by A. J. Mayall
“How long have they been in there, kid?” he said, patting McGee on the shoulder.
“Couple weeks; I wanna know how Basseri built this damn thing, why he built it. I mean, why go through…this?” he gestured with his hands.
“I don’t know, but it’s his style, that’s for damn sure. My guess is, we go in there and we’ll find evidence we couldn’t get last time.”
“How are the people, Joe?” Phoenix said, looking over the device.
“Fucking terrible. That had to be torture. It wasn’t bad enough that he triggered a gang war. He had to put those people through hell…”
“Todd’ll be okay, after some physical therapy. Docs think being cuffed for so long may have done more harm than the knife wounds. Emma will need stitches and is malnourished. The EMTs are hopeful Joel’s stab wound won’t go septic. It grazed his large intestine though.”
Phoenix paused and hung his head. “What about Caroline?”
“Heavy blood loss, but the knife missed her spine by half an inch. Docs say she’ll pull through.” Linville gripped his friend on the shoulder tighter. “We got the dead bodies lifted out. Mind if I take your statement, see if it’s anyone from your case?”
Phoenix walked to the far side of the cube. He touched the control console, shuddering from the sheer inhumanity of the device. He never felt he should hate a piece of hardware, but here he was; he loathed this thing. It was anathema to everything he stood for. He tucked his hands in his pockets and walked to three body bags held on metal gurneys. Linville passed him some menthol cream to put under and in his nose.
“You’re gonna need that; these bodies are a few phases into decomposition.” Linville waited until he saw Phoenix apply the cream, and then he unzipped the first bag.
Phoenix looked at the face of the dark-haired man, his skin purplish and yellow, bugling out here and there, a hint of skin slip showing. He turned toward the device, feeling that sense of inhumanity once more. Something about the man clicked in his mind, but he wasn’t sure where.
“He kinda looks familiar, maybe I ran into him at the supermarket or something. I got no clue.”
Linville shrugged. “Honestly, there’s enough deformity that I thought he looked familiar. It happens.”
He walked to the next bag and unzipped it. Phoenix felt his stomach drop. He unzipped the other bag before Linville could stop him.
The detective fell to his knees in tears, screaming to the ceiling in fury and frustration.
He found Margaret and Jeremy Benton.
In the days to follow, Phoenix found himself more and more withdrawn, aside from taking part in the case against Basseri. The Bastard spared no expense in getting legal counsel, getting funds from mysterious benefactors after his assets were seized. He played it all in his head, every bit. Wondering where he went wrong, where he could have done something different. How he could have anticipated the chess game, to find the captives earlier. He sat on a wheeled office chair near her desk, pouting and leaning back, head tapping on the wall.
Suzette clicked her tongue; deep down, she did feel sorry for him. He had tried so hard to do the right thing, but he never got over the fact that you can’t win them all. She poured him a cup of coffee, patting him on the shoulder.
“You did good, McGee. If you didn’t get there when you did, those people would have died.”
“Yeah,” he sighed, “I know that, but it doesn’t stop us from having lost them. Maxwell. He used to romance Margaret and he trapped them in that place.”
“I know,” she said, gripping him a bit and passing him a small cup full of sugar and cream packets.
“He starved them till they died,” Phoenix mumbled, looking out the windows to the right of Suzette’s desk overlooking the street.
“I know. It’s horrible and Maxwell is going to go away for a long time.”
“What about the rest of The Pack?”
Suzette looked away. “They were following their Alpha. There’s an investigation, and Jack can’t tell me much, but it looks like Dorian will rise to Alpha, and Jack to Beta.”
“They get off after they helped that shit.”
Suzette shrugged, moving her hand from his shoulder to the cupboard where she had her coffee cup, filling it halfway with coffee and topping off the rest with milk. “You know about the Blue Shield, and Pack Mentality is a federally protected condition of lycanthropy. Trust in The Pack will take a long time to mend. I wouldn’t be shocked if the lower members find themselves run off the job.”
“MacKenzie could always teach Little League,” Phoenix hissed through a tight jaw. Although the injuries were gone, he still remembered the beatdown the werewolf gave him.
Suzette pushed on Phoenix’s shoulders, wheeling him into the walkway between her reception station and the waiting room, the crossroads of his business.
“We’re going to the deposition later, right?” he asked.
“Jack will be here soon. Go shower or something, lie down, get out of your head. It won’t do you any good to sit in court in the headspace you’re in.”
“Maybe you’re right.”
“Of course I’m right. It’s my job to be right. It’s your job to put on a pretty face. Now, go get ready; we have testimony to give. Gemini will be there as well. “
Phoenix looked shocked. “I mean, yeah, he helped with pooling resources, but he was pretty hands-off.”
“I think he’s coming to support Guess,” Suzette said, sliding into her workstation, printing out a note to walk-in clients that the office would be closed for a court appearance. She slid it to Phoenix, who taped it to the glass door. As he looked across the street to the bookstore, he watched a young red-haired girl walk in with her father. His mind flashed on Caroline, the knife in her back, the screams Douglas O’Halloran gave when he heard his daughter had been injured.
Phoenix sunk his face into his hands. He kept repeating to himself he saved four lives, he saved four lives, he saved four lives.
He saved four lives. He should have saved more. He could have saved more.
“I need some Bouncer time,” he muttered and headed upstairs.
He closed the door and hugged the plush raccoon to his chest. “Hey buddy, mind helping me out a bit? I’m in a funk.” He fell back and closed his eyes, groaning as his phone beeped.
“No rest for the wicked, eh, Bouncer?”
As he reached for it, he saw it was his old friend, Justin Bailey. He paused, a wave of intense emotion building as he reached for the phone, it was one of the extra senses that came with his power, being pulled to pivotal moments like gravity. It filled him with dread. He shook his head and pulled back. The recent events had been too much; he’d deal with it later. He grumbled and held the plush toy against the side of his head and collapsed back into bed, using Bouncer as a makeshift hugging pillow.
“Make the bad men stop, buddy.”
He closed his eyes, trying to rest before Jack arrived. He lay on his back for a time before kicking off the bed, unable to restrain his mind enough to relax. Maybe a shower would do him good.
Downstairs, Suzette cleaned the files and back room from the efforts devoted to reeling in payment for the Benton case. Necessary files had been duplicated and swiped to a cheap fliptop, hoping it would help the cases against Basseri, and to a lesser extent, O’Halloran and Bellacino. While the victims of the ordeal, they had still called for each other’s deaths, and innocent lives had been taken in the crossfire. She scanned in the paper documents, saving them to a FogDrive, before compiling them and shredding redundant data. It was her therapy, putting things where they belong, destroying the unnecessary.
She thought about Jack, scowling a bit as she touched the necklace around her neck. Was he really the one? Deep down, she hoped he wasn’t. He was a nice guy, but being nice isn’t always synonymous with being innocent. The whirlwind of recent events had been making her question her thoughts on the werewolf. He was about to become The Pack’s Beta, directly under Dori
an.
That was another man she thought about. He was imposing; something she wasn’t sure Jack was willing to deal with. It worried her, thinking of what might happen when the dust settled. There was one good cop in that whole Pack, willing to stand up to the world and draw a line in the sand. One who respected the law, and made sure procedure was followed. One who didn’t care about the Blue Shield. One she respected once she saw the real man behind the façade he presented to the rest of his Pack.
Dorian and Jack were going to end up like fire and ice, oil and water. The honor of one could not coexist with the corruption of the other.
As she poured out the unused coffee and rinsed the pitcher, she heard the familiar rumble of Jack’s truck outside. She unlocked the door for him.
He wore dress shoes, slacks and a white button-up shirt, a pair of black suspenders in lieu of a belt.
Suzette raked her fingers through his well-coiffed hair. “Add a tie and a fedora and you’d give Phoenix a run for his money on the private eye look.”
“Well, how fickle your loyalties are, Miss DiMarco.”
“The better to break your heart with,” she responded with a playful turn of the head and a tight-lipped grin, topped with overly widened eyes.
Jack chuckled, but as she maintained the look he found the chuckle slowly turning more awkward. He paused in the silence and scooted back toward the door, before she blinked and straightened her neck.
“Jeez, you’re easy to mess with.” she said, slugging his shoulder.
He grunted and rubbed it. “My, what big eyes you have…”
“The better to judge you with.” She leaned in against him, mind going back to her previous thoughts about him, about Dorian, about the future, eyes unfocusing as she fell into his arms.
“It’s going to be an interesting case today, no?”
She nodded. “You’ve been pretty active in the proceedings so far, at least in the evidence and paperwork side.”
“Hey, I’m still a rookie. It’s good to learn court protocol, get a feel for the local attorneys and their grilling style.”
“Anything you can tell me about the cases?”
“Basseri is going away, most likely for life. Looks like O’Halloran and Bellacino have cases against them as well, but nothing that directly ties them to what happened. These guys know the system, they can afford the good lawyers, and my guess is, they got people on the inside as well. I mean, if Basseri could get someone in The Pack, I can only imagine what strings they must be pulling.”
Suzette paused. “Heh, kind of a good thing AGI is trying to fix up stuff with City Hall, right?”
Jack beamed, “Yeah! I gotta say Gemini’s philanthropy will be doing the department a lot of good.”
She looked him in the eyes, smiling weakly, and held him. “Big fan, eh?”
“Absolutely. That’s a program I could be very loyal to. Speaking of, Basseri was what got you into this line of work. If he goes away, have you considered changing professions?”
“I can’t think of anything that’d make me want to leave.”
The sounds of Phoenix belting out top forty singles from inside the shower fell upon their ears.
“Then again…”
CHAPTER 21
The Rouge Mal Public Courthouse was more ornate than most of the buildings in the city. It rose six stories high, and had large pillars, much like a Greek temple. Unlike the pristine white pillars of Athens, these were black and red; the concrete was a mix of traditional concrete and stone, the local clay, and pulverized obsidian from the mines near South Whispers. The figure of Blind Justice flanked by two bald eagles stood at the top of the overhang leading into the main building.
With its coloration, Phoenix believed it more resembled a temple to some great evil; the fact he once fought a great evil here did not help. It lived up to its local nickname as the Temple of Hades, where the damned entered, and found themselves locked away for a good long time.
He stood in line to be checked for weapons. A few others showed Stygus or Omnus licenses ahead of him and were waved through. Suzette followed him in, but Jack set off the metal detectors. He reached into his back pocket, showing off his badge, and was guided to a separate queue, where his sidearm was gathered and stored in safe keeping.
Phoenix chuckled and slung an arm over the smaller man’s shoulders when he rejoined them.
“Shall we find a place to sit?”
He led the trio, having had to make more than a few appearances as a witness for prior clients. His jacket slapped at his calves as he walked, necklace glinting in the fluorescent lighting.
Only a handful of people were already in the courtroom. The nearly platinum-colored straight hair of Guess stuck out like a daffodil in a field of clover. Suzette whistled; Guess turned, nodded to her and gestured to the spot beside her. On her other side was Reginald Gemini, who blinked like a lost puppy, a nervous smile on his face.
Phoenix went to sit by the man, but Jack waved a hand. “Might be best if I sit there, McGee. An officer should be close when his bodyguard is on the stand.”
Phoenix nodded and went to sit on the other side of Guess, but not before Suzette shoved him.
“No.”
He looked around and took the small area between Suzette and the edge of the bench. She looked at him and set her purse down between them in a gesture that told him she wanted her space. The slightly raised edge of the bench decided the crack of his ass was as good a place as any to reside. Phoenix squirmed, then stood in frustration and sat behind the four of them.
Soon, he was joined by two older women, their hearing aids giving a slight whine. Phoenix gritted his teeth and flicked a finger, focusing on the devices and narrowing his gaze as he manipulated them to stop the headache-inducing tone. The duo sat back and conversed louder than Phoenix would have preferred.
“Oh Gladys, did I tell you about the squirrel feeder I bought?”
“No, I want to get one but doing yard work has been hell on my new hip, Mildred.”
After five minutes, Phoenix internally screamed for sanctuary from Mildred the Squirrel Empress and Gladys Brittlehips. He stared forward, trying to let time sweep him by. The room went chilly, as the air around him loosened, letting the minutes pass like seconds. To the rest of the world watching him, which was no one, he appeared to be in a trance-like state. This also meant he was still when the judge entered and the bailiff called for everyone to rise.
Forced resynchronization is painful, and being hit with a heavy purse is a good way to get snapped out of a time bubble. This was the moment when the audience he had gathered over the course of the last twenty minutes went from zero to eighty. After a few moments of bashful smiling, Phoenix deflected attention from himself and sat when everyone else did.
They watched as Basseri was led in, the lower portion of his face heavily bandaged, under a clear plastic mask designed to help keep his facial structure intact. His hands were also heavily bandaged, the left one in a sling. He sat in an orange jumpsuit, looking as if he hadn’t gotten much sleep since his arrest. Phoenix narrowed his gaze at him, flashing on the images of Jeremy and Margaret’s half-bloated corpses when he turned, their eyes meeting.
He wanted to stop time, to walk over there and pummel his temporal frozen body, to break every bone in his body between the ticks of the second hand. He could do it; he could beat him down and be back in his seat before anyone noticed. When his gaze met the visage of his attorney, his blood boiled. Northcott. Two years ago, the man managed to throw enough legal loopholes at the case against Basseri until it stuck. It looked like it was time for round two.
Why of all times, did he want to let the system work now?
A skeleton of a man, Judge Ullery sat on his bench, head bald and cheeks looking as if a garden trowel had cut them out. When he smiled, he looked like Death at Thanksgiving dinner; there was cheerfulness and graciousness, but the package it came wrapped in made you want to hide behind your mother.
&nbs
p; “We are here to hear the case of the State vs. Dominic Basseri. Charges brought against you are murder in the first degree, three cases. Conspiracy to murder, four cases. Violation of private data systems in the first degree. Attempted domestic terrorism, three cases. How do you plead?”
Basseri’s attorney stood. “My client has stated to me that he wishes to plead not guilty on all counts.”
Judge Ullery nodded, making a note and looking at the court stenographer as well.
“Before we begin, I want to say a few things. This is a most unusual case, one I was, at first, reluctant to oversee. For reasons unknown, and of which I will not speculate, the defendant has waived his right to a jury trial. He has also exercised his Sixth Amendment rights to a speedy trial. For reasons I have yet to understand, this particular case has been fast-tracked in just under a week. To the Defendant, I assure you that despite my suspicions, I will remain objective and fair. To the State standing in prosecution, I put into question the ability to formulate a properly vetted collection of evidence against the accused. Both State and Defense have agreed to these terms, but if I feel, for any reason, this is a farce, this trial will be moved to a later date, am I understood?”
Both attorneys nodded to the judge, who turned to the prosecution. “Will you start your case?”
District Attorney Stefano Wolfgang Ewert swung his legs to the side and descended the stairs next to his chair. He grabbed a folder he had kept on the edge of the table and stood between the desks of the two opposing sides, Basseri eying him. Although the lower part of his face was bandaged, it was clear from his eyes that he didn’t take Stefano seriously. Phoenix leaned up and over between Suzette and Guess to get a better view. Suzette planted her elbow against the back of the bench and brought the back of her hand into Phoenix’s chin. He winced and leaned back, grumbling.
“Your Honor, I agree this is unusual, but the State believes Mr. Basseri called for an expedited trial believing we could not assemble an adequate case against him. However, the evidence will prove the man sitting before you is guilty on all charges. While in previous cases, the State has not performed its job of convicting the man before you, I can assure you, Your Honor, we will do so beyond the shadow of a doubt this time.”