The Will Slater Series Books 1-3

by Matt Rogers

  Slater wondered how long it would take them to get back to the station.

  As the sedan peeled off the sidewalk, Slater let the blood from his broken nose flow over his cotton shirt. The garment had already been ruined, but the crimson wave added insult to injury. He watched D’Agostino like a hawk — even though the sedan’s cabin lay shrouded in darkness, enough of a glow from the streetlights filtered in to make out the commander’s facial features.

  D’Agostino didn’t take his eyes off the unfinished skyscraper as the sedan accelerated down the street.

  Only when they rounded the corner did he turn his attention back to the road ahead.

  Slater masked a wry smile.

  Police brutality was an issue, but not something a Black Force agent was ordinarily tasked with investigating. But police brutality in order to hide something darker…

  Slater remembered the way D’Agostino had acted around the construction site.

  Like an addict protecting his stash.

  Got you, you bastard, Slater thought.

  He gave himself the mental permission to use force if the situation required it, and then he sat back and waited for the madness to ensue.

  7

  Alone with his thoughts in the back of the sedan, separated from D’Agostino and his partner by a mesh screen, Slater had time to piece together what had happened.

  He ignored the throbbing in his nose, even when the pain drilled up through his brain and intensified behind his eyeballs. He’d suffered all manner of grievous injuries before, and this was just another broken bone to compartmentalise and deal with later. His eyes were watering, but he ignored it. He focused on what he could control.

  The initial patrol car had spotted him. At first he’d thought they’d foolishly passed him by, but D’Agostino must have specifically requested to be notified of any vagrants hanging around that area. It was something to do with the construction site — Slater was sure of it. The pace at which D’Agostino had hauled him off the sidewalk and put him in handcuffs wasn’t a normal response to a squatter. Slater hadn’t even done anything inherently hostile — not yet, anyway.

  He would give D’Agostino reason to fight back soon.

  By then it would be too late for the police commander to do anything anyway.

  But he needed more information. Either through provoking the man, or striking up an innocent conversation that managed to whittle out some more details. Slater didn’t figure D’Agostino would let anything incriminating slip out, so option number one seemed to be the best choice.

  Piss him off.

  ‘You sure pulled me in quick, man,’ he mumbled through the metal screen. ‘Almost like you got something to hide, hey? What are you hiding, brother?’

  He conveyed the ramblings like that of a mindless drunk, but he wondered if D’Agostino would jump at the accusation.

  Sure enough, the commander twisted in his seat and pushed the barrel of his Glock semi-automatic sidearm against a gap in the screen. ‘One more word out of you…’

  Slater feigned terror. ‘Hey! Relax, buddy. Relax.’

  ‘I told you to shut up.’

  ‘You can’t kill me, you know? That ain’t legal.’

  D’Agostino glanced across at his partner and laughed, an attempt at a mocking display, but it wasn’t genuine. Slater saw right through it, saw the panic suppressed behind the man’s eyes. D’Agostino was playing the bad cop, but he wasn’t doing it because he wanted to. He was doing it to distract from something else.

  Something his partner didn’t know about, it seemed.

  The other cop would turn a blind eye to D’Agostino’s over-the-top measures, but he didn’t know the reasons for them.

  Slater didn’t either, but he knew the commander was cleansing the construction site of vagrants.

  D’Agostino probably didn’t want anyone sniffing around that area.

  Has the other cop clued into that yet?

  Slater decided to test his luck.

  ‘What’s a big time commander like you doing out here, boss?’ he said. ‘This doesn’t seem like your job, man. Why you so interested in me for?’

  D’Agostino sent the Glock’s barrel straight back in the same direction, pointed at Slater’s head again. He didn’t mind. He’d had weapons pointed at him before. He doubted the commander would do it in the sedan. Too messy. Too much clean-up.

  And, even though he’d dished out some violence in front of his partner, Slater didn’t think D’Agostino was ready to kill someone in front of the man. He would do it later, when the station was quiet and attention had died down.

  Slater would be ready for it.

  ‘Point that thing at me all you want,’ Slater said. ‘It’s not scaring me, buddy. As a matter of fact my friend got picked up from that exact place a week ago. One of my old squatting pals. You know what happened to him? I been lookin’ for him.’

  Once again, he laced the drunken outpour with an undercurrent of truth. He was hoping for a visceral reaction, for D’Agostino to order his partner to stop the car and haul Slater out into the middle of the street, demanding the truth about what he knew.

  But none of that happened.

  D’Agostino kept his head screwed on straight, and even though his eyes burned with fury he twisted away from Slater, passing the rambling off as delusional.

  ‘Bums,’ he said to his partner. ‘Fuckin’ useless, the lot of them.’

  Despite his best efforts, D’Agostino was unable to hide the rage in his voice. It boiled under the surface, threatening to burst out in the sedan. Slater hoped the man could keep it contained until they got to the station.

  He was prepared for whatever would follow.

  8

  The blood had formed clots in Slater’s nostrils by the time the police cruiser rumbled back into the station.

  He sat still and patient with his hands squashed into the small of his back, pinned together by the biting cuffs. The circulation in his wrists had been cut off, so he squirmed from side to side in an attempt to alleviate the pain.

  He channelled the pain into motivation.

  Everything D’Agostino had done to him, he would use to propel him forward.

  And a semblance of a plan was beginning to form in the back of his mind.

  There was no doubt that D’Agostino was involved in something. Suspicion had turned to certainty, at least in Slater’s opinion. The simple act of sitting on the sidewalk outside the construction site had resulted in being hauled off to the station with a broken nose. A completely unnecessary display of force, all carried out by a police commander in charge of an entire district who shouldn’t have been tasked with making arrests like that in the first place.

  Slater knew what was up.

  D’Agostino had instructed any patrol car that spotted loiterers by that particular construction site to contact him immediately. He might have disguised it under the veil of orders from his superiors, but he was paying careful attention to that unfinished skyscraper.

  There was something in there…

  And he was keeping it a secret. Slater could tell by the way he puffed his chest out, pumping himself full of false bravado, as if pulling vagrants off the streets was the most noble cause in existence. All to distract from the fact that he didn’t want someone stepping within a foot of that construction site.

  And he didn’t want his partner to know that was the reason.

  So when the driver pulled the police cruiser to a halt in front of the station’s side entrance and disappeared off down the footpath, Slater kept a close eye on D’Agostino. The man slipped out of the passenger seat, glanced in both directions with intense focus, and then skirted around to the rear door.

  To Slater’s door.

  Slater was in no position to fight back. With his wrists cuffed, there was little he could do to protest. So he kept up the drunken act, gazing into the distance and letting his shoulders slump as D’Agostino pulled him out of the car. He got his feet underneath him and grimac
ed as the rapid motion sent a stab of pain through his shattered nose.

  That would need medical attention as soon as he got out of this mess.

  Interestingly, he noted that he might have underestimated the police commander. A quick look at his surroundings revealed an empty parking lot, cordoned off from the street by a tall wire fence, populated sparsely by a handful of official Chicago P.D. vehicles. The station itself was a long low building with a white brick exterior, its perimeter illuminated by harsh LED floodlights. Without a soul in sight, D’Agostino would be free to kill Slater here and pretend his body never existed.

  But Slater’s eyes wandered to the security cameras covering every inch of the concrete expanse, and figured D’Agostino was unwilling to make that bold of a move.

  He was right.

  D’Agostino eyed the cameras and grunted his frustration, confirming Slater’s suspicious that the commander wanted him out of the picture.

  The hairs on the back of Slater’s neck rose. A certain dynamic unfolded when you knew someone wanted you in the ground. Slater stood inches away from the man, sensing his trepidation.

  D’Agostino shoved a hand into the small of Slater’s back and hurried him into the station through a side door.

  9

  The atmosphere shifted.

  At the beginning of the night, Slater hadn’t been fully convinced that D’Agostino was corrupt. Angry at Lars for interfering with his personal life, he’d spent most of the time loitering outside the construction site running through a list of reasons why the vagrants’ deaths could be chalked up to simple coincidence. But now, after having met Ray D’Agostino in the flesh, and quietly observing how the man behaved, Slater knew he would have to see this through to its bloody conclusion.

  Because D’Agostino wanted him dead for what he’d said in the car, and the man wasn’t bothering to hide it anymore.

  The commander led him through sterile white-washed corridors that probably stank of disinfectant — not that Slater could smell anything. They passed no other officers — either the station was sparsely populated at this time of the evening, or D’Agostino had deliberately headed down a deserted stretch of the building.

  Slater imagined it was the latter.

  At any point, he expected the big commander to make a lunge for him. The Glock sidearm was still in its holster at D’Agostino’s waist as he led Slater through the building, but the man made no attempt to snatch for it. Slater imagined he would need a damn good reason for firing on a vagrant in restraints.

  He was biding his time.

  And Slater could see it was eating the man alive.

  They pulled up to a row of single-man holding cells and D’Agostino unlocked the door to the closest one, shoving Slater inside the tiny concrete box.

  Slater turned as D’Agostino slammed the cell door closed — they were now separated by the metal bars.

  Last chance, Slater thought. Send a message.

  ‘I know what you’re doing at that construction site,’ he said, his voice suddenly sober, his drunken rambling ceased. ‘How many more of us are you going to kill before you get busted, big man?’

  D’Agostino froze in his tracks, his eyes flaring with surprise. Slater could almost see his mind racing behind his pupils, analysing just how much trouble he was in.

  Not much, D’Agostino must have concluded. If I can shut this guy up forever.

  Slater eyed the corridor outside the cell and found a single surveillance camera in the far corner, but there was no flashing digital light underneath the lens.

  It wasn’t rolling.

  ‘Going to try and kill me, too?’ Slater said. ‘Come on in. Still got these cuffs on but I’ll put up a fight. How you going to explain that?’

  D’Agostino remained resolutely quiet.

  Big guy, Slater could see him thinking. Well-built. Strong frame. He’ll be trickier to handle.

  ‘You’re going in the drunk tank,’ D’Agostino said.

  ‘The drunk tank?’

  Wordlessly, the commander unlocked the cell again and pulled Slater back out into the corridor. He led him down another set of hallways, darting this way and that, energy in his stride.

  Nervous energy.

  ‘What was wrong with that cell?’ Slater grumbled.

  ‘Shut up.’

  ‘I know what you’re doing at the construction site.’

  ‘No idea what the hell you’re talking about, kid.’

  But D’Agostino wasn’t even bothering to maintain any semblance of believability. His cheeks had turned pale, and the bravado he’d been holding himself with had dissipated. Slater figured the other vagrants he’d killed may have only hinted at seeing something in the construction site. Slater had not only confessed to being in the know; he’d actively tried to antagonise D’Agostino.

  That must have thrown the man through a loop.

  They pulled to a halt a minute later in front of a cell only a few feet wider than the previous one. This cell, however, was populated by another man in custody. He was a true vagrant, with a filthy beard and long hair matted to his scalp. He wore the same dirty clothes he’d been arrested in — long khaki pants and an oversized rain jacket that looked at least ten years old. He was reclined on a bench along one wall, facing the ceiling, fast asleep.

  ‘The drunk tank,’ D’Agostino said.

  Slater didn’t understand why he’d been moved, but he wasn’t about to kick up a fuss. D’Agostino unlocked his cuffs and shoved him into the cell before he could do anything to retaliate. Slater stepped straight in through the gap in the steel bars, and D’Agostino yanked the door shut behind him. The homeless man remained fast asleep, knocked out by the alcohol in his system.

  Why the hell did D’Agostino want him here? If Slater was in the commander’s shoes, he would put the man he wanted dead in as isolated a place as he could manage. The other homeless guy was simply an additional potential witness.

  Slater crossed to the other side of the windowless concrete box, breathing through his mouth because of his broken nose. Casting a glance across the floor of the holding cell, he realised he probably didn’t want to be able to smell in any case. Dried vomit and other bodily fluids were caked across the concrete floor. Disgusted, Slater planted himself down on the opposite bench and set to work overcoming the pain of his shattered septum.

  Still, D’Agostino lingered.

  ‘I’ll be back later,’ he said.

  Still, the homeless man didn’t stir.

  ‘I’m sure you will be,’ Slater said.

  ‘You’re messing with the wrong guy.’

  ‘You’re the one killing vagrants. Which makes you the right guy.’

  Bingo.

  Slater had been preparing to drop the bombshell for some time, and by the way D’Agostino reacted he figured he’d nailed it. The police commander darted his gaze in every direction at once, searching for anyone who might have overheard the accusation. Finding nobody, he sent a dark look of fury in Slater’s direction, then strode off down the corridor without a word.

  Slater had made him angry.

  He wondered what the night would entail.

  10

  The answer came only a couple of hours later.

  Slater spent the time rolling with the waves of pain from his nose — the injury proved mind-numbingly annoying. Usually he was able to force all thoughts of his wounds in the field to the back of his mind until the task was complete, but in this instance the task entailed waiting around for hours in a dark concrete box with nothing but his own thoughts to keep him company. He could hardly focus on anything other than the pain in his head. But he fought time and time again to push the pain to a darker place, a place where he could retrieve it and deal with it later.

  After a hundred and twenty minutes, Slater had most of the agony under control.

  He’d elected to spread out across the bench and keep his eyes closed, pretending he was asleep until someone came for him. Whether that was normal cops or D
’Agostino himself, he figured the best option regardless was to play up his vulnerability. So he stretched himself out, lying sideways on the cold steel, and kept one eye open a crack to observe what was happening in the corridor outside.

  For hours, there was nothing.

  The homeless guy across the cell must have consumed enough alcohol to kill a horse, because he didn’t stir once in the time Slater spent reclined on the opposite bench. He snored and coughed and spluttered, but he didn’t wake up.

  Slater preferred that.

  He didn’t feel like striking up a conversation right now.

  When D’Agostino returned, lumbering into Slater’s vision with a switchblade in one hand and a steely expression on his face, Slater knew exactly why he’d been put in the drunk tank.

  So there was someone to pin the following incident on.

  The knife must have been retrieved from the evidence room, unless D’Agostino had left the station to purchase it. It was small enough to be feasibly concealed inside the homeless man’s clothes, which would make an excellent cover story in the proceedings that followed. It was a simple enough explanation — two bums had started arguing and one had produced a weapon.

  If there were no cameras capturing the proceedings, then it was D’Agostino’s word against a homeless man who hadn’t even been conscious at the time.

  A foolproof cover story.

  Slater didn’t move a muscle. D’Agostino crept down the corridor, trying his best to keep quiet as he approached the cell, but Slater didn’t react. He kept his eyes closed and his demeanour relaxed. He took a deep breath in, then released it over the course of a few seconds. It proved strangely difficult — acting calm and subdued in the face of a man coming to stab you to death.