Die Laughing 2: Five More Comic Crime Novels Read online

  “Well, yes and no. I’ve been thinking about this for a couple of months, actually. Business has been really good and I don’t see why it won’t continue. I’m spread thin. I need a partner. Someone who is competent and smart. Also, it doesn’t hurt that you have the attributes to make guys like Wally Crouch lift car batteries out of trunks. But that’s just a bonus.”

  She smirked. “Attributes?”

  “Your ankles. Ankles like that can drive a man wild.”

  She already knew the details of the job: The long hours. The boredom, punctuated by occasional excitement. The risk that one of your targets might get angry and flatten your tires. She’d heard it all.

  The waiter brought the check and I handed him a credit card. I said to Mia, “Even better, we’ll be able to write these meals off. Think of the satisfaction of dodging the IRS. Legally, of course.”

  “When would I start?”

  “Whenever you’re ready. Tomorrow. Next week. A month from now.”

  “Full time?”

  “That’s what I’m looking for, but hey, if you want to try it part-time for awhile, that’s fine with me. We can work something out. However you want to arrange it, I’m up for it.”

  “What about all your gear? Your laptop, your cameras, all that stuff? I don’t have any of that equipment.”

  “We’ll share at first, and then we’ll buy some more stuff. The van can be our rolling office. We can just pass the keys off and everything you need would be inside. I’ll buy another car for myself.”

  “I don’t know how to use any of the equipment.”

  “You’ll learn. It’s easy.”

  She shook her head. “You have put some thought into this, haven’t you?”

  “A lot.”

  She was quiet for a minute.

  I said, “You don’t have to decide right now, obviously. Mull it over.

  Ponder it. Ruminate. I’m sure you’ll have other questions, and I’m fully prepared to make up bullshit answers.”

  “What I said earlier, about being friends. I meant that. You know what they say about doing business with friends. If we were to do this, and if it began to affect our friendship—”

  “The friendship is way more important. No question.”

  “I’m glad you think so.”

  “Mia, I’m going to say this without getting all sappy. You’re the best person I know. My best friend. I mean that.”

  She didn’t exactly roll her eyes, but she did have a look of skepticism on her face. “Roy, that’s very sweet, but if that’s the case, you really need to expand your circle of friends.”

  18

  On the third day, his nerves began to settle. He was not being watched. He had overreacted. That was obvious now. So he let himself begin to relax. To let his guard down occasionally, as he knew he’d have to eventually. But then a new source of anxiety arose.

  “I don’t feel good.”

  That’s what Emily said when he went to get her out of bed. He felt her forehead and she was burning up. Out came the thermometer. Her temperature was one hundred and two. This was a cause for concern. He let her sleep for an hour, then he checked on her again. Her fever was unchanged. He hadn’t planned on this sort of problem. He gave her half an aspirin, but beyond that, there wasn’t much he could do.

  By mid-morning, she began to throw up. Not just once, but multiple times. Violently, and with great force. He kept a trash can beside the bed, but she couldn’t always reach it in time, because her nausea would come on so suddenly. The bed linens were a mess very quickly. Now he began to wonder if giving her the aspirin was a mistake. Was she allergic? Well, too late now.

  He knew he had to keep her hydrated, to replenish the fluids she was losing, but should he feed her? He didn’t know. He asked if she was hungry, and she said she wasn’t, not even a little bit. How about some soup? Just a little? She shook her head. But she did want the Gatorade—the fruit punch flavor—and she quickly drank a very large glass of it. Moments later, it all came right back up. Red vomit that would almost certainly stain the bedspread.

  His worry grew. Taking her to a doctor, even one of those minor emergency clinics, was out of the question, of course. So he went online to do some research. Found a useful page written by a pediatrician.

  The first thing he learned was that he shouldn’t have given her the Gatorade so quickly, because a sick child would simply vomit it right back up, as Emily had done. Better to wait thirty minutes, or even an hour, then start giving it in small sips. Slow and steady. Not all at once, even if they ask for it.

  The web page said that it was probably a virus that was making her sick. There was no cure for it, but it would pass in time. This doctor didn’t say anything about a fever. That was stupid. The information was incomplete. Worthless.

  He kept surfing and found another page on the site of a major hospital. According to this page, the vomiting could be caused by a virus, motion sickness, overeating, or food poisoning. It could also be the result of a concussion, encephalitis, meningitis, intestinal blockage, appendicitis…

  He began to investigate meningitis, which was a mistake, because now he became convinced that Emily had it. She had many of the symptoms. Yes, the vomiting and the fever, as well as agitation, irritability, rapid breathing, fast heart rate. Meningitis could be viral, bacterial, or fungal, with the bacterial kind—the most dangerous kind—requiring antibiotics. As quickly as possible. The text said treatment with antibiotics should reduce the risk of dying to less than 15%. Without the antibiotics, Emily could be facing a buildup of fluid between the skull and the brain, possibly resulting in neurological damage or death.

  That didn’t sound pleasant at all, especially since she wouldn’t be in a hospital setting. It would be slow. Painful.

  But, again, what could he do? He’d known from the start that there could be unforeseen challenges. Unexpected complications.

  Silly. Once again, he was overreacting. The odds that she had meningitis were small. Tiny. This was likely just a stomach bug, or even food poisoning, but it would pass.

  By eight o’clock that evening, Emily’s temperature was one hundred and four.

  19

  Mia had brought up a good point about the equipment I relied on in my line of work. I use quite a few gadgets, and some of them are damn expensive.

  Start with the laptop. Top of the line Macintosh. Three grand right there.

  Video cameras? Seems like I buy a new one every two or three years, because the technology is always changing. Each new camera is smaller, lighter, more powerful, more functional. The only brand I’ll own is Canon. My opinion, they make the best cameras around. Same for my still cameras and zoom lenses. It’s easy to spend a bunch of money very quickly on this stuff, so I have to remind myself I’m not shooting a feature motion picture. But I do insist on one of their pro-level high-definition camcorders, which cost a cool four thousand bucks. I also own one of their 35mm SLRs, which shoots pretty decent video, too, in a pinch, along with a pocket-sized point-and-shoot.

  It’s important to be intimately familiar with the operation of each camera and all the accessories so you can flip it on and start shooting in just a few seconds. You don’t want to be fumbling around while your supposedly injured target is hoisting a barbell or running to catch a bus.

  You have to practice regularly. And it goes without saying that you want to put freshly charged batteries in your cameras every time you go out. I keep a charger and back-up batteries in the van.

  Other gear includes a couple of kick-ass sets of binoculars, a police scanner, and plenty of high-quality flashlights. I also keep pepper spray handy—one of those big-ass canisters designed to ward off a bear attack—because, well, you never know. It’s not implausible that a target might spot me trailing him—“getting burned” is the phrase for it—and decide to get hostile. Hadn’t happened yet, but I was prepared. Better to use pepper spray than a Glock, that was my attitude.

  Then there are the device
s that people tend to think of as spy equipment. A tiny video camera built into a baseball cap. Another one that looks like an electrical outlet. Another one that’s built into a teddy bear. Yeah, I have a lot of cameras. I also have a motion-activated GPS device that feeds real-time tracking information to my laptop or iPhone. And I have various listening devices, including one with a parabolic sound-collecting dish that lets me pick up and record conversations at up to one hundred yards. For more intimate conversations, I have another audio recorder that looks like a remote control for a vehicle.

  And another one that looks like a wristwatch.

  All told, I probably have twenty thousand dollars worth of high-tech toys, not counting the van itself. None of it is illegal. Your average Joe can hop online and order all of these things himself, or get them at a retail store. On the other hand, how you use some of this equipment—that’s what can be illegal. Or legal, but unethical. Which doesn’t necessarily stop me. Remember, I’m not a cop. And I’m not a private investigator, either, so I’m not bound by any particular professional code of ethics, except my own.

  After brunch, I checked Craigslist and found a non-working dryer being given away in South Austin. It was waiting at the curb, first come, first served. I drove to the address and there it was, ready to load.

  Then I returned to Thomas Springs Road, because now it was time to get serious. Instead of sitting and waiting, I was going to take action.

  Okay, actually, I would have to sit and wait at first, which is what I did, in the same old spot in the church parking lot. Another eight hours in the van, in the summer heat, watching Brian Pierce’s gate. And nothing happened, except for an occasional vehicle passing by. No county deputies. No Jetta. No Emma Webster.

  The sun set, but I waited another thirty minutes for good measure. Then I stepped out of the van and began walking toward Pierce’s place. There was just enough moonlight to make the landscape easy to navigate. I covered one hundred yards in just over a minute.

  I stepped over to a cedar tree about twelve yards from the driveway itself. Perfect. There, at the base of the trunk, I placed my rock camera. That’s right, a camera that looks like a rock. Not a fancy rock, just a rock. About eight inches tall. Totally self-contained. Records up to eighty hours of video on a 32 gig SD memory card. The battery can last up to a solid year. Is technology great or what?

  There were other rocks in the area, and this “rock” looked enough like those rocks to make it virtually invisible. Which was good, because if someone walked off with it, that was a loss of seven hundred bucks, not to mention whatever was on the memory card.

  I would have preferred to place the camera across the road—for a better chance of capturing license plates of any vehicles coming or going—but the camera was motion-activated, meaning every vehicle passing on the road would have set it off. This way, the camera would only activate when someone was coming or going from Pierce’s place.

  I walked back to my van, started it up, and pulled onto Thomas Springs. Drove the hundred yards to Pierce’s driveway, plus a few yards past. Then I backed into Pierce’s driveway.

  No traffic coming from either direction.

  So I hopped out, popped open the back of the van, and wrestled my recently acquired non-working dryer out onto the ground. Better a dryer than a washer. Dryers are much lighter, but this one was still heavy enough for my purposes.

  Had to move quick. You never know when a car might come along. Every second counts. Which is why I had situated the camera before unloading the dryer. Even those extra few seconds, with my van sitting there as plain as day, could’ve screwed me.

  I maneuvered the dryer close to the gate, so that a vehicle couldn’t squeeze around it. Then I jumped back into my van and took off. Total time spent in Pierce’s driveway: about thirty seconds.

  Here’s something most people know if they’ve driven enough rural county roads: Every now and then, some pinhead who needs to get rid of a large item will simply abandon it on the side of the road. A worn-out couch. A busted refrigerator. A soiled mattress. An old stainless steel sink. Rather than taking it to the dump or a recycling facility, or giving it away, the idiot just pulls over and leaves it. Now it’s not his problem. Eventually, someone from the county comes and removes it. Not quickly, though. So it would be up to Pierce to move the dryer himself, with my rock camera recording the action. Would be difficult for him to do it if his wrist was really injured.

  I felt pretty good about the arrangement, so I went home, went to bed, and crashed for a solid nine hours.

  The next morning, I slept late, had a big breakfast, then went out to my van, where I saw that all four tires were flat again.

  Gruley. That son of a bitch.

  This was getting old fast.

  20

  “This is the second time this has happened?”

  I said, “Well, it’s the second time recently. The first time was on Thursday.”

  “Three days ago?”

  “Yes. Thursday.”

  “Same thing then? Flat tires?”

  “Yep.”

  “All four?”

  “Yes. All four.”

  This particular Austin cop—who had shown up an hour and a half after I called—couldn’t have been more than 25 years old. Probably a rookie. But what do you expect for a call about a vandalized van? Not like they’re going to send detectives and a forensics squad.

  “Any idea who might have done it? This time or the one three days ago?” He had that expression that I had seen before on other cops’ faces. The one, semi-amused, that said, What did you do to piss someone off?

  Patience. This happened every time. I had to repeat myself. So, just as I had done with the cop on Thursday, I proceeded to tell him the abridged version. What I did for a living. Why some people were prone to get angry with me. How the van was a regular target. Then I gave him the name Wade Gruley, and told him why Gruley had just spent three months in the county jail.

  “So he got out, when, middle of last week?” he asked, as he made detailed notes. The funny thing about rookies is that they aren’t all jaded and cynical. They still think they might actually make a difference in the world. They write paragraphs when a veteran would write a few words.

  “Pretty sure it was Thursday. Same day my tires were flattened the first time.”

  “Can you spell his name for me?”

  “W-A-D-E,” I said. He didn’t get the joke at first. Too intent on his note-taking. Then he got it and smiled. I spelled ‘Gruley’ for him. “Might be easier to check the report from Thursday,” I said. “It’s all in there. I was hoping someone from the department might’ve spoken to Mr. Gruley, but I haven’t heard from the responding officer.”

  It was a subtle jab. Not that I really expected anyone from APD to track Gruley down and give him a lecture on the evils of vandalism or to even question him. Hundreds of incidents like this happened every single day. The cops were way overloaded. Some scumbag went on a shopping spree with my credit card number a few years ago, and the investigator on that case said she had more then four hundred open files. That was her way of saying, Don’t expect to hear from me again. Ever.

  The cop said, “I’ll make a note that you think the two incidents are related.” He glanced around the apartment complex’s parking lot, inspecting the light poles.

  “No video,” I said, before he asked.

  “Any cameras at the front entrances?”

  “Nope.”

  “Maybe this will inspire the management to install cameras. You should tell them what happened.”

  “I’ll do that,” I said. I would not do that.

  “Do you know if any of your neighbors saw anything?”

  “Haven’t heard from anybody.” But you are free to ask them.

  “Has this guy Gruley contacted you?”

  “Not since he got out.”

  “Before that?”

  “Yeah, he called a couple of times when he was a guest of the county. Made
some vague promises to come see me.”

  “But no outright threats.”

  “No, he’s just this side of being that dumb.”

  “Did he say he was gonna flatten all your tires?”

  “Nope.”

  “So there is no actual evidence that he did this.”

  “Well, it’s just a hunch, but my hunches are so eerily accurate, they are admissible as evidence in most courts of law. Except in Arkansas. Those guys are really strict.”

  He got the joke this time and gave me a halfhearted grin. “You know, without a witness…”

  “Yeah, I know. And I know you have better things to do. I really do. I just need the report for the insurance company.”

  So he finished it up, handed me a copy, then whipped out a business card with his numbers on it. “If you hear from Gruley or see him hanging around, give me a call.”

  It was like bad dialogue from a cable-channel cop show.

  “You can count on it,” I said, because that would’ve been the next line from the script.

  I went back inside and planted myself on the couch. The tow truck driver would call my cell when he pulled up outside. I’d been going at it pretty hard for the past week, so I figured it was time to just take a break, even for a few minutes. I tuned the TV to a Texas Longhorns baseball game.

  But my break didn’t last long.

  A newsflash—in the form of a crawl across the bottom of the screen—caught my eye in the bottom of the third. The disappearance of Tracy Turner had grabbed the nation’s attention so absolutely, every new detail was disseminated via every possible media outlet as quickly as possible. The crawl said that a source in the case had revealed that, just last week, Kathleen Hanrahan had met with a divorce attorney.

  Whoa.

  That was big. Another bombshell, really. The circumstantial evidence continued to look really bad for Patrick Hanrahan. First he failed two polygraph tests, or at least he hadn’t passed them, then he cut off communications with police, and now this. His wife had been planning to leave him, or had been considering it.