Chapter 4
Outside Joe's room Fenton went immediately to the payphone opposite the door without acknowledging Con who was still waiting. He tapped in Frank's apartment number. It rang out and the answering machine kicked in. He left an urgent message for Frank to contact him, disconnected, and punched in his cell phone number. He replaced the handset a few seconds later with a shake of the head when it went dead after one ring. He turned and locked eyes with Con, but then intuitively picked up again and rang Joe's houseboat, the answering machine for that also began whirring so he left the same message and hung up, a little too heavy-handedly.
"Con, I need to find my son." he said, clearly frustrated. "I should never have shouted at him."
"The Doc just told me that the surgery is going to take a minimum of three hours," Con said, "why don't we take a trip out and visit some of Frank's most likely haunts?"
"I'm not sure I want to leave."
Con raised his hands. "Hey, Joe's not going anywhere, and he's protected. Frank's out there and isn't."
Fenton was clearly torn, looking from Joe's room to the phone.
Con ran his tongue along his front teeth. "Okay, look," he turned to the uniformed officer still standing outside the door, "this is Officer Anderson, he's going to be keeping watch. I've ordered that they ensure there's a guard posted at all times, I didn't like that comment Joe made to you about his assailants coming back for him and Frank."
"What if he comes out of surgery quicker than planned?"
"Then give Joe's girl a call and have her come over!"
"You've got an answer for everything haven't you?" Fenton grumbled. "All right, I'll give Vanessa a call. I promised Joe I would, anyway."
He returned to the phone and had to think hard to remember her telephone number before ringing it. It was picked up by Andrea, her mother, who recognised the urgency in Fenton's tone and had her daughter come quickly. "Hello Van, Honey, listen carefully, don't panic, but something has happened to Joe…" he explained as gently as possible.
"She was near enough out the door before I'd finished!" Fenton recounted to Con afterwards. "She's a fine girl."
"Frank's place first?" Con suggested.
"It's the most likely starting point," Fenton agreed.
Con offered the keys to Fenton when they reached his car, but he waved them away, "Drive, would you Con? I'm going to phone Frank's friends on the way, now that I can use my cell phone."
He put in his first call to Chet Morton. "Hey Chet. It's Mr Hardy…yes, sorry I got you out of bed. Have you seen Frank at all?…Well, if you do, can you do something for me? Can you let me know he's with you without letting on, and stall him until I get there?…Yes, text me or something….yes, I know, but I wouldn't ask if it wasn't important….thanks Chet."
He put in calls to Frank's other friends, including Biff Hooper and Tony Prito, even though they were now living out of state and even Frank's ex-girlfriend, Callie Shaw who was barely back from her honeymoon. None of them had come into contact with Frank that evening. He left the same request with each.
"No luck?" Con asked.
"Absolutely none."
Con pulled his own phone from his pocket. "I'm going to do something I should have done earlier." He said and dialled. "Hello, It's Lieutenant Con Riley, I want a general APB put out for the following car…" he went on to give the make, model, colour and tag number of Frank's convertible. "I want this car found pronto and the driver detained – don't ask "on what charges?" anything, tell him he ran a red light or something! All hands on deck please and phone me on this number if you get any leads," he terminated the call and shoved his mobile back into his pocket. "I've been meaning to ask, how did you locate Joe? He was in a pretty out of the way place."
Fenton looked sideways at his friend. "I listened in on the police bandwidth and picked up on a call for a squad car to go and have a look along that stretch of road. Joe passed in front of someone's car when he was running for cover and they phoned it in."
Con laughed. "I hope Chief Collig doesn't find out."
"Well, if he does, I'll be asking him why an officer never did come looking. The first time I saw an emergency vehicle was when the ambulance turned up, if Joe had been relying on your guys, he'd have been left wanting."
Con's brows furrowed. "That's mighty strange. They're obliged to come out to every emergency call. I'll be asking questions myself when I get back to the station house. Here we are," he said, pulling into the curb outside Frank's apartment building.
"No sign of Frank's car," Fenton was the first to observe.
"In the parking bays underneath?" Con suggested.
They went down into the belly of the building to investigate Frank's usual parking spot, but it was empty. They then rode the elevator to the fourth floor and stepped out to face Frank's door.
"The lights are on inside." Con observed.
Fenton rapped loudly on the door. "Frank?" he called, "Come on Son, open up, we need to talk."
There was movement from inside, but no one came to answer.
Fenton looked annoyed. "Come on Frank, this is stupid." He turned the handle fully expecting it to be locked, but it pushed open and the chain wasn't on. He started in surprise. Con caught sight of something in the hall mirror and was immediately reaching to his waist for his gun while shoving Fenton down into a crouch. There was a pop-pop noise and the glass window in the middle of the elevator door exploded into shards of glass – right at the same height their heads had been seconds earlier.
One of the neighbours stuck her head around the door to see what was going on. "Go back into your apartment, lock the door and phone the police!" Con shouted, causing the face to quickly disappear.
Without losing sight of the door, Fenton reached up and hit the elevator call button. It was still thankfully waiting on the their floor and was working. So they both simply backed themselves into it and stayed low while they rode it down to the ground floor.
When the door slid open, they could already hear sirens approaching.
"I hope Frank wasn't in there! Joe wasn't kidding, these people are good. That was a silencer."
Con nodded grimly and headed for the front doors and out, "And the gunman was aiming using the reflection in the hall mirror, not straight at us – and he was still dead on target." He turned and looked up at the building. "I've been here a couple of times, but I'm not sure which one is Frank's place."
"That one," said Fenton, pointing to a corner apartment. "No lights on now. Wait…what's that on the balcony rail?"
Con squinted and shielded his eyes from the lamplight. "I think it's a…" he took a couple of steps further forward, "Yes, it's a grapple hook. You can see the rope hanging down." They both stepped back under the building's overhang and ran around the outside towards where the rope was dangling. Before they could reach it, however, a darkly dressed figure dropped lightly to the ground behind them and sprinted away. Too late, they both noticed what was happening, but the person was already going between two buildings across the street, so they knew there was little point in following.
They entered the building again, two police officers jogging up behind them.
Con turned to address them. "Call for back-up and have the building searched. Shots have been fired in 4B. Send some people up to the apartment as well and treat it as a crime scene – that means the door taped up and a full sweep of the apartment for latents. You know the drill. This is related to the shooting earlier tonight. Don't forget the roof and be on your guard."
"Yessir."
Fenton and Con rode the elevator up to the third floor this time, and exited to take the stairs up to Frank's apartment. They drew their firearms as they came through the fire escape door and kept their backs to the wall until they reached Frank's door. It was still ajar, the inside in blackness.
With his back still to the wall, Con called out "Armed police, come out with your hands raised!"
They waited and listened intently. No sounds were detectable, so Fenton slid his arm carefully around the door opening without exposing his body and flicked the light switch. The entrance flooded with light and the first thing Con did was to look at the mirror, which, because the front room door was fully opened, appeared to show that the apartment was clear. He could see the blinds at the balcony window had been drawn fully across and the door had been slid wide open.
"Come on," muttered Con and they both entered, quickly checking the bedroom, study and bathroom and lastly, the front room. Whoever had been in the property had definitely fled the arena.
After ensuring they were safe, they went straight out onto the balcony to take a look at the grapple hook.
"That's pretty nifty." Fenton conceded, raising the rope to ensure no one could take the opportunity to climb back up. "Bet they didn't leave any fingerprints behind either."
Con returned to the front room. "Oh Fenton, you really need to have a word with your eldest about his house keeping!" he said.
The apartment had been turned over. Belongings were strewn everywhere, anything made of cloth was slashed open. Frank's new flat-screen HD TV had been lifted down off the wall, and the shelf holding his DVD, video and other equipment pulled out on top. No stone appeared to have been left unturned.
"What a mess." Fenton agreed.
"I hope he's got insurance – and a lot of it!"
"Obviously looking for something."
"Looking for Frank?"
"Con…given that my son is 6'1 in bare feet, I don't think he would be able to hide in a cushion! No, they were looking for somethingnot someone."
"Any idea what?"
"Nope."
They went back through to the spare bedroom, which was home to Frank's little study. Without touching anything, Fenton bent to look at Frank's computer. The back of the tower system had been jimmied away.
"Thought so," said Fenton, "the hard-drive has been removed, and it would appear that all his CDs and disks have gone as well."
The crime scene investigators entered the apartment with various apparatus, nodding at Con and Fenton as they passed through to the front of the building, looking into the other rooms as they went. One peeled off and began to pin yellow tape across the entrance.
"Is there anything else missing?" Con asked. "Like, for instance, did Frank come back and get clothes? A suitcase perhaps?"
"You think he might be planning on making his disappearance a little more permanent?" Fenton was stunned by the implication. "I hadn't considered that."
Con shrugged his shoulders. "It's a possibility."
"Well, he keeps his passport at the office, so we'll have to check that later." Fenton went through to the bedroom and approached the open and trashed closet. "It's hard to say if anything's gone, with everything in a pile, but nothing looks absent that would suggest my boy is planning to disappear. In fact, there's his other winter jacket. He would have definitely taken that if he'd come back. He left the other one with me and Joe, remember."
Con's phone began to ring in his pocket. He fished it deftly out and pressed the green button. "Lieutenant Riley..." he said introducing himself, paused to listen and then looked sharply across at Fenton. "Where?…No, don't do that, I don't want him spooked. Leave it with me. Good work Officer Bach." He slowly disconnected the call and then addressed his friend. "They've found the car."
"Where is it?"
"Not far from Joe's place, close to the marina. Let's move, I ordered my officers to stand down so we can corner Frank ourselves."