Free Afraid of the Dark by James Grippando Page A

however. He now lived alone.
    Jack was walking up the driveway when that new Maserati came flying around the corner, tires squealing as it pulled into the driveway behind him. A muscle-bound man with a surfer’s suntan and shoulder-length blond hair stepped toward him.
    “Chuck Mays,” he said, shaking Jack’s hand. He was wearing nylon shorts and a sleeveless work-out shirt, the “V” of sweat on his chest suggesting that he’d just come from the gym.
    “Nice car,” said Jack.
    “Not my style. Got it on the cheap, but I’ll probably sell it. Basically for guys with little dicks.”
    “You own a foreclosure company?”
    “You mean that sign in the back window? Fuck no. Mr. Foreclosures-dot-com got foreclosed on, and I snatched up his wheels. Ain’t that fucking great?”
    Jack had come expecting to meet the still-grieving father of a teenage girl. Instead, he found Hulk Hogan’s younger clone, who dropped the F-word like a carpet bomber. But Jack wasn’t fooled. “Chuck Mays could be the most intelligent human being you will ever meet,” Neil had told him at dinner the night before.
    “So,” said Jack. “You wanted to talk?”
    “Yeah.” He pressed the keyless alarm, and the Maserati chirped. “Follow me.” He led Jack up the walkway and into the house. It had all the charm of an unfurnished hotel lobby: twenty-foot ceilings, enormous crown moldings, bare marble floors, and naked white walls—not a rug, painting, or framed photograph anywhere. The chandelier in the foyer still had the price tag hanging from it.
    “How long have you lived here?” asked Jack.
    “Moved in after Shada passed away,” Mays said.
    Jack had, of course, heard about his wife’s suicide. Lose a daughter, then a wife, and who could give a rat’s ass about decorating a new house?
    Jack followed him toward the kitchen. Mays offered him a barstool at the granite counter and went to the refrigerator.
    “You want a beer?”
    It was not yet noon, but pointing that out to a guy like Mays would have probably earned Jack a major wedgie.
    “Sure,” he said.
    Mays popped open two cans and put one in front of Jack. “Cheers,” he said, and then he guzzled down most of it. Jack half expected him to start burping out the entire Mays alphabet: fucking-A, fucking-B. . .
    “I didn’t used to drink, you know,” said Mays.
    Jack knew what he was saying. “I hear you.”
    Mays had a little beer foam on his mustache. He took care of it with a backhand swipe of the wristband.
    “Your client called me from jail the other night,” said Mays.
    “I heard about that in court yesterday,” said Jack.
    “Told me where he was when McKenna was murdered.”
    Jack wasn’t sure how to respond, so he let Mays keep talking.
    “I’ve been giving his story a lot of thought,” said Mays.
    “I know it must sound hard to believe,” said Jack.
    Mays locked eyes with him, and for a moment Jack wondered if he was going to reach over the counter and slug him. Finally, Mays stepped away, took a file from a stack of papers on the kitchen table, and laid it on the countertop in front of Jack.
    “What’s this?” asked Jack.
    “Payroll records for my company. It’s from three years ago, when Jamal worked for me.”
    Jack opened the file and found his client’s name on the list of employees.
    Mays said, “We had automatic deposit for Jamal’s paychecks to go to his bank every week.”
    Jack glanced at the transaction dates on the ledger. “So is it a coincidence that he was off the payroll for the two pay periods before your daughter was murdered?”
    “Jamal stopped showing up for work. So I stopped paying him. Tried calling him, got no answer. Went to his apartment. Nobody there. Called his mother in Minnesota. No idea where he was. She even filed a missing person report.”
    Jack looked at him, confused. “All that actually supports Jamal’s claim that he was abducted before the crime.”
    “I realize that,” he said.
    Jack studied his