The Assassin

by Rachel Butler

  She took Peoria north to Twenty-first, drove a short distance east, then turned back south to follow a winding street to the parking lot of the Marlowe Mansion. In a neighborhood of lovely, gracious old homes, this one was particularly so—three stories of native sandstone, with a tiled roof and an even two dozen Palladian windows on the front facade alone. The varying shades of the stone blocks and the graceful lines of the windows appealed to the artist in her, along with the golf-course–perfect lawn and the lush gardens. If she had the chance while she was in town, she would sketch it and tour the exhibits it housed. But at the moment, art was the least of her interests.

  The lawn had once been twenty acres or more. Now a stretch of only two hundred feet remained on each side of the house. Elaborate iron-and-brick fences opened onto neighboring houses on two sides. A wooded area sheltered the third, and the parking lot occupied most of the space on the fourth side. Leaving her car in the lot, she grabbed a camera from the bag in the passenger floorboard and headed toward the trees.

  As she strolled across the grass, she contemplated her actions. She had been instructed to call the real-estate agent as soon as she arrived on Thursday, and she was expected to follow those instructions to the letter. She wasn’t expected to put in an appearance forty-eight hours early. She intended to put that extra time to good use.

  When she reached the edge of the lawn, she snapped off a few shots of the mansion, in case anyone was watching, then continued into the woods at a leisurely pace. The air seemed heavier there, though the dense foliage blocked the afternoon sun. She couldn’t identify much of the growth. There were oaks of an indeterminate variety. Sumac grew in thick clusters. Cedar trees sprouted wherever they could take root. Leaves crackled underfoot as she walked roughly north, sending up a scent of dry decay.

  The woods ended abruptly, as if someone had drawn a line and decreed nothing but grass could grow on the opposite side. Selena crouched behind a massive hedge of forsythia that would be breathtaking when it bloomed next spring—not that she would be there to see it.

  The house ahead on her left was unoccupied for the time being. The house to its left belonged to Harold and Mardelle Watson. Once Harold had retired from various jobs in the aerospace industry, they had downsized from their Maple Ridge mansion to a luxury RV and this home, merely a stopover between trips. Their children were grown and living elsewhere, but the Watsons still had strong ties to the city.

  Across the street from them were the Franklins. Aaron was a recent graduate of the University of Tulsa Law School, and Dina, born and raised in Guadalajara, was a partner in a family practice clinic a few miles away. Childless, they traveled as much as their careers allowed.

  It was amazing—or appalling, depending on your point of view—how much information was available for the asking on the Internet, Selena thought as she shifted her gaze to the final house in the cul-de-sac. It belonged to Anthony Ceola, who answered to Tony and Chee, but not to Anthony. He was thirty-four, single, and a detective investigator with the Tulsa Police Department.

  He could be a problem. But every problem, her uncle was fond of saying, had a solution.

  She intended to find the solution to hers.

  By the time Tony and Simmons got back to the office, their shift was almost over and all Tony wanted was a cold shower, a handful of aspirin, and a beer to wash them down with. They hadn’t found anything at Grover’s beyond the day planner and the name of his associate. There had been no stash of drugs. No list of customers, suppliers, or distributors. Nothing that even hinted at his drug business, unless it was hidden on the laptop, and certainly nothing that pointed to his killer.

  Mae Washington hadn’t been any help, either. All she’d known was that her son was a good boy who hadn’t deserved to die. It amazed Tony how blind a mother could be to her child’s failings. His mother had never cut him that kind of slack, and his failings had nothing on Grover’s. But maybe that was part of the difference between him and Grover. Anna Ceola had certain expectations of her children, while all Mae had were excuses for hers.

  Tony was finishing his notes when the phone rang. Another detective bellowed his name. “Chee, you’re wanted in the chief ’s office.”

  “Must be nice to have an in with the head honcho,” someone else remarked.

  “We’ll probably be taking orders from him before long,” Simmons chimed in.

  “Hell, Frankie, someone has to tell you what to do.” Tony picked up his jacket from the back of the desk chair, made an obscene gesture to the room in general, then headed out of the squad room and down the hall. He’d been a cop twelve years, following in the footsteps of his father, Joe, who’d retired from the department, and his uncles, John and Vincent, who would both be hanging up their guns this year, but none of that stopped the jokes that had started when Henry Daniels had taken the chief ’s job a few years earlier.

  On the surface, no one would have pegged Henry Daniels and Joe Ceola for friendship potential. They were as different as two people could be—Henry, a blue-blood WASP, born with not just a silver spoon but the whole freakin’ service, and Joe, the son of working-class immigrant Catholic Italians. But they had become friends in the academy and remained so forty years later. Even when Henry had left Tulsa to work his way through the ranks in other departments, they’d stayed in close touch. He was godfather to the Ceola kids and joined them for all their family events. His birthdays and accomplishments were treated no differently from any Ceola’s.

  In the eyes of the people Tony worked with, Henry was family first and Tony’s boss second. Tony tried hard to make sure they knew it was the other way around.

  The secretary waved Tony into the inner office, where Henry stood gazing at a photograph on the wall. He was in uniform, which meant he’d had a public function to attend or the press to deal with. Considering the way Tony had spent his day, it was probably the latter.

  “Chief,” he said.

  Henry turned. “Detective. Come on in and close the door.”

  After doing so, Tony turned back to Henry with a grin. “Been rousted on any suspicious-persons calls lately?”

  Henry grinned, too. “No, thank you. Once was enough.”

  The previous week, following a rash of armed robberies at the same midtown convenience store, the antsy clerk had called the police to report a man behaving suspiciously outside. When a patrol officer had investigated, he’d found himself questioning none other than the chief of police, who was checking out the situation for himself. It wasn’t the first time Henry had taken a hands-on approach to his job as chief, but it was, he’d joked, the first time he’d been treated as a suspect instead of one of the good guys.

  Henry sat down and gestured for Tony to do the same. “You’ve been busy the last few days. Bring me up to speed.”

  Tony settled in the chair and gave the short version of everything he and Simmons had learned. When he was finished, Henry steepled his fingers. “Sounds like you’ve got enough to keep you going for a while. You aren’t still working the Hayes case, too, are you?”

  His tone was mild, but Tony wasn’t fooled. Henry might have been as good as family, and he might even have cut Tony some slack because of it, but he was still chief of police and Tony was still his subordinate. The morning after the murder, he had suggested that Tony hand the Hayes case off to another detective. A few days later he had asked him point-blank to do so. The time was coming when the request would become an order, no matter how hard Tony argued.

  “Yes, I am.” Before Henry could say anything, he raised one hand. “I know you don’t believe the cases are connected. No one does but me. But I do believe it, and it’s not like seven murders are so much harder to investigate than six, especially when I’m looking for the same guy.”

  Henry’s smile came quickly. “Ah, we’re talking the famous Ceola instincts. Your father used to get these ideas from out of the blue with absolutely nothing to support them, and damned if he wasn’t always right.” He paused a b
eat, then quietly asked, “But what if you’re not right? You know better than to go into an investigation with preconceived notions. You find what you expect to find, and you dismiss evidence that leads in a different direction.”

  “I’ve never dismissed evidence,” Tony said levelly. He was a better cop than that, and the chief, of all people, should know it. “Whatever direction the evidence in this case leads, I’ll follow it. At least I have evidence in the Hayes case—a partial tag number and a witness.”

  Henry’s gesture was dismissive. “That boy? Hell, Tony, his description was so vague it fits you, me, and damn near every white man in this city.”

  “So I’ll concentrate on the white men whose license plates match our partial.”

  “You can’t base a murder investigation on the word of a five-year-old.”

  Tony resisted the urge to point out the Prinz kid was six, not five, and young, not stupid. Yeah, to a kid who was short for his age, anyone over five feet was tall, and sure, he’d been able to offer nothing else beyond “white,” but that ruled out the black, Latino, Asian, and Indian communities. That was a start.

  “You’ve already got a full caseload—”

  “Everyone in the division has a full caseload. Homicide is a growth industry in Tulsa.” Tony hesitated. He was sure he was right—enough that he was willing to break his own rule and deliberately blur the line between his personal and professional relationships. “Trust me on this, Uncle Henry. I won’t screw up. I won’t embarrass you or the department. I’ll keep an open mind, and if I’m wrong and this isn’t a vigilante case, I’ll be the first to admit it. Just give me a chance to find out.”

  Henry studied him a few moments, then shook his head. “You are so damn much like your father. Okay. Keep the Hayes case. Whether you’re right or the rest of us are, find me a killer.”

  “I intend to.”

  “Speaking of your father . . .” Henry’s voice dropped and became cautious. “How is he?”

  Tony would rather discuss the fallibility of his instincts all day than talk about his dad. “Some days are better than others.” On his good days, Joe was the man they’d always known—smart, funny, quick with a joke, as sharp as the proverbial tack. On his bad days . . . he wasn’t—and the last time Henry had seen him had been one of the bad days.

  “And your mother?”

  Tony shrugged. All his life his mother had been the strongest, most capable woman he’d ever met. Raising seven kids on a cop’s salary, keeping the house spotless and all seven kids out of trouble, and supporting every worthy cause to come along—Anna had done it all and made it look easy. But his father’s diagnosis last month had knocked her for a loop. She didn’t know how to deal with it, so she didn’t. Tony couldn’t even take issue with her. He’d rather ignore it, too, than face the fact that Alzheimer’s was destroying his father’s mind and would eventually claim his life.

  Henry sighed. “Tell Anna if there’s anything I can do, anything at all, all she has to do is call.”

  “I will.”

  “Well . . . it’s past time for you to be out of here. You have any plans for this evening?”

  “Just the usual.”

  “Supper, television, bed?” Henry laughed as he stood up, then came around the desk to clap him on the shoulder. “Those are my plans, too. That’s no way for a man like you to live.”

  “But it’s okay for you?”

  “My life is winding down. Yours is still stretched out in front of you. You should be going out, seeing a beautiful woman or three, thinking about settling down and giving Anna some grandchildren to dote over.”

  “Nick, Julie, and J.J. have already given her seven. How many more does she need?”

  “She did have seven of her own. If each of you matches that . . .”

  Tony snorted. “I’d be lucky to manage one on what I’m paid.”

  “I’ll take it up with the city council. I’d hate to see Anna suffer because my officers are underpaid.” Hand still on Tony’s shoulder, Henry walked with him to the door. “Go out and have some fun. Don’t put yourself out too much over this vigilante case. It’s not as if the victims matter so much, considering who they are.”

  “They all matter, Henry,” Tony said as he grasped the doorknob. “They may have been scum, but that doesn’t give this guy the right to blow them away.”

  “You really believe that, don’t you?” Henry stroked his chin. “In theory, so do I. But it’s a lot easier to get worked up over the real victims, the innocent ones, than trash like them. I’d have a hard time knowing which way to vote if I was on the vigilante’s jury.”

  Tony smiled thinly as he opened the door. “You and half the city, Chief. An awful lot of people only want this guy found so they can pin a medal on him.”

  “And you can’t condone that any more than you can condone what he’s doing.” Henry didn’t wait for a response. “You’re a good cop, Tony, and a good man. But I wouldn’t expect anything less from Joe’s son. Go. Relax. Find some female companionship. Concentrate on bodies of another sort, at least for tonight. If you see your folks before I do, give them my best.”

  “I will, sir.”

  After leaving the office, Tony bypassed the elevator and took the stairs to the ground floor, then went outside into the heavy, radiant heat. His footsteps echoed in the garage as he walked to his car. A plain blue Impala bearing multiple antennas, it was obviously a cop car and was about as personality-free as the lab geeks he dealt with. He hadn’t washed it since the last rain, so a thin coat of dust covered it from top to bottom. It was clean inside, though, without the layer of fast-food trash that filled Simmons’s car.

  Though the command visit to Henry’s office had kept him past his three o’clock quitting time, he was still out in plenty of time to miss the evening rush. He took Sixth Street to Denver, then headed for Twenty-first, driving through a neighborhood of half-million-dollar houses before reaching his own street. When Buck Marlowe had struck it rich over in the Osage County oil fields eighty or ninety years ago, he’d built his mansion, then added four small brick-and-wood houses as an incentive to keep his most valued employees in his employ. Ol’ Buck was long gone from the mansion, but the social status of the residents of Princeton Court hadn’t changed much. They were the poor relations to their richer neighbors.

  He pulled into the driveway and parked next to his own car, a ’57 ’Vette that ran only when it wanted to. He regularly threatened to sell it, and two of his brothers regularly pestered him to carry through with it, but so far he’d held off. After all, the city gave him a car for work, so he wasn’t without transportation . . . at least, not often.

  As he walked around the car, he gave the house next door his usual once-over. It had stood empty since Mrs. Howell died back in the winter. The old woman hadn’t had any family, so he’d taken in her dog and cats. He got along fine with the dog, and had come to tolerate the cats. Once they’d agreed upon one basic rule—he fed them, and they left him alone—they’d managed to coexist peacefully in the same space.

  He let himself in the front door, where he got as much of a greeting as he ever did from the felines—the calico swishing its tail on the way from the living-room sofa to the floor under the guest-room bed, and a hiss from the fat black cat. The coonhound, on the other hand, was banging the back door with his tail, unable to wait one more minute to get inside and sniff Tony from head to toe.

  Ten minutes later, his suit traded for running shorts and a T-shirt, and Mutt finished with his welcome-home, Tony sat down at a dining-room table that saw far more paperwork than food and settled in to work.

  The chief was right, he thought sometime later as he chowed down on a frozen dinner, surrounded by glossy eight by tens and case notes. This was no way for a man to live.

  Then he looked at a long shot of the front room of the abandoned house, at Grover Washington, Walter Banks, and Mykle Moore, and at the multiple wounds, any one of which was enough to be fatal. No matter who t
hey were, no matter what they’d done, that was no way to die.

  3

  If anyone had asked Damon at fourteen what he wanted to do with his life—if anyone had cared—his answer would have been simple: live it. In the neighborhood where he’d grown up, dying young, whether by drugs, homicide, or suicide, was a fact of life. He’d witnessed his first murder when he was five, and had become so used to gunshots and screams that he could sleep right through them. He’d grown up surrounded by misery and hopeless-ness that could sap the soul right out of a person.

  Like his mother. Pregnant at fifteen, abandoned by her boyfriend and her rigid parents, she’d tried to make it, but every disappointment had destroyed a part of her. She’d gone from high school to waiting tables to welfare to prostitution, from a pretty girl who’d made a mistake to a crack addict who didn’t care whether she lived or died. She had died, emaciated, gaunt, her body so abused that it had worn out at thirty-one. Sometimes he missed her, pitied her, wished she’d held on long enough to get a taste of the new life he could have given her. Other times he scorned her. It was the first lesson he’d learned: only the strong survive. His mother had been weak. He was strong.

  Almost as strong as William, the old man liked to say. Bullshit. William had never had to fight for a thing. Had never known hunger or poverty or fear. Had been given every advantage a person could have, and had still managed to become as twisted and ruthless as someone who’d never had anything to lose. The money had a lot to do with that. Life had taught him that anything was his for the asking— or the taking—and he’d embraced that notion wholeheartedly.

  The beauty of it was, he hid it so well. He could, and did, present himself as the most generous, upstanding man on the face of the earth. It wasn’t even entirely an act. Some part of him was generous and upstanding, just as some part of him had always been deadly. At one time the balance had tilted the other way, but over the years, it had shifted. That was why he’d rescued Damon from his pathetic life. He’d had plans, and needed someone with Damon’s particular skills to put them into motion.