Russian Roulette Read online

  “Just some general background info that might speed things up. Can we get together tonight?”

  “I wish we could but I have, ahhh, an appointment that will probably be late.”

  I didn’t need any detail on the appointment.

  “How about breakfast, tomorrow?” I asked, then thought I detected the slightest pause.

  “Yes, I guess that would work.”

  “You just tell me where and when,” I said trying to hide my surprise.

  “You know Bon Vie?” she asked.

  It took me a moment but I did, it was almost within sight of my front porch and didn’t have a bar, which may have explained my pause. Other than McDonalds, I don’t frequent many food establishments without a bar.

  “Yeah, sure, perfect. What time?”

  “Noon would be best,” she said.

  “Noon?”

  “Yes, twelve o’clock, noon. Does that work for you, Dev?”

  “It does, I’ll see you there.”

  I hung up and phoned Aaron to check on what he had found out on Kerri’s car. I ended up leaving a message.

  A few beers later I thought about dinner and after dinner. Fortified by the beer I placed a couple of calls and ended up leaving messages at both numbers. I wasn’t exactly feeling like Mr. Popular.

  I woke up sometime after three the following morning. Bourbon and a book will do that to me. I’d been sleeping in my favorite reading chair, which was great for reading and not the best for sleeping. My body felt like a bent piece of plumbing pipe and I stretched and groaned on the way to bed. My joints sounded like a bowl of Rice Krispies, snap, crackle, and pop.

  I stumbled out of the bathroom sometime after nine in the morning and noticed the message light blinking on my phone. The first voicemail was from Pam, one of my attempted post-dinner dates from the night before.

  “Hi, look, Dev, thanks for the invite but I really wish you wouldn’t call me, umm, ever again. I’m very happy with my life now that you’re not in it, and I would prefer that I never, ever hear from you. Hope everything is going okay, bye.”

  I pushed the delete button and made a mental note not to offer Pam the opportunity to enjoy an evening of my witty comments followed by mad, passionate debauchery. Which was screwier, Pam’s message or my calling her in the first place?

  Next message.

  “Hey dipshit, you there? Call me, I think I got something that might interest you. Grab that photo you showed me, too, will you?”

  It was Aaron. I called him back, left a message in response to his message then padded into the kitchen and made some coffee. He phoned back a minute or two later just as I was pouring my first cup.

  “Haskell Investigations.”

  “Christ, you sound barely awake. You keeping banker’s hours over there? How soon can you meet me?”

  “I’m just finishing up a meeting,” I said.

  “Yeah right. Look, get dressed and meet me at the morgue in thirty minutes. I got something for you.”

  “The morgue that doesn’t sound good.”

  “Don’t forget to bring that photo with you. See you there,” Aaron said and hung up.

  I poured my coffee into a travel mug, sipped as I got dressed, topped the travel mug off, and headed out the door.

  Chapter 10

  The old St. Paul morgue used to sit just below the river bluff from downtown. Perhaps, not ironically it was built directly over the ruins of the old Washington Avenue red-light district. In the days when brothels provided clean shirts for regular customers to wear home, served decent liquor, and featured a piano player banging out ragtime. At least that was the perception.

  The new, more efficient, Ramsey County Medical Examiner was a state-of-the-art facility located on the edge of an industrial area off University Avenue. If you were looking for romance this probably wasn’t the place, but time marches on. I entered the comfortable waiting room done in various tones of beige with overstuffed chairs, a flat-screen TV, and somewhat current magazines.

  I sipped from my travel mug as I walked up to the nice-looking receptionist.

  “Good morning, I’m supposed to meet Lieutenant LaZelle here.”

  “Mr. Haskell?” she said after glancing at a yellow Post-it note stuck to her computer screen.

  I nodded in mid-sip. She was a fairly attractive brunette, darker skin tone. Maybe Italian, Greek, Hispanic, Israeli. It didn’t matter I’m an equal opportunity admirer of women.

  “Aaron said to send you back to the cooler. Do you know the way?”

  As a matter of fact I did.

  “Down the hall, right?”

  “Yep, all the way back,” she said giving her hair a shake and a quick raise of her eyebrows.

  I headed down the long hallway toward the examining area and the walk-in cooler. I think they could house up to forty or fifty bodies at a time. The few offices I could see were done in off-whites bordering on the beige side of things. The occasional tasteful framed print hung on the wall, and one got the sense this was not the sort of place for levity or office clowns. I guessed I wouldn’t have fit in very well on staff.

  Once through the heavy metal door things became very industrial. The autopsy suite, in all its clinical chill, was straight ahead. Off to one side stood a large, low-dose radiation scanner. To my immediate left, Lieutenant Aaron LaZelle, was chatting with an attractive blond of about forty with her hands stuck in the pockets of her white lab coat.

  “What’d I tell you, Doc? Doesn’t he look like he should be in your cooler?” Aaron said.

  She chuckled but didn’t say no.

  “Oh, I’m sorry, pretending to look like you’re working. You must be undercover.” I replied.

  “Let’s get started.” Aaron gestured toward the massive walk-in cooler, all stainless steel, not that the occupants cared.

  “Oh, Doc, the world’s top crime investigator, Devlin Haskell of Haskell Investigations. Dev, Dr. Mallory Bendix, medical examiner extraordinaire and big fan of mine.”

  “Dr. Bendix, nice to meet you,” I said then waited for her to say please call me Mallory or Mal or Doc or snookums. She didn’t.

  I’m going to blame a walk-in cooler full of bodies to her not being bowled over by me. There are some things even my charm can’t overcome. I thought it might be wise to hold off at least for the moment on the stiff jokes.

  “You got that photo?” Aaron asked, following sexy little Dr. Mallory into the cooler. It was obvious the two of them had already gone through this drill. They walked directly to a stainless-steel drawer, number seventeen, labeled Doe, Jane. Aaron stood to the side as the good doctor pulled the drawer open, then unzipped the heavy, black body bag, gradually revealing a small dark-haired female.

  “You gonna hang onto that photo all day?” Aaron asked, breaking me out of my trance. He grabbed the photo from my hand as he asked, “You okay, Dev?”

  I nodded, took a deep swallow. The fans were running continually so that you had to raise your voice slightly to be heard over the noise. Even with the fans there was still that hint of decomposition in the air. The woman laid out in the drawer was the Asian beauty in the photo on the beach standing naked next to Nikki. Only now her lips were blue, the left side of her face was bruised purple, her nose had been broken. There were bruises up and down her arms, a large bruise on her rib cage. Her breasts, once the pride of the beach, looked like damaged fruit resting on her chest. The sunburst tattoo surrounded her navel.

  “Well Doc, at least we got a photo of her in happier times. No name?” Aaron looked at me for a possible update.

  I shook my head no.

  “I’d like to make a copy of that photo if I may, and add it to our file,” Dr. Mallory said.

  “Make two, one for you, one for Dev, here. I’ll keep this, it’s evidence,” Aaron said, then smiled as he handed her the photo once she pushed the drawer closed.

  I could have protested, but it wouldn’t have gotten me anywhere. There’s nothing like looking at a dea
d body to take the wind out of your sails.

  Just outside the door of the building Aaron paused next to his car resting in a no parking zone.

  “Man, the old Doc there is a little cutey, isn’t she?”

  “I don’t know, it must have been the setting. I didn’t pick up any vibes.”

  “You just don’t know a good thing when you see it.”

  “And you’re working Vice?”

  “Oh Jesus, relax will you? Doesn’t mean I can’t enjoy a couple of the finer things in life. Anyway, I ran down that license number you gave me. You really struck pay dirt with this client of yours. You got a photo with a Jane Doe homicide who’s been cooling her heels in the meat locker here for six weeks. Two former lowlifes, one blown up and the other blown away. And it’s all tied together with a beautiful redhead who seemed to just vanish into thin air. Meanwhile her sister’s driving around town in a car leased to Lee-Dee Enterprises.”

  “Lee-Dee, never heard of ‘em. What do they do?” I asked.

  “Well, for starters they don’t do anything, anymore. Lee-Dee, Leo Tate, Lee and Dennis Dundee, Dee, ring any bells? Most likely bogus from the start, just a tax dodge so they could write off the wheels.”

  “The two guys in the photo?”

  “Yeah, the two dead guys in the photo, Lee-Dee. Now this gal, and by the looks of her I’d guess she didn’t exactly go peacefully.”

  “You think that photo will help ID her?”

  “Can’t hurt. What might help a lot more is if I talk to the sister, what’s her name, Kerri?”

  I nodded.

  “You gonna see her anytime soon?”

  There was that little voice in my head again, saying tell him you dope, yeah, I have a lunch date with her in about forty-five minutes. You should come along.

  Instead I said,

  “I don’t know when I’ll see her next. How ‘bout when I do, I give her your number? She can give you a call.”

  Aaron gave me a long look, then shook his head.

  “You can do what you want, free country and all that. But you’ve seen some of the action you’re getting involved with stretched out in the cooler here this morning. That body bag didn’t get your attention, nothing I say will. Just know, if someone else gets hurt and I find out you’re holding back on me because you thought you could take care of it or some bullshit ‘my client’s rights’ brain-fart sort of thing, then you got me on your ass, big time.” Aaron gave me a slight nod then pulled his car door open and climbed in.

  “I’ll keep it in mind, try and stay on your good side,” I said, hoping I didn’t sound too worried, depressed, anxious, cocky, or just plain stupid.

  Chapter 11

  It was eleven-forty, I’d just sat down at a corner table in Bon Vie. I stared out the window at the traffic. Bon Vie is a nice place, small, maybe just eight or ten tables, fourteen-foot ceilings covered in stamped tin and painted flat black and gold. Marble topped tables, pastel walls dotted with original artwork, a trendy sort of place, no bar. I was twenty minutes early for my Kerri breakfast at noon. I ordered a mug of coffee, remembering I’d left my travel mug on a stainless-steel counter at the morgue. They could keep the damn thing, it wasn’t worth going back there just to get the mug. I could steal another one anytime I wanted.

  I think I was on my third refill when Kerri waltzed through the door a good thirty minutes late. I’d been withering under the stares of the rather large hostess who must have concluded I was some sort of groveling, love-sick puppy about to get stood up.

  Kerri’s appearance did nothing to help. She was eye stopping in some sort of white knit top, about four sizes too small, jeans that fit like a surgical glove, and hair damp with that fresh out-of-the-shower look.

  “Oh Dev, I was out late last night,” she said bending her head down so I could kiss both her cheeks before she sat. Once seated she shook her hair back and forth a few times. I thought the two guys at the table next to us were going to have heart attacks. I didn’t mind them staring and ogling, but the least they could have done was pay for our breakfast.

  “Meeting last night go into extra innings?” I asked.

  “Meeting? Oh no, just running late ever since I got out of bed this morning.”

  I was going to say something about the long drive home once she got out of bed but decided instead to be clever.

  “Oh, found something of yours,” I said reaching into my pocket and pulling out the green thong, then cleverly handed it to her across the table. I heard a fork bounce off a plate, one of the guys next to us.

  “That certainly is not mine?”

  “Come on, it’s green,” I forced a laughed, my hand still extended across the table, the thong hanging out either side of my fist, face reddening by the second.

  “Yes, I see that. Do you not listen, my thong was Emerald Green, from Victoria’s Secret. My God, that thing looks like it was on special at one of the Dollar Stores. You are either sleeping with high school girls or you should find perhaps a little higher class woman.”

  I quickly stuffed the thong back in my coat pocket. If I’d had a tail I could have tucked it between my legs.

  “Just black for me,” she said to the waitress who poured coffee while I sat there red-faced.

  “Give me a minute to look at the menu.” I didn’t add and collect myself.

  The waitress gave me a look that wondered what in the hell I’d been doing for the past fifty minutes, nodded, and turned to the two guys at the table next to us, both of them leaning in our direction with their ears cocked.

  After a long moment of scanning the menu Kerri looked up at me, did a sexy little hair shake again just in case I’d forgotten who was in charge.

  “So, Nikki?” she said raising the coffee mug to her lips.

  “Yeah Nikki. Where to start? I guess the beginning. The first thing would be I talked to your friend Brad the Cad.”

  “Actually, I think I said I had never even met him.”

  “You did as a matter of fact and he more or less confirmed that. I feel fairly certain that he hasn’t seen Nikki for quite some time. He told me he hasn’t seen her or been in contact with her for well over a year and I’ve no reason to doubt him.”

  “All right,” she said with a nod.

  If I was getting to her in any way she gave no indication.

  “I’ll get to her apartment in a moment, but first tell me what kind of a car did she drive?”

  “Her car? I don’t know, I mean it was blue. I really don’t know cars, to tell you the truth. Didn’t you look at it when you were over there?”

  “You mean the one in the driveway?”

  “Yes.”

  “There wasn’t a car in the driveway, well, except for this rusted green hulk without an engine, up on blocks in the back…”

  “Dev, that was not her car. It is a pile of junk. No? That is the landlord’s car, it has been there for as long as, well, it has been there forever. So, where is her car? Someone must have taken it,” she sounded genuinely concerned.

  “I don’t know. I don’t know what kind of car it was. I don’t know if she even had one.”

  “I told you she had a blue car.”

  I didn’t add, since it was blue, it could be that little Z4 you’re driving around in, compliments of the deader-than-a door-nail Lee-Dee boys.

  The waitress returned and we placed our order. She topped off Kerri’s coffee, I waved her off on mine.

  “Tell me about the apartment,” I said.

  “The apartment?”

  “Yes,” was I detecting a chink in the armor, a crack in the wall, a slight stall tactic?

  “Well, if you saw it there’s not much to tell. In some way she lived her life like a nun or something. I mean, one chair, nothing on the walls. Did you see the place? You were inside? If you were inside you must admit one would never feel comfortable. Yes? I was there, inside, only once or twice. But I never got past the front door. You know that chair? The one sitting all alone in the fron
t room, that’s about all I ever saw of the place. I never even used the bathroom.”

  “Your sister’s place, and you never used the bathroom?” that sounded like no woman I ever knew.

  “Yes, can you believe it? I’m not kidding, Dev I never was beyond the front door.”

  So much for that crack in the wall.

  “Wonder why? Was she a private person?”

  “No more than anyone else. I mean she could be fun, she loved a party, liked to laugh. It is not as though she stayed locked up in that place for a day or a week.”

  “Where’d she work?”

  “Umm, like I told you before, some clubs. She was the nanny for a woman’s children for a bit. She said she painted a house for some guy. She sometimes cleaned for a couple of women. God, she hated the cleaning. I think she lasted about two weeks doing that.”

  “What about the photo?”

  “The photo?” she asked.

  I didn’t want to pull out the eight and a half by eleven color copy that snooty Dr. Mallory Bendix had made for me when Aaron confiscated the photo. Evidence. He was probably leering at it right now.

  “Yeah, did you know any of the other folks in that photo? The two guys on the beach or maybe that Asian woman?”

  Kerri seemed to think for a brief moment then shook her head no. This struck me as a little amazing considering she was zipping around town in a sixty-thousand-plus little blue sports car owned by the two guys. Both dead.

  “No idea? Not even a guess?”

  “No!” she said adamantly.

  I couldn’t tell if she thought I knew about the car, or even suspected. In the end it didn’t matter. I paid the bill and we walked outside and stood on the sidewalk. It was a warm day, sunny heading toward oppressive. We were on the south side, the shady side of the street. The sun was coming over the roof of the one story brick building. I was thinking about how I intended to tell her that I was quitting.

  I don’t know the architectural term for the building design. I’d guess it was built back around 1920. A brick structure of eight, one-story retail fronts with large plate-glass windows. The brick was set in a geometric design above the windows then capped with some sort of blond stone. All the entrances were inset maybe four feet. At the corner there was a flower shop, then the restaurant, Bon Vie, a dance studio, bakery, a hairdresser, and a couple of nondescript offices at the far end.