Night of the Living Dandelion (32 page)

“Looks like we’re going to have to find that source,” I said.

“Unless we can positively rule him out.” Marco got up. “I think I know how to do it. I’ll be right back. I’m going to make a phone call. Sit tight.”

As I sipped my soda, waiting for Marco to return, I noticed the drunk staring at me. He saw me glance his way and gave me a lopsided smile. I looked away. Next thing I knew, he was clambering down from his stool and staggering toward me. Great.

I reached for my crutches, but Marco beat me to it, helping me down from the stool just as the man reached us. “Hey, buddy,” the drunk said, “I (hic) saw her first.”

Although I’d always dreamed of being fought over by two men, this wasn’t exactly how I’d pictured it happening.

Marco ignored the guy and ushered me away. “We’ve got an hour before our meeting at the coffee shop, so the security guards are going to let us use the upstairs room again to review Tuesday evening’s video. I asked to start with the parking lot tapes. This time we’re looking for two men—Holloway and Trumble.”

We proceeded up to the second floor and sat at the same monitor, where a cooperative security guard got us set up. Marco fast-forwarded through the video as much as possible, slowing it down only when someone approached or exited the boat.

At six fifteen, we saw Jerry Trumble get out of a small car, glance around, then move swiftly through the parking lot and up the ramp into the boat. Marco handed me the notepad and pen, and I wrote down the time. We watched as the parking lot filled up and people made their way to the boat, but none of their faces was familiar.

Just after nine o’clock, an emergency rescue van pulled up to the ramp; then the paramedic riding shotgun got out and walked into the casino. Marco stopped the tape, then zoomed in. “Who does that look like?”

“Kyle.”

Marco studied the image a moment longer. “Note the time and that the emergency lights weren’t activated.”

Three minutes later, Kyle exited the boat, got into the van, and then the vehicle left.

“Why would a rescue van stop at a casino if they weren’t responding to an emergency call?” I asked.

“I don’t know, but if they were responding to an emergency, they’d have had lights going.”

“Could Kyle have been looking for Lori?”

“Maybe Kyle’s partner can answer that one.” Marco started the video again, fast-forwarding and pausing, checking everybody who entered or left. We were well past the midnight mark and Holloway still hadn’t appeared, nor had Jerry Trumble left the boat. Once again we saw the figure in the black trench coat enter the picture, head toward Lori’s car, then vanish behind the gray van parked beside her.

Marco checked his watch and stopped the tape. “We’d better quit so we can make our meeting. I’ll come back in the morning to watch the rest. With any luck, Trumble will stop at the coffee shop tonight, and we can have another chat with him.”

 

Marco parked around the corner from the Daily Grind, then turned up his collar and took a cap from the glove compartment. “Wait here. I’ll be right back.”

I watched in the side mirror as he donned the cap, then walked to the corner and peered around it, as though scoping out the front of the coffee shop. He returned a few minutes later to help me get balanced on the crutches.

“The EMT’s name is J.C. He’s sitting against the back wall. You can’t miss him. He has red hair. Tell him I’m looking for a parking space.”

“Where are you going?”

“I want to watch the shop for a while, make sure Kyle doesn’t show up.”

“Are you expecting him to?”

“J.C. and Kyle are partners and may be good friends, in which case Kyle will know about our meeting and may try to disrupt it. Also, Kyle may have told J.C. how to answer our questions. Remember, whenever you interview a suspect’s friend or family member, anticipate lies. An investigator’s job is to dig under the lie to find the truth.”

“I don’t know if I’m experienced enough for that, Marco.”

He cupped my face with his hands. “Sure you are, sweetheart. You’re a natural.”

Was that a synonym for
nosy
?

Marco kissed me, then walked me to the corner and glanced around it. “There are two people walking toward the shop. They should reach the door in time to open it for you. Go!”

 

The paramedic was easy to spot. He had light red hair worn short and a square face covered in freckles. He had on a blue Windbreaker, jeans, and athletic shoes, and appeared to be physically fit.

I maneuvered to the counter to order a hot dark chocolate drink, then asked to have it delivered to my table. Then I headed for the table.

“J.C.? I’m Abby. My partner, Marco, called you to set up this meeting.”

“Hi,” he said, jumping up to pull out a chair, clearly surprised by my appearance. “Have a seat.”

“Thanks. Marco will be in as soon as he finds a parking space.”

“How’d you hurt your foot?”

“Actually it’s a sprained ankle. I fell off my high heel.”

J.C. shook his head. “I keep telling my girlfriend she’s gonna hurt herself on those tall heels, but she never listens to me.”

I waited while the barista delivered my cocoa. J.C. already had a coffee drink loaded with whipped cream. “Thanks for meeting with us so late. We’re helping investigate the Willis murder, and at the same time do our day jobs. It gets hectic at times.”

“I hear you on that.” He tried to come off as friendly, but I noticed that his smile was tight and one of his knees bobbed. “So how does your investigation involve me?”

I blinked at him. I hadn’t planned anything because I thought Marco would be handling it. “Well,” I said, stalling, “we were told that you responded to a call at the Calumet Casino boat last Tuesday evening and wondered if you’d noticed anyone out of the ordinary hanging around the parking lot.”

J.C. sipped his coffee, regarding me with narrowed eyes, as though he didn’t believe me. So I played dumb, something else that came naturally. “I’ve got the date right on that call, haven’t I? Tuesday? Around nine o’clock in the evening?”

“Yeah, I think it was Tuesday. We got a nine-one-one about a possible heart attack. Turned out to be a false alarm. But as for seeing anyone out of the ordinary, what are you looking for?”

“A person in a black trench coat, with very white skin and black hair worn slicked back. There were reports of him being seen in the parking lot that evening.”

“It sounds like you’re looking for the New Chapel vampire.”

I smiled. “If there is such a thing.”

J.C. took a drink of coffee, then licked cream off his lips. “I wish I
had
seen the guy. My partner keeps telling me to stop by Down the Hatch to take a look at him.”

“Who’s your partner?” Me playing dumb again.

“Kyle Petrie.”

“Oh, sure. I know Kyle from the bar. He’s a nice guy, but he’s got it wrong. The man he told you about isn’t a vampire.”

J.C. shrugged, as though to say,
Whatever
. “Kyle’s convinced the guy killed that nurse.”

“What makes him think that?”

“The way the woman was murdered. Bite marks in the jugular vein. Blood drained from the body. Who else would do that?”

“Maybe a guy who wanted it to look like the work of a vampire?”

J.C. sipped his coffee. I could tell he was turning the matter over in his mind.

Marco came up to the table and tossed his car keys down. “Hey, J.C.,” he said, sticking out his hand. “Marco Salvare. Thanks for coming down.”

They shook hands, and Marco sat next to me and put his arm around my shoulders. “I found a parking space right around the corner. No problem.” He tapped on my shoulder with his thumb on the last two words. I took it to mean he hadn’t seen Kyle.

I could sense that J.C. was uncomfortable being there with us, so I decided to speed things up and at the same time make Marco aware of the groundwork I’d laid. “J.C. just told me he didn’t notice anyone matching our suspect’s description in the casino parking lot last Tuesday evening. And he also verified that he made an emergency call there on Tuesday evening.”

Marco nodded, as though absorbing the information. “Do you get a lot of calls from the casino?”

“No, not really. And that one turned out to be a false alarm. I wish we had more of those and fewer genuine heart attacks.”

“So, even though it might be a false alarm,” Marco asked, “is it SOP to respond as though it’s a life-or-death situation?”

“Sure.”

“Does that mean carrying in your emergency equipment?” Marco asked.

“Of course. We can’t waste time running back to the van when seconds count.”

Marco took a sip of my cocoa. “Do you always work in pairs?”

“Yes, we do.”

“So how does that work? Does one of you go into the building with the emergency equipment while the other stays with the ambulance?”

“Not usually, not unless there’s a reason for the other partner to remain in the vehicle, and then it should only take a few minutes.”

“What kind of reason?”

“Calling in to HQ to report that we had arrived on the scene, or to get additional instructions or equipment.” J.C. shrugged, as though he couldn’t come up with another reason.

“But at least one of you would take in some kind of medical equipment, just in case.”

“That’s how we operate.”

Marco’s brows knitted. “That puzzles me, J.C. I watched a surveillance video that shows Kyle going into the casino alone Tuesday evening, but he didn’t take anything with him, not even a medical bag.”

J.C.’s face turned so red, his freckles seemed ready to jump ship. He cast me a furious glance, obviously angry because I hadn’t told him about the video. I picked up my cocoa and sipped it, avoiding his angry stare.

“What are you trying to prove?” J.C. asked Marco.

“I’m just trying to understand why Kyle went into the casino without equipment for an emergency call,” Marco said.

“Sometimes when a person calls nine-one-one, he or she isn’t certain whether there’s a real emergency situation. So in that case one of us might go inside to check it out first.”

“You’re sure about that?” Marco asked.

He shifted positions. “I said we might do that.”

Marco looked doubtful. “So if I called nine-one-one right now and reported that someone in this coffee shop might be having a heart attack, one of the responding paramedics would come inside without any medical bag or equipment to check it out first?”

J.C. chewed on the inside of his cheek. “As I said, he might.”

“And if I posed the same question to the responding EMT, he’d give me the answer you gave me?”

The nervous paramedic shrugged.

Marco pulled out his phone. “Let’s test it and see.”

M
arco punched in 9-1-1, put the phone to his ear, then said, “I think someone at the Daily Grind coffee shop might be having a heart attack. That’s right. At Lincoln and Morgan.”

J.C. tried to grab his phone, but Marco snapped it shut and slid it into his pocket.

“Listen, man,” J.C. said, clearly agitated, “you’d better call again and say it was a false alarm. They’ll send responders if you don’t.”

Marco took out the phone and opened it, but stopped short of making the call. “What was the real reason you and Kyle stopped at the casino that night?”

“Are you kidding me?” J.C. said angrily. “You’re gonna let them come out here for nothing? You’ll be arrested!”

“Answer the question and I’ll call it off,” Marco said.

J.C. slouched back in his chair with an exasperated sigh. “I don’t believe this. What if a real emergency comes in and they’re on their way here?”

“Then you’d better answer fast,” Marco said.

“Kyle stopped at the boat to make a payment, okay? He owes the casino money. The emergency call was Kyle’s cover story. He asked me to use it in case anyone questioned me about the stop. So that’s what I did.”

“How much money?” Marco asked.

“Look, I’m only telling you what Kyle told me,” J.C. said, sweat beading on his upper lip. “I didn’t question him. It was none of my business. Now would you make the call?”

“You and Kyle are friends, yet you didn’t talk about him being in debt?” I asked.

“We work together. We’re not friends. All I know is that he had to stop there to make a payment. I don’t gamble. What do I know?”

Marco closed the phone. “Calm down. I didn’t make that call. No one is coming.”

The EMT’s face turned red. “Why did you do that to me, man? I came here to help you.”

“Lying doesn’t count as help,” Marco said.

“Look, I’m sorry! I didn’t think Kyle would want it to get around that he owed money.”

It was Marco’s turn to slouch back with an exasperated sigh. “You’re still lying.”