Dying to Play by Mark Zubro

Author:Mark Zubro [Zubro, Mark]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: gay mystery
Publisher: MLR Press
Published: 2015-03-22T04:00:00+00:00

WEDNESDAY 12:56 P.M.

I called Murray and asked if he knew where Czobel had been staying. It was a carriage house not that far from my motel.

It’s not that hard to conceal yourself while breaking into a house on a quiet street on a hot July afternoon with huge trees carving out deep shadows in all the right places. I broke in. I was careful. I didn’t want to run into his dead body there either.

Czobel’s efficiency apartment on the second floor faced east. The space might as well have been a pharmacy. Czobel had enough meds to inject an entire baseball league, much less one guy. Two suitcases were filled with rows of pills, syringes, and vials of liquids. He had to be dealing, supplying, rum-running, something.

Was this evidence that he’d been collecting or was he a major drug runner or supplier? Where would he have hidden a tape? I assumed on a flash drive. If he was investigating, where were his notes?

I feared I might find his dead body, but the killer hadn’t put it here. Why hadn’t this place been tossed? Or were all these drugs even Czobel’s? Had the place been tossed and then this stuff planted here? I had no idea. If any of this last were true, it could indicate the killer was well organized and planned well.

Czobel had shaving gear, deodorant, toothpaste, toothbrush, and the normal detritus on a vanity in a bathroom. I tried to take them all apart searching for hidden caches but found nothing. I rummaged through a small mound of dirty clothes. Nothing.

I was careful not to leave fingerprints. I found no teddy bears or ceramic dolls stuffed with drugs or jewels. Plus, no books on an end table with the insides hollowed out.

I hunted for notes, his recorder/phone that I’d seen him with, or a laptop, but I found nothing.

I heard a downstairs door open and close and footsteps cross the hardwood floor with a care that suggested whoever it was, was someone trying to hide his presence. I had a half view of the stairs from just inside the door of Czobel’s apartment. I saw Albert Bordine peering around the doorway.

I eased myself out of the room. He heard the sound, looked up. I crossed the hall and started down the stairs. “What are you doing here?” he demanded before I was halfway down.

I waited until I descended to the ground floor and said, “That seems to be the question of the moment.”

“I…” he began, then stopped.

“Tell you what,” I said, “I’ll leave you alone so you can figure out what lie you want to tell.”

He stomped out. My level of suspicion increased about what the entourage was up to, what they knew, and when they knew it.

I went to the stadium and reported to Connor Knecht. When I told him Tim Czobel was dead he asked, “Who?”

“The reporter from TRUTHINSPORTS.COM.”

“There’s been no news about that. I haven’t heard anything. They’d have called me, told me.”

“Somebody took the body.

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