by Chris Culver
“Other than the fake boob thing? Because I don’t really know that. I’m just speculating.”
“Yes, other than the fake boob speculation.”
The stoner seemed to think for a moment. “Nope. That’s it, man.”
“Are you keeping any mail for the company right now? If so, I’d like to see it.”
“I’d have to see a warrant before I show you anything.”
Ash lowered his gaze, growing tired of the conversation. Time for a new tact. He pointed to the front entrance.
“I can get a warrant, but I’ll do you one better. Do you see that door?” The stoner nodded. “Do you see those cars in the parking lot?” He nodded again. “One of those cars is mine. If you don’t get me Commonwealth Financial Services’ mail, I’m going to arrest you for possession of marijuana and throw you in the back of my car. I’m then going to take a drug dog through here and have it find whatever it can. If we find any other drugs, I’ll charge you with trafficking. Do you know what the penalty is for that?”
“Dude, man, I can’t show you her mail. It’s against company policy—”
“Twenty years.” The stoner stuttered something, but he didn’t relent. “Kate is dead, and so is her husband. The man who killed them abducted another woman. Do you want her death on your hands?”
The stoner didn’t say anything, so Ash started walking around the counter.
“All right, all right. I’ll check to see if they have anything.”
“Good,” said Ash. The stoner walked through the archway in back. Ash heard him whisper to the giggler, but he couldn’t understand what either of the men said. A moment later he came back empty-handed, but apparently sensing Ash’s annoyance, he stopped walking while he was still well out of arm’s reach.
“According to my coworker, Kate came by yesterday and picked everything up. Her basket is empty.”
“Are you sure?” The stoner shuffled back a step and nodded. Ash didn’t trust him, but the kid didn’t seem to be lying. He grabbed a business card from his wallet. “You’ll call me if you find anything?”
The stoner nodded again, so Ash put the card on the counter and slid it toward him before walking out. He hadn’t spent much time inside, but with the drive over, he had wasted half an hour to find out that Jane Doe was in fact named Kate Doe. Or Katie Doe. Or something like that. Hopefully Eddie Alvarez and the rest of the team had made better progress.
3
Konstantin Bukoholov felt his eyes droop as the young man in front of the conference room droned on about the company he and his siblings were trying to sell. Ostensibly, Kostya had yet to make a decision about the purchase, but in reality, his accountants had already made it for him. According to them, he had far more cash than the receipts of his various companies allowed. Thirty years ago, it wouldn’t have been a concern. He knew the presidents of at least three regional banks who would allow him to drop off bundles of cash for deposit without asking a single question. Now, with everyone looking for terrorists, every dollar he deposited to every bank with which he did business had to be explained. Even basic bookkeeping had become a nightmare.
Kostya glanced at the city’s skyline through the window to keep himself awake. Business deals used to be easy. He’d shake a partner’s hand, exchange some money, and it’d be done. Now he had to spend several hundred dollars an hour to hire lawyers who only told him whatever he wanted to hear anyway. It seemed like such a waste.
“Are you all right, Mr. Bukoholov?”
He snapped his head forward and glared at the speaker. James Cooper. He buried his father two weeks ago and already had the family business on the market. In another decade, Kostya knew it might be his kids up there selling off assets he’d spent his entire life developing.
“My welfare is not your concern, Mr. Cooper,” he said. “Your total receipts for the past three years have averaged fourteen million dollars per year. How much of that is cash?”
“The exact figure depends on the location, but company wide, forty percent of our sales are cash. Before he died, Dad considered lowering the price of gasoline by a couple of cents per gallon for cash sales, but we haven’t implemented it yet. Our accountants forecast—”
Cooper kept talking, but Kostya ignored him as he felt his cell phone vibrate against his chest. Very few people, most of whom waited for him in the building, knew his personal cell phone number. He fished the phone out of his pocket and glanced at the screen. He didn’t recognize the number, but he knew its owner. For a moment, his breath caught in his throat.
“That’s fine,” said Kostya, interrupting Cooper’s sales pitch. “I’ll pay your asking price.” He looked at the lawyer to his left. “Mr. Evans and his firm will complete the sale on my behalf. Thank you for your time. I’m sure we’ll be in touch.”
Cooper startled and stared at him, but the lawyers quickly stood.
“You don’t want to hear—” began Cooper.
“No,” said Kostya. “Good day.”
Cooper didn’t move at first, but then he gathered his briefcase and pranced out of the room along with the attorneys. Kostya hated paying off a rich man’s children for assets they didn’t earn or deserve, but he took solace in knowing they’d probably lose everything he gave them within a few years and die penniless. The sale would cost six million dollars, but the stations would allow him to move three or four million of otherwise-unaccounted-for cash a year into legitimate, interest-earning bank accounts. He’d earn his investment back in two years; hopefully he’d live long enough to see it.
Kostya answered his phone. “Kara?”
“Afraid not.” The voice belonged to a man, one Kostya didn’t recognize. That didn’t surprise him, though; he rarely knew the men in Kara’s life. “Who am I speaking to?”
“That’s none of your concern,” said Kostya. “How did you get Kara’s phone?”
“I took it from her after I blew her head off and killed her husband.”
It took a moment for that to register, but once it did, Kostya’s heart seized in his chest like an old piece of machinery, and he coughed hard. When he spoke again, his voice possessed little strength.
“You killed her?”
“That’s how I got her phone. It was an awful waste of a fine piece of ass if you ask me. I’m calling you because I wanted to find out what kind of a man she’d take orders from.”
Kostya’s hand shook. He tried to force strength back into his voice but found he had little.
“I don’t give orders to anyone, least of all to her.”
“Sure you don’t. Kara was a real piece of work. She and her husband didn’t make too many friends in my line of business, and I’m willing to bet you don’t want too many people knowing she worked for you. Give me some money, and no one will.”
Kostya swallowed and then took one breath followed by another. That helped some.
“Do you know who I am?” he asked.
“I don’t need to. I’ve got Kara’s phone, and you’re the fourth number listed in her address book. She labeled you ‘boss.’ That’s all my people are going to need.”
Boss. Kara had never worked for him, but it didn’t surprise him that she would call him that. They had never gotten along well.
“How much money do you want?”
“A hundred thousand dollars. Cash. We’ll call that a start.”
Given the nature of the request, Kostya thought it reasonable. A smart man wouldn’t pay blackmail, though; if he did it once, he’d do it for the rest of his life.
“Let’s meet in person to discuss this.”
“I don’t think so. You’ve got twenty-four hours, and you’ve got my number.”
“I’ll think about it.”
Kostya hung up the phone before the caller did. He didn’t know what to feel. He hadn’t seen Kara in almost a decade, but he kept a picture of her in his desk at home and thought about her almost every day. She called him once a few years ago but hung up within a minute of placing th
e call. He missed her. Kostya kept his eyes on the table, processing the conversation. Eventually, his brother-in-law, Lev, stepped into the room and shut the door behind him. A detective Bukoholov knew referred to Lev as “the Hulk”; the appellation fit.
“Cooper said you agreed to his asking price. What’s wrong?”
Kostya took a deep breath, drawing on a well of internal strength before looking at his brother-in-law. The ice around his heart began to melt as rage built inside him.
“Someone claims to have murdered my daughter. We have work to do.”
4
As soon as Ash got back in his car, his stomach rumbled. He ignored it and took out his cell phone. Eddie Alvarez answered before the phone finished ringing once.
“It’s Ash. In your interviews, has anyone mentioned the name Kate or Katie?”
Alvarez clucked his tongue twice, thinking. “Not to me. Why?”
“I talked to the guy who handles John and Jane Doe’s mail. He thought our female vic was named Kate.”
“We picked up four felons on our warrant sweep. I could run the name by them and see if it’s familiar.”
Try as he might, Ash couldn’t help but feel disappointed; they were no further along than they had been when he first arrived at the scene.
“Yeah, talk to them and then grab Tim Smith and recanvas the neighborhood. If someone says he’s heard rumors about a Kate or Katie, I want him brought in. Our vics were into something, and I want to know what.”
Alvarez paused. “That’s a lot of work for a long shot.”
Ash had been in Alvarez’s shoes on cases before, so he understood the detective’s reluctance. Alvarez wasn’t trying to weasel his way out of work; he was looking for work worth doing. Ash doubted they’d turn up anything new, but a name could possibly jog someone’s memory. They didn’t have enough leads to be choosy yet.
“I know it’s a lot of work, but we won’t have anything until we can ID our victims. I told an officer to call the local hospitals. Did he find anything?”
“A couple of stabbings and a shooting, but nothing that seems plausible for our case.”
“How about Doran? He say anything about the car?”
“Just that he popped the trunk and didn’t find Rebecca inside. I think he plans to have the car towed back to the lab.”
“At least he didn’t find a body. Good luck out there.”
Ash expected Alvarez to hang up, but he didn’t.
“You ever handled a case like this before?” Alvarez asked.
“Not quite. We’ll get her back, though. Just get out there and do what you need to do.”
“I said a prayer for her. I think it’ll help.”
“It can’t hurt. Good luck.”
Alvarez hung up the phone, and Ash stayed still to think. He liked Alvarez, and he had heard good things about him. That phone call proved he shouldn’t have been in Homicide, though. The assignment would wear on him, break him down over time. No matter how many cases he solved or murderers he locked up, he’d just find more the next day. He could probably forget most of those cases; other cases, though, would stick with him long after he went home. Some guys could handle that, but a guy who said prayers for the dead would only end up bitter and angry. Ash knew that firsthand. Unfortunately, he didn’t have time to sit down with him and deal with it at the moment.
He put his car in gear and called Greg Doran for directions to Rebecca’s abandoned car. During the drive, he kept replaying his conversation with the stoner at QwikMail in his head. John and Kate Doe spent five hundred bucks a month on an anonymous mail service. They were hiding something, obviously, but Ash didn’t know what. Hopefully that ignorance wouldn’t keep him from finding out who killed them.
While still two miles from Shadeland Avenue, Ash called Detective Sergeant David Lee of the narcotics squad. He picked up his cell phone before it finished ringing once.
“Hey, buddy,” said Lee. “I don’t get to talk to a celebrity every day. You’ve been on the news. Kristen Tanaka said you picked up a double by the fairgrounds.”
Ash grunted. “It’s more than that. Our perp carjacked a woman who happened to be in the area. As far as we know, they’re still together.”
“No shit?”
“No shit.”
Lee exhaled softly. “What do you need?”
“Information right now. I think my homicide victims were involved with something they shouldn’t have been. Are you guys looking at anyone named Kate or Katie?”
David was silent for a moment. “What else do you have on her?”
“She’s blond, maybe thirty years old, attractive. Found her in a Mercedes with her husband. He’s still a John Doe. He looks like he’s in his forties or early fifties.”
David grunted. “Description’s not ringing any bells.”
Ash strained his eyes and peered at the changing scenery around him. The sun had very nearly set, leaving a world shrouded in shadows. Shadeland Avenue ran north and south on the east side of town. If a resident drove long enough, he’d find grocery stores, hotels, drugstores, used car lots—really whatever he could want—along its four lanes. If he knew the right signs, he’d also find prostitutes, drug dealers, and even a pawnshop that wasn’t too particular about the ownership of the goods it sold.
“If you haven’t heard of Kate, how about Katherine or Kara or some other name that starts with K?”
“I need more than a first name if you want me to find something. Does she have a street name?”
“I don’t know yet. Maybe you can answer this: If there were fights in the drug supply chain, would any of your confidential informants hear about them?”
“They would have heard rumors at least. It’s pretty quiet right now, though. We’ve still got drugs moving into the city, obviously, but a lot of players have left town. I guess IMPD was too much for them.”
Ash had heard about that exodus, but he doubted the department had much to do with it. The dealers didn’t leave; a politically savvy gangster named Konstantin Bukoholov forced them out, with Ash’s inadvertent help. Bukoholov had even indirectly offered him a job in the prosecutor’s office as payment for his services. One day Ash would have to deal with him, but for the moment, Bukoholov wasn’t his concern.
“If you keep an ear out for me, I’d appreciate it.”
“Will do. Oh, and hey, Ramadan Kareem.”
The phrase loses something in the translation, but David had just wished him a generous Ramadan. It took a moment for Ash to get over his initial surprise.
“Allahu akram. Did you convert and not tell anyone?”
“No, but my sister just married a Muslim man in Jersey. What does Allahu akram mean?”
“‘God is most generous.’ It’s a polite response.”
“Cool. Sorry to hear about your case, but I’ll ask around and see what I can find. If I hear anything, I’ll give you a call back.”
“Thanks.”
Ash hung up and drove the rest of the way to the scene. When he pulled into the strip mall, he immediately hit a pothole big enough that his car shuddered. Greg Doran leaned against an unmarked cruiser about a hundred yards away, while two forensic technicians photographed a red Toyota Camry. An IMPD tow truck stood idle in the mall’s fire lane. Aside from Rebecca’s Toyota, every car in the lot belonged to the city, and as he neared the building, he could see why. The strip mall had room for a dozen stores, but only two storefronts had signs over their doors, and neither looked as if paying customers had crossed their thresholds in years.
Ash parked beside Doran’s Crown Vic and stepped out. The evening had yet to overcome the day’s heat, but Ash didn’t sweat. His head hurt as well and he felt tired, three telltales signs of dehydration. Thankfully, the sun would go down soon. If he didn’t pass out, he could make it. Detective Doran nodded and exhaled a lungful of smoke as soon as he saw Ash.
“You found anything?”
“Not really,” said Doran, throwing his cigarette down an
d grinding it under his heel. Ash walked toward Rebecca’s car. Doran had left the trunk propped open, but the windows and doors were still closed. “We dusted the exterior for prints and pulled seven distinct sets. Most are probably going to be from Rebecca’s family, but we might get lucky. I wanted to have the car towed to the lab before we touched the interior in case there’s fiber evidence that might blow away out here.”
Ash nodded and walked around the vehicle. The remnants of the graphite powder the forensic team had used to check for prints clung to the door panels.
“Anything in the trunk?” asked Ash upon reaching the back of the car.
“Just jumper cables,” said Doran, joining Ash. “The lab vacuumed for fibers, but it’ll take them a while to analyze things.”
Even though Doran hadn’t found anything in the trunk, Ash knelt down to get a look at the interior anyway. He didn’t find anything new, but he did find something missing.
“Did you guys find a bright yellow handle anywhere?”
“No,” said Doran, his voice uncertain. “Why?”
Ash pointed to an indention in the lid of the trunk.
“This is missing the internal trunk release,” he said, already taking out his cell phone and dialing Eddie Alvarez’s number. The detective picked up quickly. “The scene by the fairgrounds still secure?”
“For now. The Mercedes has been towed, but I’ve still got guys down there.”
“Good. I need them to start searching for a bright yellow lever. It probably glows in the dark.”
“What kind of lever is it?”
“It’s the internal trunk release from Rebecca’s car. It’s a safety feature in case you get locked inside. The guy who kidnapped Rebecca might have ripped it out, and if he did, it might have his prints on it.”
Alvarez didn’t say anything for a few seconds. “I’ll call it in and tell them to be on the lookout.”
“Good. And if you find it, don’t bother calling me. Just get it printed. I want to find out who this guy is.”
“Will do.”
Ash hung up, and Detective Doran cleared his throat and shuffled back a step. He looked uncomfortable.