A New Dawn Ch. 08

"Fire away."

"First, have you done any cleaning or thrown anything away?"

"Oh, no. That's not my job. We have people for that. My job was to figure out if they'd really flown the coop."

"Good. Second, would you have any objections to us doing a fairly thorough search of this cabin? I mean, looking in all the cabinets, drawers, waste cans, the garage, and so forth?"

Mark rubbed his chin as he thought about it. "Weeeeelllll... that couple deserves their privacy and all. And I don't know why you'd want to..." His face lit up. "Of course! You want to make sure there's nothing that would threaten the security of your bigwig!"

Meyer gave a slight nod as if Mark had tumbled onto the answer.

"Help yourself. I got nothing but time tonight. Poker game got cancelled and wife's out of town. And nothing to steal here now." He reached into his coat and Buddy tensed again.

Mark pulled out a cigar.

"I don't need to follow you folks around. We usually show cabins during the day, but hell, this started out weird already. I'll just go out to the front porch and smoke this thing while I finish going over the paperwork. Take your time."

"Any chance you've got another one of those cigars?" Buddy said. "I'll be happy to pay you for it."

"Hell, son, these things are cheap as dirt." He reached in and pulled out the little box of little cigars. "Help yourself. I got a lighter."

Smart, Buddy. Rear guard is rear guard.

When they'd left, we began.

I activated my comm. "Dawn, we're going to be awhile here. There's no action, but we have the opportunity to fully search the cabin. See if you can talk Kimmy into going home with you. I'd really rather have her as far from this fucking place as possible and watched by three people I trust."

"Alright, dammit, I'll go," Kimmy said.

What the hell? There was a pause.

"I'm sorry Johnny, I was showing her how it worked and why she couldn't see it on me and... bad timing," Dawn said. "I copy that we're off for home."

"Roger, wilco!" I heard in the background.

This kid was going to be a handful while we had her. Never mind how we were going to handle what we were going to do with her over the long term.

I sent Meyer out to question Mark about the identities of the "couple" who had leased the cabin, including whether he had anything that could positively identify them and find clues that could lead us to their current whereabouts. Meanwhile, Jen and I searched the cabin. There wasn't a lot to find. The place was obviously fully furnished, including pots and pans and stereos and TVs and WiFi Internet. Some "cabin." They'd apparently done a good job of taking all of their own belongings.

"Something," I said from the bedroom closet. Jen joined me and I handed her one of those thingies that the airlines put on your luggage to let the computers move it to the right plane.

"Ronald Coleman," she read. She smirked at me. "Probably not THE Ronald Coleman."

"And maybe Ronald Coleman wasn't one of the recent inhabitants of the cabin," I said. "Still, it's the only thing I've found. They apparently even bagged up the trash from the can outside."

We kept at it.

"Something," Jen said. I went to her.

She pointed to a notepad on a desk blotter. It was blank. I looked closer and saw indentations.

"You're kidding," I said. "The old pencil trick?"

"Works in the novels," she said.

I hugged her. "That was smart. It might be nothing, but it was still smart as hell."

She smiled up at me.

And those two things were the only two damned things we'd found. Had we been real cops we'd have had a forensics team here with us, fingerprinting the hell out of the place, checking for DNA evidence, and so forth. But we weren't real cops, and we couldn't afford to involve LAPD at this point because then that organization would be party to whatever we were going to do. Still...

I called the chief and explained where we were.

"Do you think you have enough to go on?" he said.

"Very thin," I said. "We have an airline luggage tag with a name on it. We have a phone number and an address on a note pad. Either could have been left by someone other than the last occupants. We'll soon have copies of the paperwork signed by the couple that leased this place. So far, that's it."

Silence for a while, then: "Run with what you have, Johnny. I appreciate your keeping the department clean for now. Among other things, if you didn't it would seriously limit your options. Anyway, that place has got to be lousy with fingerprints and tying a set we can match to the crime would be... well, I don't have to tell you. On the other hand, if we could do a match and then Kimmy could identify him as one of the... bastards in question..."

I thought about it. I really, really didn't want to put Kimmy in that position. On the other hand, if we ran dry it might be the only way to get at least one of the... bastards."

"Your call, Sir," I said. "I want these guys, but I also want to protect Kimmy - emotionally as well as physically."

"Run with what you have, then. Keep me informed, please," and he hung up.

---

Amazingly, we were able to get the paperwork that had been completed for the cabin lease. As the leasing business owner, a short slightly plump brunette woman named Marty Johnson had explained, leases were not public records. And it could bite her in the ass civilly if it came out that she'd shared her paperwork with me. But she was pissed that they'd run off without notification and without telling her that she could rent the property again. And she was hoping for a new lessee.

Also, I schmoozed her.

"So," she said, "basically you're concerned that they caught wind that your, um, client was after that particular cabin."

"Basically," I said.

"And how would they have known that?"

"Well, our client doesn't have the tightest lips in Los Angeles. Others know that he was planning to lease a cabin here."

"And this is one of the biggest and best we have, is that it?"

"Kind of."

"And you security people need to lock absolutely everything down, right?"

"Right."

She took a sip of Bourbon. "I called the LAPD on you," she said. "Because you told me that you were a cop there. You got rave reviews."

The process for answering such calls had been set up when we went to work for the chief.

"You know, if you were still a cop, you'd need a warrant to coerce these papers from me."

"I know," I said.

"But I like you. Swear to me that this will never come back to bite me in the ass."

"I swear."

She stood up. "Okay, I'll trust you. I'm going to make the copies myself because I don't want anyone to know what I'm doing." She started to walk out, then turned back to me.

"Oh, Mr. Rand?"

"Yes?"

She smiled. "You can personally bite me in the ass if you wish to." She walked out.

Oh, man... Two things I knew. I was not going to bite her in the ass.

And I was going to lease her cabin for three months. It was the least I could do.

---

What we couldn't do was directly expose the LAPD with a link to whatever black shit we might be doing. What we COULD do was use their resources. Which we did.

The luggage tag was traced to a home in Beverly Hills that actually did belong to a Ronald Coleman. The phone number and address were traced to a couple in Silver Lake, neither of whose names were a match for those on the lease papers. Perhaps not surprisingly.

We held a team meeting.

"The luggage thingy was for a trip from DFW to LAX," Meyer said. "Which likely was a return trip - likely, because he owns a home in Beverly Hills. And Kimmy said that there was a couple in the cabin who only watched. That could be our mystery Silver Lake couple. The question is, how to nail it down."

"She needs to see them," Buddy said.

"Right," I said, "and that's not going to happen in person."

"So... surveillance?" Jen said.

Jay said, "Shouldn't be too hard for trained detectives to get good pictures, right?"

"We'll have to do it all ourselves. You can't hire this out. If you do, and then you whack them, it'll come back on you," Christine said. She'd bought in 100% to the "Wrath of the Gods" intent in some of the cases we took on.

"Then that's what we'll do," I said.

And we did.

---

"That's them!" Kimmy screamed. "That's them! How did you find them?"

"We have our ways," I said as I pulled the picture of the couple back over to my side of the coffee table. "I told you, we are going to get these people. That's the couple that watched and made drinks?"

"That's them," she said.

"You're sure?"

She stared at me, and I felt stupid again.

She stood up, came to me, and crawled into my lap. There were a couple of "Awws" from the women in the assembled group.

"I have another picture to show you, Kimmy, and I'm sorry I have to," I said, and I pulled out the best one of Ronald Coleman.

She went rigid in my arms. She tried to speak but it came out in a series of grunts and stutters. I felt warmth on my legs and realized that she had just peed herself. She started crying.

Proof enough for me.

I picked her up and motioned for Mary Beth to follow me to the bathroom. Mary Beth's face was set in a war mask as she walked with me.

"Get them," she said.

"Oh, yeah," I said.

---

The assault on Ronald Coleman's house would not be carried out by officers of the law, nor by members of Rand and Associates. It would be carried out by a single employee of Federal Express. Ostensibly an employee of Federal Express, that is.

I felt silly in the uniform. When I rang the doorbell, "Ronald" answered. I held the thin FedEx envelope up and said, "I need a signature, please," and handed him the fake mini computer. When he took it, I shoved my .45 into his throat and backwalked him into the house and kicked the door shut.

"Who else is here, tell me fast, and tell me the fucking truth," I said. "Because I'm really pissed at you, and I have a lot of backup."

He pissed his pants.

"That's the second time that's happened to me in as many days, and both times were because of you. I'm sick of it, and I'm sick of you, and you really need to give me a reason not to just shoot your sorry ass right now."

"I... I... I don't know what this is about or why you're doing this!"

"Well, golly. Let's start with how you fucked a kidnapped 13 year-old girl in Lake Arrowhead."

The blood drained from his face. His legs buckled and he sat down hard on the ceramic tile.

"I didn't know she was only 13," he said, which pretty much sealed it for him. I pointed the gun at his face.

"And when she said, 'No, please no,' did you understand that part?"

He actually started to cry.

"I thought it was play acting. I paid a lot of money to get just the right scenario set up, and I thought they'd done so."

"I knew she was too young for that shit when I picked her up, naked, running away from an atrocity, bloody feet and all. Which means you knew. Which means that's what you wanted, and you didn't care how you got it."

I pressed the gun against his forehead.

"No, please! I'll go with you, I'll serve my time for whatever I've done."

"I'm not the cops, asshole. You'll pay right now."

He threw up on me. Between that and the urine smell, I figured I'd need to change clothes before I went home. With my free hand I pulled out a picture of Kimmy.

"This little girl," I said. "You raped this little girl. Say it with me now, 'I raped a little girl.'"

His lips trembled. I shoved the .45 harder into his forehead.

"I... I raped a little girl."

"Good," I said. "That's very good. You have one chance at this. One. Tell me who the other men were."

His eyes flew open wide. "But I don't know! I swear I don't know. We were just summoned there for..."

"An opportunity?" I said.

"Yes, exactly," he said. "I swear. We give them our desires... which in my case was only for someone who looked young and would act defiant," he said quickly. "And they accommodate us."

The doorbell rang. I kept my gun leveled on his head and got up and answered it. The rest of my crew entered, guns drawn and pointed at Coleman. I walked back to him and pressed my pistol against his lips.

"And... who are 'they'?"

---

With what we got from Mr. Coleman, we were able to hand everything over to the LAPD. The wall between us was safe because hey, we were just a private security firm that had tipped onto something that seemed seedy and had investigated it.

And we hadn't killed anybody. Much as we'd wanted to.

Coleman spilled his contacts with the couple in question, and it jibed with the phone number and address that had been written down on the notepad that Jen had found. They were in custody. They hadn't sung yet about any other connections, but the chief was rubbing his hands in anticipation.

There'd been a second DNA match, and a second rapist had been locked up.

My crew was basking in the warmth of a job well done.

My girls were happy that we'd all come out of it safe and had gotten at least some of it back for Kimmy.

Kimmy. We'd gotten together a little conclave to discuss the issue.

"What are we going to do about Kimmy," I said over drinks. Kimmy was fast asleep upstairs.

"Keep her!" Dawn said. "She's adorable and she needs our help."

"We don't have any legal ability to do that," Christine said. "At all."

"Plus," I said, "she apparently thinks I'm her daddy. I'm neither ready nor equipped for that."

Cindy Morrison gazed at me for a moment.

"As someone who has become a second father to my daughter, and who I've learned to trust in that trust, I think you'd do fine."

"This is not a question of 'Okay, I'll watch her for a week or two. This is a question of how to raise a 13-year-old girl and all that that means. The commitment it means. And everything that goes along with that. I care for this girl, and she's intelligent and hurt and I want to do everything I can for her, but..."

"Do you want to keep her, Johnny?" Dawn said. "Do you want to make life as good as you can for her?"

"You don't play fair," I said.

"Do you, Johnny?" Jay said.

"Yes," I said.

"Well then do it!" Kimmy came running down the stairs and flung herself onto me. I oof'd. The girls laughed at me.

I hugged Kimmy and rubbed her back and then pushed her a little way back from me.

"There are a few complications," I said.

"You mean how you like to be naked all the time?" she said. "Been there, seen that. Next?"

I thought about how or whether to bring up..."

"Or how you sleep with all of these women?"

Fuck.

"I'm not stupid. In fact, I'm highly intelligent. I've seen you kiss all three... and how you've kissed them. I've seen the huge bed in your master bedroom. It doesn't take Hercule Poirot to know what's going on."

"I..."

"I know exactly what happened to me, Johnny. And I know that you would never do it. And that you would do whatever you had to do to protect me from it. And I know that Dawn, Jay, and Mary Beth are with you because they want to be with you, not because of anything else. And that's the way it's supposed to be. And for God's sake, who's going to be there to keep me safe if it's not you?"

It took me a long time to figure out what to say. I started.

"This is going to take some discussion, and it could take some time, and..."

"Shut up," Mary Beth said. "We're keeping her."

"Right," Dawn said.

"Right," Mary Beth said.

"But..."

"Shut up," Cindy said. "Kimmy, tomorrow I want to introduce you to my daughter, who knows absolutely everything there is to know about the redoubtable Johnny Rand."

"Cool," Kimmy said.

I looked at each of them in turn.

"So I have nothing to say or do in this matter?"

"Well," said Dawn. "You could get the adoption paperwork started."