Ruthless Ink

by April Lust

  I can’t bring myself to look in Keith’s eyes. He disappears from the door and his clunky steps fade into the background.

  “Did he pull a gun out?”

  Russ shrugs. “He’s spooked.”

  I peel myself off the floor, using the bed as support to drag myself up over it.

  Russ’ shoulders rise a bit. He seems to be puffing out of his black leather jacket and dark gray camo hoodie combo. What’s got him bushing up worse than a cat’s tail?

  As if he heard my though, Russ continues. “It’s Dayton. He’s tailing Keith as well.”

  My jaw sits hard on that.

  “Dayton’s good.” Russ again voices what I had been thinking. “He’s searching for a weak link.”

  “Has he found it?” I snap, my eyes narrowing. If Keith sells me out, I’ll kill him.

  “No. Keith’s clean as far as I can tell.”

  “That’s comforting.” I stare him down, the silence heavy. I reflect, realizing there’s little reason to alienate Russ. He’s been loyal, and I have yet to doubt him. In fact, he’s my most trusted man. “I want this to end as quickly as possible. Do you have anything we could use?”

  Russ stoops to pick up the tray and glass, his hand reaching out for the ibuprofen bottle. It’s closer to me so I bend to get it, passing it to him. Russ thanks me gruffly, but I nod for him to continue.

  I know he has something on the son of a bitch putting me in this position with my men, with my family, with Lily...

  “You were right about Dayton. He was pulled from the SLMPD for a reason, and all signs suggest it has to do with that narcotic sting gone bad.” Russ smirks. “Turns out there’s more to it than just a dead partner. There are some loose-lipped beat cops Dayton rubbed the wrong way, and one of them happens to be a second-generation blue blood.

  “His father’s a captain in Internal Affairs. News travels and I got it on record that gang fight that killed Dayton’s partner also killed nine civilians.”

  “Nine? Shit.” I massage a hand over my jaw. My brain is moving ahead, working out the pieces, but I listen to Russ, hear him out to the end.

  “Those nine included five sex trafficked workers, their go-between madame, two johns, and the driver chauffeuring everyone around.” Russ’ information is music to my ears. I’ll have to give him a fat bonus check.

  Russ tilts his head, the smile slipping. “It got me thinking. What else are they hushing up about Dayton? Someone up high had to have got him out quietly and put him in Potentia. He’s a man with bad enemies and good friends.”

  “Guess I should have a word with Dayton then.” I stand, noting Russ’ foot sliding forward. I give him a stern look. He might have given me a huge jump on Dayton, but I am not about to be coddled by him.

  “Let me dress and I’ll be with you and your man soon enough. There’s a lot for us to do.” And taking a glance over my shoulder at the bright sunlight fighting to get through the blinds, I say, “A lot to do, and so little time.”

  Only Russ is alone when I meet him in my airy living space, dressed and ready to go.

  “Keith?” I ask.

  “I sent him to keep an eye on Erickson and her pretty friend.”

  I pause, looking at Russ. “I never did ask, but when you were tailing Dayton into St. Louis, did you happen to stop by my sister’s place?”

  My concern is for Julie. She likes him. And as far as I understand, Russ doesn’t feel the same for my kid sister. I can’t blame him. It’s hard dating the boss’s sister...and likely harder dating the boss.

  I suddenly understand where Russ is coming from, and where Lily’s head might have been at last night. She probably only agreed to the alibi because she thought I was going to kill her or fire her.

  “Sure.” Russ bravely holds my gaze and that’s enough to tell me he hasn’t touched Julie. “But she had some pretty hot ladies in there. She called me out on it, that and something about my not visiting enough.”

  “I heard the same spiel,” I commiserate.

  “Before I forget,” Russ hooks a hand behind his neck, his lips twitching and gaze avoiding mine too obviously. “Ellen left something for you.” He jerks his head to the coffee table.

  Seeing what has him all flustered, I move to collect and slide the large zipper storage bag into my brief case. Lily’s forgotten panties are now tucked away in there safely, thanks to Ellen’s clever thinking. I know I’m left with the task of delivering them.

  Chapter 12

  Luke

  Outside we’re all business.

  I send Russ off ahead to track down Dayton. I’ve got other errands to run before I drop in to see the pain-in-the-ass detective.

  On my way down the steps toward my garage, I note the car sliding in through the gates of our condo community. I recognize the owners, a young pregnant couple, who roll the car to a stop and lower the passenger’s window. Trading greetings, I smile and wave until they’ve slipped into their garage at the end of our row of four eastern-facing lots.

  The grocery store is up first. I need to stock up the fridge. I’m not a chef, but I know my way around the kitchen and care about the food I put into my body.

  I come across more familiar faces while shopping. Names and other minor details readily on my tongue, I greet four people before I arrive at the checkout with my cart full of items. The braces-wearing teenager behind the counter is also a face I recognize, his father being on my sales team.

  Welcome to Potentia: A large enough town for its own police department, but small enough for most people to know someone who knows someone who knows you.

  It’s all so cozy, but the warmth from those unplanned meet-and-greets ends when I hear from Russ.

  “You were right. Dayton’s in his office, working a double-shift.”

  Confirming I’d be there soon, I head for my next errand.

  The fair-haired florist knows me as a regular. Also, I might have fucked her two years back, right after choosing the funeral wreaths for my mother. I’d been handling her sudden illness and passing badly, and sex became an outlet. Alcohol another.

  Last night was unique for me. I hadn’t felt that level of despondency since Alice Hanley died. How strong a hold does Lily have on me?

  As I try to make conversation light with the florist, my mind still turning Lily’s grip on me, I see something new on the florist’s finger while she rings up my overflowing bouquet of lilies. The irony of the flowers isn’t lost on me.

  “Congratulations.” I say, relieved.

  She beams, holding up her hand, fingers wiggling to display her stunner of an engagement ring. She babbles about her fiancé, giving me a history of the guy, and then ends off with the romantic, surprise proposal. I’m all complimentary smile and nods.

  Waving, I step out of the store with my prize in my hand. Careful with the flowers, I rest them in the passenger seat and round the car to get going to my second-to-final stop.

  The cemetery lies at the far side of Potentia, near the town limits. It’s big and most long-time residents of our town end up here.

  My mother, born and bred in the city, moved out to live with my father in his then-small town. Potentia quadrupled to its present population of twenty-thousand in a couple decades, but back in the late seventies, there were slim pickings of entertainment for a city girl. And Floyd Hanley didn’t have the money he has now, so driving his wife to St. Louis was a luxury.

  Yet she made the most of it, and she loved Potentia, possibly even more than her husband and her son who were born here.

  “Hey, Mom,” I greet her the only way I know how. Coming out here, seeing how lonely and cold the cemetery has gotten with summer ebbing into autumn, I’m blindsided by sorrow.

  “I brought your favorites.” I angle my words to the clouded heavens, imagining her riding on one of the gray, cotton-candy like fluffs scuttling low overhead. “And apparently someone else has as well.”

  Indeed, nearly the same arrangement I bought is leaning against her black
marble grave. Only the white of the lilies is broken up by the vibrant red of roses.

  “Dad’s been by. Wonder what he had to say,” I mumble.

  Nothing good, likely. He doesn’t make it a point to visit his wife. Too painful, he complains. His argument is that he wants to keep the memories of his wife as she was before the rapid decline and eventual succumbing to late-stage brain cancer.

  I frown, settling the lilies down by the other flowers. I’d have to get in touch with him. Right now though, I had an appointment with Art Dayton, intrepid detective.

  Russ isn’t there when I arrive at the converted church building housing Potentia’s blue. Better he stays away; it seems like Dayton has no clue he exists, and I want to keep some of my cards hidden from our nosy badge-wielding superhero.

  The Neo-Moorish styled church that used to stand here dissolved long before I could remember, but my dad’s full of stories, and he says the congregants dispersed after their last pastor was tried on financial fraud. The building stood empty for years, and then the suggestion for a police force to be implemented in the growing town was passed by the then St. Louis mayor.

  But it’s not the red and beige, Oriental-inspired building that lures me to this part of town. It’s the detective somewhere inside.

  “Dayton,” I say in response to the officer sitting at the front desk when he asks what I’m there for. There’s no bulletproof glass shielding him. I imagine that’s due to the lull of living and working the beat in a small-ish town.

  Picking up his desk phone, the officer speaks briefly to whoever is on the other end. My bet’s on Dayton.

  Then he hangs up and nods for me to take a seat in the waiting area behind me. I’m not alone. Keeping me company is a wild-haired, unkempt man wearing several old, worn and torn coats, and a sniffling young woman sporting a nasty bruise on her right cheek.

  Sitting across from me, I find it hard to look at anything but that bruise. Once she notices my stare, she angles her head away, smoothing her blond hair over the ugly mess. My thoughts immediately go to whoever did that to her. A boyfriend? Her husband? She’s young-looking, but it’s possible.

  My fists squeeze tightly in my lap.

  I glance over at the officer behind the desk. Have they taken her statement? Why isn’t she in an office talking to a detective? What kind of station were they running around here?

  Instead of taking care of this poor woman, Dayton’s riding my back, hounding the bigger fish and ignoring the small fry. Except abuse is hardly small fry. I add it to the reasons for despising the man.

  “Mr. Hanley, I presume,” a voice, slick and smooth, drags my attention off the battered young woman.

  Dayton is nothing like I imagined him.

  For one, he’s dressed in drab-colored shorts and a white polo shirt. Golfer comes to mind, but the man carries himself like a cop, through and through. He holds out his hand on my standing from the plastic chair, his small smile falling short of reaching his eyes.

  Those eyes, a clear blue bordering on gray, assess me. He does his full survey of me when he lowers his hand from our quick, squeeze of a grip. It’s a handshake that means business. While he studies me, I give him a good look as well.

  His temples are graying, the bits of salt and pepper folding over into curly sable. Under the station’s fluorescent lighting, his dark complexion exaggerates the gloss over his broad forehead.

  When he stretches his lips for his forced smile, all he does is bare his startling, white teeth at me and reveals himself for the asshole he’s going to be.

  I don’t balk at the show of teeth. I like teeth. It tells me he isn’t all bark. It’ll make it so much easier, more satisfying, when I push him out from his ivory tower.

  “We can speak in my office,” Dayton says. He turns on his black Nikes, heels squeaking, the bright red laces expertly tied, and like the rest of the man, polished and presentable. If he thinks his appearance will throw me off, he has another thing coming.

  My intentions are to leave his office and leave behind a message: The Hanleys own this town—are this town—and as long as Dayton wants to keep his job here, he’ll have to cooperate with me and mine.

  “Mr. Hanley, please.” Dayton gestures to a chair in front of his desk.

  I take the seat because I’m not a douche, and my mother raised with manners. Anyway, my words can be as impactful on my feet as they would be off. And this way I’m level with him.

  Leaning forward in his office chair, Dayton locks his fingers together and settles his chin on his makeshift post. “What can I help you with?”

  I smile. “See, you stole my line. I’m here to ask you if you need my assistance.”

  Dayton mimics my mirth, his lips tugging up for a fake show of easy emotion. “Ah, this must be about Derrick Smyth’s death.”

  What does he think I am? An amateur? Toss out the name of the deceased and see if I jump at the bait, quiver in my chair and start sweating buckets?

  Fucking idiot.

  “I heard.” And at his cocked brow, I explain, “Small town, detective, news travels fast. Derrick Smyth happened to graduate from the same high school I did, though he was two years older. It’s sad to hear his passing and sadder that he has no immediate family in Potentia.”

  “You know his family?”

  “Knew,” I nod. “Derrick lived with his grandmother, was raised by her when his mother slipped away to drugs and his deadbeat father ran from his duty.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that. We’ve been trying to get in touch with any family that could claim the body now that autopsy’s done.” Dayton pauses, his gaze boring through me, lips a thin, even line.

  “It was a clean, speedy report. The ME didn’t linger. Clear as mud, really, what killed the poor man: two bullets, both still lodged in his chest,” he tells me, pushing back into his plush-looking seat, one hand tapping out the two purported entry wounds, the other hanging lax over his armrest.

  “I’m sure you’ll catch the culprit.”

  “Culprits,” Dayton raises his voice, nodding. “Oh yeah, I suspect there’s more at play here—more than one man or woman running rampant. Derrick had his nose in something that got him killed. That’s what my gut is telling me.”

  “You seem to have this figured out,” I say.

  Dayton continues that terse nod. “I do. That I do.” He moves fluidly, standing and striding to the boxy window offering a small bit of light and air to the claustrophobic, dark wood-paneled office.

  His purposeful gait suggests he’s thinking several more steps ahead than I credited him. Maybe I should have considered sending Russ in to do some more reconnaissance. Still my gut is telling me no amount of recon would have leveled the playing field in my favor.

  “See that’s the thing. I don’t think I have it all figured out.”

  I keep silent; he’s going somewhere and I want him to believe I’m with him when really I have no fucking idea what’s going on and how this conversation slipped out of my hands.

  Turning from the window, he stares at me, his hands hooking behind his back. “For instance, I have no clue why you’re here, in my office.”

  I recover quickly. I’m a Hanley. I’ve dealt conning cops off me since I was old enough to understand the depth and darkness of my father’s pockets. “The funeral. I’m here to offer to foot the bill of Derrick’s funeral.”

  It’s Dayton’s turn to look shocked. He smooths out the lapse in emotional grip soon enough.

  “Is that so?” His jaw is steel. Brows wrinkled in thought. Then he nods. “Understood. I’ll see that you’re put into touch with the hospital’s morgue.”

  Standing to leave, I know when I’ve overstayed my welcome.

  Dayton calls me back at the door. “Mr. Hanley, I’m looking forward to the ceremony.”

  “I’ll do my best for Derrick.” I bob my head as way of farewell and Dayton doesn’t hinder my exit.

  When I walk to the waiting room, I note the young woman is sti
ll sitting there. She shies away from me as I pass toward the station’s exit.

  I think of Lily yet again, and the snatches of the dull headache following me around creep back. It takes me a few minutes of lying my head on the steering wheel before I start the engine and drive, steering my Lexus toward Lily’s apartment.

  I call Russ on the way. “We’ve got a problem.”

  He informs me he’s replaced Keith in watching over Lily and her friend. When I tell Russ I’m on my way over, his silence tells me he’s surprised.

  “Oh and Russ, how do you feel taking the ladies out with me and showing them our idea of St. Louis?”

  It’s high time I groveled.

  Chapter 13

  Lily

  Four weeks later

  “Luke!”

  I’m half-asleep when I open the door, but fully awake when I see who’s knocking so early on a Sunday. My boss, handsome and looking enviably fresh-faced, shakes a large, brown takeout bag and holds out a carton cup holder of sweet-smelling breakfast offerings.

  “Delivery.” Luke’s smile parts his lips to straight, white teeth. The man’s a walking Adonis. Who can blame the gods for fighting over beautiful humans?

  And not only beautiful but thoughtful; for a fake boyfriend, Luke’s a pretty affectionate man. One of these days I’ll wake up and catch myself believing this ruse. It hasn’t gotten easier over the last month. Four weeks of being Luke’s girlfriend and I’m oftentimes blinking his way, wondering how I ended up here, with him, and us, like this.

  “Not a morning person,” he says as I step aside to let him pass through to my apartment. I close the door, clasping my hands together, sensitive of my space now that he’s filling it with his overwhelming presence. Luke walks, talks—breathes power. It oozes off him, infecting anyone around him to jump to his orders.

  “We’ll need some plates,” he says, cheerily.

  "I’ll get to it.” Like it’s an order, I hop off to fetch our tableware.

  When I get back to pass the plates over, he’s setting our meal up on the coffee table. Despite living in Potentia for three years, long enough to shop for furniture, I haven’t considered getting a table. Besides, lately I eat most of my meals catching up on episodes of my favorite TV shows.