Heartless: a Derek Cole Mystery Suspense Thriller (Derek Cole Suspense Thriller Book 1) (15 page)

He had felt shocks before. Doctor Lucietta was the first to use them as treatment many years ago and was also the one who first discovered how they debilitated him. Shocks were not only painful for him, but they disrupted his thoughts and ability to function for days.

They allowed him to stay at the water’s edge for nearly twenty minutes before suggesting they “head back and get in out of the rain.”

“Very well, Doctors. And thank you for this privilege,” he complied.

Neither he or the doctors saw the young man approaching them, but there he was, smack dab in the middle of the road separating the lodge from the lake. He seemed like the nervous type, the type that Straus would enjoy having as a patient. And had Straus been alone during this encounter, he might have offered his business card and a suggestion that the stranger contact him for an appointment.

But now was not the time to advance a career. Straus and Curtis stood as if they were catatonic as the young man stood staring at the gray man walking up from the path. As the stranger moved closer, Straus thought that he looked familiar but couldn’t place the face.

“Good day,” the young man offered, his eyes now less intense. “Not the best day for a hike, is it?”

“Just a short walk to the lake. No hiking today.” Curtis said.

“Well, stay dry,” the young man said.

“You too,” Curtis said. “We should be getting inside now. Take care.”

The young man stared at Alexander, and the doctors noticed that he was staring back at the young man. There was no look of terror on the young man’s face, only intrigue.

“You must excuse us,” Straus said. “Our patient hasn’t been feeling well. We need to get him back into his bed. Good day.”

“Hope you feel better,” the young man said as he continued his trek down the road.

When he was far enough away, Straus whispered with an intensity unfitting for a whisper, “Inside. Now!”

But his patient just stood, not moving. He was looking at the stranger getting smaller with distance.

“Alex, inside now, or by God, I’ll press this button.”

“I doubt that, doctor Straus. Doing so would create a scene that may attract the attention of that strange young man as well as the attention of anyone who may be glancing out of their windows. I am not planning on doing anything foolish. I just realized that the man I just saw was the first person I’ve heard speak besides your team.”

“Well,” Straus said, collecting himself and shifting his gaze to see if any neighbors were looking out of their windows, “I appreciate your behavior, Alex. I truly do. And I also appreciate how you must be feeling. However, I know that you are fully aware of what people would think and do to you if they ever found out about you. With that in mind, Alex, why don’t we return to the safety of your rooms? I promise that the next time you earn the privilege of coming outside, we will do a much better job at making sure you will have your privacy. Sound fair enough?”

“Fair enough, Doctor,” he said as he shot a final glance towards the stranger who was now almost out of sight. “I must admit that that man’s reaction to me was not as drastic as I would have thought. Not like you suggested reactions would be.”

“You have no idea how he may be reacting. Imagine if he ran into you alone? Trust me, Alexander, that reaction is far from what you should expect. Now let’s get back inside where it’s safe.”

It was time for his plan to begin.

“This doesn’t make sense,” Derek said. “The timeframe. The note left for me at the car rental desk. It doesn’t make sense.”

“Now Derek,” Ralph said as he walked over to the counter to retrieve a fresh Arthur Avenue cigar and a book of matches, “this whole case is stuffed to the rim with things that don’t make much sense.” Ralph paused, introduced flame to his cigar’s end and was soon billowing out grayish smoke into the humid air of the Adirondack lodge’s entry way. “But, before we get further into discussing the finer points of this case, you said something that caught my interest.”

Derek had stood up and was tracing the scar of his left cheek gently with his fingers. He knew he was tired and that his mind wasn’t as sharp as he needed it to be. As he paced the entry area of the lodge, he struggled to piece together the time frame of the last several hours.

“Are you planning on pretending that I am not here in this same room as you or are you just building up something brilliant in that freelancing mind of yours?” Ralph said.

“I’m sorry. What did you ask me?”

“Actually I have yet to ask you anything, but I am fixin’ to as soon as you appear ready to be asked a question.”

“I just can’t figure this out. I must be missing something. But, go ahead and ask me your question.”

“You said during your little ramble a moment ago about some note that was left for you at the rental car desk. I sure would like to know what that note said and who gave it to you.”

The smoke from Ralph’s cigar was quickly replacing the fresh mountain air. Derek moved over to the main door, opened it, and took a deep breath of non-cigar smoke filled air.

“The note just said ‘Welcome to Albany, Mr. Cole,’ and I have no idea who wrote it. The only person who knows that I flew into Albany was my client.”

“Any chance your client left that note?” Ralph asked, thankful for the open door but not as thankful as he was for the finely crafted cigar he held between his stubby and overly hairy fingers.

“Possible, but doesn’t make any sense. If he left the note for me then he did so assuming that I would suspect that it was him.”

“Someone else must have known about your travel plans?”

“US Airways and Hertz. That’s about it.”

Ralph checked the time on his watch. “What time did your flight leave Chicago?” he asked.

“Just before ten last night.”

“And when did your plane land?”

“Around midnight. Got to the Hertz desk twenty minutes after that. I asked the clerk who the note came from but he had no idea. Think it could have been Alexander? But, how the hell would he know I was headed to Albany and was renting a car from Hertz? Had to have been my client or someone my client told that I was coming here. Must have been.”

Ralph drew softly on his cigar and watched Derek struggle to figure things out. For his entire working career, Ralph had been in law enforcement. He had developed the ability to read people that others who worked with him both envied and were cautious of.

Though he knew that allowing Derek access to information about the case would violate nearly every rule in the book, he also knew that his department lacked the resources and experience to solve the murders. The state police were involved and certainly didn’t need Ralph’s or his department’s assistance, but Ralph liked to see things through himself. He never liked when another department, be it a federal, state, or city department barged in and took over an investigation.

As Derek continued his thought-laden pacing, Ralph felt that Derek could be trusted and that there was something about him, something that made breaking the protocols, rules, and standard operating procedures worth the risk.

“Well, let me ease your mind about one of the options you have. It wasn’t Alexander, and I’ll show you why.”

Ralph waved a single hand towards Derek, inviting that Derek follow. They walked deeper into the lodge, through the great room that in the daylight would offer spectacular views of Piseco Lake and the surrounding mountains. They finally came into a small, windowless room. The room was decorated with countless pictures of who Derek assumed to be William Straus.
 

Ralph took a seat behind the blonde wood desk that was entirely too large for the small room, opened a desk drawer, and pulled out a four-inch thick manila folder.

“I have made a few mistakes in my career,” Ralph said as he held the folder out in front of him, “and I sure do hope that what I am about to do here is not gonna be another one. Whether or not it is a mistake is entirely up to you, Mr. Cole.”

“Is that the case file?” Derek asked.

“Not exactly,” Ralph said as he dropped the heavy folder on to the desk, sending dust into an immediate flight. “This here is a little something that those state police investigators overlooked. Now, I’m thinking about showing you some very interesting things I’ve found in this folder, but I need to make sure my impression of you is accurate.”

“Ask me anything you want.”

“Ya see, Mr. Cole, I wasn’t a 100% forthcoming about my feelings on freelancers. Fact is, I often wished I could bend the rules a tad. You know, here and there.”

“In my experience, you’re not alone,” Derek said in a measured response.

“Now I may have actually bent some of those rules over the years but always did so when my instincts suggested that them rules needed a little flexibility. So since I am pretty much alone on this investigation, and the state police see me as someone just to keep informed, I am going to include you into this investigation.”

“I appreciate your trust.”

“You need to catch some shut eye?”

“Eventually, but I’m more interested in seeing what’s in that file first,” Derek said as his eyes grew hungry at the idea of reading the contents of the file.

“Well, I do. So I’m going to leave this file right here on this goofy-looking desk and go find a place to sleep.” Ralph stood and hitched his pants over his belly. “I want to show you a few things first that I want to pay particular attention to.” Ralph opened the file and thumbed through a few sheets until he pulled out a group of photographs. “You take a good look at these, and I’ll bet you’ll understand why I don’t believe your mysterious note leaver wasn’t Alexander.”

As Ralph quietly left the small office, Derek moved to the more comfortable chair behind the desk. He gave a quick glance at Ralph.

“Thanks for not shooting me earlier,” he said.

“Well, I imagine that would have not been an enjoyable event for you. But, there’s still time, I imagine. Still time.”

As Ralph left in search for a bed that would be kind enough to allow him a few minutes of sleep, Derek dropped his eyes to the series of photographs laying on the desk in front of him.

“Holy shit balls!” he said.

The picture on top of the pile was of a young man who, to Derek, seemed to be posing for his autopsy pictures. The man in the picture stood over six feet tall and was standing against a wall. As he stared at the photograph of the man standing naked against the off-white wall, Derek was captured by his eyes.

Baby blue, yet dimmed, surrounded by yellowish-gray skin where white should have been. Eyes too large for a man, and too blue. If not for the spark of something in them, Derek would take these eyes for those of a dead man.

Lifeless. Cold. Vacant.

The man’s eyes were they only bit of life’s color in the picture. The man’s skin was a horrible shade of death; gray mixed with hints of purplish blue. He was completely bald, and though the photograph was obviously taken from a digital camera then printed out on an ink jet printer, Derek could make out whispers of eyebrows, so faint as to remind him of an infants. Soft brown and stretched to a point of comical sparseness. Above each eyebrow were two, nearly perfect circles of much darker skin. They looked like old, healed burn marks and made Derek think of the pictures of electrodes he’d seen pictures of before.

The shade of death the man wore on his face was a theme carried throughout the rest of his body. Though some areas of the man’s body- his elbows, back of his hands, and knees - were a darker shade of death, the man was colorless.
 

There was very little fat on the man. Muscles, seemingly defying the death motif, were visible. A classic and envied six-pack was clear in the man’s abdominals. Biceps and deltoids both well developed and prominent. Muscles lined the man’s thighs and appeared to have been carefully carved to show each of their assigned functions. His genitals hung softly and assumed a much darker variation of gray. Unlike the rest of the photo subject’s body, his genitals appeared to have never developed.

“I see what you mean, Ralph,” Derek said out loud, somewhat hoping Ralph was still awake and within ear shot. “This guy showing up in an airport would certainly be remembered.” Derek received no report back from Ralph.

As Derek scanned the photograph again, he paused when his eyes met the man’s smile. The thin lips curled just slightly at their corners, parting enough for Derek to that they hid nothing. Though he couldn’t be certain, the way the lips fell inward and the lack of anything white behind them, suggested that the man was toothless.