Road Kill; Puppet Master; Cross Wired

by Jan Coffey

  Her work with Alisha and the pimp’s murder. Bratva. Those were the first things than ran through Gavin’s mind. Terri would have had a file on them. He checked the folder behind where Lacey said the missing one should have been. A different case—one they’d started working on together on Gavin’s last days at NHPD.

  Nothing on Alisha. Nothing on Bratva. Nothing.

  His eyes moved from the files to the lock on the cabinet. He looked closer. “This cabinet has been jimmied open. Someone has been in here.”

  CHAPTER 34

  “Wait for me here. This shouldn’t take more than ten or fifteen minutes,” Kathy Green told her assistant, getting out of the car.

  The driver opened the door for her. “Are you sure this is the right place, ma’am?” he asked, looking dubiously toward the decrepit cottage perched on a knoll overlooking the marshy end of a pond.

  A battered white car was parked by an open shed at the end of the driveway. Trash bags, old appliances, and car parts littered the overgrown yard next to it.

  “Yes, this is the place.”

  Hitching the strap of her purse higher on her shoulder, Kathy moved toward the cottage. She’d left a dozen phone messages, but Claude had refused to call her back. She had to talk to him this weekend.

  The single-story, ramshackle cottage looked like it was ready to collapse in on itself. Kathy’s gaze swept over the missing shingles on the roof and the closed shades in the windows. More trash was piled up against the house, blocking the main door.

  Ten years ago, even five, she might have felt some sadness, some pity…something…at the sight of how her ex-husband lived. But no more. All of this was his choice. They had plenty of money. He had access to doctors, programs, medications that he could try. But he refused all of it. It was his choice to live like a backwoods hermit.

  Getting involved with politics had given her a new perspective on the decisions the two of them had made since Stephanie’s murder. Her life was focused on the future. Claude’s was focused on the past. On some misplaced sense of guilt.

  She knew who to blame and she wanted no part of this life.

  Walking around to where the cottage faced the pond, she noticed the newly replaced boards on the deck. This surprised her. Another door on the deck led into the cottage.

  “Claude?” she called out from the bottom step. “I’m here, Claude. We need to talk.”

  No answer. She didn’t know if he was home or not. He had no job. No friends. No country club where he could hang out. When she’d decided to run for office, she’d had him followed for a while. It was important to know all the skeletons in her closet. The report came back that Judge Green took walks. In the woods and cemeteries. He ate at fast food places. When he ate. That was about it. For the most part, he just stayed locked away in this dump.

  Kathy climbed the steps and rapped on the door. “Come on, Claude. I don’t have all day.”

  She listened. No creaking of the floors, no noise from the inside that said he might be home. Turning around, she studied the odd view of the pond from this angle. The dark water shimmered in the distance, but clumps of long, yellow marsh grass and swampy muck hugged the closest shoreline. Typical.

  Kathy’s heart leapt into her throat when she heard a creak behind her. He was there, on the bottom step. He was holding a black trash bag with something fairly heavy in it. She hadn’t seen him approach. It was like he’d appeared out of thin air.

  “Jeez. You scared me,” she said, stepping back to give him room to reach the door.

  The clothes he wore were older than anything Goodwill would give away. His thinning white hair hanging out below the ratty fishing hat was long and shaggy. The deep wrinkles on his face made him look twenty years older than he really was. He looked dirty and haggard and tired.

  There was nothing left here of the man she’d been married to for eighteen years. Nothing but the eyes. They bore into hers with a coolness that made her shiver despite the thickness of her tailored wool blazer. As he reached the door, she glimpsed a patch of red wool peeking from under the collar of his coat. She recognized it right away. It was the scarf Stephanie had given him their last Christmas together.

  “I’ve been trying to get in touch with you all week.” She decided to lay it out for him. “The New York Times is doing a feature story on me. The reporter is planning to come to Connecticut next week. This is great publicity for my campaign, Claude. The trouble is that they want to talk to you, too.”

  He looked at her for a moment, then slid a key into the door and unlocked it.

  “So here’s the deal,” she continued. “Obviously, I don’t want them to come here. But a phone interview won’t do, either. You need to clean yourself up. And I want to be present when you talk to him. We need to put up a united front. What I’ll do is set up the meeting someplace public, like a restaurant or a library. Whatever you want. I can have my driver pick you up, and we’ll bring you back her, afterwards.”

  “Go to hell,” he muttered, pushing the door open.

  “Wait a second. You owe me this,” she snapped. “I haven’t asked a single thing from you all these years. I’ve put up with—”

  He disappeared inside, slamming the door in her face. She pushed it open, walking in behind him.

  “Damn it, all I’m asking is for you to see this guy, to let the world see what those filthy bastards did to our family. I—”

  Claude disappeared through another door and slammed it behind him.

  Kathy stopped. She was standing in a large kitchen space. The smell of mold and sweat and urine and paint and rodents all combined to turn her stomach. The counters and sink and stove were piled high with yellowed newspapers and magazines and other assorted junk. A kitchen table with three legs lay on its side by one wall and a single kitchen chair stood near it. Empty cans and scraps of rope and trash filled the corners.

  Kathy’s gaze fixed on the wall. Two spotlights, haphazardly nailed to the filthy linoleum floor, illuminated magazine and newspaper clippings and pieces of maps and photographs. They covered the wall from floor to ceiling.

  Faces and headlines were marked up, underlined or circled in red. Whether it was blood or ink, she didn’t want to guess.

  And there was writing everywhere. Unintelligible words and symbols, as if written in code. Lines and arrows. She stepped closer, recognizing some of the faces. Others had pieces missing, eyes or a mouth gouged or carved out by a blade. The writing seemed to be gibberish, but as she looked closer, she recognized Latin words and scribbled curses.

  Kathy jumped when Claude reappeared in the kitchen. He looked at the wall, then at her face. She saw then what she hadn’t seen outside. His eyes were those of a dead man. And in his hand, he was holding a long kitchen knife.

  Terror kept her frozen in place for an eternity.

  “What…Claude? Why?” she managed to croak.

  “I told you to go to hell.”

  She didn’t have to be told again.

  A moment later, Kathy was in her car, gasping and slamming the locks on her door and staring out the window at the cottage.

  Claude Green was not only insane, but dangerous.

  CHAPTER 35

  The two suitcases lay open on the sofa, each only partially filled with Terri’s things. Four stacks of books sat on the coffee table, the only ones Lacey had decided to take. She was done sorting for now. Gavin was speaking with someone at NHPD on his cell in the bedroom. He believed someone had gone through Terri’s apartment after the funeral. And whoever they were, they knew what they were doing. Other than the signs of breaking into the file cabinet, there was no other disturbance.

  Walking back to the kitchenette, Lacey caught a glimpse of Gavin’s back as he stood in the bedroom. There was an immediate tightening deep in her stomach. Something was happening between them. In her. She was trying not to think about how alive she’d felt when his arms were wrapped around her and how the kiss had made everything that was wrong in her life disappear. />
  During those few passionate moments, she’d known that if they were to make love, she’d be a changed person forever. He wasn’t like other men she’d known—not in temperament, not in confidence, not in the way his simple glance melted her insides. He had a quality that Lacey recognized could wipe out any self-discipline she had left.

  She tore her gaze away when he turned around. He was being a perfect gentleman and Lacey knew her limits.

  The envelope the building manager had signed for was still sitting on the counter along with a half dozen other pieces of correspondence about benefits and social security that had arrived for Terri over the past few weeks. She reached for this one and tore it open.

  Pension information. She thumbed through it. Life insurance. Lacey’s throat closed as her gaze fell on the benefit amount. She blinked back immediate tears. Terri. Even in death, she made sure that her sister was taken care of. Through blurred vision, she saw that Terri had taken out a million dollar policy, with Lacey named as sole beneficiary.

  “Damn it,” she whispered. The tears were back.

  The papers dropped onto the counter and she sank to the floor, her knees drawn to her chest, her face buried in a dish towel as she tried to muffle the sobs that shook her to the very core.

  It was so wrong that her sister was gone.

  Gavin found her a few minutes later.

  “I can’t leave you alone, at all,” he said gently, crouching down in front of her. He brushed away the tears on her cheek. “I don’t think it’s such a good idea for you to be spending the night here.”

  She nodded, struggling to her feet, gratefully accepting his help. She headed for the bathroom to wash her face. He followed and planted himself in the doorway. She stole a glance in the mirror and was horrified by her reflection. Puffy eyes, red patches on her face, crazy hair coming out of the ponytail. She turned on the water and splashed handfuls of water on her face, too dejected to care that he was watching her.

  “If you won’t mind taking me back to New Milford to get my car, I can go back to my house,” she said, grabbing a towel to dry her face.

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea either. Not yet. There’s no security system at the house and there’s not enough time for me to hire someone to camp at your door around the clock.”

  “I really don’t think—”

  “I’m not going to leave you alone. So how about this? You come and stay at my apartment tonight.”

  As soon as she opened her mouth to object, he raised his hand.

  “I have no ulterior motive. I just want you to be safe. I’ll come out and stay with you in Westbury if that’s what you want, but there are a few things that are coming to the surface here in New Haven. I might be close to figuring out who broke in here…and who took Terri’s badge.”

  “You asked about her badge the first night you came to the house.”

  He nodded. “I found it in the possession of a local thug this past week. I’ve been trying to figure out how he got it.”

  Lacey needed him. And Gavin was doing exactly what she hoped someone would do—solve her sister’s murder. And it was murder.

  “Can you talk about it?”

  “I need you to show me her keys first.”

  Lacey left the bathroom and he followed. Terri’s keychain was on the kitchen counter where she’d left it. She handed it to him. He studied the keys.

  “Is this the only set?”

  “The only one I found.”

  “Whenever she was off duty, Terri kept her badge and weapon in her locker at work,” he explained. “She often left her second set of keys in her desk. It was a duplicate set to this one…except for these two keys.”

  Lacey looked down at the keychain, and at two identical keys he was holding.

  “My guess is that these open that file cabinet in her closet,” Gavin explained.

  She frowned. “So you think someone you worked with did this?”

  “Someone who had access to her desk and the second set of keys could also have had access to her badge. It would have been very easy for them to walk right in here.”

  “But then they would have had to break into the file cabinet.”

  He nodded. “I just spoke with my old boss again. Terri’s desk was cleaned out after the funeral. There were no keys in there. So, yes, somebody in the department could have taken them.”

  Lacey didn’t have a high opinion of police officers. Her sister had always been an exception. And now Gavin.

  “Why would this person give her badge away to some criminal?”

  “Not just some criminal. The mope who was carrying it is part of a larger organization and that missing file that is about them.”

  “I still don’t—”

  “There’s a lot these thugs can do by flashing a detective’s badge.”

  Lacey thought for a moment. “This narrows things down, doesn’t it?” she said, for the first time hopeful that he might be close to finding an answer.

  He looked at his watch. “I’m meeting with one of the other detectives at five o’clock at a restaurant not far from here. Jake Allen worked with Terri on a couple of cases after I left. He’s enough of a busybody to have ideas about who in the department is spending more than their paycheck these days. And we’ve been friends long enough that he’ll answer some of my questions off the record.”

  “But do you trust him?”

  “Everyone’s a suspect. Jake has three kids, but his wife works, too, and brings in a good paycheck. And even though that doesn’t let him off the hook, it’s worth seeing him.”

  Lacey understood this was Gavin’s business. “I can wait here until you come back.”

  He shook his head. “I don’t want you out of my sight. I want you to come with me.”

  CHAPTER 36

  Luke Brandt sat in his car on Ferry Street, staring across the dirt and gravel lot at the dockside warehouse. He looked past the rusting blue structure to New Haven’s skyline. Just below, the river widened into the harbor, and the red sun was about ready to crash and burn into West Haven.

  Luke’s stomach had been churning ever since he got the summons. It had been a good day until then.

  After dropping off his daughter at his ex-wife’s place, he’d been at the police station when his phone had buzzed.

  He’d known who was calling. That phone was only used by Bratva’s people.

  Thirty minutes later, he was here, dreading what was ahead. This was the first time he’d been called to the warehouse.

  Luke scanned the neighborhood even though he was certain no one was watching Quinnipiac Lobster, Inc. That was one of the things he was paid for, knowing and reporting what law enforcement was doing with regard to Bratva. And in spite of the fact that this was the center of Bratva’s operations, no surveillance teams were deployed here or anywhere else to watch him.

  He drove into the lot. There was a refrigerated truck backed up to a loading dock and three SUVs parked in the shadows cast by the building. As Luke pulled in beside them, one of Bratva’s soldiers—dressed in yellow rubber overalls and black rubber boots—appeared by the back of the truck, eying him warily. There would be more of them around, with enough firepower to hold off an entire SWAT team. That was the way Bratva did things.

  “Okay,” Luke muttered to himself as he opened the car door. “Let’s do this.”

  On the loading dock, he let Bratva’s man pat him down.

  “Where’s your gun?”

  “Left it in the car,” Luke replied. “I know the rules.”

  The man shrugged and jerked his head toward the door.

  The door opened and Luke went into the dimly lit warehouse. The smell of seafood and salt water slapped him in the face as soon as he entered. It was ten degrees cooler than the October afternoon outside, but three of Bratva’s men were standing around in short sleeves.

  Behind them, four aqua blue tanks—three feet high and twelve feet long—were filled with water. In them, about a thousand
lobsters of all sizes moved like a brown mass at the bottom, climbing over each other and going nowhere.

  Along the bulkhead wall that cut the warehouse in half, four more blue tanks were stacked, one on top of the other, held up and separated by huge blocks of lumber. Water cascaded in a measured flow from each tank to the one below it.

  One of the men pulled open a heavy, sliding wooden door beside the stacked tanks.

  “In,” he ordered.

  Luke went through and the door slammed shut behind him.

  A single light in the back corner illuminated this half of the warehouse. Four overhead doors were shut and the two skylights in the high ceiling had been painted over, making it even darker.

  Luke was vaguely aware of more stacked tanks and a catwalk overhead. It was the pool-sized tank in the center that held his attention. That…and the naked, bleeding man, trussed up with duct tape and dangling from a hook above it.

  “Detective.”

  “Mr. Bratva.”

  Luke looked at the crime boss. Middle-aged and balding, Bratva still had the lean, solid look of a man who did hard physical labor for a living. And wiping his hands on a bloody towel, he might have been filleting fish at a supermarket. There was an aluminum chair and a rolling table beside the tank. In his hand was a curved cutting tool. There were others on the table.

  Bratva was wearing the same rubber overalls and boots as his warehousemen, but his were shiny with blood. The same blood that had created pools on the concrete floor around him. Next to his foot, a white bucket appeared to contain pieces cut from the bound victim.

  On the far side of the tank, one of his men held the controls of the electric hoist.

  “Come here, Detective,” Bratva said quietly. “I want you to see something.”

  Luke moved reluctantly toward him. He knew that if he made a run for it, he was dead.

  Bratva tossed the blade onto the table, and the man above the pool started to regain consciousness. The victim tried to scream through the layers of duct tape, but only a low strained moan could be heard over the rhythmic sound of the water pumps.