My father sat back in his chair.
My heart thudded a solitary beat and then stopped.
“We’re going through the membership list for Sweet Hell,” I lied steadily. Breath in. Breath Out.
“Sweet Hell,” my father repeated, lifting a hand to his chin as though contemplative, and looking anywhere else but at me. “I know it.”
I remained silent. Carl would be proud.
“My name is on that list?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And what do you wish to know?” He looked at me now. Challenged me. Dark grey staring me down.
Every single reprimand from my childhood came rushing in. Every single turned cheek, ignored question, impersonal pat on the shoulder, flashed before my eyes. Every single moment of worth in my life that he was absent from.
Every single failed effort I had ever made to get him to see me.
“What can you tell me about it?” I asked, starting off easy.
My father did not agree.
“It’s personal,” he snapped. Or it would have been a snap, if he had been remotely human. Instead it was just more chilled than his usual cool tone.
“We understand it’s a gaming establishment and one must be invited to attend,” I announced, ignoring his reprimand. Because it was a reprimand. It was Ethan Keen saying, Back off!
“That’s correct. You hardly need me to provide you that information.”
OK. He was playing hardball. He was calling my bluff.
“We’re unsure at this stage if drugs are sold on the premises or not.”
Silence. My father knew all the tricks too.
“But it’s the Irreverent Inferno that really interests us most.”
“The what?” my father asked, but his voice had dropped an octave. His face remained impassive. His eyes kept deadly focused. His hands relaxed on the armrests of his chair.
But he was reeling. I knew this. Because Ethan Keen never said anything as ineloquent as, “The what?”
I wasn’t sure how to take this bit of information. I wasn’t sure how to proceed. The cop in me wanted to push, but at the same time wanted to hedge my questions and not give too much away.
The daughter in me wanted to warn him, tell him everything. Despite our fucked up relationship, I wanted to shout at him to take care.
I stared into the steely grey eyes of my father and said, “Have you heard of it?” in the most innocent voice I could muster.
He said nothing for such a long time I thought he was employing the silent treatment again. Poorly timed, but nonetheless hard to combat.
And then he let a long breath of air out and admitted, “It rings a bell.”
I held his unwavering gaze with a cynical one of my own. You can do better than that.
“What happens there, sir?”
“You’re asking questions I cannot answer, Lara.” His turn to use an informal approach to elicit a response.
In this case, he wanted me to drop my line of questioning.
“People will find out,” I offered. “This investigation is not closed.”
“I can make it that way.”
“A homicide,” I said, incredulously. “Even you don’t have the clout for that.”
“Watch yourself, Detective. I hear you’ve been on probation. Would you like a return to it now?”
I blinked at him. I’d always known my father wouldn’t hesitate to arrest me should I break the law. For him it’s black and white. Right and wrong. No grey. It’s where I got my attitude from. How could I not?
But even Hart hadn’t called my assignment to HEAT a “probation.”
My father wouldn’t be stretching the truth, either. He didn’t do that. Those words would have been applied to me at some point in the past three weeks, and attached to my personnel file.
I’d been on probation. And he’d known it.
I sat still for several seconds. So long, in fact, that he relaxed back into his chair and reached forward to pick up a sheet of paper from the surface of his desk. I wondered if it referred to staff parking.
Anger replaced shock.
I wasn’t on probation now.
“Just one more question, sir.”
He didn’t look up. “Yes.”
“When was your initiation completed?”
The paper he held was slowly lowered to the surface of the desk, and then straightened to match the edge of the blotter pad.
His eyes came up to mine, purposefully.
“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean, Detective.” He knew. He so bloody well knew.
But I couldn’t prove it.
“Your name…” I began.
He raised a hand to stop me. “Enough! These questions are out of line. You risk insubordination.”
“It’s an investigation, sir,” I tried. “I’m obligated to ask the difficult questions.”
“Never lower yourself to defence, Lara-Marie. And should further inquiry into my private life be required, I’ll expect a personal visit from Inspector Hart and no one else. Is that understood?”
I’d been shut down. Gone over my head. Hart would have a complaint on his desk before I even made it back to my car. From the office of Superintendent Ethan Keen.
“Understood, sir.”
He looked to the door. Then tipped his face down to the memo he’d picked up earlier. Dismissing me.
I stood up from my chair, brushed my jacket and blouse down, and left the room without a backwards glance.
It was only out in the carpark that I realised he hadn’t commented on the coffee stain. He’d seen it. He’s Ethan Keen.
He just hadn’t seen that it was on me.
Chapter 9
“The plot thickens, Keen. It fucking thickens.”
“So, what do you want to do with this?” Pierce said over the cellphone.
I sat in my car at a McDonald’s carpark, eating a cheeseburger and downing some fries. I swallowed my mouthful before I replied.
“I can’t prove he’s involved with the Irreverent Inferno - if that’s what they call themselves - but I am sure he attends the front part of Sweet Hell.”
Silence over the line, then, “Do you want this noted on the case file?”
Pierce had changed recently. He worked more in grey now than anything else.
I rubbed a greasy hand over my face and then grimaced. Reaching over to my glovebox for some wet wipes I said, “He knows something, but whether it’s just hearsay, I can’t be sure.”
I cleaned myself up and looked out the window at the litter filled carpark around me. Some of these cars were barely certified, let alone registered to be driving on New Zealand roads.
“Where are we with connecting Sweet Hell to the murder? Any leads?” I asked, instead of committing myself to an answer regarding my father.
Pierce let me deflect.
“The deceased was a Samantha Margaret Hayes,” he said. “Twenty-nine, worked for Bainbridge’s on Queen Street as a personal shopper. Had a selection of high flyers on her list of clientele. Never married, no children. Her boyfriend wasn’t even aware she hadn’t turned up for work. They don’t live together,” he added.
“He good for the perp?”
“No, has a rock solid alibi. Get this, he was having an affair with his secretary who has confirmed he was with her last night. And a call-girl. Who has also corroborated the story.”
“Willingly gave that up?”
“Yeah. Not a shade of pink to be seen on his cheeks, either.”
“Open relationship?”
“Possibly. We’ll delve further into that when he comes into the station later today for a formal interview.”
I let that all sink in, feeling a deep seated sense of weariness at the state of society today. Why even call yourself in a relationship if you both seek pleasure elsewhere and in such blatant ways.
I let a huff of breath out in a laugh. Eagle always did say I was too uptight and proper.
“What’s so funny?”
Pierce asked.
“Nothing,” I said, shaking my head to dislodge the thought, well aware he couldn’t see the move. “We get the warrant for the security camera footage at Sweet Hell yet?”
“It’s on its way. I’m sending Jones in with it to get the videos.”
“You don’t want me to go back to Sweet Hell?” I challenged, feeling a little déjà vu creep in. Were they side-lining me again?
“What? No. You and I have a date in Newmarket.”
“Newmarket? What’s in Newmarket?”
“Our eyes and ears on Michaels.”
My chest suddenly ached. I rubbed absently at it. Working hard to keep the angst from showing through my ragged breaths.
“Hart’s OK’d him going in?”
“It’s our only lead,” Pierce advised. “And a flimsy one at that. He’s given us this evening to nail down something more, but if Michaels can’t give us a solid, we may have to start looking elsewhere.”
“Sweet Hell’s involved,” I insisted.
“I believe your gut, Keen. So does Hart. But this woman is well known. Some of her clients have even contacted Hart directly, wanting to know what we’re doing about finding her killer.”
“And the Assistant Commissioner is now involved,” I guessed.
“Watching Hart like a hawk.”
“Which means he’ll be watching us.”
“Bingo. So, Broadway, that big as fuck grey building down by the lights. You know it?”
“Yeah, I know it. Anscombe Securities and Investigations. You trust them?”
“With my life,” Pierce shot back without hesitation. “Michaels is meeting us there at six tonight. But I want you in the building well before then. Use the back door. We all are. If Michaels is being watched, I don’t want you connected to him, or him connected to ASI, in any way. Kyan Marcroft is a person of interest to the SFO. He’s been under investigation for two weeks. He’ll be twitchy.”
“Serious Fraud Office? What crime?”
“Nothing that could link it to this case. Yet. A little electronics company he heads up with signs of embezzlement.”
“Interesting.”
“Isn’t it just? ‘The plot thickens, Keen. It fucking thickens.’” The line went dead with that annoying beep. Leaving me wondering if Pierce often had Carl inside his head, as well.
I stared at the phone and considered what we already knew. One person dead, across the road from Sweet Hell. Two people missing. One, sighted at Sweet Hell, absent for three days from a halfway house that should have known better. The other, not on the streets, but tenuously linked to Sweet Hell by an open night flyer in his alley.
At the moment, Hart would be treating Carole’s disappearance as a separate case, and even then, not officially open. Just because she’d been absent from her home for three days, didn’t mean anything nefarious had happened. But her history. Her being sighted at Sweet Hell. It all added up to something.
Tie in the murder across the road from the boutique casino, cross reference that with the doctored video surveillance of the crime, and pepper it with the alleged fraudulent activities of the owner of the establishment, and you’ve got a melting pot of potential filth. The criminal kind of filth that frequents the holding cells in every police station, in every city, throughout the world.
This was all connected. But I needed to bring Eagle to the table to convince Hart, and in particular, the Police Assistant Commissioner, that this place, this Sweet Hell with its Irreverent Inferno at the back door, was worthy of investigation.
Kyan Marcroft had just been bumped to the top of my suspect list. Too many arrows pointed at his head.
I pulled out of the overflowing carpark at McDonald’s and headed back into the CBD via Great South Road. I needed time to settle my thoughts, and the motorway would be heating up about now. It was the middle of the afternoon, but usually at least one of Eagle’s team could be found sitting in the Starbucks on the corner of K Road and Mercury Lane. I prayed they weren’t all missing.
I constantly feared someone targeting my informants. It was irrational. Mine had never been singled out before. But the memory of Carl’s being knocked off, one after the other, because the Crown Prosecutor was trying to cover his tracks by having them kill me, was too fresh. Eagle was astute and street savvy. But he was also ten feet tall and built of titanium in his mind.
And now he was missing. Even if only for one night, I felt it in my gut. Eagle had been pulled into this thing. Whatever it was that Sweet Hell had going. He was trapped in their web as surely as Carole.
I found a carpark on Cross Street, and walked up Mercury Lane to the corner of K Road. One quick glimpse inside the glass walls of Starbucks and I could once again breathe without feeling it catch on every exhale. Eagle wasn’t there. But Rooster, his closest friend, was.
I pushed open the doors to the familiar sounds of grinding beans and Nora Jones on repeat over the air. The smell of Colombian roast met my nose, as the hum of conversation swelled. I went directly to Rooster’s table, taking in his scrawny frame, loose hanging skaterboy jeans, ripped knock-off brand name t-shirt and four-hundred-plus dollar running shoes. Eagle paid well.
I’d never been able to confirm if Eagle was pimping his mates or just paying them for their eyes and ears. What Eagle didn’t know, wasn’t worth knowing. But I’d also seen Rooster working the streets. Not Eagle’s alley. But close enough to back each other up if need be.
Eagle, though, was definitely the leader of this little ragtag group. His absence was painted on every single strained face sitting around that table.
I pulled a chair over and sat down before they even noticed I was there. Eagle would have spotted me the instant I walked past the windows outside. Rooster should have as well. I was unsure about the skill level of the others dotted around the table. I’d certainly seen them all before, with Eagle, but not seen them at work.
As they wore the same “uniform” as Rooster and Eagle, I assumed they were all in the same job.
“Afternoon, gentlemen,” I said receiving a few jolts of surprise and, in the case of Rooster, a loud put-upon sigh.
“We know nuffin’,” he said in all his eloquent splendour.
“About what?” I asked, innocently, picking up a cookie from a plate in the centre of the table. The boys didn’t look like they’d been eating much.
“Where Eagle is,” Rooster supplied.
“Is Eagle missing?” I asked, widening my eyes in faux surprise.
Rooster just gave me the evil eye back.
“When did you last see him?” I pushed.
“See, that would be knowing somefin’. We know nuffin’.”
“But he’s not here,” I pointed out, dropping the act and not bothering to look around the shop to prove my point. “And he wasn’t on the street last night,” I added. “Which means he’s missing.”
I looked at each boy individually and then settled my gaze on Rooster.
“Right?”
He crossed his skinny arms over his narrow chest. All these boys were in their late teens or early twenties. Some more developed than others. But even I knew there were curb crawlers out there who liked their men… boyish. And Rooster fit that bill.
His round face harboured a little baby fat, even if his body was all lanky limbs. His eyes had seen more than I had, but still gave the impression of sweet innocence. His skin was pale and smooth, I’d never even seen a hint of stubble.
My heart ached for him.
He wouldn’t have appreciated the sentiment.
“What do you know, Rooster?” I asked quietly. Dropping the uneaten cookie back on the plate. “What’s his instructions if he disappears?”
“I don’t know…”
“He’s in trouble,” I offered, interrupting a repeat of his earlier nuffin’ statement.
“What makes you fink he’s in trouble?” Rooster demanded. But the defiance of before had all but gone.
“Ever heard of Sweet Hell?”
I ignored the “bitch” part of that and pushed on.
“Open night last night. Any of you guys attend?”
Rooster held up his hand before any of the others opened their mouths. They were all too well trained by Eagle, anyway. None of them talked directly to me. Even being seen with me was usually a big no-no. But they were worried. I could tell. Lowering their guard out of concern for their missing leader.
“What’s in it for us?” Rooster said under his breath. I could hardly hear him.
“I deal with Eagle,” I hedged, playing the game, because it was expected. “You want me to deal with you now, is that it?”
“Eagle ain’t here.”
“Confirm he’s missing and you’ve got the job.”
Rooster glanced around the café, the first time he’d acted remotely like his usual paranoid self, and then leaned forward, pushing up from his chair to stand.
“Meet me in his alley in twenty,” he whispered, and then sauntered out of the room followed by each of his boys.
I leaned back in the chair, swiping up the forgotten cookie, and took a bite. Every single person in the shop appeared normal. None of them set of alarm bells. But Rooster was being cautious. Because they were being watched? Targeted? Or because he feared Eagle was involved in Sweet Hell?
I glanced at my watch and then pushed up from the table, joining the line for a coffee. Venti low-fat caramel macchiato in hand and I was sauntering myself out the door, as well.
The bums were gone from Eagle’s alley. But their boxes were stacked neatly down the end where Rooster leaned against a dirty wall smoking. His hand shook when he pulled the cigarette from his mouth.
This kid was scared shitless. Acting big, playing it cool. Sweating in his satin boxers.
His eyes darted back down the alley towards K Road, but I’d made sure I entered the alley unseen. Timed it while a delivery truck pulled up blocking any view from across the street. Made sure I moved into the shadows when the driver dropped his carton for delivery, pulling everyone’s eyes towards him and not me.
A Touch Of Heat (H.E.A.T. Book 2) Page 8