LIFERS Chapter Four

Four

Richmond, Virginia.

Inside the offices of “K.P Investigations” at 01:05 EST, Larry Kessler stood six-feet-two over his partner’s desk and scratched at his buzzed head hard enough to wear down his fingernails. There was something he needed to find but had no chance of locating it in the mess before him. If he emptied Gregg’s overflowing waste bin on the desk it couldn’t have looked any more disorganised.

‘Christ, how the hell does he get things done?’ he said to no one, an unlit cigarette hanging from his mouth.

In all his forty years he’d never known anyone as unsystematic as Gregg Pieroni. Larry hated clutter, plain and simple. Clutter bred confusion, confusion bred mistakes, and in the business they were in, mistakes could very well get you killed.

They were currently working on the case of a missing fourteen-year-old black girl by the name of Alicia Vincent. Alicia was last seen on Arlington road just off I-95 by café owner Carlos Roccossa who claims to have seen two men, he reckoned in their late-twenties to early-thirties, bundle the young girl into their car; a light-blue Ford Sedan with a red replacement trunk lid.

Alicia, at that point, had become the ninth teenage girl to go missing in Richmond in the last three months, and all taken by the same people. Their calling card being a white rag previously soaked in chloroform which they used to subdue the girls. Information which hadn’t been released to the press, but Larry and Gregg still had friends in the force.

‘A-hem.’

Larry looked up to see a woman leaning under the doorway to the main office with a light-grey mac over her arm and wearing a black skirt and bright-red blouse which seemed to augment an already curvaceous figure. Early thirties, but looked late twenties, with shoulder-length hair as black as raven’s feathers and eyes of the richest emerald green. And if it wasn’t for some personal issues he had, plus the fact that Brenda Wise was the company secretary, Larry may have asked her out before now.

‘Jeez, Bren, I thought you went home ages ago.’

‘I did, but my car packed-up three blocks away and I had to wait two hours for the tow-guy to come get me.’ Her voice had a soft, sultry edge. Another thing he tried hard not to like about her.

‘And he didn’t run you home?’

‘He offered, but…’

‘A creep?’

She nodded. ‘Kinda. So, can I bum a lift?’

‘Sure,’ he said, still rummaging around Gregg’s desk. ‘But I gotta find something in all this crap before I leave.’

‘You’ll never find anything in Gregg’s filing system.’

Larry stuck the cigarette behind his ear, scoffed. ‘You call this a filing system?’

‘It works for him.’

‘Well him ain’t here right now, Bren, and I’m not having much success in finding out why.’

‘He’s still not contacted you?’

‘Nope, the last thing I got was a text this morning saying he’d be leaving at nine for some place called Lynchburg, where ever the hell that might be. Said he’d received a call from some old dame who lives out there. And get this; she told him she’s a psychic, said she knows they used chloroform on the girls.’

‘Psychics have been known to offer up some very useful information on hundreds of cases, Larry.’

‘Or hell … not you too?’

‘Oh come on, don’t be so cynical. At least it’s a lead.’

‘No, Bren, it’s a croc-o-shit from some freaky old bird who thinks she can see goblins, gooks and ghosts. And Gregg went trundling off without putting it by me first.’

‘Because he knew exactly how you’d react.’

‘Yeah, and now he’s gone missing. Go figure.’

‘What else did his text say?’

‘Nothing, ‘cept he’d call whether he found something or not. So far he’s been gone sixteen hours and I’ve had zip from him.’

‘I take it you’ve tried his cell phone?’

‘At least five times in the last hour. It rings a few times then goes to voice-mail.’

‘Could be on silent.’

‘Then he’d feel it vibrate.’

‘Could’ve lost it.’

‘No,’ Larry said, knocking more papers to the floor. ‘If he’s lost it he’d use a public phone.’

Brenda gave up. ‘So who is she, this psychic?’

‘That’s what I’m looking for, I’m hoping Gregg’s wrote down her address, her name’s Bronte or Brontrope or something.’

Brenda crouched to pick up the half dozen papers Larry knocked to the floor and a few others already lying there. She thumbed through them then stood.

‘Could this be her?’

The sheet contained a woman’s name and address. No phone number. No zip code.

Miss Celia Brontrose
2 Lilac Lane
Lynchburg

After locking up the office they walked to the parking lot behind the building where Larry parked his red 1974 Triumph Spitfire which he bought as scrap and spent a year and three and a half grand to get it back to its original condition.

They drove along Williamsburg road before taking the 60 to skirt around Richmond International and then onto the 33 to Brenda’s apartment block in Highland Springs, a four-story brick building built seventy years ago as a clothing mill, and since turned into forty high-priced apartments.

Brenda climbed from the car and leaned in the open window. ‘Wanna come up for a coffee?’

‘Nah, Bren, gonna head home, grab a sandwich and hit the sack. Maybe next time.’

‘Yeah, sure, Larry,’ she said, turning for the door.

Larry watched her go inside before finally lighting his cigarette. He turned the car around and drove along Nine Mile road to his house in Church Hill. It wasn’t a large house but it was big enough for his needs.

As Larry pulled up outside, he sat looking at the place, remembering how happy both he and his wife Samantha were to get out of their two room apartment in the city and move to a neighbourhood where their future family could be brought up in relative safety. But that happiness ended six years later when Samantha was asked to work overtime one evening at the hospital where she nursed.

An eleven year old boy by the name of Michael Madison had been admitted to the hospital after suffering a gunshot wound to the neck. A drugstore robbery had gone awry and Michael had been hit by a stray bullet.

The little boy lay in theatre being operated on when his eighteen year old brother Daniel arrived at the hospital demanding to see him, but after staff refused him access to the O R he produced a gun and insisted they take him to his little brother. In an attempt to take the gun from him, a security officer tackled the youth to the floor, and, during the ensuing mayhem, the gun went off. The bullet hit Samantha in the chest and she had died instantly, along with the six-week-old foetus she hadn’t yet told Larry about.

Michael Madison died from his injuries, but the sad twist about him being shot and killed was the part his brother played in it. Under later interrogation, Daniel Madison admitted to attempting to rob the drugstore, and said he’d only taken Michael along because their mother was constantly drugged-up and he didn’t want to leave him with her perverted live-in boyfriend.

He’d told Michael to wait outside the shop, but it’s thought he entered when he heard shouting, and no doubt would have seen the drugstore owner holding Daniel by his shirt-front, shaking him. The shaking had caused the gun to go off twice, one shot hitting the owner in his right forearm, the other shot hitting the cash register and ricocheting off before hitting Michael in the neck.

Daniel was given a thirty year prison sentence for attempted armed robbery, Samantha’s manslaughter, the attempted murder of the store owner, and the manslaughter of his eleven year old baby brother.

Since then, Larry hadn’t bothered with dating, even though Gregg had tried to set him up on a number of occasions. But every time he did, Larry lasted for an hour or two before making his excuses for leaving for home.

Once he was out of his suit and out of the shower, Larry dressed in a pair of grey sweat-pants and an orange Cavalier’s sweatshirt. He threw together a ham and cheese on rye smothered in mayonnaise and retrieved a Bud from the fridge. Then, slumped in a chair in front of the television, he’d eat the sandwich, drink the beer, then call Gregg’s cell phone one last time.