“Was he now?” Coldman’s voice could have frozen the lake.
“Pull up a chair, Mr. Logan.” Captain Lee squeezed past Coldman to take his own seat. “These are the people you want to lose money to.”
Coldman stopped shuffling. Tim might have missed the glare she shot at the police commissioner if he hadn’t been watching her carefully.
“You just missed Crella.” Apparently taking pity on the newcomer, Trevor gave him a straight answer. “He was here but he took off.”
“He had some business he needed to finish before Thanksgiving.” Coldman turned her flirty eyes up to Tim. “You can find him at the dead docks.”
“He has business there this late?” Tim asked.
Personal business.” Nancy Burton, the thin woman the mayor had introduced as his right hand woman, spoke up. Her growling sigh told him everything he needed to know about her opinion of the man. He would have liked to stay and get to know her better but her next words made his blood run cold.
“Crella said he had to take care of his woman.”
“Right.” Tim said, playing it cool. “Well I’ll go give a look but maybe I can come back and lose some Jacksons to you later?”
Everyone looked to the mayor who nodded even as Tim backed out the door. “Come by anytime, Mr. Logan. I’d love to help.”
Tim smiled politely and waved a hand at the five, sauntering away. The instant the door shut behind him, he ran.
Eleven
Avi unwound the cord of the bare bulb lamp as he dragged it over to container Thirty-three. The temperature was dropping as dark clouds moved in overhead obscuring the stars. He set the light near the container doors where Kissy waited. She’d pulled the green ribbon attached to the key off her wrist and was trying to fit it into one of the padlocks by feel alone.
She grunted in frustration. “They should have better light on the docks.”
She sat back on her heels and looked up at Avi as if he could personally address her complaint. He looked overhead. “There are lights. They’re just not on.”
“Probably a political thing.” Kissy rubbed her arms. “Get that one on at least so we can find out what’s in here.”
Avi searched the post of the standing lamp and on the cage around the bulb. “I can’t find a switch.”
Kissy jogged over to the little makeshift boat repair area and picked up the other end of the ridiculously long extension cord attached to the lamp. She looked around and then crouched down on the far side of the dinghy. The bulb sparked to life.
“Yay!” She danced back not even noticing Avi’s embarrassment.
She would have knelt back down to the locks, but Avi pulled her to him. “Beauty and brains.”
“Aww, that’s nothing. When I was,” she paused and changed what she was going to say, “working with computers, I learned to always check the power first.” She kissed him and then squirreled out of his arms and bent to the locks. “Electricity is fun.”
“You’re a strange girl.”
Kissy looked over her shoulder and raised an eyebrow at him.
“Woman,” he corrected.
He tilted the lamp so the light fell on the padlocks attached to the two locking bars on the right side door. Kissy tried their key on one and then the other. Neither hasp released. Kissy looked back and forth between the two. Then her gaze shifted up to the rectangular box crossing the center line where the doors met. She stood and looked up at the numbers stenciled on the side of the container. Then she turned to Avi.
“I think we’ve got a challenge here,” she said.
Avi talked through their position as if Kissy were a detective. “Crella has the official key from the Dock Storage office. But two other people have locked the container as well.”
“Are you allowed to do that?” she wondered.
“I expect someone might add a personal lock for safety if they didn’t trust the Dock Storage personnel.”
“But two personal locks?” Kissy scoffed. “Does that sound like a conspiracy?”
“Yes, but not necessarily a criminal conspiracy.”
Kissy shouted in frustration. “I want to know what’s inside.”
“We can’t break in to someone’s personal storage unit. It’s illegal.”
“We have the key.” She pointed out.
“We need two more.” Avi retorted.
Kissy thought for a moment. Then she ran Avi through the facts of the situation. “Crella is not a good guy. Agreed?”
“Agreed.”
“There are three locks on one storage unit. That’s suspicious.”
He nodded again, “Agreed.”
“If we open the container, somehow, and there is nothing suspicious inside, no stolen property or illegal drugs or slipshod construction materials, then no harm no foul and Tim goes about his job.”
Avi wrestled with his conscience as Kissy waited. Then he laughed at the irony. “That’s what he means by Killer With a Conscience.” He looked at Kissy, at the locks, and at the mental image of Evelyn’s gashed head. “I’ll go see if I have anything in the car that might help.”
He let go of the lamp and jogged back down the aisle between the containers. When he got to his car, he popped the trunk and pulled a pair of bolt cutters from the spare tire well.
Jogging back, he noticed the wind picking up. It made strange noises on the dead docks, blowing around the massive containers and tossing the few boats against their moorings. As he reached the halfway point of the alley where the back end of container twenty-eight met the back end of container thirty-three he heard voices. Had Tim joined them? Wouldn’t he have heard the killer’s motorcycle?
Suddenly, Kissy’s scream pushed Avi into a run. Far ahead, he could see where the cement dock met the newer wooden walkway along the water. He saw a tall man with white hair, possibly Hispanic, wearing a lambs wool trench coat over an expensive suit. The man slowly dragged Kissy to the water’s edge. Kissy was fighting back but she was a tiny girl battling a large man and she was losing.
The man had his hands wrapped around Kissy’s recently healed throat and even as Avi raced along the containers, the man flipped her over the railing so she was dangling above the rushing waters of the lake. He was screaming at her but Kissy couldn’t reply. She clawed at the hands on her throat.
When Avi cleared the sound well that was the container alley, the tall man’s words became clear. “Where is the key? Give me the key!”
Avi’s eyes instinctively searched Kissy’s wrists. There was no green ribbon and no key. Kissy’s face was bright red. Her jaw chewed at the air as she struggled to draw a breath. He’d almost reached them when her eyes glazed over and her hands stopped clawing so fiercely at the man’s hands.
Avi screamed, “Kissy!”
Kissy’s body jackknifed as if the grip on her throat had tightened and she slammed into the outside of the wooden guardrail as the white haired man turned mad eyes on Avi.
“Freeze! Or I’ll kill her.”
Avi stopped running. He was five feet away and he screamed again as he saw Kissy’s hands drop limply to her sides. “Kissy!”
The man kept his eyes on Avi. “Give me the key!”
Suddenly Kissy’s eyes opened. She focused on the side of her attacker’s face. Because he was glaring at Avi now, the man didn’t see her bring both of her hands up to her chest. She clasped them together and punched straight forward between his arms, hitting him with all her remaining power in the carotid artery.
The hit knocked out the man’s nervous system for just an instant. But one instant was all it took. His hands released their grip and Kissy fell straight down into the freezing waters.
Twelve
Tim raced his bike through the streets. His tires would pay for the tight corners but within five minutes of leaving the not so secret poker game, he was at the intersection of Elm and Lake, just two blocks from Circus Freaks. He cruised past the cars sitting at the green light wondering at the stillness. The cars on
Lake were motionless as well. Then he heard the siren.
A blue and white ambulance wove carefully around the cars and eased through the red light. Clear of the traffic, it sped off down Lake Boulevard. Tim’s heart sank.
Finn always said it was an emotional job being the Killer with a Conscience. Moving constantly made things lonely. Their clients were never the cheeriest of people. And of course, there was the killing.
“If ever you find the killing easy, my son, you need to stop,” Finn had told him. “Right then and there, you get up off your ass and adopt a puppy.”
They’d been perched on a platform doing recon on a multi-target job when she’d brought up this recommendation for the first time. The wind had been whipping their wigs and cutting through their jumpsuits for a few hours by that point and Tim was still naive enough to wonder if he’d misheard his mentor.
“Excuse me,” he asked, “but did you say ‘adopt a puppy’?”
“Yes, sir.” She unwrapped another lettuce and tomato sandwich and handed him half.
“You’re a cat person, Finn.”
“I am. But a cat doesn’t need a person.” She swallowed her bite before she continued. “Why are we here?”
“To stop the cabal that shut down the mental hospital and then evicted everyone from the Reasher Housing Projects and is harassing the food kitchens and shelters.”
Finn squinted at him. “No, my son, why are we here.” She pounded the platform with a gloved palm making it rock.
Tim grabbed the bars around him and pulled his feet in from where they’d been dangling. They were both wearing bright yellow safety harnesses clipped into the rigging but logic couldn’t reduce the instinctual fear of swinging fifteen stories off the ground. The blue glass and steel building at their backs didn’t help a whole lot either. He looked down over the little business plaza, steadying his nerves by reviewing their targets’ locations; the circular door of Farmers Bank, the Juice Hut porch, the arched southern entrance to the plaza, and the exit of the wine bar.
Looking over it all, he realized what she was asking. “We’re here so we can see the big picture.”
“Yes.” Finn raised her hand as if she was going to hit the platform again, but she laid it quietly on her knee instead. “Point of view. You have to remember your point of view. If your target looms larger in your view than your client, you need to adjust your view. A puppy insists on your attention, your care, your love. A puppy will remind you that we work for a better world.”
“And that’s you sent me to that farmer while you did the research yesterday.” Tim observed.
“Why did I do that?” Finn asked, pulling a pair of binoculars from the big white bucket of window cleaner.
Tim rolled his eyes. “What good would it do to kill these guys if those guys starved.”
“Good job. Break it down.”
Tim considered. “The client is more important than the target.”
Finn gave him a half smile. Her highest praise. Then she handed him the dripping binoculars. “Look at the maintenance guy.”
There was an old man in dark green pants and a matching shirt rolling a plastic garbage dumpster away from the juice joint where all five targets would gather at 3:30. Tim heard Finn speak into her watch.
“Stall the suit at twelve o’clock.”
The old man tripped and dropped his broom. The dumpster continued forward when he stopped to pick the broom up. He turned to see if he’d dropped anything else and the wooden broom handle hit a woman in a gray suit whom they had named the Realtor. The man dropped the broom again in his rush to apologize and it fell on her foot. When she tried to pass him, the old man bent right in front of her to pick up the broom. He tried to get out of her way but kept blocking her with either his body or the business end of the broom which the businesswoman was reluctant to brush past.
Finn murmured, “clear,” and the man smoothly turned and noticed his runaway dumpster. He hustled after it, leaving the woman to brush herself off and continue on to the bank entrance where she would be just a minute late meeting with the fiercely punctual Contractor.
Tim put down the binoculars and chewed on a bite of the sandwich. He washed it down with water and smiled at Finn. “We just changed the relationship between the Realtor and the Contractor by throwing their equilibrium the slightest bit. So I should not allow my equilibrium to be thrown by small things. I should remain in control of my emotions no matter what happens.”
Finn knocked back the rest of her coffee and screwed the lid back onto the thermos. “Interesting,” she observed as she slipped the thermos into the silver lunch pail they’d swiped from the real window washers’ truck and stood. “I wanted you to know we aren’t alone. If you ever need help, ask. Whether it’s a puppy or a maintenance guy, find the help you need and make certain you find the help your client needs.”
Tim thought he’d left Evelyn safe in Julia’s hands. He thought she’d be safe surrounded by the committee women. But he hadn’t made certain.
Instead, Tim had run off to kill Crella and Evelyn had paid the price.
Thirteen
Tim waited at the intersection for the cars to work out the proper order of things after the ambulance passed and the light changed again. When the light was green, he waited impatiently for a break in the cars coming from Elm Boulevard East before he could turn onto Lake himself and chase down the ambulance.
He screeched into the overcrowded little parking lot at Circus Freaks and rolled around the building to find an ambulance by the back door. He circled the building once, looking for Randall Crella or an idling car but the hoods of all the cars in the area were cold and the shadows produced nothing but harsh winds.
Tim parked in the back and was about to jog inside when he realized he was still wearing Red Logan. He hurried back to his bike, looking south towards the dead docks, hoping Avi and Kissy were having better luck. He pulled the cuff off his ear with one hand while he unclipped the wallet chain from his belt loops with the other. He pulled out his satchel and shoved cuff, chain, wallet, and bandanna in the pockets of the bike seat. As he pulled up his shorts and buttoned them, his phone buzzed.
He latched the seat closed while he pulled out the phone, already jogging towards the back door of Circus Freaks. His hand was on the door but he froze as he read Avi’s text.
Kissy in the water! Heading north!
Tim looked out at the black lake even as his instincts took over. He yanked the door open and ran for the equipment closet. He was aware of the gaggle of women watching two uniformed EMTs work but he didn’t stop to see any details.
He grabbed a pre-rigged knot of fabric from the silks shelves and ran back out the door, past the ambulance, down to the metal railing looking over the water. He pulled one end and shook out the long blue silky fabric. He flipped it around the top rail, clipping the carabiner to the fabric right below where it wrapped around the rigging hardware. He kicked his shoes off, dropped his satchel, and watched the water for any sign of Kissy in her sparkly silver turtleneck as he wrapped the end of one of the long tails of fabric around his waist and tied it off.
The clouds parted as he gathered the second tail in his hands and searched for the edges of the wide fabric. A ray of moonlight caught silver in the water. Tim dove beyond the sparkle. He spread the fabric as he fell and the silk caught the wind, slowing him so he smoothly sliced into the water, dragging a net of fabric with him.
For a moment, he fought with the strong current, pumping his legs against the flowing water. And then he felt the fabric go taut and let it swing him around. He wrapped the end of the silks around one arm and use the other to swim to the human bundle tangled in his silky cradle.
Kissy lay unconscious in the water, her body curled up in the pocket of fabric. Tim checked her breathing and wrapped the silks more securely around her. Although it was not as pretty a wrap as his sister would have managed, it was effective. He draped an arm around her chest, turning her so that she floated fa
ce up on the water and he tried to swim for the wall. The current pulled too strongly for him to fight it. Tim pulled on the silk acting as Kissy’s cradle and managed to wrap it twice around himself, tangling it with the tail he’d tied around his own waist.
With both arms free, he was able to use the silks as a mooring line and drag them to the edge of the lake. When he reached the base of the wall, he rested for a moment. The wall seemed to rise into the sky like the Cliffs of Insanity. He forced himself to begin climbing. The water was freezing cold and Kissy was unconscious. If he wanted to help her, he had to first get them onto dry land. So he took a breath and began climbing hand over hand, feet on the wall, Kissy hanging limply beneath him.
His arms burned. His grip grew looser and looser as the cold ate away at the power of his muscles. But he wrapped the fabric around his palms and pulled, ascending the wall by inches, all the time wondering if Kissy was still alive. He had to rest. He couldn’t keep climbing. His arms were about to give out and send he and Kissy plummeting back down into the freezing water. Tim closed his eyes and prayed to Finn for strength.
A voice on the wind woke him. Tim didn’t think he’d actually fallen asleep but he had to shake his head to focus his eyes. He felt his body sliding along the wall and scrambled to grab tighter to the silks. But then he realized he was moving up the cement. The voice finally broke through his exhaustion and Tim looked up.
“Hang on to her!” Avi shouted from the railing where he was pulling them both up.
Tim released one hand from its death grip on the fabric and unwound his arm. He reached back and pulled Kissy to him, holding her tight against his body. He leaned back, his feet braced on the wall, Kissy laying on his chest, and walked up as Avi dragged the fabric foot by foot over the railing. After an awkward struggle to get everybody on the safe side of the railing, Tim fell to the ground and retched up a gallon of dirty lake water.
“She’s breathing,” Avi reported. “But she’s unconscious and cold.”
Killer on Call 6 Book Bundle (Books 1-6) Page 22