Snow Burn: A thrilling detective mystery

by PT Reade

  “Of course,” Amir said. “Good to see you working though, and if I were –”

  Suddenly a crash sounded from the kitchen, followed by some colorful cursing in a language I didn’t understand. I didn’t need to know the words though, to recognize an angry Chef.

  “Come back sometime soon, and we’ll chat more. For now, I have to stop my restaurant burning down,” Amir half-joked as he hustled off to solve whatever culinary crisis had just occurred.

  “Will do,” I replied absently.

  I watched the man head to the back of the restaurant where he entered the kitchen through the swinging door.

  Amir and I had an odd relationship. It had been that way ever since the incident in New York.

  It was good to have Amir to go to. Sometimes, a scarf for sentiment was enough. Other times, you just needed someone to talk to. Still, I always felt there was something else to the man, a whisper that my cop sense couldn’t let go. By all accounts he was a good guy, hardworking and well connected. Plus he had the patience of a saint to put up with my crap while running a successful business. Still, there was something about him I just couldn’t place. A feeling in my gut that Amir Mazra was keeping something from me.

  THREE

  The brightest lights hide the darkest secrets.

  I arrived outside Lumika an hour before Gremlin’s appointed time. The temperature had dropped again, and I breathed into my hands to warm them. Nearby the howling grates of an underground station spewed steam into the frigid night. I eyed the club from across the street, trying to formulate a plan.

  Security. Damn.

  I don’t know why I hadn’t considered it before. There was no way the bullnecked meatheads on the door were going to let in a has-been like me. I was 20 years too old and a lifetime too uncool for a pretentious joint like this.

  As I considered my options, I suddenly recalled something from earlier in the day, and an idea formed.

  Five minutes later, I strolled as casually as possible toward the neon entrance, clutching my prize. Thumping bass echoed from within, and I wondered if what I was doing was a good idea. I suddenly felt exposed and stupid.

  The bouncers eyed me suspiciously for several long moments as I paced straight to the front of the queue. I tensed for a confrontation, anticipating the worst, ready to fight. One of the black-clad goons stepped forward, and I braced for action.

  Then, at the very last moment, he reached down to the barrier, unhooked the rope and nodded me inside.

  The ruse had worked.

  After remembering Amir’s Herculean waiter at the restaurant, I had decided to try the same trick. I had slunk off to the nearest convenience store two blocks away and purchased an entire crate of bottled water, much to the cashier’s surprise. Strolling back around the corner to the club, I had mustered as much nonchalance as possible.

  Sure enough, the security had assumed I was part of the club staff, restocking the bar for drugged-up ravers and sweaty teens. They waved me straight in.

  After all, who would be stupid enough to carry around a whole crate of water on a winter’s night?

  I mentally thanked the shoddy hiring standards of the club and wandered in, leaving the crate in a dark corner. My arms were on fire from the effort, and I suddenly had more respect for Amir’s staff.

  ***

  I’d idly thought Lumika might be good to recapture some hint of the vibe from my younger years, even if only to recall what it had once been like to not be hindered by death and lies at every turn. But when I walked down the steps into the main room and heard the sort of repetitive robot-gibberish noise the DJ was playing and saw the even more robotic people, I wished I’d stayed home.

  The place vibrated with dark resonance, and impossibly fashionable screens cast abstract neon visuals through the smoke.

  I needed a real drink if I was going to put up with this crap, so to make the most of my time, I ordered a painfully expensive Jack Daniels and sat at a nondescript table at the quietest fringe of the club I could find. As I sat there and watched a crowd that was on average at least twenty years younger than me, I again cycled through the information I knew about the Ashburn case.

  One of the things the media was speculating on was why Ashburn had been singled out among the several other politicians who had also been hacked. If the writers for those media outlets had the same research chops as I had, they would have uncovered one interesting bit of information that had yet to make it to the press. I had discovered that Ashburn owned anonymous shares in several shipping companies and a major chemical manufacturer in the south.

  The companies had seen some negative press for breaking environmental regulations over the last few years. If there was some point of contention between whoever was behind the hacking and Ashburn, it would make sense that it was some environmental activist or antipollution lobbyist. But, honestly, something about that just didn’t feel right to me.

  A drunken girl stumbled past, spilling her drink. She looked no older than nineteen and wore a skirt that would make a hooker blush. As I watched, she howled something incomprehensible and fell into a clutch of similarly dressed young women who seemed pleased to see her. I figured from their over-animated screeching match and wildly waving arms that at least three of them were high on something.

  The longer I waited, the more I wanted out of this hell hole.

  I bided my time until at last the clock on my cellphone read 10:25. I then glanced over to the far right corner of the club. It was the VIP suite, usually reserved, I had been told by a bar tender, for business meetings or big spenders. As I looked over, I saw two bouncers standing by either side of the small stairwell that led to the suite. Up those stairs, sitting on a plush couch in dark lighting, I could just make out a man who looked to be in his late 30s sitting back and trying to look casual. In reality, he looked bored and almost as out of place as I did.

  I assumed this was the man that Gremlin was meeting. Sure, it was a bad stereotype, but this guy did not look like the type who would live in Gremlin’s apartment. I ordered another drink and kept my eye on the VIP corner as inconspicuously as I could. It was easy to do with the blaring music and weird patterns of lights that kept dancing around from the DJ’s booth.

  I was relieved when Gremlin made his appearance at 10:31. He looked just about the way I had imagined him. He was scrawny and pale, dressed in all black, with his hair hanging low in his eyes. He blended in well with the crowd except for the fact that he looked nervous as hell.

  I watched as Gremlin and the other man spoke, their faces quite close. The older man nodded, laughed, and then nodded again. He clapped Gremlin on the back, and then they stood up. They walked to the back of the VIP corner and opened a door that I had not seen before due to the dark lighting in the club.

  Shit.

  I watched them enter the room, hidden as the door closed behind them.

  I ran through my options quickly. I’d originally planned to watch the whole deal from afar, maybe getting some pictures on my phone. But this changed everything.

  I figured that I could wait for them to come out, but that was no good. I wanted to catch them in the act, whatever the act might be. Maybe this was the deal…maybe this was where Gremlin sold the material on Ashburn.

  That thought alone got me to my feet. Flying purely by the seat of my pants, I worked my way over to the VIP area where the two bouncers stood diligently by their posts. As I drew closer to them, I switched on my rather lame acting skills. Inspired by the girl from before, I pretended to stumble a bit as I neared the bouncers. I did a quick glance around and saw that the next closest bouncer to the area was all the way over at the bar, nearly on the other side of the club.

  I made a lurching stagger towards the VIP suite stairs and was stopped abruptly by one of the guards. He had the build of a tree and a face that looked like granite.

  “No,” the bouncer said. “Reserved, mate. Turn on around.”

 
; “Looks nice up there,” I said, pointing with my drink. I made sure some of it sloshed out onto his crisp, white shirt.

  When the bouncer took just the slightest step back away from the unexpected splash of Whiskey, I quickly curled my fist around the glass and turned to the second guy. I brained the man with the glass and could feel it break down the center in my hands. I then instantly sent a palm into the bouncer’s solar plexus. He dropped, heaving for air.

  When I turned back to the first bouncer, he was reacting the exact way I had expected. I knew that these guys were trained to restrain, not hit. So as the bouncer came at me with his arms positioned in a bear hug attack, I dropped quickly to my knees and punched the man squarely in the crotch. As he doubled over, I came up with an uppercut that caught him in the jaw, something I had come to think of as my patented knock-out shot.

  He dropped instantly, joining his friend on the floor. All around him, the crowd was thinning out. The entire skirmish had lasted no longer than five seconds, but that had been enough. I looked to the other side of the club and saw that the muscle over there had not yet seen or heard about what had happened to his co-workers.

  Taking advantage of this, I hauled ass up the stairs to the VIP section. I staggered past the couch and table, suddenly feeling heady from the mix of booze and adrenaline as I headed straight for the mystery door. I opened it quickly, peering back through the crowd of club-goers to see that the other bouncer had finally caught on to what was going on. I slammed the door shut and found that there was no lock on this side.

  But when I turned to examine the room, the lack of a lock suddenly didn’t matter.

  Gremlin was there, waiting for me.

  Only, waiting wasn’t the right term.

  Gremlin was dead.

  He was sprawled out on a plush couch with a neat and precise bullet hole between his eyes. The computer whiz stared blankly up at the ceiling as if expecting divine intervention. All the poor bastard got was me, and I grimaced as blood steadily trickled from the wound, coursing down his face.

  He’d logged off for the final time.

  I looked up from the body and saw that there was only one other door in the room, all the way on the other side. A sign above it read EMERGENCY EXIT: FIRE ALARM WILL SOUND WHEN OPENED.

  This made no sense, as the second man was not in here. If he had left through that door, an alarm would have gone off. That meant the door was either broken and the man had known this, or he’d had outside help to keep the alarm for triggering.

  I knew I would have to figure that out later. Right then, there was no time. The other bouncer (and probably a few of his friends) would be in the room in less than ten seconds. With this driving me, I sprinted for the door, figuring that I was in a decent situation either way. I could make a clean escape and locate Gremlin’s killer without the alarm going off, or the alarm would go off and cause mass panic and confusion within the club, hiding my getaway.

  With no other choices I slammed the exit bar down and pushed through.

  Alarms immediately blared from all around

  Well, that answers that.

  I didn’t even bother looking behind me for the bouncers. I stepped out into a thin, dark brick alleyway as the door closed behind me. The sudden cold stole my breath. I heard the alarm through the door and paced forward to get away from any security that might come out still on my tail. I realized then that the sky had now started spitting snow. The flakes stung my hot skin, and powder dotted the streets.

  Then I spotted the tail lights up ahead, creeping through the alley and back towards the street.

  Gremlin’s killer!

  I broke into a sprint, still improvising. I was fairly sure that I could catch up to the car but not sure what I would do then. I hadn’t brought any weapons, knowing I’d never be allowed inside the club with them. Besides that, I was trying to make the adjustment from my gun-friendly US upbringing to the much more gun-free society across the Atlantic.

  I pounded ahead on instinct, racing forward until I was only three feet away from the car. Breathing heavily, I tried to take in the details….

  …a black sedan….Jaguar? Mercedes? Featureless ...And it had government plates.

  Government plates? What the hell?

  I gasped for breath as I tried to catch up, but the years, the booze, and the guilt was gradually slowing me down.

  I suddenly saw a slight shimmer of movement as the rear window came down. Something metallic came out slowly, something that I was all too familiar with.

  I stopped running instantly and threw myself hard to the left. Just as I struck the wall of the neighboring building, I heard the first thump of a gunshot muffled by a suppressor. The sound was reminiscent of fluffing a pillow. I heard two more as I hit the frigid ground next to some garbage bags, kicking up a plume of slush and trash. All of the shots missed, yet one ricocheted from the pavement so close to me that I felt flecks of asphalt clip my cheek.

  I covered my head, knowing I was exposed, waiting for more shots, but none came. Finally I glanced up and watched the car as it squealed out of the end of the alley and quickly took a right onto the street.

  “Government plates,” I whispered to myself. I tried to figure out what this might mean, but it was then that the club’s fire alarm seemed to grow louder.

  I checked behind me and saw two bouncers coming out through the fire exit door. One had blood running down his head, and the other screamed “Oi!” as they started to advance.

  Having had enough excitement for one night, I elected to retreat rather than wait around and face them. I scrambled to my feet and headed in the same direction as the car.

  I was on the streets twenty seconds later, and within a minute I was nestled safely in the steady flow of foot traffic for the nearby Tube station. I doubled back a few times and crossed the street to make sure I wasn’t being followed, but the bouncers were nowhere to be seen. My retreat had also been rapidly obscured by the snowfall.

  I quickly walked the five blocks to where I’d parked my car, shivering in my damp clothes. I wondered if I was over the limit for driving, I wondered if the snow would continue, but mostly I wondered what the hell had just happened.

  FOUR

  Cold mortality.

  There were many locales that didn’t take kindly to private investigators snooping around. I knew this from experience. That was why I wasn’t expecting any results when I visited the coroner’s office the next morning. I’d visited a few different morgues in my time.

  As a cop, as an investigator, as next of kin….

  I had always been shut down, placated with the kind of bland platitudes professionals feel forced to use around death. “No information at this time….” “Results are not yet available.…” “We’ll call you when we know more….”

  I was expecting nothing different today, hoping only to hear some news by eavesdropping on staff or if I got lucky, by paying off security.

  I found myself surprised, though. It seemed that putting the Ellington case to bed had gained me a gritty sort of respect within many circles inside and outside of the police force. This apparently included members of the medial examination team, even if I didn’t yet know it.

  I was standing in the frost-covered yard at the rear of the Coroner’s office, checking the cuts on my face from the chipped pavement the night before. The shrapnel had left a smattering of grazes that looked like I had run through a wind tunnel full of razor blades.

  I’d looked better.

  I was looking myself over in the reflection of a parked car’s driver’s side window, at least ostensibly, so as to not draw attention from the various vehicles and medical staff coming and going in the snowy morning. In reality, I was using the reflection to scope out the “delivery” entrance, the wide doorway where bodies made their last inglorious journey, straight to the examiner’s autopsy table.

  I suddenly sensed someone watching from behind and froze in place.
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  “You’ll never get in that way,” a voice said from across the yard.

  I looked up to see a woman dressed in a lab coat casually leaning against the concrete pillar of a closed loading bay. She took a long drag from a cigarette and eyed me cautiously.

  I scanned around, expecting her to be talking to someone else, when she spoke again.

  “Like I said, you won’t get in that way. Gus is on duty”

  “And who is Gus?” I hesitantly enquired across the space.

  “Security guard, big guy, short temper.”

  She gestured and I followed her gaze to a kiosk window across the parking lot where a large official-looking man sporting a salt-and-pepper beard stood, mug in hand, watching us both suspiciously.

  “Well then, how did you –”

  “Luckily, he has a weakness for blondes taking cig-breaks.” She waved to the big man, and he nodded stoically before disappearing from the window.

  The woman then straightened, stubbed out her smoke, and crushed it underfoot.

  As she strode toward me, I saw that beneath the lab coat and black clothing she was rake thin but very attractive. Late-twenties, dark eye makeup, and high cheekbones gave her a slightly other-worldly appearance. A streak of dyed red ran through her otherwise ash blonde ponytail. The whole image was accented by a small nose stud.

  Is she a rock-chick, some kind of Goth? I realized I had no idea what the difference was, in this country anyway.

  As an NYPD detective, I’d learned on the streets how to efficiently analyze people and figure out how best to address them, but in the UK I was an outsider, and there were different rules. Boundaries were blurred.

  “The Ellington case, right?” the woman said as she approached the car.

  “Yes,” I replied, finding it funny and a bit worrying that people now knew me solely by my last misadventure.

  Now closer, I noticed the woman was something of a contradiction. Despite her rebellious appearance, she held a quiet intensity in her eyes. A kind of worldly countenance that made her seem older than her years.