deduced that part already,” Ralph said, cutting Derek off mid-sentence. “Let’s try this a different way. Are you one of them private eyes?”

“Not really, but sort of.”

“Well, that certainly clears up this whole situation.”

“Sorry to be so vague.”

“Is that what you call it? Being vague? I’d be more likely to say you are monkey punting around the truth. To me, ‘freelance detective’ sounds like something an assassin would call himself or herself, depending on the particular assassin.  You an assassin?”

“Not at all. I don’t kill anyone. Just locate them, isolate them, render them powerless if needed, and then alert local authorities. Basically, I do what a detective does, but I don’t have to worry about following all the protocols.”

“When I was down in Texas,” Ralph said, pointing the Colt directly at Derek’s chest, “I was the fire chief in my town’s volunteer fire department. I always use to say there are two types of firefighters: one who follows the rules and listens to the officers, and the other type, who may or may not be as well trained, hell, may even be better trained, but goes off and does things the way he thinks they should be done. Come to think of it, I think I actually called that second type of fire fighter a ‘freelancer.’

“Now, here is the problem as I see it, Derek. Freelancers get themselves into situations way more often than do those who follow the rules. And when a freelancer gets himself into a situation, me, as fire chief, would have to send someone else in to get the freelancer out of the situation. That means that I have to risk injury or death for one of my rule followers to save the freelancer’s ass.

“Derek, I have to tell you that I don’t like saving a freelancer’s ass by putting my own ass or the ass of someone else at risk.”

“I don’t blame you at all. But let me tell you how I see things,” Derek said.

“I can’t wait to hear your side of things, Derek.”

“Let’s say that that freelancer’s wife is trapped inside a burning building and the other fire fighters won’t even try to save her because of protocol. Would you blame the freelancer for running in and at least trying to save his wife?”

“Can’t say that I would.”

“And if the freelancer was prevented from going in after his wife, who ends up dying in the fire, could you understand how the freelancer may feel about following protocol?”

“I suppose a man might be prone to think ill about any protocol that he thinks prevented his wife from being saved. I’m with you so far.”

“Let me ask you, . . Uh, I don’t know what to call you?”

“Let’s start with referring to me as ‘the only man in the room with a gun.’ Unless you have something stuffed in your waistband.”

“Nothing stuffed in my waistband Mr. ‘only man in the room with a gun,’ sir.”

“Good to hear. Proceed with your story,”

“When I was on the police force in Columbus, my wife was held captive during a bank robbery gone bad.  A spaced-out loser with a Glock held her and five others at gunpoint. I knew the bank and knew that I could get in the rear entrance, walk up, and pop the bastard before he knew what I was doing. But, I wasn’t allowed to do it. I wasn’t allowed to ‘freelance.’

“Another ten minutes goes by, with me trying to convince my Captain that I could get in and make the whole problem go away. He kept telling me about the department’s ‘protocol’ and how we needed to wait for a hostage negotiator.

“Then we heard the shots. Three of them. One for my wife, one for some eighteen-year-old kid, and one for himself. Bastard killed my wife and a kid, then shot himself dead in the head.

“So you see, Mr. ‘only one in the room with a gun’ how I may just feel about following protocols?”

“Turn around and face that wall,” Ralph said without pause.

As Derek turned, he heard Ralph move closer, and then he felt himself being frisked.

“Okay, freelancing Derek, you can turn around now.”

Derek turned to see Ralph lowering his Colt.

“The name is Ralph Fox. And just because I put my trusty peacemaker down doesn’t mean that I won’t pull it back up if you decide to do something stupid.”

“Understood, Ralph.”

“You said you was hired by a Thomas O’Connell, did ya?”

“Yes sir. He hired me to protect him from his brother, Alexander, who my client believes has already killed three men. The three men who, I have to believe were found in this room.”

“I’d say your client is right about Alexander killing people.”

Derek looked around the room, noting the blood-stained couch and splatter stains on the ceiling and walls.

“What the hell happened in this room?” he asked.

“Something that was pretty damn fatal.”

Derek, relieved from the stress he was feeling when a gun was being pointed at him, regained his level of curiosity.

“Not sure if you or your team discovered this yet, but there is a trap door under the bed here.” Derek moved the institutional looking bed to reveal the opening in the floor.

“Son of bitch,” Ralph Fox said. “My boys may not be the best in the world with all this police stuff, but you’da figured that all them State Police investigators would have noticed something like this. How did you find this out?”

“Luck, I guess,” Derek said. “This leads to a crawl space under this part of the lodge. A square of the flashing had its screws and insulation removed. I can’t say for sure, but to me it looks like this was done from underneath, not from inside this room.”

“Like maybe the fella who resided in this here room had some assistance?”

“Seems likely to me.”

“So, tell me Derek Cole, you said you was hired by Thomas O’Connell?”

“Yes. He is the son of Ken and Janet O’Connell, who I believe you contacted already.”

“Yep. Called them the day after my boys discovered this scene. Found their names, and a whole lot of other names in a bunch of files in Doctor Straus’s office. Found a lot of very interesting stuff as well. Medical reports, experiment results, names and addresses, and a stack of pictures. Some of them damn pictures are scary enough to scare the stink off a skunk.”

“I’d love to have to look at those files,” Derek said through a grin.

“I bet you would, now wouldn’t you?”

“The story that my client told me, and that was confirmed by a Doctor Mark Rinaldo, seems a bit hard to believe. You find information in those files that referenced a pretty unbelievable story?”

Ralph gestured for Derek to follow him out of the bedroom, through the sitting room and into the hallway. Ralph didn’t say a word until he reached the entry way of the lodge.

“Now what I found and whether or not it supports this story of yours depends on what your story is. Doesn’t that make sense?”

“I was told that Alexander O’Connell, who may now be called Alexander Black, was reported to have died shortly after birth on account of him not having a heart. I’m no doctor, but I believe having a heart is pretty important.”

“Well now, Derek, I have to say that you and I are on the same page with that statement.”

“I also was told that the doctors in Chicago told the O’Connells that Alexander died and then formulated a plan to hide him away with a Doctor Straus. Straus ran an institution on Long Island.”

“So far what you have said is in agreement to all that I have read and determined as well. But one thing you mentioned caught my attention. I would have asked about it a tad earlier but you seemed pretty excited about telling me the story you heard.”

“And that was?” Derek asked, knowing that there was something about Ralph Fox that he liked. Perhaps it was Ralph’s confidence in himself, his down to earth nature or just the fact that he hadn’t shot him, Derek liked this guy.

“You indicated,” Ralph said as he sat in one of the leather chairs that decorated the lodge’s entry way, “that you had a conversation with a Doctor Mark Rinaldo. I gave Rinaldo a call right after I spoke with the O’Connells to let him know that we found his name on a bunch of medical reports as well as on a list.”

“My client told me about the list. Told me the names that are on it and that two of the names were crossed out in what looked like blood?”

“Their own blood, to be exact,” Ralph said. “Now Derek, you have a fine ability to take a conversation down a different path than what was intended. I’ll get to that list in a while, but I want to have a bit of a conversation about Doctor Rinaldo if you don’t object.”

“Sure. Sorry. Lot’s to digest with this case,” Derek responded.

“As I was saying, I gave Rinaldo a call to find out some details that I may need in this here case and also to let him know that his life may be in danger. Told him that three men, two of them doctors, had already been murdered and that the perpetrator may be fixing to pay him a visit. He didn’t shed any light on my case and didn’t seem to care about my suggestions that he take some precautions.”

“I got the same reaction when I visited with him in his house. He didn’t seem to care if Alexander Black, or whoever is responsible for these murders, came after him. He said he deserved whatever happened.”

“I always say that apathy is a telltale sign of guilt,” Ralph said.

“So is guilt,” Derek replied. “Rinaldo confirmed my client’s story and told me that he deserves whatever Alexander has in store for him. I suggested that he get some protection, but I don’t think he will.”

“He didn’t,” Ralph said, his eyes fixed on Derek’s.

“What do you mean?”

“Rinaldo was killed late last night in his home. Had his skull crushed.”