Hard Rock (A Hardboiled Private Investigator Mystery Series): John Rockne Mysteries 2 by Dani Amore Read Free Book Online Page A

fill.
    In addition to the wallet, there was three thousand dollars in cash and a .22 magnum auto with a silencer.  He grabbed the bag and a towel, took a long, hot shower.  His wounds were feeling better and he was careful not to let the shower spray reopen them.
    Afterward, he changed into his new clothes, unscrewed the silencer from the pistol and slipped it into a pocket of his jacket.  Next, he stuck the pistol down the back of his jeans and threw Klapper’s shirt into the wastebasket in the locker room bathroom.
    The remaining items in the duffel bag were three pay as you go cell phones with a charger.  He put two in the other pocket of his jacket and kept one in his hand. 
    He walked out to the lobby, found a chair with an outlet nearby, plugged in the charger and then plugged the charger cable into the phone.
    Once it had enough juice to power up, he dialed a number from memory.
    It was answered on the first ring.
    He smiled.
    Someone really wanted to talk to him.

 
     
     
     
     
    Chapter Thirteen
     
    “That’s all he said.”
    Amanda Collins shook her head.  “That he’d met someone. And Grosse Pointe didn’t seem as bad.  Which obviously led me to believe it was a Grosse Pointer he was talking about.”
    She finally looked up at me, and I could see the emotions waging war inside her.  But her face remained steady.  She wasn’t going to cry like she almost had back at her home in Birmingham.
    The next question was very difficult to ask, but I had no choice.
    “Did you get a feeling if the person was male or female?”
    She actually gasped lightly at the intrusiveness of the question.  But the fact was there had been a lot of speculation about Benjamin’s sexual orientation.  The young man had very few friends and a totally ambiguous social presence, so no one could determine his orientation.  The night of his murder, his killer had adopted a very effeminate affectation.  Had it meant anything?  No one knew.
    Amanda recovered immediately from my query.  She had to know that knowing the gender of a murder victim’s possible love interest was very important to the case.
    “I was about to ask why that mattered, but then I realized why you asked,” she said. “But the answer is no.  I don’t know. Benjamin and I never talked specifically about his private life.  And we certainly didn’t talk about mine.  I can honestly say I don’t know.”
    I believed her.
    Unfortunately, while the information was intriguing, it really didn’t get me anywhere.  It was too incomplete.
    “Anything else you can think of?” I asked.
    Amanda shook her head, drained the last of her beer and handed me the empty. 
    “Another?” I asked.  She shook her head.  “I really have to be going.  I’m not sure if what I told you was much of a help.”
    “It could potentially be a huge help,” I said.  “But we need to know more.”
    “I know.  The problem is I don’t know anything more.  Which is why I never told the police about it.  I figured it wouldn’t do any good on its own and I had nothing else to add.  But I figured with you, if new information was coming in.  Maybe you could make sense of it.  Or connect it to something else.”
    She got to her feet.
    “I hope I can,” I said.  “I’m not going to stop now.”
    “If I think of anything else I’ll call you,” she said.
    “Thank you for stopping by. It…” I stumbled a little bit for the right words but she saved me.
    “It’s okay. I just want to make the person…”  She seemed to lose the thought.  “I just don’t want them to get away with it.  It’s just not right.”
    She turned and walked out of the office, closing the door behind her.
    I waited a minute or two, then collected the empties, put them in recycling and locked up the office.
    Sometimes I walked home from the office, seeing as how it was less than a mile away.  But now I felt like driving so I went to the Taurus, fired it up, and drove down to