Vengeance: A Reece Culver Thriller - Book 1 Read online

  His legs hurt like someone had hit it with a baseball bat. He felt a nagging pain in his right side that he worried might be more serious. Reece walked up the steps to the rental car, climbed in, and drove out of the parking lot, blending into traffic on Memorial Boulevard. He wanted nothing more than to put a few miles between himself and the crime scene he’d just departed.

  Yet he’d accomplished what he’d come for. The folder he’d dug out of the records box was lying on the passenger’s seat beside him. As he stopped at a traffic light he glanced down and saw that Tracey Roberts had used her aunt, Mary Ann Fletcher, for her emergency contact. After pulling his cellphone out, Reece flipped it open and dialed the number Crystal had given him when they’d parted ways.

  “Hello,” Crystal answered, sounding stressed.

  “Crystal, it’s Reece Culver.”

  “Oh, hi Reece, where are you?”

  “I’m in Tulsa. How’s your business trip going?”

  “Oh, it’s just the usual boring stuff,” she said. “How’s the investigation going, Reece? Have you found anything yet?” He thought about what had just happened, but thought better of telling her.

  “Crystal, do you remember the street you lived on back in St. Louis, before Tracey took you and your brother’s to Tulsa?”

  “Let me think. Calvert maybe?” Crystal said. “Yeah, that’s it. No, no, it’s Calvin Ave. Our house was on the left side of the street three houses down from the park with the big tree,” Crystal said. “I miss that place.”

  “Okay, Calvin Avenue. Do you remember anything else about it?”

  “No, not too much. It was a long time ago. Are you going there?”

  “Yeah, I’ve got an errand to run first, but I’ll probably head there tonight. When are you planning to be back in Denver?”

  “It depends how the meetings go, but I think I’ll probably be home Wednesday. I’d really like to see you, Reece,” she said. “That night in your apartment. The second time we met.”

  “Yeah,” he said, not sure where she was leading, but wanting to find out.

  “For a while there it seemed like something was happening,” she said.

  “Yeah?” Reece said, letting her talk.

  “Reece, I know you felt it too. Something was happening between us.”

  “Like some kind of connection?” Reece said.

  “More than that.”

  That purr she got in her voice was back again, and Reece couldn’t help feel stimulated, even though the phone. The entire mess he’d just been through slipped from his mind as he waited to hear more of that purr. But it didn’t take him long to realize she’d already hung up.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Crystal Thomas stepped from the curb into the cab, thankful the rain had stopped. George Kendall had let her skip their afternoon meetings with the Missouri federal attorney. He’d told her he would call when he returned to the hotel, so they could have dinner together.

  The inside of the taxi had the faint smell of cherry pipe tobacco. Crystal ran her hand over the smooth black vinyl back seat. She noticed the driver’s hair was gray on the sides and thinning with wisps of white on top. She wondered if her father Owen’s hair might look the same. He would be sixty or so about now, so he would have lost the thick brown hair she had patted with her small hand as a child. After the meeting today she felt conflicted, having hated him all these years for what she’d imagined he’d done to her mother.

  His compulsive gambling most likely ruined the marriage. The family as well. She thought of her brothers Julian and Wayne, and wondered where they were. Soon enough, though, her mind turned to more immediate circumstances. She had to watch out that someone in the investigation might connect her to her father, and suspect she was trying to sabotage the investigation.

  She felt the cab slow and come to a stop. They had arrived in front of her hotel. She smiled at the driver, handed him a fifty and said, “Keep the change.” The driver got out and opened her door.

  “If you need any more rides during your stay, here’s my card. You can reach me on my cell twenty-four hours a day.” Crystal took the card, looked at the name, and said. “Thanks, Charlie. You never know what I’ll need.”

  “Give me twenty minutes, and I’ll be here. I can take you anywhere you need to go,” the cab driver yelled as she walked toward the front entrance.

  The lobby was paneled in fine wood and a large clock on the wall near the entrance to a bar told her how much time she had to prepare for the sting she was planning. She took the elevator up to the third floor, and once she was inside her room she tossed off her long gray raincoat, and plopped down on the bed. She ran the back of her hand across the cold cotton pillow. The cool cloth felt good and reminded her of her mother’s soft skin. She remembered her mother holding her against her shoulder when she used to iron Owen’s dress shirts. Her mother was so kind and loving. Crystal had kept the letters she’d been receiving the past couple of weeks in her purse.

  The first taupe envelope she’d received looked like a wedding invitation. None of the letters had a return address and the postmark was always from a different city. Tears welled up in her eyes as she grabbed her purse and pulled the latest letter she’d received from the person she assumed was her mother. She wanted to be reunited with her more than anything. They had so much to catch up on.

  Crystal got up off the bed and went to the closet, wondering what to wear for dinner. She paged through the hangers, stopping to examine each piece of clothing. She passed by a green wool sweater, a pair of khaki slacks, a dark gray hooded sweatshirt, a beige collared satin top, and a short blue skirt. The satin top was a definite possibility. Was it conservative enough?

  Crystal reached into her suitcase and dug out her new Samsung smart phone. She scrolled through the numbers, found the one she was looking for, and pressed send. The phone rang twice and went to voicemail.

  “I’m sorry to bother you, Papa, but I need to talk,” Crystal said in a soft voice. She ended the call and, holding the phone, she remembered the starring role it was going to play tonight. She pressed the blue applications icon on the display. Scrolling through four pages of icons, she came to the one for the camera. With her index finger she tapped the tiny camera button and the viewfinder opened up, displaying the hotel room’s brown shag carpeting. Crystal held the phone sideways, aiming at the dresser mirror across from the bed. The image was clear and, with a little light, would be perfect. She pressed the gray camera symbol on the top right, and the mode changed to video.

  That’s what she wanted: a recording of her married boss engaged in sex with another woman.

  Crystal set the camera on the dresser across from the bed. To stabilize it, she propped it up with the Bible behind, and a Cosmopolitan magazine in front. She clicked the red button, and the phone chimed. The counter on the top right of the screen counted the seconds of video. Using her finger, she stopped the recording and played it back. Crystal tapped one of the four buttons on the bottom, put the phone into silent mode, and left it sitting sideways on the dresser. It was all ready for the fireworks display.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Reece drove east toward Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, eyeing the moisture-laden clouds that hung from the sky, in places hugging the ground. He had a vivid flash of the janitor splayed out on the cement floor and hoped he hadn’t died. He wondered who was trying to kill him.

  He’d caught a lucky break with the employment records from the hospital, and was hoping he’d be able to learn something from Tracey’s emergency contact, Mary Ann Fletcher. Reece held up the scrap of paper from the hospital and read off her address. He drove past an assortment of small well-kept yards. Spotting her address, he drove into the driveway in front of a beige house with red trim that was in need of a paint job. The small porch was covered with more than a week’s worth of yellowing newspapers and an assortment of white plastic trash bags. He didn’t care to guess what the trash bags contained, but figured it was dog poop.

/>   He pressed the doorbell, and heard its echo through the small single-story home. Reece took a deep breath, preparing himself, and the faint smell of mold came to him. He was pressing the bell a second time when he heard someone fumbling with the knob. It seemed like whoever was inside the home wasn’t exactly sure how to open the front door. An elderly woman with a nasal cannula shoved into her nostrils and threads of stiff white hair sticking out at odd angles from beneath a yellow scarf popped out. She stood staring at him with deep-set gray eyes as if he’d been the first to ring her bell in years.

  She began to look ill, and then a slow billow of smoke rose from the corners of her mouth. In the fingers of her vein-covered purple paw she held a long cigarette with two inches of ash about to drop at any moment.

  She brought the cigarette to her lips and sucked until the hollow parts of her cheeks drew in toward her mouth. The sight caused Reece’s throat to constrict, and made him feel like coughing.

  “What do you want?” the woman hollered in a voice louder than warranted.

  “Mrs. Fletcher, my name’s Reece Culver,” he said, holding out his private investigator’s license.

  “You’re from Colorado. What do you want with me?” she said, more observant than her physical demeanor indicated.

  “I’m investigating the disappearance of Tracey Roberts. She listed you as her emergency contact at the hospital in Tulsa,” Reece explained, hoping she’d invite him in. The woman stood looking at him, like she was trying to decide what to do next. She took another drag on the cigarette, and he watched the ash break off and drop onto the toe of his shoe. Finally, she retreated backwards into her home, waving him in.

  Most of the furniture was covered by dull yellow sheets with a thick covering of dust. The walls were decorated with brown striped wallpaper, and the air smelled like a mixture of cat urine, cigarettes, and something sweet that he couldn’t identify. The woman parked a green oxygen tank by a gold recliner covered in cat hair. As she slowly sat down, she displaced a small cloud of dander.

  “Take a seat, Culver,” she said, pointing to a matching recliner. Reece sat down amid a huge cloud of rising dust as he sank into the worn chair. He fought off a sneeze and realized the noise he’d heard when he’d first arrived was coming from a television set on its loudest volume. Noticing it at the same time, the woman dug the remote control out from under a stack of used cigarette packages and lowered the sound.

  “What was it you were looking for, Culver?” she asked in a sarcastic tone.

  “I’m working on a missing person’s case,” he answered. “I’m looking for Tracey Roberts.”

  “After all these years, why bother? If she’d wanted to be found, she would have called,” the woman said in an annoyed tone, blowing smoke from both nostrils. “Who’s turning that stone back over? Let me guess: it’s got to be Crystal.”

  “You know Crystal Thomas?” Reece asked.

  “Is that what she calls herself these days?” the woman asked. “That damn child never could let anything alone.”

  She took another deep drag of smoke. “That Crystal has had more men than I have cats. What’s that silly child looking for now?”

  “Did you spend much time with Crystal when she lived in Oklahoma?” he asked, getting the feeling that if he didn’t change the subject he was going to waste half a day listening to what she thought of Crystal.

  “No, not until she got into boys. She used to come for the weekend and stay with me. I liked her company at first,” the old woman said.

  “Did something happen to change your mind?”

  “She met a boy from another school. He was two years older than her, and I wondered what a sixteen-year-old boy would want with a fourteen-year-old. Of course, it didn’t take much imagination to figure that out. Crystal was one of those girls that developed early, like her mother. At least she didn’t get herself pregnant like Tracey did,” she said, adjusting the oxygen cannula in her nostrils and inhaling more smoke at the same time.

  Reece could feel his eyes starting to water and wasn’t sure if it was from cat hair, dust, or smoke.

  “Oprah’s on. You ever watch her? She’s great,” the old woman said. She picked up the remote and began increasing the television volume.

  “Can I see the room Crystal stayed in when she came to visit?” he asked.

  “Yeah, it’s that one down the hallway. Help yourself. It’s time for the show.”

  He walked down the hallway, passing an assortment of black and white photos, and idly wondered where the cats were hiding. He came to a door and reached for the handle.

  “Not that one. At the end of the hall,” the old lady shouted.

  Reece followed her directions and turned the brass knob of a light wood door. He walked in and looked around. The walls were pink, and a window at the top of a queen-sized bed was covered with yellow drapes. The walls were covered with an assortment of movie tickets, ribbons, and school photos. Reece studied them, and noticed how different the clothing back then looked. By the closet he saw a corkboard covered with pictures.

  Reece came upon an eight-by-ten photo of a woman with long red hair and bright blue eyes —was that Tracey Roberts? She held a small girl in her arms, and two older boys stood to one side. A man on the left had left a noticeable gap between himself and the others. He had a slight build with curly brown hair and a muted smile. The kids looked sad, but for some reason the mother looked proud. He was guessing the look was put on for whoever was taking the photo, and had nothing to do with how she felt.

  The picture was taken in front of a single-story house with green window trim and white siding. He guessed from the ages of the children that it had been taken in the mid eighties. The corkboard was filled with other photos of Crystal and her friends. In one photo she stood with a boy in an Edison High School football uniform. Reece guessed that was the boyfriend Mrs. Fletcher had mentioned earlier. Crystal was holding a football, and the boy had his arms around her and was kissing her on the cheek.

  He was looking at a bunch of old movie tickets stuffed into the edge of the frame when he spotted what looked like a Rolling Stones concert ticket. It looked older than the rest, and he doubted Crystal had gone to Rolling Stones concerts as a child. He plucked the ticket from the wood border, and read the date. It was from the November 1981 concert in St. Louis. He did some quick math, and confirmed this must have been a keepsake from one of her parents. Crystal wasn’t born until August of 1982.

  He stuffed the ticket into his pants pocket, and as he turned to go, he found Ann Fletcher standing a few steps behind him. How long had she been there?

  “I hope you aren’t taking things,” she said.

  “Mrs. Fletcher,” he said, trying to deflect her attention by pointing to a large group photo he’d seen earlier, “who are these people?”

  “That’s the family,” she said, walking up, bringing a trail of stale smoke-filled air with her. “That’s me and my husband Fred. That man there is Owen Roberts, Tracey’s husband.”

  “Do you remember what year the picture was taken?” Reece asked.

  “I’d guess 1985,” she said. “If I were you and I really wanted to find Tracey, I’d concentrate my energy on locating Owen. He’s the only person I can think of that would have something to gain.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  George Kendall walked into his hotel room, bothered by the name Owen Roberts. He’d been considering that last name since leaving the earlier meeting. Kendall sat on the bed and saw a row of pigeons on an adjacent roofline. Things hadn’t gone well for him in the afternoon meetings at the federal building in downtown St. Louis. Special Agent Stephen Cox had appointed himself lead and Kendall was pissed. It had been the Missouri federal attorney’s idea to include the FBI in their investigation, and now they were taking over the case. He was no longer sure he’d be the chief prosecutor.

  Kendall opened his laptop, and while waiting for it to boot up, he went to the bathroom for a glass of water. When the col
d water washed over the new crown in the back of his mouth, he made a funny face. He set the glass down a little too hard, enough to crack it.

  Returning to his laptop, he scrolled down a list of websites until he came to the Colorado Bureau of Investigation. He went through a series of login screens until he found the directories he was looking for. It had been standard protocol for the CBI to run an extended background check on all of the personnel working in his office. He scanned the entries until he found the original folder for Crystal, dated September 23, 2007. He opened the folder and clicked on her file, looking for the list of relatives she’d provided.

  He found the heading Birth Parents and read the names Tracey and Owen Roberts. He stared at the names, thinking back to the meeting he’d just come from with the FBI. How many men named Owen Roberts lived in St. Louis?

  *

  Crystal splashed water on her face and glanced down at the skimpy black thong she’d picked for dinner, knowing the task ahead would be easy. The collar of her blouse was slightly crooked, so she adjusted it, lining up the red silk edge just above the black lace of her bra. With both hands cupping the undersides of her breasts, she pushed up. She stuck her plump lips outward, puckering at the mirror, and applied one last coat of restless red. Staring at the full-length mirror on the back of the door, she looked down at her bare feet and then upward to her forehead, then squeezed her buttocks tight, pulling in her stomach. The skirt she’d laid out earlier was sitting on the bed.

  The phone rang, startling her.

  “Hello.”

  “Crystal, it’s George. I’m down in the Clock bar. Will you come join me for a drink?”

  “Oh, okay, I was reading a magazine, but I guess so, George,” Crystal said with simulated hesitation. “I’ll be down in a few minutes.”