Daemon’s Mark

by Caitlin Kittredge

  “In what kind of a world?” I sighed.

  “In the kind of world where you wait until you can nail the motherfucker to the wall for life,” Lane said calmly.

  “Don’t worry. We’ll get these sons of bitches.”

  “Your optimism is infectious,” I assured her when she looked disappointed that there wasn’t more excitement at her speech. “But now I have to write my report and find some coffee that won’t give me an ulcer.”

  Will touched my arm. “You need company? You seem a little … high-strung.” His nice way of saying, Honey, when you punch a van you scare all the plain humans.

  “No,” I sighed. “You might as well go home and get some rest. No sense both of us being irrationally exhausted.” I made sure to kiss him in front of Lane, so he’d know I didn’t hold our little confrontation against him. Those days, of blaming all of my problems on my asshole boyfriend, were behind me.

  Leaving Lane at her desk, I went into my office and loaded the photos on the SCS network drive, making sure Pete would see them when he came into work in a few hours.

  Then I stretched out on the battered sofa in my office and took a nap, waking up with a kink in my neck and Lane standing over me. She’d changed to an entirely new conservative pastel blouse and freshened her makeup. I felt grit in my eyes from yesterday’s mascara and sort of hated her.

  “My friend up in organized crime is ready for us,” she said. “And I’m pretty sure they have coffee in their office.”

  “I’m up,” I grumbled. I checked myself in the mirror hanging on my door. To say I looked like I’d been dragged through five of the seven hells was an understatement. I tried to do something about my smeared makeup and my Siouxsie hair, but there was nothing I could fix about the grumpy first-thing-in-the-morning attitude.

  Lane and I rode the elevator up to the daylight climes of the Plaza proper, and she led me to the warren of Organized Crime, which shared a vast open floor with Fraud. I saw Kilkenny’s swath of red hair and tipped him a salute.

  “This is Detective Han,” she said, gesturing to a fellow sporting a shaved tattooed head, a few earrings more than department issue and a leather jacket. “Shi, this is Luna Wilder.”

  “Pleasure,” Han Shi said, standing and shaking my hand. “I’ve heard a lot about you since the department opened the SCS.” He had a firm grip and an infectious grin that transformed his face from hard to open. “You’ll forgive the getup—I’ve been out on the street for a week working on the Golden Snake gang.”

  I was kicking myself for not washing my face or at least finding some deodorant before we came up here. Han was cute. And still smiling at me. Dammit.

  “So, Natalie here tells me that you’re having troubles from our comrades in the Russian mob,” he said. “Care to take a look at the pyramid of shame?”

  “What’s that?” I said. Han led me to the end of the row of cubicles and pointed to a large corkboard covered in mug shots, surveillance photos and crime-scene shots that varied from garden-variety dead bodies to parts that even your mother couldn’t identify.

  “Jesus, Mary and Joseph,” Lane said. “Animals.”

  “The Chinese are worse, believe it or not,” said Han. “They have that creative edge the Russians haven’t quite mastered. The new leader of the Golden Snake cut out his predecessor’s eyes and sent them to the detective in charge of watching the gang’s headquarters. Sort of a Spy Versus Spy thing. Only with eyeballs.”

  Lane started to turn green, but I was looking at the mug shots. “This is the hierarchy of the Nocturne outfit?”

  “As far as we’ve been able to tell,” Han said. “We don’t have anyone on the inside with the Russians, and neither does the FBI. Eastern Promises, this is not.”

  I scanned the board, seeing a lot of hard-bitten, tattooed men glaring back at me. “Him,” I said, landing on a mug shot of Goatee. “That’s who I shot it out with last night.”

  “That’s Nikolai Rostov,” said Han. “He’s an enforcer, a high-level one in line to be the boss. Very old school. Did time in a couple of Soviet prisons before he fled to the wicked, wicked West. That doesn’t exactly turn you into a cuddly sort of guy.”

  “Is he involved in the human trafficking going on through the port?” Lane asked. Han nodded.

  “Probably. Rostov is who you send in when you don’t want to get your hands bloody. Blood doesn’t bother him overmuch.”

  “Or selling women into slavery…” I said, taking his photo off the board. Han made a sound of protest.

  “You better bring that back. My captain gets very upset when we disturb the pyramid.”

  “Don’t worry,” I said with a wink. “I promise I’ll return him and he’ll still be ugly.”

  I yawned as I rode back down to the SCS to pull the computer file on Nikolai Rostov. I just needed to get a fix on him, and then I was on him like a fat kid on a birthday cake until this case was closed up tight.

  My nose warned me that someone was in my office seconds before the door banged shut behind me. My Sig came out as I turned around and I found myself looking at Nate Dubois over the barrel.

  “Hex me,” I sighed, lowering the gun. “That’s a real easy way to get yourself killed, Nate.”

  “Maybe I don’t care,” he muttered, his shoulders slumping. “You arrested that man John Black. Is he the one?”

  I scented him, subtly so that he wouldn’t take it as a threat to his dominance, and caught a whiff of cheap bourbon on his skin and breath. On a second look, Nate didn’t seem so hot. His hair was sticking up all over the place and the lines on his face were twice as deep as when I’d seen him last. “I don’t know,” I said, and then added, “I don’t think so. He has an alibi.”

  Nate grabbed my citation plaque for bravery off my desk, the only one I’d managed to earn in Homicide, and flung it at the wall. “Why the hell not?” he bellowed.

  “Okay,” I said, tightening my grip on the Sig. “You can calm down, or you can leave.”

  Nate glared at me, his lips pulling back over his teeth, and then he crumpled, missing the edge of my sofa and sitting hard on the floor, legs akimbo.

  “No one knows who hurt my little girl,” he sobbed. “No one cares … She’s just gone … I can still smell her in her bedroom, I think I hear her coming into the room, laughing…”

  I crouched down next to Nate and gripped him by the shoulder. “I promise you that I am going to make this right. Where’s your wife?”

  “Home,” Nate sighed. “She’s taking this so well … she’s being so strong. I went out last night just to get away from the house and I ended up here…”

  I stood up and dialed Norris, our office assistant. He was old as the hills and twice as crotchety, and we didn’t talk if I could help it, but this was an emergency. My life is full of those. “Norris, can you get Petra Dubois on the line and tell her that her husband is here and needs a ride home?”

  “Very good, Lieutenant,” he said prissily, and hung up on me. It was probably the most civil exchange we’d ever had.

  Nate tried to pull himself up, and I helped him onto the sofa. “You wife will be here soon,” I said. “You need to go home and be with her, and take care of yourself.”

  “I miss my Lily so much,” Nate sighed. “Pack justice won’t bring her back to me.” He swiped his hand over his face. “You really pissed them off sending Theodore back like that. They’re going to come for you now, just like Lily’s killer.”

  “I thought you were the pack leader?” I said gently, even though his words sent an involuntary tingle of fear through my gut.

  “I’m broken,” Nate said, slumping. “One of the younger ones will use this as an excuse to oust me and then we’re both fucked.”

  “I’ll close this case,” I said. “You just have to have a little faith in me.”

  “What kind of a world do we live in when this can happen to a sweet little girl?” Nate asked me.

  “No kind of world,” I said. “But it’s the
only one we’ve got.”

  Nate and I sat in silence for a time, him nodding in and out and me scrolling through the photos from the night before. Just a glutton for punishment, that’s me. I paused on a clear shot of Nikolai Rostov’s face. My last lead. My last hope.

  My phone buzzed and I switched on the speaker. “What?”

  “Mrs. Dubois is here,” Norris said.

  “Thank you. Send her in.”

  Petra came through the door a moment later and her face fell when she saw her husband. “Nate, is this really what it’s come to? Stumbling around like a bum?”

  “I’m not strong like you,” he said matter-of-factly.

  “Thank you for bringing this to my attention, Lieutenant Wilder,” said Petra. “I’m so sorry that he barged in here.”

  “Look,” I sighed as Petra pulled Nate to his feet. “This may be out of line, but you two need help. Take the grief counselor’s number. He’s supposedly very good.”

  Not that I had ever gone to the guy. I’d seen the department psychiatrist, Dr. Merriman, more than a few times, but someone to help me actually deal with my problems was a luxury not afforded to most cops, unless they beat up their girlfriends or tried to eat their guns.

  “We’re dealing with this in our own way,” Petra said coldly. “Something you obviously know nothing about.”

  “You know what, Mrs. Dubois, I’m doing my job to the best of my ability,” I said. “Maybe if you didn’t keep harassing me I’d be able to build a case against the man who hurt your daughter.”

  “So you do have someone in mind,” Petra said, rounding on me. “Who is it?”

  “I’m afraid I can’t reveal the details of an open investigation,” I said primly. Nate Dubois I felt for. His wife was just starting to piss me off.

  “Not even to the person who could call her pack off of your scent?” Petra said, her eyes darkening as the pupils expanded. My were snarled inside my head and I felt my fingernails sting as my claws started to grow.

  I beat the were back. “I’m not playing this game with you,” I told Petra in a deliberately quiet tone.

  “If I removed you from this case, I could get some real progress,” Petra snarled. “Believe that I’ll be talking to your chief in the morning. We have plenty of friends, including the commissioner.”

  Nate put a hand on her arm. “Can we just go home, please?”

  Petra put her hands over her face, and her shoulders started to shake. “I’m so sorry, Lieutenant Wilder. I know that every time we meet, I treat you horribly.” She grabbed my hands. “I’m so, so sorry.”

  “It’s fine,” I said, looking to Nate with a help me expression. He put his arms around Petra as she started to sob in earnest.

  “Come on, love,” he said. “Let’s go home.”

  I pulled up Nikolai Rostov’s file on the department database once Nate and Petra had stumbled out, and checked his known addresses. None were current, no businesses listed. Aside from enforcing mob law, Nikolai was a ghost. No wonder no one could build a case against him.

  The pictures were still sitting on my desktop and I looked at the meatpacker’s logo again, faded and patchy. I punched the company name into the department database search and found an address sure enough, with a notation that the company was in foreclosure.

  I hit my intercom. “Norris, forward my calls to my cell.” He grunted at me.

  “And what should I tell any further drunken, disgruntled werewolves who invade our office space?”

  “That you’re an enormous curmudgeon?” I suggested with a bright smile. “I’ll be back in an hour.”

  “Don’t get yourself shot,” Norris said, turning back to his computer. “That would be terrible. Just terrible.”

  CHAPTER 10

  The drive to the suburbs took me across the overpass of Ghosttown, the burned-out wreckage of the government housing project that the Hex Riots destroyed in 1969, through the tract houses that were starting to finger out from the center of Nocturne City, and finally into the industrial wasteland, old chemical factories like patient, rusted sentinels by the roadside, weeds and birds and graffiti spreading life over their carcasses.

  The meatpacking warehouse was just another ghost along the strip, sandwiched between a restaurant supply warehouse and a strip club called Tit for Tat. About as classy a locale as I would expect from a mobster who trafficked in sex slaves.

  I pulled into the parking area, empty except for my car and a few pallets of old refrigeration equipment that had rusted to lace in the elements.

  I locked the car and headed into the warehouse through the cargo door, pushing aside bloodstained plastic strips designed to keep the cold air in. Arrows painted on the floor guided me toward the front office. I followed them along a white-tiled hallway illuminated by half-dead fluorescent tubes, only to find the shades pulled and a sign crookedly shoved into the window that proclaimed closed.

  I tried the door anyway. It was locked, in a shocking development. I looked at the frame for alarm wires, and saw nothing but an antique security camera. I pulled out my lockpicks, which lived on my belt next to my handcuffs, a packet of rubber gloves and the waist rig for my sidearm. I’m a good lockpick even without tools, which comes more from a teenage life as a delinquent than training as a cop.

  Either way, I got the lock open in about fifteen seconds. The door clicked open an inch, and I scented the room beyond. Cheap carpet, dust, stale air and perfume.

  Keeping my hand on my gun, I pushed the door open and edged inside, hoping that I’d caught Nikolai with his pants down.

  A secretary stared at me from behind a reception desk. “We are closed.”

  “Um,” I said, easing my finger off the trigger guard of the Sig and brushing my hands over my jacket to smooth it. “Your door was open.”

  “No, it wasn’t,” she said plainly.

  “Okay,” I said with a sigh. “Just tell me where Nikolai is.”

  “I do not know who you speak of,” she said, her accent managing to make her sound prissy even though she was wearing a garish floral-print blouse, had red hair that could have been put out with a fire extinguisher and bright blue eye makeup. “You leave before I call the police.”

  “That’s good,” I said. “You calling the police on your front—I mean, your ‘meatpacking warehouse.’” I made sure to use air quotes.

  She glared at me. “You are a very rude woman. You will leave now.”

  “Tell you what,” I said, leaning on the desk. “I’m fresh out of patience, so you toddle on back and tell Nikolai I’m here, or I’ll give you a reason to wear that much cheap makeup on your face.”

  Her lip curled back and I started when I saw fangs. She didn’t smell like a were, but then again, she was sporting about a gallon of cheap perfume. “I wouldn’t do a thing for you, except throw you out on your fat ass.”

  “Word of advice, Fuzzy,” I said. “You don’t want to go there with me. I’m what you might call a sensitive type.”

  She pursed her lips. “What do you want I should do, pull him out of thin air?”

  “Look, I know he’s here or you know where he is,” I said. “I’ll speak to him now, or I’ll get very, very unpleasant until he shows his face. Your choice.”

  After a long second of snarling at each other like wolves on a nature program, she sighed. “I buzz him.” Her hand dipped below the level of the desk.

  My gun came out fast, the safety off, aimed less than an inch from her eyes. “Don’t move.”

  She didn’t gasp or cry, like someone who % wasn’t reaching for a gun would. She just glared at me, like a small child who’s been denied a reach into the cookie jar.

  “Slowly,” I said. “Show me the piece.”

  Sniffing in fury, she brought out the long-barrel revolver and slammed it onto the desk. It was a .38, plenty large enough to ventilate me at close range.

  “Now I call Nikolai?” she asked hopefully.

  “You wish,” I said, taking the gun and toss
ing it into the trash can on my side of the desk. I unhooked my cuffs from my belt and gestured to her. “Up.”

  “Nikolai will kill you,” she snarled. “He will make you into pieces so small you will not fill paper cup for a funeral.”

  “Scary threats, scary gangster, blah blah blah,” I told her, handcuffing her to the office door and relocking the deadbolt.

  She cursed at me some more, in Russian, but I turned my back on her and walked around the desk and through the door behind it, finding myself in a chill metal-lined hallway, freezer lockers on either side filled with nothing but permafrost and empty hooks for meat. I gave a small sigh of relief. Another dead body would really ruin an already crappy day.

  I walked on, pushing through another plastic curtain into the main freezer, from which a chorus of male voices emanated.

  I didn’t hesitate before I banged the door wide open. “What, no strippers? No pool table? No humidor? Nikolai, this is one sucky secret clubhouse.”

  The group I’d surprised slowly stopped what they were doing, which was counting stacks of worn bills and banding them. Four pairs of eyes turned and bored into me. Rostov stood up slowly, deliberately setting down his fistful of bills.

  “I’m sorry, miss, but this is a private business establisment. Can we help you find your way back to wherever it was you got lost?”

  “Is this where you took Lily Dubois?” I said, gesturing at the featureless warehouse and plastic pallets, the cold air drifting down from the vents in fingers and cloaks of white vapor. “Not exactly a romantic hot spot, I have to say.”

  One of Rostov’s companions reached for his gun, or whatever the bulge inside his windbreaker was supposed to be. Could have been a hero sandwich, but I doubted it.

  “No,” Nikolai said. “I’m sure the young lady is here in an official capacity.”

  “Smart boy,” I said. Rostov gestured to a an empty plastic chair at the table covered in money.

  “Please. Sit.”

  “You’re pretty polite, for a gangster,” I said. Rostov chuckled. It was a deep, fatherly sound, like a jolly Eurotrash Santa Claus.