For Want of a Memory Page 19

  "What?" she asked.

  "Me?" Mitch looked nervous suddenly. "Nothing."

  "You were staring at me," said Lou Anne. "What's wrong? That's what you ordered."

  "It is," said Mitch, looking down at his plate and then back up at her. His face changed. "Why wouldn't I stare at you? You're easy on the eyes, Lulu."

  "Save it for Carla, Mitch," snorted Lou Anne. Her eyes moved to Kris. "You need anything else?"

  "I'm fine," said Kris. "Thanks."

  "You're welcome," she said and was off again.

  Kris looked back at Mitch, who was now staring at him now, instead of the waitress.

  "Well I'll be a monkey's uncle," said Mitch. "She likes you!"

  "She was just being polite," said Kris, feeling uncomfortable.

  "Lulu never says, 'You're welcome'," said Mitch. "Not like that."

  "You're reading things into her actions," said Kris.

  They were interrupted again as Jessica appeared at their table.

  "Move over, Mitch," she said. "Lulu said I could sit here. She says you're misbehaving again and I should keep an eye on you."

  "Me?" said Mitch, sounding wounded. "All I did was say she was easy on the eyes."

  "You're an incorrigible flirt," said Jessica. "I don't know why Carla puts up with you."

  "That makes two of us," said Mitch, happily. "Please, do sit down."

  He moved over and Jessica slid into the booth. She looked over at Kris. She fixed her eyes on him.

  "I'm glad I got this chance to see you," she said. "I wanted to make sure you were perfectly clear about not saying anything about what you saw the other night."

  "Of course," said Kris, feeling his face get hot.

  "What?" asked Mitch, looking from one to the other. "What did he see?"

  "Nothing," said Jessica firmly. "Isn't that right, Kris?"

  "Absolutely," said Kris.

  She turned back to Mitch. "See? He didn't see anything."

  "That's what they all say," said Mitch, looking thoughtfully at Kris.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Lola Henderson may have been blond and ditzy, but she wasn't completely stupid. And sometimes her personal idiosyncrasies, while annoying to others, worked in her favor. For example, there had been a night when she'd wanted to go out and Kris had told her he had to work.

  "I have to turn in an article at Miffen and Combs in the morning, and it's not quite finished yet," he'd said.

  Being the insecure woman she was, Lola had looked up Miffen and Combs in the phone book, to make sure it actually existed. Now, after her abortive attempt to get the police to find Kris, she'd taken the desk sergeant's advice. She stood, looking up at a steel and glass structure that seemed pretty fancy to be in the business of publishing obscure journals. It was also in a pretty ritzy part of town.

  She felt better when, by consulting a six foot tall directory on a granite wall, she found out that Miffen and Combs only took up one floor of the building. She took the elevator, examining a chip in one of her French tips on the way up.

  The elevator doors opened into a small waiting vestibule, with a half circle desk, a slim well-dressed brunette seated behind it.

  "How may I help you?" she asked, looking up from the keyboard she'd been typing on.

  Lola hated brunettes. They all thought they were superior to blondes.

  "I'm looking for my boyfriend," she said stiffly.

  "That's nice," said the brunette. She reached up and touched the earpiece that all but covered her right ear. "Miffen and Combs, how may I direct your call?" There was a short pause and she said, "I'll connect you now." She reached for something on the desk that Lola couldn't see and punched buttons, before looking back at Lola.

  "Now, about your boyfriend. I have no idea who that might be."

  "His name is Kris," said Lola.

  "There's no one working here by that name," said the receptionist.

  "He's an author," said Lola tightly.

  "We serve hundreds of authors," said the woman sweetly. Too sweetly for Lola's taste. "Could you be more specific?"

  "Kris Farmingham," said Lola, trying to control her temper.

  The woman smiled. "He's not here."

  "How do you know?" asked Lola, her voice cracking.

  "Because right now, there are exactly two authors in the office and neither of them is named Kris Farmingham."

  "Well where is he?" Lola's voice rose.

  "How should I know?" asked the brunette coolly. "He's your boyfriend."

  "I want to talk to his publisher!" snapped Lola.

  The receptionist sighed. "One moment, please," she said, with a blinding smile.

  She turned to her computer and started typing. She looked back at Lola, who saw what appeared to be a triumphant look on her face.

  "No Farmingham in our files," she said.

  "But he said you published one of his articles!" yipped Lola.

  "We publish books, not articles," said the woman.

  "He just finished something for you a month ago!" insisted Lola. "He couldn't take me out one night because he had to get it finished!"

  "Did you actually see him write something?" asked the brunette. Her voice sounded snide to Lola.

  "As a matter of fact I did, you cow!"

  What was about to turn into a cat fight was broken up by a harried man who came out of an office nearby and approached the desk.

  "Melissa!" he barked, interrupting the building hostilities. "Did you find anything on Stevens yet?"

  "Only that he doesn't seem to exist," said the brunette.

  "It's my ass if we don't find him, Melissa!" barked the man. "I gave him a huge advance. He was supposed to check in a week ago. I need you to find him, Melissa."

  "Mister Templeton, I am a receptionist, not a detective. I am not responsible for you losing one of your authors and I don't think you should be asking me to do all this extra work without any extra compensation."

  "Don't do this to me, Melissa," the man moaned. "I have to have something for Breckenridge or that advance is coming out of my pay. I don't HAVE that much, Melissa."

  "Well this ... woman ... " Melissa shot a frowning glance at Lola. "This woman can't find her boyfriend and she claims he's one of our authors. Maybe you two are looking for the same man."

  "What's his name?" asked Lola, looking at the man.

  "Ron Stevens," said the man eagerly.

  "Oh," said Lola, obviously disappointed. "He's not the one I'm looking for."

  "He's not?" moaned the man. "Short, light brown hair? About this tall?" He held his hand at his own height.

  "Kris has short, light brown hair," said Lola uncertainly. "And I guess he's about that tall."

  The man went on, trying to remember more detail, until Melissa finally held up her hand.

  "Do you, by chance, have a picture of your boyfriend?" she asked Lola.

  Lola lit up and began digging into her purse immediately.

  "Yes!" she said excitedly. "We used one of those photo booths down in Chinatown while we were shopping one day!"

  She pulled out a strip of paper an inch wide and five inches long that contained four small photographs in a column. She was smiling brightly in three of them, and kissing the man in the photographs in the last one. She held them out.

  "That's him!" shouted the man.

  * * *

  Mr. Templeton took Lola to an office and went behind a huge desk, waving at a chair in one corner of the room. He didn't meet her expectations, as far as being a publisher. He was mostly bald, for one thing, with wild tufts of hair sprouting from the sides of his head above large ears. He was short and fat, too. The desk was piled high with books, stacks of paper, empty coffee cups and various office supplies. The chair he waved her to was the only thing in the office that wasn't covered with reading material.

  "So his real name is Kris?" he asked.

  "Kris Farmingham," said Lola, nervously. "You don't even know his name?"

  "He's
very private. Authors are strange ducks, Miss ... "

  "Lola."

  "Authors are strange ducks, Miss Lola," said the man. "He's done very well for us, but he's very secretive. His last book sold so well that I gave him too much for the next one, and now he's overdue for a progress report."

  "Book?" Lola sounded confused. "He wrote a book?"

  "Three of them," said the man. "Two of them hit the best seller list, which is what clouded my judgment."

  "He never said anything about books," complained Lola. "He said he wrote stuff for journals."

  "Well he writes books for us," said the man, who still hadn't introduced himself. "Now, where is he?"

  "I don't know," complained Lola. "That's why I'm here. I was hoping you could tell me where he is."

  The man's face crumpled. "You don't know?" he moaned.

  "I haven't seen him in weeks," said Lola.

  "He must have gone into seclusion to write his next book," sighed the man. "Some authors do that. He didn't say he was going anywhere. He just promised to update me every month. He hasn't done that. He must have gone away somewhere."

  "He went away?" Lola's voice rose. "He didn't tell me he was going away!"

  "I can't help that," said the man. "Are you sure you don't know where he is?"

  "Of course I'm sure!" screeched Lola. She abruptly went silent. "How big an advance?" she asked.

  "What?"

  "I asked how big the advance you gave Kris was?" she asked.

  "I can't tell you that!" said the man. "That's privileged ... AWP!"

  He gasped and tried to roll the chair back as Lola Henderson climbed over his desk, scattering books and papers everywhere. Her pointed nails reached for his throat, and her suddenly savage face was right in front of his.

  "How much?" she screamed.

  "Sixty thousand dollars," he whispered.

  "Sixty ... thousand?" gasped the blonde woman into his face. "For one stinking book?"

  "He'll get much more when it's done," whined the publisher, who completely misunderstood why Lola Henderson was so upset.

  Lola fumed for a few seconds. She'd been had. She knew that now. Kris was already rich and he hadn't told her that. He was already a famous author. He had to be, if someone was willing to give him sixty gees for a book he hadn't even written yet. And he'd gone off somewhere to write that book, without telling her.

  Without taking her!

  * * *

  The DNA results were taking time, like they always did when the examination had a low priority. And Harper had had to give his request a low priority, because he was only acting on a hunch. The ballistics exam, on the other hand, gave results in stages, and those results could be used as they were produced.

  The first thing the lab tech did was take the bullets recovered from the kidnapping scene - two, in this case - and examine the marks left by the lands and grooves in the barrel of the weapon that had fired them. By counting the number of grooves and measuring the distance between them, he could narrow down what make and sometimes what model of weapon had fired them. He confirmed that that bullets had been fired from a Dan Wesson semi-automatic pistol, which matched the gun that had been seized at the scene. That one was a PM3-P Minor Series, which, in its current condition, might bring a hundred dollars on the open market.

  Next, he test fired the weapon that had been taken from Moe's hand and compared the bullet microscopically to the two bullets recovered from the scene. One of the bullets had been found embedded in a car parked on the street. It was too badly damaged to match. The other one, dug from a tree next to the car, was in better shape. It was a match, enabling him to say that it had been fired from that particular Dan Wesson pistol.

  Harper checked the date of the earliest arrest record of the Higginbothams and used that as an anchor date for his searches, since it was likely they had procured the gun after that point. What he was interested in was if that gun had been used in any previous crimes. He knew it hadn't been seized before, because it would have been destroyed, if that were the case. So the first thing he looked at were unsolved homicides where there was an indication that a Dan Wesson .45 automatic had been used.

  It wasn't fool proof, but it did let him narrow his search. He decided to examine a time frame of six months before the Higginbothams came to the attention of law enforcement, the first time, up to the date of their attempted kidnapping. That was a five year span, and the results looked daunting at first. There were hundreds of cases. Half of them had no firearms evidence in them, though, and could be discarded. Three quarters of the remaining cases had weapons other than a Dan Wesson, or calibers other than .45 involved, which let him dump them. In the end, there were fifteen unsolved homicides in which evidence suggested a Dan Wesson had been used. When he got that far, it was relatively easy to determine that only five of those involved the same model pistol as had been taken from Moe's hand when he'd been arrested.

  Harper explained what he was doing to the lab supervisor and asked that the evidence from those five cases be compared to the evidence in the Higginbotham case. He fudged a little, saying he was doing this as a favor to the FBI, which got his priority bumped up.

  Twenty four hours later, Jim Harper stared at a report that had just been delivered to him. The pistol seized from Moe had been matched to a bullet that had killed a money courier eight months ago. There were no leads in the case. The money stolen had been old bills and there had been no way to trace it.

  Quite suddenly, though, Jim Harper had identified the murder weapon and the case was thus reopened.

  * * *

  "What the fuck are you up to now?" asked the scowling FBI agent who was facing Detective Harper.

  "I'm bringing you a little present ... that's all," said Harper. "Moe's gun was used to murder a money courier eight months ago. Now you got him for murder."

  "I don't need him for murder," groused Jefferson. "I don't need this crapping case at all! All I'm getting is pressure to find the mastermind, who I am now quite sure is a figment of somebody's imagination!"

  "Okay," said Harper. "So use this to deal with." He shrugged. "Offer him a deal for the murder rap, in exchange for a full and complete confession to the kidnapping. You've got what could be two capital crimes. Surely the U.S. Attorney will be willing to deal one of those death sentences away to get a slam dunk on the other."

  Jefferson frowned and appeared to think. "You might have something there. Except that the U.S. Attorney isn't going to care about the murder. The murder is a New York City issue, not a federal one."

  "Moe won't know that," said Harper. "Neither will his lawyer. Spin it as a federal banking issue. Bring charges and use them for an excuse to get him into the interview room again. His lawyer will have to let it go at least far enough to find out what you've got on him. Cut a deal, then drop the murder charges."

  Jefferson stared at the detective. "So you and your prosecutor can charge him with that crime, instead of us?"

  "You're a lot smarter than I gave you credit for," said Harper, grinning.

  The FBI agent ran a hand through his hair.

  "I suppose you want to be there when I do this," he said.

  "The thought had crossed my mind," admitted Jim.

  "I'll just bet it did," said Jefferson and smiled.

  * * *

  The interrogation of Moe Higginbotham, concerning the murder of one Rodney J. Spruill, a money courier for a well known auction house in New York City, resulted in information that would create shockwaves throughout both the FBI and the New York City Police Department, though none of them knew it at the time.

  Harper had been right. Moe's lawyer took the bait and allowed his client, who swore on his mother's grave that he hadn't killed any courier, to be interviewed. What convinced his lawyer he was telling the truth was a simple question Moe asked him.

  "If I'd robbed that money courier and got all that money, wouldn't I be living better than I am?"

  The young public defender, who
in later years would learn never to believe anything a client said, bought it.