by Carmen Faye
This is a work of fiction. Any names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons--living or dead--is entirely coincidental.
Tempered Steel copyright @ 2014 by Carmen Faye. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embedded in critical articles or reviews.
CHAPTER ONE
Cynthia was waiting on the stairs of Daphne’s apartment for Larry to show up. She wanted to tell him that Daphne didn’t want the police inside the house. Derrick had done a lot of crystal the night before and she had no idea what had been left out. There was no time to really clean.
“Doesn’t look good, having your friend lawyer up like this,” said one of the detectives. “Looks—”
“Looks fucking great,” Cyn told him, cutting him off. “Let me ask you something: Have you ever seen anyone’s case improve by talking to the detectives without a lawyer present? No, you haven’t. Not one. That’s why they always stop those reality TV shows when the lawyer is asked for. So fuck off.”
“She’s not really a sus—”
“Of course she is! The girlfriend or wife is always the first suspect. Look, go try your bullshit out on someone who might listen to it. Alright?”
“What’s your name?” the detective asked, pulling out his pad.
“Don’t answer that,” Larry said from behind him. “You’ve got nothing to do with this, and he has no grounds for asking except that you called him on his bullshit.”
“What, not even her name?” the detective asked with a laugh.
“Not a damn thing that doesn’t absolutely require an answer from her or Daphne,” Larry informed him, his face like that of a lion guarding its territory. “What do you have here, six cop cars? You’re using intimidation tactics on a woman who just lost her partner of over ten years. You will not get in her house without a warrant. You will not talk to her unless I am present. You will not see either of us without scheduling a time through my office. Is that clear? Because harassment and intimidation are two of my biggest peeves.
“Now,” Larry told him, “you can go. I’m going to talk to my client, and we will come down to the station at the time you arrange through my office, to make a statement. Not to answer questions, not to be interrogated. A statement. That’s it. Unless you are going to arrest her now, and please say you are going to arrest her now. Please,” Larry told him.
The detective was furious, but he kept his mouth shut, took Larry’s offered card, turned, and walked away.
“As for the rest of you,” Larry said, raising his voice, “if I come back down here and see one of you here, I’ll not only file departmental complaints but raise charges of harassment. I hope that’s clear to you, because I’m willing to clear my calendar for the rest of the year with this one.”
Cyn watched the cops and detectives get in their cars and pull out of the parking lot.
“Holy shit, Larry,” she said as he came up beside her. “I think you just became my hero.”
“Does that make me sexier?” he asked with a smile.
“You were sexy before. Ever have two girls give you a spontaneous blow job?” she joked, and then glanced upstairs. She said more seriously, “Probably not going to happen for a while, though, Larry. She’s really torn up. Her insides are shredded. I’m really glad you kept them from talking to her right now.”
“The BJ can wait. It would probably kill me, anyway. Let’s deal with the real victim first,” Larry agreed. He continued upstairs, Cyn following.
“Larr,” she whispered before they got to the door.
“Yes?” he asked in quiet tones as well.
“She thinks Hank did this.”
“Shit. Thanks.”
Larry continued inside and found Daphne sitting at her dinner table, looking out the window. “You made them all go away?”
“Yes, Daphne, I did. We still need to talk to them, though, but only at the station, and only with me present. You don’t need to answer questions right now, or worry about interrogations or them coming to your house. In fact, if a cop even stops you on the street, you call me. Because I won’t stand for that, at all.”
“Alright,” Daphne said.
“Now, we need to prepare a statement.”
“Can Cyn stay here? Please?”
“Yes, Cyn can stay. But there are two things I take very seriously in this world. One is the club. The other is the client-lawyer relationship. What you say to me will never leave this room through me. To put it bluntly, I won’t even tell Knight if he says I’ll lose my patch if I don’t tell him. And he knows it, too. Cyn is a good person, a great person, and I really like her a lot, but her relationship with you is not protected by law like yours and mine is. It would be very hard, and I would fight them every step of the way, but they could make her answer or go to jail for contempt of court. Which means she stays there until she answers. Understand?”
“Yes,” Daphne said. Then she looked at Cyn, “I want you to stay, but, if you want to go…”
“I’m here baby, I’m right here.”
“Okay, so what is my statement?” Daphne asked.
“They’ll want to cover at least last night up to this morning. Where you were, what you were doing, things that were said, what time you went to sleep, and what you were doing this morning before you answered the door.”
“Last night? Should I tell them about the banishing?”
Larry thought that one through. It was apparently a fine line between client and club, Cyn decided. “If you want to tell them in that much detail, you can, and I don’t think anyone will be upset with you. There was nothing illegal or even immoral going on. But you could also say that you were at the club, weren’t having a good time there, and left, bringing you home at, what? Ten?”
“About 9:45,” Daphne said. “I checked the clock when I came in, hoping I could go straight to bed.”
“So, then what happened?” Larry asked, turning on a tape recorder.
Daphne eyed the tape recorder, but she told her story. “When I got up here, after Cyn dropped me off, Derrick was doing a needle of meth. When he does that, he does a lot of it, so he wasn’t going to sleep, I knew that, and he probably wasn’t going to want sex, either, since he never stays hard when he’s on meth.”
“I asked if he wanted to talk, and he said he had business to do and now he could do it. He said that we were going to move out of here alright, but not because of the club. And then he laughed, and I really didn’t like that. It wasn’t a funny laugh, like a joke. Not like that at all. Then he told me to go to the bedroom, that he had a phone call to make.
“So I went to the bedroom, but, hell, I could be in there with the door closed and the pillow over my ears right now trying not to hear this conversation and still be able to tell you everything. But I went, because I didn’t want to wait outside.
“He got on the phone about a half hour later and he tells the person on the other end that he has a ton of information about what he is doing, everything, he says, and if he wants it, then it will cost $100k.
“Then he goes outside, and I can hear him talkin, but can’t make out the words. But he is back only five minutes later and he’s really happy. I ask what is going on, and he says he has a meeting to go to, and that I’m not coming. He’ll be back around sunrise. Then he says we are going to pack up and put our stuff in storage and ride out of here in style.
“I asked him what is he doing? And he says it’s none of my business. He
was just evening the score, that’s all. ‘He had his way tonight, now it’s my turn,’ is what he said. So, I think, Hank, he’s going to see Hank with something else he has, something more, or maybe he’s going to tell someone else about him. Anyway, he’s happy, and he’s going through stuff and pulling out files and putting them in a file box and flipping through things. And now I know that the crystal is really kicking in, because he’s tweaking hard on his filing shit, which he does from time to time.
“Anyway, I was going to wait up until he went to his meeting, thinking he was going to leave soon. But midnight arrives and I say, ‘It’s midnight, Derrick.’ And he nods his head and keeps up with the filing. So, now it’s either do a bit of tweak for me, or go to bed, and I’m just exhausted so I go to bed.
“Then I wake up to the knocking and the cops are there, that one detective you talked to outside, and he tells me that Derrick has been murdered out in a clearing somewhere, and then he starts in with the questions. I freak out and call Cyn, who keeps me on the phone and then tells me to tell the police to leave because my lawyer is on the way.”
Daphne laughed. “And they did, it was funny as hell. Cause here I was so fucking scared of them and they just leave.”
“Did they say anything else about Derrick’s murder?”
Daphne thought about it. “I was really freaked. I know he said Derrick was found in some clearing, that he was killed ‘execution style,’ whatever the fuck that means, and that they knew he was in the Steel Riders. Then he starts asking who we were with last night, where did we go, did anyone have a fight?”
“Did they mention his bike?”
“No, his car. They found his car.”
“You mentioned files, but I don’t see any boxes of files around.”
Daphne got up and looked in a closet, and then in another. “He must have took them with him, because they aren’t here, which is probably why he took the car. He hates driving the car. It’s a piece of shit.”
“Any idea of what was in the files?”
“It was his tweaker thing. You know, some guys tweak on radios, some tweak on cleaning — god wouldn’t that have been nice — Derrick tweaked on his filing shit. I never really bothered to look. I saw some magazine pages and newspaper clippings in there, and a bunch of handwritten pages, but that was his stuff, you know? Like my diary. My space, and he always kept that. Never read my stuff. So, I never read his.”
“Sure, I get that, and that’s perfectly understandable. So, let’s talk privacy and facts we have to spill. First, do you want the murderer caught?”
Daphne lifted an eyebrow. “What? Of course I do. What kind of question is that?”
“A serious one. If you want him caught, then you tell the police everything you just told me, leaving nothing out. Even add in what you recall about the tribunal last night. They’ll be all over us with questions and interviews and I’ll be busy as hell, but I’m in.”
“Why are you in?” Daphne asked.
“You showed everyone last night not only what it meant to be a sister, but what it meant to be a woman’s man. When you left with Cyn, there wasn’t a dry eye in the house. Even Knight was crying. I stood the tribunal, and I said what I felt was the truth. But I never meant that to include you. I know it hurt you, and now, like Knight said last night, I have a chance to go a dark mile with you and make some of that up.”
“Cyn said you would help me find another lawyer.”
Larry nodded. “Yes. I know of two real good ones and both owe me favors.”
Daphne studied him. “I think I want you. I know you. I know you’ll do the best you can, because you always do the best you can, for everyone. So, trust isn’t really an issue.”
Larry smiled warmly. “That’s probably the best compliment I’ve ever received. Thank you.”
“It’s just true, that’s all. So, back to your question. I know, because I just know, Derrick, that Hank was involved in whatever shit he was doing last night. I know that. The police should know that.”
Larry flipped a glance at Cynthia.
Cyn said, “It might have been about him, and it probably was. But Hank was with me last night, and I guarantee you he wasn’t on the phone.”
“He was with you?” Daphne asked, surprised.
“As with me as he could get Daphne. We were at each other well past midnight, and he was there when I woke up,” she lied.
Larry called his office, and he found that the detective had made an appointment for two in the afternoon the next day. Then he ordered a pizza, sodas, and salad to be delivered so that Daphne didn’t need to make anything for them.
They spent the next two hours discussing her statement and what should be said to give the police the information they needed without involving the club more than was necessary.
“He was already banished,” Larry told her, “but that didn’t make him open game. Remember how Knight put it? ‘I feel that simple banishment is enough.’ That was the punishment, yes, but also a directive to the club. He was telling us, that was enough and to leave him alone. So, I really doubt that it was anyone in the club, especially last night.”
Cyn saw an opening and took it. “Alright, just a hypothetical, Larry, if you don’t mind.”
“Alright.” He nodded, putting his game face on.
“You find out that Derrick is going to Ruiz with the information he learned at the tribunal last night about Hank, Knight, Ben, and the determination the Riders have in making him pay for Howey and Margaret. Derrick is meeting him in a clearing, not far from here, in about thirty minutes.”
Larry let all that sink in and glanced at Daphne. “Yes, I understand. It could be someone in the club. Under those circumstances, I think any Rider, including Hank, would kill him. There would be nothing else to do. Ruiz is too strong for us to face head on. That’s a simple fact. At least a hundred of us would die in three days, and whoever didn’t scatter would be hunted down after that. So, you think that someone was keeping an eye on Derrick last night?” he asked Cyn.
“Could even have been a friend to begin with,” Cyn reasoned. “Just someone silently watching his back for the night. Doing a hard mile as penitence for not standing for him, and not being able to stop what was going on.”
“I can think of two men right off the top of my head who would do that. Randy, for sure, and Rick Walker.”
“Even after the banishment?” Daphne asked.
“Yes, and because of it. Just to make sure you got home alright, and that no one was going to fuck with you.”
Daphne didn’t seem to know what to think about that.
After another two hours, Daphne had her statement. Cyn typed it for her on her computer. They printed out a copy, and Daphne asked if they shouldn’t give a copy to Knight.
“You know,” Daphne explained, “kind of a heads up, because the club is mentioned and you know the detectives are going to be up there as soon as they hear this.”
“Daphne,” Larry said, “Knight, and every member that was there last night would be grateful for a heads up like this. Also, it would let them know what happened and what you are going through. But are you sure you are willing to do this? Maybe you should sleep on it and think about it in the morning. You’ve been through a lot today.”
“Tomorrow doesn’t give Knight much time to prepare,” Daphne told him, “and I’ll feel the same way tomorrow or a month from now. The cops are going to know this, so the club should know it, too.”
“Knight only? Or those Knight believes should know it as well?” Larry asked.
“Knight’s discretion,” Daphne told him.
“Then, if I may, I’ll email him this from your computer,” he told her.
She nodded. Larry logged in to his own email and sent Knight the statement with Daphne’s instructions, as well as the time of the police interview the next day.
It was one o’clock before they were finished. Larry gave Daphne a kiss on the forehead. “You’re going to be fine. I have
to run now. Remember, no cops, and if they do come, just call me. Do not speak to them, not even to tell them your name.”
They watched him leave. Still inside, Daphne asked, “I’m really tired now, but I don’t want to be alone. Could you, you know, take a nap with me, maybe? Just an hour would be good.”
“Come on, baby, we’ll take a nap, and then you can come over to my place, or I’ll run home and get my laptop and come back here, alright? You don’t have to be alone.”
Daphne lay down with Cynthia, but she didn’t fall asleep right away. She just cried and then sobbed.
“I miss him so much!”
After almost an hour, Daphne exhausted herself and passed out. Cyn slipped out of the bed and called Hank to bring him up to speed.