Without Malice (The Without Series Book 1) Page 7

  Now she didn’t know who she could trust. Her assailant was either a civilian or a correctional officer. It wasn’t easy to loiter in the parking lot without detection.

  Who was so concerned about what Frankie knew?

  Not Walt, she thought frantically. Please not Walt Steiner.

  Whoever was threatening her, clearly she was no longer safe at Pelican Bay.

  Twenty minutes later at her remote house in Crescent City, Frankie slumped limply against the front door. Henry Fader’s medical file had scared her, but the attack in the parking lot had been terrifying. Her first thought was flight.

  She needed to take personal leave and contacted the assistant warden immediately. She was sorry for such late notification, she claimed, but her aunt had just been diagnosed with stage four Hodgkin’s lymphoma. After giving a vivid, if false, account of the aunt’s prognosis, she was granted time off, a week, possibly longer.

  Three hours after her shift had ended, she was packed and on the road to Bigler County, where Cole Hansen had been paroled to. Ironically, Rosedale was where she’d gone to high school. If she found Cole Hansen – hopefully alive – she might get some answers about the bizarre note he’d bequeathed her. And why she was in danger.

  She didn’t dare return to the prison.

  Chapter 22

  The parole office was empty after hours. Cruz was finishing up on paperwork at his desk when a knock diverted his attention. He glanced up to see a woman standing in the open doorway, her hand lifted to knock again.

  Damn, he’d thought the front door was locked.

  “Are you lost?” he asked.

  He took in her clean but worn jeans and plain jacket tossed over a white shirt. He wondered if she was one of his. She looked the part, clothes rumpled and hair dishelved, but her face didn’t have the uncertainty of someone who’d just gotten out of jail or lived on the street very long.

  He tried again, clearing his throat. “Can I help you?” He glanced pointedly from the leather-strapped watch on his wrist to the mound of paperwork on his desk.

  The woman suddenly turned, as if in a daze, to examine the empty lounge behind her.

  Damn, he was always a sucker for a damsel in distress.

  Frowning, she looked troubled, as if she didn’t know how she’d gotten here. “I’m looking for someone.”

  Cruz eyed the loose hair and worn Doc Martens. She was tall for a woman, slender beneath the loose-fitted jacket incongruously wrapped with a cheerful scarf around the neck.

  “A parolee, or – ” she continued, “or someone in charge?”

  He saw now that she clutched a set of car keys in the hand that dangled at her side. Not a parolee, then. They never had cars, at least not ones they actually owned.

  She held herself formally, like a school teacher trying to detect a lie on a student’s face. Cruz refrained from squirming under her stern look by rising and sweeping a negligent hand at the molded plastic chair in front of his desk.

  He wondered idly what she meant by “someone in charge.”

  “I guess I’ll do as well as anyone.” He half rose and extended his hand across the desk, but she’d already sat down, looking around her in mild interest. Feeling awkward, he stumbled over his words as he sat down. “I’m Santiago Cruz, one of the parole officers for Bigler County.”

  The woman perched on the edge of the chair, her fingers twined on her lap, her eyes downward, the tiny frown between her eyebrows telling him she was struggling with words. He noticed the pallor of her face, the dark smudges beneath her eyes.

  Cruz held back a smile. He’d never had a drop-dead gorgeous woman come looking for a parolee before. Her dark shiny hair swirled around her face, tiny threads of gold and copper glinting through the dark curls.

  “It’s always good to start at the beginning,” he offered. “Who’s the parolee you’re looking for?”

  She raised her eyes and met his steadily across the desk, revealing striking gray eyes fringed with thick, short black lashes. Under her scrutiny, he glanced down at the folder in front of him, tapped it to indicate he had something important to attend to.

  Those arresting eyes followed his fingers as if the monotonous tap-tapping hypnotized her. “Cole Hansen. He was just paroled from Pelican Bay. Do you know him?”

  Cruz swiveled to the gray filing cabinet behind his desk and extracted a file. He angled the folder so she couldn’t see the contents and recognized the photo immediately. Cole Hansen, the beaten-down man who’d just registered with him this morning. He closed the file and looked directly at her.

  “I might know him,” he said, “but I’d have to understand what business you have with him.” He shrugged with a small lift of his shoulders. “Confidentiality issues.” He smiled, curious about why a woman like her would want to find a man like Cole Hansen.

  She returned his smile with a wide, bright one of her own as if to acknowledge that he had her there. “I ... knew Cole at the prison,” she began tentatively. “He gave me a message, but, uh, was discharged before I could talk to him.” She leaned urgently across the desk. “I just want to make sure he’s all right.”

  Cruz shook his head. “Why wouldn’t he be? He hasn’t been on parole long enough to get into trouble.” He lifted his eyebrows in question. “Unless you know something I don’t.”

  She frowned again, the tiny line marring the smooth beauty of her skin. “No, probably not. It’s just that ... well, everything happened so fast, and then he was gone.” She examined her blunt fingernails at the end of sturdy well-formed hands. “Do you have an address – or a phone number for him?” A pleading note entered her voice. “Please, I really need to find him.”

  Cruz opened the folder again, knowing the answer already. Cole Hansen was going to be living on the street, which didn’t bode well for any kind of successful rehabilitation. He shook his head. “Sorry. He checked in, but doesn’t have an address yet.”

  He took another careful look at her, knowing the answer before he asked it. “Are you a relative?”

  She sighed in resignation and rose, reaching for a card in her jacket pocket. “No, I’m not. I’m just a – a friend. If you hear from him, will you contact me?”

  She handed over a business card, with a hand-written cell phone number on the back, and turned toward the door. The front of the card bore the state seal, and the information, “Frankie Jones, MD, Pelican Bay State Prison, Crescent City, California.

  Cruz suddenly remembered Hansen’s words about “the doc.”

  What the hell?

  When he looked up again, however, Dr. Frankie Jones had already gone.

  Chapter 23

  Frankie sat in her car outside the Rosedale Police Station, weighing her options. The parking lot was brightly lighted and in a relatively new part of the city, a safe part of town. Across the street were recently-built condominiums. A quarter mile away, upper-middle-class homes that were constructed about fifteen years ago, looked attractive and pricey.

  Lifting her hands off the steering wheel, she realized she’d been clutching it so hard that indentation marks showed on her palms.

  What should she do? Go in and file a complaint – or drive the long, unwelcome trip back to Crescent City? She’d have to return home sooner or later for her belongings, and now it seemed safer there, even so close to the prison, than in Rosedale.

  If she entered the police station, what kind of complaint could she file? Without evidence the police would laugh her out of the precinct. She had no evidence, just a shadowy, creepy, gut instinct that someone was following her.

  Had been following her since her visit to the parole officer earlier today. What was his name, something-or-other Cruz? She’d driven circuitously around the city, trying to determine if someone was actually tailing her.

  Her first clue to being stalked was the car, distinctive because of its non-monochromatic paint job. As if someone had begun the task with a bright metallic red and finished up with a dull gray – or stopped p
ainting altogether. The car’s muffler was noisy and distinctive.

  She’d caught a good look at the two men inside the car. She’d been around felons long enough to recognize them easily. From their look, they were gang bangers, which explained the noisy muffler and incomplete paint job.

  After a few more twists and turns, she’d pulled into a Walmart parking lot and idled her Toyota’s engine. She didn’t see the car. Ten minutes later, she pulled out of the lot and into a McDonald’s drive through. When she arrived at her motel, however, she spied the same car driving past on Vernon Street.

  Damn! She unsuccessfully tried to convince herself she was being paranoid, but her practical mind wasn’t buying it.

  Instead of returning to the motel, she’d gathered her things and checked out by phone. She’d driven to the police station, eating her dinner while sitting indecisively behind the wheel. She could think of only one sensible, safe thing to do if she didn’t go into the precinct and file a claim.

  “Walt,” she said when he picked up his phone. “It’s Frankie.”

  “Hey, why a no-show on the lunch date?” he joked, his voice sounding tinny over the connection.

  She paused and took a sip of soda. “I had a problem. Sorry, but I had to go to – ”

  “What’s wrong?” He interrupted her, hearing the fear and uncertainty in her voice.

  She blew out a heavy breath of frustration. “Nothing. I just couldn’t make lunch.”

  “What’s wrong?” Walt repeated, harsher this time. “Are you in some kind of trouble?”

  Frankie looked around at the police parking lot, nearly empty of cars. “Maybe,” she ventured. “I had to drive to – ”

  “Not on the phone,” Walt interrupted again. “Get to a safe house. You know what I mean,” he emphasized assuredly. His voice sounded calm and steady, and her nerves settled. “A safe house. I’ll come to you,” he promised.

  The connection went dead.

  Twenty minutes later Frankie pulled into the driveway of her old house on Bridgeford Avenue in Rosedale. The security pad code on the garage door still worked and she drove inside, parking her Toyota beside the old family car, a 1983 Impala, a classic now, she supposed. The door from the garage into the laundry room was unlocked, same as always.

  The house had the musty scent of unused linen and stale air. Even though she had a cleaning service come twice a month, and a lawn service weekly, she couldn’t believe vandals or teenagers hadn’t broken in to camp out or party in the abandoned house. Or that her aunt hadn’t tried to sell it for the equity. But, no, it looked much like it had the fateful night of her Homecoming Dance over a dozen years ago.

  Rummaging through her bag, she found sweats and a tee shirt to change into. She made up a bed on the couch. She couldn’t stand sleeping in either her old bedroom or her parents’ room. Opening a package of Top Ramen she’d brought with her, she settled into a family room arm chair, worrying what to do next.

  She wouldn’t sit helplessly and wait for Walt to swoop in and save her. Again. She would stay here tonight and tomorrow she’d go back to see that parole officer – the Cruz guy. Insist that he give her information about Cole Hansen. Or help her find him.

  That was his job, wasn’t it?

  Cole had answers to her questions. All the trouble had started with him.

  Going back to Crescent City without knowing what the note he’d given her meant, or why he’d given it to her, was an admission of defeat. He considered himself in danger. Had he involved her in the same danger just by passing her the indecipherable note?

  And what in hell did it all mean?

  Chapter 24

  Feet propped on the coffee table in front of him, a whiskey shot glass in his right hand, he tried to remember how he’d gotten himself in so deep. If he’d known it would come to this when he started, he’d have – have what? Not started? He didn’t think so.

  Didn’t every man gamble a little here and there? Golf rounds, football pools.

  Give it up completely? Maybe. He sipped at the whiskey and stared at the muted television screen. That wouldn’t help the dilemma he was in now, though.

  The Moktu Indian Gaming Casino, he decided. That’s where the real trouble had begun.

  It was fun and games at first, playing the dollar machines, swilling booze, getting a little high. Then he’d moved up to the five-dollar slots. Roulette and poker next.

  He’d worked his way into the private poker games in a flash. The buy-in was a thousand bucks. He remembered thinking vaguely what a big chunk of change that was for a man in his profession, but he’d gotten this primo condominium from his parents. He’d shrugged off caution and taken out a large mortgage on the property.

  The condo paid off, he figured he could handle a second mortgage.

  Later, he cashed out his 401K.

  Most of the time he’d won big at gambling, and the temptation sucked him in like an industrial vacuum. The casino opened a line of credit for him, long before he’d needed to use it. A temptation he couldn’t resist. Five thousand, then twenty, then a hundred grand. By the time his head had cleared, he owed Moktu Casino nearly two-hundred fifty thousand dollars.

  Even then he hadn’t panicked. Not until the reality of owing over a quarter million G’s to a bunch of Indians, probably backed by mobsters, hit him like a ton of bricks.

  Holy fuck!

  Another mortgage on the condo, now almost under water, 401K depleted, his finances a ruin. No way he could afford to live in this neighborhood on his salary. He was in debt to the casino so deep he didn’t know how to get out, and he knew it would only get worse. The only solution was to run, a sure way to get killed.

  So what had he done instead?

  He’d laid low, making piddly-ass payments once in a while, just enough to keep the bone-breakers away from the door. All the time knowing a huge day of reckoning was just around the corner.

  Like a little kid, he pretended that if he ignored them long enough, his problems or debts would go away. They hadn’t, of course. The long arm of retribution had finally reached out.

  They came to him brutally – three of them, although the ugly giant would’ve been threat enough – and the knowledge of his vulnerability washed over him like a summer monsoon – without warning and very lethal. A drenching flood of dread that could only end in him dead and lying at the bottom of the ocean.

  Not to worry, though, they had a proposition for him.

  “A mutually beneficial proposition,” the ham-fisted brute with the broken nose and squinty eyes explained happily. The thug was a walking cliché, but it fit him like a glove, a brass-knuckles-encased glove.

  After the debt-ridden man had sworn off gambling forever, explained he’d never enter the doors of Moktu again – cajoled, begged, almost cried – the giant continued calmly, “You want to make this right.”

  You need to make this right, the brute had emphasized, unnerstand? He jabbed a thick finger in the air.

  “My Boss is the debtor, you’re the debtee.” He leaned close and grinned as if he’d said something clever.

  The man was pretty sure those weren’t the right words, but he had no intention of arguing with a six-foot-six gargantuan with a nasty face and even nastier breath. Plus, the giant had explained, the debtee was in a unique position to give them what they wanted in lieu of the cash owed.

  Maybe take a year or two, but it could be done. An acceptable arrangement for both sides. Wasn’t he lucky the Boss was so accommodating?

  Just to be sure the gambler understood their plans for him and the repercussions if he reneged on the deal, the thug had calmly explained what would happen to his body if he didn’t cooperate. Every bloody slice and specific blow to his weak flesh and puny muscles. It ain’t pretty, the thug declared with a wry smile but ... He lifted both muscled shoulders and let the threat hang ominously.

  Fucking animals!

  Fingers or thumbs, they’d said – you’ll get a choice what to lose when the tim
e comes – if you screw us over.

  But first ... a little something so you don’t forget.

  The man swirled the whiskey around in his glass, calm now that the slick, smooth liquor and the oxys had taken off the edge of fear and pain. Briefly contemplated how costly disappearing would be – just getting the hell out of Dodge.

  But where to? With the 401K wiped out and the condo mortgaged to the hilt, did it really matter what the cost was? He didn’t have any of it.

  However, the situation wasn’t intolerable. He was perfectly capable of doing what Moktu Casino – the mobsters – asked of him. He had the knowledge, the skill, and certainly the guts for it.

  He scratched his jaw, thinking about the how and the who and the where of such a project. It was risky, but doable.

  Placing the whiskey glass on the end table, he held up his left hand, palm inward and wiggled the splint on his broken ring finger, their reminder of his debt.

  Chapter 25

  Cruz waited another day before driving to Rosedale and talking to Angie Hunt at Jesus Saves about his recently-paroled client. Predictably, Cole Hansen hadn’t reached out to Angie, and no one had seen him hanging around the Washington Street area. It was early, though. He had almost a week before his parole could be violated.

  Angie didn’t look well. Her flesh was a dusty gray color, like a burlap bag filled with potatoes and clinging with the dirt from harvest. Cruz knew she worried about her “boys,” as she called them. She was one of those people who’d been through hell, come out the other side, and wanted to pass what she’d learned to others.

  Cruz tapped on the office door and slung his long frame into a wooden chair in front of her desk. “What’s up, Angie?” Misunderstanding her depression, he tried to assure her. “You don’t need to worry about the backpack. The police won’t hassle you about it. Sergei, now that might be another matter.”