Where Evil Lurks Read online

  Other Boson Books by Robert Rodman

  The Evil That Men Do

  WHERE EVIL LURKS

  A Dagny Taggart Jamison Mystery

  by

  Robert D. Rodman

  BOSON BOOKS

  Raleigh

  Published by Boson Books

  An imprint of C&M Online Media Inc.

  ISBN (paper): 978-0-917990-80-9

  ISBN (ebook): 978-0-917990-79-3

  © 2010 Robert D. Rodman

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, including mechanical, electric, photocopy, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the author.

  For information contact:

  C & M Online Media, Inc.

  3905 Meadow Field Lane,

  Raleigh, NC 27606-4470

  e-mail: [email protected]

  http://www.bosonbooks.com

  Contents

  BOOK ONE: HARRY

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  BOOK TWO: TOM

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  BOOK THREE: DICK

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  BOOK FOUR: ASHLEY

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  EPILOGUE

  BOOK ONE

  HARRY

  CHAPTER 1

  Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men?” began an old radio show. Who, indeed? In the 1940s, The Shadow knew. In the 1990s, in the thirty-first year of my life, I found out that evil may lurk in the hearts of women, too.

  It was the last autumn of the twentieth century, in the city of Raleigh, on a crisp morning of Carolina blue skies punctuated by marshmallow clouds. The previous night I’d quietly celebrated the fifth anniversary of the remission of the breast cancer that had nearly taken my life. Statistics favored me now, not the disease. It was ironic, then, that that same day of closure would see the start of events that would be every bit as deadly and emotionally distressing as that terrible disease.

  I was sipping coffee and working on the daily crossword puzzle. I had a six-letter word for threatening snake that went c—l—. I reviewed my snakes: krait, cobra, asp, mamba, adder, viper, rattler, hisser—but none fit. I racked my brains for the right word but it wouldn’t come. Idly, I gazed out the front window. That was the first time I saw her. She had parked her ice-blue Lotus facing the wrong way at the curb in front of my house. A lithe body unfolded itself from the low-slung vehicle. With a glance at my house number, she came with a resolute step up the walkway. An old pickup truck chugged by, the driver rubbernecking at the blonde in the suede skirt.

  Ah, got it! Hastily I penned in coiler and put the newspaper aside. The snap of the car door when it shut had alerted Hank and Midas, my two greyhounds, whose ears had pricked up at the sound. The footsteps of the approaching visitor set them to barking.

  I hustled my two would-be guardians into another room and went to the front door. I opened the door at the same moment that the visitor was poised to knock on it. She lost her balance for a second.

  “Oh, sorry,” I apologized. “I saw you coming up the walk.”

  She was unruffled, however. Looking at a slip of paper she asked, “Are you Dagny Taggart Jamison, the private investigator?”

  “Yes, I am.” I opened the door fully and stepped back. “Won’t you come in, please?”

  She was an inch taller, a shade blonder, and two letters more curvaceous than me. Her clothes were immaculately tailored, and were a perfect match for the Lotus. Even her scent, I thought, had an element of the lotus blossom in it. Her only jewelry was a man’s wristwatch and two diamond studs. Golden hair flowed down to her shoulders and the blue of her eyes matched the blue of the sky. There was a hint of harshness, though, in an otherwise cover-girl face.

  “What can I do for you?” I asked when she’d entered the house and we were standing facing each other in my living room. A soiled tank top I had carelessly thrown over a chair for later removal to the wash caused me a moment’s embarrassment, but she seemed not to notice or care.

  “My name is Ashley Bloodworth. I believe you’re the private investigator who unearthed the pharmaceutical scandal in California. A couple of people were murdered by hanging that was made to look like suicide, if my facts are correct.”

  “Yes, it was me, and your facts are correct, but I had some luck and a lot of help with the case.”

  “I found your Web site,” she said, “so I know from your bio that you’re licensed in California as well as here. If my memory serves, it said you’d been in the service and afterwards got your degree at UCLA. Let’s see, what else?” She paused to smooth a perfect eyebrow with a finely manicured nail.

  I cocked my head, curious to know what information on my home page was arresting enough to be remembered.

  “Ah, yes, you had some law school education and I think it said your brother trained you to be a private investigator.”

  “You have a good memory.”

  “I also asked my legal firm to check you out—I hope you don’t mind. They said you have a reputation for being objective and discreet. That’s really why I’ve come to see you this morning.”

  “Thanks for the compliment,” I said, blushing slightly, “but I just try to do a good job.” I held out my hand. “I’m pleased to meet you, Ms. Bloodworth.”

  We shook hands. Her hand was cool and slight, but her grip was firm.

  “Why don’t you come this way,” I said. “My office is back here.”

  I led her through my outsized living room, past the old Bösendorfer grand piano, around the large dog beds to my sunroom-cum-office in the rear of the house. The greyhounds whined behind the door that kept them shut out.

  “Coffee? It’s already made.”

  “Thank you. Black, no sugar.”

  I motioned her to the chair reserved for clients. When I purchased my home, it had a glass-louvered porch jutting out to the southeast. I converted this, along with some interior space, into an office. The chair in which I seat clients faces the bright exterior, while I always face the dimmer interior. This seating arrangement puts their features in high relief, the better for me to observe them.

  After setting down cups of coffee for each of us, I took my seat and waited a few moments for her to settle comfortably. Then, leaning forward a little in my chair, I invited her to tell me what her visit was about.

  “Ms. Jamison, please don’t be insulted if I ask you for an assurance of complete confidentiality. I’ve no reason to doubt you, but I do need to satisfy myself on this point. What I have to tell you is extremely personal.”

  “I understand. Let me just say that I treat my clients with the utmost discretion. You can depend on that—you have my word on it. I wouldn’t stay in business long if I didn’t honor that code.”

  Ashley Bloodworth straightened in her chair and tugged at the hem of her skirt. She cleared her throat, then said somewhat hesitantly, “It’s taken me a long time to arrive at this point, a length of time that may surprise you. I might have done this sooner, and I mi
ght have gone to a deluxe agency—no slight intended—but I want this to be a one-man—or I should say, a one-woman—operation. I don’t believe I could tell a man my story.”

  “All I can do is to repeat my assurance, but I need to add that what you tell me isn’t privileged, as it would be if I were a lawyer. I can be forced to testify in a court of law under oath, so if that’s a problem…”

  “No, it’s not that at all. It’s just, well, feminine matters.”

  “Then I think we’re on safe ground, Ms. Bloodworth.”

  “Ashley, please, and may I call you Dagny? I’d like to dispense with some of the formality. I should guess we’re no more than a year or two apart—‘of an age,’ as Jane Austen might put it.”

  “Okay, that’s fine with me, uh, Ashley. I won’t betray your personal matters as long as there’s no question of perjury.”

  “There won’t be. I have no crimes to confess, though crimes there certainly have been. I know I must put my trust in someone and I believe I can trust you.”

  She looked directly into my face, her lips pressed together, her head nodding slightly forward and back.

  “Perhaps I might begin with some background?”

  “That’d be fine,” I said. “Go right ahead.”

  “I was born into an old, southern, moneyed family. For me this meant private schools, the best church, a debut, fine clothes and jewelry, expensive cars, social connections, and of course no drinking and no sex.” She spoke detachedly, as if about a different person. “I conformed. I got good grades, and I was accepted right out of high school at Meriwether, just a few miles from here. The Bloodworth daughters were obliged to attend the most prestigious women’s college in the old Confederacy, whether through achievement or family influence.”

  She paused to sip her coffee and asked, “Do you mind if I smoke?”

  I didn’t, and I went and fetched an ashtray, which I placed next to her cup and saucer. She lit a slim, green, gold-filtered cigarette with a gold-colored lighter shaped like a harp. A whiff of smoke made me wistful and reminded me how much I once enjoyed the habit.

  Ashley took another sip and continued, “Imagine college life in the late ’80s. You were probably a student then, too. You know things were wild. My parents warned me to abstain from alcohol and sex. That I should leave drugs alone went without saying.”

  Memories of my own school days danced in my head as Ashley spoke. I saw my fellow students doing lines off the chem lab tables, using short pipettes to snort the powdery cocaine. I smelled the sweet smell of marijuana smoke drifting over the laurel bushes behind the science building, those same laurel bushes behind which girls occasionally abandoned their panties in their haste to dress after sex. My demeanor must have changed because Ashley paused for a moment as if expecting me to speak, but when I said nothing she went on.

  “A wildness came over me, as it did with so many of us when we left home for the first time. We drank. We experimented with sex, and soon after with drugs. This is important. Or maybe I shouldn’t be telling you this?”

  I shrugged. “Don’t worry. Even if the actual statute of limitations hasn’t expired, the practical limitation has. If they went back and arrested everyone who did drugs, half the Congress would be in jail.”

  She took a deep drag. I had a nearly uncontrollable urge to bum a cigarette off her, which I fought off by crossing my arms over my chest, reminding myself of my recent malignancy.

  “Cocaine was as plentiful at Meriwether as sugar at the dining tables,” she said. “Snow is white and money is green, and ever the twain shall meet. And Meriwether kids are sooo rich, and cocaine is—was—sooo sweet. Within months I was a cokehead, in with the in-crowd of cokeheads. When spring recess came in March, they asked me to pick up a delivery on my way back to school.”

  She paused for another sip and crossed her legs, allowing a black pump to dangle from her foot. “I drove a Lamborghini then—a high school graduation gift. The trafficker wanted to hide the cocaine in the door panels but I wasn’t about to let anyone tear up my car’s interior. Why the hell should I have? I had the good sense not to speed in the Lamborghini because the damn thing was a cop magnet. I didn’t expect to be stopped or searched, so I put the half-pound of coke in the glove compartment. I didn’t even bother to lock it up.”

  She took a final drag of her cigarette and stubbed it out. “I get bored on the main highway,” she continued. “I know the secondary roads that lead to Raleigh and I’m cruising down one with pine forest on both sides when the Lamborghini dies. It just ups and quits, dead, kaput. I coast onto the shoulder and try the cell phone but I don’t have power. I can’t even lower a damn window. I hang an old T-shirt on the hood ornament and begin to walk.”

  She pursed her lips as she decided how—or whether—to go on. She withdrew a blue cigarette from a case that had a matte gold finish. She shut the case with a snap, put the cigarette between her lips, lit it, and took a deep, cancerous pull. I wondered if the blue paper added to the health risk. She turned aside to exhale a stream of smoke, which she followed with her eyes as it dissipated through the open louvers.

  “What happened then?” I asked.

  Ashley shifted her gaze back to me. “A break occurs in my memory,” she said, speaking in a lower tone now. “On the other side of it, I find myself waking up in a hospital bed, tubes and bags everywhere. I don’t know if I’m dreaming or truly awake. I hear a beeping sound that I recognize from a TV hospital program. It’s my heartbeat.”

  I was shocked by this unexpected turn of events. “How dreadful! What, did you fall and injure your head?”

  “I’ll come to that,” said Ashley, uncrossing her legs and slipping her foot back into the shoe. “A nurse was there. She was asking me questions—difficult ones, like my name, my age, what kind of car I drove, how many fingers was she holding up, and who was the goddamn president. When she was satisfied with my answers, she beckoned towards the door and up show my parents, if you’ll pardon my down-home grammar. They’re thanking the Lord and praising Jesus. I’d been unconscious for thirty-six hours and there was a possibility of brain damage. Their vigil had taken its toll. They were too tired to disguise their disapproval of what they thought I’d done.”

  “God, you must have been so upset and confused,” I said. I was feeling agitated but didn’t have the benefit of lighting up, so instead I took a large swig of coffee, and immediately regretted it as it burned its way down my esophagus. I gulped in a deep, cooling breath of air and asked, “What did they think you’d done? I mean, how did you even get to the hospital in the first place?”

  She ran her fingers through her hair, then shook it back into place; she brushed a rebellious wisp off her face. “A state trooper found me in my car, unconscious,” she said. “Cocaine powder was on my face, in my hair, in the upholstery of the car. I was gravely overdosed and near death. His quick action, and that of the EMS medics, saved my life, though not my memory.”

  That struck a chord in me. When I was in the army, I trained to be a corpsman and part of what I learned was how to deal with ODs. But mostly corpsmen learn to treat battlefield trauma—and those were peaceful times. There wasn’t much trauma around, except for victims of auto wrecks and barroom brawls, and the civilian medics usually got to them first. Eventually I asked for Military Police training—anything to ward off the boredom of peacetime army life—and it meshed with the medical training.

  Ashley’s voice broke my reverie. “You look a million miles away, Dagny.”

  “Oh, I’m listening,” I assured her. “It’s just that I was thinking back to overdoses I’ve treated. I was a medic in the army once. You could’ve come out of this a lot worse, you know. Did you remember anything about the cocaine?”

  “That was about the last thing I did remember, and I was scared that I’d be busted. Not even my father’s influence and money would get me out of it. A bit of cocaine on the lips is one thing; a half-pound in your car was entirely another. But all
they charged me with was possession of six-tenths of a gram and driving under the influence. I got off with a fine and three years’ probation.”

  “You were lucky,” I said. “Don’t tell me they didn’t find your stash.”

  “There was no stash to find. You’ll see.”

  Ashley was going to tell the story her way, and she wasn’t going to be hurried.

  CHAPTER 2

  The dogs had their own tale to tell. They were tired of being locked up while hearing us talk. Their whines, which had at first been a quiet entreaty, became loud, demanding yelps.

  Ashley said, “Feel free to let your dogs out, poor little things.”

  “Uh, well, they only sound little. They’re greyhounds—little throats, big dogs.”

  “That’s fine. I need a break anyway.” She stood up and stretched her arms toward the ceiling, yawning unabashedly at the same time. Her blouse came adrift, exposing a narrow swath of bare midriff. I knew guys who’d pay money for that sight. She tucked everything back in and said, “I’d be happy to meet your hounds.”

  I let Hank and Midas out, and they fell over each other to see who would be first to check out the guest. Ashley met them standing. She was a good sport and deftly parried the inquisitive muzzles before they could leave nose prints on the fine, shiny leather of her skirt. She gave each dog a rub behind the ears and a pat on their substantial rumps. Satisfied, they retreated to their large soft beds by the piano to watch the proceedings.

  “They’re nice dogs. Did you rescue them?”

  “I did, actually. They used to race and I got them when their careers ended. They were pals in the kennel where they lived, so they were put up for adoption as a pair. But anyway, I’m mystified about this half-pound of disappearing cocaine. Do you want to tell me about it?”

  “I don’t mean to be mysterious or secretive. I’m just trying to relate events not as they happened in time, but as I came to realize them. So, let’s see. After I left the hospital I rested at home. The first couple of days I was dazed most of the time. I dreamt awful dreams, violent and terrifying, and when I was awake, I’d find myself wringing my hands or grinding my teeth. I hurt inside, too, and bled some. By the end of the week I realized that I’d been sexually assaulted, but of the event itself I could remember nothing.”