By Any Means

by Chris Culver

  “I’ve never seen him break the law.”

  “That’s not the point. Wilson was a cop,” said Bowers. “He swore an oath to uphold the law, but then he used his position to break it. Even if you just get information from him, that’s the sort of man you work with when you talk to people like Konstantin Bukoholov. You think you can trust somebody like that? You can’t. He and his friends are using you and our department to do their work for them. That’s why we’re concerned when we see you two together. Keep that in mind next time you see him.”

  Bowers turned to go back to Reddington’s office.

  “If Wilson was picking up prostitutes on the job or letting them go for sex, why haven’t I heard about it before now?”

  “Maybe you haven’t been listening to the right people.” He stopped. “And I’ll see you tonight. Try to stay out of trouble in the meantime. I’ve put myself on the line for you.”

  Bowers left the conference room, and Ash felt his shoulders slump. He didn’t want to work with Leonard Wilson any more than he wanted to work with Konstantin Bukoholov, but sometimes it was necessary. Maybe in a perfect world, he could afford to be idealistic, but not in this one. In this one, he had to get his hands dirty, and if that meant a gangster got something he wanted, so be it. Bukoholov and Wilson would get their comeuppance eventually. They all did. As he walked toward the elevator, Ash took out his cell phone and called home. Hannah picked up.

  “Hey, hon, I’ve got to go out tonight, but I’m going to head home early. You want me to pick up anything on the way?”

  “No, but somebody just came by with an envelope for you. It was really weird. It has a bunch of passports in it and a note with an address on it.”

  “You know who it’s from?”

  “No, but the guy who brought it by was huge. You’d know him if you had seen him before.”

  “Did he say anything?”

  “He just asked me to give you the envelope. He was very nice, but he was hard to understand. He had an accent. Who was he?”

  Ash hoped he was wrong, but he could only think of one man who fit the description.

  “Someone who shouldn’t have been there. I’m on my way right now.”

  Ash slipped his phone in his pocket and pounded the DOWN button on the elevator. One of Bukoholov’s henchmen had just come calling.

  * * *

  Megan met him at the back door with a juice box in hand when he got home, having already finished fasting for the day. Children, even during Ramadan, aren’t required to fast, although some try. Hannah and Ash let Megan go half a day; in practical terms, that meant she skipped a morning snack. It allowed her to feel included in the events without hurting herself, and it had the added benefit of teaching her a little bit about patience and delayed gratification, lessons a lot of the people he arrested had missed when they were children. Ash gave her a hug and pushed her on the swing to get her started before joining his wife and son inside the living room.

  Kaden, Ash’s youngest, had just had his first birthday and his favorite pastime had become stacking things up and then knocking them over. In his more destructive moments, he also seemed to enjoy removing the petals from flowers and pulling heavy pots out of the kitchen cabinets. When Ash walked into the room, Kaden dropped a plastic container full of blocks and waddled toward him, grinning. Ash couldn’t help but grin back and pick him up.

  “I’m glad you’re home,” said Hannah, closing the laptop she had been working on before standing up. Ash shifted Kaden to his other side and kissed his wife hello. Unlike in previous months, she didn’t linger to smell his breath. After eight hard-fought months of sobriety, he had earned some of her trust back. It felt good. “The envelope I told you about is in the kitchen.”

  “I’ll look at it in a moment,” said Ash, making a face at Kaden. The baby smiled. “I want to spend some time with you guys first. You up to anything?”

  “Just hanging out,” said Hannah. “Hamid Aziz called this morning. He said you don’t need to take Nour and Jake out again.”

  Dating among devout Muslims is a little different than it is for most Americans. The Prophet said that whenever a man is alone with a woman, the devil makes a third. Some Muslims take that very seriously and, aside from a spouse or close relative, never allow themselves to be alone in a room with someone of the opposite sex. Others are more lackadaisical. Nour Aziz fell somewhere in the middle of the spectrum. Her aunt and uncle introduced her to a man at their mosque, and the two seemed to get along well. They didn’t feel comfortable on dates alone, though, so Nour asked her father if he knew anyone who’d be willing to chaperone a date or two. He called Ash, the only police officer he knew.

  “That’s too bad,” said Ash. “I really thought they hit it off well.”

  Hannah cocked her head at him. “What did you guys do?”

  “Jake suggested some kind of hike, but the way I see it, dating is like a job interview. I thought Nour would want to know if Jake could protect her, so I called in a favor from a friend of mine and took them to the gun range at work.”

  Hannah nodded. “Jake and Nour still plan to see each other, but your sister is going to chaperone them. They think she’ll be more compatible with them.”

  “Oh,” said Ash. He paused. “I took you to the gun range before we were married. You had fun, didn’t you?”

  “No, but I still married you. And I’ve felt safe around paper targets ever since.”

  “I’m glad to hear it.”

  He hung out with them for only about fifteen minutes, but it was the best part of his day. Hannah showed him pictures of a used minivan she thought they should consider. She originally thought they’d just buy another regular-sized car, but between diaper bags, strollers, and backpacks, they needed more room. The van cost more than most of the cars they had looked at, but it had a lot of safety features. They could make it work if she really wanted it. Ash had never expected his wife to become a suburban soccer mom, but she had become content with the role, and because of that, so was he.

  At about two in the afternoon, he put Kaden back on the ground near a pile of blocks and went to the kitchen, where he found a manila envelope on the counter beside the back door. Ash unfolded the clasp and dumped out the contents. Eight passports, a couple of brochures—one of which had been written in Arabic—and a note. He opened a passport from the Republic of Uzbekistan. It belonged to a nineteen-year-old Uzbek girl named Sabina; she had a one-year student visa. He quickly opened two other passports and found similar information. One belonged to a young woman from the Czech Republic and another belonged to a girl from India. Both had student visas. He flipped through the rest and found a similar pattern. All belonged to young women, and all had one- to two-year student visas. What Bukoholov wanted him to make out of that, Ash didn’t know.

  Next he muddled through the brochure, which advertised a student-exchange program. If the passports belonged to program participants, he at least had an idea of why they all had student visas. The note simply contained the address of a bed-and-breakfast in New Palestine.

  Bukoholov didn’t act without reason. The last time he suggested Ash look into something, he got some very bad men off the street and saved the lives of several innocent people. He also ended up in the middle of an interdepartmental mess that forced a very strong candidate out of the primary race for county prosecutor, ensuring that Leonard Wilson, a man amenable to Bukoholov’s agenda, won. Bukoholov would reap the benefits of that tip for years.

  Ash had little doubt that Bukoholov would get something from this tip, too, but equally, he had little doubt that someone needed to check it out. Just not him, not with Agent Havelock and his own department already suspicious of him. Ash took out his phone and looked up the number of the Hancock County Sheriff’s Department and called them up. As soon as he introduced himself, the civilian receptionist transferred his call to Craig Davis, the deputy sheriff.

  “What can we do for you, Detective Rashid?”

 
“I’ve got some information for you. A confidential informant I run contacted me and said that something illegal might be going on in a business in your jurisdiction.”

  “And which business would that be?”

  “The Dandelion Inn. It’s in New Palestine.”

  Davis didn’t respond for a moment, presumably as he wrote the information down. “Your CI give you any details?”

  Ash looked at the brochures and passports on his table. “Not really, but it might involve some college kids.”

  “Okaaay,” said Davis, drawing the word out. “You think drugs?”

  “Possibly, but I don’t know. My CI hears a lot of things. If he gives me a tip, it’s usually pretty important. I’ve made a couple of big cases because of him.”

  “And this place, the Dandelion Inn, is in New Pal?”

  “That’s the address I’ve been given.”

  “All right,” said Davis. “It’s just that we don’t get a lot of problems in New Pal. It’s families and farmers, not a whole lot there.”

  “I understand that,” said Ash. “I’d consider it a personal favor if you checked it out. I’ll owe you one.”

  “Yes, you will,” said Davis. He yawned. “I’ll have somebody swing by this afternoon.”

  “I’d strongly suggest you send at least two officers and warn them that the people in the inn might be armed.”

  Davis clucked his tongue. “Are you holding information back on me, Detective Rashid?”

  “No, I’m telling you everything I know. My CI has given me extremely reliable tips about high-level criminal activity in the past. I’ve brought down a lot of violent suspects because of him. I don’t know what’s at the inn, but judging by my CI’s track record, you might run into some dangerous characters.”

  “I’ll tell my guys. Can I reach you at this number if I need to get in touch with you?”

  “Sure. It’s my cell.”

  Davis said he’d call if he found anything and then hung up the phone. Hopefully that’d be the end of that. Ash repackaged the contents of his envelope and took it back to the living room. Hannah had resumed typing whatever document she had been working on when he arrived. She had a blog on which she reviewed bad movies and had started developing quite a following. She said they might even be able to get some money out of it one day; now, though, payment came in the form of free movies from studios Ash had never heard of. Most were worth about what she paid for them.

  “I’m going to take a nap,” said Ash. “If somebody calls my cell, can you wake me up? It might be important.”

  “Sure, sweetheart,” said Hannah. Ash thanked her and then went to the bedroom. When he put his head on the pillow, it felt as if no sooner had he closed his eyes than Megan came to wake him up. Two hours had passed according to the clock on his nightstand. He opened his eyes wide, yawned, and sat up. Megan thrust a cell phone toward him.

  “Here you go.”

  The phone buzzed, so Ash answered and mouthed Thank you to his daughter. She ran out of the room, presumably to wherever Hannah was.

  “Ash Rashid. What’s going on?” he asked, blinking sleep from his eyes.

  “Detective Rashid, this is Craig Davis from the Hancock County Sheriff’s Department. I need you to come out to the location you gave me earlier.”

  “Did you find something?”

  “Yeah. And I think you should come out here to see it.”

  “All right,” said Ash, glancing at his watch. He had work that night, but not for several more hours. He had time. “I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

  “See you then.”

  Ash hung up the phone and put his work clothes back on before heading to the living room. Hannah sat on the floor with Kaden while Megan lay on the couch.

  “I’m going to head back to work for a little while,” said Ash. “I’ll try to be back for iftar, but I can’t make any promises. I might be late.”

  Hannah smiled at Kaden and then looked up at him. “Late like last night?”

  “We’re going to try to get Rebecca Cook back tonight. The guy who took her asked for me. I don’t know why.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means I’m dropping off the ransom money and hopefully getting Rebecca. I’ll be wearing a bullet-resistant vest, and I’ll have half our department watching my back.”

  Hannah sighed and closed her eyes. “Why does this never happen to anybody but you?”

  “I didn’t ask for this. It just happened.”

  Hannah nodded and looked at Megan.

  “Hug your father, Megan. He’s got to go to work.”

  Megan sprung up immediately and latched on to Ash’s waist. “Bye, Bob.”

  “Bye, sweetheart. Stay out of trouble.”

  “I will.”

  Ash looked up at Hannah again. “I’ll call you before anything happens.”

  “Sure.”

  Ash hugged Kaden on his way out of the house and then entered the bed-and-breakfast’s address on the GPS in his cruiser. Time to see what Bukoholov had found.

  14

  The Dandelion Inn stood in the center of a roughly ten-acre clearing in a wooded area east of New Palestine. It had a gravel lot and a four-car garage to the west of the main building and a storage shed in the distance, near the tree line. Two uniformed Hancock County sheriff’s deputies stood watch beside the inn’s front door, while a big man with tattoos on his forearms sat in handcuffs on the steps. Ash parked beside one of the five police cruisers in the lot and stepped out to get a look at the building. Aside from some thick black bars over the casement windows in the basement, it looked like a high-end bed-and-breakfast, exactly what it purported to be.

  Ash waved to the deputies on the front porch and walked toward them. He unclipped his badge from his belt and slipped it into the front pocket of his jacket.

  “I’m Detective Ash Rashid. I’m looking for Craig Davis. He’s expecting me.”

  One of the deputies nodded to the other and then disappeared into the house. The second deputy took a step forward and thrust a clipboard in front of him.

  “Can I get you to sign the log sheet, Detective Rashid?” said the deputy. Ash looked at the deputy’s nametag. Andy Maitlin. Evidently, Bukoholov had come through again; Hancock County had found something if they needed a log sheet. Ash scribbled his name in the correct box of the form and then nodded.

  “What’d you guys find?”

  Maitlin raised his eyebrows and shook his head. “We’re still trying to figure that out.”

  Ash looked down at the handcuffed man. “Who’s our friend?”

  “Marvin Spencer,” said Maitlin. “He had a firearm on his hip when we pulled up, so we sat him down and ran a warrant check on him. Turns out he’s wanted in Cincinnati for passing bad checks. We arrested him and then ran a protective sweep inside.”

  Ash raised his eyebrows. “I assume you didn’t call me in to see Mr. Spencer.”

  “No, we didn’t,” said Maitlin, nodding. “I’ll let Craig fill you in.”

  Ash only had to wait for another minute for Deputy Sheriff Craig Davis to walk through the front door. He had thinning black hair, a trim figure, and a mustache. Ash shook his hand and nodded to Marvin Spencer.

  “I see you guys are already making arrests.”

  “Yeah, Mr. Spencer greeted my officers on arrival. I think we’ll be holding him for a while.”

  “He say anything?” asked Ash, glancing at the prisoner.

  “Fuck you,” said Spencer.

  Ash looked back at Davis. “He say anything other than that?”

  “That’s it.”

  “He’s not very friendly, is he?”

  “Nope. No, he’s not.”

  Ash nodded toward the house. “What have you got?”

  “I think you should see it first.”

  “Sure.”

  The porch creaked as Ash followed Davis. The entryway had obviously been built to impress, but Ash had little time to take stock of
his surroundings before Sheriff Davis darted to a hallway on the right side of the room. They passed an empty office and walked straight toward a modern, commercial kitchen with stainless steel countertops and appliances. Ash covered his nose with the sleeve of his shirt, hoping to block out an almost overpowering odor of bleach. His shoes stuck to the porcelain tile and came off with a lurching noise. The inn’s janitorial staff probably hadn’t rinsed off their cleanser properly.

  Davis ignored both the smell and the sticky floor as he walked toward a door near the opposite side of the room. Ash found his eyes drawn to grease stains along one exterior wall. He would have dismissed them as the result of cooking spatter had they been closer to the stove, but grease wouldn’t fly all the way across the room, not in that quantity. Moreover, he found a brown splotch in the crevice of an otherwise white window frame near the back door. It may have been paint, but it looked an awful lot like clotted blood.

  “Did you guys see this yet?” he asked.

  “See what?” asked Davis.

  “I think it’s blood.”

  He nodded. “I’ll put somebody on it, but that doesn’t surprise me. The real surprise is downstairs. Come on.”

  Ash hesitated and then walked toward the door Davis had stopped near. It had a barrel latch screwed into the frame, allowing someone in the kitchen to lock someone else in the basement. First bars on the windows and now a lock on the door. That’s not something you find on too many hotels. The sheriff walked down a carpeted set of stairs, and Ash followed. The basement ran the entire length of the house and had welded metal cots spaced every few feet from one end to the other. It looked like a dormitory.

  Ash walked toward a group of police officers on the far side of the room, counting sixteen cots—nine of which had bedding—as he went. The air smelled sweet, almost flowery. It was perfume, and since none of the officers in the house were women, Ash doubted it came from one of them. As he walked closer to the group, he noticed that most of them were staring at a poster on the blank exterior wall of a bathroom. The perfume smell became stronger.

  “Is this it?”