They didn’t set off on a wild-goose chase, despite their urgency. They were better served using Tess’s locating skills than randomly driving around in the hope of spotting a familiar face. Po took her to his auto shop, and gave her access to his computer. ‘May as well get some use out of it, I rarely turn the damn thing on,’ he announced.
‘Only when you want to see some nice pictures of cute puppies and kittens, eh?’
He grunted in mirth. Left the cramped office to her.
Following the same investigative trails she did to collate family trees, Tess was able to identify the known haunts and accomplices of John Torrance. Her task would’ve been simpler if she’d had access to law-enforcement databases, but instead she had to rely on media websites and social networks. It might surprise some people to learn how much could be gleaned by tracing social network updates back to their sources, if not to the extent that people wore their hearts on their sleeves when it came to those very public forums. Rapidly she found an ex-girlfriend, who’d publicly shamed Torrance’s sexual prowess after she caught him with another ‘ho’. It was then a simple task to follow the torrid stream backwards along the timeline to a point where they were both still loved-up and sharing selfies of them enjoying themselves at various locations. Hell, the girl had unwittingly made things easier by turning on the ‘tag location’ function on her status updates and Tess found a handy map attached showing exactly where Torrance called home. It didn’t give an exact house number, but the street was good enough. Other snaps taken by the girl showed the garden and exterior of the Torrance household, and by driving the street, Tess was confident she’d be able to identify the property.
Before setting off to front Torrance, Tess had also identified his blond partner in crime. He was in a number of the photos, handily tagged back to his own Facebook account. He had an everyday name, nothing that would ordinarily stand out, but Kenneth Jones was better known to his Facebook compadres as ‘Welshy’. Tess had also identified his address easily enough, but this time via a news media channel reporting a drunken brawl the man had been involved in mere months ago.
She searched their ‘trees’ for any hint of who the faceless killer might be, but there was nothing of value. He could be any one of dozens of friends appearing in photographs on the social network sites, or any one of dozens more commenting on statuses, or he could be none of the above. Tess even looked for a page dedicated to Albert Sower, and one for his nom de plume Alberto Suarez, but it seemed Sower came of a generation with neither the time nor the inclination for social networking. Or he was too subtle a criminal to make his every move so obvious.
And thinking about the subtleties of criminals …
When he wasn’t looking, Tess quickly keyed in Po’s name, in its various combinations, but also drew a blank, for which she was relieved. When he’d originally been tried for his revenge killing of his father’s murderer, the Internet was in its infancy and perhaps the Times Picayune hadn’t yet got round to digitizing all its back copy yet. The name Nicolas Villere did crop up in search engine results, but not in a way she could be sure had anything to do with Po, and certainly not in connection to Sower or his associates. She clicked off again, feeling like a sneak thief digging through his personal things. Anything she wished to know about him she should ask. If he didn’t want to reply, then so be it.
‘You’re making that funny woodchuck sound again.’
Tess glanced up from the monitor, immediately halting the unconscious clucking of her tongue. Po stood in the doorway, his left arm extending up the frame. He was dressed in a tight black T-shirt tucked into black jeans. He was wearing the same military issue boots she’d always seen him in. He clutched a thin black jacket in his right fist.
‘What’s this, your ninja costume?’ she asked, while discreetly deleting her recent searches from the computer’s history.
‘It takes a ninja to catch a ninja,’ he said, one eyebrow lifted, and it sounded like a quote from some cheesy movie she’d watched years ago. ‘Found us a starting point yet?’
‘I have,’ she said, and told him Torrance’s street address.
‘You expect him to be there?’
‘No. But we won’t know unless we check.’
Po nodded, and she closed down the computer. She followed him into the workshop. He paused at a large toolbox. ‘Maybe you’d like to grab something,’ he offered.
‘What, there’s no equivalent to Pinky Leclerc in Portland?’ she asked.
‘Despite what you might’ve heard, I’ve suppressed my criminal tendencies while living in Portland. So no, I don’t have a handy gunrunner on call to get us what we need.’ He shrugged his tall frame. ‘I never was comfortable with guns anyway.’
‘So what have you in your box of tricks? Throwing stars and nunchucks?’
‘Best I can do is knives, or a hammer if you prefer.’
Tess puffed out her cheeks. Since her accidental slaying of the clerk she hadn’t felt comfortable around guns either, but given a choice she’d rather have Pinky’s Glock than resort to sticking someone with a blade, or bashing in their skulls with a blunt object. ‘I’ll pass,’ she said.
She waited for Po to choose a weapon, but he simply stood. It was likely he’d already secreted his weapon of choice in his high-top boots.
‘If we can go by my place there’s something there I’d like to collect,’ she said. Po’s mouth turned down briefly, but it was a sign of agreement.
Back in the Ford Mustang, they were at her apartment in no time. Po waited with the car while Tess jogged up the steps. Caution slowed her as she approached the door. She checked for signs of forced entry; Sower’s people might have arrived while she was out and were now lying in wait. The lock was untouched. She keyed it open and stepped inside, forced to turn on lights to see where she was going. Her apartment didn’t feel as empty this time, more familiar and comfortable. She went through to her bedroom, opened her walk-in closet, and crouched to pull out a heavy steel box. It had a digital keypad, and she tapped in her grandfather’s birthdate, and lifted the lid. Inside was his old NYPD revolver, a Ruger .38 Service Six, handed down from father to son and then bequeathed to Tess following her dad’s untimely death. Tess had never used the gun during her service, but had maintained it, and occasionally test-fired it at the range. It was ready to go, and she’d two speed-loaders of ammunition. She fed rounds into the cylinder, then put the spare loader in her jacket pocket and slipped the gun in her belt. The revolver was licensed for home defence, and carrying it on her person was illegal, but to hell with that! Under the circumstances she’d take the rap to her knuckles, rather than face off against Sower’s killer empty-handed.
Next, as another tool of choice, she collected her iPad, which she’d left charging while she was out.
Returning to the Mustang, she found Po out on the kerb, smoking a cigarette. That was how it appeared at first glance, but really he was patrolling. He too had thought that the bad guys might target her apartment. If he were in cahoots with them, would he stand guard against them? Time to put those doubts aside. She got in the Mustang and asked Po to drive; best to divert attention away from her home. As they drove away she glanced back, picturing the devastation a firebomb would wreak on the wooden structure.
John Torrance’s address was tagged to a cul-de-sac off Brighton Avenue, nestled adjacent to a dirt track giving access to the Capisic Brook Trail alongside the Fore River where it spilled into a large pond. It would be a pleasant place to live in daylight, but in the dark it took on sinister tones. Tess wouldn’t willingly walk down that trail without her gun in hand, for fear of being set upon by muggers or rapists, even if the fear were all in her mind. Po elected to take the back way in, for which she was grateful, while she waited by the Mustang to allow him time to get in place. He disappeared the second he ducked into the trail, beneath the overhanging boughs of trees and shrubs. Tess silently counted to one hundred, then went forward and knocked on the front door. She didn’t expect Torrance to answer, because there were no lights on inside. When the door crept open, Po glanced out.
‘Found an unlatched window back there,’ he explained.
Tess checked behind. There was no challenge from any of the neighbouring abodes. ‘OK, in and out as quickly as possible.’
Torrance had been a thug in his earlier years, and Tess almost expected a similar hovel to the one they’d searched for Crawford Wynne in Morgan City. But Torrance had aged since his wild drunken days, and his tastes had obviously matured too. His house was nice, without being overdone. Not too cluttered, which actually helped them make their search. Tess found his travel case on his bed. He’d only gotten as far as opening the suitcase, without taking the laundry to the wash basket yet. But it was enough to tell them that he had arrived back from Louisiana not long before them. Going downstairs she joined Po in the kitchen, he was playing a small flashlight around the room. As she walked in, he settled it on an opened can of chilli-con-carne sitting on the breakfast bar. A spoon jutted out of it. ‘Looks as if Jacky Boy left in a hurry,’ he said.
Tess leaned and sniffed. It smelled like dog food, but fresh enough. The sauce hadn’t begun drying yet, which suggested the tin hadn’t been open long.
‘Think he got a taste for spicy food down south?’ Po asked.
Tess said nothing.
She frowned, then went to a notepad on the breakfast bar, hoping to find some handy clue scrawled on it. There was nothing, Torrance not being much of a note taker. She opened a drawer and found it full of the usual stuff packed out of sight in drawers everywhere, but again nothing of importance. She closed it. Po had walked away into the hall.
‘Here,’ he whispered.
She joined him and frowned down at the old-fashioned landline phone on a small wooden stool. ‘What?’
Even as she posed the question, a red light blinked on the phone.
‘Voicemail message,’ Po said. ‘Should we listen to it?’
‘Hell, yes,’ said Tess and lifted the receiver. She hit a chunky button on the keypad, and put it on speaker.
‘Hey, Jacky, it’s me, Welshy.’
Tess lifted her eyebrows at Po, but continued listening keenly.
‘D’you believe the shit that’s going on? These times they are a-changing. If you want to be part of the new regime you’d better get over here, man. The greaseball’s called the troops together and isn’t taking no for an answer.’
The message was cryptic enough without giving much away, but Tess got lucky.
‘Get your ass to pier-side ASAP. The Greek’s boat, right? And, Jacky, if you’ve fallen asleep, well, I pity you, man. The greaseball’s looking to cut something and it might just be your balls.’