Cruel Comfort (Evan Buckley Thrillers Book 1) (3 page)

After they'd gone Evan sat down at
his desk and rested his head in his hands. This all seemed like some terrible
nightmare, but he knew he wouldn't be waking up from it any time soon. This was
his life now. He didn't like the things Ryder had said but he couldn't fault
the logic. Sure, it was Stanton's wife and McIntyre who were the root cause of
it all, but it was his whisky and his photographs that had pushed the man over
the edge.

He should never have given him the
memory stick
.

Up until he got home, Stanton had only seen the first picture of the two of them standing outside the motel,
still wearing all their clothes. There was still room for an innocent
explanation. He'd asked Evan about the others but he hadn't wanted to see them.
But then, sitting at home, full of whisky and with the memory stick burning a
hole in his pocket, he hadn't been able to stop himself from looking. Evan
imagined him getting it out of his pocket and turning it over in his hand;
maybe he threw it in the trash only to go back and dig it out again, knowing
all the while that in the end he would have to
know
, just like Evan had
said.

And what he'd seen had robbed him of
the will to live. Ryder was right; it was his fault and he was going to have to
learn to live with it for the rest of his life.

There was another, softer knock on
the still open door. Evan looked up and saw Tom Jacobson filling the doorway.
Jacobson was a huge man with a grizzled beard who’d played college football
before he tore the ligaments in his knee badly enough to end his career. His
teeth were crooked and uneven which always surprised Evan since he carried on a
dental practice in the office downstairs. Evan often thought he could hear the
drill and the patients screaming. He also owned the building making him Evan's
landlord.

'Tom, come on in. I think some root
canal work would just about round off my morning. You don't happen to have any novocaine
on you, do you?'

Jacobson smiled and looked at his
watch - it was still only eight thirty in the morning. 'Not a good day so far
then,' he said, sitting down in the visitor's chair. 'I heard some shouting so
I thought I'd come and see if everything's okay. I passed a couple of guys on
my way up - they looked like cops.'

Evan could see it didn't look good.
If he was a landlord, he wouldn't want a tenant like him. The whisky bottle and
glasses were sitting on the desk not more than six inches from Jacobson's left
elbow. The sleeping bag was still on the floor and the air in the room was
stale despite the open window. Cops were involved and there'd been a lot of
shouting. Perhaps he was worried someone would get shot in his building next. Evan
decided he might as well come clean.

'You're right, they were cops...'

Jacobson held up a large hand to
stop him. The fingers looked like they could pull teeth without needing pliers.

'I can see something's been going
on, Evan, but I've got a patient at nine. You look like you could do with
getting it off your chest. Why don't we get some lunch together and you can
tell me all about it then.'

'Yeah, that'd be good,' Evan said.
Jacobson was right; he did need to talk to someone, especially after Ryder had
touched a raw nerve and set him off about Sarah. He also needed to get Jacobson
on his side because he knew his income and ability to pay the rent were about
to take a nosedive.

Jacobson got up to go and grinned at
him. 'I'll give you a call about twelve thirty. And if you still want a root
canal afterwards, we'll see what we can do about that too.'

They went to a nice place round the
corner from the office, called the French Washroom or something like that. The
sort of place frequented by successful dentists, rather than struggling PIs,
where they won't let you have ketchup. The prices made Evan's eyes water but
Jacobson had insisted up front that it was on him.

The maître d’ looked at Evan as if
the last time he’d seen him was when he’d caught him taking a shit in the alley
outside the kitchen door. Evan could see he didn’t want to let him in, despite
being with
Monsieur Jacobson.
He felt a lot better when he saw his
bow-tie was not only askew, but a clip-on and not properly tied. He tapped his
own collar and smiled as he passed. He knew it was stupid – the first thing the
maître d’ would do would be to scoot into the kitchen and order extra phlegm
for
Monsieur Jacobson’s
guest.

It got better still when they got to
their table. The waitresses all wore short skirts and frilly white blouses that
had shrunk in the wash. The waiters all looked a little light in their loafers.
A couple of them looked like they wanted to wear the same outfits as the women.
Evan’s silent prayer was answered as a young and pretty waitress came over to
serve them. She brought them their drinks and a couple of bread rolls that
looked like they were made from whole vegetarians. Evan felt healthier just
looking at them.

There was a small plate of olives on
the table. He took one and ate it and fished the pit out of his mouth. He never
knew what to do with them; certainly not in a place like this. If it hadn’t
been for Jacobson, he’d have flicked it at the maître d’.

'You know that song
Novocaine for
the Soul
,' he said, once he'd taken a swallow of his drink, 'well I feel
like I need a large dose of that, right now.'

'I don't know it,' Jacobson said,
'but I guess this is a whole lot more serious than a couple of cops giving you
a hard time.'

'It is. You know I'm a private
investigator, a private eye or whatever you want to call it.'

Jacobson nodded but didn't say
anything. He took a sip of his mineral water and waited for Evan to continue.

'It probably doesn't come as any
surprise to hear that it's not quite as glamorous or exciting as it's made out
to be in the movies.' Evan took a large swallow of his Margarita and licked the
salt round the edge of the glass. It was the best bit. 'Do you know what I
spend most of my life doing?'

'I would guess it's divorce work.'

'Exactly. What one of those cops
called
snapping dirty pictures
of some guy or other screwing my clients'
wives. Or vice versa. It doesn't make you feel very good about yourself.' He
slumped back into his chair and ran a hand through his hair.

'I don't suppose it does.'

'But you get over it. This helps.'
He held up his almost empty glass. 'It's uncomfortable and embarrassing when
you give them the photos or whatever else you've dug up. Some of them cry, some
of them get angry and shout at you like it's your fault. But then they all get
up and go back to what's left of their lives and you never see or hear from
them again.'

'But not this time?'

'Definitely not this time.'

He drained his glass and looked
round for the waitress, and then remembered Jacobson was picking up the tab.
Jacobson waved a hand and told him to go ahead, it sounded like he needed it.
Then Evan told him all about Stanton and how they'd sat drinking together and
how Stanton had gone home seeming as good as could be expected in the
circumstances. And how the next thing Evan knew, Stanton was swinging from a
rafter in his garage.

'And you blame yourself because you
made him take the memory stick home?'

'Wouldn't you? That's what tipped
him over the edge.'

'I don't know, it's impossible to
say; but I do understand how it would make you feel that way.'

The waitress brought their food. She
really was very pretty. Evan was sure she was smiling at him more than the
other diners. He got stuck into his steak. It was excellent. So were the fries.
He wouldn’t have put ketchup on them even if they’d allowed it. At least he
hadn't lost his appetite.

'I can see why you want that
novocaine,' Jacobson continued, 'but I'm afraid time is the only thing that's
going to make you feel any better.'

They ate in silence for a while;
then Evan said, 'You're right, but there is one thing that I can do.'

Jacobson waited for him to go on.

'I'm not going to do any more
divorce work. I've always hated it, and now this happens. So that's it.
Finito.' He chopped the air emphatically with his hand.

'Sounds good. So where does that
leave you?'

Evan didn't need to spend much time
thinking that one through.

'Realistically? Sitting on my butt
in my office with rent to pay and no clients.'

'Well you can forget about the rent
to start with. That's not a problem.' Jacobson said through a mouthful of
seafood risotto. 'I'm happy to wait until you get yourself back on your feet.’
He grinned. ‘Maybe you can check out my wife for free...’ The grin slipped off
his face. ‘Sorry, that was a really crass thing to say.'

Evan looked down at the table for a
moment, looking hurt. Then he looked up and grinned back at him. 'That's okay,
I've already got those photos...'

Jacobson did a double take, realized
he'd been had and punched him on the arm. With someone Jacobson's size, it
hurt. 'I think I'm about ready to do that root canal you were asking about.
Unfortunately I'm all out of anesthetic.'

After they'd finished eating,
Jacobson said he had one last question that was on his mind. Evan told him to
fire away.

'What was all the shouting about? I
would have thought it would've been quite a somber visit.'

'So would I, but the fat one was
riding me really hard. Letting me know what a worthless piece of shit he
thought I was.'

Jacobson looked like he was weighing
up the answer in his mind. It obviously came up short. 'That's it?'

Evan looked at him, wondering how
much to tell him. He really didn’t want to get into it now, but a couple of
Margaritas had loosened him up a bit. The guy had been pretty good to him...so
what the hell.

'No, that's not all. He touched a
very raw nerve and I completely lost it.'

Then Evan told him all about Sarah
and how she'd just disappeared five years ago; how he'd tried to find her and
that was why he'd ended up doing what he did now.

Jacobson shook his head slowly. 'Jesus
Christ, Evan, I had no idea.'

'Not many people do. I don't talk
about it much. Besides, people just want to forget about things like that and
get on with their own lives. Nobody really
gives
a shit. Just another
sad story that had everyone's attention for about five seconds before they got
distracted by something more important, like a great, new breakfast cereal
flavor.'

Jacobson nodded. 'I know what you
mean. Most people have the attention span of a goldfish. What about the
police?'

'They went through the motions, but
they weren't interested. They decided early on there wasn't any foul play
involved, so they dropped it. Not officially of course, but that's what
happened. People disappear of their own free will every day.'

'Do you have any idea what might
have happened?'

Evan didn’t say anything for a
moment. He didn’t know what had actually happened, but there were plenty of
ideas that had passed through his mind over the years. Most of them unwelcome,
and nothing he wanted to get into now.

'Nope. She just disappeared without
a trace.'

It was obvious to Jacobson that there
was a hell of a lot more but he didn’t push it. 'But you keep on looking?'

'I wouldn't be able to stop if I
wanted to. You know what they say about "closure". Until I know what
happened - one way or the other - I'll never be able to drop it.'

Back in his office Evan was as good
as his word - he sat around on his butt wondering what on earth he was going to
do to drum up some business. Business that didn't involve sneaking around motel
parking lots in the middle of the night. Business that didn’t make people’s
lives worse than before. If he didn't manage to come up with anything it
wouldn't just be himself he was letting down now - he'd be letting Jacobson
down too. It would have been easier if Jacobson has given him an ultimatum on
his rent arrears instead of being so damn understanding.

Even though the possibility of
another client didn't seem likely any time soon, he didn't want to risk being
caught out – or at least that’s what he told himself - so he picked up another
bottle of scotch on his way back from lunch. It was sitting on his desk now; an
unwelcome, accusing reminder of the previous night and the irreparable damage
that he’d caused. He knew he'd be beating himself up for a long time to come. He
desperately wished there was something he could do to make the situation better
but there was no way he could make amends. Stanton was dead and Evan was
probably the only one who cared.

Then there was Sarah. It wasn't that
he'd forgotten - there wasn't a day went by when he didn't think about her, but
time had softened the edges of his pain. The argument with Ryder that morning
had taken him straight back to when it first happened and the terrible rawness
of his grief and his frustration and anger at the police.

It didn't take long before he caved
in and cracked the seal on the bottle. He'd been determined he wasn't going to
let himself slide into a drunken pit of self pity, but it wasn't long before
he'd fired up his computer and sat browsing his photo archive. Not the client
archive - he deleted that religiously at the end of every assignment - but his
personal mementos. The things that should have brought him joy but now only
made his pain more acute; the restaurant in Paris where he’d proposed and she’d
made him squirm pretending to think about it; the white clapboard church in
rural New England where they’d got married in the fall and where her folks
still lived; the whitewashed villa – more like a shack - on Santorini where
they’d spent their honeymoon; the
good
friends who'd somehow drifted away;
the house she fell in love with that they couldn't afford but bought anyway,
the one he couldn't bear to live in after she'd gone...

He wasn't sure when he'd fallen
asleep or for how long. The bottle was half empty and it was dark in the
office. He wasn't sure what had woken him up but then it came again. A
tentative knock at his door. Who the hell was coming round at this time of
night? Again his first thought was that Hugh McIntyre had tracked him down. But
would he even care now? He'd got Stanton's wife and Stanton's half of the
business for himself now. Besides, he hadn't seemed the type to knock politely
on the door and wait to be invited in. Probably kick it down like Evan had done
to him, or wait for him in some dark alley.

'Come on in,' Evan called, 'it's not
locked.'
Join me for a drink if you dare
, he thought.

But instead of opening the door,
whoever it was turned and retreated back down the corridor. He heard the fast
click of a woman's heels. That surprised him, but then an awful thought crossed
his mind - what if it was Stanton's wife? He was in two minds whether to follow
her or not. He knew he couldn't hide from it.

In the semi-darkness he jumped up
from his chair too quickly and knocked the open bottle, sending it flying off the
desk. He made a desperate attempt to catch it but only managed to lose his
balance and crash into the filing cabinet behind the desk. Ignoring the whisky
bottle as it emptied the last of its contents into Tom Jacobson's carpet, he
crossed to the window to see if he could catch sight of his visitor. It was too
late to run after her now; he was half drunk and he had a large damp stain
where some of the whisky had landed in his lap. Or at least he hoped that's
what it was. He certainly couldn't follow her in his car in his present condition.

Looking out the window, he caught
sight of her as she ran across the parking lot and got into an old Toyota
Corolla that had seen better days. She was parked in the corner furthest from
the street lights. All Evan was able to make out before she drove away was a
blond woman in her mid-forties. He didn't think he'd ever seen her before - it
wasn't Stanton's wife, he was sure of that - and he had no idea what she
wanted. Or why she changed her mind and ran.

The strange visit shook him out of
his melancholy stupor, but it also unsettled him. He realized how vulnerable he
would have been if it had been McIntyre come to pay him a visit. He wouldn't
have stood a chance. The trouble was, the way he was feeling about himself, he
deserved to have some meathead beat seven shades of shit out of him.

He'd been sleeping in the office on
a fairly regular basis recently. He had a small apartment that he rented after
he sold the house he bought with Sarah, but it was a depressing sort of place.
Going home to an empty apartment just seemed so much more lonely than staying
late in the office before unrolling his sleeping bag. He didn't really know why
he kept the apartment - apart from the fact that he'd need somewhere to go when
Tom Jacobson finally kicked him out.

He had a battered, old armchair and
a small screen TV in the office, and it had that cosy, homely feel that a
whisky soaked carpet lends a room. So it wasn't unusual that he should be
sitting in his chair watching the TV the following evening, with a somewhat
smaller drink in his hand and the cap screwed down tightly on the bottle.

Luckily for him, Jacobson had been
out of town all day at a seminar on the future of dental amalgam or whatever
else it was that got dentists off, so he'd smuggled a commercial vacuum into
the building and sucked all the whisky out of the carpet. Then he'd frozen half
to death with the window open all day and now the only thing that remained was
the faintly suspicious, lemony smell of carpet cleaner.

He'd even turned down one enquiry
for more divorce work and was feeling pretty good about his resolve. The thing
was, he was starting to get cabin fever. He needed something worthwhile to do,
just like Detective Donut had said.

The stresses of the previous few days had left him feeling
drained. He felt tired, so he turned the TV off and settled back into his
armchair. It was remarkably comfortable for something that had only cost him
twenty-five dollars.

He was drifting off into a mildly
intoxicated doze when car headlights washed across the ceiling of the room and
woke him. His office was on the second floor which meant a car had just driven
up the ramp and into the parking lot. The lights from the cars on the street
didn't reach this high. It could be kids looking for somewhere to park up and
make out, but it was a bit too exposed for that, unless you got a thrill from
that sort of thing.

He immediately thought of the woman
from the night before and went over to the window. Sure enough, the same tired
Toyota Corolla had just parked in the same spot. The engine was still running
and nobody seemed to be in a hurry to get out. He watched it for a full five
minutes before the door opened and the interior light went on but she still
stayed where she was. Just as he decided to go down she leaned back out and
pulled the door shut again and started backing out.

Forgetting everything else Evan
grabbed his car keys, bolted out the door and ran for the stairs. He didn't
have time to wait for the elevator. He took the stairs three at a time, the
adrenalin flushing any remaining effects of the booze out of his system. She
was turning left out of the parking lot as he crashed through the main doors
and sprinted for his car. He leapt into the driver's seat, slammed the car into
gear and fishtailed it out of the lot and into the traffic behind her, horns
blaring as he shot in front of the oncoming traffic. He could see her three
cars in front and settled down to a more reasonable speed. Traffic was just
right; enough to cover him but light enough for him to easily keep her in
sight. Whatever turmoil was going on in her head probably worked in his favor
too.

He followed her for a couple of
miles into a quiet residential neighborhood on the edge of town. Like her car,
it had seen better days. He had to drop back further as there was almost no
traffic at all. He made a left where he thought she'd just turned and then
pulled sharply into the curb and stopped. She was turning into a driveway about
a hundred yards further on. He sat there for five minutes until he was sure she
would be inside and started driving slowly down the street. He made a note of
the house number and her license plate as he passed and then stopped again
another hundred yards further on.

He couldn't make up his mind whether
to approach the house or not. He didn't want to carry on with this ridiculous
nightly charade forever. Besides, the woman seemed to be getting more nervous
every night and she might not come back at all. On the other hand, having him
knock on her door in the middle of the night would probably only freak her out.

He felt almost as nervous as she
was. It was ridiculous, he felt like a teenager on a first date, too nervous to
knock on the door. He got out the car, walked back to the house and rang the
bell. The only noises he could hear was the pinging of the car engine as it
cooled and the faint sound of the TV coming from inside. She hadn't gone to bed
yet, but she didn't come to the door.

He gave it a couple more minutes and
rang the bell again, but he knew he wasn't going to get anywhere that night.
Unless he wanted to stand there all night and freeze to death, he might as well
give up and go home. He left a business card in her mail can and drove back to
the office, wondering what he was going to do to make her talk to him.

Back inside the office he dropped
wearily into his armchair. It was just after nine p.m. He poured himself
another drink and settled comfortably into his chair; it was far too early for
bed.

The next thing he knew, it was
almost midnight and he was still in his chair. He was cold and his neck was
stiff. The drink was untouched on the table next to him. He was surprised he'd
dozed for so long. It was becoming a habit. He needed to get a better
lifestyle. He massaged the back of his neck and took a sip of the drink before
pouring the rest of it down the sink.