Hank Mossberg, Private Ogre: Murder in the Boughs Page 12

  “It’s possible,” I said. “I just don’t have enough information yet. I need to know her work history. I need to know about her income and her bank accounts; maybe if she has insurance for this kind of thing.”

  Tas was already typing before I finished. I saw the welcome screen come up on the I.R.S. website. Then he hit three buttons at once, and the whole thing vanished. An old-fashioned cursor-type interface appeared on the screen. “Are you sure this is safe?” I said.

  Tas smiled. “Don’t worry, if they even notice this invasion they’ll trace it to an empty building in Berlin. I need something to search, a name or social security number…”

  “Roxy Paton,” I said. “She lives in the Heights.”

  Within seconds, Roxy’s entire I.R.S. tax history appeared before me. Tas scrolled down through the pages. “She’s worked a lot of low-end jobs,” he said. “This land insurance gig she’s got is by far the best job she’s ever had. Her salary’s half a million. She started at almost a hundred grand ten years ago, and that was ten times what she’d made in previous jobs. She gets bonused good, too.”

  “Can you print that?”

  “Easier done than said.” He hit a button on his keyboard. “Okay, let’s see what else we can find…”

  I left half an hour later with an armload of papers that could have gotten me tossed in prison for about ten lifetimes. I asked Tas if he could call me a taxi on my way out. “A taxi?” he said. “Why not just borrow my ride?”

  “No, that’s okay. I’ve got my Blazer at home-”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. Come with me.” He led me out front and pressed a button on his keychain. All six garage doors opened at once. “Take your pick.”

  “Seriously?” I said. “I don’t know Tas, I wouldn’t want to hurt one of your cars.” I glanced at them. He had three or four cars in each garage, everything a person could want. Ferrari, Rolls Royce, Corvette…

  “Don’t sweat it,” he said. “I’m insured. Come here, you’ll like this one.”

  He led me to the furthest stall and made a broad gesture towards a big tough-looking Hummer H1. It was olive green, like the original army paint, but this wasn’t the army paint. It was deep, lustrous, and shiny. “I don’t know,” I murmured. “It’s beautiful, but-”

  “I told you, don’t worry about it. Besides, I don’t think you’ll fit in any of my other cars.” He reached up to open the door. I grinned as I imagined him trying to crawl into that beast and drive it. He gestured, and I obediently crawled into the driver’s seat.

  “Well?” he said.

  “It’s very nice,” I admitted.

  “That’s not all… check out the fuel gauge.”

  I glanced at the dash panel. “Uh, where is it?”

  He broke out laughing. “There isn’t one. This thing runs on hydrogen-injected biodiesel. It gets a hundred miles per gallon. The computer will tell you when it’s low, but it’ll be a while. It’s also environmentally friendly of course, but it’s not technically legal…”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well it is legal, but it’s not… I mean, it’s registered and everything. It’s cool as long as nobody looks under the hood. It won’t pass a smog test, though.”

  “What? I thought you said it was environmentally friendly?”

  “It is. This Hummer runs cleaner than any hybrid you can buy, and it’s got a lot more power. Problem is, the state won’t license the technology, therefore it won’t pass a smog test. Therefore, I have to get creative with the DMV computer network to keep it registered, if you know what I mean.”

  I started crawling out. “Look, Tas-”

  He reached up and pushed me back in. “Hank, I insist. Besides, I thought you were in a hurry.”

  I grimaced. “I am.”

  “Then go! Just give me a call when you’re done with it and I’ll have one of the boys pick it up.”

  “Thanks, Tas.”

  I was extra cautious to make sure I obeyed the traffic laws on the way back to the city. The last thing I wanted to do was wreck Tas’ Hummer. Not to mention the can of worms I’d open if a city mechanic got a look under the hood. Other than the nervous factor, the Hummer was actually a fun ride. Tas had installed every upgrade imaginable, from a DVD player to power leather bucket seats, to the voice activated GPS system on the dash. The thing was practically a limo. I glanced in the back, wondering if there was a bar hidden back there somewhere. Knowing Tas, there probably was.

  I got to Roxy’s house just after ten, but she wasn’t home. Roseanne said she was at work. “Do you think it would be alright if I looked around for a few minutes?” I said. “I just want to test out a theory I’ve been working on.”

  “Anything, if it helps Jenny,” she said.

  I stepped inside and pulled my ethometer out of its case. I got no readings on the main floor, so I headed up to Jenny’s room. There, I scanned the closet, under the bed, and around the desk. I got nothing until I directed it towards Jenny’s pillows, and suddenly I caught a flash of pale green luminescence. I stepped closer, pulling the covers back.

  “What is it?” Roseanne said behind me.

  I glanced over my shoulder. “Could you please close the drapes?”

  Roseanne did as I asked, and then hovered behind me. I grimaced as I saw the telltale smudges of luminescence here and there around the bed. Satisfied, I turned away. Roseanne was staring at me with huge, wondering eyes. “What is it?” she said. “What did you find?”

  I hesitated for a moment, wondering if she was capable of handling the truth. Reluctantly, I handed the ethometer over. “Take a look I said.”

  She put the scope to her eye and gasped. “What is it? What is the strange light?”

  “It’s residue. Something left behind by…” I trailed off, not sure how to explain it.

  “The spirits,” she said. She put the scope down and turned to me, a look of horror spreading across her face. “The spirits took my little Jenny?”

  “Something like that,” I said. “It’s hard to explain.”

  “I know about them,” Roseanne said. “My grandmother told me about the spirits in Mexico that used to steal children in the forest. She said that when the spirits took a child, the child never returned.”

  Her eyes were pleading with me. I wanted to say something to make her feel better, but I couldn’t bring myself to lie. Her grandmother had told her the truth, at least as much as she understood it. “I need to talk to Roxy,” I said. “Can you tell me where to find her?”

  Roseanne scribbled Roxy’s business address on a piece of paper. “Please bring her back,” she pleaded as I left. “Please make the spirits give our Jenny back.”

  I didn’t answer her. It would have been cruel to tell her what she asked was impossible. I crawled back into the Hummer and headed downtown. Roxy’s insurance company was located on the twentieth floor of the Triple Six, one of the largest skycrapers in the city. The place was notorious for catering to big money. The running joke around town was that every time the government enacted another bank bailout, the Triple Six added another level.

  After all my running around, it was nearly noon by the time I caught up with Roxy. After a brief wait in the lobby, she came out to greet me. She guided me into her office and closed the door behind us. “Have a seat,” she said. She dropped into the chair behind her big cherry wood desk. “It’s so good to see you, Hank. Please tell me you found her.”

  I took a deep breath. I’d been driving around for more than an hour, but I still hadn’t figured out exactly what I was going to say to her. I sat down across from her, struggling to find a tactful way of telling her what I believed. “Roxy, I don’t think you’ve been entirely honest with me.”

  Her face fell. “What are you talking about?”

  I pulled out some of the papers Tas had given me. “You never finished college. You worked a dozen jobs in your twenties, each of them worse than the last. You made a career out of jobs that should belong to college
students and welfare cases. You were on a road straight to nowhere, digging yourself deeper every year.” I saw anger in her eyes, but also tears. I was dredging up some painful memories for her.

  “That’s all true,” she said. “I don’t know how you got that information. How does any of that have anything to do with my Jenny being taken? When exactly did I become a suspect, Mr. Mossberg?”

  I sighed. “Eleven years ago your life turned around overnight. You went from a dead-end job, one paycheck away from homelessness, to a job that paid a hundred grand a year. How did that happen?”

  “I already told you,” she said. I could see her trying to maintain control of herself. She was fighting back the tears, struggling with the anger that made her want to lash out at me. Roxy was smart enough to know none of that would help her. Maybe on some level, she really did want her kid back.

  “No, you didn’t. All you told me was that you came to work here and had an affair with your boss, who happened to be a married man.”

  “Yes, that’s exactly how it happened. I had just lost my job. I’d been working the night shift at the all-night theater on Haight. It was awful, the most disgusting job I’ve ever had, but I needed it. I got fired because one of the customers asked me out and I said no. It turned out that he was the boss’s best friend.

  “I was going to commit suicide. I couldn’t keep living like that anymore, but I couldn’t seem to get out of it. I couldn’t afford school, and my grades had never been that good anyway. I had never owned a car and all the clothes I wore came from Goodwill. I was two weeks away from eviction. I was going to be homeless. So I took my last paycheck and bought a bottle of wine and a box of sleeping pills. I planned to just go to sleep and never wake up. But then I got the phone call.”

  “Phone call? From who?”

  She looked at me. Tears streamed down her face. Her mascara was running and she looked flat out miserable. I felt sorry for her. “It was ten minutes to midnight. I still remember that moment like I’m there. I was halfway through the wine. I was building up my courage to take the sleeping pills. Then the phone rang, and it was some guy from an employment agency. I’d never even heard of them before, but he said he had my name on file, and he had a job for me.”

  “How did he get your name?”

  “I don’t know. I always assumed someone who knew me had done it, maybe somebody I’d worked for in the past.”

  “So he called you out of nowhere, and told you about this job?”

  “Yes. I interviewed the next day. I was on the job by the end of the day. I had moved into a new apartment by the end of the month and bought my first piece of real estate by the end of the year.”

  I settled back into the chair. “What is it that you’re not telling me?” I said.

  I saw the anger flash across her face. She quickly suppressed it. “I’m getting tired of your accusations. If you don’t remember, I hired you, Mr. Mossberg.”

  “Have you ever played with a Ouija board? Tarot cards maybe?”

  “What? What are you talking about?”

  “I’m talking about the supernatural. A lot of times when people are down on their luck, they’ll do anything to turn it around. As an act of desperation, they turn to the supernatural. They go to the spirits for help. But what they don’t understand is that they don’t end up talking to spirits. They’re talking to imps and fairies, creatures who will make bargains that sound good up front, but turn awful a few years down the road.”

  Roxy narrowed her eyes. “Imps and fairies? Are you out of your mind?”

  “I’m just trying to help you, Mrs. Paton. You have to be honest with me. Have you ever had any dealing with the fae?”

  “Fae?”

  “The fairy-world.”

  “Get out.”

  I rose reluctantly from my chair. “I’m only trying to help you,” I said. “I can’t find your daughter unless you tell me the truth about what happened. I know you did something. You made a pact or a bargain… there has to be something.”

  “Get out. I’m not going to tell you again,” Roxy said angrily. She stomped around her desk and opened the door. “You’ve got five seconds before I call security.”

  I put my hat on and stepped past her. I wanted to apologize, to try and explain myself more clearly so she’d understand, but we were beyond that now. I had just told her I thought fairies had taken her child, and that it was because of something she’d done. Once words like that are spoken, there’s no bringing them back.

  I left the building with a heavy heart, and not just because of the way I’d destroyed my relationship with Roxy. Jenny was still out there somewhere. She still needed me. I just didn’t know what I could do to help her. If Roxy wouldn’t be truthful about her past, then I couldn’t get to the truth about who had taken Jenny. I couldn’t move on without Roxy’s cooperation. That wasn’t going to happen now. I was off the case. After what I’d just said, Roxy wouldn’t have called 911 if she saw me on fire.

  And poor little Jenny was on her own. Without my help, I knew she’d never come home again.

  Chapter 10

  It was the kind of day that made me wonder what I was doing with my life. I could have been a sewage plumber or a high school janitor. That was honest work; safe work. Maybe even noble. Anything would have been a step up from what I was doing. I felt terrible about the way things had gone with Roxy. I hated the fact that I’d had to accuse her of being involved in the kidnapping. I just didn’t know how else I could have gotten her reaction. Now that I had it, I almost wished I could go back in time and undo everything I’d just said. Before our meeting I’d been sure that Roxy knew more than she was letting on. Now, I didn’t know what to think.

  Those were my thoughts as I stood staring at the burned-out hull of Tas’ beautiful Hummer.

  I was on the street outside Roxy’s office building, staring in disbelief at the flames licking up through the broken windows and crawling across the surface of that once-glossy paint. Someone had spray painted the words environmental nazi and eco-terrorist all over the vehicle, and then they’d set it on fire. Obviously, the vandal hadn’t realized that Tas’ Hummer was probably the most environmentally friendly vehicle in the world, and that it contained technology that could set the world free from the stranglehold of fossil fuels. The activist had assumed the Hummer was just what it looked like, and nothing more, and that was his justification to do something like this.

  I stared at it for about twenty seconds as a crowd of onlookers gathered around me. Then I suddenly realized how much danger we were in. Tas had said the Hummer had some sort of hydrogen injection. Hydrogen is a dangerously explosive gas.

  “Get back!” I started shouting. “Everyone, get back! It’s going to blow up!”

  I had about ten seconds to convince them, and then it did. Fortunately, the crowd believed me. They all moved back in time to avoid the explosion. The boom was loud enough to temporarily deafen everyone within a one-block radius. Black smoke rolled up into the sky and flames licked at what was left of the vehicle. The crowd wandered around in a daze trying to figure out what exactly had happened.

  I decided I’d better get out of there before someone started asking questions. I pulled my hat down over my face and ran out into the street, waving down a taxi. Seconds later, I was in a cab on the way back to the tree. I called Tas on my cell phone to give him the bad news.

  “That’s a bummer,” he said. “I’m sorry to hear it. I suppose it was only a matter of time, though. This isn’t the first time this has happened.”

  “What?” I said incredulously. “Tas, are you saying you knew this would happen?”

  “No, of course not! I didn’t know it would happen to you, today… I’m just saying I had a similar problem with my last Hummer.”

  I groaned. “I don’t know what to say, Tas. I really. Don’t. Know.”

  “Hey, at least you weren’t in it when it happened!” he said with a laugh. I hung up on him.

  I found
Butch sitting at my desk back at the jail. He looked miserable. He smiled weakly as I came in. “Afternoon, Boss,” he mumbled .

  I hung my hat and coat on the wall and then came closer, inspecting him. “Butch, are you… sober?”

  He grimaced. “Aye. What a terrible thing to say, but it’s true.”

  I sat down across from him. “Still can’t figure out what to do about Talia?” I said.

  “He won’t call her,” Vinnie offered from his cell. “He’s been moaning about her all day, but he won’t pick up the phone.”

  “Is that true?” I said.

  Butch put his hands over his face. “I can’t do it. I know what she’ll do. She’ll laugh at me. She’ll say, Quit stalking me you hideous, short, hairy monster!”

  “You don’t know that,” I said.

  Butch snorted, but Vinnie spoke up again. “It’s true. Elf girls are wild, Butch. You think they want a guy like me, but they don’t. They want something exotic.”

  “See,” I said encouragingly. “You’re not short and hairy, Butch. You’re exotic.”

  He rolled his eyes. “Ah, so now I’m gonna take the advice of a mobster?”

  “Hey now!” Vinnie said. “I’m not a mobster, I’m… well, I’m unemployed.”

  I chuckled. “You are that,” I said. “Let’s keep it that way, huh?”

  “Ah, you don’t have to worry about me, Steward,” he said. “I’m on the straight and narrow from here on out.”

  Butch grunted. Shulzy Orzo came walking around the corner. He was wearing jeans and a black leather jacket. He had his hands tucked in his pockets and he looked somewhat nervous. I shot Butch a confused glance, and he shrugged. Apparently, Shulzy had come down on his own.

  “Just the man I wanted to see,” I said.

  Shulzy glanced back and forth between Butch and me. “Did everything work out?” he said. “Was it like I said?”

  “It was exactly like you said, Shulzy. I’ve got to admit I had my doubts about you, but I can honestly say you’re one of the good guys.”