by L. A. Witt
Speaking of man-made, though . . . “What about by the power plant?” I tapped it with my index finger. “They’ve got a big cooling pond right next to them. Vic took me fishing there a few times, and there are some houses pretty close by.”
“Huh.” Paula peered at the map. “Okay, maybe. It’s worth checking out. We could send some uniforms to—”
“We’re going.” Andreas’s tone of voice brooked no argument. “Darren and me. Can you look up all the county roads near there, take a look at their composition?”
“Divide and conquer?” Paula asked, apparently rhetorically, because she kept going. “Got it. You boys have fun tramping around a swampy pond.”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence.”
“I’m confident that I’m going to have more fun than you,” she said. “Coffee for me, then road work. Darren, you want some for the ride?”
“Maybe when I get back.” I felt okay—tired, but I was keeping it together. Paula left, and I turned to Andreas. “What will we do if it smells swampy?”
“Start looking for the right road, the right house . . . anything that stands out.”
“If they have a garage—”
“I’m not expecting to find a sign that says, ‘Kidnapping Fuckers Here, Please Shoot Us in the Face,’” Andreas snapped. “But we’re not going to know if we don’t go and check. It’s better than sitting around here all day.”
I held up my hands. “Okay. Fine. Let’s go.”
We were halfway down the elevator when he said, “Sorry. I’m just . . .”
“You don’t have to apologize, I get it.”
“I am apologizing, though. I feel like we just got a huge break, but that I’m not smart enough to put it together.”
“Hey, no.” The elevator opened into the parking garage, but I pushed the Hold button and reached for Andreas’s hand. “We’re a team, right? So there’s no ‘you’ failing at anything. We succeed together, we regroup together, we solve this together.”
“That simple, huh?”
“Oh shit no, are you kidding me? I’m going fucking nuts,” I confessed. “I can only imagine how you feel. But I’m serious about the togetherness part.”
Andreas smiled, and I felt like I’d accomplished something huge. “Very eloquent.”
“I’m a goddamn poet.” I leaned close to him, and he reeled me in for a fast kiss, over too soon. I resisted the urge to press for more. “I guess we should—”
“Jesus Christ! Would you two stop holding up the elevator?” Detective Schneidmiller, one of our more vocal critics, stopped in front of the open door, glaring even as he panted a little. “My knees can’t take another round of those stairs!”
“Ooh, you should have those looked at, might be time for a replacement,” I said as I released the button and walked out.
“Jackass! Just needed to get my damn jacket, had to hike all the way down here and found you two canoodling, I don’t need this shit—” The elevator door closed on his tirade, and I turned to Andreas.
““Canoodling.’ Is that making out while in a canoe?”
“Darren.”
“I’m serious,” I said as we got into my car. “It sounds like the sort of thing you’d do while balancing a paddle across your lap. Also, how old is Schneidmiller? Doesn’t he still have to pass a physical?”
“You can paddle me across your lap when this is all over if you stop talking about Schneidmiller.”
“Done. Sold. No take backs.” It was nice, bantering like this. Almost enough to pull my mind away from the task at hand, but there was no avoiding it for long. It was a short trip to the Wright County Power Plant, but figuring out where exactly to go once we got there was a little trickier. In the end I parked at the trail head for the activity area. At the very least, we could establish whether the smell was right, and Andreas wouldn’t have to negotiate any mucky water on his crutches.
“Oh wow. It’s . . .”
“Swampy. Yeah.”
“Like, really.” The stench of rotting vegetation was almost overpowering, actually. “It must be the thermal heating effect. The power plant speeds up the rate of decay because of the increased temperature of the water.”
“Jesus. And you and your dad fished here?”
“I didn’t say we caught anything.” I wrinkled my nose. “Actually, this might be why we never came back.”
“No kidding.”
A middle-aged woman with a corgi on a leash chuckled as she passed. “It’s not like this all the time,” she assured us. “Just at this time of year. As soon as the rains come, the smell evens out some. And in the winter you don’t notice it at all!”
“Do you live near here?” Andreas asked.
“I have for almost twenty years.”
“Are there a lot of housing developments in the area?”
She made a face. “Not many new ones since the city started redirecting funds toward more ‘urban renewal.’ Who wants to live downtown though, that’s what I say. Too crowded, the traffic is terrible, and there’s so much crime!” Oh, she had no idea.
“But there are some?” Andreas pressed.
“Of course. This is Wright County’s farm country! Plenty of people want to live out here.”
“Are any of the roads unpaved?” I asked.
“Goodness.” She chuckled. “Most of them are, once you get off the main drag. It’s a bit of a maze out here, to be honest.”
“Great,” Andreas said dully. “Thanks for your help.”
“Well, I don’t know how much help I’ve been, but you’re welcome. If you two are thinking about buying,” she added with a little twinkle in her eye, “I know of a couple nice places that aren’t on the market yet, but whose owners would give you a good deal.”
I blushed to the tips of my ears, and Andreas had to answer for both of us. “We’re not looking right now, but thanks for the advice.”
“You’re welcome!” She continued on her walk, and despite how little information we’d actually gotten out of her, Andreas seemed to have regained his equilibrium.
“Is it the thought of me or a mortgage that has you terrified?”
“Neither!” Gah, why did I sound squeaky? “Neither, just . . . houses. Buying. Things. It’s all so . . .”
“Adult?”
I opened my mouth to retort, but then had to stop and think about it. Huh. Maybe that was the issue. I’d rented ever since I moved out of my parents’ house—hell, I still thought of their house as “home.” It certainly wasn’t the prospect of living full-time with Andreas; we were practically doing that already. “Yeah. Adult.”
Andreas grinned. “Welcome to your thirties. Now—” His phone rang, and he answered it with a sigh. “Paula, we need help narrowing things down.”
Her voice was loud enough to carry to me: “No, you need to come back here.”
Andreas’s grip on the phone tightened. I moved in to hear better. “Why? What’s happened? Has one of the kids—”
“No, no one else has turned up. Not one of your kids, at least. Sorry.”
“What is it, then?”
“Some guy who calls himself Pitbull walked in a minute ago. He says he has information about the case, but he’ll only speak to you.”
Our eyes met incredulously. “Are you sure about that?”
“Would I lie about some idiot named Pitbull?”
“We’re on our way.”
It was a weird feeling to be in a hurry to speak to Pitbull without also being in a hurry to rip out his throat. Though that option was still very much on the table if he was wasting my time, and the list of things that weren’t a waste of my time was exceptionally short. He’d better be praying like hell that whatever he had to say was on that list. Especially since he was playing the “I won’t talk to anyone but you” game, and he wouldn’t talk to me on the fucking phone.
While Darren drove like a bat out of hell, I made calls. I had the captain send uniforms out to the area around the power plant. Wh
at they were looking for, I couldn’t be sure. Just canvas every house. Every pedestrian. Every possibly sentient piece of livestock. If Emily and Casey were close enough to smell the pools outside the power plant, then somebody out there had to know something. If they didn’t, then . . .
Then that was something I couldn’t think about right now.
As the precinct came into view, I called Paula to find out where Pitbull was waiting for me.
“I stuck him in an interrogation room,” she said dryly. “It was the only way I could make sure he was alive when you got here.” I didn’t know if that meant he was driving her crazy or everyone else in the building, but I wasn’t surprised either way.
“Which room?”
“Three.”
“All right. We’ll be there in a minute.”
Darren turned into the parking garage, and I thought I heard Paula trying to add something just before I hung up, but if it was important, we’d be face-to-face in the next three minutes anyway. Wouldn’t be the first time one of us had hung up on the other.
Darren let me off at the elevator, then went to park. I considered going up without him, but in the interest of not killing Pitbull with my bare hands, I decided it was better to have my cooler-headed partner with me.
He didn’t make me wait long. The car door had barely slammed before he was jogging across the garage, and he stopped beside me a second before the elevator opened.
On the way up, he stared at the numbers above the door. “How are you holding up?”
“I could ask you the same thing.”
Gaze still fixed on the numbers, he exhaled. “When this is all over, I think we could both use a drink.”
“Sounds good to me.” I didn’t even know if he meant after we’d found my kids or after his brother had passed, but I suspected there would be some serious drinking after both of those happened.
The elevator opened, and Darren kept the doors from closing while I hobbled out. Then he followed me.
“Pitbull’s in interrogation room three,” I said. “Paula put him there to—”
“Andreas!” An all-too-familiar voice stopped me in my tracks so fast, Darren nearly collided with me. “There you are!”
I blinked, and sure enough, right in front of me with her dark hair loose and her eyes wide, standing beside the captain with a Styrofoam cup in her hand, was my ex-wife.
Marcy came closer. “What’s going on? Nobody will tell me—”
“I have to go talk to someone,” I said tersely, and continued past her. “Give me twenty minutes, and—”
“Twenty minutes, hell. I need to know—”
“You will.” I didn’t stop. “But—”
“My son is in danger, Andreas,” Marcy snarled. “Don’t you dare shut me out right now!”
I halted and, as much as my crutches allowed, spun around. “Marcy, there are two choices right now. One, I can stand here and brief you on everything I know. Or two”—I gestured sharply over my shoulder—“I can get in there and talk to someone who might have a lead on where Casey and Emily are.”
The anger immediately evaporated from her expression. So did most of the color.
“Okay.” She waved me on. “Go. Just . . . promise me you’ll tell me something when you can.”
“I will.”
I didn’t wait for a response or another dismissal, and continued—faster—toward the room where Pitbull waited for me. Admittedly, I felt guilty for blowing her off. We had a cordial relationship, and she had every right to be worried sick.
But time was of the essence. Every minute I spent explaining things to her was another minute I didn’t have whatever nugget of information Pitbull—if he valued the current shape of his skeleton—had come to give me.
Outside interrogation room three, I stopped for a second to glance through the two-way glass.
Pitbull was pacing the room. He was jittery, alternating between folding his arms and wringing his hands. He’d always been the twitchy type, but I hadn’t seen him that nervous or agitated since the night I’d shoved a pistol up under his chin.
Darren touched my shoulder. “How do you want to play this?”
I swallowed. “We let him talk. See what he has to say.” In a low growl, I added, “And he’d better have some useful information.”
“Andreas.” Darren’s hand was heavier on my shoulder. “Keep your cool with him. Even if he is fucking with us.”
“We don’t have time to be fucked with.”
“And we have even less time for you to be locked up for assault and battery.”
I stiffened. He . . . did have a point. “All right. I won’t touch him. Let’s go.”
He didn’t hesitate. Without a word, he opened the door, and then followed me into the room.
Pitbull spun as we came in. “Finally. Jesus.”
“Don’t start.” I stopped, leaning on my crutches. “If you’d been willing to talk to me on the phone—”
“I didn’t want anyone hearing. This place is crawling with cops on my friends’ payrolls.”
Darren and I exchanged uneasy glances.
Pitbull came closer and dropped his voice. “The people who snatched your kids? They were pros.”
“Tell me something I don’t know.” Seriously. Or I will fucking kill you.
“I mean, I don’t know for sure. Okay?” He showed his palms. “But some guy who owed me money, he came by the club and paid off his whole loan. All at once. Cash. Interest.” He swallowed. “Said he’d just hit the jackpot. Couple of drinks later, he’s telling war stories about jobs, and shows us a big old bruise on his ribs. Said he got it grabbing some cop’s kids.”
My blood turned cold. “What else did he say? Anything?”
Pitbull shook his head. “Naw, man. I didn’t want to grill him in front of my people.”
“Do you know where I can find him?”
“Yeah. He goes by Brando. Real name’s Brandon Wallace. He’s got a studio. Little shithole over on Twelfth and Pax.”
“You know the apartment number?” Darren was already writing it down.
“Uh . . .” Pitbull thought for a second. “Four. Definitely four.”
“You sure?”
He nodded.
Darren and I glanced at each other. Then he gave a subtle nod and started for the door. “I’ll get the car.”
A second later, the door thumped shut behind him.
Pitbull gulped, backing away from me. “I ain’t lying, Detective. I swear.”
“I know.” I looked him right in the wide, terrified eyes. “Because I’m pretty sure you’re smart enough to know what’ll happen if you send me on a wild-goose—”
“I do. Absolutely.” His back met the wall, and I was legitimately shocked he didn’t piss himself. “I don’t know what else you want.”
“I want you to tell me if there’s anything you’ve left out. Any details.”
He chewed his lip, staring at the floor between us. Then, “No. No, man. That’s it. But . . .”
I raised my eyebrows as he raised his gaze.
Pitbull shifted nervously. “After you all cleaned house? With the cops who was dirty? You didn’t get ’em all.”
“I can’t imagine we did.”
“Yeah, but . . . just . . .” He hesitated. “Rumor has it, you didn’t get all the dirty cops. And some of the guys you didn’t catch aren’t right in the head. Like, scary not right in the head.” Pitbull swallowed. “Just be careful who you trust, man.”
It was almost funny to hear those words from a loan shark who’d roughed up the mother of my daughter. Any other day, it might’ve been funny. Today, it just made me cold.
“‘Brando’? Really?” Darren laughed dryly as he drove us toward Twelfth and Pax. “These guys need to be more creative with their nicknames.”
It was the first thing he’d said since we’d left the precinct. The silence had been weird. Not that anything was particularly comfortable right now, but he was uneasy in a way I had
n’t seen before. And not the way he’d been after he’d come from visiting his brother.
“You all right?” I asked.
He glanced at me. “Yeah. Why? I was just thinking the guy’s got a weird nickname.”
I didn’t speak. Just watched him. He squirmed in the driver’s seat, staring straight ahead.
Then he exhaled. “You’re going to talk to your ex-wife, right?”
Oh. That.
“Of course.” I shifted my gaze toward the GPS, which said we were eight minutes from Brando’s apartment. “Right now, she’s on her way to the hospital to see Ben and Erin. And we’re hopefully on our way to find out who hired someone to kidnap my kids.”
Quiet again.
“Do you think I should’ve stopped and explained things to her?”
“No. No.” He sighed, shaking his head. “No, and I don’t know why it’s bothering me so much that she’s here.” He ran a hand through his hair, and for the first time, let it show just how bone-deep tired he really was. “I think my brain’s just all fucked up right now.”
I gently squeezed his thigh. “I know. And you don’t need any of this right now. You should be taking care of your family.”
“No. I need to be helping you find yours.”
“I appreciate it. You know I do.” I gave another light squeeze. “But if you need to be with your parents and your brother, then go.”
The look he shot me said nothing if not Are you sure? Like he was really considering taking me up on it. But then he shook his head again and faced the road. “No. There’s nothing I can do to help my brother, and Vic is taking care of my mom. At least with this, I can do something.”
I envied him that confidence. Me, I’d never felt more helpless in my life.
Brando’s apartment was, so far, living up to Pitbull’s description. It was in one of the severely depressed neighborhoods near the industrial part of town. One of those neighborhoods the more affluent citizens wanted razed because they were crime-riddled eyesores, or insisted didn’t exist at all.
The building was visibly crumbling. It looked like a three-story fire hazard, cobbled together out of something slightly sturdier than cardboard, with bare light bulbs hanging in the hallway and stairwell, at least two of which were burnt out. The interior walls had as much graffiti as the exterior, and judging by the distinctive smell of spray paint, some of it was recent.