Medusa (2 page)

I rolled my chair over to my computer, which sat on a side desk, and checked my email. Nothing there. Maybe, I reasoned, the person on the phone had been referring to my postal mail slot downstairs. That must be what the caller was talking about . . . snail mail.
 

With an increasingly weird feeling, I went down the stairs to the mail slot, careful to pocket my .45 before doing so. The world is full of kooks, I reminded myself, as I strolled down the stairs. I had made the news, after all. That might attract any number of psychos, for no other reason than they simply wanted to do me harm, so they could make the news, too. Or maybe their dog told them to come to the Brooks building and shoot the heroic doggy detective. A similar excuse had been used by a maniac once before, after all.
 

I looked out the front windows into the slanting red light of Birmingham in the death of afternoon. There were no kids across the plaza, no car with the engine running, no lookout peering surreptitiously around a corner to watch some prank unfold. There was no bag of flaming dog poop on the stairs. It didn’t feel like a practical joke, either. Something about the voice had been, oddly . . . commanding.
 

I picked up the mail from the lobby floor. There was a power bill, but nothing else. Maybe the call was a prank, after all.
 

You know it wasn’t
, a little inner voice told me. The little voice is one of my peculiarities. It warned me sometimes, and chided me at others. Over the years, I’ve learned to take that little voice very seriously. Now, though, I was at a loss as to how to proceed. I stood there for a second, then shrugged it off.
 

Just a prank call. I walked back upstairs and grabbed my overcoat and pulled it on. I caught sight of my reflection in the office door.
Hell, Roland, you even look like a private eye
. I smiled to myself. But that strange uneasy feeling stayed with me, just the same.
 

Time to take it to the house, I decided. For the first time in more than a month, I was going to spend a quiet evening at home and actually watch a ball game, or a movie on television. Hey, perhaps even an oldie, a good old detective film noir, and maybe, just maybe, I’d even get to watch it all the way through.

Chapter 2

I pulled into the parking lot of Sally’s Diner and parked my aging brown Buick against the curb, behind a blue sedan. It was a Crown Victoria, a supposedly “unmarked” police car, one of those that, with even a cursory glance, most people would identify as a police cruiser. A shortwave radio aerial protruded from the center of the trunk, and dual blue police lights were quite visible through the rear glass, as was the protective screen separating the driver’s compartment from the rear seat. The car in question belonged to my old partner, Detective Sergeant Lester Broom. Feeling magnanimous after my victory over the dognappers, I had invited my old friend and partner to lunch. There was no more appropriate place for us to get together than Sally’s Diner.
 

Broom and I had used Sally’s as our secondary base of operations when we were working the streets of North Birmingham together. Many were the days the two of us had sat in a booth and gone over the leads in a case, downing coffee and knocking our heads together over the latest murder or robbery in our precinct.
 

Later, when I had become a private detective, I had set up shop in my present location, largely in part because it was in close proximity to a place that was so familiar to me from my life before the bottle. Sally’s was a beacon of familiarity, somewhere I felt at home. And, Sally makes the best coffee in North Birmingham, which never hurts.
 

Besides my own office, situated on the third floor of the nearby Brooks Building, no other businesses remained open in the two-block area that was known as Brooks Plaza. All the others had long since been boarded up. The area had taken an economic hit when downtown had shifted further north in the 1970s. But Sally’s Diner was still a going concern. For the most part, the place was frequented by a regular clientele, and many of the faces were the same as when Broom and I had first partnered up, years ago.
 

I welcomed the continuity, because it was still my favorite place to eat, grab coffee, or just go sit in a booth and think things over. As I walked through the doors, I immediately spotted the impressive bulk of Detective Lieutenant Lester Broom squeezed into the end booth.
 

“What’s up, Roland?” Broom stood and put out a big hand. I smiled and shook my old friend’s hand and we sat down.
 

“Nothing much. How’s that new partner of yours?” I was asking about Cassandra Taylor, who replaced Lester’s second partner, Francis “Mack” McMahon. Mack, who had replaced me, had died in a gunfight a few months before.
 

“Cassandra? She’s doing great, for someone fresh from the uniformed ranks. I still miss Mack a helluva lot, you know, he’ll always be a brother. Cassandra’s got what it takes, though. She’s a good cop. She’s working hard to be a good detective.”
 

“I’m glad to hear that.”
 

“So how are things with you, by the way?” Broom’s tone indicated he already had heard about my latest case.
 

“Unbelievable. From some of the calls I’ve been getting, you’d think I was Hercule Poirot.”
 

“So I hear. Looks like you are the savior of dog lovers all over Birmingham. Will there be a television interview?”
 

“Actually, Channel Six called, but I don’t know. I’m not as photogenic as you, big guy.” Big guy was especially apt when talking to Les Broom. Although I am six foot three, my former partner dwarfed me in both height and size.
 

“Anyway, good job. Money in the bank for you, and none of us poor policemen had to so much as lift a finger. I assume the congratulations are pouring in.”
 

“Thanks, Les. And, yes, I picked up some sweet references.” In the back of my mind, though, I heard the strange voice on the answering machine. An odd feeling overcame me, something like a chill.
 

“Everything okay? You looked kind of funny just then.”
 

“Well, to be honest, I’m not totally sure. I got a weird call at the office today. I thought it might have been a prank. My name is in the news presently, so I figured maybe some dumb kid decided to get cute. But the whole thing felt . . . weird, actually
creepy
weird. I think it was someone telling me to check my mail. Like I said, I got the call at my office, and there was nothing in the mail there, but I haven’t checked the mail at home, yet. Maybe they meant my home mail.”
 

“Hmm. Maybe. You never know, Roland, it’s a shady business that we’re in, after all. Let me know if you run into anything else strange.”
 

“I’ll do that.”
 

Broom nodded and picked up his coffee, gave it an experimental sip, and nodded in approval. “Alright, then, so tell me all about this dog-napping caper.”

* * *

I left Sally’s feeling a little better, overall. The strange message had left me with a feeling of unease, but talking with Broom had at least put it into the background of my thoughts. It had still been a great day.
 

I pulled up to my house, a low, one-story place situated away from the road. It boasted a high brick wall that tightly enclosed the entire perimeter, the top of which ran almost even with the gutters. I had liked the security, perhaps even the anonymity that the design ensured. One could approach the front door by walking along the side of the house, but the rest of the place was walled off from access, or from view.
 

I unlocked the door and pocketed my keys. There was a litter of mail on the floor, as the heavy storm door had an old-fashioned brass mail slot. I knelt and picked up a sliding stack of letters. There were a couple of bills in there, and a small, white envelope. The address had been written in a tiny, careful hand on the back. There was no return address.
 

A shudder ran up my spine, and made my face and hands feel suddenly cold and clammy. My little inner voice told me that this was the start of a strange trip. It had told me such things before, and it hadn’t been wrong.
 

I walked toward my desk with the thought of checking my messages, my eyes still on the strange envelope, when the telephone rang. I looked up from the envelope and stood there, perfectly still.
 

“Surely not,” I mumbled aloud, and picked up the phone. Once again, there was static on the other end, and a vague sound within it, a sound that grew in strength to a ragged buzz, just enough so that I could hear a distant childlike voice, the voice of a girl, maybe, though I couldn’t be sure. And that small voice barely penetrated through the storm of static electricity that raged on the line.
 

“. . . in your mail . . .”
 

And then, nothing; even the static slowly died away, until I was left holding the receiver, listening to the silence on the line. Then, after several seconds, there was a click and a dial tone as the line was automatically disconnected.
 

I quickly punched in the number for information.
 

“How can I help you?” The operator asked.
 

“Operator, this is an emergency. I need the telephone number of the party that last dialed this number.”
 

“I can’t do that, sir.”
 

“This is an emergency,” I repeated, with more force.
 

“I’ll have to get my supervisor.”
 

“Then please do.”
 

There was a momentary pause while the woman summoned someone else to the phone. A young man’s voice took the place of the woman’s.
 

“Supervisor 23 here, sir.”
 

“Ok. Listen, this is an emergency. I need you to give me the number of the telephone that last dialed this number.”
 

“Well, I’m not supposed to give that kind of information out over the line.”
 

“It’s an emergency. This is a law-enforcement related matter. I can give you a police number for verification if you need it, but you have to hurry.”
 

There was silence on the other end of the line, and I could feel the young man’s mind whirring as he chose between potential firing if this wasn’t for real, or the harm he would cause by delaying, if it was. His morals won out over his worldly concerns, because next he said: “Okay, sir, let me look that up for you.”
 

“Good man.”
 

“Sir, is this Mr. Roland Longville?”
 

“That’s me.”
 

“Mr. Longville, according to our logs here, there hasn’t been any activity on your line since yesterday afternoon.”
 

I stared into the telephone receiver. “Excuse me?”
 

“That’s right, Mr. Longville. According to our logs, you received several calls in the afternoon hours yesterday. There’s has been no activity on this line since that time.”
 

I thanked the man and hung up. I took a deep breath, and picked up the phone and dialed Lester Broom’s office. Broom answered after one ring.
 

“Broom here.”
 

“Les, it’s Roland.”
 

“Ah. You sound a little weird. Did you get something else odd?”
 

“Did I ever! Whoever it was that placed that weird call yesterday called me back a few minutes ago. Get this, the phone company says no one has called. Very strange. I got a letter here, too. Hang on a sec. Let me see if I can find out what this is all about.”
 

“Sure. This is getting pretty damned interesting.”
 

I picked up a letter opener and carefully slit the envelope. It was too small to be a bomb, of course, but it always pays to be cautious.
 

There was a folded piece of newspaper inside. I carefully unfolded it and held it to the light:
 

(Reuters) NEW ORLEANS. Danielle LeGrandville, 11, was reported missing last week from her Lake Pontchartrain home. The girl’s parents had initially believed that the girl had run away, since she had a history of emotional and discipline-related problems. However, the parents have determined that the girl was not with friends, and filed a missing persons report. New Orleans police department spokesman Sergeant Charles Behan indicated today that police now suspect foul play, although he declined to offer any details. “This is still an open investigation, and we don’t want too many details published in the press at this time.”
 

The story was continued on another page, which the sender had not included.
 

“It looks like somebody is trying to send me a message.”
 

“Any idea who?”
 

“Not a clue. Get this. It’s a story about a little girl who’s missing down in Louisiana. And the sender wanted to remain anonymous.”