Yesterday's Thief: An Eric Beckman Paranormal Sci-Fi Thriller (9 page)

“Exactly. And the result …” I gestured toward the dark area of San Francisco.

Viviana the wonder woman was finally running low on power herself, so I escorted her back to her room and said good night. She pecked me on the cheek, and I turned before she could see me blushing.

CHAPTER SIX

After a few hours of sleep in the doctors’ lounge, I took a bus to police headquarters. Stan’s secretary, a white-haired sweetheart, gave me a peck on the cheek and let me wait in his office. I didn’t blush this time.

I collapsed into one of his mismatched visitor chairs. Here was the office of an experienced investigator. Binders of different colors jammed the shelves—no digitizing for Stan. The walls were gray and devoid of ego photos and diplomas. His semi-cluttered work surface included a travel mug, a water bottle, and a photo frame. I leaned forward and turned the frame toward me—it held a picture of his wife. The din of a busy police station filtered in from the hall.

Stan came in, dropped some binders on his desk, and installed himself behind it.

“You slept in your clothes.” This came from a man who always looked as if he’d slept in his. “How’s the shoulder?”

I rolled it around. “Not bad.”

“I don’t have much time. You here about the woman?” He leaned back in his chair and laced his hands across his stomach.

I nodded. “She woke up at two a.m. She’ll try to escape, I’m sure of it.”

“Name?”

“She says her name is Viviana Petrescu from Moldova.”

Stan wrote it down. “The old country.”

“But she may be lying about her last name.”

“One of your hunches.”

“Right. She’s a good liar, and she doesn’t want us to figure out who she is. A good actress, too, but nervous underneath. Like a trapped animal. Can you put a guard on her room?”

Stan chuckled. “Like she could slip past all the paparazzi?”

“We’ve fooled them so far. They all think she’s at a different hospital.”

“Doesn’t the FBI have someone on her room?”

“Not all the time.”

“I don’t know, Eric. She’s big news, but at this point, it’s a science thing, not something for the local police.”

“You worked on it before.”

“Yeah, but word has come down on this. She hasn’t done anything illegal. Energy crimes have exploded, and we’re overloaded. I don’t like it, but my hands are tied. Does she know what happened—how she could appear like that?”

“Amnesia.”

“Yeah?”

“Says she doesn’t remember a thing. Could you put some rookie cop there?” I asked.

“They’re all busy. What about you?”

“I’d do it, but I want to find Donny Winkel while he’s still alive. Have you got anything on that?”

Stan sat back up and pulled a binder toward him. He looked through it. “No, nothing useful on this Roman McCrea guy. He’s the guy you say kidnapped Winkel then died, right?”

“Yes. Have you searched his house, talked with his widow?”

He left the binder open. “While the San Francisco Police Department would love to take advantage of your many years of investigative experience, we know how to work a case.”

“If you’ve got a list of his friends, it could save me some legwork.”

He sighed and turned to a page in the binder with a list of names, then looked out the window. After a few seconds, he said, “Done?”

I frowned. I wasn’t getting anything useful from Stan’s mind. “Done what?”

“I’m looking out the window now.”

“Okay, got it.” I took out my tablet and snapped a photo of the page. “Thanks, Stan.” I waved to the secretary on my way out, but Stan came into the hall and called me back.

“Here’s what I’ll do,” he said. “For some strange reason, your hunches sometimes pay off. I do think there’s something important about Ms. Petrescu, and if she disappeared, it wouldn’t look good for the department. So, I’ll put a kid from the police academy outside her room. Now get outta here, Batboy, and let me get back to work.”

* * *

Back at my office, Peggy was putting the finishing touches on her nails. I guess beauty is a full-time job when concealing one’s dudeness. She waved her hands as if playing a fast polka on an invisible accordion. “Coffee, boss?” She nodded at the stack of mail on the corner of her desk.

I shuffled through the bills and other junk mail. “Yeah, and get us both some sandwiches from the deli.”

“You got it.”

She and two pastramis on rye soon joined me in my office, and I filled her in on the Donny Winkel case. She was particularly interested in the sex club.

I took a bite of my sandwich and washed it down with a swig of coffee. “And we’re not mentioning that to Mrs. Winkel, unless it becomes necessary.”

Peggy mimed locking her lips and dropping the key into her cleavage.

“Well, that’s an appropriate place for an imaginary key.”

She punched me on the shoulder.
Ow.

We divided the meager list of Roman’s friends and made some phone calls. And no, I can’t read minds over the telephone. Through walls, yes, long distances, no.

We came up with only two reachable individuals who might help us. The first, fittingly, was in prison himself, a man known simply as “Eyeball.” I finagled a prison visit, and Peggy and I drove out to the small, low-security facility in Concord. She’d been angling for more involvement, and pointed out that I wasn’t getting a lot of phone calls.

We took my gas-guzzling, fifty-mile-per-gallon Yaris. We pulled into the parking lot, and Peggy waited by the car while I went through the bureaucratic procedures for my first ever visit to a prison. Mr. Eyeball lived up to his nickname, having a realistic eye tattooed in the center of his forehead. He sat down across from me in the visiting room and picked up his phone. Leaning toward me, he closed his real eyes.

“Thank you for meeting me today, sir.” I spoke directly to his tattoo, shaking my head. “I’m sorry for the loss of Mr. McCrea, your friend. I’m looking for some information that might save a life.”

“I’m happy to help you, sir. I don’t get no visitors.”
>

Back in the parking lot, Peggy leaned against the car, waving to her new friends. The inmates whistled and waved back from their cell windows.

“That was quick,” she said.

“Dead end. Let’s go.”

I hoped for better luck at the nearby home of a Ms. Irene Nordman. On her sweltering porch, I laid out the situation.

Irene was pushing fifty, but built right, like a sexy sports car. She laid her hand on my forearm. “I’d get us some iced tea, but every second counts, don’t you think?”

Her sensuous movements made me sure she’d known Roman McCrea from the sex club. Seemed old for a club like that, but maybe appearance counted. I pictured some carnival-like sign at the entrance: You Must Be This Sexy to Ride.

“Did you know Donny, or just Roman?” I asked.

> “Yes, I knew them both. Have you checked with Jerry … I can’t remember his last name.”

Peggy checked the list. “Jerry Edgar.”

“Right, Edgar. He was Roman’s best buddy.”

Peggy nodded and looked at her notes. “We couldn’t reach him. He’s on vacation, some backpacking thing, he won’t be back for—”

Irene snapped her fingers. “Jerry has a shack in Isleton. Isolated. The perfect place to stash someone. Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

We were, in fact, all thinking the same thing: Donny was locked in Jerry’s shack. Irene drew us a map. The place was an hour away, and Peggy and I set off, driving as fast as we could get away with. That is, just above the national fifty-mile-an-hour speed limit.

Peggy slid her seat back and put her sandaled, waxed, and manicured feet on the dashboard. “So you think this Edgar guy was in on the kidnapping?”

“Not necessarily. Maybe Roman just used his place without his knowledge, while Edgar was away. Maybe. We’ll know when we get there.”

After a few wrong turns, we pulled up in front of the shack. “Shack” was the right word for it, assuming it was preceded by “broken down.” Built with scrap lumber, it sat in a yard so full of junk that the place looked as if someone were running a garage sale—a discolored claw-foot bathtub, a treadmill, assorted garden gnomes.

We called out, “Donny? Donny?” Nothing.

I broke in, and by that I mean I shifted a sheet of plywood that covered an opening in back. The place wasn’t lockable, but maybe Donny was chained up inside.

Not so. I searched thoroughly. It took only a few minutes.

Peg and I trudged back toward the car. I had expected a victory here.

“Hey, boss, what about that?” She pointed to a rusty ship container nestled under some willows. It was blue and as big as a semitruck.

With renewed energy, a second blowing, we raced over to it and banged on the sides. “Donny! Donny, you in there?” We pushed our ears against the sides of the container. Not a peep.

I examined the lock. Brand new. High quality. That’s when I caught it. A thought from inside the container. Delirious.

Like the last thoughts of a dying turkey. What a letdown it would be if he died before we could get him out.

“Call an ambulance!”

Peggy squinted at me as if I’d asked her to call Tinker Bell. “But we don’t know he’s in there, boss.”

“I’ve got a hunch. Do it!” I ran back to the shack and dug around in the workshop area. A rusty hacksaw. That would have to do.

Sawing was awkward because the hasp was covered with a protective steel box. The blade disintegrated after only a few strokes. I ran to the shack again, pulling Peggy along with me. “Call the fire department. Tell them we need to break in. And if anybody asks, tell them I heard Donny in there.”

“But you didn’t.”

“Trust me on this, Peggy.”

I looked over her shoulder. The tool I needed stood in the center of a woodpile. A huge splitting ax. I ran over and picked it up: a rusted orange thing with “Monster Maul” engraved on the head.

Back at the container, Peggy ended her call and crossed her arms, watching me attack the container. <
Okay, now he’s lost it.
> “They’re sending someone from a place called Rio Vista. It’s not far from here.”

The maul weighed a ton and threatened to slide out of my sweaty hands as I cast it over my head and down. After the third whack, a crack appeared in the rusty assembly. Two more, and the padlock broke free, falling to the ground.

I pulled the right door open, and our hands flew to our noses. Peggy turned and said goodbye to her pastrami on rye. The sirens of emergency vehicles reached us, and she ran to meet the first responders. I held my shirt against my nose and entered the container.

Donny lay on his stomach in the corner, wearing nothing but underwear. The container was as hot as an oven. His mind wasn’t even making turkey noises any more. Were we too late? The EMTs came in and took over. They checked him out, then rolled him onto a stretcher and headed to the ambulance.

I trotted along. “Is he going to make it?”

The taller EMT nodded. “His vitals look okay. It’s a bad case of heat exhaustion and dehydration, but since I’m not a doctor, I’m not allowed to tell you more.” He slid Donny into the ambulance. <
He’ll make it, but it was close.
>

I called Donny’s wife, Beatrix, and gave her the news. She sounded overjoyed.

Maybe this private eye thing will work out after all.
After filling out some forms at the one-room sheriff’s office, Peggy and I got a table at the Barge Inn, a floating bar and grill on the Sacramento River. I ordered a gimlet. I didn’t know what a gimlet was, only that Phillip Marlowe drank them. Peggy ordered some frou-frou cocktail.

When our drinks came, we sat in a comfortable silence, looking over the river and listening to an insect symphony.

“So, boss, how come you were so sure he was in there?” Peggy played with her drink’s paper umbrella.

“I must have heard something, subconsciously.”

She shook her head.

“I don’t know. I saw Donny on that stretcher, and he didn’t look like he could—”

“Wow, this gimlet thing is really good—you ever have one? Let me order a gimlet for you.”

My relationship with Peggy was the closest thing I had to a good relationship with a woman. Right, I know, she wasn’t a woman. Maybe she was like training wheels for me on my quest to develop a long-term relationship with a member of the opposite sex.

After I got her gimletted up, I said, “Peg, may I ask you a personal question?”

“Sure. Give me a second to set up my recorder. For the sexual harassment trial.”