Chapter 13: Dead Men Tell No Tales

"Tell me again, Babe, how you escaped," Ranger asked as he drove toward Hamilton Township and the address that Connie had given Steph for Morty Moricolo. The sun was just rising; they wanted to find Morty before he began his workday.

"Well, the room had very little loose stuff or really anything that could be used as a weapon, but there was one old rickety wooden chair. Let me tell you, they made them really good in the old days. It took me a long time and a million splinters," she held up her right hand to show him the splinters still working their way out of her skin, "before I got one leg separated. It came away with the brace piece attached."

"Let me see your hand," Ranger said. He looked closely at her palm and then said, "Please let Bobby take care of these splinters. They could get infected." Steph pulled her hand away. "I'm serious, Babe. I'm going to ask Bobby to take a look at them." Steph rolled her eyes, but she wisely didn't say anything.

"So, you had a makeshift club," Ranger prompted.

Steph nodded. "I didn't know if I could do it, if I could hit him hard enough. You know, in cold blood. But I wasn't about to let them chain me up again. I picked Ski Mask Man because, even though he always carried a stun gun, he left the door open when he brought me breakfast." She ducked her head, remembering the other reason she'd decided not to try to escape from her other captor.

"I pretended to be sick and when he got close enough, I hit him. Then I took his stun gun and hit him with that. And then," Steph paused, "I took his shoes because my feet were freezing. I was so scared I just ran; I ran up the stairs and down the street. I kept running until I came to the library."

"What aren't you telling me?" Ranger asked.

"It's nothing."

"No secrets, Babe," he said, pulling her hand to his lips and touching his tongue to the many splinters still embedded in her skin.

Steph hemmed and hawed before she finally came clean. "I told you I was scared of being chained up again. Well, there was another reason I was scared. I stood up to him at the time, but one of my captors, Morty, not only threatened me with death, he threatened to ... rape me, dead or alive."

It was a full minute before Ranger spoke and when he did, it wasn't what Stephanie was expecting. "When we get to this address, you're going to stay in the car."

"Ranger, we agreed to do this together. And that means confronting Morty together."

"You can confront him after I've ... talked to him," Ranger said between clenched teeth.

"Will he still be able to answer my questions after you've ... talked to him?" she inquired, a definite note of doubt in her voice.

"I need just a few minutes alone with him, Babe."

"No," Steph said. "I let you confront Joyce alone because you were afraid I might try to kill her. And you were right. We are both going to see Morty. I'm serious about this, Ranger. I'm not about to let you do something that could jeopardize our soon-to-be-married life. I don't plan on visiting you in prison."

He didn't say anything.

"We do this together," Steph insisted. "Promise?" She got a barely perceptible dip of his head in response.

The address Connie had provided was an apartment building, nothing fancy. Morty had a ground floor corner apartment.

As they approached his door, Ranger whispered, "Stay off to the side so if he looks out the peephole, he doesn't see you." Steph nodded.

Ranger used his knuckles to give the door a sharp rap. They both stood silent, listening for movement inside. It sounded like the television was on low. Twenty seconds later, Ranger knocked on the door again. There was no response. He gave it another twenty seconds before he pounded his fist against the door and shouted, "Morty. Morty Moricolo." There was still no response, and they couldn't hear any sounds other than the TV coming from the apartment. Ranger reached into his inside jacket pocket and pulled out a set of small tools.

"Don't," Steph hissed. "That's breaking and entering."

Ranger crouched in front of the door, and ten seconds later he stood and slowly opened the door, shouting, "Morty?" The drone of the TV got a little louder as the door creaked fully open. That's when they saw him.

"That's him. That's Morty," Stephanie whispered. He was sitting in a recliner in the living room, staring at the TV, but only his side profile was visible from the open doorway.

Stephanie started to enter the apartment, but Ranger held her back. "We're not going in, Stephanie," he said in a hushed tone.

"Why not?" she asked.

"We don't want to contaminate the crime scene," Ranger informed her.

"What crime scene?" she asked, looking away from Ranger and into the apartment. "Morty," she said, her voice loud and clear. "Get your perverted ass over here."

"Babe, he can't hear you."

Steph peered in and looked closely. It was then she saw the trickle of blood on Morty's forehead, right under the small round hole. She looked toward the back of his head and immediately turned into Ranger's shoulder. She struggled not to be sick.

Suddenly, she popped her head up and stared at Ranger, eyes opened wide, along with her open mouth.

"No, I didn't," Ranger frowned, replying to her unspoken question. "Seems like Morty displeased his bosses when you escaped."

"That means Ski Mask Man is probably dead, too," she inferred. "No witnesses. Except me."

Ranger closed the door and then called in the dead body. He and Steph waited in the parking lot for the police to arrive. They answered questions for an hour, explaining that they'd found the door open, before Detective Bouchard allowed them to leave.

"Next stop's Joe, huh?" Steph looked over at Ranger. "It feels like I'm going backward, talking to Joe about Terry Gilman again. I don't know how many times I accused him of still seeing her when we were dating. He's not going to take this well."

"I think he'll take it better coming from you than from me," Ranger said. "You know he has a girlfriend, so maybe start with a pleasant conversation about her. You aren't feeling jealous of her, are you?"

Steph blew out a noisy puff of air. "Puh-leeeze," she said. "I stopped being jealous of Joe's girlfriends even before our final breakup. I knew it was over between us. I wasn't mad or jealous, just tired. But Terry hits all my buttons, maybe because she takes me all the way back to high school and what happened between Joe and me then."

"Do you want me to talk to Morelli?" Ranger offered.

She shook her head. "I need to put all that in the past. It's time I grew up," she said, taking a deep breath. "What's important today is finding my kidnapper. And Joe might know something that could help us with that."

She got a lot of stares as she marched down the precinct hallway toward the detective offices. She was a woman on a mission. No one approached or talked to her, but everyone knew who she was there to see. And no one wanted to be Joe Morelli.

Stephanie pushed open the door and strode in until she was standing over Morelli's desk, and hence, over Morelli.

Joe looked up from the folder of reports he'd been reading, a small noise of surprise emanating from his wide-open mouth. "What are you doing here, Stephanie? I thought Mañoso would have you tucked away in a safe house until your kidnapper is arrested."

"I don't have time for that. I need information," she told him.

"You need to talk to Detective Bouchard," he said. "He's in charge of your case."

"I've talked to Bouchard. Now I'm talking to you."

Joe leaned back in his chair and, with a sigh, asked, "What do you want, Cupcake?"

She cringed inwardly at the nickname, but held her tongue. "I hear you're dating someone."

Joe snorted. "That's what you want to talk about? My dating life? Shouldn't you be concentrating on Rambo's dating life? Or maybe setting a wedding date with him?"

Steph narrowed her eyes and thought about a snappy comeback, and then pulled back. She needed Joe's cooperation. "Ranger and I are fine. But, until the person who kidnapped me is caught, I can't think about getting married." She sat down in one of the chairs across from him. "I have a question that may sound odd, but just answer it, okay, Joe?" Steph said, cryptically.

"Okay, shoot," he replied.

"When was the last time you dated Terry?" she asked.

Joe looked shocked at her question, but he jumped out of his chair and shut his office door before answering. "Terry? Why do you want to know that?"

"Just answer the question."

Joe turned his head away from her, but he answered, "A few months ago."

"What?" Steph cried, obviously shocked. "You dated her after we broke up?"

"Yeah, but only for a few months. I guess like you and I finally realized that we weren't going to happen, I realized it was never going to happen between Terry and me."

"So, you broke up with her?" Steph asked.

"You might say that."

"Are you saying that?" she demanded to know. "Was she upset?"

A sheepish grin spread across Joe's face. "You could say that. We fought like cats and dogs. I thought she was going to sic her boys on me. And that was part of the problem. Her Mob connections and me working Vice. Not a match made in heaven."

Steph paused and then asked, "Did my name ever come up in any of your fights?"

"What do you think?" he said, sarcastically. "Yeah, you were a frequent topic of disagreement."

"Why? You and I were done and over with by then."

"Well, you may have been done with me, but ... I wasn't quite ready to call it quits with you."

"Joe..." Steph said, a slight whine in her voice.

"Don't worry. Once you and Rambo got engaged, I threw in the towel."

"But you and Terry fought about me?" she asked again.

"Why do you want to know all this?" Joe queried.

"Please, just answer me, Joe," Steph insisted. "What specifically did you and Terry fight about that concerned me?"

Joe blew out a deep breath. "If you and I had gotten married, we'd have lived the Burg life. You know, a bunch of kids, a house, Bob, the whole nine yards. Terry didn't want any of that, not even Bob."

"So, Terry might blame me for you two breaking up?"

"I don't know about that," Joe said. "You aren't thinking that Terry had anything to do with your abduction, are you? Because that's ridiculous."

"You don't think Terry's capable of something like that?" Steph asked.

Joe shrugged. "Terry can be pretty cold sometimes, but I don't see her wasting her time obsessing over you. After all, I've moved on. I'm seeing someone else now. If Terry were going to go after someone, she'd go after Alison. Alison and I are getting serious. She wants all the same things I do. She's perfect for me, even better than you." He grinned at Steph. "Her job doesn't involve psychos, and she said she'll be more than happy to quit it as soon I knock her up."

Steph rolled her eyes. Once again, she realized she'd made the right choice to dump him. Thank heaven for Ranger.

"Thanks, Joe," she said. "You've been very helpful." She stood up.

"Hey, that's it? No explanation? Aren't you going to tell me what the twenty questions was all about?"

"I just want to put Terry Gilman where she belongs—in the past, with all your other bimbos," she quipped, as she sauntered past Joe and out the door.