by Matt Hilton
'We know that your business is just a front,' I said. 'You can masquerade as a security consultancy, but the truth is that you supply mercenaries to those willing to pay your fees. It's well known that you're indiscreet about the kind of people you serve.'
'Listen to me, Hunter. Doesn't matter what you think… this has nothing to do with me.'
'Stop screaming like a bitch,' I snapped. 'Now, we have two names: Jean Shrier and Ben Le Duke. Where are they now?'
'I'm not telling you that. I have a duty of care to those who work for me. You can't expect me to divulge classified information?'
'You will unless you fancy takin' a dive through that window,' Rink said.
I grabbed hold of his chair and dragged it back to his desk. The computer had avoided the crashing fall to the floor that had cleared the rest of his work space. 'Bring up their files, Wetherby.'
'Don't need to. Neither of them are who you're looking for.'
'Where are they?'
Wetherby sighed. His eyes went to the loose pile of unconscious men littering his office. 'You didn't get this from me, OK?'
'Just get on with it,' I said.
'Shrier's got a gig protecting a Hong Kong businessman. Le Duke, he's over in Nigeria protecting an oil field. I told you… they're not involved.'
I pulled out a photograph supplied to me by Walter.
'Him?'
'Don't know the guy.'
'Look again,' I ordered. 'He was a pilot. Miguel Suarez. Did he work for you?'
Wetherby picked up on the past tense.
'He's dead?'
'A bullet in the skull kinda has that effect on most folks,' Rink said. His words were loaded and Wetherby picked up on that too.
Wetherby shook his head. 'Still don't know him.'
'You don't seem to know very much,' I said. 'For such a top guy as you think you are.'
He shrugged and I could see he was beginning to gather a little composure. 'I told you that all along.'
'You're still a prick.'
He gave me a sickly smile. 'You're wrong about me. In every way.'
'Just hope that I never find out otherwise, Wetherby. If I have to come back again, things will be much worse next time.'
I punched him directly in his face, aiming to cause pain rather than unconsciousness. Let him dwell on that for a while.
We left Wetherby tending his bleeding face. Back outside the office building we stood side by side and looked out across the water towards Miami Beach. It was early in the morning in late February, and here in the subtropics it was unseasonably warm, but I felt very cold.
'Dead end,' I said to Rink.
'It was always a long shot. At least you taught Wetherby not to fuck with you again.'
'Maybe.' I clapped him on the shoulder. 'Except if they're going to be frightened of anyone, I guess that it'll be you. Those were some good moves back there.'
'It don't take much to slap down a few pussies like them,' he said, playing it cool.
'I'm surprised you broke that guy's arm. You're not usually as brutal as that.'
'You didn't see the switchblade he pulled outa his pocket?'
'Too busy with Wetherby,' I admitted.
'Here,' he said, handing me a black-handled flick knife – old type, like something out of Rebel without a Cause. 'Memento for you.'
I slipped the knife into my jeans pocket. My mobile was ringing and I pulled it out.
It was Harvey.
'How'd things go with Wetherby?'
'Waste of time,' I said. 'We're going to keep looking, though. Couple other names in Miami I want to look up.'
'You might want to get yourselves back here first.'
'Problem?'
'No. A possible lead.'
'Who?'
'Not who: what. Walter's liaising with the local PD on what looks like a hit that went wrong. The mark turned the tables this time.'
'He's dead?' Part of me wished that was true, but another part was full of regret. After what he'd done to Imogen I still wanted my day with the killer.
'That's the thing, Hunter. It looks like the man you're after was the mark this time. He killed three men as quick as you like.'
It was just an expression, but in reality I would have said quite the opposite. I didn't like this turn of events one bit.
Chapter 21
'Dry your eyes, Alisha. People are starting to notice you.'
Sitting looking at his wife, Luke Rickard wondered what to do with her. Right now she was baggage that he could do without. Ordinarily he fed off the fear in her, but now it was too damn inconvenient. Her snivelling had grown so annoying that he considered doing her right there and then in front of the breakfast crowd in the diner.
She used a napkin to dab her eyes, lifting her sunglasses one lens at a time. 'I… I'm sorry, Luke. I just can't get those men's faces out of my mind.'
Rickard took her wrists in his hands. 'Don't speak about that here.'
'When can we speak about it? You haven't answered any of my questions.'
Rickard took a less-than-surreptitious look round. At a nearby table an elderly man was eyeing him back over the top of his coffee mug. Rickard stared directly at the man until the guy got the message and returned his attention to his eggs and ham. Rickard turned back to Alisha. 'We can talk about it later.'
'You've been saying that for hours.'
Rickard lowered his voice. 'They wanted to kill me, Alisha. Would you rather it was me lying dead back there?'
Her face went rigid. 'No. Of course not. But… well… maybe they weren't coming to kill you.'
He expelled a breath. 'Why else would men with guns sneak into our apartment?'
Alisha turned her face away. It was only a momentary dipping of her chin, but Rickard caught it. It was a sign of deception. He recalled the smell of the lead assassin's cologne and how he was sure that it had lingered in his apartment on his return home. Maybe he'd been scoping the terrain a little closer than was expected.
'You knew him, didn't you, Alisha? The one with the grey hair?'
Alisha shook her head with just a little more exaggeration than was necessary.
'He was in my home,' Rickard said. 'You must have let him in.'
'I didn't…' Her voice was a child's whimper.
'What lies did he tell you?'
'He didn't… I mean… he wasn't there.'
Rickard was still holding her wrists. Not in a supportive manner now.
'Luke,' Alisha said. 'You're hurting me.'
He squeezed harder. 'He came to my apartment, Alisha. He spoke to you. What did he say?'
'N… othing.' Alisha tried to pull her wrists free, but Rickard wouldn't let her go. 'I haven't ever seen him before, Luke. I promise.'
Staring at her, Rickard thought back. There were a few details about the entire episode that he did not like. Below his private floor, he didn't have sole right to the elevator, so it wasn't unusual to find another person on board, but the manner in which the man had reacted when the doors opened and he found Rickard standing there was a little over the top. He hadn't expected Rickard to return home so soon. He'd been mid-conversation on his mobile phone: someone warning him that Rickard was back in town. Where are you, Rickard? Had the man been talking with his employer, or was he having a final conversation with someone much closer to home?
Then there was the fact that the man had gained access to his private floor without causing damage. Rickard had first thought that he had entered via the fire escape door, which made sense as he'd need a key to manage the elevator. The trouble was, although the fire escape gave easy access from the hall outside his apartment, to gain egress he would need to have punched in a code that only he and Alisha knew. There were ways round electronic locks, but Rickard had checked the dead man and found no devices.
Then there was the door to his apartment. As the man had entered on cue with those coming from the roof, the door had been thrown open and had crashed against the wall. But Rickard had a
n eye for details, and thinking back, he couldn't remember any sign that the latch had been broken loose. He hadn't thrown the locks, but a key was still needed from the outside. That or a lock-pick, but that had been conspicuous by its absence as well.
One more point was troubling him, but that was something to be considered later.
'I believe you, honey,' he said. He slowly released her wrists, transferred his fingers to her hands and patted them gently. Beneath her sunglasses she was blinking very fast. He caught flashes of her blue eyes like strobes going off.
'You do?'
'Of course, babe. I love you, don't I?'
'I love you too. It's just that… well…'
'What is it?'
'The way you killed those men…'
'I was lucky.' He smiled at her. 'No. That isn't true. There was something very precious to me that I just had to protect. You, babe. I didn't think about my own life. I just didn't want them hurting you. Given that kind of motivation, no one could have stood in my way.'
Up until now she'd been as pale as death, but colour pinpricked her cheeks. But she wasn't flattered. She had picked up on his lies. And by the way she withdrew her hands from under his fingers, she knew that he knew it too.
'Now, babe, I've been thinking. We can't go to the police over this. I don't trust them to find the people responsible for sending those men. Others might come. We have to get out of here first. Go somewhere safe.'
Alisha nodded at him, even though by the trembling of her jaw she was buying none of it.
'What I want you to do is go to the restroom back there. You need to freshen yourself up. Fix your hair and make-up. You're so pretty other people can't help looking at you, but I don't want them to see your tears.'
He made a play of searching his pockets. His hands came out empty. 'I must have left my phone in the car. Here,' he said, reaching for her purse, 'give me yours. I need to make a couple of calls, find us somewhere safe until we can figure this thing out.'
He took out her phone and passed the purse back to her. Alisha stared at the phone like it was a lifeline.
'Go on now.' Rickard nodded towards the back corner of the building. 'Go make yourself pretty again.'
Alisha got up, looking unsteady on her feet. Those expensive Prada shoes weren't the best in which to make a run for it, but they matched the rest of her designer ensemble. Training shoes would have attracted undue attention. Rickard had told her to wear them. Now he wasn't so sure it had been his best idea. They made her legs look as long as a boring week. Two or three men in the diner watched her progress towards the restrooms, including the old guy from earlier. She was so beautiful that she was distinctive. She'd be recalled, and so would the man who was with her.
'Can't let that stop me.'
She's baggage. That's all. He should have left her in the gutter where he'd found her, instead of wooing her and making her his wife. He'd allowed his desire to totally control a woman to overwhelm his best senses. In hindsight she'd always been a liability, and one that could ultimately have led to his downfall.
As soon as she was through the restroom door, he opened up her phone and checked her incoming calls. Withheld numbers. He checked her outgoings. Withheld numbers again, but one of them coincided with his arrival back at the parking lot at his apartment. He closed the phone and placed it in his pocket alongside his own phone. He flicked some dollars on the table to pay for the food they hadn't touched. Took out his ceramic knife and cupped it in his palm.
He stood up and walked towards the restrooms.
Just baggage, he thought again.
Chapter 22
We didn't get access to the crime scene but it didn't really matter. I'd seen enough death in my time to know what it would be like. The blood and the stench; the frailty of flesh versus bullets and blades; the surety that, somewhere down the line, I could be found in similar circumstances.
I waited in our car with Rink and Harvey while Walter and Bryce spoke to the detectives on site. The Miami PD had turned out, but so had the FBI. There were CSI techs and people from the coroner's office. And there were a large number of reporters from the press and TV. The latter were our greatest inconvenience. Once we attracted an inquisitive look from a reporter who wandered off and came back carrying a BlackBerry. He was searching the screen then peering back our way.
'Better move,' I said to Harvey, who was our driver. Last thing any of us wanted was for the reporter to start yelling that there was a cop-killer in their midst. The police on scene might act first and ask questions later.
Harvey started up the Chrysler and pulled out past the cordon of yellow tape. I averted my face as we passed the reporter but in my peripheral vision I could see him doing a double take between me and whatever was on his screen. But then we were gone and the moment had passed.
Harvey took us to a nearby strip mall where there was a choice of eateries. We entered the nearest diner and ordered coffee. I got the largest, most potent mix I could find on the menu then asked for an extra shot of espresso. Over the last few days what little sleep I'd had was in snatches of a couple hours here and there and I was in need of the caffeine kick-start. We sat in a booth where we could watch the entrance – old habit – but where we were out of earshot of any of the other customers. I called Bryce and told him where we were.
'So what do you think all of this means?' Harvey was referring to the identities of the men found dead in the apartment.
'The cops are looking at it as a hit gone wrong, but I don't think that's the case,' I said.
'Me neither,' Rink said. 'I know Del Chisholm. He's been in the PI game for years, and he's always played things straight up. Can't see him heading a hit team. No way.'
'There's no denying that he went to that apartment expecting trouble,' Harvey pointed out. 'All three of them were armed.'
'Two of them only had Saturday Night Specials.' Rink was referring to the.38 revolvers the men were packing. 'Not the weapon of choice of most assassins.'
I gulped coffee. 'That's what's troubling me the most. If you'd been hired to take out a pro-shooter, you'd take something along that was sure to put him down.'
'There were three of them, don't forget, one of 'em had an automatic. Maybe they thought they could take him out between them.' Harvey sat back and ran a hand over his bald head. He didn't believe that any more than we did, and was only adding conjecture to the pot to get the thought processes bubbling. He took a sip of his coffee, then said, 'Unless they'd no idea who they were going up against. Sorry – rephrase that – what they were going up against.'
'Stands to reason.' Habit made me glance round the diner. People had their heads down spooning food into their mouths, or were reading the morning papers or texting on mobile phones. No one was looking our way. My eyes lingered for a moment on a man and woman sitting at a table near the exit door. The woman was a beauty. The man was ten or more years older than her. Nothing unusual about that. I turned my attention back to my friends. 'My guess is that there was some other reason for them being there. They had no idea who this man was or what he was up to. What does that leave?'
'They were after someone else,' Harvey offered.
'Or they went there at someone else's bidding,' said Rink.
'How well did you know Chisholm?'
Rink see-sawed his head. 'Well enough to nod in passing. I knew him more by reputation than from sharing a beer, if that's what you mean.'
'What did he specialise in?'
Rink was a PI and so was Harvey, but even they had different slants on what that entailed. There were different niches in the market that PI outfits concentrated on. 'Far as I know he was happy with low-end cases. You've seen Cheaters on TV, right? That's Chisholm's usual type of gig.'
'So it'd be a big step up for him to go to something like this?'
'Yup.'
'You think he was after this guy 'cause he was playing away from home?' Harvey laughed under his breath at the irony of it.
'Mayb
e that's all they thought Rickard was up to.' I'd already learned the killer's name. And that of his wife. 'I don't think that Alisha knew what he was involved in. Maybe she didn't trust him, thought he was up to no good, put two and two together and got five. She called in Chisholm to put some meat on her suspicions.'
'Makes sense,' Rink said. 'But that doesn't explain why Chisholm takes two heavies along and breaks into the apartment.'
It didn't.
'Sounds like an extraction,' Harvey said.
We nodded along with him.
'Alisha wanted out and asked Chisholm to help. They thought that by waving a gun under his nose, maybe intimidating him by way of the two heavies, Rickard would be a good little boy and back down.'
'Big mistake,' I said.
'The worst kind,' Rink added.
I looked again at the couple by the door. The woman got up and walked in our direction, heading for the restrooms on our left. She was a fine-looking woman. She was wearing a wedding band, and I looked away. Her man had stood up and turned our way too. He started forwards, digging in a pocket. Then he diverted to the cashier's desk and paid their bill. He rested an elbow on the counter and talked with the young female teller. From where I sat, he was flirting with the girl. A job in the making for the likes of Del Chisholm, I thought. The woman came back out of the restroom and joined the man. They shared a joke with the girl at the till, then the woman gave the man a playful thump on the shoulder and they walked out the diner together.
As they went out the door someone caught my eye on the pavement outside. We were expecting Walter and Bryce, but it wasn't either of them. It was the bloody reporter who'd been watching us outside Rickard's apartment building.
'Trouble, guys.'
The exit door had swung shut, but now it was opening again.