Camels and Corpses

by G. K. Parks

  “The guys and I will review Claxton’s confession and maybe talk to Gregson again. If we uncover anything, I’ll give you a call, okay? Once we get a positive ID on the woman, I’ll pass along that information,” Heathcliff offered, and Ryan nodded and left the room.

  “Derek, I trust Mark and the guys here, but whatever’s going on in the European offices at Interpol, I don’t trust them. Last year when I was working in Paris, things weren’t sitting well back then, and from Donough’s experiences, they’ve only gotten worse. Everything you guys read in those files, take with a grain of salt.”

  “Will do.” I was almost out of the room. “Hey, Parker,” he called before I made it to the stairwell, “if you need back-up, give us a call.”

  “Absolutely.”

  * * *

  Steeling my nerves, I followed Donough into the interrogation room. Virgil Mallick was chained to the chair. The federal agent monitoring him offered to shackle his ankles too, but I didn’t want him to think I was scared. Maybe I was, but no one needed to know that. There was something about this guy that creeped me out, probably the fact that he had come close to literally snapping me in half.

  “Virgil,” Ryan cooed with such maliciousness, even I was surprised, “how are you feeling?”

  Mallick shifted his gaze briefly away from me before settling on Ryan and smiling. “I liked you better unconscious.”

  “Personally, I can rest easy knowing you’ll never see anything except the inside of a prison cell. Unfortunately, you’re not the focus of this investigation.” Ryan weighed each of his words carefully.

  Mallick continued to scrutinize me, and no matter how hard I tried to ignore it. I couldn’t. Yanking one of the chairs away from the table, I sat, glowering at him. “What?” I snarled.

  “How many?” His eyelids lowered, and he stared through the narrow slits, relishing in some devious thought. “How many of your bones did I break?” He was watching the way I held myself, enjoying every minute of it.

  “I’m not breakable, but I’m positive by the end of the day, you’ll be broken,” I replied, low and calm. “Let’s put it this way, right now, you’re in a room in a federal building, but there aren’t any agents inside. I’m not carrying a badge, and neither is Ryan. So we don’t have any protocols to follow. Whether you make it out of this room alive or not is up to you.”

  He laughed, not believing my threats. “The only thing I understand is violence.” His eyes focused on my holstered gun, smiling again like the snake I knew he was.

  “Oh, you like shiny things, huh?” I stood and went around the table, pressing my knee into the bandage on his thigh. He howled, and I dug harder. “How’d you like the glass? Was that shiny enough for you?”

  Ryan shifted behind me, and I stepped back. This was the first time Mallick displayed any normal response to pain, and I wondered if that was a result of the mix of drugs they’d given him to get him conscious or if whatever methamphetamine he normally used was no longer prevalent in his system. I stepped away. My point was made, and I was done.

  “Word of advice,” Ryan spoke up, “I wouldn’t piss her off. Then again,” he sat on the side of the table, leaning down to Mallick, “you shouldn’t piss me off either.”

  Some realization struck in Mallick’s reptilian brain, and his eyes darted between the two of us. “We’ve known for quite some time you were an Interpol agent,” he clarified. “And once we were sure you weren’t a threat, we decided you could be eliminated.”

  “Who’s we?” I asked.

  “Who do you think?” he sneered, and Ryan moved quickly, slamming the chair backward, and stopping it with his foot before Virgil’s skull cracked on the ground. Mallick laughed. “It sure as hell wasn’t Barlow.”

  “Devereaux?” Ryan asked, knocking the tilted chair forward to an upright position. It teetered slightly due to Mallick’s large mass but stabilized. It was apparent physical danger and pain wouldn’t work to tip the scales in our favor.

  “You know, don’t you?” Mallick met my eyes, impressed and satisfied. “I’ve been waiting for someone to make the connection. Barlow thought I’d be the protection, the enforcer, but instead, that twat had to prove what a badass he could be.”

  “Details,” Ryan growled, and I glanced at the recording equipment to make sure everything was working properly.

  “What for?” Mallick sneered. “Hoyt, or whatever the hell your name actually is, you’ve been with us for months now. Don’t you know everything there is to know about Barlow’s car deals?” His voice was full of saccharine.

  “I don’t give a bloody fuck about the cars,” Ryan yelled, and I left the wall and sat across from Mallick at the table.

  “What do you want?” I asked quietly. Trades were a far too common occurrence, and after everything they’d put Ryan through, he wouldn’t offer or budge. I didn’t blame him. Letting this snake get away wasn’t something I could particularly live with, but we had to find some kind of leverage if we wanted him to talk. Ryan stepped back, fuming. He glared and slammed his palm into the wall.

  “Oh,” Mallick smiled, “you’re in charge.” He turned his head to face Ryan. “It sucks never calling the shots, doesn’t it?”

  “What.Do.You.Want?” I tried again, and he leaned back. The power in the room shifted.

  “I don’t know. I’ll think about it.” He smirked, and Ryan lost it.

  He was across the room with Mallick still in the chair, shoved against the wall. Jablonsky and two agents burst through the door. Maybe I should have attempted to intervene or pull Ryan away, but the way I figured it, even if I tried, I wouldn’t have been able to. The two agents struggled to drag Ryan from interrogation. I averted my gaze; I’d been there before. I understood.

  Mark raised an eyebrow, but I remained in the chair, waiting for answers. “I’d suggest you think faster,” Mark urged. “The next agent you piss off won’t be that easy to drag away.”

  Mallick’s eyes never left mine, and we stared at each other for what felt like a millennium. “How many?” he asked again.

  Shoving a pen and paper in front of his handcuffed hands, I stood up and leaned over him. “Not until you tell us exactly who Chase Devereaux is.”

  Slowly, he manipulated the pen in his bound hands, drawing an image on the paper. When he was done, he leaned back. The vicious smile never left his face. Mark glanced down and spun the pad in my direction. On the paper was a rudimentary sketch of a one hump camel.

  “Five,” I responded, and he shut his eyes, inhaling a long, blissful breath.

  I left the room, wondering how admissible any of that actually was. Then again, it wasn’t like I had a badge. Maybe rules were important. They would help balance the violence, the rage, the desire for revenge that didn’t need to be explored. Those scales had been tipped one too many times in the last few months, and I feared how much worse it would get if I didn’t find a balance. Glancing toward Michael’s old desk, I ducked inside Jablonsky’s office and found Ryan.

  “I’m sorry,” he whispered, his face buried in his hands.

  “I get it.” I sat sideways in Mark’s chair. “It scares me sometimes how much violence I’m capable of inflicting. Don’t be that guy, Ryan. Someone has to wear the white hat and ride in on the horse to save the day, and I’m only up for that about seventy percent of the time.” He sat back, confused. “The rules exist for a reason. Regardless of what I said to Mallick, we’ll be lucky to make it out of here with our asses still intact.”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “It should. You’ve seen me close to rock bottom, and you kept a tight leash on me. Unfortunately, I didn’t extend you the same courtesy. I’m sorry about that, but Mallick did provide us with a nice doodle.”

  “Doodle?” he asked contemptuously.

  “Yeah, of a camel.”

  “Bloody hell. How’d you get him to say it?”

  “Virgil Mallick isn’t your typical criminal. I’m not even sure he’s sadistic in a t
raditional sense. Honestly, I’d wager he has an inferiority complex. The only thing he seemed concerned with was proving he was the toughest, meanest, biggest badass in the room. The guy pumps iron. Shit, he probably eats it for breakfast, takes who knows what, and all of that is to walk around being some tough goon. He wanted to bitch and moan about Devereaux because, all of a sudden, he wasn’t the biggest badass anymore. That’s why the only thing he wanted was reassurance that he was still physically threatening.” Ryan raised an eyebrow. “He kept asking how many. He needed me to tell him that he snapped my ribs like they were twigs. His fucking ego needed stroking.”

  “Be thankful that’s all you had to stroke,” Mark replied from the doorway. He shook his head. “Kid,” he turned to Ryan, “we don’t assault handcuffed prisoners in interrogation rooms, particularly when the interview is being recorded.”

  “D’accord,” Ryan replied.

  “Fine,” Mark blew out a breath, “we’ll just chalk it up to something being lost in translation.” He sighed loudly. “Parker, any reason you didn’t move a single muscle to intervene?”

  “My back still hurts. Movement’s not what it should be,” I deadpanned. “I can’t help it if I’m injured, especially when Mallick was directly responsible.”

  “Just FYI, if you ever did decide to come back to the OIO, you can’t continue to assault suspects, detainees, or prisoners,” Mark casually added.

  “Duly noted, sir.”

  Thirty-five

  After the way our interview with Virgil Mallick went, Ryan and I weren’t permitted to be anywhere near Chase Devereaux. Despite Mallick’s lovely little drawing, we still didn’t have solid evidence or corroborating eyewitness accounts that Devereaux was the Camel. So while Farrell and Jablonsky went to work on Mallick and Devereaux, Ryan and I began reviewing the recently acquired information and checked to see if the forensic lab had any idea who the woman in the photo was, where the bank accounts would lead, or if something obscure could give us a location to scout.

  “Nancy Shepherd,” the tech said, handing over the pertinent file. “We’ve just started on a full workup, so it’ll be a while before we have anything solid.”

  “Thanks.” I took a quick snapshot of the copy of her driver’s license and led the way out of the room, my phone to my ear. “Hey, we found a match to the woman in the photos. Nancy Shepherd. I just sent you a copy of her ID. The OIO’s working on a profile but start checking into her close contacts, friends, family, ex-husbands, whatever, and see who has something to gain by ordering a hit. Ryan and I will be there in twenty.” I disconnected from my brief call with Heathcliff and made sure Ryan was still with me.

  “Back to the precinct?” he asked.

  “Unless you’d rather stay here and keep Mark’s couch warm.”

  “I’m a cop. The precinct is where I belong.”

  “Have I mentioned it’s nice to have you back, Inspector?”

  He smiled. “It’s nice to be back.”

  When we arrived, Heathcliff and Thompson were knee deep in research materials. Not only were they compiling a list of known associates for Ms. Shepherd, but they were also reviewing a stack of files and information Interpol sent over. As it turned out, Ms. Shepherd was the proud owner of a 1967 Mustang, the same model that Robert Gregson had me steal as part of my initiation into his car boosting ring. At least we found a connection between Gregson, the Camel, and one of the Camel’s intended victims. After being caught up to speed, I checked the area.

  “Where’s Nick?” I asked.

  “Unrelated case,” Thompson offered. “He caught a triple homicide at the scene of a burglary. I’m supposed to meet him there in a couple of minutes.”

  “Tell my pals in burglary I said hello,” I deadpanned, and Heathcliff snorted. Most of burglary still blamed me for the dirty cop scandal that rocked the city not too long ago. “Is Moretti around?”

  “Office,” Heathcliff supplied, and I left the men with their research while I knocked on the door.

  “Lieutenant,” I began once I was situated, “I thought you’d like an update.” After telling him everything we gained from interrogating Mallick and the information on the woman, he gave permission to track her down and investigate any pertinent leads. But there were two stipulations. First, Donough was my responsibility, and second, someone with a badge needed to accompany me at all times. It looked like I’d be involved in a threesome after all.

  By the time I went back to Heathcliff’s desk, Thompson was gone and Ryan was getting reacquainted with his investigating chops. It had been months since he’d been behind a desk in a police station, and while this wasn’t the Police Nationale, I could already see his years of experience and training taking over. Some things you never forget.

  After careful study, a few things were painfully clear. First, the piston that arrived in Devereaux’s hotel room was a match to the make and model of the vehicle registered to Nancy Shepherd. Also, the techs found a set of prints on the metal that matched Robert Gregson. Now we had our proof Gregson was supplying Barlow’s team with cars and the Camel with his calling card. Second, based on the photographs, the oil drum, and all the other nasty equipment found in the house, we were working under the assumption Ms. Shepherd was the Camel’s next target. Lastly, a court order was in the works for her financials. We were trying to determine who would have ordered the hit, but it was still too soon to tell.

  “Shall we take a ride?” Heathcliff asked as soon as I stopped typing.

  “Either that or send a couple of uniforms to bring her in,” I suggested.

  “No, we should go,” Ryan insisted. “Obviously, Devereaux’s in custody, but on the off chance we’re wrong or in case he hired our still unidentified sniper to carry out the contract, we don’t want to alert anyone of our progress.” I glanced at Heathcliff, and he nodded at Ryan’s assessment.

  “I’ll have an unmarked car follow us, and we’ll notify ESU to be on alert. But first things first, we need to determine who wants her dead,” Heathcliff declared.

  On the drive to Shepherd’s apartment, we debated on possible suspects. She had an ex-husband who was paying a pretty penny in alimony. A twenty-year-old stepson who recently was suspended from college for drug abuse, and considering the fact that she operated her own interior decorating business, it was possible one of her subordinates might have an axe to grind.

  “What about disgruntled customers?” Donough suggested.

  “Really, she didn’t get the right color carpeting, so you’re going to pay thousands to kill her?” I asked.

  “Okay, probably not,” he admitted.

  “Don’t forget, there’s always the possibility of some spurned ex-lover or current fling,” Heathcliff suggested.

  I squinted into the distance. The Camel was expensive, and his methodology was brutal. Whoever would go to such lengths definitely wanted revenge and probably stood to gain quite a bit. If not, there were always cheaper avenues to kill someone.

  “How old is she?” I asked, not remembering what her DOB was.

  “Thirty-five,” Ryan replied, “her ex-husband is in his fifties.” He let out a chuckle. “She’s young enough to be one of his children. I’d say he’s our best bet.”

  “Let’s talk to her first before we start theorizing,” I suggested. Although, there were a dozen reasons I could think of why he might want to kill her.

  Pulling up to her place of business, Heathcliff nodded briefly to the officers in the other vehicle, signaling they should remain on standby while the three of us went inside. The office was small, not much larger than my own, with samples and books filling half the space. Shepherd’s assistant glanced up from the desk, smiling warmly at the three of us.

  “How may I help you?” she asked.

  “We need to speak to Ms. Shepherd,” Heathcliff retorted, flashing a badge.

  “She just stepped out for a minute, but she’ll be back soon. What is this about? Is she in trouble?”

  “Nothing li
ke that,” Ryan replied, and I saw the woman beam at him. Obviously, she thought there was something sexy about him. My money was on the Irish brogue. “There were just a few routine questions we need answered.” He lowered his voice and leaned in to the desk, turning on the charm. From the few words I heard in between her answers and giggles, I knew he was asking about the business, some of the clients, if Shepherd had a boyfriend, and if her assistant ever met the ex-husband.

  Heathcliff rolled his eyes. “Is he going to ask her to drop her panties too?”

  “Derek,” I hissed, stifling my laugh, “he’s working. Plus, it’s an excellent distraction.”

  As Ryan continued his flirtatious questioning, we perused the items on her desk, flipped through her appointment calendar, and otherwise searched the entire office space without the assistant ever noticing. Heathcliff pointed to her appointment book, and we skimmed through the times and locations, looking for something that might have hinted she met with Devereaux. Just as our search concluded, the bell above the door chimed, and we saw Shepherd enter the office. Parked right out front was a classic Mustang.

  “Can I help you?” she asked, putting her sketchbook on top of her desk.

  “Ma’am, we were hoping to ask you a couple of questions,” Heathcliff began, identifying himself and introducing Ryan and me.

  “Sure, no problem.” She bit her lip, slightly nervous, and asked her assistant to pick up lunch. Once the four of us were alone, she sat behind her desk. Heathcliff began asking some basic questions about her vehicle, how long she owned it, if she received any threats, what her relationship with her ex-husband was like, and other similar questions. “Why are you asking me any of these things?” she asked when there was a pause in the questioning. “Did something happen to Scott or Nathan?” Scott was her ex-husband, and Nathan was her stepson, ex-stepson; the proper terminology was lost on me.

  “Nothing like that,” I responded, knowing my male counterparts thought I’d be better at the coddling. “Have you ever encountered a man named Chase Devereaux?” She frowned and shook her head.