Bad Memory_A Jake Abraham Mystery Novella Read online

  “I don’t care what people believe. It’s what happened.”

  “How bloody was her blouse?”

  “It was soaked with blood.”

  “Yup that is consistent with the crime scene photos. They show very clearly her blouse is totally covered in blood, which fits your description perfectly.”

  “I presume you have a point?”

  “Well, the thing is Grady, it was raining really hard that night. Four inches of rain fell in one night. That’s a month’s worth of rain in one shot. You remember the rain yesterday? It was kind of like that.”

  Grady sat down on his black leather couch and tried to look casual. “Why do I care?”

  “See this shirt I’m wearing? I was wearing it yesterday when your two goons forced me off the road. Bashed my nose up pretty good – it bled all over my shirt. You see any blood on my shirt Grady?”

  “You washed it out What does that prove?”

  “No, I sat in the rain, waiting for the cops. You see Grady, if it was raining that hard when Elizabeth was shot, the rain would have washed the blood away before it had a chance to soak into her blouse. In fact, I asked the ME how long it would take for blood to dry so much that it wouldn’t be washed away by twelve hours of torrential rain. He said it would take at least six hours. Probably more. So that’s how I know Elizabeth Weber was not shot at 8:19 p.m. on November 2. If she was, the crime scene photos would show no blood on her blouse. You didn’t see her that night. You saw her that morning when you shot her. I’m thinking she tried to get you involved in her mortgage fraud and you decided to blackmail her instead. The irony is, if you hadn’t tried to give yourself an alibi, you probably would have gotten away with it.”

  “Stop! Stop it!” He shouted. In one fast, clumsy motion, Grady launched himself from the couch in my direction and took a swing at me. He missed by half a foot and when I stepped out of his way, his momentum carried him into his desk with a crash. I tried to grab his arm to restrain him but he lashed out and caught me in my broken ribs with a wild elbow.

  The pain seared through my side and put me down on one knee. For a moment, everything went white. I breathed in and forced myself to my feet. By the time I reached full height, Grady’s desk drawer was open and he had a gun in his hand. It wasn’t the first time I’d had a gun pointed at me, but it doesn’t get any more fun. I took another painful breath and pretended to be confident.

  “You’re not going to shoot me, Grady.”

  “Why not? I shot Elizabeth, apparently.”

  I nodded towards his office door. “There’s about thirty people out there. When they hear a shot, one of them is going to be brave or stupid enough to come in to see if you’re OK. Are you gonna shoot them too? Are you gonna shoot the cops when they arrive? There’s no way out, Grady.”

  “No?” He stopped pointing the gun at me and my hands unclenched briefly. Then he put the gun to his temple. Maybe telling him there was no way out was a bit hasty.

  “It didn’t happen the way you say it did,” he said.

  “Well, if you pull that trigger, nobody will ever know your side of the story. Talk to me. What did I get wrong?”

  “I wasn’t blackmailing her. She did try to get me to help her defraud the bank, but I refused. So she tried to blackmail me.”

  “She was going to tell your wife about the affair?”

  He nodded.

  “So you lured her to the woods to stop her?”

  “No. I called her bluff.”

  “You what?”

  “I told her I wouldn’t help her, and she could tell my wife whatever she liked.”

  “What about your prenup?”

  “It wasn’t worth it. I wasn’t prepared to break the law. She asked me to meet her. I thought maybe I could talk her out of going through with it. But she had other plans.”

  “The gun?”

  “As soon as I got there she took it out. She said if I didn’t agree to work with her she would kill me. I made a grab for the gun, tried to get it away from her. But it went off.”

  “OK. It was an accident. Let’s go tell the police that.” I moved half a step closer.

  “Why would they believe me?”

  “I believe you.”

  “They wouldn’t have believed me at the time. People had seen us together. Afterward, I found out Felicity had hired a private detective to have me followed.”

  “That’s why you didn’t want me talking to your ex-wife.” Another half step. I was almost in range.

  “I never knew how much he told her. It’s not the kind of thing you can ask. If the police found out Elizabeth had been trying to blackmail me I would’ve been their number one suspect. So I had to give myself an alibi.”

  “You made a recording?”

  “I rented a couple of Hitchcock films. Recorded the bits I needed on a Dictaphone. I figured if it came to it Jane would testify that it couldn’t possibly have been me.”

  “And if forensics somehow tied you to the scene of the crime, you could say you’d been there when you discovered the body.”

  I took another step towards Grady and this time he spotted what I was doing. He took the pistol from his temple and pointed it at me again, which was exactly what I’d been hoping for. Before he could tell me not to move any further I closed the distance between us, grabbed the barrel of his gun and twisted it counterclockwise, wrenching it out of his hand, and away from his trigger finger.

  His last hope gone, Grady slumped into his chair and sunk his head in his hands. It was hard not to feel sorry for him.

  “Right now,” I said, “the cops are looking for the two guys you hired to follow me. When they find them, they’re going to offer them a deal to testify against you. I’m betting that rather than face a charge of attempted murder, at least one of them will tell the cops you told them to kill me. Solicitation of murder for hire is a Class X felony. Twenty to forty years in prison.”

  Head still buried in his hands, Grady began to sob quietly, his shoulders shaking almost imperceptibly.

  “You know what I think, though? I think you only told them to warn me off, maybe frighten me. I don’t think you wanted me dead. If you come with me to the cops, you can get out in front of this. Don’t wait for them to find your friends. Let’s go tell them what really happened.”

  Grady slowly lifted his head until he was looking into my eyes. He held my gaze for a full thirty seconds before he looked down at his hands and nodded.

  Chapter 28

  “Raise one hundred,” said Dr. Odin.

  I looked at my hole cards. Seven and eight of clubs. I called. Nelson, Howe, and Scott folded round to Al, who hesitated, then called.

  “Caldwell gave us a full confession,” said Scott. “From covering up Elizabeth Weber’s death to hiring the two guys to intimidate you.”

  “Good thing I don’t intimidate easy,” I said.

  Howe dealt three cards face up on the table. An ace, a nine and a two. No clubs. Al checked and Odin raised another hundred. I folded.

  “What’ll happen to him now?” I asked.

  Al called Odin’s raise, and Howe dealt the turn card – a king.

  “That’s up to the DA to decide,” said Scott. Al checked. “He’ll definitely get jail time though.”

  “Two hundred,” said Odin.

  Al called, and Howe dealt the final card – a six. Neither man showed any expression. Scott’s face was easier to read.

  “You feel bad for him,” I said. “Do you believe him?”

  Al checked again.

  “Actually, I kinda do,” said Scott. “Don’t get me wrong – he made a stupid mistake and now he needs to pay for it. But yeah, I think Elizabeth Weber threatened him because he was prepared to lose his marriage and all his wife’s money rather than break the law. When she died, he panicked, and he got desperate and stupid.”

  Al slapped his hand on the table hard enough to make my chip stack fall over. “Fellas, seriously? We’re trying to play some cards
here.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Scott, smiling. “Go ahead, Robert.”

  “Thank you, gentlemen,” said Odin, pushing two small stacks of chips into the center of the table. “I bet six hundred.”

  Al looked at the pot, then at his cards, then he moved a few of his chips around as if he was counting them. He looked at Odin’s chips and stared into Odin’s unblinking eyes. Only then did he push all his chips forward in one movement, declaring “I’m all in.”

  Odin smiled, called the re-raise, and showed his cards. An ace and a king, giving him two pairs.

  Al nodded graciously. “Not bad,” he said as he turned his cards over, “but it don’t beat three twos.”

  A note from the author:

  Thank you so much for reading Bad Memory. I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. Your bit was probably quicker, at least. If you had fun, I'd really appreciate it if you could spare a few moments to write a quick review on Amazon, because it would really help other readers to know what to expect from the book and whether it’s right for them.

  Thanks so much,

  Jim

  P.S. Would you like to know about Jake’s first case? Read on for the opening chapters of The Shoulders of Giants, the first full length novel in the Jake Abraham Series.

  Chapter 1

  The call came on Sunday.

  I picked it up on the third ring and said, for the first time, “Abraham and Associates, Jake Abraham speaking.”

  “Hello,” said a gruff voice on the other end. He paused after every few words. “My name is Gregory Patterson, and I have a matter I’d like to discuss with you.”

  I’d never actually spoken to a client before. I wondered if there was anything special I should say next. I went for “Please go on.”

  “Perhaps we could meet up and talk.” He sounded highly strung.

  “Sure, you can come to my office or...”

  “Do you know a bar called Flanagan’s on Larrabee Street?” he interrupted.

  “Yeah, I know it,” I said. Actually, I didn’t, but it would be simpler to look it up in the phonebook than have him direct me there.

  “Okay, meet me there in an hour.” He hesitated. “Do you know who I am?”

  I assured him I did, and he hung up. The question was kind of redundant. You’d have to be living in a very deep hole not to have heard of Gregory Patterson – a year before he was barely out of the papers. Captain Gregory Patterson of the Chicago Police Department, 15th District. At the tail end of 2004, just as the ball was dropping in Times Square, he was arrested on racketeering charges and put on trial along with three high-ranking members of the Irish Mob. He was accused of tipping them off to raids, tampering with evidence and, most famously, giving up the location of a Federal witness. A witness who later died alongside three FBI agents when the safe house they were in was blown up. The evidence they had was circumstantial, backed up by testimony from convicted mobsters, and ultimately the jury found there was reasonable doubt and he was acquitted. Of course, it was too late, since he’d already been tried and found guilty by the media. Most people assumed he was guilty and got lucky. Some were angry at the jury and felt he got special treatment because he was a cop. I must admit I thought he probably did do it, but I believe in the system and from what I read I didn’t think there was enough evidence for a conviction beyond reasonable doubt. Naturally, his career was over, his private life turned inside out and laid bare in the press. They went on and on about his youth in Bridgeport, his childhood friendship with future mobster Jimmy Moran, his drinking problem, his citation for using excessive force. It was brutal.

  And now he wanted to speak to me. Gregory Patterson wanted to meet with me, in my professional capacity as a private investigator. I panicked about whether I was dressed smart enough, which was dumb, seeing as a client could walk in at any time. At the moment, I had on light slacks, a blue button-down shirt and a suede jacket. I looked a little like Don Johnson in Nash Bridges. I checked the address of Flanagan’s in the phonebook and decided I had time to go home and change.

  In my apartment on Halsted, I put on a light gray summer suit and a tie with little turtles on it. I looked in the mirror to check my guns didn’t show, and left.

  As I walked into Flanagan’s, I saw Patterson sitting at the bar. I’d remembered him from a thousand newspaper articles, and he hadn’t changed much in a year. He was about fifty, had lost weight, and I could see in his face there wasn’t much fight left in him. On the way to the bar, I wondered what he wanted to talk to me about. Did he want to hire me to clear his name once and for all? To find out who set him up?

  “Hi, I’m Jake Abraham.” I said as I approached him, “We spoke earlier.”

  Patterson finished his drink and ordered another. A double scotch on the rocks. I ordered a Coke, no rocks. Never drink in front of a client. If I’d had time to formulate a set of rules, I’m sure that would have been one of them. Our drinks came and we moved to a booth at the back of the bar. Patterson spoke first.

  “I’d like to hire you,” he said, “to find my daughter.”

  Chapter 2

  I took out a notepad and pencil, and this seemed to encourage him to talk.

  “Susan just started her sophomore year at UIC.” He took a photo from his wallet and handed it to me. She was very attractive. She had long dark hair, large doe eyes, and Liv Tyler lips.

  “How long has she been missing?” I said.

  “She was supposed to come round last night. When she didn’t show up I called her roommate, who said she hadn’t seen her since Friday evening.”

  “Where did she go Friday night?” I hoped I was asking the right questions.

  “She went to a bar or a nightclub. You’d have to ask Denise. That’s Susan’s roommate. I’ll give you their address.”

  “Well, she hasn’t been gone long. Have you thought maybe she met someone and forgot she was supposed to come see you yesterday? You know what college students are like.” I wondered if he did.

  “She didn’t forget.” He took a deep breath. “Yesterday was my fiftieth birthday, Mr. Abraham. Susan had planned a big surprise party at my house. When I got home at six, all the guests were waiting in the street. She should have been there at five to let them all in and set everything up. They were all very embarrassed and told me what they were doing there. I said not to worry, she was probably stuck in traffic, and that we should wait for her before starting to celebrate. We waited. She didn’t come. She’d been planning it for over a month. She didn’t forget.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said, “What about the police? Isn’t this more their field of expertise?”

  “You said on the phone that you know who I am, Mr. Abraham. I don’t have any friends in the Police Department anymore. They ostracized me quite effectively. I’ll file a missing persons report, but I don’t trust them to put every effort into finding Susan, let alone keeping me informed of their progress. I called a few P.I.’s I used to know before I called you. The polite ones just put the phone down when they heard it was me.”

  “I see. Okay, I’ll need to keep this photo, and I’ll have to take Susan’s address, and a few more details. I get $250 a day plus expenses, and I’ll need five days in advance as a retainer.”

  “So, you’ll take the case?”

  “Yeah.” I said, “I’ll take the case.” Before I left, I got a check, and some more information from Patterson, such as Susan’s full name, date of birth, Social Security Number, and the name of the bookstore she worked part-time in. That’s about all most parents know about their kids. I’d find out more by talking to her friends.

  I decided to start at once, even though I wouldn’t be able to cash my check until morning. Since she’d been gone less than forty-eight hours, there wouldn’t be much of a paper trail to follow just yet, so I headed over to speak to Susan’s roommate, Denise Everett.

  Susan and Denise’s apartment was in Greek Town, on West Van Buren. I buzzed their apartment
, third floor, and a voice answered.

  “Who is it?”

  “My name’s Jake Abraham, I’m a private detective.” I grinned to myself. “I’m working for Susan’s father and I’d like to ask you a few questions.”

  “Come on up.”

  The door buzzed, and I pushed it open. When I reached the top of the stairs, Denise was waiting for me by the door. She was taller than me and wore jeans and a baggy gray sweatshirt with the University of Illinois logo on it. When she talked, it was with a southern drawl.

  “Come in,” she said, “can I get you anything? Coffee? Juice?”

  “Thanks, I’m fine. I just want to ask you a few questions about Susan. Do you know where she went on Friday night?”

  “Yeah, she said she was going to Dutch’s. It’s a bar on the North Side. I don’t know how long she would have stayed there, though.”

  “Did she go on her own? Was she meeting friends there, her boyfriend?”

  Denise laughed out loud. “I’m sorry,” she said, when she had recovered, “Susan don’t have a boyfriend. She’s gay. Dutch’s is a gay bar.”

  “Does her father know that?”

  “That she’s gay? Sure. He’s cool with it”, she said. I wondered why he hadn’t mentioned it.

  “Okay, does she have a girlfriend then?” I asked, shifting gears expertly.

  “Nah, not at the moment. Far as I know she wasn’t meeting anyone, just there for some fun.”

  “Do you have any idea where she might have gone? Do you think she would have missed her father’s birthday without a reason?”

  “She has a good relationship with her old man, you know? They’re pretty close these days. I was real surprised when he called me up and said she wasn’t there.”

  “Tell me a bit more about her. Does she have any close friends, other relatives she mentioned, ex-girlfriends maybe she went to visit?” I was running out of things to ask before the old favorite ‘Can you think of anyone who might want to hurt Susan?’