Chapter 2

THE INFORMATION ON THE FRONT of the business card Jennifer gave me has been deeply scratched out. I can make out a word here and there. It’s a crème-colored vellum card that you can buy over the Internet. I erase as much ink as possible and then gently blot the card with baby oil. The letters h-o-l. Maybe holiday? They’re followed by b-t---. I know that if I work on it I’ll get something good but it is tedious work. It’s almost seven o’clock at night and I’m still working my new case. I spent a few hours checking police records for any homicides that occurred two years ago in the area where Jennifer met the woman who supposedly had her father offed. I check for police reports of a body found that was missing a finger. Nothing pops except a stabbing death of a teenage boy and a murder of a woman by her estranged boyfriend. No mention of a dead body with a missing digit shows up. How the hell was it covered up? Did this mysterious woman have connections in the coroner’s office? Was the severed finger put back on the hand?

The sketch artist faxed me the image of the hit man about an hour ago. Jennifer and her fiancé must have gone there as soon as they left my office. I look at the sketch. He has a Nordic-looking face. He appears to be somewhere in his middle to late forties and he looks like a man who spends a lot of time outdoors. Sandy colored short hair tops a rugged, chiseled face. It’s almost like looking at a face from some online dating site for professional eliminators.

 

“Nice looking male professional eliminator, forty-ish, seeking sexy female companion for romance, travel, and murder-for-hire joint ventures. Must be willing to carry out eliminations quickly and cold-bloodedly.”

The term hit man is an interesting one. No one advertises the fact that he or she is a paid assassin. Sometime a hit man is someone who you’d never suspect. The kind of person who has a day job as in the case of a St. Louis dentist named Glennon Edward Engleman. He moonlighted as a hit man for over thirty years and no one, not even his wife, knew about his after hours activities. Or Helene Connors, a social studies teacher in Florida, one of the best “hit men” in the business.

However, most people think of a hit man as someone who resembles a character from The Sopranos. Certainly organized crime has its share of hit men but what a lot of people don’t realize is that there are men and women who are called professional eliminators, just as the handwriting on the back of the card stated. They’re not doing a job for a mob boss, they don’t hang around in groups or strip joints and talk about their “goomahs”; they’re real, authentic, hired guns, killers and loners who will eliminate someone for a lot of money and who, once the job is done, disappear as if they never existed. Those in law enforcement call them ghosts. No names, no addresses, nothing. They appear and disappear at will. This man is more than likely one of those ghosts.

I fax the picture to a woman I know, a top-notch hacker. She’s part of that group of individuals who are virtually untraceable, the ones who never leave any tech footprints. This type of hacker works off the Tor, more commonly called the Dark Net, which offers total anonymity and protection. This is done by bouncing your communications around a distributed network of relays run by volunteers all around the world: it prevents anybody who is watching your Internet

GRAVE MISGIVINGS 13

 

 

connection from learning what sites you visit, and it prevents the sites you visit from learning your physical location. My contact has asked me several times if I want her to hook me up on the Tor and I am seriously thinking about it.

What she does is illegal but using someone who operates off the grid has never stopped me. If I think what the person does can help me on a case, I’m fine with it.  I text her and tell her to run it through photos of known hired killers to look for a match. If this professional killer is really good, I don’t expect she’ll find much but you never know what info will pop up in any area. You’ve got to make sure you cover all parts of a case and get as much info as possible.

The clock says it’s past seven thirty and I promised Will I’d meet him at my brownstone at eight. I leave what’s on my desk and go check on the doves’ nest on my fire escape. A nice surprise awaits me. The parent doves have come back unexpectedly and seem settled down for the night. They’re a peaceful diversion in my life and I whisper good-night to them. I put my gun in the back of my jeans and hit the double locks as I pull closed the heavy old oak door to Catherine Harlow, Private Investigations.

 

๕๕๕

 

Will is waiting on the steps of the brownstone with two large bags and the aromas hit me sweetly as I walk toward him. From across the street I can see he’s not in the best of moods.

“I don’t know why you won’t give me the key to your place,” is his greeting to me.

“It’s personal, Will. This is my private haven, I already told you that. If you have a key, then it’s not mine anymore.” I put the key in the lock and open the door.

“That’s not logical, Cate,” Will says as he walks through the door in front of me heading to my kitchen.

“You do logic your way, I’ll do it mine. Anyway, you’re a detective, you know how to break and enter.”

He looks offended. “I would never do that. Not unless I thought you were in trouble. I just think that it would be so much easier if I had a key, that’s all.” He looks all put out and everything. “I mean, come on now, we do sleep together although the word sleep is a misnomer for what we do. But, hell, Cate, making me sit outside waiting for you to come home was a royal pain in the ass tonight. Just give me a damn key.”

“No. Subject closed.” I smile sweetly at his scowl. “What’d you get us?”

A bit unwillingly he smiles back and with his mind on the food in the bags, tells me what feast he bought while I open a chilled bottle of merlot. A nice Italian wine with Chinese food—great combo.

After dinner I sit back on the couch and quiz Will on torts and criminal law, New York State style. He’s good on some answers and hesitant on others. I don’t think his heart is really in the lawyer thing. Other people, me included when we were married, have always encouraged him to pursue law. His mother, the elegant art historian Francesca Sutton Benigni, has always hoped that he would take up law someday; her father was a lawyer. Even his superiors in the precinct had given strong hints about him becoming a lawyer and then a tough DA.

 

 

KRISTEN HOUGHTON 14

 

 

And to be honest, Will did envision himself as a crusading DA type. He liked the idea too and that’s why going through night school wasn’t the drudge for him that it seems to be for most people. His dreams of being a lawyer turned DA were just that; dreams.

Dreams are good for all of us but then reality has a habit of smacking you in the back of the head. Take my line of work for an example. Everyone thinks that being a female PI is somehow glamorous. You know, you always look great and sexy, you’re fearless in getting the job done, and then you have fantastic romantic encounters with some hot guy you met on the job. I admit I daydreamed those thoughts myself.

But the truth is much different than what is portrayed in movies and on TV. I rarely look great and sexy on the job except when I’ve had to play the part of a hooker, I have a healthy fear of the dangers that can happen to me on a case, and my romantic encounters never evolve from any guy I do meet while I’m working. Dreams vs the reality: reality wins every time.

Will and I go over tedious law terms until almost one in the morning. The boredom is palpable. I’ve been up since five thirty and I’m having a hard time keeping my eyes open. I keep nodding off. Will comes back from a bathroom run to find me with my head slumped against the back of the couch, eyes half-closed. He sits next to me and blows air toward the ceiling in frustration. In another minute he closes his eyes and is out. I nod off and a muffled snore wakes me.

“Hey,” I touch his arm sleepily. “We need to stop for tonight. Go home and sleep. Or, better yet, sleep on the couch. I don’t want you driving if you’re too tired.”

He opens his eyes and nods toward my bedroom door. “What, I can’t sleep in the bed?”

I stand up feeling wobbly and lean against the couch. “Will, I am exhausted. You come into that bed with any thoughts of a sexual escapade...”

“Who, me?” He smiles that hot smile I know too well then gives away his own exhaustion in a loud yawn.

“Yes, you. I’m so tired that, if you even attempt to do anything, it will be as if you’re having sex with a dead woman. Seriously, not tonight. Tomorrow, absolutely, but tonight I am wiped.”

Another yawn. Looking at me he says, “Well, God knows that I am not someone who is into necrophilia so I’m taking the couch just for tonight.”

He gives me a tiny smirk when he says the word necrophilia. It’s his nasty little way of getting a dig in at my former love interest, Giles Barrett. Giles is the best medical examiner in New York State and being with him was sweet. For Will to make that crack about “doing it with the dead” is unworthy of him and I tell him so.

“Look, smart-ass, that was so uncalled-for. Giles is very respectful of the bodies down at the morgue. He’s a doctor, he’s a professional. You are such an...”

“Whoa! Hey! Did I say Giles? Did you hear me say his name? Seriously, would I really insinuate that Giles would do something unnatural with a dead body? Oh, Cate, you really are tired to think I meant Giles when I said I wasn’t into necrophilia. I’m hurt, seriously hurt.”

I am tired and my only retort as I head toward the bedroom is, “Go to Hell.”

To which my ever-sarcastic ex-husband says innocently, “Hell will have to wait, babe. I’m going to sleep first.”