File 31410: Pioneer Courthouse Square

By Gregory Paul Wilhelm

Lydia Pendleton, PI is back in action and this time she is in the thick of weird.
Strange cases always seem to find her. Not surprising, considering the favorite bumper sticker of the locals is "Keep Portland Weird". But no matter what "Weird" Portland dishes up, private investigator Lydia Pendleton always seems to come out on top. But what happens when she's faced with mad scientists, terrorists, and flying iceballs? Find out in The Pendleton Files second book, FILE 31410: Pioneer Courthouse Square.

Inspired by the Stephanie Plum series, but not quite the same. This west coast PI gets to keep her Mysterious Black Pontiac Solstice. It never goes boom. And her bank account? ... P'lease. Being an heiress makes it a little easier to take down the bad guys. And it doesn't hurt to have a private investigator who's an ex-KGB agent watching your back either. The Pendleton Files series is like no other with cases so unusual they belong in the "X-files".

• Language: English
• Publisher: Gregory Paul Wilhelm
• Release date: Sep 30, 2016
• ISBN: 9781311300935

Gregory Paul Wilhelm

Greg lives in Maine with his wife Lisa and their cat Ranger. He is currently busy working on a new fictional series titled "Tregothagan Quay", a side project about a fictitious village in Cornwall England. Its due date is to be announced soon. The second book of his new series "What it's Really Like to Travel Through Time" will be on hold 'til further notice.

Book preview

Prologue

The Victim

It was a Tuesday afternoon. The leaves on the potted trees along the Square's perimeter were bright green and newly unfurled. Evidence to the start of a new spring season. A warm breeze occasionally visited the open plaza’s brick-laid surface bringing a welcome relief to the last remnants of winter’s cool breath. Groups of people, sparse and scattered, were busy having coffee, meeting friends.

The three of them were at the southwest corner of Pioneer Square, at the bottom of the steps that arced across its western half. Rejoice, said the transient. For we shall all be with him and our loved ones in the Kingdom of Heaven!

Lord help me, Jesus! cried the young girl, and shook like a possessed parishioner at a Baptist Revival. Her boyfriend smiled and laughed. She laughed with him and shook some more for him.

Hallelujah and praise Jesus! Amen! I come to you in the name of the Lord. Do not take his name in vain! continued the transient.

Lordy, mercy! proclaimed the young girl, who only wanted to entertain her boyfriend. She laughed, mocking the transient’s religious enthusiasm. Then she danced and shook some more. Her boyfriend, lying back on the Square’s step, watched every bounce and jiggle.

I say unto thee, let not yee put asunder! said the transient, then turned to the girl and said, Let those who are without sin cast the first stone.

But she wasn’t aware he was talking to her. She didn’t care. She turned to the transient, waved her arms in the air and shouted, Praise be! Her boyfriend threw back his head and laughed. She laughed with him.

Then it happened.

Phhooom ... POP!

It came without warning.

She had no idea what the sound was. Her back was turned when it happened. She could see the shocked look on her boyfriend’s face and was afraid of what she might see. But she couldn’t stop herself. She had to look. She turned.

The transient was no longer where he was before. His body was lying on the ground. His legs were apart and arms outstretched as if he were about to make a snow angel. An impossible task, considering he no longer had a head. Shards and pieces of bloody ice scattered outward from the body. His heart, beating its last beats, sprayed and squirted the dead man's blood. It oozed and pooled into the names etched within the bricks.

The girl screamed.

Holy shit! said her boyfriend. I guess God didn’t like what he saying.

Chapter One

A Day at the Office

PK & Associates, please hold. PK & Associates, please hold. PK & Associates, hold please.

It’s always the third one. When I first noticed it, I didn’t get it. I thought there might have been something wrong with her. But I wasn't about to start looking for another receptionist. Not again. All the good ones had held tight to their jobs during the recession, so it was slim pickings once we weeded through the loony bin. Fortunately, I didn't have to. When I asked about it, she told me it breaks the monotony and helps her keep track of how many calls there’ve been and who they're for.

PK & Associates, please hold.

There was a long break in the call frequency. I love it when there’s a long break between calls. Whenever it happens, there’s a game I like to play. Though it’s really not much of game. There are no rules and I don’t actually win anything. Unless you call getting a chance to catch Sarah not switching to hold please on the third call a prize.

PK & Associates, please hold.

That’s two!

PK & Associates … hold please.

Ugh! I should’ve never told her I listen whenever there’s a break. I’ll bet she’s out there snickering at me. Wait a minute! How come I’m not getting any calls? My phone hasn’t rung once. Usually, I get about the fourth or fifth one. Don’t tell me the background checkers have stopped hiring me. They’re all I had. Sarah, why am I not getting any calls? I heard her chair roll out just as another one came in.

Please hold, she said, then she swore under her breath for not informing them they reached PK & Associates. I heard footsteps and she appeared at my door. Sorry, Ms. Pendleton …

Lydia.

Lydia. There hadn't been any for you just yet.

Well, who are they for and what do they want?

It didn’t seem like her answer was going to be one I liked or at least one she didn’t think I’d like. Sarah Cummings was a prize catch, as far as receptionist go. Even though she’s still wet behind the ears to the office world at the club hopping age of twenty-four, she’s very good at it. Fortunately for us, the corporate law firm where she cut her receptionist teeth had been a casualty of the recession when a majority of their clients went belly up. When I interviewed her for the position, the first thing that struck me about her was how well she dressed; very professional, but with a casual style that was up on the latest trends. I was curious to see what she’d wear the next day if I hired her. Today, for instance, she was in an outfit that said high-class business professional ready for Friday night fun. It was a mustard-yellow cardigan that hung to her hips with a gray scoop-neck tank-top, gray pencil skirt, and black pumps. I thought the cardigan was the perfect shade for bringing out the red highlights in her strawberry blonde hair.

They’re for Kris, she said. They want to hire him for some security work.

Kris? I get ‘Ms.’ and Kris gets ‘Kris’. Maybe she was afraid I would insist she use his first name too. But Kris isn’t here, I said. Are all the calls security jobs?

Kind of. A couple of them were about a boxing event at the Moda Center. They want to hire him to be a body guard again.

Oh … I see. She was right. I didn’t like the answer.

But I’m sure you’ll get something soon, she said and punctuated it with a pity smile.

I rolled my eyes and sighed. Thank you, Sarah. Don’t think I don’t appreciate your effort to cheer me up.

You're welcome M-uh .. Lydia. She turned and went back to her phone, which I’m sure is filled with more calls for Kris.

I tossed my pencil at my desk. Shit! It’s A&P all over again. It’s been so long since I had a good case I’m starting forget what it’s like. I feel like I’ve been picked last to play on a losing team. How quickly everyone forgets the Shanghai Tunnels. I just sat there in my office, trying once again to figure out why I suck and feeling sorry for myself before getting back to my paperwork.

Hours went by before I knew it. It was almost three thirty and, as I alluded to before, it was Friday. It was obviously apparent I wasn’t going to get any clients today, so I thought I’d leave the rest of my work for Monday. Since all the calls had been for Kris and the two associates were busy tailing people faking medical claims, I thought I should tell Sarah we were knocking off early. I got up to do just that when I heard the elevator ding. I stopped and listened.

There was someone talking to Sarah. I couldn’t hear what was being said, but it sounded like it was a woman talking to her. Blluddadup-blluddadup, went my phone, nearly scaring the crap out of me. Oh, so that what it sounds like. I picked it up. Yes? It was Sarah.

There’s a woman here who says she needs to see someone. It’s about that thing that happened in Pioneer Square on Tuesday. The one where the guy was killed by a piece of ice from--

It wasn’t plane debris, I heard the woman yell. Somebody killed my brother!

Chapter Two

My Client

The similarities between my current office and the one I shared with Tom are a bit different. The file cabinets we had against the wall now have their own separate room, though I do still keep a short one with my secret stash behind my desk. My client chairs are those coffee bean color bookstore club chairs that I’d been thinking about getting. Those cafeteria chairs would’ve obviously looked so out of place here. And another difference, which has become somewhat of an elephant in the room, is Tom’s desk. At A&P it was just a few inches away from mine, but here in my new office, it’s still in the same spot where Kris left it; up against the wall with Tom’s chair beside it. Oh, and instead of old bare hardwood floors, there’s beige carpeting with some purple generic geometric designs.

Come in. Have a seat Miss?

It’s Mrs, she said. Mrs. Kalomyer. She sat in the client chair on the left. She didn’t look like a dangerous nut, so thought it was safe to be left alone with her. She looked like any normal fortyish woman with an average build in a casual beige conservative dress outfit.

I closed the door to my office and sat behind my desk. So what makes you think your brother was murdered? I asked her.

I’m a physicist. I teach a class at the University of Oregon in Eugene.

She just looked at me as if what she told me was enough, but got the picture when she saw the confused look on my face.

She sighed, looking as though she told this explanation more than too many times. I researched all the probabilities and collected the relevant data. Flight schedules, real-time air traffic radar records and the temperatures at different altitudes on that day. I found that the object’s trajectory didn’t match what should have happened according to the temperature and wind speed at that time of day. To quote an old cliché, it didn’t add up. I could tell there was pun somewhere in what she said by the way she tried to smile.

When I led her back to my office, I was sure she was in denial. I was ready to talk to her, mourner to mourner, and help her come to grips with her brother’s death. Now, I'm not so sure. Crazy as it sounds, after what she just told me, I was starting to think I might actually have a case. To be honest, I've always thought there was something weird about that 'accident'.

Wh-uh … hmm, was all I could get out at first. I took a moment to rethink, then started over. What made you do that? Why didn’t you just let it go? I asked her those particular questions in order to find out what every investigator needs to know. The reason for suspecting a murder had occurred. Because of the way they sounded, I knew those questions would probably upset her again, but I had to ask.

"You sound just like the police! She started yelling again. I let it pass. They didn’t believe me when I told them, either! She was silent for a moment but still fuming. Then she said in a calmer tone, I had to check it out. He asked me to. He said if he was ever killed under suspicious circumstances, I should look into it. He wanted me to verify the facts, just to be certain there wasn’t any foul play. She gave me a defiant look and said, My brother was murdered."

Well … that’s all I needed to hear. Finally, I get something worth investigating. I grabbed a legal pad from the stack on the credenza behind me. I’m supposed to bring up a file on my desktop with our client interview template, but I find it distracts the client. It’s better for everyone if I do all the typing after I’m done with the interview. Then I started the investigation by saying what always say to any new client. Okay … I’ll need you to start from the beginning. Tell me everything leading up to his murder. How you think it happened and why it happened. Omission is the enemy. Even the smallest insignificant detail could be useful to me.

Her eyes welled with tears. Does that mean you’re going to help me? She said. You’re going help me prove my brother was murdered and find out who killed him?

I smiled and nodded. "Yes …