Robert B. Parker's Bye Bye Baby by Ace Atkins

Author:Ace Atkins [Atkins, Ace]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Mystery & Detective, General, Private Investigators, Traditional
ISBN: 9780593328514
Google: jKZPEAAAQBAJ
Amazon: B08XNCFVQP
Goodreads: 57238524
Publisher: G.P. Putnam's Sons
Published: 2022-01-11T06:00:00+00:00

30

I trailed the Nissan truck up and over the Mystic River, and deep into Malden. Thirty minutes after leaving Porter Square, the truck parked beside a ramshackle two-story house in a ramshackle neighborhood filled with liquor stores, greasy spoons, and corner groceries.

I passed the house, doubled back, and parked at a gas station across Highland Avenue.

I filled up with gas and coffee before moving Susan’s car to a lot beside a nearby garage where I could do my job without being seen. The coffee tasted as if it had been made fresh in the last week or two. But I drank it anyway.

I waited only ten or fifteen minutes before another truck pulled up and parked behind the Nissan. It was a brand-new Chevrolet with a camper top over the bed and big mag wheels. Two men dressed in jeans and dark T-shirts crawled out and hopped to the ground. From the distance, they looked nearly identical. A little under six feet, white, with dark hair. One had a beard. The other was scruffy-faced. Both wore sunglasses and walked with a bulge against their right hip.

Five minutes later, a dirty white Ford Explorer drove up and parked along the street. A white man in his fifties or sixties with a white mustache/goatee combo walked up the front steps and headed inside. He had on a khaki-colored sport coat with a bulky object under his right arm. He had the walk and demeanor of a cop.

I’d stumbled upon either a suspicious gathering or a well-armed surprise party.

Out of habit, I speed-dialed Mattie Sullivan.

“I thought we agreed not to talk until I finished studying for the police exam?” Mattie said.

“Are you studying?”

“I’m watching some stupid shit on TV.”

“Can you do me a favor?”

I’d noted the address and all three license plates.

“You know you can do that from your phone?”

“True,” I said. “But the text is really small. And you’re much faster.”

“You forgot your glasses?” she said. “Didn’t you?”

Out of pride, not dishonesty, I did not reply.

“Okay,” she said. “Whaddya got?”

I told her. Twenty seconds later, she gave me the name of the property owner, Cole H. Buckley. He was thirty-eight, with a possible criminal record.

“I’m shocked.”

“You know this police test isn’t as easy as when you took it.”

“When I took it, you had to work by firelight on the cave walls,” I said.

“For fuck’s sake,” she said. “Hold on.”

I held on. Mattie inhaled a long breath and let out a low whistle.

“Is that the equivalent to me shouting ‘Eureka’?”

“Cole Buckley is a real creep,” she said. “Ag assault. Ag assault. Attempted murder. Felon in possession of a weapon. Silver Nissan Frontier registered to him. Give me the other plate numbers.”

I gave her the plate numbers for the other three cars. She wrote them down and promised to get right back to me. Being a dogged and curious sleuth, I looked up Cole Buckley from Malden on the Massachusetts Department of Correction site.

He’d served five years for manslaughter. But I’d have to pull his whole court file to get details.

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