The whispers grew louder and Carson finished. He looked around at the worried faces. “I can’t pretend this won’t be difficult,” he said. “But we’re survivors. We’re warriors. You’re the best of the best and I have every confidence in you.” He waited as the murmurs died down.
“Are there any questions?”
_______
Nick Stephenson is an Amazon Kindle Bestselling author of mysteries and thrillers. To find out more information about Nick Stephenson’s work and other books featuring Leopold Blake, you can visit his website at: http://www.nickstephensonbooks.com
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Loose Ends
A California Corwin Mystery Thriller
By David VanDyke
With a clear docket and hope for a new case, I reached down to flip the drop box open, the one inside my Mission District office off of Valencia. The sounds and smells of San Francisco streets faded behind me as the door swung shut and latched automatically, a feature that said a lot about the neighborhood. If people wanted in to California Investigations, they had to buzz, or have a key.
Typical Monday mail. Bills, junk, bills. As I sorted, a business card fluttered to the floor. Bending over, I used my left forefinger’s sharp nail to lift it off the tile floor, then held it up with my thumb tip while I walked over to my desk. Never know where stuff has been.
On the front, the card read Miranda Sorkin, Pharm.D, with the phone number printed beneath it hastily scribbled out and obscured with ballpoint. I turned it over.
Cole said you can help—PLEASE CALL RIGHT AWAY and a Marin number scrawled across the back of the stiff cream stock, in a hand that was probably neat on most days, but not this time. This time it seemed shaky, anxious, like a woman in trouble might write. I was no expert, but as a former cop of almost a decade’s experience I boasted a passing familiarity with all of the forensic disciplines, including handwriting analysis.
And I got these vibes sometimes, ever since the bomb. The blast had left me with nerve damage in my right hand, put some scars on the far right side of my face and rang my bell but good. Ever since, I got the occasional flash of weird insight. My new-age hippie mother said “the spirits” had given me something supernatural in return for their pound of flesh, but I didn’t believe it. If anything, my brain had been rewired, and not necessarily for the better.
It was nice to get a line on a new case on a Monday, especially from Cole Sage. The journalist had sent me more than one lucrative commission, and I appreciated it, even if I couldn’t get him to take a serious look at me, what with him always drooling over that Sausalito houseboat hottie.
I sighed. Men.
Taking off my classic-cut gray blazer, I hiked the automatic holstered at my left hip so it didn’t catch on the arm of the old captain’s chair behind my oaken desk. I tossed the jacket on the sofa to my left and reached for the phone on my desk.
When I was in my office, I used my landline as much as possible. It had certain advantages, one of which was the custom-made device it sat on that recorded everything—incoming, outgoing, voice, numbers dialed, messages, the works.
My tech guy Mickey says by 2010 everyone was going to ditch their landlines in favor of wireless, but that was a handful of years away, and I didn’t believe it anyway. He still thinks flying cars are just around the corner. I chalked that up to the same fantasy that promised honest politicians and cheap gas.
I dialed the number on the card.
“Good morning, Ms. Sorkin. This is Cal Corwin of California Investigations,” I said as soon as I heard a woman’s voice on the other end. “You said Cole Sage referred me? How may I help you?”
Silence. Then, “I thought Cole said you were...”
“A man? It’s all right. I get that all the time.” I had a dozen different responses to that reaction ranging from polite to withering. With potential clients, I played nice. “Is that an issue? I have men among my employees, fit for any necessary role.” Not strictly true—the employee part, that was. More like regular freelancers.
“Yes, uh...I have a serious problem, and I need your help.” The woman sounded mid-young, thirties perhaps, like me.
“I’m in my office. Come on by.”
“Ms. Corwin—”
“California. Just call me Cal. Everyone does.”
“All right, uh...Cal. Call me Mira. I thought this was going to be discreet, and I can’t leave my home.”
Thought it was going to be discreet? What is that supposed to mean? And it sounded like she didn’t believe Cal was my real name. What did Cole tell Mira about me? I brushed my dark brown bob back behind my left ear, a nervous habit, and asked, “Can you explain what this is about?”
“Not over the phone. This is a prepaid cell but I want to talk face to face. I want to see what kind of person you are.”
I shrugged mentally. Clients were quirky sometimes, but as long as they paid... “All right. Where are you?”
Mira gave a Mill Valley address and then said, “I’m not entirely sure they aren’t watching the house. I’ll leave the back gate open and you can come in there if you don’t mind.”
I paused a moment as I wrote it down, long enough for Mira to ask, “Did you hear?”
“Yes. I’ll do my best to be discreet. See you within an hour.” I put the phone down, and rather than leaping up to go, let myself think for a few minutes.
A house in Marin County’s Mill Valley meant upper middle class, except for a few older folks that bought long ago and didn’t sell out to the yuppies. Across the Golden Gate Bridge from the City, Marin was upscale for even its downscale residents, rivalled only by San Francisco proper in the price of housing. Mira’s accent had been pure West Coast, though without the stereotypical Valley-hippie-airhead tones the rest of the country associated with California.
The state, not me.
Someone was watching, Mira seemed to think, perhaps tapping her phone or the house itself, and she worried enough to try a bit of cloak and dagger. I tried to tease out more observations, Sherlock Holmes style, but couldn’t come up with anything. I was throwing on my blazer when I heard the groan.
Instinctively my left hand dropped to the butt of my automatic, right reaching for the phone again. That was another reason I like the hard line—911 had a much better response time. “Mickey?” I called, easing over toward the open door at the top of the stairs leading to the floor below.
A strained voice drifted up. “Yeah, boss. Sorry.”
I took my hand off the weapon and descended the steps quickly. On the lower level—technically not a basement, as it walked out the back into a common courtyard-cum-private-parking-lot—I flipped on the light.
“Ow, ow, please, Cal.”
I picked my way across the floor cluttered with computer gear and rotated the blinds open, then turned the ceiling light back off from the nearest switch. The overcast of a Bay Area October provided soft but sufficient illumination to reveal the corpulent body of Mickey Tucker, my—well, it was hard to say just what he was. Lost soul, hacker extraordinaire, sloppy puppy, champion online gamer, research assistant. Mickey was all of those things, and often put his considerable talents to work for the relatively cheap price of computer gear, crash space and food money.