Fatal Connections

Chapter 38

I made sure to write down the tag number before heading back home. Noting the license plate number reminded me that I had two others to check out. So I searched for identifying information for all three. Turned out the two cars behind The Void were owned by the same person—Mabel Forbes. The brown sedan's license plate number was the real oddball. I couldn't even find a listing.

I took a moment to sit still and close my eyes. The need to ignore reality felt overwhelming. My life was becoming increasingly surreal. To think that a week ago, I was a Marine with PTSD and an opioid addiction who was trying to make a living as an unlicensed private eye. Now, I'm still the same thing, but with a couple of dead clients, the cops suspecting me of murder, and a mystery man in a brown sedan who may or may not have some interest in me.

As to the mystery man's license plate, I thought at first that he might have altered the tag number. Then it occurred to me that he might have forged the thing. I imagined that someone could actually do that. After all, people are using 3D printing to do all sorts of things that were previously unimaginable.

As for Mabel Forbes, I could picture her being the owner of the joint. Or maybe married to the owner. I checked her address. The street had one of those goofy names that Columbia, Maryland, is mocked for. Columbia? I recalled the receipts from Columbia Mall belonging to Troy Fairchild. Could my bail skipper be hiding out with his strip club–owning girlfriend? And what was she into that involved the limber Mr. Adams?

I did another quick search in the state business records. After a bit of poking around, I confirmed that Mabel Forbes essentially owned The Void. Technically, under an LLC. But she was named as the principal. I searched Google maps and zoomed in on Mabel Forbes's house using Street View. The neighborhood looked like a typical Columbia residential neighborhood on any given weekday. Color-coordinated, nonconformist conformity, and empty of cars and people.

Now I could play this a few ways. I could go to the house on a pretense of some sort, gain access, and look for clues. Or I could do a bit of surveillance before I took that step. Troy Fairchild had evaded capture long enough to suggest he wouldn't be so dumb as to create a trail to his hiding place by setting up any accounts or do anything other than eating an occasional meal at Columbia Mall. But I had to at least perform a due diligence background check for any possible connections. After a good 15 or 20 minutes of this, I felt like I had run the databases dry. It was time to go old-school.

I had done enough work with the Marines to have developed something of a toolkit and some standard operating procedures. I had a wardrobe of low-cost costumes consisting of a clipboard, a lanyard with a card holder into which I can slip either my military ID or a fake (if I want to remain anonymous), a lab coat, a worker's uniform, and the chutzpah to make them all work for me. My good friend Terry Morris (or, as his oldest friends know him, Two-Bit Terry) had provided this bounty. How he did it, I didn't know or care.

And I figured on making an evening of it. So I would go prepared with a water bottle and a receptacle for when it came out the other end. Trust me when I say you don't want to know the details.

I finished up with my other work as quickly as I could. Columbia is only about twenty miles from where I live in Wheaton, but I hoped to reach Rt. 29 before the worst of the evening rush. I might have considered I-95 at one time, but commuter traffic had reached the point where you were screwed no matter which way you went. With my tools stashed in the car, all I had to do was grab my phone, shoulder bag, and case file. Before leaving, I fed Rocky his ration of peanuts.