by Mark Henwick
“No, I’m not being clear. I don’t mean just at Silver Hills, I mean generally. What’s out there and how come you’re an expert?”
I struggled. I wanted to talk to someone other than the Obs team or Captain Morales, but besides the danger of Jen regarding me as a lunatic, there was always the threat of that isolation cell back at Obs if they knew I was involving civilians in the ‘weird’ stuff.
As if she read the conflict in my face, Jen leaned across and squeezed my arm.
“It’s okay. A woman of mysteries. I’m a very patient person, Amber. Tell me when you’re ready.”
I smiled my thanks at her and chased the salty garlic olives with another sip of the rum.
“You mentioned the last husband,” I said to change the subject. “Do you have someone else lined up in your sights?”
She laughed. “Hell, no! After what he cost me? No way. What about you?”
“Oh, I’m between guys at the moment.”
“Sounds kinky.” She raised her eyebrows at me, pretending to look shocked.
“You know what I meant.” I tried to glare at her and we ended up giggling, but at least that was better than my blushing.
“What about where you live?” she said. “Do you have a house?”
“No. I rent a room down in Aurora. Never thought of buying. Well, to tell the truth, I never met a banker drunk enough to lend me money, at the same time I was drunk enough to borrow.”
Jen waggled the rum bottle. “I’m sure I could rustle up a banker,” she said.
I sighed. “An evening getting drunk with a banker. So tempting, but no, thank you. I’ve got to—”
“Yes, you said,” she stopped me.
The maid came in to say that my clothes were ready, except for my jacket. Crawling around on the ground had gotten stains on it, and she was very sorry, but they wouldn’t come out and she was afraid it was ruined.
“I have a jacket you can use,” Jen said. “It was...well anyway, never been used. Should fit you.”
By the time I was dressed and back in the living room, Jen had brought it out.
“I can’t take this, Jen.” I held it, but couldn’t put it on. It was the most beautiful leather jacket I had ever seen. It was soft brown, lined with silk and had a dramatic double collar. It had to be worth a month’s pay for me.
“Of course you can,” she insisted. “Your jacket got ruined on my case, so it’s my responsibility. Anyway, it’s too cold outside without something.”
She eased it on despite my protestations and zipped it up halfway. It fit perfectly. A hesitant look crossed her face for a second, but then she smiled.
“There,” she said. “Go out and do your stuff. I’ll see you later, maybe.”
The driver came in to collect me, and there didn’t seem to be time to argue any more. I went out wondering how I was going to pay for this. I had learned that lesson early in life. There’s nothing without a cost.
Chapter 18
Jen’s driver was called Kingston, that much I learned on the way down to the office. Beyond that he was very quiet. Still, as he drove away, he left me feeling lonely. And cold. I was glad of the jacket.
Tullah would have called me if anything important had come in during the day, but out of habit I checked my email and messages. There was a routine update from Victor on the search for Troy. They still hadn’t found him, so I just skimmed it. All it gave were a list of possibilities that they had discounted. He would be including Jen in future communications now.
I got out the colonel’s information about the ZK rave and logged onto one of the announcement sites. After a couple of false trails, I tracked down the address where it was being held. It was an old shopping mall, too small and too close to the giants to survive. It had a large delivery area beneath it that was ideal for the rave. No neighbors within hearing. The police’s only concern would be drugs, so they would probably take a light touch approach unless things got out of hand.
I wouldn’t be leaving my car near this rave tomorrow. Besides the potential for damage, I knew the police regularly noted license plates and I wanted to keep off all those databases. The new office was two minutes’ walk from Colorado Boulevard’s Light Rail station, and the rave was about five from Dry Creek station. I would leave the car here and take the train.
ZK were running it, but the sound and light show were going to be from a couple of teams called Electric Breath and Beat Gear. I rubbed my head—I knew them and that combo meant a hardcore dance event. At least I wouldn’t look out of place in my standard clothes. Some raves I had to look like a vampire to blend in, and the humor of it was kinda lost on me.
I closed the computer down. From the drawer in my new desk I took the blood test machine and strapped it to my arm. A couple of minutes later it confirmed to me that it had edged up another point to 0.43. It wasn’t anything to get concerned about yet. I wanted to keep checking it at different times to see if there was anything I did or felt that gave a different reading.
After stripping and cleaning it, I swapped the Walther for the Heckler Koch in the safe. Along with the Walther, I put in all the things we’d taken from the three men out at Silver Hills except for the two Glocks, which I also cleaned and wrapped in plastic bags. Then I locked up and walked to my car with the Glocks in a cardboard box.
Morales wanted to talk this evening, and it wasn’t too late. I sent him a text asking him if he wanted to meet or talk to me on my cell, tonight or tomorrow. He came back right away with a request to meet him at Monroe at 11 p.m. Oh good, another late night.
At least that gave me enough time to visit my storage facility, which was my other task for the evening.
I reached under the center of the dash, behind my modified GPS navigation system, and retrieved an ID card identifying me as Mrs. Abigail Welchester, along with a key to Abigail’s unit at the Central Self Store down near Union Station. I’d accidentally kept some of my fake documentation when I left the army. Bad girl.
If the guy at the gatehouse wondered why Mrs. Welchester should be visiting her storage unit so late, he hid it well. My key opened the gate and he barely glanced up as I drove down the streets of padlocked containers. At the cheap end, my small unit was in the middle of a row of a dozen identical ones, only the number stenciled on the front identifying it. Damn, but it was like being back in the army.
I put the Glocks in, alongside the shotgun I wasn’t supposed to have either.
It was dark and the nearest spotlight shed no light in this locker, but my night vision was good. I could see my past life, hanging or neatly folded, sealed in plastic or tidied into boxes. All done and packed away.
My army uniform hung from the rail at the top. The uniform that Krantz said I never wore, the uniform that the army said I should no longer wear, the uniform that I spent ten hard years earning. I unzipped the plastic cover and slipped my hand in to count the stripes on the sleeves and to reassure myself it wasn’t all a dream.
Then I slammed the door closed and rested my forehead on the cold, uncaring metal.
There was a damned good reason I left the uniforms down here. They reminded me of everything I’d lost. On top of that, now Krantz was telling me I had never been in the army. In Ops 4-10 I’d signed up for secret operations, but I couldn’t believe how much pain it caused me to realize what most people would believe: there was no record, so I couldn’t have been there. Nothing left.
Give it all up, I thought. Why shouldn’t I go back to Manassah and get drunk? Let someone else carry the load. I’d given, God knows I’d given, why couldn’t I take now? Because I can’t.
I twisted around and looked up at the blurry moon in the night sky. Its silver radiance was dimmed by the harsh spotlights. Above Silver Hills, it would be shining, clear and pure, and the vision of it made my heart ache. I wanted to talk to the moon without the city haze and backscatter, I wanted to sing to its cold beauty in the pristine night, I wanted my song to float on the wind, I wanted to run naked throu
gh the woods, nothing between me and the clean air.
Shit, are you ever the wrong type of weird for that, Amber! Too much rum, too little sleep.
I zipped up the jacket and got back in the car. Enough. I was going to be late at Monroe.
∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞
Morales looked better than he had the previous night. His team had cleared an area for him in the living room of the house on Monroe and they were working in the background, still sorting, tagging, bagging and photographing. The body and the rats were gone, thank goodness, but the smell stayed on.
Morales’ lightweight gray suit was store-window perfect, with pants creases that a drill sergeant couldn’t find fault with. I always thought he looked as if he might be called to appear on the evening news, and with some justification. His face was square, the hard lines softened by designer stubble, and fleshier than when he’d been a lieutenant. His hair was still jet black and combed straight back, and his eyes were still sharp under the eagle wing eyebrows. He was a good face on TV and the chief knew it.
“Captain, you’re looking good.” I shook his hand.
“Thank you, Farrell.” He stared at me, suspicious of any compliment, and jerked his thumb at a seat. His team had brought in folding director seats and a table. We sat down opposite each other.
“No cleanup crew turned up,” he said shortly.
“Well, hell. The squad car outside and the yellow tape around the house must’ve put them off. Who woulda thought it?”
A muscle in Morales’ jaw twitched. “We waited till noon. I can’t sit on a murder inquiry longer than that. There wasn’t a strong enough reason to wait longer.”
I shrugged; it was history now. The Snakebite team had crept in last night and I had no reason to suspect they would have blown it before they had to. I waved at the mess. “Is there anything in this junk that gives us a lead?”
“Almost nothing so far. We’ll need to process all the prints. Forensics have a lot to work with. According to the other Crate & Freight drivers, Windler was the key man. There’s got to be something here.”
We’d spoken only of essentials last night, and I was counting on getting a chewing out for going in alone. To spite me, he started at the other end.
“Definitely vampires?” He nodded at where the sofa had been last night. “Not some random psycho or gang killing?”
I nodded.
“Forensics say he was probably alive when they cracked his chest,” Morales said. “Were they making a statement, or is that normal for vampires?”
Chills ran over my body. “I think it’s a statement. Windler was the only one who knew who was behind this. He’s been killed by vampires. Either the vampires were running it, or they worked with the person running it.” I shook my head and took a deep breath. “But it seems there are vampires and then there are vampires, Captain. This group are different from the locals. So were those three last year.”
“You’ve identified a local vampire community?” He sat up and leaned over the table. “I thought I was supposed to be kept up to date on any developments.”
“You thought right, but I’m not there yet. I may,” I stressed the word, “may have an introduction. If I do, you’ll hear about it.”
“I need to be there, Farrell, I can’t have you going in alone like last night, I—”
I cut him off. “That’s not fair, Morales, and you know it. You didn’t like being woken up in the middle of the night when I found the body—how would you have felt if I had called to tell you I was coming out here on a hunch because I recognized a nearby street name from an unrelated case?”
“You could have called someone else.”
“Yeah? Like who, given what’s here? The desk sergeant at the local station?”
He wiped his hand across his face. “Fair point,” he conceded. He picked a card out of his wallet and gave it to me. “Lieutenant Edmunds is the contact on Project Snakebite. All of these people here report to him, and anything on Snakebite is his priority. He’s available on this number 24/7 until further notice. His team doesn’t know anything about you except that you’re a consultant on this. Use the number, Farrell.”
“Thanks,” I said. Edmunds had been here last night. He seemed competent and even better, he had his curiosity about me well under control. His small ambush team had been geared up for serious trouble, from flak jackets to motion sensors. They couldn’t really know what they might be up against until they’d faced it, but they were well prepared. Frankly, I hadn’t believed that a vampire would come back last night to clean up, or I’d never have left them.
I pocketed the card. “I’ll call him if I come across anything that combines vampire and criminal. But I will not involve you in meetings with the local vampire community, if they are law-abiding, until they give the go-ahead.”
I watched a vein throb in Morales’ forehead, and counted out ten beats before he spoke.
“What about some kind of tracer on you, one that we can only access if things go bad? You don’t know what you’re getting into.”
“I can’t think how that might work, Captain, and it’s my ass. And I do have some idea of what I might be getting into. I promise, I’ll tell you what happens.”
“You get away with this crap with me, Farrell, but one of these days you’ll be talking to the FBI. They’re getting interested in this stuff and they will find their way to you.”
“All above my pay grade, Captain. I’ll just tell ’em to go talk to the colonel. Let’s see how they get along with him.”
Morales almost smiled before he hid it behind a hand. He turned serious again. “What did you think of the special team last night? I mean, have we got the right gear? What will work?”
I shrugged. “If it moves, it can be sensed. If it bleeds, it can die.”
“If it doesn’t bleed?”
“It’s already dead.”
“Not entirely reassuring, under the circumstances.”
I shrugged again and changed the topic. “So all we have are some signs that there’s a connection between guns and drug running, which was using Crate & Freight, and ZK, and out-of-town vampires. No further leads.”
Morales grunted.
“What about Nokes?”
“Ian Nokes. Contract driver for Ranchos Rigs, out of Albuquerque. That was his own truck at the depot, and he was doing his own work. In the wind.”
“Who owns the house?” I asked.
“The stiff, through a shell company we found this afternoon. Your original dead end.”
“Back to Crate & Freight,” I said, tapping my fingers. There was something bothering me about the whole setup. “Eight drivers at least, a company that transports over the whole US, the size of that shipment, compartments designed for it. This must have been a major distribution center.”
Morales nodded, his face deeply unhappy. “Drug trading in Denver is going down. Much as I would like to say it’s thanks to the PD, there’s some indication that it’s gang-on-gang.”
“Keeping the base clean for their business HQ?” I asked and Morales nodded again. “This can’t be ZK, they’re just the hired muscle, aren’t they? They’re a frigging biker gang.”
“They were originally,” he agreed. “They’re not now, they’re big-league organized crime, and I hear there’s a new boss, some guy called Hoben, who’s taken them up a step.”
“So if they go the normal route for organized crime, they’d need a legitimate front, a reputable business.” The chair creaked as I shifted. “Is that Crate & Freight?” Carter going into crime instead of politics?
But Morales shook his head. “Not big enough, and strictly transport. Useful, but not enough.”
“But you’d assume that they’d want to own it as well if they were planning on using it as their distribution system. But for the main front company, how about the Kingslund Group?” I asked casually.
Morales looked up sharply. “You want to run that thought by me again?”
“You said
Crate & Freight wasn’t big enough. Maybe Kingslund is. What if ZK were aiming to take over Kingslund? How would they go about it?”
“They’d have to shift Je…Ms. Kingslund first. She’s not the selling type. But it’s the type of company they’d be looking for: big, but not too big, privately owned, lots of outlets, national profile, mixture of businesses. What are you thinking, Farrell?”
I frowned. “I’m thinking I’m glad we organized a full-time security detail for her this afternoon. Victor Gayle’s crew.”
Morales grunted in approval. “I know him. He runs good security. What happened to prompt that?”
We had a staring contest across the table. I broke it first. “Something has happened, and at least one of the people involved had the ZK tattoos.” Morales looked as if he wanted to jump over the table and arrest me right there, so I hurried on. “If I have a provable felony that’ll slam dunk in court, I’ll tell you.”
“Find me enough ZK members in one place and I’ll pull them in anyway,” Morales said.
“Sir?” One of the team opened the door and put his head around. Morales looked up. “We’ve just got a call, sir, the news people are on their way here. Something must have leaked.”
“Okay, thanks. That was bound to happen sooner or later. I’m surprised we kept it quiet for this long.” He blew out a breath and got out his cell. “I gotta go. I don’t want attention focused on this.”
“You want a lift?” I said. “They won’t know my car.”
The cogs were visibly turning in his head, but he agreed. Five minutes later, we passed the news vans. I turned up towards Colfax to take us back into the city.
As I dropped him off at HQ, I mentioned that there was a ZK rave the next night and I would be going. I said I would call him if there was anything interesting, or even a lot of ZK around, and he decided he was going to be satisfied with that for the moment.
∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞
It was after 1 a.m. when I made it back to Manassah and checked that the security team had changed shifts and was alert. I spoke to each of them and went through their procedures one more time.