Before The Killing Starts (Dixie Killer Blues Book 1) (13 page)

Chapter 27

Evan had only just got
off the phone to Ellie when his phone pinged. He checked and saw that he had a
text from Tom Jacobson, the dentist who had the office below Evan's.
Call me
was all it said. Jacobson happened to own the whole building which made him
Evan's landlord as well. Over the years he'd had to put up with quite a bit of
strange goings on as result of having Evan as a tenant.

'Mr Buckley,' Jacobson
said when he picked up.

Evan bit back the
wisecrack that had been on the tip of his tongue. Something was wrong. Despite
all the aggravation that Evan's presence had caused for Jacobson over the
years, they were firm friends. Jacobson had been very supportive to Evan, both
financially when Evan's business had been on the rocks and personally when he
went through his bad patches over Sarah's disappearance. The usual greeting would
have been
Evan
or perhaps
Evan, you sorry son of a bitch
.

'Mr Jacobson,' Evan
said, instead of
Tom, you old bastard.

'I hope you don't mind
me calling you,' Jacobson said, 'but there's a young woman here to see you. She
said it's urgent. I didn't want to let her into your office, so she's here in
my waiting room.'

'Did she tell you her
name?'

'Yes. Her name's Sarah.'

If he hadn't been sure
something was wrong before, he was now. Jacobson knew all about Sarah and he
knew the effect her name would have on Evan. He might as well have shouted
they're
here waiting for you with a gun to my head
.

'Okay, tell her I'll be
right there.'

He cut the call and
tried to think what to do. It had to be the two guys again—Juan and José. It
all made sense. They'd seen him give his card to the bartender in Kelly's
Tavern. They must have gone back there and got it after the police had scared
them off and rescued Evan. After they'd missed him at the hotel, his office was
the obvious next step. In a way he was surprised it had taken them so long.

He wondered what sort of
a state Jacobson was in. He'd sounded okay apart from the forced formality of
the conversation. Hopefully the thugs didn't suspect him of alerting him. They
weren't to know what sort of relationship Jacobson had with his tenants.
Presumably they'd all agreed beforehand what he would say to persuade him to
come back to the office. Luckily they'd settled on a young woman waiting. That
made it so much easier for Jacobson. He wondered what Jacobson would have said if
they'd told him to say a man was waiting.

There's a man waiting
to see you. He says it's urgent. His name's Jesus H. Christ.

The question was what to
do now. He couldn't go back there. There was nothing he could do to help. What
was he going to do—shoot it out with them? Then it came to him.

'Not dead yet?' Guillory
said when he picked up. 'I'm waiting on a call any moment to say they've found
you dumped in an alley somewhere. They'll probably ask me to ID you.'

Evan laughed. 'It's not
me you need to worry about,' he said and told him about the situation at his
office. 'I really don't want to do Ryder any favors, but if he gets his fat ass
over there, it'll be on a plate for him. They're probably carrying all kinds of
unlicensed firearms and other stuff. He'll get lardy-ass detective of the
month.'

Guillory laughed. 'You
have no idea what a fiercely fought battle that is every month.'

'Shame the same guy wins
it every time.'

'Okay, time to get off
the line. I'll get him over there as soon as you get your skinny ass off the
line.'

'Don't forget to tell
him who he owes for his good fortune. Tell him he owes me.'

'No problem. I'm sure
he'll be more than happy to give you a call later and let you know when it's
safe to go back to your office. He'll enjoy that.'

Damn,
Evan thought.

'Whose side are you on?'

But the line was already
dead by then.

Chapter 28

Evan was surprised how
persistent the two guys—and whoever they worked for—were. But did that make it
any less or any more likely that the meeting with Ellie was another set-up?
Were they looking to get two bites at the cherry—his office and her hotel—or
could he assume that their presence in his office meant they'd given up on the
hotel?

He suddenly laughed to
himself at his own stupidity. What the hell was he worrying about? As a result
of the tip-off to Ryder, they were likely to still be in police custody when he
was meeting Ellie.

However, just to be on
the safe side, he'd head over there straight away. The two guys would still be
at his office now, waiting for him to turn up, so even if they decided to go to
the hotel as well they wouldn't be able to get there before him. And that was
without the added complication they would face with the police. That would cost
them a good few hours even with some slimeball defense lawyer working to get
them out. It would also give him time to get his car back and change the wheel.

But, despite what most
people he knew believed, he wasn't a complete idiot (well, maybe sometimes) and
he decided to buy himself even more time. He got his phone out and shot off a
quick text to Jacobson:
Traffic completely snarled up. I'll be another
twenty minutes. Ask Sarah to wait.

That only left one
problem. What to do about the whole situation with Ellie when he met her? He
turned things over and over in his mind as he took a taxi across town to her
hotel and the more he thought about it, the more convinced he was that her
whole story was one big lie. There were just too many holes and inconsistencies
in it. She'd lied to him more times than she'd told him the truth—if she'd told
the truth at all. Even though he'd thought her story about being Dixie's snitch sounded plausible at first, it just didn't ring true now. Why didn't she
have some means of contacting him?

And then there was the
situation at her hotel room. What did she have that made them want to turn her
room over? If she was a snitch, it would be information that she dealt in. Not
something physical that you could hide in a hotel room and people could search
for.

And what about the piece
of paper he'd found with a date, the letter 'J' and the name of a bar? If she
was a snitch and that was the information that she wanted to deliver to Dixie then she was a very stupid one for writing it down and tucking it in her diary.
Whatever else she was, Evan didn't think she was stupid. Far from it.
Conniving, manipulative, duplicitous—yes. Stupid? Not so much.

On top of all that,
there was one overriding principle that he knew he could rely on. Whatever else
might happen, he could be certain that whatever was at the bottom of all this,
it was all about
her
. She was using him for her own purposes. And if it
hadn't been for the photograph in his pocket he would have been one hundred and
ten per cent sure that she was stringing him along with her promise of
information about Sarah's whereabouts.

But the photo was in his
pocket. On top of that, she had deliberately cut the original photograph in
half so that he wouldn't see her or the mystery arm. Sarah's arm. Why would she
do that if she wanted him to believe her? Maybe it was some kind of
psychological manipulation, knowing he would believe it more if he found it for
himself.

He could go mad thinking
about it. There was only one way to find out. He just didn't have any choice in
the matter. At least he'd got things straight in his mind to the extent that he
knew what she'd told him so far was a lie. Surely he could only move forward
from here.

The taxi dropped him
outside the hotel and after fifteen grubby minutes and a lot of strong language
he'd changed the wheel. He got in the car, took the photograph out of his
pocket and studied it. He knew he was seeing what he wanted to see, but despite
that there was no mistake about the bracelet on the unidentified arm. If it
wasn't Sarah's then it was one identical to it. What were the chances of that?
Of Ellie having two friends who owned the exact same bracelet. If Ellie had
bought it for her, then okay, maybe she bought them in bulk and gave them to
all her friends. But that wasn't the case—Evan had bought it himself and given
it to her for her birthday and as far as he was concerned that made the chances
of it being a coincidence pretty much zero.

He put it back in his
pocket and went inside to book a room.

Chapter 29

Dixie
needed to find a way to get rid of
Crispy before he could start looking for Ellie. He didn't want to kill him—although
if it came to it he would— but he needed him out of the way for a couple of
days at least. He had something of a plan but he knew he'd end up playing it by
the seat of his pants. Crispy might not have chaired many Mensa meetings but he
had a certain animal cunning. Added to which, Dixie didn't know what Chico had said to him. If Chico had told him to keep an eye on Dixie, he might be expecting
him to try something.

As it turned out, it was
a lot easier than he expected.

'Hey Crispy,' Dixie said, 'you got any duct tape?'

'I think so, yeah.'

'You think so? Have you
or haven't you? I don't want to wait until we've got hold of her and she's
kicking and screaming to find out we need to stop off at the hardware store and
buy some. It's called thinking ahead.'

Crispy looked offended.
Everybody liked to treat him as if he was an idiot. Dixie was the worst.

'I think I've got some
in the trunk.'

'How about we take a
look, just to make sure?'

Crispy grunted something
unintelligible, the second word sounded like
you
, but he pulled into an
empty parking lot about a mile further on. He popped the trunk and they both
got out to take a look. The trunk was full of all kinds of assorted crap.

'What a mess,' Dixie said.

'What do you expect?
It's a car trunk.'

'Why don't we just go
and buy some now,' Dixie said, 'You'll never find anything amongst all this junk.'

'It's not junk,' Crispy
said. 'You never know what you might need. Just give me a minute, will you.'

Dixie
gave a small shrug like it was no
skin off his nose if Crispy wanted to spend a half hour rooting through the
trunk.

'Whatever. Just don't be
all day.'

He took a small step
backwards to give Crispy some room and Crispy leaned in and started rummaging
around. He moved a blanket to one side and Dixie saw a baseball bat underneath
it.

Just what I need.

This would be the moment
of truth. If Crispy was suspicious in any way it wasn't going to work.

'Nice bat,' he said,
leaning past Crispy and picking it up.

Crispy ignored him. Dixie let out a sigh of relief and took a step backwards to give himself room to swing.

'Hey, Crispy.'

'What is it now?' His
voice had taken on a sharper tone. Dixie didn't know if he was fed up with Dixie's interruptions or he was pissed because he couldn't find the tape and he was going
to look stupid. Dixie smiled to himself but then his heart missed a beat.
What
if he didn't have any tape?
He couldn't worry about that now. He might not
get another chance.

'What's this stain on
the end of the bat? It looks like blood. You need to wash it off after you've
beaten some guy's brains in. What if the cops caught you with it like this?'

'What are you talking
about?' Crispy said and pulled his head and upper body out of the trunk.

Dixie
swung the bat and caught him right
on the temple. There was a sickening thump but not a worrying sharp crack. He'd
judged it just right. Crispy let out a loud grunt and started to crumple. Dixie took another swing and caught him across the gut, a flat, smacking sound. The air
exploded out of Crispy like it wasn't ever coming back. He doubled over and Dixie finished him off—not permanently he hoped—with a blow across the back of his neck.
Crispy dropped to the floor as if his someone had cut his legs off at the knees
with a chainsaw. His head landed with a dull thud on the ground, inches from
the exhaust tailpipe, the fumes washing over his face.

Dixie
stepped over him and started
frantically searching through the crap in the trunk. Then he stopped just
moving it aside and grabbed an armful of stuff and dropped in on the ground
next to Crispy. No tape.

He bent into the trunk
again and scooped up another armful and dropped it on the first pile. Nothing.
He started to turn back to the trunk and heard Crispy groan. Surely he couldn't
be coming round already. He didn't want to hit him again if he didn't have to.
He looked down at him but he wasn't moving. His breathing was very shallow
which was probably a good thing—it was best if he didn't breath in too much
carbon monoxide.

Dixie
turned back to the trunk and
offered up a silent prayer of thanks. There was a half roll of silver duct tape
lying in the corner. He grabbed hold of it and knelt down next to Crispy. He
flipped him onto his front, pulled his arms behind him and lashed his wrists
together with the tape. He did the same with his ankles. What about his mouth?
He didn't want the guy to suffocate but he couldn't risk him shouting for help.
Crispy had an irritating, nasal sort of voice but did that mean he had problems
with his sinuses? Only one way to find out.

Dixie
tore off another strip of tape and
pulled it tight over Crispy's mouth. His chest heaved a couple of times and he
made a snorting noise through his nose but then his breathing settled down
again. He wasn't going red in the face either so Dixie reckoned he'd be okay.

Crispy made what was
probably another groan behind the tape when Dixie sat him up and rolled him
onto his shoulder. Dixie got his legs under him and stood up like he was doing
a squat in the gym and rolled Crispy off his shoulder and into the empty trunk.
He landed at a strange angle but it was only a small drop so Dixie didn't think
he'd done any damage. You couldn't break somebody's neck from that height.

It was a generous-sized
trunk so there was enough room in there to pack all Crispy's junk around him. Dixie thought he actually looked quite comfortable—almost peaceful—lying there. He leaned
in and dug Crispy's phone out of his pocket. He knew his gun was in the glove
compartment so he could get that later. Then he slammed the trunk shut, got in
the front and drove off.

He drove around for the
best part of an hour until he found what he was looking for—an old abandoned
factory near the railroad tracks. He drove in and around to the parking lot at
the back which wasn't visible from the street. Nobody was likely to find the
car here. In fact he'd probably have to let somebody know where it was unless
he wanted Crispy to starve to death.

He thought he better
check up on him one last time. He took Crispy's gun—a Glock 19—from the glove
compartment and went to take a look. He could hear a very faint noise as he
walked around to the back of the car. It sounded like Crispy was awake. He
opened the trunk and looked in. He was right. Crispy was thrashing around
making a guttural sound in the back of his throat. He stopped thrashing and
stared up at Dixie. If looks could kill and all that sort of stuff . . .

'Save your strength,
Crispy, you're going to be here for a few days.' He smiled down at him. 'Don't worry;
I'll let them know where you are once I'm long gone.'

Crispy shook his head
violently back and forth. Dixie patted him on the cheek. He briefly considered
taking the tape off and trying to get him to tell him what Chico had told him
do, but he decided against it. Crispy wouldn't tell him voluntarily and Dixie didn't have the heart for torturing people. Even people like Crispy.

'I could just set the
car alight and be done with it,' he said. 'Then you could live up to your
name.'

Crispy ignored the
comment, didn't even grunt or thrash around a bit more. Just glared at him.
They both knew he wouldn't do it. There was no point wasting any more time. He
slammed the trunk lid shut. Should he shoot a couple of air holes in it like
they did in the movie
Thelma and Louise
when they locked the traffic cop
in his trunk? That was
such
a great movie. But was the air holes thing
just some BS they made up for the movie? Surely car trunks weren't airtight.
Not on an old heap of rust like this one anyway. On the other hand, it might be
fun to do it just to scare the ever-loving shit out of him.

On balance he decided it
wasn't worth wasting a couple of perfectly good bullets. He started walking
back to the street, hoping to find a cruising cab. He pulled Crispy's phone out
of his pocket and checked it as he walked. There was nothing from Chico. Nothing from Chico that hadn't already been deleted, anyway.