Eyes of the Dead: A Crime and Suspense Thriller (The Gardens Book 1)

by Adam Netherlund

  “What was he doing?”

  “I dunno. He was just shambling up the hill. He stood at the crosswalk, looking around. At what, I don’t know. The light changed and he crossed. At first, I didn’t recognize him. He looked kind of haggard, ya know? Grungy. Dirty. I couldn’t smell him or nuthin’, but he looked…he looked rough.” He paused. “Then I realized that he was undercover. Blending in and all that. Although, I don’t know how much he was blending in down there with all them yuppies. If you ask me, he kinda stood out.”

  “Any idea where he was headed?”

  “Can’t say. He crossed. Came right up beside me under the patio and just kept walking down Lock Street. Goin’ to the harbor, I guess.”

  “Did you say anything to him?”

  “Nah,” Fletcher said. “Once I knew that he was UC, I didn’t bother. I know enough to not interact with UCs. It only takes that one second to blow someone’s cover. You just keep moving. Don’t even make eye contact with them.”

  Fletcher was right. But then again, he worked Vice. Becca was UC right now. They had done undercover assignments numerous times. A part of him wished that he hadn’t followed protocol. Then, at least someone would have spoken to Scott. “How did he seem?”

  “Seem?”

  “Yeah. Did he look out of sorts?”

  Fletcher looked at him, puzzled. “How do you mean?”

  Now for the difficult part. Should he share what he knew? He didn’t want to tarnish a cop’s reputation, but he was starting to get desperate. He felt like he was grasping at straws here. “High?”

  Fletcher looked down at the floor of the van. “High? No, I don’t think so. I don’t even wanna know why you’re asking me that, Mitch. So I’ll just say that he looked a little sad, maybe. Grungy and sad. That was him.”

  Fletcher would have had a good look from his vantage point. The Highlanders’ patio sat up off the ground and overlooked the sidewalk. It had a perfect view of the entire intersection, depending on your seating.

  What else should he ask?

  Mitchell left him alone for a bit, which allowed him some time to check in with Becca via radio to make sure that she was all right. She said, ‘she was fine, and to let her work.’

  Fletcher was shaking his head, saying, “Women.”

  “Did Scott talk with anyone?”

  “Not that I saw. He crossed and went on his merry way up the street.”

  “Do you know if he was workin’ down in Port?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Know his street name?”

  “Marty. Or, at least at one time. I saw it on some reports. Yeah, Marty,” he said, nodding his head. “Christ, Mitch. What’s with the third degree here, man?”

  Mitchell folded his arms. “I know. I’m sorry. It’s just—”

  “Just because I work a bust sometimes doesn’t mean that I know the ins and outs of the whole goddamn operation, man. Don’t you have a partner? What the hell have you two been doing?”

  “We’re trying. I’m trying. Really. It’s just that we don’t have a lot to go on and Ecker’s gonna come down hard on us if we don’t start producing. I’m still fresh and—”

  Fletcher made a face. “Ecker? As in Deputy Chief Ecker? Why is he involved?”

  “He assigned us. He’s our Commanding Officer on it,” Mitchell said. “We just figured that since Scott was Gardens PD, maybe he wanted to hold this one a little close to chest. They’re tryin’ to keep it quiet for now.”

  Fletcher didn’t utter a word. Were they done here? Had he exhausted his line of questioning with him, now that he knew the truth about Mitchell and his partner? That they were two dicks without a clue?

  What are you gonna do?

  Berlin was supposed to be the best. Someone who could teach him a thing or two.. Or maybe he’d be better off with someone else. Someone that had less baggage.

  No, don’t be cruel, Mitch. He lost a wife. How would you feel if you lost Jaden? Or, God forbid, Delanna.

  Would you be able to power on?

  Fletcher made a squeaking sound in his chair and Mitchell suddenly realized that he was still in the van and that the two hadn’t said a word in a several minutes. “You all right?”

  “Yeah, I’m fine. We’re just under a lot of pressure, Fletch. I could use some help on this.”

  Fletcher sighed, clearly annoyed. “Look, like I said, I can’t help you too much with Scott. I didn’t know him all that well, that’s the truth.”

  Mitchell leaned over again, alert and enlivened. “I sense a but in there somewhere.”

  “I’ve been hearing a lot of chatter lately, through the grapevine. People keep talking about some guy named X. Word is, he’s taking a run at Ivan Sokolov.”

  “Yeah, we’ve caught wind of him now,” Mitchell said, disappointed. He sat back in his chair.

  “Oh, you have?”

  “His name is Exodus Clay.”

  Fletcher tugged on his earlobe with a thumb, looking back across the street. “Well, here’s something maybe you don’t know. Richardson and his team? I’m told that they’ve been aware of this X character for quite some time, but, so far, haven’t done anything about him.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means what it means, Mitch. For some reason, someone’s calling off the dogs.”

  TUESDAY

  CHAPTER 28

  Berlin nodded at the front desk sergeant as he entered the downtown Headquarters. It was early, approaching seven a.m., and he hoped to have some time alone before Mitchell came in for his shift. He sat down at his desk and drummed his fingers. Operating on very little sleep, his body felt tender and sore all over. His head felt like it was filled with quicksand. In his head was an endless stream of regurgitating thoughts, sinking one after the other. Like Kate in the water.

  He tried to put his mind at ease, attempting to focus his thoughts, and lock the dream of Kate away for good. Into the dark place, a place where his mind couldn’t access it.

  Wouldn’t access it.

  He had more important things to worry about in the here and now. Like whether or not Ecker was going to throw a fit for essentially accomplishing nothing on the Scott case.

  What was he missing?

  What had they overlooked?

  The words kept repeating throughout his head, like a song stuck on repeat.

  He leaned back in his chair, pushing it onto its back legs. Stretching back his arms, he ran his fingers through his hair and massaged at his neck with his fingertips.

  Think, think.

  Where could he turn?

  What was it that she had said in the dream? The line about beginnings and endings?

  The beginning had been Scott’s body under the canal with two in the chest. No, before that…what led to that? What led to his murder?

  I don’t know.

  Berlin frantically started to search the top of his desk, moving stacks of paper from one side then to the other. He pulled out folders and other documents from the black tray holder that housed even more paperwork at the corner of his desk.

  Where did he put those files? Scott’s personal files?

  “Lose something, pal?” a voice asked him.

  Berlin gazed up at the voice with puffy eyes. It was Simmons, one of Richardson’s men. “Nah, I’ll be fine,” Berlin croaked.

  “If you say so,” Simmons said. He continued to walk down the aisle past him.

  Berlin traced Simmons’ path and saw Chief Ecker, waiting for him at the end of the aisle, his door open. The two men shook hands and Ecker closed the door behind them.

  Curious.

  Berlin reached down to his right and unlocked the desk drawer. He thumbed through the manila folders and read each name scribbled at the top in black permanent marker. They mostly consisted of his own personal records that he had brought over from Port. A few cold cases were scattered among them, cases that Berlin just couldn’t let go. Every Homicide Detective had them. They haunted you.

/>   He was about to give up on the task when he had one last inkling. He reached into the back of the drawer, pulling the folders taut and squishing them together into one unit. Near the back were several other dingy-colored folders and clippings. He picked up the stack and brought them up onto the desk in one big heap. He turned on his desk lamp and cast all of the other paperwork aside. Sifting through the first three sets of folders, he figured that he was in for more disappointment. They were all old case files. Folders that, for the most part, shouldn’t belong in his desk. He moved them and came to a set of folders bound together by a large elastic band. The band had lost most of its elasticity, and it hung loose and was decrepit looking. He didn’t need to open this set. He knew what evil lurked inside. Fighting the urge, he tossed the bundle onto the large stack that had formed on the desk. That left exactly one folder.

  You gotta be kidding me.

  It was Scott’s files.

  Berlin cracked open the folder and started to leaf through its contents. It consisted of miscellaneous reports that appeared to detail potential drug dealers, buyers, johns, and prostitutes. Berlin was thankful that Tim Scott had appeared to be very thorough and precise with his notes. He could have learned a thing or two from him, by the looks of it. He flipped over the page and found a hand-drawn chart on a piece of graph paper.

  Odd, Berlin thought.

  He inspected it more closely, noticing that, at the top, it had a heading that read Address. Across the page there was another heading that read Materials. It was two columns long, with a line dividing the two sections. Below the heading were sets of addresses and on the other side was a sort of itemized list.

  Berlin began to read.

  55 Lock St. was listed as housing large supplies of potting soil and fertilizers that were stacked around a shed in the backyard of the property.

  34 Melba Rd. was listed as having extension cords running from house to outbuilding and a utility meter that had been tampered with. Below that, it read, ‘Signs of sweating on windows.’

  The chart was extensive, running front and back, filled to the brim with information. He flipped the page and another sheet outlined Scott’s purchases from drug dealers with his ‘buy money’. At the bottom of the list was a bunch of random numbers.

  Serial numbers?

  Berlin moved on and another hand-drawn page followed. He had to spin this one so that the longest side was facing him. In large block letters in the center of the page was the name Sokolov. From there, everything spiraled out in all directions like some kind of brainstorming session.

  Berlin saw a lot of familiar names: Ivan Sokolov, Remy Marco (from Old Town), and The Cook Brothers (from Rose City). It was the Big Three. Each name was circled and joined together by a line. As he followed the lines, he finally saw another name that he recognized, Exodus Clay. It was noticeably written in after-the-fact in different ink, scrawled quickly and haphazardly.

  Downtown Brown was right. Clay was making a name for himself, joining the ranks of the Big Three on Scott’s list. However, the list didn’t stop there. Under each main name was another list of names. The whole thing was one big hierarchy. The who’s who of organized crime for the entire area.

  “Well I’ll be damned,” Berlin said quietly to himself.

  Berlin shook his head in disbelief and continued to peruse through the documents. There were a few more miscellaneous notes, but it was the back of the folder that immediately got Berlin’s attention. On the inside of the folder were two taped small pockets. One held a USB thumb drive and the other held a small black moleskin notebook.

  Berlin removed the thumb drive and set it at the corner of his desk. He then pulled out the notebook. It was small and frayed on the corners. It had seen a lot of travel. It would have been ideal for portability, so Berlin imagined that it spent the majority of its time in Scott’s pockets. He licked his finger and thumbed the first set of pages.

  More lists. Times, dates, and addresses followed by single letter abbreviations. Everything was in columns, similar to the graph paper.

  Now what?

  Berlin flicked ahead several pages and it was more of the same. He jumped to the end and the dates finished approximately three months before Scott’s death. There was no second book. Berlin closed the notebook and put it on the desk with the rest of the folder.

  “What you doin’?” a voice sounded from beside him.

  Berlin turned to the voice. Mitchell stood next to him. “Morning, Mitch.”

  Mitchell gave a small smile. “Well, you’re chipper this morning. What’s goin’ on, man? It’s not even eight yet. Can’t say that I’ve ever seen you here this early.”

  Berlin motioned to Mitchell. “Grab a chair.”

  Mitchell took off his blazer and set it on the back of his chair.

  “I…I owe you an apology, Mitch,” Berlin said.

  Mitchell showed puzzlement. “For?”

  “I haven’t been myself.”

  Mitchell waved him off. “It’s all right.”

  Berlin shook his head. “No, it’s not. I need to get something off my chest.”

  Mitchell didn’t say anything. He simply waited.

  “Scott’s files,” Berlin stated.

  “What about ’em?” Mitchell’s eyes then swerved down to Berlin’s desk. Berlin watched him put two and two together and waited with bated breath for holy hell to be unleashed.

  Mitchell’s face turned dark. As dark as his skin would let him, anyway. “Scott’s—You told me that you’d look at them. You tellin’ me this entire time that we’ve been chasin’ God knows who or what and you never even looked at them?”

  Berlin let his head drop to his chest. He deserved it, that much he knew.

  “Man…” Mitchell was shaking his head and looking around the Squad Room at some of the other detectives as they came in for the day. “I know you got some stuff goin’ on,” he began in a hushed voice, “but this isn’t right. I worked hard to get here. I can’t blow it before I even get started.”

  “I know,” Berlin said.

  “I knew somethin’ wasn’t right wit you,” he said, folding his arms, avoiding eye contact. “Well, it’s a good thing that I reached out to a friend last night.”

  Berlin leaned over on his elbows. “Oh? What friend?”

  “I hooked up with an old pal from Vice. He said that he happened to spot Scott down in Port, just weeks before his murder.”

  “What?”

  Mitchell pulled out his notebook. “Lock Street. Apparently he was wandering around. He said that Scott looked out of sorts.”

  “What else?”

  “He mentioned Exodus Clay,” Mitchell said. “I told him that we already knew the name. But then he said somethin’ else that got my attention.”

  “I’m listening,” Berlin said.

  “He told me that Richardson and his team have been aware of X for quite some time, but they’ve been called off his scent.”

  Berlin leaned back in his chair, contemplating this new piece of information.

  “Does that make any sense to you?” Mitchell asked him. “Why would the guy that is leading the war on drugs back off someone who is poised to take down Sokolov?”

  “So there’s a puppet master somewhere,” Berlin said. “Someone pulling the strings behind this whole thing.”

  “Sure, but what is…this whole thing? It’s not just about Scott’s murder. There must be more to it than that. Something we’re missing.”

  “I need to show you something,” Berlin said, opening the folder again to the hand-drawn page that was set up like a brainstorm map. He rotated the page so that Mitchell could see it more clearly and slid it over in between the two desks.

  Mitchell whistled. “So, what are we thinking? ‘Cuz the way I see it, the pool of suspects just grew exponentially.”

  “It’s possible, but unlikely.”

  Mitchell pointed a finger at Berlin’s desk. “What’s in the notebook?”

  Berlin picked it u
p and began to flip through it. “Not sure what to make of it. A list of dates, time, addresses, things like that. A single letter in the columns. I’m counting five unique letters next to the lists. Codes?”

  “Can I see it?” Mitchell asked. Berlin handed him the small notebook. “Yeah, definitely looks like code. Abbreviations, maybe. There’s a B, H, L, W, and S.” Mitchell said, tracing his finger down the column. “People maybe? Dealers?”

  Berlin took it back from him and inspected it again. “Yeah, good eye, Mitch.”

  “What about that?” Mitchell asked, pointing at the USB thumb drive.

  Berlin looked to where he was pointing. “Haven’t looked at it yet. Wanna?”

  Mitchell sprang up from his seat. “Let’s do it.” He pulled his chair around so that he and Berlin could sit side by side.

  Berlin grabbed the thumb drive and stuck it into the slot on the PC tower. He then punched in his password to login into the computer and looked for the icon on his desktop.

  Mitchell gently tapped him on his shoulder. “Hold up. Speak of the devil.”

  Berlin brought his head around the monitor to look down the hall. “Simmons? Yeah, he went by earlier. He was in a meeting with Ecker.”

  Simmons walked by them without giving them as much as a glance. Ecker stood in his doorway and signaled for them to come join him in his office.

  “Shit,” they said in unison.

  CHAPTER 29

  “Where are we on Scott, Detectives?” Ecker said. “Need I remind you, today is the final day. If you don’t bring me something solid, I shut you down and give it to someone else.”

  Ecker sat at his desk, wearing a cream-colored dress shirt that was buttoned tight all the way up to his neckline. His red and blue-checkered tie distracted Berlin. It was like one of those picture puzzle games where, if you stare at it long enough, you see an image.

  Mitchell looked to Berlin for guidance, for answers, but Berlin didn’t know if he could offer anything useful to him.

  “Don’t make me repeat myself,” Ecker said with more authority, drumming a fist into the table.