by Tom Secret
Brad dived over the seats as their headlights lit up his cab. Eastern European voices shouted over the noise of their engine and the battering rain as they pulled alongside. He looked at his windshield, and his heart stopped. It was all over! They’d see the smears!
The men traded words in rapid fire as he held his breath and stole a glance at the med bag in the footwell. Rain ricocheted off the roof, filling the cab with its tat-tat-tatting, while his mind scrambled for an option that wouldn’t amount to suicide. A warning chime announced the opening of their car door and sent a shooting pain through his chest.
“Dimitri!” Something foreign, then “Michaels!”
The car door slammed, the engine roared, voices faded and dark descended again, but Brad remained flat on his back, breathing hard and searching the windows for signs of movement. Had his prayers been answered, or was this a setup? He wasn’t hanging around to find out. Firing up the truck, he kept the lights off as he U-turned and made a left back onto Fairfield, then took the first right, onto Lincoln. A hundred yards down stood the remaining half of a multi-story parking structure, but half was enough. He drove the Ford over the debris and into the depths of the building until he found a rubble-free bay, parked and grabbed his bag.
Clinging to the shadows, he backtracked to Dragon Street, hugging the sides of the derelict buildings until Michaels’s warehouse came into view, then he froze. The pedestrian entrance was open, with a light blazing like a beacon into the frigid darkness.
The building stood alone, which meant crossing open ground to get to the door. Brad huddled into his fleece as the icy rain ran down his neck, then peeked around the corner and along the side of the building. Maybe he could get in around the back, but then what were the chances of an open window in the middle of winter?
Precisely zero, Gonzo! Just like the bloody temperature. He reached into his bag, grabbed the Taser, and flicked the switch to “arm.”
His heart was flying now, every sense on red alert as adrenaline turbo-pumped through his frazzled body. With a final glance, he sprinted across the parking lot and skidded to a halt beside the corrugated-steel structure.
Stifling his labored breaths, he listened for sounds beyond his thumping heart and the rain hammering down on the metal roof, high above. A glance through the opening, he pulled back to process the view. Nothing but open space with steel joists above and, at the rear, floor-to-ceiling metal racks filled with junk. He peeped again. A hole in the roof at the far end had given rise to an oasis of plants around a wreckage of shelving and debris, but the coast looked clear.
Brad touched the bump of Daisy’s bracelet in his breast pocket for luck, filled his lungs with the icy predawn air and dived through the doorway… as the baseball bat collided with his nose, and the world exploded in red.
As he hit the floor, Michaels’s grinning face appeared above him, and Brad pulled the trigger.
57. BLACK’S
Saturday, 6:08 a.m.
Donatello pulled through the towering wrought-iron gates and parked on the muddy verge behind one of the dozen police cruisers lining the grand driveway. Up ahead, the ambulance lights flashed hypnotically in the drizzly predawn gray while the driver shared a thermos with a uniform. Donatello flashed his shield, ducked under the cordon, and crunched through the deep gravel onto the path as Officer Kennedy came out of the house.
“You were right, Lieutenant.”
“About what?”
“Walton not being a one-off.”
“I’d rather have been wrong.”
“Sounds like someone had a bad night.”
“Kennedy, it’s six o’clock on Saturday morning; we’ve got another corpse, no perp, no clue; Colby wants my head on a platter; and that IRS creep has just sent me a truckload of bullshit tax demands, so please tell me something I should be happy about.”
“Sorry I spoke, Lieutenant.”
Donatello shook his head. “Forget it; it’s not your fault. Who’s not here?”
“Lance and Crane are on their way, and Sanjit’s at that spiritual festival he was raving about.”
“Thanks, Kennedy. Forensics?”
“Ray Ray’s in there…”
“And?”
“And I hate to be the bearer, but Colby’s charging around like a bull with two sore heads at one end and Carlson’s shoved up the other!”
“Damn it! How’d they get here… never mind. Where are they now?”
“Last I saw, Captain was heading into the Vic’s study.”
“To do what?”
“Not a clue. He shut the door.”
“Had Ray Ray cleared the room for access?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Was Carlson with him?!”
“No, Lieutenant.”
“So, what the hell is he doing contaminating a crime scene? Scratch that, where’s Carlson?”
“Haven’t seen him, Lieutenant.”
Donatello glanced at the entrance to the house. Ronnie and Lance were dead-on about Colby being a wrong-’un, and he would need to fly fast and low to avoid another collision. “Give me the layout, Kennedy?”
“The Vic’s in the kitchen. Kinda grisly. No sign of forced entry so far, and nothing seems to have been disturbed, but Ray Ray’s found semen traces in every room she’s been in.”
“Whose?”
“Don’t know yet. She said the mobile DNA tracer’s drawing a blank, but maybe she’s not using it right.”
Donatello ignored Kennedy’s swipe at his former fiancée. “Who called it in?”
“The wife.”
“She here?”
“Beach house. Said she’d been calling all evening about a personal matter, got concerned and called local PD. Patrol found the back door open and the Vic in the kitchen.
“When did she make the call?”
Kennedy rubbed his hands to fight the chill air. “Around midnight, I think.”
“And the officer found him?”
“Around five twenty this morning.”
“Terrific!” Donatello shook his head. “Cause of death?”
“The M.E.’s in there now.”
“You’re sure it wasn’t robbery?”
“Like I said, nothing looks disturbed.”
“You checked the safe?”
“We haven’t found one.”
“Well, find it. Place this big is bound to have one. Any sign of a struggle?”
“None, but someone cut the cable to the garden lights.”
Donatello scanned the enormous grounds. “This perp’s thorough, I’ll give him that. Listen, Kennedy, the Vic must have been loaded, so his lawyers Buttkick and Buttlick will likely have us locked down before breakfast. I need you to put a rocket under Lance and Crane to get here now. Then clone and copy everything you can find onto Sherlock, like yesterday. I want computers, phones, documents—the works.”
“What if Captain blocks us?”
“Come straight to me. I need to see what he’s up to in that study.”
“Got it.”
“Get the data cross-reference against Walton and Stark, okay? Find out who else these three have in common—especially if it’s Colby.”
“You think this is the same perp?”
Donatello shook his head. “It’s starting to smell like Jonah’s death. Bodies piling up, Colby butting in… so, light a fire under Lance and Crane—oh, and, Kennedy.”
“Lieutenant?”
“Where’s the study?”
“Upstairs, first door on the left.”
“Thanks.” Donatello strode into the double-height hallway, then stopped. At the far end stood three uniforms playing marker for the corpse. On his right, the staircase lead to a bloodbath with Colby. Rough choice when all he wanted was to be home in bed pushing out Z’s. What could he do, anyway? If Colby was up there shredding papers, it would be his word against his superior’s, and given the current scores on the doors, Colby would beat his ass into a top hat. Anyway, didn’t some philoso
pher once say if you want to win a war, don’t fight one?
He headed for the kitchen, instincts screaming that the perp was the same and he was about to see another liver displayed on the cutting board. He braced himself, barged through the door, then took two steps backward as the fumes brought tears to his eyes. He was wrong. This time, the whole hog was on display, complete with blood-caked shirt, severed earlobe tossed on the table, and the burnt stumps of his legs dangling inside a metal bucket.
58. DRAGON SLAYER
Saturday, 6:16 a.m.
Brad lay motionless on the concrete floor, drawing shallow breaths like razors down his parched throat. He tried to force his eyes to open through the searing pain while his brain ran a systems check over his body to assess the damage. Through tiny slits, he peered at blurry metal objects high above, rolled his head sideways and stared at a dark puddle, that made his ear feel warm and sticky. He moved his tongue forward along the roof of his mouth, over the broken stubs where his front teeth had been, to the deep gash in his already bulbous upper lip.
Wiggling his fingers, then toes, his eyes followed the dark pool away from his face and settled on something small and dark a half dozen feet away. Must be the stun gun. Farther away lay something more substantial… long and undulating… Michaels. Shit! Gotta move! He raised his head and slumped back with a groan as the remains of his nose erupted in agony.
Distant voices echoed through the cavernous warehouse and percolated through the white-hot pain, into his brain. They came again, louder this time, crying, wailing. Children’s voices! His children! Move your dead ass, numbnuts, move! He forced himself to roll onto his front and grimaced as he got to his hands and knees.
Like a fallen soldier dripping a trail of blood across the floor, he crawled toward the stun gun, praying his enemy would stay down. Almost there, and for once the gods were listening as he pressed the reset, waited for the whirring to stop and the light to turn green, then fired a lightning bolt into the prone man.
Michaels’s body arched upward, eyes flashing open as a silent scream caught in his gaping mouth, before he slumped back down, spasming from the aftershocks.
Brad staggered to his feet, spotted his bag, and dripped a zigzag trail of blood across the floor. Clutching the soft leather handle, he stumbled back to Michaels, reached inside for the syringe of phenobarbital, and removed the green sleeve. He squirted a little into the air to remove the bubbles and plunged the needle into Michaels’s neck.
59. WHERE’S MICHAELS
Saturday, 8:13 a.m.
Randall turned his Chrysler into Michaels’s parking lot, pulled to a halt next to Snyderman’s car, and wound down the window. “Have you been inside yet?”
Snyderman shook his head. “We were waiting for you.”
“Why? Michaels’s car is here, so, he must be inside.”
“He doesn’t answer his cell or the warehouse phone.”
Castro’s eyes darted between Randall and Snyderman. “Something isn’t right.”
Randall gingerly worked his way out of the car and hobbled through the drizzle, toward the entrance. “Well, quit yakking and let’s find out, shall we ladies?”
“Don’t start, Cilcifus!” Snyderman called after him as he closed his car door.
“Just shut up and get over here. What’s wrong with you, anyway? Waiting for me to come hold your dicks?” He reached the corrugated-metal structure, pressed the buzzer, and waited while the shrill sound echoed around the warehouse and back through the closed door, then pushed again, as Castro and Snyderman reached him.
“Have you tried the handle?” Snyderman said.
Randall shot him a withering look. “What am I, your gofer? You try it.”
Snyderman’s big hand grabbed the handle and pushed. The door swung silently open, but none of them moved.
“What’s that on the floor?” Castro whispered, peering into the darkness. “And why’s it so quiet?”
“Michaels!” Snyderman called, reaching inside the door for the light switch.
“Where’s all the crying?” Castro said. “They’re always crying.”
“You’ll be crying in a minute if you don’t shut up!” Randall shuffled through the doorway and approached the wet area on the floor. Lowering himself gently onto his haunches, he ran his finger through the liquid, testing its consistency. He sniffed. “It’s bleach!” He rose, hobbled to the back of the warehouse, flung open the door to the cavernous storage room beyond, and froze.
The windowless room was vented through a large grime-caked ceiling duct, fifteen feet above. Lining the three walls were sixty, four-by-four-foot metal cages—and they were empty.
Randall whipped around as Snyderman and Castro approached. “Where the fuck are the screamers!”
Their faces dropped as they peered into the empty room. Snyderman pushed past and walked along the rows, checking each lock as he went. “They’re gone!”
“That’s the best you can do, Einstein? Of course, they’re gone! But where are they, and where’s that maggot Michaels? Get him on the phone now!”
“He wasn’t picking up five minutes ago,” Snyderman said.
“Just do it!”
Castro fumbled with his cell phone, hit some buttons, and held it to his ear. “Voicemail.”
“His house!”
Castro dialed again. “Same. This is really bad!”
Randall could hardly breathe. “No shit, Shamus! Snyderman, you said Piest and his gang were bringing fifteen more last night, right?”
“That’s correct.”
Randall studied Snyderman’s expression for a tell. “So what are you not telling me?”
“What are you talking about?” The big man shuffled uncomfortably.
“Last night, you said you were going to call the Westside gang and tell them I’m screwing them over. Now there’s an empty warehouse, and forty-three screamers have disappeared. Bit of a coincidence, wouldn’t you say?”
“Are you suggesting I had something to do with this?”
“Did you?” Randall’s cheek twitched furiously.
“If anyone’s trying to do the dirty, Cilcifus, it’s you with your despicable auction! What happened with Black last night, anyway? You’re keeping mighty quiet about your meeting.”
Randall looked away. “Parasite didn’t show.”
“Well, how convenient! Did you call him?”
“’Course I called him, you great blimp. He didn’t pick up… wait a minute. That’s it! The Westside gang are cutting us out and Black’s in on it.” Randall hobbled into the open warehouse.
“Cilcifus, wait!” Snyderman called.
“What!”
Snyderman walked over. “Think about this. Rohn’s dead, Michaels has disappeared along with the cargo, and Black was supposed to meet you and didn’t. If we go charging over to accuse Piest of taking the goods back and we’re wrong, he’ll slaughter us on the spot.”
Randall felt the blood surge to his head. “Who knew the screamers were here, eh? Black is their banker as well as ours, Michaels is a slippery prick who’d sell his own grandmother, and then there’s you and your buddy Piest!”
“Don’t forget Walton,” Castro said. “Why’s he dead?”
“How the fuck should I know! Maybe Piest whacked him. Who cares! Do something useful for once and find Michaels, will you.”
“What are you going to do, Cilcifus?”
“Piest and his gang are cutting us out, so I’m going to teach him some manners!”
60. FAMILY TIES
Saturday, 8:20 a.m.
“Mommy, Mommy, Mommy!” Lilly rushed from the pickup and leaped into her mother’s open arms.
Brad studied Jack, sitting motionless in the passenger seat with his safety belt still on, his cheeks flushed and a distant, tortured look in his eyes. “Shall we go inside, Son?”
Jack blinked slowly, deliberately. Then, without looking at Brad or saying a word, he pressed the red button to release his seat belt, opened th
e door, and stepped out onto the gravel.
Lola swept Lilly up on her arm and moved toward Jack with tears streaming down her pale cheeks as she wrapped her free arm around his shoulders, hugging him tightly. Lilly grabbed her brother’s neck with her tiny hand and buried her face in his hair as she sobbed with her mother; but Jack stood motionless, arms hanging limply by his sides.
Brad stood beside the pickup, watching until Lola looked up and focused on him.
“What happened to your face?” she said through the tears.
“I got hit… that’s all.”
“Where are your teeth?”
Brad felt his own eyes well up. Of all his thoughts of the past two hours, none of them had been about his looks. “I think I’ll need a new set.” He touched the caked blood around the swollen lips and the smashed nose. “Don’t look at me, okay? I need fixing up.”
Lola buried her face in Lilly’s hair, her body convulsing as the sobs racked her.
“You should get them into a hot bath and make sure they’re not hurt.”
Lola looked at him for a moment, then put her arm around Jack’s shoulder and led him toward the front door, with Lilly hugging her neck.
“Did my father call?” Brad asked after her.
Lola shook her head but didn’t look back.
Brad watched his family walk away, then called out, “I’ve got… something in the back of the pickup I have to get rid of.”
Lola turned. “I don’t want you coming back, Bradley.”
Brad leaned on the truck as his legs buckled. “What are you talking about?”
“I’m saying I don’t think you should come back. I can’t do this anymore, so go do what you’ve got to do and get yourself looked at in the hospital, but don’t come back here, okay?”
He tried to swallow the lump in his throat. “But you’re my family! I’ve just got our children back and done what you wanted all along. I’ve taken care of the people that hurt us!”
Lola swiped her sleeve under her nose. “I don’t care anymore. It’s too late. None of this should have happened, and none of it would’ve happened if you’d acted when I told you to. I’m sorry, but I can’t be around you anymore, not after what you’ve put us through.”