by H. P. Bayne
But after an hour of dusting and swabbing the scene, Ident came up with nothing.
Sully had notified Betty, and she’d come in, swearing up a storm, in the midst of the fingerprinting. She had stalked to her office in search of Sergeant Joe Peterman, and the resulting conversation had been terse enough to send snippets of it down the hall.
The Ident officers seemed happy to be leaving.
“Looks like a professional job,” one of them told Sully and Dez. “We can’t find any sign he removed his gloves, and he brought a long rubber car mat with him for the window ledge so he wouldn’t cut himself crawling in. We checked the mat, but no obvious hairs, fibres or substances showed up. Could be he just bought it. We’ll take in a few items we seized for further analysis, but it’s not looking promising for evidence.”
Dez returned his attention to Sully as the Ident officer and his partner left with the seized and bagged evidence. “Did you or Betty call Lowell?”
“Not yet. Guess I should.”
“Let Betty,” Dez said. “She’s the manager.”
“I’m the assistant manager. And I’m the one who was here. No sense his crapping on her for this.”
“No sense his crapping on you either. Tell you what, I’ll call him. Betty’s likely to be held up with Joe for a while.”
While Dez made the call, Sully headed down the hall to where Betty and Sergeant Peterman—the officer who had taken over the night’s investigation—were digging through the office, looking for anything that might have been taken.
Betty excused herself and joined Sully, leaving Joe to take advantage of the break to go outside for a smoke.
“Anything?” Sully asked.
Betty’s headshake was a tight one. “Not that I can see. Listen, would you mind pouring me a rye and water from the bar? I don’t normally drink this late but, given the circumstances, fuck it.”
She turned back into the room as he left to fill her request. He’d taken a couple steps when he heard the sound of tape being ripped off something and the sound of her muttering, “Thank Christ.”
Sully ducked back inside. Betty faced a section of cheap wood panelling which lined the office. “Everything okay?”
She spun, eyes wide and mouth open as she stuffed her hands into the pockets of her jacket. “Jesus, Sully. Don’t scare a gal like that.”
“Sorry. It sounded like you found something.”
“Oh.” Betty ducked her head, but looked back up at him. She pulled her hand from a pocket and uncurled her fingers, revealing a pale blue thumb drive. “Just some family photos and history I’ve been compiling. I thought maybe it was gone.”
“Why would anyone want your family photos and history?”
“They wouldn’t,” she said. “Just that it’s on a thumb drive, and sometimes thieves take those thinking they contain important classified information. Always do on TV, anyway.”
Sully smirked. “Who would think you’ve got important classified information? You moonlighting as a spy or something?”
“Don’t be stupid.”
Sully had gotten to know Betty fairly well over the past four years, and he could read people. He sensed this person—this friend—was lying to him. He risked not going for the ordered drink, suspecting she’d only made the request to get him out of the room, anyway.
In a low voice, he asked, “What do you think the guy was after?”
“How the hell should I know? Peterman there kept asking the same thing. I don’t keep anything important here. Just employee and business records, tax records, my personal tax returns. I’ve got an extra copy of my will here. There’s no cash, sure as hell no drugs or expensive goods. The computer’s so old it’s going to crap out any day now. I can’t imagine what someone would want coming here and breaking in.”
Sully couldn’t say he knew either, but he suspected it might have something to do with the thumb drive Betty had returned to her pocket—whether or not she was prepared to admit it.
She must have seen his eyes drifting that way. “Sully, please don’t tell anyone about the thumb drive. It’s just my personal stuff and it means a lot to me. I don’t want to risk it getting seized as evidence and accidentally erased. That’s all. There’s nothing important on it, all right?”
Sully watched her eyes and, while she blinked a little more than normal, she didn’t look away. She was doing her utmost to convince him and, short of ratting her out or wrestling it away from her—moves that would make working here unbearable going forward—there wasn’t a whole lot he could do about it.
Nor did he know he should do anything. He didn’t have any clue what was on that drive, and rational thought suggested she could be telling the truth.
Except, deep down, he knew she wasn’t.
2
Lowell Braddock started his pharmaceutical company from the ground up. It had been at the forefront of a number of successful medical breakthroughs thanks to skilled chemists and a willingness to take a few well-placed risks with his money.
LOBRA employed a hefty portion of the city’s scientifically minded, and it had achieved a reputation for being one of the best places to work in Kimotan Rapids if you had the skillset to earn your way in.
Lowell surrounded himself with the best of everything, be it people, places or things. He drove the most expensive cars, had both a penthouse in the city and a sprawling estate to the west, and was photographed at charity events and highbrow social gatherings with KR’s elite. He gave frequently and had a hand in a number of local businesses, having been credited more than once with keeping some of them afloat through the economic crunch that had hit within the past few years.
As free with money and credit as he was in handing out a well-deserved compliment, he was the sort of guy most people wanted to be close to. To the world at large, Lowell Braddock was a good man.
Sully knew better.
He’d long since accepted he might well be the only person in the world who saw the other side of the man, the darkness he worked so hard to keep hidden. Despite Lowell’s best attempts to conceal the black side of his soul, it continued to lurk just below his shiny exterior, hunched there like a poisonous toad, beady eyes ever watching and waiting. It was nothing like the surface Lowell presented to the world; well-dressed, handsome, tall and elegant, Lowell could charm the socks off the oft-curmudgeonly Christian Ladies’ Club one minute with a well-turned speech, and impress smart-ass teens the next with his love for extreme sports and hot cars.
Perhaps most frustrating to Sully was that Lowell’s inherent charm didn’t fail him in the family department. Lowell and his brother Flynn—Sully’s foster father—were like night and day in some respects, but Flynn loved his younger brother nonetheless. And Mara—Sully’s foster mother—was close with Lowell’s wife, Kindra, so that holidays were rarely complete unless all of them were together. Dez looked up to his father, he also adored his uncle, had grown up anticipating the best birthday and Christmas gifts thanks to Lowell’s generosity. While Lowell was a blind spot for Dez, the younger Braddock was observant enough to recognize the tension between his brother and uncle. Dez had never pursued it, whether out of concern for trespassing too far into Sully’s personal feelings or simply because he didn’t want to face any more pain within his little family unit. Either way, Dez had Sully’s back around Lowell—always had—but he did it without rocking any boats.
Sully held his own course and kept his misgivings to himself. Flynn, Mara and Dez Braddock had taken him in as a kid, but he’d learned by then nothing was ever set in stone. At the end of the day, Lowell was still blood and Sully was not. He had no doubt the Braddocks loved him like true family, but there were ways in which he wasn’t prepared to test the strength of that bond. Lowell was the granddaddy of all tests.
Lowell and Sully had an understanding they’d held to since those early days. They spoke to each other civilly, treated each other fairly and kept any unfavourable views to themselves. Most days, it worked. On the d
ays it didn’t, they simply ignored the resulting questions and moved on.
There was no ignoring Lowell now, as he swept into the Black Fox, wearing a facade of concern. He took in the scene and breezed out to find the lead investigator.
“He insisted,” Dez explained to Sully. “Third break-in here in as many months. He’s anxious about it.”
The suggestion being Sully should be anxious too. And he was, just not for the same reasons Lowell was likely to be.
Sully didn’t say anything else to Dez on the matter; there wasn’t much to add. Dez went off to talk to his uncle, leaving Sully in the bar nursing a beer. It was only a matter of time before Lowell came over to politely demand an explanation, and it took seconds rather than minutes before the bar’s owner was sliding onto the chair across from Sully.
“The sergeant’s still busy with Betty in the office,” Lowell said. “What happened, this time?”
Sully provided the obligatory narrative, detailing the night’s events from the initial noise to the confrontation in the alley. He left out the bit about the ghost; Lowell didn’t go in for that sort of thing, thought Sully was somewhere just this side of crazy. Lowell had tried to do him one favour over the years, though: seeing to it Sully had a running supply of sleeping pills. There had been many nights over the years those pills had come in handy.
“Were you hurt?” Lowell asked.
Sully felt the smile plucking at the corners of his mouth. As Sully was obliged to provide an explanation, so Lowell had to go through the motions of concern. This was how the two of them worked.
“Fine, thanks.”
“Did you happen to get a look at him?”
“Nothing that’s much help. He was masked. But he was a pretty big, solid guy, and he knew how to handle himself. Not like the last couple of boozers who smashed in here.”
“And it seems like he focused on Betty’s office rather than the bar,” Dez added. “That’s a new one.”
“It certainly is,” Lowell said. “Any idea what this guy was after?”
Sully shrugged, making efforts to appear like he was studying the label on his bottle. It was usually easier not to look at Lowell, just answer his questions and get on with things. “No idea. Betty said she doesn’t know either.”
“Do you believe her?”
That had Sully glancing up, and he found Lowell watching him closely, studying him as if wanting to read and to dissect his thoughts.
“Why wouldn’t I? Are you suggesting she’s lying?”
Lowell offered his own shrug and sat back with crossed arms. “You tell me.”
“There’s nothing to tell. Maybe the guy thought we kept the float back there or something. I really don’t know.”
“Just seems strange,” Lowell said. “Most people break in here for one reason. They’re after booze and smokes, maybe whatever might be left in the cash drawer. That means the bar’s the target, not the offices.”
Dez usually ended up cutting into Sully and Lowell’s conversations, and he blessedly picked that moment. “Most people around here know you own the place, Uncle Lo. Maybe they weren’t thinking of it as Betty’s office, but yours.”
“I don’t spend a lot of time around here. Why would anyone think that?”
“I don’t know. But there are quite a few people in this neighbourhood who don’t think things through very well before committing a crime.”
“Except, by Sullivan’s description, this intruder doesn’t seem our usual smash-and-grab type. I’d say it sounds almost professional. Which leads me back to my question about what he would have been after.”
“Maybe you’re better off waiting and asking Betty,” Dez suggested. “Sully doesn’t know.”
“He works closely with her. I just thought he might have a theory, that’s all.”
But Dez’s words had the desired effect, Lowell giving up on the mild interrogation and heading off to check back in with Betty and Sgt. Peterman.
Sully waited until Lowell was out of sight and earshot before turning back to Dez. “Thanks.”
“He’s not meaning to come down on you,” Dez said. “He’s got questions. So do you and I. He’s right that it’s not your typical bar break-in.”
“I know that. Look, maybe Betty’s got some idea as to motive, but I don’t.”
“I know, Sull. I wasn’t suggesting otherwise. I’d just like to get this sorted out sooner rather than later. Whoever broke in is still out there and, like we’ve all said now, it’s got the feel of a professional job. I don’t like the idea of you being here on your own until we’ve picked this guy up.”
“I don’t think I’m in any danger. He could have taken me out but he didn’t. I didn’t get the impression he was out to seriously hurt me.”
“Even so,” Dez said. “If he got what he came for, then it’s all good. But if he didn’t, chances are he’ll be back once the heat dies down some. And if he’s desperate enough to get his hands on whatever he came here for, there’s no predicting how far he might go to get it—or who he’ll go through.”
The search of Betty’s office turned up no sign of anything missing or any additional items the intruder might have left behind. Sgt. Peterman summoned Sully to go over a few questions he had about his statement.
By the time Sully had provided what extra information he could, Lowell had sent Betty on her way, and Dez had been dispatched on another call. Once the police took their leave, Lowell and Sully remained behind to clean up.
They boarded up the window and swept up the shattered glass. Having ensured the place was as secure as possible, Sully reluctantly got into the passenger seat of Lowell’s Land Rover, his uncle having promised to take Sully over to Dez and Eva’s for the rest of the night.
Sully had hoped for a quiet ride, but wasn’t remotely surprised when Lowell broke the silence during the drive to the Gladstone neighbourhood on the city’s west side. Only, the break-in wasn’t what Lowell had in mind as subject matter.
“You still got those pills I gave you?”
“No, they’re back at the apartment.”
Lowell reached into a pocket, producing a pill bottle he handed to his passenger. In the light from the passing streetlights, Sully recognized the label as the usual brand he was given.
“Figured you’d be running low by now, anyway. Here. Take them. You look like hell.”
“I was sleeping fine until this happened.”
“Right. But take one when you get to Dez and Eva’s, anyway. You’ve always had a hard time nodding off.”
That much was true, but Sully didn’t acknowledge it, didn’t say anything else about the matter. He hated taking pills. Most of the time, they kept dreams at bay, but sometimes they made it so he couldn’t wake from nightmares. And there were times those nightmares were so real, he preferred the waking ones.
“You still don’t like me very much, do you?”
Sully turned his head enough to realize Lowell was looking at him, stopped as they were at a red light. He refocused his gaze on the dark, quiet street ahead, wishing it was as easy to divert his thoughts. “I’ve got nothing against you.”
“That’s not altogether true, is it?”
Sully didn’t say anything. There wasn’t a right answer, nor was he anywhere close to thinking one up. Sully wasn’t gifted in the art of gab at the best of times; chatting with Lowell typically hovered closer to the worst of times, as far as Sully was concerned.
True to form, Lowell picked up the one-sided conversation. “You know what I did today? I donated fifty thousand dollars to St. Luke’s Childrens’ Hospital. Fifty thousand dollars. It’s enough to secure them the MRI machine they’ve been working toward purchasing. There’s going to be a big story about it in the paper tomorrow. That’s the kind of man I am, Sullivan.”
Sully held his tongue. No right answer, he reminded himself.
“Still nothing to say? Even though I made sure you had a job after you finished high school? Come on, kid, you’re smart
and you’ve got a good head on your shoulders most of the time. But you’ve got no idea what you want to do with your life. I did my best to do right by you, didn’t I? Where would you be right now if I hadn’t?”
Sully shrugged, hoping that would be answer enough.
“What was that?”
Apparently not. “Thank you.” The words emerged from Sully’s lips through gritted teeth.
He heard the smile on Lowell’s voice. To anyone else, it might have sounded innocently amused. “I’m sorry? I didn’t quite catch that.”
“I said, thank you.”
The light turned green and the car pulled forward.
“You know your trouble, kid? You lived a rough life before Flynn and Mara took you in. You were treated badly, and you came to believe the whole world was out to get you. Problem is, that’s not true. Some of us only ever want to help you, but you make it so damn hard sometimes. You can trust me or not, but the only one you’re hurting is yourself. Now, I don’t know what it is you think I did that was so bad, but—”
“You don’t know? Really?”
“No, Sullivan. I don’t.”
And the sad truth was Lowell probably didn’t know, probably wouldn’t acknowledge it as fact even if Sully could present the distant past to him on a film screen. Because Sully had realized a long time ago the reason Lowell was so brutally capable of snowing the whole world. The man had spent his life practicing in the mirror. Whatever lies he told everyone else, perhaps he saved the biggest untruths for himself. And Sully didn’t possess a shovel big enough to dig through all that bullshit.
“Never mind,” Sully said. “It’s not important. I’m tired. Wake me up when we get to Dez and Eva’s.”
This time, Lowell let the conversation drop, likely because he wanted to hear the answer to his question about as much as Sully wanted to say it out loud. Sully leaned his head against the window and shut his eyes most of the way, the sliver of sight allowing him to keep his eye on his surroundings outside the car. Lowell might have been lying about everything else, but he’d spoken some truth in there too.