Free The Midtown Murderer by David Carlisle Page A

prevailing theory was that a cartel -possibly Triple’s-was operating an enormous clandestine lab somewhere downtown.
    Chief Clay had penned the concluding statement. It stated that until more information was collected, no mention of the vigilante killer, the department spy, or the super meth lab would be made public.
    Trent glanced at his watch. Leave it to a politician, he thought, placing the latte-stained GID report in his bag.
    It was time for him to fulfill his end of the bargain he had made with Garcia.

 
     
     
     
    Chapter 19
    Trent left a ten-dollar bill on the table to cover the tip. He decided he’d rather be caught by the police giving a copy of the GI D report to the Apostles than suffer sleepless nights wondering when Utah and his thugs would ambush him.
    He descended the stairs into the cold hard air of the city, shuffling along a sidewalk that rimmed the park, head down, hands in his pockets while the wind whipped his hair around. He spotted the agreed upon steel-mesh trashcan. An instrumental ‘Jingle Bells’ from a store competed with a bar-belled muscled man ringing a handheld bell by a red bucket. When Trent loitered by the trash bin, the man turned toward him. “Drop it in the bin,” he said gruffly.
    “It’s damn cold out,” Trent said.
    “Keep walking , Palmer,” the man said. “It’ll warm you.”
    T rent dropped the copy into the bin and hurried along.
    Fortified by the caffeine, he continued down Fourteenth Street and turned into a harmless looking neighborhood in search of the house where the triple homicide had occurred.
    The first block consisted of high-rise condos and retirement homes; further in, the neighborhood deteriorated rapidly, becoming a dreary wasteland of rundown tenements blighted by corruption and poverty, violence and drugs.
    Trent had reached the Midtown Public Housing Project. The temperature was hovering just around the freezing point. Thick, misty fog, streaked and dirty, complemented the weed-infested yards, seedy wood-frame houses with bars and grills on the windows, and old dented cars at the curb.
    Trent found the creaky house where the killings had occurred. The dirty windows were boarded-up, the stained paintwork was cracked and chipped, and rusty junk and rubbish littered the yard.
    The police said the killer had not gone out the back because an eight-foot fence with strands of barbed wire rimmed the adjoining property. Trent knew the police were thorough; he had no reason to doubt them. That left the street. The only way out of the neighborhood was back to Fourteenth Street and then left or right.
    Trent went door-to-door asking questions.
    After an hour he was bone-cold and shivering and had decided to pack it in for a rum and coke, when he spotted a disabled man in a wheelchair rolling down the street. He wore a water-proof bomber jacket, had a round pink face, and wore an Atlanta Braves baseball cap.
    “Hey there,” Trent said. The wind gusted harder now, with snow at times.
    “Goddamn litter bugs,” the man said, using a metal pole with a trigger and a grabber-claw to pick up coffee cups and fruit bar wrappers.
    Trent dropped a few singles in to his coffee tin.
    “Thanks,” he said. “You don’t live on this street.”
    “No. I’m checking into the triple murder; know anything about it?”
    “Today’s Wednesday. Been a week.”
    “That’s right.”
    “You a cop?”
    “No.”
    “A PI?”
    “No,” Trent said, handing him a business card.
    The man studied Trent’s card and said, “ Peoplefinders.com. So you ask questions and find people?”
    “ That’s it. I’m searching for the little girl who was abducted from Piedmont Park.”
    He tilted his head to one side. “What happened to your face?”
    “I get paid to take a few bumps and bruises. Now, about the murders . . .”
    “I know it was Wednesday because that’s when the garbage truck s come through; those guys spill half the shit they take out. I was picking up