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  MISSING PERSONS

  The First Buddy Steel Mystery

  “Missing Persons is a cracking series debut and Buddy Steel is a protagonist bound to have a long shelf life.”

  —Reed Farrel Coleman, New York Times bestselling author of What You Break

  “Fans of Parker’s work will appreciate Buddy, another irreverent, complex lawman.”

  —Library Journal

  “Michael Brandman’s follow-up to the three Jesse Stone novels he adeptly penned for the late Robert B. Parker gives us the cool and iconic Buddy Steel. A former point guard turned cop, Steel damn sure owns the ground he walks on. All capable 6’3” and one-hundred-seventy pounds of him, Buddy’s that guy that you want to ride with when s..t hits the fan. With plenty of thrilling moments and turns you don’t see coming, what a great ride Brandman takes us on in Missing Persons. Trust me, you won’t be disappointed. Buckle up.”

  —Robert Knott, New York Times bestselling author of the Hitch and Cole Series

  One on One

  A Buddy Steel Mystery

  Michael Brandman

  Poisoned Pen Press

  Copyright

  Copyright © 2018 by Michael Brandman

  First Edition 2018

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2018933529

  ISBN: 9781464210273 Hardcover

  ISBN: 9781464210297 Trade Paperback

  ISBN: 9781464210303 Ebook

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in, or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the publisher of this book.

  Poisoned Pen Press

  4014 N. Goldwater Blvd., #201

  Scottsdale, AZ 85251

  www.poisonedpenpress.com

  [email protected]

  Printed in the United States of America

  Contents

  One on One

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Chapter Thirty-six

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-one

  Chapter Forty-two

  Chapter Forty-three

  Chapter Forty-four

  Chapter Forty-five

  Chapter Forty-six

  Chapter Forty-seven

  Chapter Forty-eight

  Chapter Forty-nine

  Chapter Fifty

  Chapter Fifty-one

  Chapter Fifty-two

  Chapter Fifty-three

  Chapter Fifty-four

  Chapter Fifty-five

  Chapter Fifty-six

  Chapter Fifty-seven

  Chapter Fifty-eight

  Chapter Fifty-nine

  Chapter Sixty

  Chapter Sixty-one

  Chapter Sixty-two

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgments

  More from this Author

  Contact Us

  Dedication

  As always...

  ...for Joanna...

  ...my shining star.

  Epigraph

  “Maybe all one can do is

  hope to end up with

  the right regrets.”

  —Arthur Miller

  Chapter One

  The late summer sun was making its steady ascent into a cloudless morning sky when my cell phone rang.

  I broke stride, mopping the sweat from my forehead with my t-shirt. Still fighting for breath, I grabbed the phone from the pocket of my running shorts, and flipped it open. “Buddy Steel.”

  I had been jogging along a barren stretch of Freedom Beach, all the while sidestepping mounds of dried and drying seaweed that disfigured the grainy white sand. A pair of gulls eyed me suspiciously. The smell of burnt wood rose from the remains of a beach fire.

  “Sorry, Buddy,” Sheriff’s Deputy Johnny Kennerly’s disembodied voice crackled into the phone. “But we’ve got one.”

  “One what?”

  “One that requires your presence.”

  “Perhaps you might want to be a little less obtuse, John.”

  “Henry Carson.”

  “Who’s Henry Carson?”

  “Assistant Principal.”

  “Where?”

  “Freedom High.”

  “What about him?”

  “Well, for one thing, he’s dead.”

  “And for another?”

  “It appears he was murdered.”

  Still in my running shorts, but having added a green Boston Celtic hoodie, I pulled my Sheriff’s cruiser to a stop in front of Freedom High School.

  A phalanx of news personnel and their equipment, along with a handful of gawkers, had already gathered and several began shouting questions at me as I strode past them and into the building. I was met at the door by Sheriff’s Deputy Marsha Russo.

  “Nice legs,” she commented as I approached her.

  “Witty. Where’s Carson?”

  “In his office. Fourth floor.”

  We stepped into the closest elevator and Marsha pressed four.

  “Talk to me,” I said.

  “Not pretty. Killer used a steak knife.”

  At the fourth floor, the doors opened onto a chaotic scene. The narrow hallway was filled with small groupings of students, most of them simply standing around watching the goings on in silence. One young woman was crying.

  “What are they doing here?”

  “Classes have been suspended for the day.”

  “Can we disperse them? Get them out of here.”

  “Be my pleasure,” Marsha said as she led me to Henry Carson’s office, a small room, sparsely furnished, with a single window that overlooked an air shaft.

  Johnny Kennerly stood in front of the office door, in conversation with Coroner Norma Richard. A team of State forensic officers huddled together, awaiting the green-light to begin their investigation.

  I nodded to each of them, then followed Johnny into Henry Carson’s office.

  “You’re the first one in,” Kennerly said.

  “After how many school personnel?”

  “The building maintenance supervisor. The principal. A security officer. No one else.”

  “They disturb anything?”

  “Not that any of the
m will admit. Maintenance man found him when he was making his morning rounds.”

  I stepped carefully around several pools of blood and approached the body. The late Mr. Carson was seated on a wooden armchair in front of his desk, facedown, a stainless-steel steak knife protruding from his neck.

  Large quantities of blood had flooded the desk en route to the unpolished wood floor where it had congealed.

  I stepped away and looked around the office, a cramped affair boasting a desk, the armchair on which the body now rested, a pair of straight-backed chairs facing the desk, and two wall-sized bookcases, each filled to overflowing.

  I turned to Johnny. “What do you think?”

  “I think he’s dead.”

  “That’s very helpful, John.”

  “Should we admit the hordes?”

  “I don’t see why not.”

  I stepped to the door and motioned for Marsha Russo to join us. “You know the drill?”

  Marsha nodded.

  “Is there a Mrs. Carson?”

  “There is,” Kennerly said.

  “Does she know?”

  “Principal phoned her.”

  “I’ll want to talk with her. And the principal. Would you please make appointments for me with both of them? I’m going home to change clothes. I’ll be back in an hour.”

  “You’ll inform the Sheriff,” John said.

  I nodded.

  “And Her Honor?”

  I nodded again.

  “Some fine way to start the week,” Marsha said.

  I shook my head in agreement. “It’s always something.”

  Chapter Two

  The Sheriff to whom John referred is my father, the Honorable Burton Steel, Senior, now in his third term but currently debilitated by the early onset of Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, ALS, otherwise known as Lou Gehrig’s disease.

  Her Honor is my father’s wife, my stepmother, the estimable Regina Goodnow, the Mayor of Freedom. I stopped by their house, my childhood home, to deliver the news in person.

  As is generally the case when I get my first glimpse of my father these days, I’m forced to conceal my shock at the level of his deterioration. Once a powerful and towering figure, the old man’s disease had diminished him considerably.

  When he had received his diagnosis, he summoned me and insisted I join him in the San Remo County Sheriff’s Department. I had been living in Los Angeles, an LAPD homicide detective attached to the Hollywood division. Conflicted as I was about him and our at-best testy relationship, I answered his call and returned to Freedom and a lifestyle that grew disagreeable quickly.

  My life was further complicated by his continued insistence that I be prepared to assist him in taking his own life whenever he deemed it advisable.

  We had a great deal of unfinished business between us, but the encroaching ethical challenge was paramount in my mind. It took precedence over any presumed detente we might somehow manage to achieve.

  When I arrived at the house, he was seated at the breakfast table in his bathrobe and slippers, a plate of uneaten scrambled eggs and sourdough toast growing cold in front of him. He looked up at me and muttered, “Murdered?”

  “Murder? Someone was murdered?” my stepmother inquired as she bustled into the kitchen.

  As usual, she regarded me warily, at once on her guard and, as always, ready to spring to the offense regarding any issue on which she and I might disagree. Which meant nearly everything.

  “Did you offer Buddy some breakfast?” she asked my father, who mumbled some kind of unintelligible response.

  She turned to me. “Buddy? Coffee? Eggs? Anything?”

  “Thank you, Regina. I’m fine.”

  “Burton’s not eating,” she proclaimed, ignoring the fact that my father was still in the room. “The doctor keeps telling him he needs to eat in order to keep up his strength. But does he listen? Not on your life, does he listen. Look at him. He looks anorexic. He refuses to eat.”

  The Sheriff didn’t respond. I could detect the first spark of anger igniting in him.

  “What’s this about a murder?” the Mayor asked, taking a seat across from my father.

  “Henry Carson,” I said.

  “Who?”

  “Freedom High. Assistant principal. Stabbed to death.”

  “Stabbed,” she said. “My God, how gruesome.”

  “I wanted you both to know.” I hoped to appease the two birds with a single stone.

  My father gazed at me through sorrowful eyes that begged compassion for his diminished faculties. His voice, once so forceful and commanding, had been reduced to a scratchy whisper. “Where?”

  “In his office.”

  “Suspects?”

  “None yet. But I’m just starting. I’ll keep you in the loop.”

  “Does the press have the story?” Regina quizzed me. “Will I be asked for a comment?”

  I inwardly smiled in wonder at how she always managed to make herself the center of any and every event. Her question was a rhetorical one. My guess was she had already determined in which order she would summon her makeup, hair, and sartorial team. Her public relations reps, also. “A murder won’t reflect well on Freedom.”

  “I’m sure you’ll charm the press in your usual manner, Regina.”

  “She’s got the fucking media in her back pocket,” the Sheriff rasped.

  “Oh, Burton,” she yammered, “must you always be so profane?”

  Which I took as my cue to get out of there.

  Chapter Three

  “She wouldn’t talk with me,” Marsha Russo said. “Claims the doctor put her on some kind of sedative that made her gaga. They’d been married for less than a year. All she would say is she can’t imagine who would want to kill him. I told her we needed to speak with her.”

  “And?”

  “She hung up.”

  “Try again later.”

  Marsha nodded.

  We were seated in my office at the Freedom Town Hall where the Sheriff’s Department was housed. Marsha had been joined by Johnny Kennerly and Sheriff’s Deputy Al Striar. All three were longtime department veterans, appointed by my father in his first term. Each wore a Sheriff’s uniform, smartly tailored and pressed.

  I, on the other hand, wore my outfit of choice: jeans, an L.L. Bean light-blue work shirt, a brown Ralph Lauren corduroy jacket, and Filson work boots.

  I rarely if ever wear a uniform—for reasons stemming back to the days when my old man was a street cop. He had purchased a boy’s size police uniform, a junior version of his own, and had decorated it with medals and awards. He frequently forced me to wear it.

  He was forever dragging me to all kinds of police-sponsored events where I was shoved forward as a kind of gussied up Mini-Me version of himself, the uniformed scion of a steadfast police officer whose sights were already set on bigger things.

  As I grew, my mother repeatedly tailored the uniform until finally there wasn’t enough fabric left to take out. The uniform became smaller and fit more tightly. Until the night I grabbed a pair of scissors and decimated the fucking thing. Which was the official end of my uniform-wearing.

  I did manage to suffer through a uniform phase when I was an LAPD beat cop, but as soon as I made detective, it was over.

  When I joined the San Remo County Sheriff’s Department, I defied convention and remained a plainclothes guy, thereby producing yet another bone of contention between my father and me.

  “What do we know?” I asked Marsha.

  “About Henry Carson?”

  “Yes. Him.”

  Marsha opened her laptop and read aloud. “Henry Carson. Born, 1987. Montclair, New Jersey. Graduated Montclair High School, 2004. Earned a degree in Education at Fairleigh Dickinson University, 2008. Stayed on for one more year of graduate work. Taught American
History at Columbia High School, Maplewood, New Jersey, for eight years. Became the Assistant Principal at Freedom High last year, where he’s also on the coaching staffs of the baseball and swim teams.”

  “Personal?”

  “Married Kimber Collins, Montclair, New Jersey, December 2017. No children. Both parents still living.”

  “Here?”

  “Montclair.”

  “Any strangeness?”

  Marsha looked up from her laptop. “Strangeness?”

  “Anything weird?”

  “Nothing apparent.”

  “The principal?”

  “Julia Peterson,” Kennerly said. “Who, by the way, eagerly awaits her audience with you.”

  “What do I need to know?”

  “She’s a cool customer. Claims to have had a good working relationship with the deceased. When pressed, she made mention of the fact they did little or no socializing. She’s a no-nonsense type. Deadly serious.”

  “My kind of person. Forensics?”

  “Nothing yet,” Striar said. “I’m hoping for something by end of day.”

  “Shall we, Marsha?”

  “No time like the present.”

  “So what are we waiting for?”

  We were ushered into Julia Peterson’s office by her assistant, a nerdy-looking young man wearing an off-the-rack blue suit, the ill-fitting kind, likely part of a “buy one, get one free” promotion.

  Ms. Peterson appeared to be in her mid-to-late thirties, a handsome woman, also in a blue suit, hers far better tailored than her assistant’s. Her shoulder-length brown hair was streaked with red. Her wide brown eyes were lined with black. She wore a light dusting of blush and muted pink lipstick. She exuded the faint scent of Chanel Chance. Hers was a turned-up nose that wrinkled when she smiled.

  Marsha and I wrestled ourselves into the not-so-comfortable hardwood armchairs that fronted her desk.