Thirty-four
Hillary James mixed a gin and tonic, kicked her high heels off, and stretched out on her couch, thinking of how the broadcast had gone. She had told no one at the station of the content of her story until it aired, and it had gotten the attention of the owner of the station. He called to see what she was on to, and she had to do some fast talking to hide the fact that she had very little real evidence to back up her claims. She managed to put him off until after her meeting with the mayor and the chief of police, which she’d managed to schedule for the next day.
The doorbell rang. “Shit, who could that be at this hour?” She got up and peeked through the peephole in the door. It was Buzz Burkhart, and she didn’t want to see him. He was a macho brute with little or no class and she despised him, but he might be able to shed some light on what the chief of detectives was up to, so she let him in.
“Buzz, darlin’, what a surprise. Come on in.”
He swaggered into the apartment and looked around. “Pretty snazzy place. They must pay you TV people pretty good.”
Hillary’s smile faltered for a moment before she got herself under control and hid her distaste. “Would you like a drink?”
“Ya got any beer?” he asked, running a beefy tongue over dry lips.
Beer, that figures, she thought. “Sure. Make yourself comfortable and I’ll get it.” She went into the kitchen and got a can of Coors out of the refrigerator. As she opened it, she called, “Have you got anything for me, or is this a social call?”
When she entered the living room, Burkhart was grinning like a cat with canary feathers on his lips. “Well, I got some news, and it’s worth plenty. This thing is even bigger than you thought.”
Hillary raised her eyebrows and handed him his beer. She sat next to him on the couch and picked up her drink. “Tell me about it.”
He grinned as his eyes roamed over her body. He licked foam off his lips. “There was some talk about us gettin’ to know each other better if I delivered for ya.”
She took a big drink of her gin, wondering if she could go through with this. Oh hell, she thought, it’s not like I’m some dewy-eyed virgin. She looked at him over the rim of her glass. He’ll probably come in about thirty seconds anyway. Even so, it’d better be worth it, you asshole. She got up off the couch.
Slowly, letting him watch, she began to undo her blouse. “Tell me a little before we start, darlin’. Just so I’ll know what I’m buying.”
Burkhart wiped at the sweat that suddenly appeared on his forehead. He couldn’t believe she was actually going to do it. “Well, it seems that the chief is on to a big, a really big crime.” He chugged his beer down in two gulps, crushing the can in a pawlike hand and pitching it onto the coffee table. He began to undo the buttons on his shirt. “I guarantee that it’ll be the biggest story of the year.” He wiped the last of the beer foam off his mouth with the back of his hand.
“In that case,” she said as she grabbed him by the shirt and led him into the bedroom, “I’ll guarantee that I’ll make this a night you’ll never forget.”
She pushed him back on her bed and began to work on his belt. She pulled his pants and underwear down and stepped back to look at him. His chest and stomach were covered with a hairy pelt, and he had the beginnings of a beer gut. Not exactly Mel Gibson you have here, Hillary, she thought with distaste.
He was excited and sweating, and she could smell the sour stench wafting up off his body as he lay back on her bed. Damn, now I’ll have to change the sheets before I go to bed.
She took his half-erect penis in her hands and bent over him, her hair falling on his stomach. She licked him with one long stroke of her tongue, trying not to let him see her shudder. “Tell me.”
He groaned and closed his eyes, unable for the moment to talk. She let him go and stepped back, standing there with her hands on her hips, waiting.
He opened his eyes, whining, “Okay, I’ll tell you. Just don’t stop.”
As she leaned over him and began to work on him with her mouth and hands, he began to talk.
* * *
After working most of the morning at Clark’s office, going over a handful of folders Shooter had taken from Niemann’s office, the task force decided to go to a nearby Denny’s restaurant for breakfast and a discussion of what they had found.
While waiting for their food, Damon sipped his coffee and made a face. They didn’t serve espresso at Denny’s.
“I’ll start,” he said. He looked over his notes for a moment. “I didn’t find any checks to real-estate companies, mortgage companies, or banks. Nothing that would even remotely give us a lead to any real property Niemann might own. I told the bank to freeze his account and to notify me personally if he tries to withdraw any funds.”
Matt shook his head and pushed his coffee away. He was feeling pretty bad, with sore, aching muscles in parts of his body that he didn’t know had muscles. “I’ve been through every check in my stack twice, and nothing stands out as unusual or that might help find TJ.”
Damon lit a cigarette, letting the smoke escape through pursed lips. After a moment, he asked Sam, “How about you?”
She looked up, chewing on a fingernail, a thoughtful look on her face. “I don’t know. I didn’t find anything definite, but there are a couple of checks I’d like to follow up on before I give up.”
“Did you find something?” Matt asked.
She frowned. “Well, nothing that indicates he was paying on any property, but . . .”
Damon took a deep drag on the cigarette, then stared at her as he exhaled. “Come on, Sam. Tell us what you have.”
Sam spread her hands and shrugged. “Well, it’s a long shot, but I found a check from several years ago made out to the Mayflower Moving Company. I’d like to give them a call and see if they can dig out an invoice. Maybe he moved some furniture or something to a place we don’t know about.”
Sherry frowned. “Jeez, you’re really reaching, Sam. I hope the company keeps their records that long.”
“Me too. I also found a check made out to the Port Authority, and the check had a notation at the bottom that said ‘taxes.’”
“Why would he be paying taxes to the Port Authority?” Matt asked.
Sam smiled. “I wondered the same thing. I made a couple of calls to city hall and found out that the only taxes the Port Authority levies are to ship or boat owners who berth their boats at a public pier. They also tax international shipping lines for loading or unloading their ships, but I don’t think that would apply here.”
Damon slowly began to smile. “That sounds more like it,” he said.
They stopped talking while the waitress delivered their food; then they all began to eat with more appetite than they had when they’d ordered. It seemed even a long shot was better than no shot.
After a few minutes, Damon said, “Sam, you’re pretty busy with the autopsies and physical evidence. Why don’t you let Matt work on the moving company and you spend your time on the Port Authority? And, I want Sherry to go along. Maybe the presence of a badge will make them look at those records a little harder.”
Matt wiped his face with a napkin, a little irked that Sam had found the clues and that Clark was giving him her leftover jobs to do. “What’s your next step, Damon?”
“I’ve got to put in some time on some of the other homicides the department is working. Unfortunately, the rest of the city’s criminals haven’t stopped killing while I’ve been working on the vampire murders.”
He held up his hands at the look on Matt’s face. “Just a minute, Doc, I’ll keep finding TJ and Niemann as a number-one priority. Hell, I’ll even cover for Sherry and Shooter and keep them from being assigned to any other cases until this one is solved, but I’m too visible to the brass to work on just one case at a time.”
He stood and threw a bill on the table to cover the check. “Keep up the chase, people. We’ll get the bastard sooner or later. Oh, but be careful to keep a low profile. I’m a little uncomfortable now that Hillary James seems to have a snitch in the department.” He leaned over and put his hands on the table and lowered his voice, looking around the restaurant as he spoke like a spy in an old movie. “Remember, if she finds out what’s really been going on, all of our butts are stuck out a country mile.”
As they got up to leave, Matt looked at Sherry. “I just hope for TJ’s sake that we find him sooner rather than later.”