Right then the woman, who still hadn’t given her name, turned a card of a man lying facedown with ten swords in his back. She glanced at him and then at the card again. She then turned one that didn’t need any explaining. It was the card for death.
She hesitated for a minute or two before sharing her thoughts.
None of which were good. She didn’t refer to Cosmo but to a stage in his life that was coming to an end. She saw great pain and suffering. By the expression on her face as she closed her eyes, Jack wished he had exited earlier. He was struggling, as it was, to remain positive. She brought the cards together and walked over to the kitchen sink and laid them down. There she gripped the edge of the counter and stared out.
“What did you see?” he asked.
“I think it’s time you leave,” she replied without looking at him.
Jack wasn’t going to argue. The chair screeched as he pushed it back. He thanked her and wished her well and headed for the door. Just as he was about to exit she spoke his name, “Jack.”
“Yeah?”
“You can’t control the path laid out for you without altering the path for others. Just know that both will come at great cost. You just need to decide what matters more.”
Jack frowned, nodded and exited letting her words linger in the back of his mind. As he left the building he removed his leather jacket and offered it to someone who was homeless on the street in exchange for a baseball hat, sunglasses, and a light brown hooded rain jacket with a hole in its pocket. It stank of vomit, cigarettes and alcohol but it made it far easier to blend into the crowd. Even after forty minutes in her apartment, cops were still present in the streets. He crossed a road and melted into the crowd while cops stopped people resembling his description and questioned them.
“And I’ve told you for the second time. We can’t help you. Had I known you were from the media I wouldn’t have even told you about his property.”
“But were you aware that he had ties to the mob?” Kelly asked Chief Wilkerson.
“No.”
“Surely that will affect how you move forward with the investigation?” Zach said. “It’s information like that which could really help. For all we know this Jack guy may have murdered Dana and buried her in a shallow grave. Have you thought about that? Just give us a snapshot of what he looks like, we’ll handle it from there.”
Zach was acting like he was some kind of private detective.
They were in the lobby of the station talking through the glass barrier. It was very impersonal but the cops had made it clear from the get-go that they weren’t going to help them. Kelly had gone in hoping to ride the wave of her sob story on Dana’s family member having died but Zach was too impatient and thought flashing his card from the Chronicle would carry some weight. It didn’t. It only got their backs up.
“It’s time to leave before we escort you out. And if I hear you have been harassing any of the locals in town, you’ll regret it. Now on your way,” Wilkerson said.
“Real nice!” Zach said. “You know my taxes pay your wages.”
“You’re from a different state.”
“Now you’re splitting hairs,” he replied.
Kelly pulled Zach away, otherwise he would have continued arguing and they would have found themselves thrown into a cell under some bogus charge. Outside Zach wanted to go back and file a formal complaint but Kelly managed to get him to see sense. “You’ll only piss them off. Forget it. Let’s head to the computer store before it closes and hope to God that has something.”
Zach groaned. “No face. No number for the person he visited out of state. We have shit to go on, Armstrong, and believe me, Johnson isn’t going to accept that half-assed draft article of yours. That thing had better be ready to go to print when you hand it in, otherwise don’t bother.” He shook his head and looked back at the police department.
The computer store was on Colorado Avenue. Two tech heads in their late twenties ran it, both looked like they’d graduated from some tiki bar in Hawaii or California. They had long hair, goatees and threw out a lot of surfer or pothead lingo. Their website spouted how they could rescue 98 percent of hard drives that had suffered from water or fire damage or they would give your money back. Whether or not it was true was still to be determined.
“We need to face the fact, Kelly, that there is a good chance we’re not going to find anything on him or her. Johnson will keep us on a short leash if he thinks we don’t have anything. Look, I want to get to the truth but instead of running around let’s just make up the truth. Isn’t that what we’ve always done? Give the people what they want, give Johnson what he needs, and we come off the heroes. It’s a win-win situation.”
“For you,” Kelly said as they crossed the road. A truck honked its horn and Zach flipped the driver the bird.
“And you,” he quickly replied catching up with her.
She pushed into the store area and approached the counter, striking the shiny silver bell to alert the staff. The smell of weed was thick in the air, and the odor only got stronger as a kid emerged from the back with a head visor magnifier. It made one of his eyes look larger than the other. He flipped it up. “Hey,” he
