“Screw you, Ken! I was crackin’ heads in this town while you were still in elementary school. I’m going to be sure to tell the captain how the three of you withheld information from me and did everything you could to slow down the task force. Hell, by the time I’m done telling Wyche and Drayson about how you conspired with this chick and her psycho partner, you’ll be begging to keep your jobs.” Turning to Lambert, he said, “Of course, I’d be doing you a favor, honey. After the way this loon got his last partner killed, I’m probably saving your life.”
Channing moved forward, but Harris quickly stepped in and held Channing back.
Lambert caught Channing’s gaze and said, “Untouchable?”
Channing gave a quick nod. Lambert’s right fist hammered Hatley’s nose, breaking it immediately. The high-pitched shriek exiting his throat caused the members of the testosterone-loaded SWAT team, who were taking off their tactical gear, to pause, take notice, and then laugh hysterically.
“You don’t think he’s running, do you?” asked Lambert once she and Channing were back in the squad room.
The tip line info had finally been emailed over, and Channing clicked his mouse as he scrolled through the records. He said, “I don’t know. I don’t think so. Mayton’s still out there, and we still don’t know where Abdella was actually killed. I don’t like loose ends.”
“What are you looking for in those records?”
“Porn.”
“What?” asked Lambert.
“Porn. You know…I’ll know it when I see it.”
Lambert moved her chair closer to her partner. Channing caught her flexing her hand.
“It was a nice punch.”
She gave out a little laugh and said, “It was an overdue punch. Do you think he’ll cause trouble?”
Channing smiled and said, “No, I don’t think so. Captain Wyche is a pragmatist and deep down he knows Hatley’s an idiot. And by now, the SWAT fellas have told half the department about Hatley squealing loud enough to break glass. No…I think we’ll be fine.”
Lambert put a hand on Channing’s shoulder. He turned away from the screen and met her eyes. She said, “Jackson, you should get out of here.”
Channing turned back to the monitor and said, “I don’t much feel like going home. It’s…hollow.”
“I didn’t say you should go home. You should go talk to your wife. I assume you still love her.”
“Very much.”
“Then go get her.”
“I’ll call her later tonight.”
“No, don’t call her. Go find her.”
Channing said, “No, I owe her too much to do that. If she’s ready to talk to me, then she’ll talk to me. But I’m not going to force anything on her. I’ve done enough damage.”
“Fine. Then call her. Call her now.”
Channing began to argue, but stopped himself. He pulled out his cell phone and began to dial. Before he pushed three digits, Harris broke out of his office and exclaimed, “We got him! We’ve got Mayton!”
The smell hit Channing before he saw anything. Nothing smelled quite like burned flesh. Lambert covered her mouth and nose with one arm and extended her flashlight with the other. Both detectives weaved between the trees and bushes, moving toward the other flashlights. Through the beams of light, smoke drifted off the body as it smoldered. Up a hill in the distance, floodlights illuminated the deck on the back of a house. According to Harris, it was the home of the city’s Planning Director, Treva Pinkston.
Channing spotted the man he knew was a member of the department’s Dignitary and Witness Security squad and approached him. James Specter was wiry man in his forties who had come from a Special Forces background in the military. Channing knew him from his patrol days and liked the man.
“Is this your doing, Jim?”
At seeing Channing, Specter allowed himself a rare grin and shook his friend’s hand. “As much as I’d like to claim I scared the guy to the point of spontaneous combustion, I can’t claim this one.”
Channing smiled back, but Specter could see it was forced. Channing asked, “Can you tell me what happened here?”
“This guy tried to get in the back door of the house. I was making my rounds around the perimeter when I spotted him. He was dressed all in black, was wearing a mask, and carrying a gym bag. I drew down on him, identified myself, and ordered him to the ground. He took off running through the woods, I used the radio to let the other guys here know what was going on, and I chased him while the rest of the detail secured the Planning Director. I pursued him to this point when he turned and dumped a container of gasoline all over himself. He must have been carrying it in the bag. Anyway, I’m yelling for him to stop and get down on the ground, but he finishes with the gas and then uses a lighter that I hadn’t even seen in his hand. Then…poof! He’s screaming and rolling on the ground, but what can I do? I don’t have any way of putting the guy out and you can see how far it is to the house. For a second, I thought of shooting the guy just to put him out of his misery. It took a minute, but he finally stopped screaming and I went back up to the house and got a fire extinguisher. Of course, by the time I got back, he was toast and the fire was pretty much out.”
Channing asked, “How did you ID him?”
“The gym bag didn’t burn too much. We found a wallet with his driver’s license, credit cards, and some other things. There were a few other items in the bag that were a little strange. First, I thought they were burglary tools, but one of those things sure looks like a blade.”
Channing’s eyes followed the direction Specter was pointing and Lambert, who had been listening to the two men, pointed her flashlight in that direction. The detectives saw two long spikes and a knife. Channing noted the knife did not appear to have a distinct handle, as the entire implement was made of some sort of metal. Each of the handcrafted items was as black as the night.
Specter continued, “We each had a picture of Mayton, but as you can see, the body is in bad shape. The mask he was wearing was some sort of synthetic material and melted to his face. However, he looks to be roughly the same height as Mayton.”
Channing stared at the body, his mind sorting through the new information.
“How’s Ms. Pinkston?” Lambert asked Specter.
“She’s pretty rattled. Between you and me, she strikes me as a bit of an emotional wreck. I get the impression she was pretty fragile even before people started telling her she needed a protection detail. As soon as she found out what happened out here tonight, she popped a couple Ambien and went to bed.”
Channing thanked Specter and walked away, his partner following.
“It’s not him, is it?” asked Lambert, realizing they were walking back to her car.
“No.”
“A diversion? While he escapes?”
Channing thought for moment and said, “I don’t know—maybe.”
Dead leaves crackled under their feet as they walked up a steep hill, the voices from the crime scene growing fainter. The smell of winter replaced the stench of death. As they ascended the terrain, Channing’s leg ached in the spot where he hurt it while chasing Mayton.
“We’ll call Harris and tell him the department needs to keep the protective detail on Pinkston. Mayton must have thought we would assume he’s dead and let our guard down, at least until DNA tests show that he didn’t die here tonight.”
Channing did not speak. He did not like it when pieces were missing from a puzzle. In the brief time since Mayton was identified as the killer, they had learned his wife, Cindy, had died a horrible death as cancer ate away at her body. By the time she passed away, she was a faint echo of her former self, too weak to get out of bed, and bald from hopeless treatments. Channing wondered about Wayland’s scalping. Was the removal of his hair meant to be symbolic of the effects of chemotherapy as opposed to a reference to Washington’s Landing? Did it matter? And where the hell was Abdella killed? Wayland was killed in his home; Culligan was murdered in a parking gar
age; but nobody had uncovered the Abdella scene. Then a thought occurred to Channing.
“We need to head back downtown.”
“To the station?” asked Lambert.
“No. We need to go to where it all started.”
– – –
Cigarette smoke wafted from her mouth and flowed up his nostrils. Stifling a cough, Mayton did his best to ignore her. The newscast on the television above the bar was nearly inaudible, but the caption at the bottom of the screen held the most important piece of information.
Suspect in Killing of City Officials Believed Dead.
Another blast of smoke crossed his line of sight. If smoking in places like this had been banned, nobody in here seemed to care. There were a handful of people in the bar. He wished the woman beside him would gravitate toward one of them. He reached up and rubbed a hand over his newly shaven head and then adjusted the recently purchased eyeglasses that had useless lenses.
The haggard woman said, “Now, hockey—that’s a real sport. Football is great, but it’s gotten too soft.”
Mayton took another sip of the drink sitting on the bar. He had come in here to simply watch the news and confirm his plan had succeeded, but from the bartender’s tone, it became apparent that he was expected to order a drink. Not knowing if he could tolerate any other type of alcohol, he turned to the bartender and said, “Give me something with rum in it.” Now, he was drinking a rum and Coke and becoming increasingly annoyed at the decrepit creature that had taken a seat next to him. From the minute he walked in, she had focused her attentions on him—occasionally touching his arm and licking her lips.
“It used to be a real game, back in the sixties and seventies. You didn’t hear the players whine about concussions and all that nonsense. You know what I mean?”
Mayton stared at the television and strained to hear the reporter’s voice. From what he could tell, the terminally ill Danny Berres had done his job. Mayton had known that, compared to the physical suffering Berres was going through, the pain of knowing his elderly mother would go uncared for weighed heavily on him. With no other living relatives and his money all but gone, Berres was exhilarated when Mayton had reached in his coat and handed him a sizable check. It was enough money to ensure Berres’ mother would be well cared for in the years to come.
Berres did not react particularly well when Mayton explained to him what would have to be done to earn the money. He told Berres an elaborate lie about how Treva Pinkston was using her position with City Planning to shut down any facilities that focused on helping those who are HIV-positive, including the New Heights Outreach Center. Mayton told him how Pinkston had garnered major support in the city government, and drastic action had to be taken. Mayton suggested the best way for Berres’s life to mean something, was to martyr himself in a protest against the city. He was to approach Pinkston’s house, wait for her security people to discover him, and then set himself ablaze. Mayton could only make out portions of the news broadcast, but it appeared Berres panicked and ran as far as his weakened condition would allow. However, in the end, he had done as instructed. From the caption on the screen, Berres had also failed to notice Mayton’s wallet stuffed in a pocket of the gym bag that he thought also contained burglary tools. Berres never doubted Mayton’s word that he would later send an anonymous email to all the major media outlets, explaining the noble reasons for Berres’s actions and pleading for the community to take up his cause. Mayton felt no sympathy for the man. Berres had wanted to die and Mayton was happy to help speed up the process.
“Hey—are you listening to me?”
Without looking at her—he could not bear to look at this ragged, filthy person—he said, “I don’t follow sports. I’m trying to listen to the TV.”
The woman, who was no stranger to being ignored, took offense at what was obviously a brush off. She leaned in toward Mayton. The smell of stale Marlboros and beer intruded into his space. She gave him a nudge on the shoulder and said, “No sports, huh? What are you, some sort of fag?”
“Leave me alone.”
Speaking to the bartender, who she seemed to know well, she said, “Hey, Walter! Are you turning this place into a bar for queers?”
Mayton stood to leave and placed cash on the bar.
The woman looked up at him and said, “Maybe you just need a real woman,” while she simultaneously grabbed his crotch.
Before the woman could react, he grabbed a clump of her hair and slammed her head into the oak bar. He repeated the action four more times until the woman went limp and stopped screaming. The bartender reached under the bar, pulled out an aluminum baseball bat, and took a swing at the bald man, who was deceptively fast and strong. Mayton leaned back and watched the bat fly past his nose, and then lunged at his attacker. Grabbing the man’s shirt with one hand and an abandoned beer bottle with the other, Mayton broke the bottle against the bar and then plunged it into the bartender’s throat. The man’s eyes registered shock as blood poured from his ruptured carotid artery. He dropped to the floor with a thud as Mayton turned toward the patrons seated at the tables in the middle of the room. Blood dripped from the broken glass in Mayton’s hand. When nobody dared to approach him, Mayton dropped the bottle and walked out the exit. He had never felt so alive. He had never felt so powerful. He had never felt so…godlike.
– – –
The tapping on the glass caused Marvin McKeand to bolt upright in his chair at the reception desk. Standing on the other side of the glass doors, two individuals displayed badges. Using a plastic access card, the guard unlocked the lobby door for the detectives. Aside from the occasional security guard, the main offices for the city’s Housing Authority, as well as all the other government offices located on Washington’s Landing, were all but abandoned at this time of night.
The stocky African-American man in the signature gray Stillwell Security uniform said, “Is there a problem, officers? I don’t think we had any alarms go off.”
Channing replied, “No problems. We’re sorry to bother you, but we were wondering if you always work at this building.”
“Yes, sir. I’ve been on midnights here ever since I started with the company a few months ago.”
“Have you noticed anything suspicious?”
McKeand stroked his chin and said, “Suspicious? No. This is a quiet gig. In fact, other than the townhome community, the island is pretty much deserted at night.”
Lambert asked, “Have you noticed anyone unusual hanging around?” Pulling out a picture of Mayton, she said, “Maybe this guy?”
“Nope. Like I said, it’s quiet here at night. And I read all the dayshift reports and nobody has reported anything.”
Channing was feeling deflated, but kept grasping at straws. “Have any employees reported having any problems? Anyone been threatened or harassed?”
“Is this about Mr. Abdella?” asked McKeand. “He was such a nice man. Sometimes, he’d get here early, before my shift was over, and always stopped to chat it up. Nice man. Hard worker, too.” McKeand smiled at a memory. “Sometimes the man would be preoccupied and pop in the side door at four or five on a Sunday morning, forgetting the alarm on that door was armed on the weekend. He’d call down and apologize over and over again.”
Channing turned to Lambert and gave a silent indication that it was time to go. The detectives’ hopes sank as they began to turn away.
McKeand was still reminiscing. He said, “I didn’t get to see him last Sunday. I sure wish I had gotten a chance to talk to him one last time.”
The detectives stopped in their tracks. Lambert asked the security guard to repeat what he had said.
“He set the alarm off last Sunday. But he didn’t call down that day.”
Channing thought back to the medical examiner’s report on Abdella. It had placed the time of death to be early Sunday morning.
He asked, “How do you know it was him?”
The guard’s voice became tentative. “Well, it was always him. And I wen
t and checked the door and it wasn’t damaged. Mr. Abdella had used his access card and let himself in.”
Lambert asked, “And you didn’t check to make sure it was him?”
“Well…no…I mean, it was always him on Sunday mornings. And he’s the boss, so I didn’t want to call up there and…I mean…it had to be him, right?”
“Do you have security cameras?”
“Sure,” said McKeand. “But not on the side door.”
Lambert fired off more questions at the man who was becoming distressed. “When the access cards are used, does it register in a computer? Can you tell whose card was used?”
McKeand shook his head. “Our system doesn’t work that way. All the cards are basically the same. But only employees are allowed to have a card.”
“What about former employees?” asked Lambert.
“Anyone who isn’t going to work here anymore is supposed to turn their card in to their supervisor. It’s a rule.”
“And is that rule always followed?”
The guard shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess it’s up to the person’s supervisor. Look, we have a lot of respons—”
Channing cut him off. “Is any part of this building not in use?”
“There are offices on every floor. It’s a busy place during the day.”
“Are there any large storage areas, or sections being renovated?”
“No. It’s a new building, there’s nothing to renovate. And the storage areas are really just closets.”
“And the basement?” asked Channing, not sure if he wanted to hear the answer.
“I don’t know about that. There’s a basement, but nobody goes down there. I guess I don’t know what’s down there.”
Channing’s stomach turned as he said, “Let’s go take a look.”
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