"Gotta talk to you lot," I said, modulating my voice, adding a little gravity to my tone.
Marc stood up from his lean against the kitchen bench, face alert, but not at all shuttered. I split my attention between Gus, the lovable rogue who never did anything he didn't want to do, including show his reaction to the cop who was there when his boss was arrested, and Russell, the kid who didn't know any better than to school his features in the presence of a seasoned detective.
"Go on," Marc encouraged. "We're all here that is here."
I nodded, watched my quarry and said, "Damon Michaels was arrested for assault last night and is being charged with grievous bodily harm."
Shouts and cries of dismay and outrage filled the air. Gus looked shocked. Russell looked lost and a little frightened, but certainly not doubtful of my claim. I let them get a lot of it out of their system then held up my hand and waited for them all to stop.
It took Jude to bellow in that rich, deep baritone for them to all quieten down enough for me to have their attention.
"You better be getting him off the charges, Keen," Gus demanded, and received a directive to shut the fuck up from Marc.
"OK," I said. "I had to put it to you that way, I'm sorry," I offered, aware I sounded chagrined.
"What's going on, Lara?" Marc asked, picking up on my genuine regret.
"I had to test you," I admitted.
"What?" Gus demanded, surprised rather than outraged at this stage.
"Marc, can we talk alone?" I tried.
"Whatever you have to say can be said in front of the men," he shot back, unsurprisingly.
I sighed. "I have to ask you to keep this all in house for now." I purposely chose their colloquialism.
"It will be," Marc replied on behalf of the team.
"Someone broke into the Central Police evidence locker last night and doctored video footage of Damon beating the crap out of a suspect. They wiped his part clean, left the evidence that pertained to the arrest of the suspect. And walked back out of the Station undetected."
Astounded silence followed my words. But I could tell from the shocked look on Marc's face that he realised they'd been suspected.
"I'm doing what I can to figure this thing out," I said. "Damon will be released within the next hour or so. No charges will probably be laid. But this is.." I hesitated, searched for the right word. "This is unusual," I finally settled on, and it seemed inadequate. "It could be wrapped up in the case Damon and I were working on. And if it is, it's likely dangerous. You guys should be aware, take precautions."
"Like we don't have enough to worry about," Gus muttered.
I wasn't sure if Damon had told them all that I knew of their arsonist issues, so I didn't pass comment.
"We'll look out for him," Marc told me.
"And yourselves," I offered, turning to walk out the door.
"It sounds more like it's to do with you and Damon, Keen," Marc argued.
"I'd say you've got yourself a guardian angel or a stalker," Jude offered.
I stopped and huffed out a laugh.
"I'm really not at all sure which I would prefer at this stage," I said to the room.
The men all half-heartedly laughed as I walked down the stairs and back to my car. Once seated I leaned my head back and tried to think of what should come next.
Prioritise. Use your time wisely. Buy a fucking watch.
I glanced down at my G-Shock, saw it was already quarter to six, and decided Collins would be my next target. I dialled Pierce, he answered on the second ring.
"You cleared HEAT?" he asked in way of greeting.
"They had no idea he'd been arrested."
"Brilliant. One avenue crossed off the list."
"You all done with the Zero guards?" I asked.
"Swore on a bible the perp resisted arrest. They've been bought, Keen. It's written all over their faces. But I couldn't get any of them to admit to a thing."
"It'd be hard to prove. We'd need warrants for security footage, and we all know how they could be altered," I offered sarcastically. "And we'd have to spend days figuring out their behaviour pattern over the past twelve hours."
"I'll add it all to our to-do list," Pierce quipped. "What's your next move?"
"Collins, then maybe Smith."
"Great minds think alike, Detective. Collins has been released from hospital and is being detained at Central Police. I'll meet you back at CIB."
"Roger copy, Sarge," I replied, and swiped the call closed.
I needed further sustenance, leads to follow or not. God alone knew how long shaking Collins up would take, so I stopped off at Angelo's and grabbed two chicken clubs to go. Sharing a few normal words with a more than normal Italian immigrant, I passed the ten minutes it took for my sandwiches to be made feeling somewhat steady. Even keeled. Despite the clusterfuck these cases were making.
Police work can be very mundane, very routine. It somehow works. You methodically follow one lead to the next. You spend time cross referencing one piece of evidence with the next. You take care to ask the right questions to elicit the right answers, until finally all the dots line up and the picture they present makes sense.
My dots were nowhere near lined up, but I was working my way through the evidence and following the leads, and it was helping to keep me sane. Keep me focused. Stop me from tearing my hair out and screaming my throat hoarse in frustration.
It also helped, that Damon would be released by now. Set free. No longer lounging in a two-by-two cell wearing disposable coveralls and bare feet.
I didn't want to look at my conscience too closely on that, though. I'd made my decision before I'd walked into CIB earlier today, the intruder and video evidence tamperer just sped things up a little. Made my job easier. They hadn't forced my hand, they'd only helped steady it.
And God, what a field-day my shrink, Hennessey, would have with that line of thought.
I thanked Angelo for the dinner, paid my bill and headed back to the Station to meet up with Pierce. I found him at his desk, two over from mine, at CIB.
"Dinner," I announced, chucking the tinfoil wrapped sandwich on his blotter pad. I sank down in the chair at his side.
"Angelo's?"
"Of course."
"You're a dream come true, Keen." He started to unwrap the meal without pause. The scent of roasted chicken, delicious sweet smelling herbs and spices, wafted up from the opening. "Michaels is out," he said as he bit the thing practically in half.
"Good," I said around a mouthful. "No charges?"
Pierce shook his head, his mouth too full to comment. We ate in silence for a while, then when our bodies were satisfactorily refuelled, chucked the wrappers in his trash.
"So," Pierce started. "Collins. How do you want to play this?"
I took a sip of soda from the can I'd purchased at the vending machine in the hall.
"You said it," I murmured. "We use Carole Michaels' name."
Pierce held my steady gaze, aware that I didn't want to pull Damon's sister into this any further. But if I had to pick between keeping one Michaels out of prison and keeping the secret of another, Damon would always win.
It said a lot about who I was. Who I had become. I'd always claimed I was there for the victim and only the victim. And I had no intention of approaching Carole Michaels on this. I had to pray that we could use our knowledge of the offence against her to force a confession from Collins. But it was a thin veil to hide behind. Carole was a victim. Damon was not.
Yet I had chosen to back him. Figuring out why evidence convicting Damon would be wiped clean on this particular case was all I could think about. Because, if I was honest, it was a little too close to the killer on the informants' murder case engineering Damon to team up with me. Damon had said it himself, back in the lock-up cell; why would someone want him working with me and cleared of all charges? There was a connection there.
So, was the killer helping? Or hindering? A guardian angel or a stalker?
He'd already been escorted into an interview room by the time Pierce and I arrived. I tried not to study his bruised face too closely. He had two black eyes, a swollen nose, and various shades of colours across his jaw. I knew, from evidence photos taken at the hospital, that his ribs and stomach looked pretty much the same. It was a testament to how many beaten people I'd seen in my life that I didn't even blink. This prick was going to rape a woman. Probably did it before. Possibly did it to Carole Michaels.
I sat at the table beside Pierce, resting my aching foot, and offering a united front. Pierce placed a closed folder of select images we'd chosen on the surface between us. Then announced the start of the interview and relevant information for the recording device in the room.
"Tane Collins," Pierce began, "how many times have you worked with Charles Smith?"
Right into the thick of it. Collins had been asked these questions already, but Pierce was going for the rinse and repeat approach, and then throw a surprise question into the mix to shake things up a bit. My job was to observe for now. Catalogue facial features, the suspect's body position and reaction at any given time, and then attack nearer the end. A modified good cop, bad cop routine. Only this time it was silent cop, talkative cop. Just what is the quiet cop going to do?
For some reason it unnerves them. We took any advantage that we could get.
"I've already told you. Met him that night," Tane replied, his lawyer having whispered the answer in his ear.
The barman was dressed in the same jeans from last night at Zero and a Police issue paper-like shirt. It billowed around his upper body, even though I knew he was pretty buffed under there. The lawyer was one I'd had experience with in the past, from a reputable firm in West Auckland. His suit didn't quite fit.
"What did he ask you to do?" Pierce queried.
The lawyer leaned over and whispered in Tane's ear before he let him talk.
"As per last time," Collins said, reciting word for word what the lawyer had instructed, and sounding fairly much like a parrot because of it, "he mentioned he wanted to make a little bondage film. I agreed to find a woman who would suit and meet him at the room."
"But you didn't take the woman to the room yourself," Pierce said, levelly.
They did the lawyer thing again and Tane said, probably verbatim, "I pointed her out to Smith, he approached to get her in the mood."
"So you worked as a tag team?" Pierce asked.
"Kinda," Tane replied, before the lawyer could stop him. That received a good sixty seconds of whispered reprimand in his ear.
As I watched the scene unfold, I knew this wasn't our killer. Tane Collins wasn't intelligent enough. Plus, my gut was telling me that the person who altered the video footage was the same one who left the newspaper with the article and picture of me on Damon's doorstep. Tane had been under guard when the evidence locker had been broken into. Smith, who had excellent representation and had walked earlier, if anyone, was our man.
"You doctored her drink to make her more compliant, so you said in our last interview," Pierce stated, reading off a transcript of that interview just for show. He knew damn well what Collins had said.
"Yes. It helps to get them to relax." Same answer as last time, led by the hand of the lawyer at his side.
"And what did you plan to do to her again?" Pierce asked.
"Film the sex. Film me having sex with her while she was bound."
"And Smith?"
"He was in charge of the filming. The director, you know."
"He didn't want to participate further?"
"He liked to watch, but he said he'd have a go after."
No honour among rapists. Tane was prepared to drop Smith in it to that degree, but unfortunately at this stage it was his word against the wiser, richer man.
"And you hadn't done this with Smith before?" Pierce asked, straight away.
"No. Like I said, he approached me last night for the first time."
"Have you done it with anyone else?"
Another moment to confer with his lawyer.
"No."
"Have you done it alone before?"
The lawyer leaned in, whispered. Collins said, "No."
"Does the name Carole Michaels mean anything to you?"
And here we were. The lawyer straightened, went to place a restraining hand on Tane's wrist, but Tane just spat, "She wanted it. She asked me to tie her up."
"So you have done it before?" Pierce confirmed.
"She wanted it."
"Not what we heard."
"She's lying," Tane shouted, the lawyer trying to get his attention and shut him the fuck up.
"You tied her up, after giving her a roofie," Pierce said, "and then sexually assaulted her. We know this for a fact."
Not really, but close enough. We can read between the lines. The point is though, Tane believed Carole had told us those exact words. Rather like his lawyer whispering in his ear, Carole had whispered in ours.
"She did want to do it," he insisted. "She just needed a little help."
"Like Stacey Lawrence needed a little help."
"Mr Collins, stop talking now," the lawyer said. My cue to jump in.
"Here's what we think, Collins," I said in my best bad cop voice. His head spun on his shoulders and he got the big eyes oh-fuck look on his face. "You've not only done this before with Carole Michaels, but there've been others as well. A string of them in fact. Now, if you did it all alone, that's a hell of a lot of jail time on your shoulders. Tell us who else was involved and spread the load a bit."
"Smith. Smith was involved," he shouted, the lawyer flinging himself back in his chair with disgust. "Every time. Every single time. He purchased the rohypnol, I put it in. We did the women together. We've been doing it like that for months. It's his thing. He likes to watch. Doesn't like to get his hands dirty, but he likes to watch."
Squealing like a stuck pig.
"And these?" Ryan said softly, opening the folder and spreading the graphic and gory pictures of the dead informants across the desk.
Collins recoiled. Muttered an "Oh my fuck," while the lawyer leaned forward and said, "What the hell are those?"
"Anton Burgess," I supplied, pointing to the first picture. "Thomas Withers." The next, my voice whisper soft. "Tyrone Anderson and Patrick O'Malley. Did you do this, Tane?"
His head was shaking from side to side so much I thought it would fly off.
"Oh, fuck no. No, no, no. Not me. You can't pin those on me."
"Did Smith?" Pierce asked.
"Are you kidding? The guy gets a soft-on if there's any blood on the girls. They gotta be bound, but you can't rough 'em up. Trapped and resistant, but never damage the goods, he says."
"I think you should shut the hell up now, Tane," his lawyer instructed. "Are you charging my client?" he asked Pierce.
"Yes," Ryan replied.
"For the murders or just the DFSA?" the lawyer asked, and I swear if there hadn't been a desk between us, I would have throttled the prick for saying 'just'.
"The Drug Facilitated Sexual Assault," Ryan replied, eyes stone cold, enunciating each word crisply.
I ran a hand over my face. Despite the adrenaline rush - not to mention the blood, sweat and fucking tears - of the past few days, we were now back at square one.
Collins and Smith weren't our murderers. Rapists, but not murderers. There was no connection between Zero Gravity and the dead informants.
We had nothing. Absolutely fucking nothing.
The dots did not connect at all.
Chapter Twenty-Five
"Sometimes all it takes is a gentle shove in the right direction. Sometimes it takes a two-by-four to the head."
It took four hours to finish processing Collins, having uniforms pick up Smith, then charging him with the DFSA, further charges pending, and complete the paperwork. Not all of a detective'
s life is an adrenaline rush.
Smith's lawyer appeared as soon as his client was pulled into Central Police, making the whole process drawn out and a little messy. Despite having had a good night's - or morning's - sleep, I was exhausted again.
But we had them. Collins' lawyer wanting to make arrangements for a deal; information including locations, dates and numbers implicating Smith as well, for reduced sentencing. It was something for another day. Tonight, I needed to file my paperwork and get the hell out of here to clear my head. The DFSA at Zero Gravity might have been all tied up with a nice neat bow, but the murder of the informants was wide open and riddled with holes.
I was sitting at my desk finishing off the last of my notes in the system when a shadow fell over me. I expected it to be Pierce, who'd disappeared for a phone call half an hour ago. But it wasn't.
Inspector Hart took the seat across my desk. Carl's seat. It was strange seeing the older, sterner looking man in my mentor's chair. I respected the Inspector, he usually ran a very tight ship. The evidence locker incident the only time I had seen him appear less than certain how to proceed.
I wondered if this was the cause of the personal visit.
"I'm heading home, Keen," he announced, flicking the edge of a desk calendar in front of him. "The wife had a thing on this evening. I missed it. Marriage to a cop can be a hard ask."
I had no idea what to say to that.
Hart looked up, directly into my face. His was not soft, nor was it irate either. Just the standard gruff, hard look he usually wore.
"I can't have Michaels back in here for a while. You understand?" he asked.
I forced a breath out and said as steadily as I could manage, "Yes, sir. I understand."
Damon may not have been charged, but he'd been implicated, and we all knew he was guilty of assault. Not that the powers that be breathing down Hart's neck right now were one hundred percent aware of that. Damon would still be persona non grata, though, until things either settled down or got swept away.
Neither outcome a comfortable prospect for a detective who had once operated strictly by the book.
"Still, you work well together," Hart added, making my eyebrows rise up my forehead. He stood up then, looked around the room, possibly to see if anyone was listening, then said, not looking at me at all, "Perhaps it would be a good idea for you to take the files for the informant case home with you. Work remotely for a few days. You can liaise with Pierce that way."
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