by Bob Mayer
“Chase?” Porter was staring at it. “What are you going to do?”
Chase had made a decision while sitting in the commissioner's office. The case of Rachel Stevens might have destroyed his career, but there was something he could still salvage out of the entire affair.
“Something I should have done a long time ago.”
* * * * *
Chase drove down Second Avenue more out of habit than desire. He could see the shades were drawn on Sylvie’s apartment and he was about to turn the corner when he saw someone come out the front door of the building.
Nicholas Tai.
Chase stopped the Jeep, and then backed up, double-parking. Tai saw him and paused, waiting.
“Super-cop,” Tai said, as Chase walked up to him.
“Not anymore.”
“Fucking up?”
“Are you?”
Tai smiled, but Chase could see his stance as he spread his feet ever so slightly. Chase took a step closer.
“Sylvie’s my friend,” Tai said.
“That all?”
“No.” Both men turned slightly as Sylvie spoke from the open door to the lobby of the apartment building. “No, Chase. He’s my boss. And I just fucked him. Too much information. Or not enough?”
“For how long?” Chase asked.
Sylvie looked her watch. “About forty-five minutes.”
Chase felt his face tighten.
Sylvie stepped out of the door, between the two men. “I got your note, Chase. And the flowers. And the copy of the signed settlement. The note was nice. Thank you. Same with the flowers. The settlement—why should I care?”
Before Chase could say anything, he saw her eyes soften and she took a step toward him, putting a hand on his arm. “I’m sorry. But you kept me out of your life, why do you think you have a right to look into mine?”
“I did what I had to do,” Chase said.
“So did I,” Sylvie said. “You have a secret life. I have one too. But yours could get you killed. That was a little hard to deal with. And you probably never thought of me having to deal with it. Did you?”
Chase looked her in the eyes. “No.”
Sylvie nodded. “Thank you for being honest.” She looked over her shoulder at Tai. “Could you give us some privacy?”
Tai nodded, but he was staring at Chase. “Sure. See you at the club.” He walked away.
“You don’t have to go to the club again,” Chase said.
Sylvie gave a sad smile. “What? Are you going to take care of me, Horace Chase?” She didn’t wait for an answer. “Come upstairs.”
Chase followed her. They went into the apartment and to her bedroom. She went to her wicker chair and curled into it. Chase sat on the edge of the bed.
Sylvie placed her hand on her chest. “Chase, you’ve got a dark place in you right here. I know. I’ve got one too. I can talk about the money I get for stripping, but there’s something else that brought me to the Silver Satyr. At least mine hasn’t killed anybody, though.”
“Sylvie, I only--”
“Chase, I know you had to do what you had to do. But you’ve put yourself in positions where you have to do things like Wyoming and the Barnes’ house. And before that Afghanistan and Iraq.”
“I didn’t want--”
“No--” she cut Chase off. “I said I have to dance for the money, Chase, and it was a lie. I have choices and you have choices. We just don’t believe we do. Sometimes we take the easier way; sometimes we take the way we were twisted into taking. Our sex was never normal because we weren’t normal. Doesn’t take a shrink to figure that out.”
Chase could see that her face was drawn and he realized she was tired, very tired. And that she had been crying. A lot. “I didn’t fuck Tai. I said that to hurt you. I’m sorry. Chase, did you ever wonder why I went out with you in the first place?”
“Well--” he decided to be honest again. “Not really.”
“When you came in to question us about that kid who got beat up I could tell something about you. That you gave a damn. You didn’t come into the dressing room to get a cheap thrill. Oh, I know that’s what you told Porter and maybe even what you told yourself, but you gave a damn, I could tell. You did more than go through the motions. That meant you cared about somebody other than you. Even if they were just a case. That’s why we went out the first time.”
“Why’d you stay with me?”
“Because you were as broken as me.”
Chase took a deep breath.
“What’s in that letter from your mother?”
“She wrote to tell me she was dying.” And that I was broken, Chase thought.
“You didn’t go see her, Chase.”
“I was at war.”
She nodded. “I know. But when you came back from war, did you go where she was buried?”
“They didn’t bury her,” Chase said. “She was cremated and her ashes spread by boat into the water of the Intracoastal off-shore of the house in South Carolina she mentions in her letter.” Chase was surprised to feel tears in his eyes.
“Did you go there?”
Chase couldn’t speak. He could only shake his head.
“I’m broken, Chase. I’ve known it for a long time. The problem is you’re more worried about your relationship with me than with your relationship with you, aren’t you?”
“I was.”
“Do you see how misplaced that is?”
Chase nodded again, sealing his fate.
“You need to start with yourself, not me. You can’t give me or anyone else anything until you mend yourself.” She stood. She looked down at Chase. “Tell me one thing.”
“What?”
“What did your mother do?”
“She was a dancer.”
Sylvie smiled. “It’s not too late for you, Horace.”
And then he left her apartment.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Chase drove east to the warehouse district and parked a slight distance away where he could watch the door. Since he was suspended, he had nothing but time. In a way, by suspending him, the chief had freed him, cutting the chain of duty that held Chase to his Boulder PD desk. He didn’t know exactly what he expected, but Merck magazine and Lou Thorne seemed like a good place to start.
Forty-five minutes went by, less time than he had spent on his belly in the alley two weeks previously, when the door swung open and who should walk out but Baldie, the ex-SEAL, his ebony skull gleaming in the sunlight, his arm in a cast.
Chase pulled his Glock out and exited the Jeep. Baldie was walking away from Chase, in no big rush, heading toward a red Camaro, no idea Chase was closing. Baldie must have sensed something at the last second because he started to turn, which only served to jam the barrel of the 10mm pistol into the side of his face, instead of the back of his head.
“Whoa! Take it easy.”
Chase quickly backed off, getting four feet between, making it difficult for Baldie to strike before Chase could pull the trigger and have a bullet heading his way. Bullets beat hands or feet every time. A trickle of blood ran down Baldie’s cheek where the front sight post of Chase’s gun had ripped skin.
He touched the spot, pulled his hand away and stared at the small smear of blood on his fingers. “Damn, man. You messed with the face.”
“’The face’? You’re lucky you still have a head.”
He shook his head. “Hey, you got no issue with me.”
Chase raised his eyebrows.
“Really,” Baldie insisted. “I wasn’t going to hurt you. Just doing what I’m told. You know all about that, right?”
“Doing what who told you?”
“Me.”
Chase recognized the voice behind him right away-- Lou Thorne. Chase edged sideways, keeping an eye on Baldie while taking in the old man who was about ten feet away. He had a cigar in his hand and he poked it back toward his building. “Why don’t we sit down and chat like civilized people?”
“Was it
civilized when you sent this asshole to threaten me?”
Thorne laughed. “Hell, son. He wasn’t threatening you. He was sent to motivate you.” He nodded at Baldie. “Jimmy, go to lunch. I’ll take care of this.”
“You fucked my arm up, man,” Jimmy said, glaring. “Payback is a medevac.”
“Jimmy,” Thorne said with a warning in his tone.
“Try payback and it will be the morgue for you,” Chase said, holstering his gun. “I’m done fucking around.”
* * * * *
The pit bulls didn’t leap at Chase when he entered Thorne’s office this time. They just lifted their ugly little heads and growled deep in their throats. Thorne walked behind his desk and Chase took the chair he’d had the only other time he’d been there.
“Motivate me?”
“You’re slow, sonny, real slow.” Thorne’s gravelly voice and Chase’s new nickname grated on his nerves. “Expected to see you here a while ago.”
“I was busy.”
“Yeah, read about it in the papers. Boulder police actually nabbing a killer. Well, alleged killer. Outstanding. Although wasn’t Karr an alleged killer?”
His sarcasm wasn’t lost on Chase. “Why’d you expect to see me here a while ago?”
“I was impressed you came to talk to me about the Patriots. Most Feds got their head stuck so far up their ass they wouldn’t ask for help from anyone, never mind someone like me. I thought I gave you enough to go on the first time you were here, but you didn’t do shit with it. So I sent Jimmy and his buddy to shake you up. Figured they’d get your blood flowing. You’d either kick some ass or be a pussy and wimp out.”
“By threatening me?”
Thorne shrugged. “It’s a technique.”
“I’ve been threatened by professionals.”
Thorne frowned. “CIA?”
Chase nodded, not too surprised Thorne had leapt to that conclusion.
Thorne frowned. “Figured they’d come nosing around sooner or later. Fucking spooks aren’t exactly what I’d call professionals, though.”
“What the hell is going on?”
“I don’t really know all of it, but what I do know says it isn’t good.”
Chase had gotten over his initial anger and settled back in the chair, waiting for Thorne to fill him in.
“Rivers is in town,” Thorne began.
“I know.”
“He’s the one that called the Patriots in to the sheriff’s office when they were heading back to Wyoming.”
Chase hadn’t known that. “So he set that deputy up to get shot.”
Thorne shook his head. “No. He set the Patriots up to get caught before they could make it out of Colorado. Both those guys in that Blazer had outstanding warrants. Rivers didn’t know that sheriff’s office was going to be so incompetent about stopping them and get one of their people killed.”
“The best-laid plans--” Chase didn’t finish the rest of the sentence, realizing he’d already done one stupid cliché in Gavin’s office.
“I imagine he feels bad about the deputy and the troopers wounded in Wyoming.”
“You ‘imagine’?” Chase asked. “How do you know all this?”
“I talked to him just after he got in town. We met up in the hills.”
“Before or after the shooting at the Barnes’ house?”
“Before. And that was Vladislav.”
Chase shook his head. “I don’t think he shot them. I think Rivers did.”
Thorne grunted, which meant what, Chase had no idea. He hadn’t spoken Neanderthal since leaving the Infantry.
“He shot a baby, for Chrissakes,” Chase added.
“If he did, it was an accident.” For the first time, Thorne had lost his hard edge.
“Rivers is after Vladislav,” Chase summed up what he’d already figured out on his own. The only thing Thorne had added was the connection to the Patriots.
Thorne nodded. “Rivers been after that shit-bag for two years. Tracked him to the States. To Colorado. Then tracked him here to Boulder. Asked me to help pinpoint him. I told him I wasn’t going to get into that. To let the law handle it. That’s why I tried to get you involved.”
“You could have been more direct.” Chase felt like he was back investigating Rachel Stevens’ murder-- everyone knew better about how things should go. And he knew that Rivers hadn’t exactly tracked Vladislav here.
“Then you would have known I knew about Rivers,” Thorne said. “And you would have gone to your bosses and they would have shut you down. The CIA wanted to shut you down with the little you did do and we both know the Boulder PD would have had a cow if they knew anything about what was going on.”
“They did that any way.”
“No, they didn’t,” Thorne said. “You’re here now. They didn’t stop you.”
Chase had to admit Thorne had a point.
“Besides,” Thorne said, “if someone has to take down Rivers, it ought to be one our own, not some donut-eating policeman and definitely not the fucking Agency.”
Chase took what he had learned and tried to project forward. “Do you know where Rivers is now?”
Thorne shook his head. “He was in some flea-bag motel under an assumed name for a while, and then moved into mountains.”
“So the Barnes called him that night. Why?”
Thorne shrugged. “I don’t know what happened with the Barnes or any of that crap. I assume Rivers was hitting up dealers, trying to track down Vladislav. The dirt-bag was doing his same old shit, this time right here in the good, old US of A while under the protection of the CIA.”
Chase remembered what Buck had guessed at. “And the Patriots are supplying Vladislav?”
“Yeah.”
“So Rivers was trying to find Vladislav by tracking the Patriots here.”
“Makes sense.”
“Do you know where Vladislav is?”
“I’d have served him up to you already if I knew that,” Thorne said. “Or taken care of him myself.”
“Or given him to Rivers.”
Thorne shook his head. “There’s been enough blood.”
“Oh, yeah, you’ve been so helpful so far. Pardon me if I forget.”
“Hey. I knew about Vladislav long before Rivers did. I got a video from one of my stringers several years ago. Of Vladislav in action in the ‘Stan right after the invasion. Was going to do a story on it, then my source decided he preferred to keep living, so we did nothing.” Thorne pulled open a drawer and slid a DVD across his desk to Chase.
Chase took it. “You see Rivers, tell him to call me.”
Thorne shook his head. “If he killed the Barnes, then he’s up for murder. He’ll never surrender.”
Great, Chase thought. They had a Rambo in the hills. Not a Hollywood wanna-be, but the real thing.
“You have anything else that can help?” Chase asked. “I think I’ve peaked out my motivation meter.”
Thorne put his cigar in the ashtray. For a second all Chase saw was a worn-out, old man. “End this before anyone else gets hurt. When I saw Rivers, I knew he was about done in. Then you showed up and I thought you might be able to bring him in peaceful. But now--” he shook his head. “Rivers has got nothing left. He’s seen too much and he can’t come back. He isn’t on the edge anymore; he’s fallen in the pit. The fucking heart of darkness. These civilians don’t have a clue. You do.”
Chase knew exactly what Thorne was talking about. He’d spent most of the past month right on the edge of that pit himself.
“I’ll let you know how it turns out,” Chase told Thorne. “That’s if I survive.”
“You need help, give me a buzz.”
“So you can motivate me again?”
* * * * *
Chase drove up 9th, toward Chautauqua, the Flatirons ahead. To the right, the sun setting over them. Tourists came to town to the see the view. He barely noted it.
9th ended at Baseline. Chase let gravity take over and turned left, going
downhill toward Broadway. He turned left onto Broadway, the third leg of a lost triangle.
On impulse, he turned out of the heavy traffic into a tree-lined lane on the CU Campus, a corridor of tranquility out of the madness of the city. Chase drove to the Psych department building. He needed help and Sylvie was no longer an option.
Chase parked and sat for a few minutes, rolling the pieces around. He pulled out his Satphone and made a call.
“Porter.”
“It’s Chase. I’ve got a question for you. What if the money York had didn’t come from Doctor Stevens? Where could it have come from?”
“Fuck. I don’t know. Someone else who wanted Rachel dead, I guess. But we had no other suspects.”
“Remember what you said to me on the bridge over the creek last week?”
There was a short pause. “About Boulder?”
“What if all these things are linked?”
“How?”
“What are the pieces that don’t fit?” Chase didn’t wait for an answer. “York’s money—if it didn’t come from Doctor Stevens, where did it come from? Rachel’s secret money. Where did it come from? The gym bag the cab driver said Rachel had—we never found it. What was in it?” Chase knew his partner was in the dark about some key pieces—specifically Vladislav, but he wanted to see what Porter’s police expertise came up with.
“So she was doing something involving a lot of money,” Porter said. “It might have been money in that bag. Maybe York ripped off that money from Rachel?”
“And why would she have that much money?” Chase asked, although he already had his own answer.
“Money laundering. Blackmail. Drugs.”
“Thanks,” Chase said.
“What are you doing?” Porter asked. “You’re suspended, remember?”
“Suspended from the Boulder PD,” Chase said. “Not from the Feds. Not from honor. Thanks, Ben.”
“Chase?” Porter sounded worried.
“I’m all right. I’ve just removed my head from my fourth point of contact.”
“What?”