by Adam Carter
The three of them found their way to the lifts and they waited patiently, Jeremiah rocking back and forth on his heels, whistling. With a ping the lift arrived and they all stepped inside. Jeremiah suddenly stopped short. “You two go on ahead,” he told them, taking a step back. “Eighteenth floor, I’ll meet you there.”
“Why?” Thompson asked. “Where will you be?”
“Would you just trust me once in your life?” he snapped. Then he whispered. “I need to have a quick word with the security guard. He wasn’t expecting three of us and I need to explain there’s no problem, without you being here.”
“In case he thinks we’re holding you hostage,” Thompson nodded. “Fair enough.” And the two women stepped into the lift.
Jeremiah breathed a sigh of relief and waited until their lift was moving before calling his own. It arrived in good time and he stepped inside. Unfortunately just as the doors were closing someone jumped for it and just caught it with their arm. The man entered, smiling that he had made it. He was suited and clearly on his way to whatever office he worked at. He pressed the sixth floor, and Jeremiah hung towards the back of the lift, hoping not to be noticed too much.
The man stood there silently as the lift rose, facing the door. Jeremiah was praying he would keep focused in that direction: the other three walls were formed of mirrors.
Keeping a careful watch upon the man via the mirrors, Jeremiah noticed the frown furrow his brow. The suited man turned, looking at Jeremiah, and waved his hand before him as though he was an illusion. The poor guy didn’t even realise what he was seeing. The lift doors opened on the sixth floor just as the man’s eyes widened. Suddenly he had figured out the truth.
“Tough luck, pal,” Jeremiah said and punched forward with all his might. The suited man shot backwards through the lift doors, his back slamming into the opposite lift on the sixth floor. Jeremiah heard the satisfying crack of the man’s spine and he slid to the floor, leaving a bloody trail against the lift doors. The man’s head sagged and Jeremiah could tell just from the change in scent that he was dead.
The lift doors closed and it resumed its journey to the eighteenth floor.
Jeremiah stood alone in the lift.
The mirrors showed there were no passengers.
He was smiling when the door opened to reveal his two companions. Thompson looked at him quizzically, Foster was glad he had made it, and Jeremiah strolled past them both. “Trouble?” Thompson asked.
“Trouble?”
“The guard?”
“Oh. No. Sweet as taffy.”
“What’s taffy?”
“Don’t worry about it.”
The office space was open plan, but there were few desks in sight. The drug cartel had clearly bought this office space and had littered it with enough desks to make a casual observer believe it was in use. In reality it was just a front. There was every chance they owned the floor below and above; that way they could do whatever they liked to anyone they wanted on this floor and no one would ever be the wiser.
Before they could get onto the floor, however, they had a door to pass through. Until then all they could do was peer through the glass and determine the office was perhaps in use.
“We don’t have a security pass,” Thompson said, “and somehow I don’t think Busty Betty’s getting us through this door.”
“You can usually jimmy them,” Jeremiah said.
“No you can’t.”
“You can if you know the trick.”
“Believe me, if there was a trick to jimmying doors I would have learned it growing up, Jeremiah.”
“Let me give it a try before you pooh-pooh the idea.” Jeremiah set his shoulder to the door, made a show of trying to listen for the locking mechanism, even though it was electronically sealed. And with an almighty shove he forced the door so hard the lock simply snapped. “There,” he said. “All in the wrist.”
“What did you do?” Thompson asked, surprised. “How did you even do that?”
“Easy when you know how.”
“But that was an electronic ...”
“Do you want to stand here arguing all day or shall we go see if Charles is having his nails pulled?”
Thompson set her jaw firm and nodded slightly for him to lead the way.
They moved slowly. There was no noise within the office, and even Jeremiah’s senses were picking up nothing. There was a newspaper lying on one desk and he glanced at the date. It was today’s edition, which meant there might still be someone around. But in order to conduct a thorough search he had to ditch the two women.
“You check that end,” he told them. “If we split up we can cover more ground.”
“We should stick together,” Thompson said.
“And this is my assignment. Do whatever you want on your own time, Thompson, but I’m not going back to Sanders and telling him you got Baronaire killed a second time.”
She stared daggers at him, which was the entire idea, span on her heel and stormed off. After several moments Jeremiah noted Foster was still standing there and he shooed her away with both hands waving like a fan. “Go, go, go.”
Shaking his head as he watched them walk off, Jeremiah turned his own attention to the task at hand. He closed his eyes, inhaling deeply and drawing in the ambiance of the office. People had indeed been through here recently, but there were too many scents, and he could not be certain whether Baronaire was one of them. He had hoped this would have been easy, but first those two women, then that man in the lift ... it was all taking its toll upon his nerves and he was having trouble focusing.
And he could still smell the intoxicating scents of Foster and Thompson. They were like fire and ice, and his mind was playing havoc with the possibilities.
It had been a while since Sanders had given him anyone and he wasn’t scheduled anything for a couple more nights yet. No wonder his brain was screaming like a teenage boy spying on the girls’ dressing room.
A thorough search of the office revealed nothing, however, and Jeremiah decided if Baronaire had ever been here he was long gone. If he had not spent so much of the previous night searching the docks he might have been able to squeeze in the search of this place as well. But with so many officers and random gawkers staring at the wreckage at the docks Jeremiah had been forced to play his hand very carefully and had lost time.
He moved across the office to inform the two women they were moving out and almost collided with Foster coming the other way in a hurry. “What is it?” he asked, sensing from her adrenalin alone that she had found something.
Foster grabbed him by the hand and ran with him, dragging him along behind her. They came to a room tucked away in the corner. Thompson was inside, standing with her hands clenched into fists by her side. She was trembling and desperately trying not to. Jeremiah did not take this to be a good sign.
Then the scent hit him. Baronaire had been here after all.
There was a single chair in the centre of the room, but it was not an office chair. It was made of metal and bolted to the ground. The room was large enough to contain ten people comfortably, and apart from the chair there was little else aside from an empty cupboard. But Thompson was holding something and Jeremiah recognised it at once.
“Baronaire’s trench coat,” Foster said in case he had suddenly developed a bout of stupidity. “He was here. They must have tied him to the chair and ...”
“We get the picture,” Jeremiah cut her off. “Thank you.” Jeremiah’s anger was more to do with the dodgy scent. This room had been cleaned, industriously so. They had no doubt interrogated Baronaire, and had washed away any trace of blood. It was why he was having such trouble pinpointing him.
“Why would they move him?” Thompson asked the air. “He must be dead.”
“Maybe they got spooked,” Jeremiah said. The real reason was something dire. Through their interrogation there was no telling what they had uncovered. Perhaps they broke some fists on his jaw, or even some torture impl
ements. Perhaps Baronaire had snapped his bonds or called the local rats to his aid. There were all manner of things Baronaire could have revealed about himself, and if they had even an inkling that he was not exactly human they may have been freaked out enough to have moved him to a more secure location.
But no, that was a ludicrous thought. If they were going to continue the interrogation they would do it here. It was as good a place as any. That meant they were either intending to bury him somewhere or else take him to their bosses, let them figure out what he was and what to do with him. Either way Baronaire was in trouble.
“What’s our next move then?” Foster asked.
Jeremiah spoke aloud his two theories. “We need to split up,” he finished by saying. “Check out both.”
“Splitting up’s all well and good,” Thompson said, “but first we need leads.”
Jeremiah shook his head. That was where his own expertise was drying up.
Thompson folded Baronaire’s coat carefully over her arm. Jeremiah could see emotions battling within her mind. She intended to hand him that coat back when all this was over. Just then Jeremiah’s eye caught something and he stepped closer to her, reaching into the coat’s internal pocket. He produced a Dictaphone and smiled to himself.
“They let him keep that?” Foster asked.
“They were afraid of him,” Jeremiah said without even realising he was doing so. “You know how possessive he is of this coat: no one would have dared go near it. Baronaire left his coat here on purpose. He made them think they were taking it from him, but he ... Let’s get back to the car and see what’s on this thing.”
He could see Thompson did not understand him, but he was fine with that. His mind was already working three steps ahead. If they could get Baronaire to tell them what to do they would be able to rescue him. Jeremiah could deal with Thompson later if it came to it. The priority right now was finding Baronaire.
Thankfully Foster dragged them both back towards the lifts. Jeremiah purposefully did not meet Thompson’s eyes, but he watched her regardless. Her suspicions did not matter; only hard evidence ever counted for anything.
Jeremiah closed his eyes with a groan. He was going to have to think of one hell of an excuse not to get in the lift with them again.
CHAPTER FIVE
“I don’t get it,” Foster said while they listened to the Dictaphone. “We can hear the guys talking, but there’s no sound from Baronaire. How come?”
“Must be the way the machine’s facing,” Jeremiah said. “I know these things can be temperamental at times. He must have wanted us to hear them rather than him.”
“If he faced it towards him,” Foster continued, “he could have just told us what we wanted to know.”
“Maybe he wanted us to hear their voices.”
Thompson let the two of them natter on. Jeremiah knew far more than he was telling them, that much was obvious. But Thompson wasn’t fool enough to let on that she knew. She did not believe he had any connexion to Baronaire’s kidnappers, which meant his skittishness was about something else entirely, something grander. If it wasn’t immediately connected to the case Thompson was willing to let it slide for the moment. But she had the feeling Jeremiah knew precisely why Baronaire’s voice wasn’t turning up on the machine. And Jeremiah’s sudden bladder infection he’d never told anyone about, making them catch the lift before him, was something she didn’t even want to think about until she had to.
“Do you recognise any of them?” Thompson asked Jeremiah.
“No. But then I’m not in any way connected to them.”
“That’s a strange statement to make.”
Jeremiah rolled his eyes. “I meant I don’t have any assignments to this cartel. If any of us is going to recognise their voices it should be you, Thompson.”
She had to admit he had a point, and she strained to listen more carefully. But there was no way she was going to be able to differentiate between voices and she gave up trying after only a few moments. She could hear two men talking, arguing about something, although it was all a little muffled. One seemed frightened of something, babbling in a language she couldn’t understand. Spanish she thought it was. He kept saying “El Diablo,” which even she knew meant the Devil. Did the man fear for his soul if they were to torture Baronaire? Was that what he was terrified of?
There was a thud as Baronaire was struck, probably across the face, and a man shouted at him, swearing, demanding the prisoner tell him what he was. What he was doing at the docks, Thompson supposed he must have meant; the quality of the sound was not the greatest.
The machine was running out of tape and they had thus far gleaned nothing. Sitting in the car, huddled in the cold as the rain beat the windshield outside in the night, they had thus far gained nothing of any use. And the longer they waited, the longer they sat there doing nothing, was more time these people had alone with Baronaire.
And then, very loud and clearly, one of the men shouted out, “Gorlinger!”
The Spanish muttering man wailed, seemed to be praying, while there came the sound of another cuffing someone about the head, asking him why he had just shouted that out.
Jeremiah chuckled. “That’s what we were waiting for.”
“What?” Thompson asked, confused. “Why?”
“Baronaire tricked him into shouting the name.”
“How do you trick someone into shouting a name?”
“Trust me.”
“No.”
Jeremiah’s face darkened. “Anyway, Gorlinger’s the man we want. I know the name, vaguely; it’s not one you’re likely to forget in a hurry. I think he’s some higher-up in their cartel. Likely he wants to see Baronaire personally.”
“Why? He won’t even know Baronaire’s in the office.”
“Maybe they decided to take him to the boss, maybe they weren’t getting anything.”
Jeremiah was skirting the issue again, but Thompson had bigger concerns. She radioed the office and got Barry Stockwell on the other end. That was a stroke of luck. If there was one person who could work his way quickly through computer files it was Barry Stockwell.
“I need everything you can get me on Gorlinger,” she told him without preamble.
“Sure, Jen. Hold on a sec.” She could almost imagine him pushing his glasses at the bridge of his nose. Stockwell was young, eager and utterly annoying. He was obsessed with fish, kept telling her what speeds tiger sharks could reach and the best way to cook a sea bass. At first she thought he was trying it on with her, but the more she got to know him the more she realised he was just a nerd. A nerd for fish, but then she supposed there were people obsessed with anything.
Thinking upon her life, she supposed at least he actually had an interest.
“Francois Gorlinger,” Stockwell said at last.
“He’s French?” Thompson asked.
“No idea. Doesn’t sound very French, but who knows? Maybe it’s an alias.”
“Who cares?” Jeremiah muttered.
Thompson found she had to agree. “Just tell me where I can find him, Barry, and anything else you think I might find interesting.”
“The nurse shark is entirely harmless to human beings.”
“Right. That’s not interesting and has no bearing on the case.”
“Come on, Jen, it was a joke.”
“And Baronaire’s still missing. What have you got for me?”
Stockwell gave them the information and Thompson was glad to get away from him. It seemed WetFish knew a great deal about Gorlinger, just as they knew a great deal about a lot of influential bad guys. If it ever became their jurisdiction to actively seek out the major players in the bad guy universe WetFish would stand in pretty good stead at taking a few of them down; but that was not their mantra.
“Gorlinger’s based about ten minutes away in the car,” Jeremiah said. Stockwell had told them where Gorlinger lived, but he wouldn’t be stupid enough to have Baronaire taken there. But Stockwell had also give
n them a certain location Gorlinger had used before when he had had prisoners brought to him. If he had used the location already there was a good chance he would be using it again this time.
“Then put your foot down,” Thompson told him. “We need to get there before they move him on.” Or, she added silently, before they kill him.
They arrived at their destination shortly and once more Jeremiah took command. They were looking at what appeared to be an art gallery, and as they approached the steps did Thompson even see a sign advertising a new exhibition.
“It’s a good front,” Jeremiah informed her when he saw her confused expression. “Hide in plain sight? And a tortured man or two can just be viewed as modern art.”
“Seriously, this place is in use?”
“Like Stockwell said, Gorlinger owns the building. After closing hours, it makes it the best place for him to do what he likes to whomever he likes. Or doesn’t like.”
Thompson had heard Stockwell’s message about the building but hadn’t realised it was an art gallery. Villains were a clever bunch, she’d give them that. “How are we playing this?” she asked.
“I’m going in the front,” Jeremiah told the two women. “I want you around the back. Find a way in and work your way towards any noise.”
“Why do you get to go in the front?” Thompson asked. “We’re all just as eager to get Baronaire back.”
“This isn’t about playing heroes, Thompson. Just do what I tell you and maybe we’ll all walk away from this one.”
It may have been an attack on her: Thompson did not know. It would have been justified if it was, however, and she took Foster around the back without another word. She could tell Foster wanted to talk, wanted to shake with excitement at rescuing Baronaire probably. Foster seldom got to go anywhere, doing all her work in the office or in the courts. Thompson however was far from in the mood to mollify her right at that moment and with a glower silenced the gleeful young woman.