The Spike (A Marty Singer Mystery Book 4) Read online

  “Maybe that’s just progress.”

  He shook his head. “It would be progress if the developers and the families that got pushed out for it shared in the wealth. But not one in ten of the original residents can afford to buy back in their old neighborhood.”

  “Where do they go?” I asked.

  “You’ve heard of ‘white flight’? The great urban migration, when June Cleaver wanted to go out in the suburbs to get away from all the blacks and Hispanics in the city?”

  I nodded.

  “Reverse it. Today, those same suburban developments are run down, outdated, and half an hour away from the urban dream that is the new, exciting Wash-ing-ton, DC.” Denton emphasized each adjective with jazzy intonation and a jog of his head. “Can a developer sell those suburban lots for top dollar three decades later? Hell, no. White folks don’t want to live there anymore. They’re heading downtown. But—hey, what do you know?—a whole bunch of poor black and Hispanic families just got shoved out of their homes in Southeast. It’s a perfect match. The rich return to a sparkling new city and suburban real estate brokers pawn off broken-down neighborhoods to a whole demographic that can’t afford anything else.”

  Denton’s voice had taken on an almost evangelical rhythm and tone. I paused, giving him a chance to ease down from the rhetoric. Not that I didn’t believe him, but I didn’t want to hear the sermon, I wanted to get to the meat of the issue. “So that’s the general state of affairs. Can we talk specifics?”

  He took a breath. “You want the skinny on Atlantic Union.”

  “It would be nice, yeah.”

  Denton steepled his fingers again, like a young professor about to deliver some bad news about my last exam. “You seem like a nice man, Mr. Singer, and you ask the right questions. But that doesn’t mean I trust you.”

  “Shucks.”

  “Give me your phone number and a couple days. I’ll do some checking. If I think you’re everything you say you are, I’ll give you some information that will knock your socks off.”

  “What if it turns out I’m working for those rotten real estate sons of bitches?” I asked.

  “Then I’ll throw you down our front steps myself,” Denton said, his face breaking into a smile for the first time.

  Chapter Nineteen

  I was swinging my legs out of bed and had turned on the light before I was awake. My head was scrambled for a minute as I tried to sort out why I wasn’t sleeping and, more importantly, why I was getting paged. I wasn’t supposed to be on duty and I could feel the burn start, angry that someone in the department had dropped the ball and now they were calling Marty Singer to fix things—

  I put my head in my hands. I wasn’t a cop anymore. No one had paged me. I didn’t have a pager. Nobody did anymore. I was retired and should be able to sleep in until at least six or seven. The clock said 3:00 and the darkness meant in the morning. Why was I awake? I listened, looked around. No sounds. Pierre was asleep at the foot of the bed wrapped in a ball the size of a catcher’s mitt.

  My phone. I turned it on. One email. I clicked and flipped until I got to the right screen, and that’s when I actually woke up. It was the automatic alert from the security system at FirstStep. It had probably kerplunked loud enough to wake me. More flipping got me to the web browser screen, where I was stymied—rubbing my temples and swearing—until I remembered the login for the site. More fumbling, then I got to the screen in question, the live feed for CAMERA THREE.

  And there it was, in grainy, black-and-white glory. A man crouched near the back entrance looking around furtively but not high enough to spot the camera. His head was bowed as he fiddled with something on the ground, a box or a bag, maybe. He wore a jacket, a baseball cap with a flattened brim, and jeans. He wasn’t trying to break in, but I doubt he was tying his shoe, either. We’d caught our first fish.

  I thought about it. I could throw some sweatpants on, jump in the car, and—at three in the morning—be at FirstStep in fifteen minutes. Or I could call 911 and there would be a cruiser there in four. If I was looking at Karla’s boyfriend, and the guy who broke Amanda’s arm, I would desperately like to twist the guy’s nose upside down. On the other hand, if I called the cops and they caught him in the act putting something unsavory or even dangerous on FirstStep’s back stoop, he might get more than a reprimand this time.

  Just as I moved to call 911, however, the man stood and walked out of the frame, finished with whatever tinkering he’d been up to. His face was obscured by the cap and there wasn’t anything remarkable about the jacket. In less than a second, he was out of sight. I swore. He would be long gone by the time any cop got there, so why call? But he hadn’t had anything in his hands when he’d left. Whatever he’d been so busy with was still sitting by the back door.

  With images of homemade bombs waiting to be discovered—or triggered—by Amanda or someone else at FirstStep, I dialed 911. In a couple of short sentences, I explained who I was, what I’d seen, and agreed to meet the patrol car at FirstStep in twenty minutes. As I was slipping those sweatpants on, however, my phone went off again. I grabbed it. It was Amanda.

  “The alert woke you, too?” I asked.

  “Yes,” she said. “Should we call the police?”

  “Already done. I’m heading down there now, see what that guy left us.”

  “I’ll meet you there.”

  “You don’t have to,” I said. “It’s going to be routine and boring and done in fifteen minutes.”

  “What if it’s a bomb?”

  “It’ll take longer than fifteen minutes, then. But what I saw of the guy on the tape didn’t seem to suggest a highly technical approach. It’s probably a pile of dog poop.”

  “Either way, I should be there. Between the two of us, I’m the only FirstStep employee.”

  I rubbed my eyes. I didn’t want an argument. “Okay. I’ll see you there.”

  The cop on the scene wasn’t impressed with the call and I can’t say I blamed him. We looked at the brown bag from the end of the alley, lit by a solitary spotlight over the back door. It had been positioned so anyone exiting the building would step right on it. It took the cake for being unassuming and plain—just a small, crumpled brown bag like one of thousands blowing around the city.

  It didn’t matter what it looked like, though. Even the hint of an explosive device required a call to the Explosive Ordnance Disposal Unit—or bomb squad, as any sane person would call it—and that meant standing around, waiting for the squad to get there and do their thing. Assuming all went well and it was just poop, we could all relax, but the patrolman would have a raft of paperwork to go through back at the station.

  And Amanda and I were going to stand there for the whole thing, too. It was why I had tried to get her to stay home. But she had a point—if it was going to be anything more dangerous than canine feces, then someone actually associated with FirstStep was going to have to answer some questions and press charges. But three and a half hours and two cups of convenience-store coffee later, the EODU squad gave the all-clear sign, hopped in their saddles, and left.

  “What’d they find?” I asked the patrolman after he’d come back from talking to the squad leader. His tag said Cochran. “Poop?”

  “No. Dead rat with a pink ribbon tied around its neck.”

  “Did you dust it?” He gave me a look and I shrugged. “Sorry. Sometimes laughing helps.”

  “Sometimes,” he said. He didn’t seem to mean it, though.

  Amanda had her arms crossed, scowling down the alley. “There wasn’t anything else in the bag? Nothing to identify it?”

  “No, ma’am. It didn’t have a wallet.” The cop glanced at me. “Just the ribbon.”

  “That’s the spirit,” I said.

  “Thanks,” he said, then looked at Amanda. “You want me to dump it for you?”

  “But we know who this was. It had to be Danny Fincher, Karla’s boyfriend,” she said, incredulous. “That’
s all you can do?”

  “I’m afraid so, miss.”

  “There’s no crime, Amanda,” I said, trying to explain. “Except littering.”

  “But we caught it on camera,” she protested.

  “You caught him littering on camera, ma’am,” Cochran said. “If he had done some damage, vandalized or sprayed the door, smashed the lightbulb, something, then maybe we could bring him in. Make him sit in the pokey for a night. But it isn’t really worth it if he hasn’t done anything serious. Especially if we can’t ID him positively.”

  Amanda opened her mouth to complain and I stepped in, thanking Cochran before Amanda could push it. Filing a weak charge, even if Cochran played along, would just mean more paperwork for the poor guy…and hurt any chance we had of building that rapport I’d talked to her about. Amanda got the hint and thanked him curtly, then he took off, leaving us staring down the mouth of the alley at the scene of the crime.

  “A rat,” Amanda said. “Wearing a ribbon.”

  I nodded.

  “As threats go, it’s not exactly a horse head under the covers,” she said.

  “No.”

  “Are you thinking we shouldn’t take it seriously?”

  “No. This guy and his threats seem rinky dink, but that doesn’t mean he won’t turn to something more extreme tomorrow or a month from now, if what he’s trying to threaten us about is important to him.”

  “It’s just like before,” she said, getting a sad look on her face that cut right to my heart. “We can’t do anything to him until he does something to us. Something that can’t be fixed.”

  “Hey,” I said and squeezed her arm. “It’s not that bad. For one thing, we actually know who’s doing this. Second, this guy is no murdering stalker, like the last guy. He’s just a loser, pure and simple, not a psychopath with police training, an influential father, and multiple homicides under his belt.”

  She nodded, but looked unconvinced. “I guess we just lock up and go home?”

  I scrubbed my face with both hands, feeling queasy from the early morning. A white, skuzzy dawn and the bad coffee brought back memories of too many mornings just like this one. At least the body in question wasn’t human. “I could use a couple hours of sleep,” I said. “But before we go, you said Karla didn’t give you any information on this guy Fincher, right?”

  “Why?”

  “It’s time I did something proactive here. Not personally, necessarily,” I said when I saw a protest start to form on her lips. “But if I have a name and an address, I can call in some favors and at least learn more about the guy. See if he’s got a record, where he works, that kind of thing.”

  “That’s all? You’re not going to hunt him down, right?”

  “Yeah. But you said you don’t have any information on the guy, so…” I trailed off.

  “Karla did say they lived together,” Amanda said, suddenly speculative. She tapped a fingernail against her teeth. “It stands to reason that whatever she listed as her residence is probably his, too.”

  “Sure,” I said. “Stands to reason.”

  “Let’s go check the records. They’re a total mess, but her address should be in there somewhere.”

  “Okay.”

  Inside, Amanda led the way back to her office. Ever the conscientious worker, she’d brought her laptop with her, so she sat down, powered it on, and started sifting her way through to the information we needed. It was slow going with her broken arm and I walked in circles around her office, trying to stay awake on three hours of sleep until she finally snapped at me to find somewhere else to kill time or she’d throw the computer at my head. The halls were boring, so I nosed around FirstStep’s conference room, other people’s offices, and the tiny kitchenette that everyone shared. Sharing, according to the state of the refrigerator, meant they all ignored cleaning it equally. I shut the fridge door just as Amanda called my name. I hurried down the hall.

  “North Carolina Avenue,” she said, and rattled off an address. I borrowed a pen from her desk and jotted it down on the back of my hand.

  “Phone number?”

  “She only gave us her cell…” she said, searching. “No, wait. Here we go. Looks like they shared a landline.”

  I jotted that down next to the address. Amanda watched me, then said, “Do you want a piece of paper? This is an office, you know. We might not have health insurance, but we’ve got paper.”

  “Nope. This keeps me honest. I have to do something about this guy before the next time I wash my hands.”

  She closed her eyes.

  “Now,” I said. “Physical description. Remember much from when he pushed his way in here?”

  “He had a mask on, remember?”

  “How about the first time? When he showed Diane the knife?”

  She closed her eyes, remembering. “White. Skinny. Blond hair. Maybe my height.”

  “How long was his hair?”

  “Short. Spiked, maybe?”

  “Age?”

  “Midtwenties,” she said. “And looks like it, if you know what I mean. A young face.”

  “Mustache? Glasses? Eye patch?”

  “No facial hair, no glasses,” she said, thinking about it. “I think. The whole thing was over so quickly, I almost can’t remember details.”

  “I know the feeling. Speaking of description, do you think you could print off a few of the best still shots from the video?”

  “Probably,” she said. After a few minutes of fiddling around, I heard the printer down the hall click on and start spitting out pages. I went and snagged them all, leafing through them as I walked back.

  “Will those help?” Amanda asked doubtfully.

  “There’s no direct shot of his face, but you never know.” I stole a folder from her desk, put the stills inside, then clicked the pen shut and put it back on her desk. “Okay, that should do it.”

  “That’s it?” she asked. “Now what?”

  “Go home, get some sleep, come back into work,” I said.

  “No, what are you going to do?”

  “Oh. Go home, get some sleep, call in those favors.”

  “Nothing pyrotechnic?”

  “Promise,” I said, crossing my heart. “The key here is to make Danny Fincher go away quietly, not with a bang. At least, that’s the plan.”

  She propped an elbow on her desk and rested her forehead in her hand, looking resigned. “I can’t tell if I’m disappointed or not. Wouldn’t it be nice if someone pushed him around for a change?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Yes, it would.”

  Chapter Twenty

  If my snazzy smartphone and recent Internet searches made me feel twenty-first century, then sitting in my car holding a fat digital camera with a telephoto lens in my hand made me feel downright space age. Next stop, flying cars and robot butlers.

  It was borrowed technology, though; Dods had received it as a birthday gift from his wife, Margie. It had been a wonderfully obtuse gift, as Dods was more technophobic than I was. He’d lent me the camera months ago, suggesting that someone with time on their hands—say, a retired homicide cop—might be able to figure out the thing’s ten thousand features and not leave it in the back of a drawer like he’d been planning. To date, I’d learned how to turn it on, take a picture, and look at it for three seconds before the screen went dark. Amanda had told me that there was a way to look at the pictures for as long as you wanted and even print them, but I hadn’t advanced to that stage. I’d probably end up asking her to do it.

  But the camera was coming in handy now. Following what I’d scribbled on the back of my hand, I drove straight from FirstStep to Danny Fincher’s address, pulling up to a spiffy row of four-story brick townhomes bookended by an empty lot on one side and a Popeyes on the other. It wasn’t a bad neighborhood, just one of those DC anomalies where one section had undergone a three-million-dollar makeover while cheap restaurants and down-in-the-mouth retail outlets were
the norm for five blocks in either direction. I cruised past the front of the buildings, checked the address, then circled the block. A parking spot halfway down the street gave me a view of the front door, so I whipped into the space and shut off the car.

  The number for Fincher’s landline, scribbled on the back of my hand, was smudged, but still legible. I took out my cell and dialed, waiting through seven rings before a man answered, groggy and pissed off.

  “Yeah?”

  I made a clicking sound then said in my best salesman’s voice, “Hello! Are you sick of the daily grind? Do you dream of white sands, umbrella drinks, and falling asleep to the soothing sounds of crashing waves? Are you interested in the vacation…of a lifetime?”

  He swore and slammed the phone down.

  Okay, he was home. I got out of the car and popped the trunk. I keep a few indispensable items in the car at all times. Spare tire, jack, first-aid kit, and thermos. I grabbed the thermos, locked the car, then walked over to Popeyes, where the nice people there filled it with coffee that smelled like fried chicken. I walked back to the car, opened the thermos, and poured the first quarter cup of what was probably going to be a long day’s stakeout.

  Considering Fincher’s late-night shenanigans, it was likely he was going to sleep the day away, which meant it was tempting to go home, catch forty winks myself, and come back around three o’clock. But his bag o’ rat prank might be the preamble to something more vicious, in which case I wanted to be ready to intercept it. Even if he didn’t have anything else up his sleeve, it wouldn’t hurt to do a little surveillance.

  At least, that’s what I kept telling myself one, two, then three hours into it. The brownstones and the street they were on saw plenty of traffic, but none of it was Danny Fincher. By one o’clock, it had already been a long day for me and I was beginning to nod off. I’d finished the coffee and done a few cautious passes on foot down to the end of the block to try and wake up, but as early afternoon passed by and midafternoon began to creep away, I knew I’d have to call it or risk passing out. I took a trip to Popeyes to relieve myself of the coffee I’d bought there and headed back to the car.