Fire Born (City of Dragons Book 5)

by Val St. Crowe

  “Huh,” said Lachlan. Then he glared at Dirk, who was still pacing. “Would you stop doing that?”

  Dirk stopped. “Why’d you say ‘huh’ like that?”

  “Just thinking,” said Lachlan.

  It was quiet.

  “Thinking what?” Dirk put her hands on her hips.

  “Do we need the magical artifacts?” said Lachlan. “We already have his DNA at the scene, don’t we? And he has no alibi, unless he’s dug some up for the other murders?”

  “No,” said Dirk. “No alibi.”

  “So, maybe he’s, uh, plagued by these violent fantasies and thoughts, and so he drinks to try to banish them. But over time, his drinking becomes problematic, so he decides to get clean. He stops drinking. But then the violent thoughts come back. And now he can’t ward them off, so he starts to indulge them. He wants, more than anything, to kill Joey Green, his lover. He fantasizes about how he’d do it, what he’d make Joey do first, all of that. But… he can’t do it. He can’t actually kill anyone.”

  “What are you going on about?” said Dirk. “You like this guy for the killings now?”

  Lachlan stood up. “But then one day he finds out about compulsion, and it’s like he’s hit upon the perfect way to do it, because it’s hands-off. He buys a talisman, and then he goes out trolling for someone—he picks a man who’s behaving like a straight man. But maybe Terry has a sense of this guy. Maybe he feels something from him, some attempt to hide his homosexuality, and maybe Terry feels he has to bring it out for this guy, bring it out so that everyone can see.”

  “I think I see where you’re going with this,” said Dirk. “After all, Joey’s in the closet, right? Won’t tell mom and dad about his boyfriend.”

  “Which is infuriating to Terry,” said Lachlan.

  “So, he takes this straight man to a hotel and uses the talisman on him, forces him to do horrible things, forces him to kill himself,” said Dirk.

  “And then he can’t face it,” said Lachlan. “His violent fantasies are real. They have become flesh.”

  “So,” said Dirk, “he picks up the bottle again. Starts drinking.”

  “And then he’s heavily drinking,” I said. “Hungover all the time, and he calls off from work a lot, which is why his co-worker thought he had AIDS.”

  “What?” said Dirk. “His co-worker?”

  “Don’t worry about that,” said Lachlan, waving it away. “Anyway, the cycle repeats itself, over and over. He kills again and again.”

  “Until one night, he finally snaps and does it,” said Dirk. “He actually kills Joey Green. It’s the ultimate fulfillment of his fantasies.”

  “Exactly,” said Lachlan.

  Dirk nodded. “You might be onto something.”

  “We had enough for the search warrant,” said Lachlan. “Even without any more physical evidence, I think we might have enough for an arrest warrant.”

  “You think?”

  “We arrest him,” said Lachlan, “and once he’s locked up, he’ll start talking. Killers like this love the limelight. If he thinks there’s no way out, he’ll confess.”

  “Maybe,” said Dirk.

  “You going to let me talk to him?” said Lachlan.

  She sighed. “I guess so.”

  “Let’s try to get the arrest warrant,” said Lachlan. “The worst that can happen is that we get denied.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Terry Jenkins was flustered. “Look, you’ve got the wrong guy,” he said as Lachlan came into the interrogation room.

  Dirk and I were outside, watching through the two-way mirror.

  “You want anything to drink?” said Lachlan.

  Terry held up his styrofoam cup. “I’ve got coffee. I’m fine. But I can’t believe you really think I did this.”

  Lachlan sat down. “Let’s not play games, Terry. It’s over. We’ve got your DNA. You were at that crime scene. I know how you did a lot of it, but there are some things I’m not clear on. Why don’t you fill in the blanks for me?”

  Terry looked flabbergasted. “I wasn’t at the crime scene.”

  “You were. Look, I have to admit, I’m impressed,” said Lachlan. “I’m a cop, and I don’t approve of killing, but I have to admit that after a time looking at murders, I’ve begun to form a grudging sort of respect for people who do it well. And you, as you well know, are a master.”

  “I’m not!” Terry’s jaw dropped. “What an awful thing to say.”

  Lachlan leaned back in his chair, surveying Terry.

  I could tell that things weren’t quite going the way that Lachlan had intended. Maybe Terry needed a little more pushing.

  “It is awful,” said Lachlan. “Very awful. Maybe it’s not something you find easy to admit that you’re proud of. That’s why you started drinking again, didn’t you? Was it hard to think about the lives you’d cut short?”

  “I didn’t kill anybody!” said Terry.

  “But we know that you did. That you killed all of them.”

  “You can’t know that, because I didn’t do it.”

  “Okay,” said Lachlan. “I can see you’re not ready to talk yet. Maybe we’ll put you back in your cell for a day or two. Let this all sink in. We’ll see how you feel after that.” He got up out of his seat.

  “Wait,” said Terry.

  “Yes?” Lachlan sat back down.

  “I do want to talk, because I wanted to tell you something that I couldn’t tell you before. I couldn’t say it in front of Michelle. I didn’t want her to know, not when she thinks so well of me.”

  “Go on.” Lachlan watched Terry intently.

  “Well, I guess you figured it out. I started drinking again.”

  “We did assume that you were drinking what with all the alcohol in the place,” said Lachlan.

  “I had it licked,” said Terry. “I was sober for a long time, but then… well, I don’t know what happened. I started having a little bit now and then, but I couldn’t keep it at a little bit, and before long, I was going out drinking every night.”

  “To quell your feelings about committing murder.”

  “No!” Terry shook his head. “Just to drink. Because I liked it.”

  Lachlan furrowed his brow.

  “What I’m trying to say is that I do have an alibi,” said Terry. “I couldn’t say it in front of Michelle, because I didn’t want her to know. The night that Joey was killed, I was the same place I go every night. Clancy’s Bar and Grill. I suspect I was there during all the other murders too. I’m always there. Go and ask the bartender there. He’ll remember me. I’m a regular.”

  Lachlan cast a glance over at us.

  I shrugged at him, even though I knew he couldn’t see me.

  “Do you hear what I’m saying?” said Terry. “I’m innocent. I swear I’m innocent.”

  * * *

  “Terry Jenkins?” said Donald, the bartender at Clancy’s as he wiped down the bar with a dingy white cloth. “Oh, yeah, he’s always here. Gets here around seven in the evening, stays until last call.”

  “Would you be able to say for certain he was here on a particular date?” Lachlan asked.

  “Put it this way,” said Donald. “I notice when he’s not here. For instance, he wasn’t here last night. I figured that’s the first night he hasn’t been here since, oh, I don’t know, sometime last September.”

  “Right,” said a woman, leaning up against the bar. She was wearing a name tag that said Teresa. “He went to his sister’s wedding in September.”

  “That where he went?” said Donald, flinging his rag over the faucet of the sink behind the bar.

  “Yeah, he told me all about it the next day,” said Teresa. “Slurring his words all over the place. He really couldn’t handle his liquor. Two shots, the guy was a puddle.”

  “Nice guy, though,” said Donald. “Tips well.”

  “And always happy,” said Teresa. “Some people get mean when they’re drunk, but not Terry.”

 
“Why you asking about Terry?” said Donald.

  Lachlan sighed. “Well, you’ll be happy to know that Terry will be back in this bar very soon.” He turned to me. “We got to cut him loose.”

  * * *

  Lachlan propped his legs up on his desk and laid his head back. He shut his eyes. “We’re screwed, Penny.”

  I wished I could figure out how to put my feet up, but my belly was in the way. I tried to slump in the chair I was sitting in. It didn’t really work. “Because we have no suspects?”

  He opened his eyes. “How long we been working on this thing? And we got nothing?”

  I reached over onto his desk and came up with the stack of tips. “We got these.”

  “We went through those already.” He groaned and shut his eyes again.

  I spied Dirk across the room. She locked eyes with me and stalked across the room.

  I groaned too. “Dirk’s coming.”

  Lachlan sat up, putting his feet on the floor.

  Dirk stopped in front of his desk. “I heard you cut Terry loose.”

  “He had an alibi,” said Lachlan. “Two people who swore he wasn’t anywhere near the crime scene on any of the nights in question. Instead, he was getting sloppy drunk.”

  “No, I heard about it all,” she said, pulling over the chair from her desk. “You had to let him go. He didn’t do it.”

  Lachlan raised his eyebrows. “I thought you were going to bust my balls for that.”

  She made a face. “Eew. Let’s never mention me and your balls in the same sentence again.”

  “Seriously,” I said.

  Lachlan rolled his eyes. “Point is, we’re screwed.”

  “Well, we’ve got to go back over everything,” said Dirk. “There’s got to be something we’ve missed.”

  “Like what?”

  “Well, let’s start at the beginning,” she said. “The first thing we did was go see that Kinnan guy.”

  “I’m not going back to talk to Caleb,” said Lachlan. “I get hit on one more time by that sleazebag—”

  “And here I suspected you enjoyed it,” said Dirk.

  He gave her a withering look. “Caleb’s locked up. He didn’t do it.”

  “And Douglas Gray had an ironclad alibi,” I said.

  “As does Terry Jenkins,” said Dirk. “So, who does that leave?”

  “The tips we went through?” I pointed at them.

  Dirk made a face. “I’m not going through those again. What about that guy you had uniforms tailing?”

  “Silas Gordon?” said Lachlan. “Well, we didn’t quite cross him off, but it was looking less and less likely, since he was straight and the evidence against him was circumstantial. But I guess we could look at him again.”

  “Might as well,” said Dirk. “Come on, if we don’t close this case, you two are going to go on leave for the baby, and I’ll be all on my own.”

  “I’ll be back in a week, actually,” muttered Lachlan. “I already used my leave.”

  “Oh, right,” said Dirk. “You went to your grandmother’s funeral in September, right?”

  “Right,” said Lachlan. Obviously, he’d lied about that so we could go after the Bryant clan.

  “Well, anyway,” said Dirk. “You and I can’t work the case without Penny as a buffer. We’ll kill each other.”

  “It’s a good point,” I said. “So, let’s go back to Silas Gordon.”

  “What we needed with Silas,” said Lachlan, “was to get him to talk. We went by to question him, and he wouldn’t give us anything.”

  “But he seemed like he was hiding something,” I said. “And that girl he had a fling with or whatever, she was hiding something about him too.”

  “Really?” said Dirk. “Well, this guy’s sounding better all the time.”

  “I don’t know,” said Lachlan. “I can’t be sure he’s our guy. Anyway, how do we get him talking?”

  “Well, why not try your idea for Terry again?” said Dirk. “Bring him in, lean on him, see what happens.”

  “I don’t know,” said Lachlan. “He’s smart. He’s not going to spill everything.”

  “If he’s the killer, wouldn’t he behave the same way you thought Terry would?” I said.

  “Maybe,” said Lachlan. “But we can’t arrest him. We don’t have anything on him.”

  “Bring him in for questioning,” said Dirk. “And when he’s here, take a DNA sample, and lead him to believe that there’s DNA that might be tied to him.”

  “He won’t give me the sample,” said Lachlan. “Well… maybe he will. If he’s as smart as he seems, he’ll know that we’ll tail him until we can get a DNA sample from something he discards. Piece of chewing gum. A straw. A plastic fork. So, maybe I can convince him to give me the sample.”

  “Which we don’t even need,” I said.

  “If he’s guilty, he’ll think he might be a match,” said Lachlan. “It might be enough to shake him up.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Silas Gordon was in the interrogation room with Lachlan. Unlike Terry, who’d been there recently, Silas seemed at ease. He was lounging casually in one of the chairs, and had managed to get several cans of Coca-Cola and a pack of snack crackers out of Lachlan. He was staring at the food and drink he’d amassed, not eating or drinking any of it.

  “You good?” said Lachlan.

  “Honestly, no,” said Silas. “I’d rather go home.”

  “Well, I got the right to keep you here for a while,” said Lachlan. “So, you might as well get comfy.”

  Silas nodded. “Right.”

  Lachlan gestured to the door. “I’ve got someone here to take a DNA sample from you. That all right with you?”

  Silas smirked. “And if I say no, you test the hell out of these Coke cans, right?” He gestured to the cans.

  “You’re a smart guy,” said Lachlan.

  Silas sighed. He opened one of the cans of Coke and took a long, long swig. “Yeah, yeah. Whatever.”

  Lachlan opened the door, and in came the officer to take a sample. She had Silas open his mouth, and then she swabbed the inside of his cheek. Afterward, she left.

  Silas drank more Coke.

  Lachlan watched him.

  Silas ran his finger around the rim of the can. “I know this game, man. You think if you don’t say anything, I’ll start blabbing.”

  “And you won’t?”

  “How about we narrow things down a bit, shall we?” said Silas. “What’s this about? What do you think you can connect me to?”

  Lachlan was quiet for a minute, as if he wasn’t sure if he should give in to Silas’s request or not. But then he took a deep breath and said, “We think we’ve got a good case against you for the serial murders on the south side.”

  Silas didn’t react. He stared forward, not even blinking.

  Lachlan waited.

  Silas took another drink of Coke, draining the can. He crushed it with one hand. “I never drink these, you know? Sugar water. Empty calories. But, what the hell, if I’m going to sit here in an interrogation room for hours on end, maybe I want something more interesting than water to drink.” He opened another can. Took another drink. “So, you’ve got DNA at the murder scenes. You want to tell me where you found it?”

  Lachlan shook his head. “Nope.”

  Silas laughed. “How long will it take to find out if I’m a match?”

  “You worried?” said Lachlan. “There a chance you are a match? Were you at those crime scenes?”

  Silas laughed again. He didn’t answer. “Without the DNA, what do you have?”

  “I’m not going to tell you that either.”

  Silas’s nostrils flared.

  “If you’re trying to convince me you’re innocent, you’re not doing a good job,” said Lachlan.

  “Doesn’t matter,” said Silas. “What matters is what you can prove.”

  Lachlan waited.

  Silas finished the second can of Coke. He opened the third, and last,
one. He opened the package of crackers and took one out. He stared at it, turning it over between his thumb and forefinger. Then he popped the whole thing in his mouth and chewed.

  Lachlan watched.

  Silas picked up another cracker.

  Suddenly, Lachlan leaned forward. “You’re not that kind of a killer,” he muttered to himself.

  Silas kept chewing, but he made a confused face.

  Lachlan got up and walked over to the two-way mirror. “That’s what Rhonda was going to say when we interviewed her,” he said, looking out in the general direction of Dirk and me.

  Okay, maybe, I thought. Did that matter?

  Silas choked on the cracker. “Rhonda? You found Rhonda? What did she say about me?”

  Lachlan turned to face him. “She found out that you were a killer, but not a serial killer. You kill for money, don’t you?”

  Silas’s jaw twitched.

  Lachlan nodded. “Yeah, that’s it. That’s why none of this makes sense. You’re not gay. You don’t take trophies. You know how to deal with law enforcement. No, you’re not a serial killer, killing for pure pleasure. You’re a contract killer.”

  Silas swallowed. “What the hell? Why would you say that?”

  “It’s all over you,” said Lachlan. “The way you’re businesslike about all of this. The way you’re controlled and calculated in your life. You watch what you eat. You exercise. You’re not ruled by your passions, not the way a serial killer would be. But you’re guilty all the same.”

  Silas hung his head. “What the hell is the DNA, man?”

  “I’m right,” said Lachlan. “It’s you. You did this for money. And it’s got something to do with Eaglelinx, and that’s why they all work there.”

  “God damn it, I washed those scenes down with bleach,” said Silas. “They were clean as fuck.”

  “Did you actually use magic to force them to commit suicide or—”

  “No, I staged it well,” said Silas. “God damn it, tell me how I fucked up? Tell me what I left behind.”

  “No magic, huh?” Lachlan shook his head. “Man, I’m going to have to hand you over to a different department on a platter. I’m the magical creatures cop.”

  “What does that mean?” Silas shoved another cracker in his mouth. “And are you ever going to answer me about the DNA?”