by Mark Henwick
And so convenient for Detective Buchanan if he could redirect the blame downwards.
But I needed to get every last fact out of Buchanan for the colonel. The easiest way would be to pretend I was taken in by his invitation to join his team.
“You transferring me from patrol to your investigation team?”
“Yeah. We’ll sort the details out later. You don’t want to stay in patrol, do you? It’d be a waste.”
“No, I don’t want to stay in patrol,” I said.
But I don’t believe your bullshit that you can shift me around just like that. Or that you’ve suddenly realized I’ve got something to contribute.
“So what’s the official story about these killings?” I asked.
“Gangs. Gangs fighting a turf war over clubs. It’ll make the newspapers happy. They can have plenty to say, and the pictures they’ll be able to use will sell newspapers for a month. The difference is, it’s all infighting between freaks. Normal people won’t get upset. No one gives the mayor much of a hard time over gangs killing each other. ”
“But these last two…they’re not gang members. They’re not freaks, either.”
“In that club?” Buchanan snorted. “People won’t believe that.”
I didn’t say anything. There wasn’t anything that I felt I could say. Buchanan was trying to lump everything under a convenient heading.
The trouble was, he didn’t really believe it. He’d obviously started to put together enough information to figure out there was something seriously screwy here. Whatever I might think of him, he wasn’t stupid.
The colonel had said he didn’t want lots of people to know about vampires, he wanted one contact. It couldn’t be Buchanan. He wasn’t senior enough.
And I didn’t want to be on this team. Or any team with Buchanan in it. I was going to have a hell of a day until the colonel arrived.
Buchanan wasn’t finished. As we were parking at the station he started speaking again. “As a team, we’ll need to be real close. We’ll need to know everything you know about this case.” He ran a hand through his hair. “It doesn’t matter if you’ve kinda stepped outside the bounds, huh? You’re new at this. Everyone drops a ball or two. The team will look out for you. I’ll look out for you.”
“Of course,” I said. “Nothing matters more than a quick resolution.”
How dumb did he think I was? He was trying to tease information out of me. Would he and Nunez try the good cop, bad cop routine as well?
We got out and walked into the station.
“You probably don’t even realize it, but something in what you know will crack this case,” he went on. “I’ll make sure they know it was your lead.” His hand waved vaguely upstairs where the higher ranks of the police had their offices while he guided me over to his. “Use my system,” he said. “I don’t want anybody reading over your shoulder. I don’t want anybody outside the team in on this.”
I nodded and logged in on his computer to enter my statement.
“I’ll get us some coffee,” he said and went out.
I put my head in my hands. I was so screwed. How the hell was I going swing this? I sighed. I couldn’t lie, but I couldn’t be truthful either.
In the end, my statement was simply a fuller detail version of what I’d already sketched out to Buchanan and Nunez. I owned up to the scrap of paper with my number on it. Forensics would find that out anyway. Nothing about the army and vampires. I wasn’t going to put anything else in a report with being ordered to by the colonel. I glanced at the clock on the screen. Another four or five hours and he would be here. I would gladly pass this mess on to him, but where was that going to leave me?
And more importantly, how many more people were going to die?
Buchanan never brought the coffee.
I’d barely finished logging off when he came back in with my report already printed. He’d probably been following me from another terminal, reading as I typed.
“Come on,” he said, and jerked his head down the corridor.
He took me to an interview room. Finally, the good guy pretense was dropped. Lieutenant Morales was sitting at the table with Nunez. Buchanan tossed the report on the table and sat opposite Nunez.
“Nothing new,” he said.
I was bone tired. They hadn’t invited me, but I sat anyway, opposite Morales. Given the look of this, I wasn’t making things any worse than they were.
Morales was running it. He had a coffee, and he took the opportunity to drink while he looked me over. He was the Denver Police golden boy. Everyone knew the position of Captain in the Major Crimes Unit was coming up in a few weeks and Morales was the anointed heir. But we also knew, all it needed was one major case to go wrong and he was out of it.
He’d want this wrapped up like a man underwater wants air.
The silence stretched. As a sergeant in Ops 4-10, I’d sat on the other side of this kind of table. Silence wasn’t going to work with me. I was screwed one way or another. Every minute brought Colonel Laine closer. I picked a spot and stared at it. My spot was the vein in Morales’ forehead.
“Detective Buchanan you already know,” Morales said finally. “Lieutenant Nunez you’ve met briefly. He’s with Internal Affairs. You know me presumably.”
I kept my face blank and nodded. IA involvement meant they were going to try and railroad me. Everything since the drive back had been to try and get me to say something they could use in the disciplinary process.
And by telling me about Nunez, Morales was trying to get a reaction. I was determined not to give it.
What I did notice was that he didn’t have the recorders on, otherwise he’d have introduced himself and me.
“At the moment, I’m chairing and this is an unofficial meeting,” Morales confirmed it.
Interesting.
Buchanan stirred. I bet he’d pressed for an immediate IA case against me. He’d realized I knew things about this case that weren’t in my report.
I could pull the plug now. I could demand a private conversation with a senior police officer and land everything in the colonel’s lap. Or I could just say nothing. I tried to think what would serve the colonel’s needs better, and regretfully arrived at the conclusion he’d want this dragged out. He’d want to be in here before Morales and others started thinking about correct procedures and authorizations. I needed delaying tactics.
“What’s on the agenda, Lieutenant?” I asked.
Morales didn’t like that. I was supposed to be trembling with shock. Instead I just felt tired. Tired of half-lies. Tired of walking the tightrope. Tired of walking alone.
The pulse in Morales’ forehead picked up.
Buchanan couldn’t restrain himself. “You don’t seem to realize how serious this is—”
“What is?” I interrupted him.
Morales gestured and Buchanan shut up ungracefully.
“Why did you join the police, Farrell?” Morales said.
Because it was a job open to me that the army would allow.
Out loud, I said: “To use my skills in something worthwhile.”
Morales’ eyes narrowed. “Is it frustrating to you, as an army veteran with all those skills, not to be able to contribute as much as you think you can?”
I thought I could see where he was heading. He was building a case for me giving in to frustration and trying to start my own investigation. I just shrugged.
He had my folder in front of him. It would have my firearms scores and hand-to-hand reports, but, of course, it would also have my scores on legal theory.
“And you find that tempts you to sidestep things, ignore procedure? Because getting the job done is the ultimate goal?”
“Tempts me? Yes. Everyone gets tempted.”
The interview wasn’t going the way any of them expected. I wasn’t overawed by sitting in front of senior ranks. They kept forgetting that I wasn’t a fresh-faced recruit with no experience. And what they didn’t know was that, short of proving I’d
committed a serious felony, the power of their little courtroom procedure wouldn’t mean anything when the colonel arrived. All I had to do was stick it out.
Nunez was getting as restless as Buchanan. He leaned forward to speak. Morales let him.
Nunez slipped a page from a folder and pushed it in front of me.
“Is that you?”
It was a printout of a couple of stills from the security camera on the door at Club Agonia. One with the makeup and one without.
“Yeah. That’s me.”
“What were you doing there?”
“Dancing.” I went on the offensive. “Look, you’ve obviously spent a lot of time investigating me.” Instead of trying to find the murderers. “You have some photos of me visiting a club on my day off, you’ve talked to my partner, got him to ask me questions. Have you got some allegations you want to make?”
Nunez ignored that. “You’re saying it’s entirely coincidental that you turn up at a club where two of the staff have been murdered in the same way?”
“Yes.”
“Why were you at the club?” Nunez said.
“I already answered that.”
“How do you know the victims?” Morales asked.
“I didn’t. They were on the door in the club. I drove the girl back home.”
“Is that another thing you do as a sideline?”
“What do you mean?”
Buchanan lost it. “Either you were doing bodyguard work for this club,” he shouted, “or you found something out and were trying some half-witted investigation. Either way, it’s your fault—”
“Shut up, Buchanan.” I was shocked that Morales reprimanded him in front of me. Morales had to be completely pissed off to do that, and Buchanan knew it. He subsided.
I wasn’t going to let him. It was like a little demon had taken control of my voice. “There wasn’t anything to investigate, unless you think I can predict the future. And is that how you dress up to do your bodyguard work, Buchanan?” I shoved the pictures in front of him. His eyes bulged, but a look from Morales kept him quiet. Nunez got the same look.
When Morales was sure he had the meeting back under control, he turned to me again.
“So, your arrival there was coincidence. You didn’t know anyone there. How is it you ended up giving an employee of the club a lift home?”
“The owner asked me. There’d been a bit of trouble earlier in the week. She asked me to drive Valery Hawks home.”
“So she knows you’re a policewoman?”
“Not from me. Not at that time.” I glanced to the side. “But perhaps Buchanan’s said something to her.”
“Maybe she doesn’t know your job, but she must know you to ask you to do that.”
“Never met her before that night.”
“That’s some leap of faith she took.”
It wasn’t a question, so I just stared at him. He was right, but he had no clue why, and I doubted Dominé was about to tell him why she trusted me.
“You weren’t there moonlighting as a bodyguard, and you weren’t trying to prove you could carry out your own investigation?”
“No and no.”
“And today.” He flicked my report. “Acting on a call that came to you from the owner, you visited Ms. Hawks’ apartment. You became suspicious because of the damage to the main entry door and the smell. You forced entry and called us immediately after you found her?”
“Basically correct. As I said in the report, the owner had been calling me repeatedly while I was on patrol and my personal cell phone was off. I checked it l when I finished patrol and I immediately called her back.”
Morales looked at Nunez. He wasn’t happy, but he nodded, picked up his folder and left. IA had lost interest.
Buchanan was halfway to standing. “You can’t be—”
Morales’ hand slammed the table like a pistol shot. “Get out, Buchanan.”
Buchanan stared at me like he wanted to strangle me right there, but he’d been given a direct order. We were not going to be friends ever, me and Detective Buchanan. Such a shame.
It was silent when they’d left.
Morales flipped open my personnel file. He picked up the first page, which was my training scores, and put that in the middle of the table. A couple of pages down, he pulled out my previous employment history and that joined the scores. From his case file, he pulled a single sheet which looked like a page full of dates and numbers. He placed that next to the others and closed the files. His cell phone joined the rest of the parade he’d set up. Then he leaned back in his chair.
“What the hell is going on, Farrell?”
“I don’t understand the question, sir.”
His hand came down on my employment history. “Sergeant in the military, ten year service in special operations,” he said. “No negative reports. All other details classified.” He jabbed at the bottom of the sheet. “That’s a hell of an aura to be carrying around.”
He rested his finger on the scores. “Outstanding firearms theory and practical. Lethal in hand-to-hand. Just what you’d expect from the cream of the cream in the military.”
“I still don’t see—”
“Because it’s not what you expect from a lateral intake to the Denver PD. What the hell is a top flight soldier with a classified record doing in my patrol department?”
“Looking to be a top flight policewoman, sir.” I had to assume that aspiration was history now.
“That sounded good. You should practice that, Farrell.”
Okay, we could both do sarcastic.
My eyes edged towards the third page.
Morales leaned forward. “And this unbelievable rookie, she has an unbelievable random connection to an unbelievable case.” He paused and tapped the third page. “What that a—” he stopped what he was going to say and tried again. “What Detective Buchanan hasn’t noticed, but will eventually, is that this log of the week’s security camera backups from Club Agonia happens to be missing one.”
Crap.
Dominé had done what I’d asked and removed the footage I’d given the colonel. I could see why Morales was going to make that Captain spot.
I said nothing. Delaying tactics were reaching their end more quickly than I’d have liked, but Morales wasn’t Buchanan. I couldn’t divert him.
“What Buchanan won’t know is almost exactly at the time I spotted that, I received a 9-Red-Mil notification.” He pressed his cell and the calendar came up with a red bar on the afternoon. I frowned. I’d never heard of any such notification. Mil meant military, obviously.
“I had to go look it up,” Morales continued. “It’s a priority ‘request’ from the military through the Department of Defense to make myself available for a meeting.”
He leaned back again and repeated himself. “What the hell is going on?”
I’d run out of delaying tactics.
“I’ve been operating under orders, sir, and I’ll have to leave explanations to the colonel you’ll be meeting shortly.”
We sat looking at each other for a minute.
Morales gathered his papers and shuffled his files into a neat pile. The cell went back in his pocket and he rested his elbows on the table, clasping his hands together.
“Farrell, as of now, you are suspended pending further explanation.”
Chapter 18
I drove out of the station parking lot feeling dazed. I was still in my uniform, but with no badge. Morales had had the contents of my locker delivered to me in a plastic shopping bag. I wasn’t even allowed to change on the premises.
The colonel would be here in a couple more hours, so I didn’t have time to sleep. Not that I would have been able to: I was too wired.
I’d get into even more trouble if I went to Club Agonia. Without thinking about it, I found the car heading back down to the site of the first murder.
The three vampires were still out here somewhere. If whatever craziness that had infected them was progressive, who knows wha
t they could do next. I couldn’t match whatever Buchanan’s team were doing on searching through traffic camera videos, or hunting credit card slips or whatever. I had one line that they probably weren’t pursuing.
The vampires had walked to the apartment where their first victim died. At the time, they hadn’t been acting crazy. It was a fair assumption that there was a rational decision about walking. They didn’t want a car linked to them to be seen at the apartment. But they wouldn’t have walked for miles. They left the car somewhere where it was out of sight, or somewhere people were used to seeing it, or somewhere it wouldn’t be seen.
That somewhere was in a grid of streets, no more than six by six.
But it would have been a lot for one woman to cover at the best of times.
I was driving in traffic along Speer Boulevard and visualizing the street map when a fleeting face on the sidewalk caught my eye.
Emily.
Dammit. Not only was she playing truant from school, she was all made up again. I doubted Klara had allowed her to get her hands on her cosmetics, but Emily was with a friend. I thought I recognized one of the group from the other night, mainly by her bright red hair.
I hit the brakes and got a horn blast from behind.
By the time I’d pulled over, Emily was nowhere in sight. She and her friend had to have turned down a side road, and it was one way.
I took off again, turning right, hoping to loop around and catch her, but there was no sign and fifteen minutes later, I gave up.
And if I couldn’t even find one girl walking along the street, what hope did I have of finding three vampires who were hiding?
I called Werner’s cell and left a voicemail.
Then I turned and headed for home. At least I could shower and change before the colonel arrived.
Chapter 19
At my apartment, I emptied the car. My police radio was in the footwell, and I’d need to remember to hand that in when they finally threw me out. I took all of it inside and tossed it on the bed with the mail while I took my shower.