The unknown devil, p.1
The Unknown Devil, page 1
The Unknown Devil
A C.T. Ferguson Private Investigator Mystery (#2)
Tom Fowler
Do you like free books? You can get the prequel novella to the C.T. Ferguson mystery series for free. This is exclusive to my VIP readers. Just go here to get your book!
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The Unknown Devil: A C.T. Ferguson Private Investigator Mystery is copyright © 2018 by Tom Fowler. All rights reserved. This book or parts thereof may not be reproduced in any form, stored in any retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise—without prior written permission of the publisher, except as provided by United States of America copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher at tom@tomfowlerwrites.com.
Published by Widening Gyre Media. Silver Spring, MD
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and events are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
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Editing by Chase Nottingham
Cover design by 100 Covers
Created with Vellum
For Lisa and Isabel.
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This book is dedicated to the memory of Lisa Mainolfi. She battled brain cancer on and off (mostly on) for eight years, and while it claimed her health and, eventually, her life, it never dimmed her spirit and joie de vivre. She brightened and bettered the lives of all who were fortunate enough to know her. Santayana said, “There is no cure for birth and death save to enjoy the interval.” Lisa enjoyed it like few others, and the world is poorer for her passing. She leaves behind a husband and a son (my godson). May she rest in peace.
Contents
Novella Giveaway
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
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Afterword
Novella Giveaway
Want to know C.T.’s origin story? Tap the cover to download the prequel novella to the C.T. Ferguson crime novel series.
Chapter 1
Some people accept things easily, and others need a great deal of convincing. It has nothing to do with skepticism—which I have in droves and support in others—but a stubborn disbelief someone could possibly deny you something. The woman on the phone with me personified this trait.
“I don’t do domestic cases,” I said for at least the third time.
“But I’m sure my husband is cheating on me!” I heard crying at the edges of her voice. The tears may have been sincere, or they could have been a play for sympathy. Either way, I resolved to hang up on her if she started bawling. I have my limits.
“Then you don’t need me, do you?”
My question gave her pause. It took her a few seconds to devise a comeback. “I’ll need to prove it in court,” she said.
As comebacks went, it wasn’t one for the ages. “Do you have a smartphone?” I said.
“Yes, an iPhone.”
“Do you know how to work the camera?”
“Of course I do.”
“Then I have to reiterate you don’t need me,” I said.
“But I do,” she said. “You do this for a living.”
“That doesn’t mean I take better pictures than the average person. If you want to give a photo essay to a lawyer, call a photographer.”
“But—”
I cut her off. “I don’t do domestic cases. There are plenty of people who do.”
“But I can’t afford to pay them.” Now the tears came. I remembered my resolution.
“Then I suggest you practice with your iPhone,” I said, and hung up before she could implore me again. My first case started out as a domestic situation and turned into much more. In my illustrious eight-month career as a pro-bono private investigator, it had been my only domestic case. I resolved to keep it that way.
The woman who was sure she had a cheating husband called back. Some people just can’t take no for an answer. I ignored the call and did the same when she tried two more times. The fourth time must have driven the point home. All this client-dodging made me hungry. After a few minutes of deleting junk emails, I got up, locked my house, and ventured out into Federal Hill for lunch.
I bought the house a little more than a month ago. The Fells Point apartment was fine, but I didn’t like the idea of running a business out of there. The management company concurred. They allowed me to break my lease five months early without paying their usurious fee. I liked Fells Point enough to stay, but I found a great house in the Federal Hill area of Baltimore. It was an end rowhouse, and the previous owner had been a doctor of some sort, so the house came with an office.
Living in Federal Hill meant no shortage of food options. During the workday, Baltimore is a city of people stuffed into buildings. The exception is lunchtime, when the huddled masses yearn to breathe and eat freely, and the streets are awash with people walking to or from a lunch spot. I lived a few blocks from the Cross Street Market and headed there.
The Cross Street Market is a long building packed with food vendors and sellers of various tchotchkes. In the areas between the vendors are a few places to sit and eat. It was a warm mid-July day, and a lot of people milled about, straining the air conditioning and making me hope I could get in and out quickly. I grabbed a salmon burger and sweet potato fries from Frank’s and walked back to my house. Total time gone: twenty-five minutes.
The food made it worth the walk and the crowd. Like I usually did, I ate at my office desk, reading about the Orioles and baseball in general as I lunched. The Orioles won a tense extra-inning road game in Boston the previous night. I tried to watch the entire game but fell asleep in the twelfth inning as midnight loomed. I felt old at twenty-eight and a half.
I was busy watching the highlights when my doorbell rang. Because of the home office, a ringing doorbell doesn’t mean a potential client. Sometimes, it’s my daily delivery from Amazon. This time, a young man who looked about seventeen peered back at me from the other side of the peephole. He didn’t seem like a delivery driver. Process of elimination made him a potential client. If so, he would be my youngest. I opened the door.
“C.T. Ferguson?” he said.
“The one and only.”
“I want to . . . I might need your help.”
“Let’s talk about it.” I invited him inside and led him down the hall to my office. It was about eleven feet square with hardwood floors and plain walls I needed to do something with. A large desk with three monitors connected to a powerful custom-built laptop consumed most of the room. If I sat behind the desk just right, the screens blocked my view of potential clients. This was by design. My young visitor took one of my guest chairs as I sat in my leather executive model. The boy looked at the remaining sweet potato fries on the desk and frowned.
“I didn’t mean to interrupt your lunch,” he said.
“Don’t worry about it,” I said. “If I feel hungry, I’ll eat in front of you.” He didn’t know what to say, so he opted for nothing. True to my word, I munched on a couple of fries. He continued not knowing how to begin. I helped. “I presume you didn’t come here to watch me eat.”
“No,” he said, coming out of his reverie. “I think I need your help.”
“I’m listening.”
“My name is Brian, Brian Sellers. I’m worried about my older brother, Chris. I haven’t seen him for a couple days.”
“Is his absence unusual?” I said.
“I live with him. I usually see him every day.”
“You live with your older brother?”
He nodded. “Our dad split not long after I was born. I don’t even remember him. Our mom . . . died a few months ago.”
“I’m sorry.”
Brian gave a small smile and took a deep breath before continuing. “Chris and I have always been close, so he invited me to live with him and his girlfriend.”
“Is she gone, too?”
“Yeah,” he said after pondering it for a second. “I guess I didn’t think about it, but I haven’t seen her for a couple days, either.”
“Maybe they took a vacation,” I said.
“No, he would tell me.”
“Maybe they went to Vegas to get married.”
“He’d tell me something like that,” Brian said, shaking his head. “It’s why I’m concerned.”
I took a notebook from my top desk drawer and jotted down a few details, mostly about the names Brian threw at me. “What’s the girlfriend’s name?” I said.
“Anna. Anna Blair.”
I jotted it down. “Oh, and I have to ask—do you spell Brian with an I or a Y?”
“An I.”
“Thank goodness.”
My fake relief got him to grin. “I’ve never liked the Y, either,” he said.
“I need a timeline,” I said, refocusing us back to why Brian came to see me. “Today is Tuesday. When’s the last time you saw your brother?”
Brian t hought about timeframes for a second. “Saturday night,” he said.
“You’re sure?”
“Yes. He was awake and doing something on his computer when I went to bed. He seemed pretty engrossed in it. Probably another raid or something. I could never get into those games. Anyway, when I got up Sunday, he and Anna were gone. I haven’t seen them since.”
“I presume you’ve tried to reach him.”
“He doesn’t answer his cell. No response to texts or emails.”
“What’s his cell number?”
“410-555-9190.”
I tried it from my office phone and put the call on speaker. After five rings, we got a voicemail. I ended the call without leaving a message.
“You’ve been home alone the last two days, then,” I said.
“Yes.”
“How old are you?”
“Sixteen,” said Brian.
“You go to school?”
“Of course.”
“Where?”
“Kenwood.”
“In the county?”
“Yeah, we live in Rosedale.”
I looked at my clock. “So you got from Kenwood to Federal Hill around lunchtime on a school day.”
“Tuesday’s a light day for me.”
“And now you’re home alone,” I said.
“I can take care of myself.”
“Maybe you can, but you can see how this is concerning.”
Brian rolled his eyes. “What are you going to do, tell the county I’m living by myself for now? Find my brother and it all changes.”
“I’m not going to dime you out,” I said. “I simply want you to be aware of your situation.”
“What do you mean?”
“Your brother and his girlfriend have been gone for two days. You can’t reach them. We have to consider the possibility this wasn’t of his own accord.”
Brian frowned and nodded. I could tell he’d already considered it. How could he not, having lost both parents already? “I know,” he said. “I thought about it.”
“Have you also considered whoever made him disappear now knows you’re home by yourself?”
I watched the rosy color flee Brian’s cheeks. “No,” he said, confirming the obvious. “What should I do?”
“First, you should call the county police and file a missing persons report. Two days is enough time for them to start looking into things. Do you have anyone else you can stay with?”
He shook his head. “I don’t think so.”
“No other family?” I said.
“Not locally.”
“Friends?”
“I could ask.”
“Ask. It might be overcautious, but we don’t know at this point.”
“All right. Does all of this advice mean you’re going to help me?”
“I’d be kind of a dick if I said no at this point, wouldn’t I?” I said.
“Totally,” he said.
“Well, I guess I can’t be a dick,” I said.
I hoped I didn’t need a new car. My Lexus sedan threw about every warning light possible a couple days ago. The dealer told me it would be a while and also be expensive. I loved my car, but good sense required me to consider a new one. For now, I drove a blue Chevy Caprice Classic I acquired a couple months ago. In exchange for not ratting him out, the chop shop owner gave me a good deal. The car would win no prizes for aesthetics, but its V8 engine came from a Corvette and still responded with alacrity when I stepped on the gas. It also blended in with other cars better than a silver Lexus.
The Caprice came with an automatic transmission. I loathed automatics. My Lexus was one of the few sedans made with a manual. It was now an endangered creature. The new luxury sport sedans didn’t have the option, and I wasn’t paying Lexus prices for a coupe. Acura and Infiniti suffered from the same problems.
This combination of factors led me to a BMW dealership. The salesman looked askance at my Caprice as I got out. “My other car is a Lexus,” I said.
“And now you’re ready for German luxury?” he said.
“I’m ready for a test drive.”
He brought around a black 340i with the M sport package. “I don’t have one in a manual,” he said. “People just don’t get them as often anymore.”
“Most people are missing out,” I said.
“You know it. I know it. They don’t know it.”
He fetched a license plate, and we got into the car. I liked the feel of the seats. The steering wheel felt good in my hands. If I liked the way the car drove, it would make a fine replacement for the Lexus. I took it out on the road. Towson in the afternoon does not allow many opportunities to open the throttle. I wanted to gauge how the turbocharged inline-6 responded but had no such opportunities. The car drove well. I managed not to hate the automatic, though I noted when I would have held a gear longer or downshifted at a different time.
After about a half-hour of listening to a sales pitch while negotiating Towson traffic, I turned back into the dealer’s lot. The salesman reminded me he didn’t have my phone number. I told him he was correct and left. Once I was back in the Caprice, I tried calling Chris Sellers again. No answer.
I thought about Brian Sellers on the drive back to Federal Hill. His father left when he was young. I could probably find the dad, but would it do any good? He didn’t want to be involved with his sons then; why should now be any different? With his mother also gone, Chris may have been Brian’s last living relative, and now Chris was missing, too. Brian was a bright teenager who just lost the most important person in his world.
My sister died when I was sixteen. I knew how he felt.
Chapter 2
I called Kenwood High School and got Brian’s schedule. All it took was me saying I was Chris Sellers and could you send it to this other email address instead? I seem to have been locked out of my primary one. You can? Thanks. People want to be helpful, which makes social engineering so much easier.
I continued my run of low-tech hacking by getting Chris and Brian’s address from the phone book. If this continued, I’d have to cancel my Internet service and go into hiding. I settled for going to Rosedale and sitting on the house. Brian attended a study group and band practice after school. He wouldn’t be home for a few hours yet. I hoped Chris would show up and solve my case for me. It would keep the lack of technology going, if nothing else.
Looking at Brian’s schedule passed a little time. High school schedules changed a lot since I was sixteen. Brian enjoyed more free time and more classes to prepare him for college. How did high school—and a public high school, no less—manage to become so much more efficient in the last dozen years? Brian took a good course load, with AP classes in math and history. I noticed the lack of any computer science class. Perhaps secondary education failed to make the quantum leap I first thought.
After about an hour, I got the suspicion Chris Sellers may not be coming home. Another hour cemented my hunch. It’s important for detectives to develop keen intuition. I then developed my observation skills by watching a woman in a sports bra and tiny shorts jog down the street. You never know who might be packing a concealed weapon. My observations left me confident the jogger was clean.
Once the jogger left the street, I called Sergeant Gonzalez with the Baltimore County Police. He and I had worked together a couple times, and I knew he’d be delighted to hear from me. “What now?” he said.
“I was just thinking how happy you’d be to hear my voice,” I said.
“We aim to please. What’s up?”
“Anyone file a missing persons report on a Chris Sellers?”
“What am I, the information desk?”
“You keep working with me, and you’ll make lieutenant.”
“Whatever. Hold on.” Elevator music played in my ear. Even the BCPD went the mellow mood music route. I expected crime-stopper tips, some boring public service announcement, or at least better music. I thought about telling Gonzalez, but he would tell me he wasn’t the complaints department. Then I wondered if businesses actually used complaints departments, and how hellish it would be to work in one. Elevator music has an effect on me.
