“You’re getting the carpet wet,” she said.
Colin’s eyes went wide and he stumbled into the hallway. If it hadn’t been for his daughter, and the fact that his hand was still on her back, he would have fallen.
Behind Ryanne, a man stood, his back to Colin. Like his wife, he was in his underwear, and as Colin watched, the man stretched and put on a t-shirt.
Chapter 14
Sergeant Chase Adams slid into her BMW and waited for FBI Agent Jeremy Stitts to get into the passenger seat before she started it up.
“Nice ride,” Agent Stitts commented as he lowered himself into the creme-colored seat.
“Thank you,” Chase said as she reversed out of the precinct parking lot, wondering if she was going to have to explain, as she had to Drake long ago, that she had bought the car from Internet poker earnings.
And how will that go over with the feds, Chase? Hmm?
But Agent Stitts’s next question made it clear that he wasn’t preoccupied with the vehicle.
“Melissa Green or Tanya Farthing first?”
Problem was, Chase didn’t know how to answer that either. With the suicide killer, she hadn’t had to speak to the victims’ families; either they couldn’t be located or simply didn’t care, or in the case of Eddie Larringer, Drake had done the honors. But she vividly recalled speaking to Clarissa Smith and was keenly aware of how awkward and terrible an experience that had been.
I should speak to her, reach out, she thought suddenly.
A sense of déjà vu overcame her then, as she realized that she had had this thought before. Only it had been in reference to Drake and not Clarissa Smith.
It’s happening again. I’m getting obsessed with the job, forgetting the human element.
“Sergeant Adams?”
Chase shook her head and looked over at Agent Stitts who was staring back at her, a concerned look on his face. He was handsome, she realized, if a little clean cut for her tastes.
“Sorry, it’s just that the last few months have been a bit of a whirlwind.”
Stitts nodded.
“I’ve read your file. A transplant from Seattle Narc to NYPD Detective, then to first grade in record time. And now Sergeant. You’ve made quite the impression, it seems.”
Chase tilted her head to one side.
He’s read the file; that’s good.
Part of the reason why she had been so quick to get the FBI involved in this case, despite her previous unproductive interactions with them in Seattle, was to get noticed, to get on their radar.
And, to her surprise, Agent Stitts seemed not only to know what he was doing, but also seemed respectful. He didn’t strike her as the type to flash his badge like his pecker and scream FBI, I’m taking over this case!
Her thoughts turned to Sergeant Rhodes and how cocky the bald bastard had been before he had gotten in her way.
“Either that or it’s just good timing; rotten eggs above me, if you catch my drift.”
Agent Stitts grunted and he turned his attention to the snow that the windshield wipers worked fruitlessly to wick away.
“Maybe,” he said absently.
They drove in silence for the next few minutes.
“Green,” Chase said at last. “Let’s go see Melissa Green first. See if we can figure out how and why the killer targeted her, if she had any enemies, and if she knew Tanya Farthing.”
Agent Stitts nodded.
“Sounds good. You want me to lead the discussion or do you want to?”
Chase pressed her lips together. Although she didn’t share Drake’s extreme revulsion at the idea of breaking terrible news to loved ones, she wasn’t a fan of doing it either. But it was her case, she was the Sergeant, and it was her city, dammit.
“I’ll do it,” she said without hesitation. “I’ll speak to the family.”
***
The address listed in Melissa’s file—which they had procured from a shoplifting arrest a few years back—was a trailer park at the eastern border of the city. They gained entry to the compound by calling ahead, and the manager, a portly man named Hector, directed them to a trailer toward the back of the compound.
The trailer itself was old, the corners that rested on cinderblocks starting to rot. Chase noticed that the blinds of the other trailers surrounding Melissa’s were open just a little, and the suspicious eyes that peered out were trained on her. For once, she wished that she hadn’t insisted on driving. She had no idea what Agent Stitts drove, but guessed that it had to be less… expensive… than her BMW.
“Ready?” she asked.
Agent Stitts nodded and Chase opened the door and stepped into the cold.
The screen door to the trailer was torn, and Chase put her fist through the hole to knock on the wood behind it.
“Comin’,” a husky voice called from within.
Chase glanced furtively at Stitts and was about to say something when then the door suddenly opened. A woman in her mid-forties sporting a long t-shirt that came to her knees, stood in the doorway. She stared at them with deeply sunken eyes.
“Yeah? Who are you? What do you want?” she snapped. Her eyes flicked to the BMW behind Chase. “You cops or something? Cuz he ain’t here, if that’s who yer looking for.”
He? Who’s he?
“No, ma’am. I’m here with some very upsetting news. May we come in?”
The woman observed Chase for a good minute, taking several hauls off a hand-rolled cigarette during this time. Eventually, her eyes narrowed and she repeated her initial query, “You cops or something?”
Chase nodded.
“My name is Sergeant Adams and this here is FBI Agent Stitts. Are you related to Melissa Green?”
The woman put the cigarette between her thin lips and crossed her arms across her chest.
“I don’t got nothing to say to cops. If Melissa got herself in trouble again, then that’s her problem. I ain’t paying for no bail. I told her that I wasn’t gonna bail her out no more. Didn’t do her no good last time, and it won’t do her no good this time.”
“Ma’am, it’s not—”
A toddler wearing only a sagging diaper suddenly appeared beside the woman, and she ushered him away.
“What’s this about, then?”
Chase sighed, a cloud of fog forming in front of her face.
“Please, can we come in?”
“Nuh-uh, not ‘til you tell me what this’s about.”
A quick glance at Stitts, who raised an eyebrow, and Chase just came out with it.
“I’m very sorry to tell you this, but Melissa’s dead,” she said flatly.
Chapter 15
Drake lowered the bat to his side and stared at the man sitting in the chair behind his desk. He was short and unimpressive, and yet every time he saw him, Drake felt unease wash over his soul.
“What do you want?” Drake snapped, the words coming out more harshly than he had intended.
Raul stood and Drake felt his hand tighten on the bat.
“He wants to see you,” he said flatly in a thick Spanish accent.
“What does he want?”
Raul said nothing. He simply moved toward Drake and the door.
“You don’t need that,” Raul instructed, his eyes flicking to the baseball bat.
Don’t go; tell Raul to fuck off. Tell him to relay the message to Ken Smith that I’m not his errand boy.
But he couldn’t do that. He owed the man. If it weren’t for him, Suzan would be dead right now, burnt alive by a psychopath hellbent on recreating deaths from Beckett’s forensic pathology exam.
Drake frowned, the scarred skin on his cheek crumpling uncomfortably. He leaned the bat against the wall by the door and shrugged.
“Alright, let’s go then.”
***
As expected, Raul said nothing during the drive to Ken Smith’s condo. This, unfortunately, left Drake with time inside his own head, which soon became a messy bog of emotions and memories.
He
was glad that Chase had brought him on the case, even if his position as ‘Special Consultant’ was ambiguous at best. And he was pleased that the harsh feelings that his ex-colleagues in the force had once harbored toward him, seemed to have eased. Yet being back in the fold meant that his memories returned, that Clay was once again front and center in his mind.
And this made him want to drink again. He hadn’t sworn off the sauce completely, but it was more under control than it had been for as long as he could remember. No drinking in his car parked outside a high school, for instance. But now, in this moment, sitting in Raul’s midnight black Range Rover, he wished that tucked inside his jacket pocket was a miniature of Johnny Walker.
Just one. Just enough to take the edge off.
But the only thing in his pocket was a mysterious e-reader.
And a finger bone. There was that, too.
As they pulled up to the condo in downtown Manhattan, however, Drake knew that he only had to wait until he made it to the 80th floor—the penthouse—before he would get his fix.
Drake exited the car first and hurried across the parking lot to the glass doors at the front of the building. He knocked once and a security guard with a thick brown mustache waddled over. There was immediate recognition in his face, but to Drake’s annoyance, he didn’t open the door. Instead, he just stood there, his hand on the keys at his belt.
“Open up,” Drake barked.
The man didn’t acknowledge him.
“Hey, you deaf? Open the—”
The security guard’s eyes darted over Drake’s shoulder, and he followed the man’s gaze. Raul was suddenly beside him, forcing him to do a double-take to make sure that he had left footprints in the snow, that he hadn’t just materialized like a damn apparition.
“Ah, I see,” Drake grumbled. “Waiting for your boss.”
Raul nodded, and the security guard returned the gesture before immediately unlocking the door.
“Thanks,” Drake said sarcastically as he passed. He didn’t bother to knock the snow off his boots.
Like the front doors, Drake was the first to the silver elevator, but once again had to wait for Raul to flash his key card for it to open.
Drake took note of the card that he used: a plain, white key card that was attached to a cable extending from his plain, black belt.
It might come in handy to have one of those, Drake thought absently.
The elevator chimed and they stepped inside.
Something occurred to Drake as the silver coffin ascended, a conversation he had had upon first meeting Raul.
He turned to the man then, who was staring blankly at the doors, paying Drake no heed.
“I thought you worked for Clarissa Smith?”
Raul said nothing and Drake pressed harder. He was annoyed by the man’s affect, and was going to try his best to break through his frozen demeanor.
“What? She turn you down after Thomas died?”
Drake thought he saw the man’s mustache twitch.
“Ah, I bet that’s it. I bet you tried to slip it in as Thomas was lowering into the ground, didn’t you?”
Nothing this time.
“How’s she doing, anyway? You still in touch?”
Raul turned to him then, his dark eyebrows furrowing so much that they nearly covered his beady eyes.
“Clarissa is—”
The elevator pinged, announcing their arrival, and Raul’s mouth suddenly clamped shut. The doors started to open, but Drake’s hand shot out and hit the close button, halting their progress.
“Clarissa’s what? Just a pawn in your boss’s game? Is that it?”
Raul looked at his hand, then the doors at half-mast. For a second, Drake thought that he was going to slap his finger away from the button, and something inside of him clenched.
But Raul did nothing.
“You know what I don’t understand about this whole thing, Raul? I get what Ken Smith is up to—he wants to be mayor. Will do anything to be mayor, evidently. But you? What do you want out of this thing? Why are you so loyal to this prick? Me? I owe him… but you? Do you owe him too?”
Raul looked him straight in the eyes then, and Drake thought he detected a hint of a smile on the man’s dark lips.
“We should go. Mr. Smith will be waiting,” he said calmly.
Drake scowled and took his finger off the button. The doors slid open, and he was surprised to see Ken Smith standing just a few feet away, dressed in what looked like another bespoke suit.
He was smiling, revealing a row of perfectly straight, perfectly white teeth that stood out on his tanned face.
“Drake, so glad that you could make it.”
“Like I had a choice,” Drake replied, stepping past Raul and into the lavish penthouse.
“Please, come in,” Ken said with a hint of sarcasm. “We need to chat.”
“What I need,” Drake began, stamping his feet, leaving wet footprints on the marble tiles, “is a drink. Then maybe we can talk.”
Chapter 16
“Mrs. Green, I know this is hard, but I need to ask: did your daughter have any enemies? Anyone that might want to do her harm?”
Abigail Green took a drag of her cigarette, her hand trembling as it brought the white cylinder to her lips.
“Enemies? How about the bastard that knocked her up? The one that punched her in the face when she was still pregnant? Does that count?”
Chase let her vent. She understood the woman’s anger. People dealt with grief in different ways, but anger was one of the most common responses.
“The father of her children?” Chase asked, her eyes darting to the two toddlers in diapers—a boy about two years of age and a girl who was at least four—who were giggling as they played with a cardboard box.
“One of them,” Abigail replied. “Brent Doakes was his name. Little prick, if you ask me.”
Chase turned to Stitts, who nodded back at her.
“Alright, just a few more questions then we will be out of your hair, Mrs. Green.”
“It’s Ms. Green,” she corrected, glaring at Chase.
“Sorry, Ms. Green. Do you know if your daughter was friends with a Tanya Farthing?”
The woman’s face screwed up.
“Melissa didn’t have no friends. All she had time for is her damn books. That’s it. Nothin’ else. I wish she would stop reading and look after her kids. Told her that all the time.”
Abigail’s eyes started to water as she spoke, but Chase saw the woman’s jaw clench as she fought back the emotion. This was a hard woman who had led a hard life, and while she was understandably angry, she was also clearly upset.
As she should be.
Chase stood, and out of the corner of her eye, she saw Stitts do the same.
“Thank you, Ms. Green. And again, please accept my sincerest condolences for what happened to your daughter.”
Abigail Green grunted as she reached for another cigarette.
“A uniformed officer will be by tomorrow with some further instructions and paperwork,” she said as she made her way to the trailer door.
“I don’t want no cops back here. People start talking, make things hard for me ‘n the kids.”
Chase nodded.
“I understand, but it’s procedure. I’ll tell them to be discrete.”
With that, she opened the door and was met by a blast of cold air. She was partway to her BMW, feeling the full brunt of the irony of telling Mrs. Green about discretion while driving a car that probably cost twice as much as her trailer, when the woman’s voice drifted to her through the falling snow.
“Catch the bastard who did this to Melissa,” Mrs. Green called after them, her voice unexpectedly soft. “Catch the bastard.”
Chase turned back and nodded once to the woman, and then got into her car.
When Agent Stitts took up residence in the passenger seat, she moved her hands to the wheel, only now noticing that they were shaking slightly.
“You okay?”
Agent Stitts asked, looking over at her. His hazel eyes were soft, caring.
“I’m fine,” she replied, putting the car into drive. She exhaled sharply. “One down, one to go.”
***
Tanya Farthing’s home was the opposite to Melissa Green’s in pretty much every way possible. Located in the heart of Manhattan, Tanya lived in a meticulously maintained brownstone. Relatively new to New York, Chase wasn’t up-to-date on the real estate minutia of the city, but she knew enough to recognize that this area was expensive.
Like seven figures expensive.
She and Agent Stitts made it to the door together, and just before she knocked, he asked her again if she wanted him to do the talking.
At this point, Chase wasn’t sure if he was just genuinely being a nice guy or if it was all some sort of a test.
She shook her head.
It doesn’t matter, she surmised.
This was her gig, and she would see it through.
Find the bastard who did this to Melissa, Ms. Green had said.
Chase hadn’t answered, not because she didn’t want to, but because she didn’t have to.
She would find the killer. It was only a matter of time.
“I’ll do it,” she said as she knocked.
The man who answered the door was short, bald, and had teeth that seemed slightly too large for his mouth.
“Yes? Can I help you?” he asked with a slight accent that Chase couldn’t place.
“Is this Tanya Farthing’s address?”
Concern suddenly formed a shadow on the man’s face.
“Yes—I’m her father. What’s this about?”
“My name is Sergeant Chase Adams, and this is FBI Agent Jeremy Stitts. Can we come in?”
The man hesitated, but then nodded when Agent Stitts produced and displayed his badge. He stepped to one side, and Chase could see that his breathing had become labored.
“Honey? Who is it? It’s a little late for clients, isn’t it?” a female voice drifted down to them from the staircase off to Chase’s left.
Tanya’s father swallowed hard.
Detective Damien Drake series Box Set 1 Page 57