“Really? Three people said ‘yeah that guy, Leo Malone was here.’ Or did they say a white guy of average height and average build wearing a black coat and you just naturally pegged me for it?”
“Doesn’t matter. As soon as I get you in front of a lineup and they pick you out, I’m sending you up for the rest of your life,” Castillo answers as she starts patting me down. “Now I know you’re packing so where is it?”
“Front right pocket,” I reply, glad she can’t see my smirk from her vantage point.
“Where? I don’t feel anything.”
“Sorry, I tried but I guess no amount of fondling from you is going to do it for me.”
“No wonder I couldn’t find anything.”
“You know, you’re a really mean person, Castillo, and coming from me that’s saying something.”
Castillo shoves me roughly into the back of her unmarked cruiser and hauls me off to the precinct. I have to slog through the typical mountain of paperwork before she tosses me into an interrogation room and finally gets around to cluing me in on what has her even more fired up than usual.
“I know you were at that house, Malone, and I know you killed at least two of the three men that had broken in. How many people in this city carry around a goddamn sword?” she shouts.
I return her wrath with a smile. “Oh you would be surprised at how many. So you haul me in, give me the third degree, and threaten to send me to prison for allegedly saving some people from a group of murderous thugs? That seems petty even for you, Castillo.”
“No, I want to know why it was you just happened to be there too. I want to know what happened to the third perp you chased out of the house. But most of all, I want to know who the hell those people are that chased off my men claiming to be feds! I called every federal agency in the state and not one claims to have been involved, and when my guys finally do get access, the bodies are gone and no one knows who they were or where they went. The only thing left behind is a woman and two preteen kids that say one of the men tore out the throat of their father and drank his blood, then a guy that fits your description steps in and acts like he just caught a couple kids playing hooky right before he kicks one through a wall, blows the head off one, and decapitates the other. Now you tell me what’s going on!”
“You really want to know what’s going on?”
Anna leans on the small table I’m sitting behind and gets in my face. “Yeah, I want to know what’s going on.”
“What’s going on is you look like you shop at the Cagney and Lacey outlet store and your breath smells like, cigarettes, old coffee, and hooker vagina. Now get out of my face and call me when my lawyer gets here.”
I needed to piss off Castillo to get her to stop asking me questions and that certainly worked. I really didn’t expect her to hit me though. Two more detectives rush in when she punches me in the face and pull her off me. One calls for a uniform to take me to holding while they try to calm their coworker down.
“Take him to cell six!” Castillo shouts as the uniform leads me away from the interrogation room.
“Man, Castillo must really hate you,” the uniformed cop says as he leads me to a holding cell.
“Why do you say that, doesn’t she punch everyone in the face?”
“Cell six is where the really nasty guys go and the camera’s broken.”
“I see,” I reply and can’t help but smile at Castillo’s level of vindictiveness.
The officer puts me in a cell with six of the meanest-looking thugs you ever saw outside of a federal penitentiary. One white guy, two black guys, Two Mexicans, and a Native American makes the cell look like the UN assembly room for the criminally insane.
I barely have time to assess my surroundings before I hear Castillo’s voice outside the door.
“Jones, go take a break,” I hear her say just before her face appears in the small window of the cell’s solid steel door. “Malone, I see you have met your new roommates. You boys make Mr. Malone feel real welcome and I’ll see to it you each get an extra desert and a smoke break.”
Wow, that is low even for her. Anna leaves me with my new friends who are looking at me as if I am a porterhouse steak that just was tossed into a pen full of starving pit bulls. It is only a matter of time before Will springs me so I just need to play nice and wait it out. No need to create any unnecessary trouble.
I look at the group of hoodlums and say, “What the fuck are you bitches looking at?”
Shit. I really need to get my brain and my mouth on the same page. Same page? Hell, they’re not even reading the same book.
I hear Castillo a short time later as I’m laying on the steel bench plowing over my case in my head.
“Why the fuck is it that all three of my witnesses put your client at the scene then five minutes after talking to you, come up with three totally different descriptions? I swear, if you have threatened them in any way I will bury your slimy little ass beneath this precinct. You won’t even get to a trial!”
“I don’t know, detective, maybe you coerced them or fed them information so you could get back what you wanted to hear,” Will answered just as adamantly. “What I do know is that you really pissed away whatever favors you called in to get that bullshit warrant issued. And you put him in cell six? You better pray to God nothing has happened to my client or you just made us two of the richest men in the city!”
The heavy door opens with a squeal and Castillo cries out, “What the hell happened in here?”
Spots of blood dot the floor, walls, and ceiling and all six thugs have crammed themselves into the corner like they are trying to set the world record for the most convicts stuffed into an invisible phone booth.
“Leo, are you all right?” Will asks me as he looks back and forth between the battered hoodlums and me.
“Other than having my morning totally wasted, yeah I’m great. Let’s get out of here.”
“Christ, Leo, what did you do?”
“Hey, no means no,” I answer with a smile.
I thank Will for getting me out so quickly and Castillo escorts me to property to pick up the few possessions confiscated when I was booked in.
“What the hell happened in that house and what the hell happened in that cell?” She demands to know just before we reach the front doors.
I turn and look her in the eyes. “There are things in this world that if you even got a hint of their existence, you would curl up in a corner hugging your knees and cry yourself to sleep at night.”
“And I suppose you think you are one of those things?” she responds defiantly.
I shake my head. “No, I’m what give those things nightmares.”
I know Castillo senses a measure of truth in my warning and I know it is a mistake as soon as I say it, but I am pissed and I lost my patience with her meddling. You see, there are two kinds of people in this world. One kind, when faced with something truly terrifying, will run and keep running or simply collapse in fear and let whatever it is devour them. The other kind, when faced with the same thing, will stop at nothing to destroy it or die trying and I know Castillo is the one of the latter. It is that very attitude that makes a small part of me actually respect her.
Will has his car waiting out front and is good enough to give me a ride back home. He damn well should, I practically paid for the BMW by myself.
“I heard that Castillo hit you. We can make some good money off that if we can get the tape.”
“I had it coming.”
Will rolls his eyes at me. “That’s completely irrelevant in a court of law.”
“Guess that’s why it’s called the court of law and not the court of justice. If you ask me, this country would be better off with a whole lot more people getting punched in the face and whole lot less getting paid for the privilege.”
“You call getting punched a privilege?”
I shrug. “Costs a lot less than therapy and is probably more effective.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
I replace the jacket Castillo confiscated, holster my sword and hand cannon, and slip the phone I took from the runner into my pocket. My first piece of real evidence is the phone, but I need someone to crack it and get me the call logs and contacts.
Marvin doesn’t live far away and when it comes to anything involving computers and electronics, he is my go-to guy. Marvin is a certified genius. He also annoys the hell out of me, but then so does everyone else on the planet so I try to keep an open mind.
He lives in a shitty apartment in an even shittier neighborhood because he claims that having a real job is selling out. In a way, I can understand the notion since I am self-employed myself. However, one cannot put enough emphasis on the employed part.
Marvin isn’t home when I knock so I skulk around across the street and wait for him to return. I don’t have to wait long. The lean, young black man comes strolling up the walk carrying a pizza, wearing the most ridiculous clothes I’ve seen outside a circus, and walking as though he suffers from an old gunshot wound to the leg.
I don’t know what new phase of weird Marvin is going through, but I just know he’ll use it to annoy the crap out of me. I take a deep breath, knock on his door—, and am promptly ignored.
I knock harder. “Marvin, it’s Leo, open up. I know you’re here, I watched you come in with a pizza and wearing a clown suit.”
“How do I know it ain’t the cops?” comes the reply from the other side of the door.
“Because the cops won’t shoot you through the door if you don’t open it in the next three seconds,” I tell him in an agitated voice.
“Only white people believe that and I only know one white boy dumb enough to walk this neighborhood alone.” The door swings open and Marvin does a good job of looking pleased to see me. “My man Leo! You must have a job for me. I know it’s not a social visit on account of the fact that you are the most anti-social mother fucker I ever met.”
“You know me too well, Marvin.”
The young man opens the door wider to let me in. “Information is my game but I don’t go by Marvin anymore. My crew calls me Mo’ Money.”
“What crew, your World of Warcraft playmates? And what’s with the ridiculous clothes and stupid nickname?”
Marvin throws his hands up as if I am going to arrest him. “Whoa, whoa! First off, it’s called a guild and online social networks are vastly exceeding the archaic concepts of flesh and blood interactions. Secondly, my gear shows I’m a man of the streets and a straight up gangsta. Thirdly, Mo’ Money says I’m a man of means and class.”
“Firstly, it’s called being a social reject and the prime factor in the success of Chris Hanson’s career. Secondly, your clothes would look ridiculous on a clown even if they fit properly. Thirdly, going by Mo’ Money when you’re flat broke not only makes it an oxymoron, it makes you sound like you have a stutter.”
“You are a very hurtful person, Leo Malone. No wonder nobody likes you. Besides, what does a white boy like you know about being street?” Marvin asks, sulking a bit.
“Your father is the dean of medicine at Mount Sinai, your mother is a world renowned biologist and Nobel nominee, and you attended MIT at age sixteen and were tossed out at nineteen just before getting your master ’s degree in computer science for hacking into the SAT database and selling that year’s answers. Then you were accepted to NYU—only after your parents pulled more strings than a harpist—where you were promptly thrown out again for hijacking several pornography sites, hosting them on the campus servers, and selling access to other students. In street terms, you’re whiter than me.”
“Have you looked in a mirror lately? You’re so white you make Michael Jackson, may God rest his soul, look like Flava Flav,” Marvin fires back.
“As much I enjoy discussing your cultural identity crisis, I need you do something for me.” I pull out the phone and hand it him. “I need you to crack that and get me the contact information and call logs.”
“Done,” Marvin declares after tapping on the keypad for about half a second.
“Done? How are you done?”
“Easy, most cells have a default security code and almost nobody changes it.”
I ask incredulously, “And you have them all memorized?”
Marvin shrugs. “It’s a common phone.”
“Let me give you a word of advice. When someone gives you a job, don’t be too over-eager to show off your skills. You’ll make more money that way.”
“Oh, so how much you gonna give me for this?”
“Well let’s see. I usually pay you twenty an hour and it took you about two seconds to crack the phone. Let’s round it up to an even dime,” I tell him.
“Aw, damn.”
“Fortunately for you I have another job for you. I need you to hack into Vtech Pharmaceuticals and find any reference to break-ins, lost samples, or security breaches. Once you’re in I may have you look for something specific.”
I need Marvin to find out if there were any records of the Cure and of anyone has accessed them since Vincent had them interred over a decade ago.
“Vtech, that’s a whole world beyond cracking a phone,” Marvin replies.
“Think you can do it?”
The young hacker scoffs. “Of course I can, but it will take time. If I go in chopping at their system like a lumberjack I’ll have feds up my black ass with a quickness.”
“Do what you gotta do. And Marvin…”
“Yeah?”
“Despite what I said earlier, if you milk this I’ll make that limping walk of yours legit.”
CHAPTER NINE
It would take Marvin a bit longer to track down the call logs and a great deal longer to investigate Vtech’s records and security logs, so I don’t have a great deal to go on right now.
Katherine is waiting for me outside my loft when I return a short time later. She is leaning against her car dressed in a respectable pantsuit and her hair is tightly coiled atop her head.
“Ms. Goldstein, what brings you out on this unexpected visit? Surely not the view,” I say as I look around at the decaying industrial buildings that make up the majority of the local structures.
She smiles, pushes herself off her car, and takes a few steps towards me. “I just wanted to see how you were doing since you were arrested and assaulted several unpleasant detainees.”
“They snitch me out?”
“Hardly,” she replies. “They refuse to say what happened, which is unusual since almost everyone who gets arrested looks for a reason to sue the city.”
“Yeah well, I hope Castillo had a good time trying to explain all that for locking me up with a bunch of scumbags in a cell with a broken camera,” I say as I unlock and pull open the heavy door that shows almost no sign of the abuse inflicted upon it by the cops earlier. “You know she sent the guard on a ‘break’ too?”
“You don’t look to have suffered overmuch.”
“Only because I’m a nasty son of a bitch, which she did not know; although she may have a clue now. What if I had been human? We might be having this conversation in the hospital—weeks from now when I wake up from my coma.”
She tilts her head to the side and smiles at me. “What would you have me do, talk to the commissioner and have her fired?”
“No. She doesn’t deserve to be fired. Despite being a huge pain in my pasty white ass, I actually…,” I sigh and choke on the word.
“Respect her?”
“I know she hates me and being a cop I certainly give her plenty of reasons to. It would just make my life a whole lot easier if she could show me even the slightest bit of respect in return.”
“Maybe if you were a little more pleasant and put on a real jacket instead of looking like some post-apocalyptic road warrior she would. You could also do with a haircut. You’re getting rather shaggy,” she suggests and twirls a finger in an errant lock of my hair.
I’m almost struck blind by the light bulb that flashes inside my brain.
I g
rab her by the wrist and pull her hand away. “Haircut!”
“It was just a suggestion,” Katherine calls out at my back as I rapidly cross the room to my desk.
I nearly yank the drawer of my desk out getting to the pictures that lay inside. I empty the large envelopes on the desktop, flip on the big, lighted magnifying glass clamped to one edge, and start shuffling through the photos.
I compare the pictures of the hair samples I got from Raj and the ones I took myself. I already know the answer but I want Raj’s professional opinion before I get Katherine’s hopes up.
Pulling open another drawer, I take out the actual samples, put them under the magnifying glass, and take more pictures with my phone. It isn’t ideal but the magnifying glass helps me get the details I want to capture.
“Leo, what is it, what are you looking at?” she asks nervously, feeding off my obviously agitated state.
“Crime scene photos; particularly, pictures of the hair collected at them.”
“You were sure they belonged to my father. Do you think they aren’t now?”
I shake my head. “I’m still sure they’re your father’s. I’m just not sure he left them.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Give me just a minute.” I’m already dialing Raj’s number and luckily still find him at his office. “Raj, it’s Leo. I need you to bring the hair samples up on your computer. Let me send you some I took as well.”
It takes only a few key presses to send Raj the pictures from my phone to his email and even less time for him to bring them up on his screen.
“I got them, Leo. What am I looking at—other than hair, obviously?”
“Look at the ends and compare them with each crime scene photo and tell me what you see.”
“Oh my god, I can’t believe I missed that,” Raj comes back after just a brief moment of studying the pictures.
“I’m sure I already know but tell me what you make of it. I want to be sure.”
“Ok, most of the hair from the first crime scene has a clean, rounded end which is characteristic of naturally shed hair. The samples taken from the other crime scenes have bits of skin still attached showing that it was ripped out, or has clean ends that indicate that it was cut.”
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