The Occupied Read online

  When I looked up, there, above my head, was a little round laser light in the ceiling that belonged to the fire alarm.

  After flicking the lights on, I found nothing but a nightstand tipped over—possibly, I wondered, the surface that I had hit with my fist?

  I sat down on the couch, heart pumping wildly. A logical assessment of the situation seemed impossible, reduced merely to What was that? A nightmare? I wanted to believe it, but I knew it wasn’t true. I looked up again at the alarm in the ceiling. Maybe it had been a dream, and I had been stumbling around in a state of half sleep.

  But as I stared at the ceiling alarm I realized that there was no red light. The light in the smoke alarm was actually green.

  It was time to switch gears. To size up my predator. My enemy with the glowing red eyes. True enough: he would be easier to spot in the dark, at night. Big Jim Torley was right. So I kept the lights off and sat in the dark on the little couch, looking for his reappearance. And strained to keep my eyes open until daybreak.

  37

  After a few hours of sleep, I was on the move, on the way to the new Manitou courthouse. I drove through the old downtown section along the Little Bear River and past the old historic courthouse that had long ago been converted into the Manitou Museum.

  After parking and trotting inside the Manitou Justice Center, I struck up a conversation with the harried-looking assistant clerk of courts.

  My request was simple. “Good morning. I’d like to see State v. Borzsted, 015 CR 239, the criminal file in the Donny Ray Borzsted case.”

  In a weary voice she asked, “Are you a reporter?”

  “No.”

  “What’s your interest in this?”

  I had already checked out the state law on open records and court files, so I was prepared for that. “I used to be a New York criminal defense lawyer. But I’m not here as a lawyer. I’m here as an investigator.”

  “This isn’t New York.”

  Of course it wasn’t, but I knew my rights. “No,” I said. “But under Wisconsin law I have a right to check out a pending criminal file.”

  “Investigator for who, exactly?”

  “The man who was murdered. The victim. Bobby Budleigh.”

  “Well, the DA who prosecutes this case is the one who represents the victim—”

  “Not exactly,” I cut in. “Actually, prosecutors represent the state.” I was tired, low on sleep, and wanted to ring the bell on this useless bout. “Ma’am, I was a high school friend of the victim. Very close. Please let me take a peek at the court file. I’ll only be a few minutes.”

  She shrugged, then waved me around the counter and into the file room and pointed to the computer screen where the files were digitally indexed. She would be no help and I was on my own, but it didn’t take me long to locate the court file. Donny Ray’s attorney had already filed a notice of alibi indicating his client was not at the scene of the crime when it occurred, and that his brother Karlin was his witness to that fact. Karlin’s address was listed in the court filing as 607 Central Avenue, Apartment C. That was all I needed.

  I motored over to Central Avenue, remembering how I used to bike around that area when I was a kid. The block was filled with old two-story houses that had been subdivided into apartments. At number 607, a house sided with asphalt roofing tiles, there was a front apartment with a porch entrance and a big black letter A on the mailbox.

  When I made my way around back where apartment B was located, I found an outside set of stairs running along the side of the house up to a second-story door. I trotted up to the next level, to apartment C, and saw no doorbell, so I banged loudly on the door. No answer. So I kept banging. Still no answer. I returned to ground level and around to apartment A and rang the doorbell. An elderly woman answered the door but opened it only a crack.

  “Good day. I am looking for Karlin Borzsted. He lives up in apartment C, right?”

  “You the law?”

  “No.”

  “Process server?”

  “I’m not that either. Just want to talk to him. Do you rent here too?”

  “I’m the rental manager. But I don’t think Karlin’s here.”

  “Where would he be?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know his business.”

  “You know anywhere he might possibly be? Places he frequents?”

  “Frequents?”

  “Places he likes to visit.”

  She thought a moment. “Casey’s Pool and Tap.”

  I knew generally where it was. When I was a teenager in Manitou I would lounge around the pool hall with my delinquent friends during my troubled-youth stage, watching tough guys and pool sharks playing for fifty-dollar bets. There was a bar with stools, which was out of bounds for minors. But as long as my teenage gang and I hung in the area with the pool tables and stayed away from the bar, we were left alone.

  I couldn’t believe the place was still standing. There was a Harley cycle parked out front, along with a pickup truck and a damaged compact.

  I strolled into the place and was hit with a hazy smog zone of cigarette smoke. The decor was strictly old-school: lighted beer signs, mounted fish on the walls, and a girlie calendar next to the dartboard. The female bartender was in a black T-shirt that read, I’m Katie and You’re Not. She was a bleached blonde who probably lifted weights and looked like she could take care of herself. Katie the bartender eyed me as I made for the pool table area.

  Two guys were playing at one of the tables. The test now was to figure out if either of them was Karlin. But neither looked big enough or mean enough to qualify.

  Then the men’s bathroom door banged open. A man around six foot four stomped out, bald-headed with a full beard, a sleeveless denim jacket, and bulging biceps. I had just located Karlin Borzsted.

  “You punks not done yet?” he shouted to the two men still playing.

  There was some nervous laughter from them and a retort that I couldn’t hear.

  I started toward Karlin, and his head snapped around to eye me. When I was a few feet away, looking right at him, he said, “What you starin’ at?”

  “Karlin Borzsted?” I asked.

  The two guys with pool cues straightened up and stopped playing.

  He took a step toward me. “Who wants to know?”

  “Somebody who may be able to help your brother.”

  “You don’t say.”

  “Can we talk?”

  “Isn’t that what we’re doing? Or are you stupid or something?” Now all the men were laughing. “Or maybe,” he said, “you want to talk to these.” With that, he held out his two fists. The knuckles were adorned with homemade tattoos—the kind of amateur ink artistry that gets inscribed in prison. Four letters on each fist:

  FROM HELL

  I tried to keep my cool. “I’d rather talk privately. Just you and me.”

  Someone in the group gave out a phony I’m-so-scared kind of moan. “Whooo . . .”

  Karlin and I stepped aside. I started first. “I’m trying to find out who killed Bobby Budleigh. If not your brother, then I want to know who.”

  Karlin growled. “It wasn’t Donny. Conversation over.”

  The big guy was missing my point. “Bobby Budleigh was my friend,” I shot back.

  “I couldn’t care less,” he said, and started walking away.

  “My name is Trevor Black. I’m in town to get to the bottom of this.”

  Karlin whipped around and started striding back to me. “You’re the one who’s been driving around with the little tramp whore Ashley Linderman?”

  Something clicked all of a sudden, like a switch, surprising even me. Maybe it was a venting of my frustration and anger. Something that had been buried, that now was exploding to the surface. Or maybe it was something about Ashley.

  But whatever it was, it caused me to grab a pool cue from the table next to me, ram it across Karlin’s throat, and push him backward on the pool table, pressing it against his larynx. I shouted, “Sh
e’s a decent woman, but maybe you don’t know what that is. My friend was murdered, and I don’t know what the matter is with you people, because I’m trying to help—”

  I never finished my sentence because Karlin knocked me back into the air like a freight train hitting a shopping cart. And I was the shopping cart. I landed on my back on the floor, with the breath knocked out of me, gasping for air.

  He snatched me off the ground, stood me up, and hauled back to throw a punch in my direction, but I managed to feint to the left and then duck to the right, so when his fist came flying it missed my face but clipped my left ear, which exploded with pain like it had been smashed with a mallet. I stumbled backward, with my hand landing on a tall wooden stool. As Karlin came charging at me, I instantly thought about using the stool, but then there was this voice in my head whizzing out of the wreckage of my legal training, and it was telling me, Smack him in the head with that stool, and you could go to prison.

  Instead, I swung the stool with both hands right into his chest like I was hitting a line drive. He bounced backward against the pool table, leaning against it and grabbing his ribs as he moaned.

  I thought I had tamed this brute, so I was feeling confident. “Look,” I said, still struggling to regain my breath, “let’s cut this—”

  But I never saw his fist. What I did see was the explosion of light like a star nebula as his knuckles hit me just above my right eye. Then the whirligig sensation of being dragged like a manikin and tossed onto the pool table. My eyesight was clearing just in time to see him pulling back his fist to play smash-a-pumpkin with my face. But that is when I heard big Katie the bartender scream for him to stop. And he did. Even in my decimated state, I wondered why. Then I saw the double-barreled shotgun in Katie’s hands.

  Right before I blacked out.

  38

  The next day I was lying on a hospital bed, eyes closed, when I heard her voice. I must have been dozing, but Detective Ashley Linderman woke me up with something that sounded like a question. I opened my eyes.

  She asked again, “So, you really don’t want to press charges?”

  I was looking up at the attractive face of the female detective as she stood at my bedside. I didn’t answer at first. She just shook her head and gave half a laugh as she watched me struggle to sit up.

  “Why am I still here?” I asked. “I’m not hurt that bad.” As I shifted, I felt the deep ache in my upper back and shoulder, and then the ugly spinning sensation inside my skull.

  “Concussion. Loss of consciousness for a while. A bad contusion over your eye. Dislocated shoulder, which they snapped back into place. Other than that, you’re tip-top.” Then she asked me again, “No charges, really? After what Karlin did to you?”

  “The truth is, I feel kind of sorry.”

  She squinted. “For what?”

  “For what I did to poor Karlin.”

  Ashley practically busted a gut laughing. Then she said, “Seriously, he could be facing an aggravated battery charge, and that’s just the beginning. We could have piled it on him.”

  “I knew the risk.”

  “What were you thinking? He could have killed you.”

  “He’s the alibi for his brother.”

  “And?”

  “If his alibi sticks, then someone else must have killed Bobby.”

  She looked at me awhile, then said, “So, you’re on the case?”

  “I never left. You’re the one who left me in the dust.”

  She shook her head. “Not me.”

  I couldn’t figure her out. I shot back, “You cut me off. Didn’t answer my calls.”

  “I had to settle some things.”

  “Like what?”

  “I’ll tell you later.”

  “Well,” I said, “I’ve got things to do. I wonder when I can get out of here.”

  “Later today. The doctors just want to make sure you’re not going goofy in the head.”

  “Too late for that.”

  Ashley flashed a smile, then looked like she was about to leave. But instead she turned back toward my bed, and her eyes widened and lit up. “The bartender said Karlin made some remark. About me. And that you defended my honor.”

  “Do I get a medal for that?”

  “No. Just dinner. If you’re up to it.”

  “That’s even better.”

  “Tonight,” she said brightly. “An Italian place here in town.”

  Things were looking up.

  Then Ashley said something else. “Over dinner, I’ll catch you up on some new developments.”

  “Can you give me a hint?”

  “It’s about that charred corpse we found at the Manitou incinerator.”

  I wasn’t in the mood for a tease. Especially about the burned remains of Augie Bedders. “This is my friend we’re talking about. Can you give me something more?”

  “Well, that’s just the thing,” she said. “About the body, I mean. You see, it wasn’t Augie Bedders.”

  39

  When I checked out of the hospital that afternoon, the discharge nurse gave me a printed sheet about how to handle myself post-concussion. She asked me if I had someone picking me up, and I just nodded and smiled and stuffed the hospital discharge papers in my pocket and called a cab to take me back to the Holiday Inn. On the way, I kept thinking about Ashley Linderman’s last comment.

  I had just put on a change of clothes when Ashley rang me up and said she’d drop by in ten minutes to pick me up for dinner. As usual, she was on time, and I climbed into the passenger seat of her unmarked, acting like I wasn’t hurting all over.

  “Thanks for driving,” I said as we wheeled away.

  “How’s your head?”

  “I’ll live.”

  “And the rest of you?”

  “Sore.” Then I added, “Hey, do you always drive this unmarked, or do you have a personal vehicle?”

  “The department lets me use it off duty. For personal things.”

  “Is that what this is tonight? Personal?”

  “Nice move, Mr. Black.”

  “I thought so,” I responded. “Sorry I didn’t bring flowers.”

  “That’s okay,” she said coyly. “I fully intend to stick you with the bill for dinner. I’m old-fashioned that way.”

  She told me we were going to an Italian eatery called Carmello’s, in the center of the old downtown section of Manitou. When she pulled into the parking lot I remembered the place. When I was a kid my parents took me to dinner there a few times. It used to be called Emile’s and was considered moderately fancy. I recalled that it had a kind of European café look inside. Never set foot inside again after my dad died. When I was in high school, it changed hands and was turned into Carmello’s. As we walked in the front door, it all came back to me. Maybe some new paint and woodwork, but the same faux Tuscan decor. Some things do stay the same after all.

  They showed us to an empty booth, and we ordered an antipasto salad big enough to split and a bigger pizza. I am usually particular about my pizza, at least when I have a choice and I’m not holed up late at night in a hotel. I’ve always believed that Little Italy in New York is tops, with Chicago second. I learned long ago it’s not the cheese that makes the difference; it’s the sauce. After that, maybe the crust, but definitely the sauce.

  We made small talk about my hospital stay and her schedule at the police department. The food came out quick, and Ashley dove in. I like a woman with a good appetite. For a skinny thing she really packed it away. The pizza was probably the third best one I had ever had. Maybe even the second. Of course it also could have been the company I was with.

  She ordered a bottle of wine. I had a glass. She had a lot more. At one point I noticed her hand shaking a bit, even before the wine.

  There were a thousand questions I had about the Bobby Budleigh murder case, but at that moment I wasn’t in a hurry to get into any of it. Instead, I asked her how long she had been a detective and whether she had found it hard breaking
into such a male-dominated field, especially in Manitou.

  “Yes, it was hard,” she said. “But I guess it was in my DNA.”

  “Your dad?”

  “Right. He was my hero. And he died that way too: as a hero.”

  Just then I felt my cell vibrating in my pocket. I didn’t want to be rude and answer it. But I had a feeling it might be important. “Excuse me,” I said. “I have to run to the boys’ room for a sec.”

  I started toward the men’s room. But I stopped. No, I was not going to bluff it with Ashley. I was going to be honest with her. No pretense. No shady stuff. That was the old Trevor Black. Things were different now. I was different.

  Instead, I turned and headed back to our booth. I don’t think Ashley had noticed that I turned around, because she had a pill bottle in her hand, and she shook out a little pill, then popped it in her mouth and washed it down with a gulp from her water glass. Then she looked up when I was almost at the booth, and our eyes locked, and when that happened, she quickly stashed the pill bottle in her purse.

  After dumping myself back into the booth across from her, I looked into her face, that slim, perfectly beautiful face that seemed way too pretty to belong to a police detective. A face that was marred only minimally, almost imperceptibly, by a single intriguing mark.

  I glanced at my cell, then said, “Truthfully, I really didn’t need to run to the men’s room. I got a call from a friend of mine back in New York. Dick Valentine. He’s with the NYPD. I didn’t want to take the call in front of you. Didn’t think that would look cool. The fact is, I care about what you think about me.”

  She looked at me closely and took a sip from her water glass. “Honesty?” she said. “That’s a refreshing change for an ex–criminal defense attorney. All right, let me reciprocate. Valentine is probably calling you because I called him. I wanted to get his take on your ‘consulting’ work for the police force. He said some good things about you. Then I pushed him about the weird stuff that you investigated. He hedged.”