Abducted: A Jake Badger Mystery Thriller Read online

  The one I found had to do with a college that had hired Monica to investigate sexual harassment charges. This had been a year and a half ago. Evidently, one of the professors, a guy name Jonathan Cary, who had just received tenure, had been accused of sexual harassment by two of his female students. According to the young women, Cary had suggested that he could guarantee them an A in the course in exchange for sexual favors. There was evidence that the charges were true. Evidently other young women, when interviewed by Monica, told a similar story. The professor was fired. He'd been very angry, accusing Monica of manufacturing evidence, extorting testimony, and so forth. This had ruined his career and he vowed revenge.

  Bingo. Candidate number one.

  Alex found candidate number two in one of Monica's computer files. This one was more recent, eight weeks ago, and I knew about the case. Monica had been working on the recovery of a stolen Andy Warhol painting valued at ninety million dollars. The thieves wanted to ransom it for a paltry ten million. The insurance company had hired Monica to handle the exchange. They offered her ten thousand for the job. She, however, wanted to recover the painting and collect the ten percent recovery fee. She had asked me to provide backup during the recovery, which the bad guys, Edward Benson, James Benson, and Richard Colette, thought was simply an exchange. They made the mistake of underestimating her. Happens a lot when guys get a look at her. During the recovery, two of the thieves were shot and killed—Richard Colette by me, Edward Benson by Monica. Edward was James' older brother. James saw Monica shoot Edward. James vowed he’d get her. He was in prison, but his cousin, Kyle Dell, had just been released three weeks ago from the same prison where James would be spending the next ten years. According the file, Monica had been monitoring the situation and was aware of the Kyle's recent release.

  I needed to talk to Kyle Dell as well as Jonathan Cary.

  Chapter 3

  Monday Afternoon

  By the time we had current addresses for Cary and Dell it was noon.

  Alex said, “There's still several hours of work to do here. I'll have her computer and her hard files sent over to our office and assign a couple of agents to go through everything. Want me to come with you?”

  “Actually,” I said, “I'd feel better if you stick with Monica's files. With your eye for details, you're less likely to overlook something that could be important.”

  He studied me for a brief moment. “Okay, I can do that.”

  “Thank you.”

  Just as I was turning to leave, Alex's cell rang. I waited.

  “Watson,” Alex said, when he answered. Unless it was a call from me or his sister Susan, he always answered with his last name.

  He listened and then said, “Okay. Keep me updated.”

  He clicked off and looked at me. “The blood on the floor was not Monica's. Monica is O positive. The blood on the floor is A positive.”

  I nodded. “She got in a shot,” I said.

  “What do you think happened?”

  “She was probably in the shower and two or three guys came in.”

  “Why two or three?”

  “Because one guy, unless he was very good, couldn't take her. There were at least two, maybe three. They underestimated her because she's a woman. Probably distracted by her body. She was getting out of the shower or drying off. They weren't looking at the right parts.”

  “The right parts?”

  “Her hands, elbows, knees, or feet. They were probably looking at her breasts. She got in a shot. Probably to a nose. May have done other damage that didn't result in blood flow. Somehow they eventually contained her, knocked her out or stunned her, got some clothes on her and carried her out.”

  “Without anyone seeing,” Alex said.

  “Probably just a little after six a.m. Wouldn't be that hard. Couple of guys put some jeans on her and a shirt and carried her out between them.”

  Alex nodded. “Plausible.” Then, studying me another moment, he said, “You sure you don't want me to go with you?”

  “I'm sure,” I said. “The FBI doesn't need any negative press related to brutality charges.”

  “That's exactly why I need to go with you.”

  I understood his concern. I'm not easily angered. But when I do get angry, I don't always control it well. That was the reason I quit cage fighting. But I'm aware of the problem and I'm working on it.

  “I'll be fine,” I said. “I'll feel more confident if you stick with her files.”

  “All right. Will you call me after you talk to each of them?”

  “Sure.”

  The information I had on Jonathan Cary said he was forty-seven years old and had a Ph.D. in history from UCLA. He had taught at West Coast University, a small private university where he had just achieved tenure when the charges of sexual harassment were made against him. His salary had been one hundred and one thousand dollars a year. Now he made thirty-two thousand dollars a year as the assistant manager of Cheap Books, in Camarillo, part of an up and coming national bookstore chain. He had been married, living in a three thousand square foot home in Agoura Hills. Now he was divorced and lived in a one bedroom apartment in Oxnard. His wife ended up with their assets, he ended up with their liabilities. Jonathan Cary would be an angry man. How angry?

  Traffic on the 101 had been slow in spots and it took me a little over an hour to make the forty-eight mile drive. All I could think of during the drive was the last time I’d seen Monica—Sunday night as she’d walked to her car. She’d waved to me as she’d driven away. I kept seeing her face as she waved to me. She’d smiled. Her whole face lit up when she smiled. But mostly it was her eyes. Those green eyes, against her ivory skin, framed by her red hair: mesmerizing. She could communicate more with her eyes than most people could with a whole paragraph of words. She’d said the words, I love you. But it had meant more when she’d said it with her eyes.

  It was a little before one thirty when I got to the Cheap Books store where Cary worked. I went to the help desk and asked the sloppy overweight nerd manning the desk if I could talk to Jonathan Cary. He told me Monday was Jonathan's day off. He'd be in the store tomorrow. I thanked him and headed off to Cary's apartment in Oxnard.

  Cary's apartment was about as far away from the ocean as you can be and still be in Oxnard. The complex looked like it might have been built in the nineteen seventies. Over the years there had been some attempts at maintenance, but none recently. His apartment was number one eighteen.

  I found his door and knocked. A guy with tired gray eyes who looked to be in his early fifties opened the door. He was barefoot, wore a pair of blue shorts and a green tee shirt that said, life is a terminal disease for which there is no cure. His recently acquired outlook on life, perhaps. He was maybe five-ten, one seventy.

  “Yeah?” he said.

  “Jonathan Cary?”

  “Yeah.”

  I handed him my card, which he read while I said, “I'm Jake Badger. I need to ask you some questions. May I come in?”

  “What does my ex-wife want now?”

  “Not about your ex-wife. This is about Monica Nolan.”

  “What does that bitch want?” He growled. “She cost me ...”

  I shot a sharp, fast jab into the middle of his face, knocking him on the floor of his messy apartment. Blood spurted from his nose.

  “Ahhh ...” he moaned, putting his hands to his face. Blood began to seep through his fingers.

  I stepped inside, kicked his legs out of the way and closed the door behind me.

  “Monica Nolan is not a bitch,” I said, standing over him.

  “Yeah, yeah,” he said, the words muffled by his hands. “I'm sorry, okay. I didn't mean that. Okay? All right? Don't hit me again.”

  I stood over him a moment and then said, “Get up and go wash your face.”

  He got up and went to the kitchen sink. I stood near a small dinette table in the eating area next to the kitchen. Once the bleeding had subsided to a slow trickle, I said, “Co
me over here and sit down.”

  He brought a wet towel to hold under his nose and sat down. I sat opposite him.

  “I'm going to ask you some questions,” I said. “And you're going to answer them honestly and without commentary. Understand?”

  “Yes.”

  He was in pain, but he wasn't afraid. Interesting.

  “Where were you this morning between five and eight a.m.?”

  “Here, in bed.”

  “Can anyone confirm that?”

  “My girl friend.”

  “What's her name?”

  “Lisa.”

  “Lisa what?”

  “Lisa Mendez.”

  “Where's Lisa now?”

  “At work.”

  “Where's she work?”

  “At the post office.”

  “Here in Oxnard?”

  “Yeah. What's this about? Why do you want to know where I was?”

  “Monica Nolan was abducted.”

  “And you think I had something to do with it?”

  “You threatened to get even with her for exposing you. You're obviously still angry with her.”

  “You bet I am. She cost me everything I had.”

  “Your own stupidity cost you everything you had,” I said.

  “Those girls were screwing half the guys on campus for nothing but the fun of doing it. I offered them a grade for the same thing they were giving away. And for that everything I had achieved is taken from me?”

  “Pretty much, yeah. And you're blaming Monica for it.”

  “I didn't have anything to do with her being kidnapped.”

  I studied his eyes. Eyes told the truth more often than tongues.

  His eyes held mine for a moment before he said, “I told you, I was here. Go ask Lisa. I didn't have anything to do with her being taken.”

  “You could have paid someone else to grab her.”

  He sighed, as if indulging a stupid proposition. He may have lost his tenured professorship, but he still had the attitude of the Ph.D. “If I had any money, I could have, theoretically, at least. But I don't have any money. My ex-wife has all of it. I was not in any way connected with Ms. Nolan’s kidnapping. I had nothing to do with it. Why would I?”

  “Revenge.”

  “Revenge? And then what? Kill her? Because she was the investigator who interviewed a bunch a little whores who got me fired? Gimme a break. I'm not a killer.”

  “Why'd you call her a bitch?”

  “Because she enjoyed what she did to me. She said I was a moral degenerate and a slime ball. Those little whores were on their backs or their knees more than they were on their feet and she lectures me about being a moral degenerate? She had no right to judge me like that.”

  I didn't like him. I wanted to hit him again. The thing was, I was beginning to think that he hadn’t had anything to do with Monica being taken. I did need to talk with Lisa Mendez, though.

  “Go wash your face again,” I said. “Put some shoes on.”

  “Why?”

  “We're going to see Lisa.”

  I didn't want to have a phone conversation with her. I wanted to talk with her in person. I wanted to look her in the eye. If I left Jonathan in the apartment while I went to see her, he could call and tell her what to say. So I walked him out to my Jeep and we drove to the post office.

  I walked Cary into the post office. There were two people working the counter. Only one of them, an old skinny guy with thinning gray hair, had a customer. The other was a chunky Latina in her late twenties.

  Cary and I approached the counter. When she saw him, she gasped and said, “Jon, what happened?”

  I said, “He ran into an object that was harder than his face.” Then I asked, “Where was Jon this morning between five and eight a.m.?”

  “Who are you?” she asked.

  I kept my voice down but hard. “Right now I'm a guy asking you a simple question and you should answer it.”

  Her eyes went to Jon's. He nodded.

  Bringing her eyes back to mine, she said, “He was home. With me.”

  “He make or get any phone calls?”

  “No.”

  “Text or email?”

  “No.”

  Her eyes held on to mine. She was telling the truth.

  I nodded. “Thank you,” I said. Then, to Cary I said, “Come on, slime ball. I'll take you home.”

  Chapter 4

  Monday Afternoon

  Dell was living in El Monte, just over seventy-five miles from Oxnard. It would take an hour and fifteen or twenty minutes, maybe more, to get there depending on the freeway. I hadn't eaten yet, so I drove through a McDonalds and got a couple of cheeseburgers and a Diet Coke to eat on the way. Once I was on the 101, I called Alex.

  “I don't think Cary had anything to do with it,” I said.

  “How is he?” Alex asked.

  “He's fine. His nose bled a little, but it's not broken.”

  “You old softy.”

  “I'm on my way to see Dell now,” I said. “You find anything else?”

  “Most of the work Monica did was less exciting than your work has been over the past few years. Low key stuff. Not much that would generate this kind of a thing. But you already know that.”

  “And yet she's been taken.”

  “And yet,” Alex said.

  “So where else do we look?” I asked.

  “Maybe go further back.”

  “To when she was an MP?” I asked.

  “Otherwise there's not much to look at.”

  “You think the army's going to cooperate with the FBI.”

  “That's the hard part,” Alex said. “They're going to want to protect the identity and rights of their personnel.”

  “Even the ones who got arrested?”

  “Especially the ones who got arrested,” Alex said.

  “Of course,” I said. “So, you gonna start on that angle while I interview Dell?”

  “Sure.”

  “Okay, I’ll call later.” I started to disconnect.

  “Hey,” Alex said.

  “Yeah?”

  “Don't hurt him, okay?”

  I thought about Monica the whole way. I remembered the first time I’d met her. She was doing a job for my father’s law firm in Santa Monica. She had just retired from the army where she’d been an MP for eight years. She’d come to L.A. and opened a detective agency. She had contacted the law offices in the area and offered her services at half price. My father had offered me a job that I’d turned down, so he contacted Monica and offered the job to her. It was a divorce case that involved some investigation into the husband’s financial affairs. Monica took the job. I happened to be visiting my father at his office one day when Monica came in with her findings. My father introduced us. She was stunning: five eleven, one-thirty, lustrous, shoulder-length red hair, expressive green eyes you could get lost in, very large breasts—Ds at least, and a small waist. Her teeth were straight; her nose was perfect. Wow. She had a firm handshake that she held a moment longer than she needed to, a strong voice, and a confident manner. I liked her. Not in a romantic way, though. At the time, I was still in love with Elaine. But I liked Monica, and not just because of her looks. She was smart and kind and capable. We became good friends. That’s all, though, just friends, for almost three years. And then I’d learned the truth about Elaine. That opened the door for Monica, a door she’d been waiting to step through. And when I let her in, she came all the way in. I loved her completely. And someone had taken her. Maybe it was Kyle Dell. If he had, he’d be sorry.

  Kyle Dell lived in an old house in El Monte on a street of old houses. The neighborhood probably dated back to the nineteen fifties. The small houses, less than a thousand square feet, were built on small lots. Each came with a one-car garage. Dell was living in a yellow one with white trim. Number thirty-six-twenty-seven. I parked on the street, went to the door, and knocked. The tattooed guy who answered the door was six-four or five and weighed
close to three hundred pounds. His arms were massive; his head was shaved. He wore Levi’s and a Levi’s vest, no shirt. From the look on his face he was not happy about being disturbed. Either that or he was severely constipated.

  “Kyle Dell?”

  “Who wants to know?” he asked, in a gravely voice.

  I handed him my card and explained.

  “Talk about what?” he asked.

  “Can I come in?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  He started to close the door. Before he could get it closed, I drove a viscous punch into his large, protruding beer belly. The punch drove him back a couple of steps and doubled him over. I was surprised he didn't go down. I followed him in and closed the door behind me. He straightened up and looked at me in a way that made it clear that this interview was going to go very differently than the one I had earlier with Cary.

  He came at me open and flailing, like big guys usually do who depend on size and strength, instead of fighting skills. He took a big looping swing. I ducked under it, slipped to my left, and put a hard left into his kidney. The punch pushed him into the door I had just closed. I stepped behind him. He turned and came at me again. I kicked him in the groin. He doubled over, his hands moving to cradle his injured manhood. I put a hard right into his jaw, which spun him to his left and put him on the floor, out. It also sent a lightening bolt of pain shooting through the right side of my chest. The wound from the bullet that had nearly killed me was not entirely healed yet. I fought to control the pain.

  When I turned, a naked girl was standing in the door to the bedroom. Her concerned eyes went from me to the motionless hulk on the floor and back to me again.

  “He's fine,” I said, reassuringly. “He'll wake up in a while. Put something on and come out here and sit down.”

  I waited. She did what she was told, putting on a red silk robe and sitting in a chair opposite the sofa. I crossed the neat, clean room to the sofa and sat down.