Clean Slate (Jim Knighthorse Book 4) Read online

  I did some quick calculations. It had been exactly four months since he and I had last spoken, and that had been when we had taken down my mother’s murderer. Four months, and all I get is, “Jim.”

  Yeah, I thought, he has issues.

  I said, “I’m working a case.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  I did, giving him the rundown from the moment Clarence Atkins walked into my office, to where I now sat outside the number one fan’s nerd headquarters.

  “That’s quite a case, Jim.” My father spoke in a monotone voice, with little or no inflection. Creepy as hell, but I was used to it.

  “Any thoughts?” I said.

  My father didn’t respond, not at first. I think he got off on uncomfortable silences. I waited. I was trained to wait. Trained by him, in fact.

  “A few, Jim,” he said after about thirty seconds. “First off, I think we’re dealing with a very twisted serial killer. Tread carefully.”

  Which was kind of like the pot calling the kettle black, I thought. My father had killed many, yes, but he had done it for his country, although I’d always suspected he had done it with psychotic glee. If my father still killed to this day, he did so quietly and behind the scenes, and never raised any suspicions. My instincts told me that he had put aside his killing tendencies. For now.

  “Second,” said my father evenly, as if he were giving me instructions on how to put together an Ikea dresser, “I think your actor really is dead.”

  “I don’t get it,” I said. “Then why the missing barista in Sedona, and why kill the doctor later?”

  “I don’t know,” said my father, “but I suspect many answers await in the apartment across the street.”

  “But why would he kill my client?” I asked. “And why would he send two goons after me?”

  “Someone is keeping something a secret.”

  “Let me guess,” I said. “That someone lives in the apartment across the street?”

  “Would be my guess. It’s all led you to him, Jim.”

  “But what’s his motivation?”

  “You will know soon enough.”

  I nodded to myself. Yes, I suspected I would know soon enough. I waited. My father was quiet. I was quiet, too. Two can play at that game, although I wasn’t sure what game we were playing.

  The crazy game.

  After a while, my father said, “Have you considered why, exactly, your client went public with the news that he’d hired you to look into Freddie Calgary’s death?”

  “I have,” I said, “but I haven’t come up with much.”

  “There was a reason for it, and it irritated the wrong people, and he paid the price.”

  “But what was the reason?”

  “I don’t know,” said my father, “but I suspect that won’t be waiting for you in the apartment across the street. But look into it. There’s something there.”

  In the background, I heard my father’s secretary come and go, saying something to him, in which he replied with a single, “Yes.” My van’s A/C continued chugging quietly. The van didn’t need to be on for the A/C to work. Another marvel of the Mystery Machine.

  My father said, “He’ll be coming home soon.”

  “My target?”

  “Yeah. The Number One fan.”

  I looked to my right, down the street, and saw a lanky figure walking hurriedly, slipping past other pedestrians. It was him, of course. Ruger P. Howard.

  “He’s coming now,” I said. “How did you know?”

  “Think Ted Bundy,” said my father, “and the Green River Killer.” And then he hung up.

  As the lanky young man turned into his apartment complex and punched in a code to the main door, I knew what my father had meant. Ted Bundy, a confirmed psychopath, had helped police profile the Green River Killer, ultimately leading to the arrest of the bastard who’d killed nearly 60 prostitutes in the State of Washington.

  I shuddered slightly as Freddie Calgary’s Number One fan slipped inside his apartment complex.

  A few minutes later, up on the fourth floor, I saw a shadow appear in a grimy window. A shadow that just might have been watching me in return.

  Chapter Forty-eight

  I waited some more.

  The apartment complex was really just a squat, dilapidated seven-story structure with small windows and probably not very good lighting.

  As I sat in the parking structure across the street, a steady stream of cars and pedestrians passed before the building. A handful of residents paused at the apartment’s main entrance and keyed in a number, and entered.

  I found my binoculars in the back seat, propped them on my steering wheel, adjusted the sights, and waited some more. An hour later, someone else stepped up to the complex, a cute girl wearing red-striped stockings. Maybe this was where Santa’s elves went for the summer. Unfortunately, the she-elf stood directly in front of the keypad. No dice.

  Thirty minutes later, a guy wearing a backpack stepped up to the complex, although he wasn’t wearing red-striped stockings. There went my elf theory. He didn’t stand directly in front of the keypad. No, he stood a little to the side, giving me a great view of his fingers through my binoculars.

  Top left twice, bottom right once, and then maybe the middle button, but it could have been the side button, too. I would try both methods.

  A part of me knew that coming back at night would have been safer for me. But another part of me suspected that the #1 Creep might be long gone, too, along with whatever was waiting for me inside the apartment.

  No, I had to act now, and my father knew it, too.

  I hate when that crazy bastard was right, which, when it came to murder investigations, was most of the time.

  I closed my eyes and rehearsed the numbers. I took deep, long, even breaths, willing my rapidly beating heart to slow. Good, good. When I felt as if I was in complete control of myself, I stepped out of my van and hung a quick right under the awning of a nearby restaurant. I continued down the street, moving with long strides. At the far corner, I crossed the street, and, now on the other side, I kept to the shadows there, too.

  The last thing I needed was for Ruger to look out his filthy window and see me coming. I was kind of hard to miss. Yes, there were a number of benefits of being a head taller than most, chief among them being the sense of superiority. But in the surveillance business, it was a curse.

  So, I continued keeping to the shadows, feeling like a real spy. That is, of course, if spies lurked along the streets of San Antonio, which I doubted.

  Soon, I found myself at the rundown apartment, and, on my second try at the keypad, I heard the main door click open.

  I was in.

  Chapter Forty-nine

  I took the stairs.

  My father taught me that you always have more control in stairwells. After all, you can control when you enter and exit. Elevators are crapshoots. As my father would always remind me, we don’t do crapshoots in our business. We do sure things. And since my crazy old man was still alive to this day, he might have a point.

  At the fourth floor, I paused outside the stairwell door and listened. Nothing, but that didn’t mean much. The Number One Fan could still be in the hallway, waiting. That is, of course, if he’d seen me coming, which I doubted.

  I slipped my hand inside my light jacket and removed the Walther, always a comforting feeling.

  My instincts told me all was clear. But when you dealt with the cunningly insane, anything was possible. I listened some more...then slowly pushed the door open.

  Warm, musty air greeted me, followed by the faint smell of cigarettes. The hallway was empty, which was a blessing. After all, I needed time to come up with a plan. What I didn’t need was to deal with a nosy neighbor. As of now, my plan didn’t consist further than just making it safely to the fourth floor.

  Step one: accomplished.

  The hallway consisted of six doors. The one closest to me read 4A. The door directly across from it, and to
my right, read 4B. Further down the hall and to my left was 4C, my target. There might be a whole lot of crazy waiting behind unlucky door number 4C.

  I closed the stairway door quietly behind me and, with my gun still in my hand and hanging down by my side, I slipped as close to 4C as I could without the possibility of being seen by the average peephole. Of course, Fan Boy #1 might have a very unaverage peephole, especially if he had reason to be paranoid.

  I took my chances that he had a normal peephole and put my ear to the wall and immediately heard music. Slow music. Old music. I pressed my ear a little harder. It sounded like ballroom music, or something that someone a hundred years ago might have danced the waltz to.

  There was more. I heard singing, too. No, not quite. Humming. And, the sound of dancing, too. Floorboards creaking, shoes scuffing and squeaking, moving in a rhythmic manner.

  I was sweating now in the hotbox of a hallway. A cockroach peered out at me from under the doorway across the hall. Had someone chosen to look out their door now, they would have seen one hell of a beefy investigator sweating and listening and shaking his head and holding a gun.

  I waited, wondering if I should call the police, but knowing I had no reason to call the police. And report what? A creepy guy dancing alone in his apartment?

  And just as I thought that thought, I heard voices talking from the apartment in question, the sounds coming through the wall. I angled my head, pressing my ear, trying like hell to make out the words. No luck. Just muffled sounds.

  Except, of course, the more I heard, the more I was certain of one thing:

  He was talking to himself.

  I considered my options, and then decided to do what I do best: use brute strength.

  I didn’t have time to monkey around in front of the door. He was liable to check the peephole at any minute. So, I raised my foot...

  And kicked the doorknob as hard as I could.

  Chapter Fifty

  The door burst open with one kick, swinging wildly and slamming into the far wall. The top hinge broke and the whole thing now hung slightly askew as I stepped in, my Walther held out before me.

  I got my bearings, or tried to, and processed what I was seeing before me. Or tried to.

  A mostly-naked Ruger was holding what appeared to be a manikin, and was standing in the center of his living room, which had been cleared of all furniture. I appeared to have caught them in mid-twirl.

  The apartment was small and covered in photographs of one man in particular, one young actor: Freddie Calgary. Of that, I wasn’t very surprised. I was, however, surprised by the sheer volume of pictures. The overwhelming amount of photos literally covered every square foot of wall surface, much of it bleeding over into window space and wrapping around doorways and down the hallway, too. Ballroom music crackled over speakers.

  Ruger stared at me, a look of complete astonishment on his face, a face that was haphazardly covered in make-up. Smeared over lips and cheeks. At least, I think it was make-up. He towered over the manikin he was holding.

  More than anything, of course, was the smell. Nothing so strong that it was overwhelming. But it was there, wafting over me. A mild smell of putrefaction laced with a lot of colognes and perfumes. But the colognes and perfumes couldn’t quite mask the smell of rotting flesh.

  I stepped deeper into the apartment, regretting every step, knowing I would never, ever remove these images from my memory.

  Ruger spun the manikin away from me, either shielding me from it or protecting it from me. A surprisingly lifelike manikin. As I stepped closer, the smell of rotting meat grew stronger...and oddly sweeter, too.

  I knew that scent, of course, having smelled it a number of times in my investigations. It was the smell of something—or someone—dead.

  My gun was steady, my footsteps careful.

  I was tempted to cover my nose and mouth, to shield myself from the vomit that threatened to rise up in the back of my throat, but I let it rise and did my damn best to swallow it back.

  I heard no other sounds, other than the music and heavy breathing. We were alone, I was sure of it. The breathing came from Ruger, as he stared at me with wild eyes.

  “Who do you have there, Ruger?” I asked, glancing sideways down a side hall. It was empty, save for the hundreds of photographs of Freddie Calgary.

  “Leave us alone! Go away, please! We’re happy here!”

  And with those words, Ruger collapsed to his knees, still holding the manikin. Except, of course, it wasn’t a manikin.

  It was the young actor.

  Where its flesh had rotted away, it was replaced with what appeared to be flesh-like latex. The eyeballs, I saw, were made of glass. Freddie’s moppy hair was now a haphazard wig. The one-time child star was dressed in clothing that, I think, was associated to his children’s television show.

  As I stood there, holding my gun before me, as Ruger wept into Freddie Calgary’s rotted neck, I turned my head and finally, did throw up.

  I hate when that happens.

  Chapter Fifty-one

  I was in the hallway with Detective Grey of the San Antonio Police Department.

  He had already long since admonished me about kicking in the door and breaking in. We both agreed that I had a reason to break in, based on what I had smelled, and my concerns. And also, because I was a man of action. The “man of action” part might have come from me. Detective Christian Grey, the tough cop with the sexy name, wasn’t amused.

  It had been a few hours since the police had first arrived, a few hours since my initial statement. Still, the corridor swarmed with cops, even as the street below swarmed with paparazzi. News had spread like wildfire that the corpse of Freddie Calgary had ended up here, in San Antonio, in the home of a very lost young man.

  “The thing I don’t get is,” said Detective Grey, “how he killed this actor?”

  “My guess, he killed him a few months ago. Or, perhaps, Freddie Calgary had died of natural causes. We know he had a heart condition, and we know he liked to party hard.”

  “Don’t we all,” said Detective Grey. “What’s your theory, Knighthorse?”

  “Freddie Calgary had reached out to him for help.”

  “Reached out to the crazy man?”

  “Ruger doesn’t present himself as crazy. He comes across as genuine. I think, probably, he really did help Freddie Calgary fake his death. For a while.”

  “Until Freddie really did die.”

  “Right,” I said.

  “By either natural or unnatural means.”

  “One way or the other,” I said.

  “So, who offed the barista in Sedona?”

  “My guess: Ruger.”

  “Because he would have done anything for Freddie Calgary?”

  “Right,” I said.

  “And the agent in Hollywood?”

  “Ruger again. He was in Hollywood when the news broke that I had been hired to look into the possibility of Freddie faking his death.”

  “But why kill the agent?”

  “I would guess that Freddie had instructed Ruger to kill anyone who got too close to the real story.”

  “And by this time, Freddie was long dead, and Ruger was acting on his own.”

  “Yup.”

  “Jesus,” said the detective. “Then why kill the impersonator today?”

  “That was personal,” I said. “Ruger didn’t like anyone pretending to be the real Freddie Calgary.”

  “Someone hired these impersonators,” said the detective. “We know that much. You have any theories on that?”

  As the crowd in the hallway seemed to grow, as the smell of perfumes and oils and decay still hung in the air, I thought of Freddie’s manager, who had publicly announced my hiring.

  I said, “My guess, Clarence Atkins did.”

  “The manager?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “He still collects commissions on all things Freddie Calgary, from the sales of his music to the movi
es, residuals that could go on forever. Except, with each passing year after his death, Freddie’s stock was falling.”

  “And, what, he kept the interest up in his client by creating a story that Freddie had faked his death?”

  “He didn’t create it,” I said. “I think Freddie really was alive, and really was hiding out here in San Antonio, and really had been spotted once or twice.”

  “That is,” said the detective, “until he really did die.”

  “And, suddenly, the sightings of him stopped, and Freddie was out of the limelight again.”

  “And so this Clarence Atkins hires you and some impersonators?”

  “Maybe,” I said. “It’s a working theory.”

  “Doesn’t seem very likely his efforts would translate into cash.”

  “Maybe not,” I said, “but I think there might have been another reason for hiring me.”

  The detective looked at me and nodded. Most good cops think the same, and pick up on the same clues. And some private investigators, too. He said, “He was hoping to flush him out.”

  “Right,” I said.

  “The real Freddie Calgary.”

  “Right.”

  “Except his client was already dead.”

  “By the look of things,” I said.

  We stood together in the hallway some more, silently agreeing that all things Hollywood were insanity, even as the smell of death and decay wafted over us.

  Chapter Fifty-two

  Hollywood loves a scandal.

  Before I had driven home, I gently broke the news to Jude Calgary, Freddie’s mom. Over the phone, I gave her a slightly sanitized version of the events. I wanted to get to her before the press did, before the police did. It seemed unfair that she would have to lose her son a second time. I tried my best to soften the blow. Not that it would bring her son back.

  Now, I was at McDonald’s, waiting for the man I hoped would come.

  After all, two weeks ago, I had killed two of God’s own. His children, so to speak. One I had killed in a fit of rage, and the other in a slightly more calculating way. Maybe Jack had moved on to greener pastures, and more promising prospects.