Ed smirked.
Tell me how you really feel, Hugh. Don’t hold back now.
Hugh turned to face him, shock briefly crossing over his features as he realized for the first time that Ed was observing him.
He shrugged, as if to say, ‘Meh, no big deal, not trying to offend.’
“What about you?”
Ed looked away, keeping his cards close to his chest. While he was adept at reading others, he liked to keep his own thoughts and feelings personal.
He hadn’t always been this way, but his thoughts about everyone being good, that this was the default and that only errors and mutations made people do horrible things, had gotten a stiff upper lip from the older brass.
It was these comments that had probably cemented him as a career detective, never to rise in the ranks.
But now that he was the older brass, Ed tried hard not to pass judgment on Hugh.
He chuckled, trying to lighten the suddenly dark mood in the car.
“What about me?” he asked, his go-to refrain from times like these. It was annoying as all hell, a sentiment that was reflected in Hugh’s expression, but it usually did the trick.
And this case was no exception.
They drove in silence for another half hour, the skyscrapers devolving into more modest offices, and then to apartment buildings. Ed had just pulled into a gas station when Hugh overcame his obvious annoyance and decided to speak up again, clearly choosing his words carefully. Thankfully, he changed the subject, reverting to a more professional approach.
“I get the fact that talking to the woman wasn’t a waste of time…I mean, we know that there was a man who could possibly be Michael meeting a fat bald dude and a skinny guy with non-smiling eyes in the park during his lunch hour, from which he never returned. I’ll tip my cap to you; potentially valuable information there. But you gotta help me out here…what are you thinking? If it was Michael, who were the other two? Was it gambling debts? Blackmail? Collaborators? How does this information get us any farther ahead, Ed?”
Ed thought about this for a moment; he definitely had a plan of attack, a reason if no rhyme to what he was doing. He just wasn’t sure if he wanted to share it with Hugh.
Not just yet, anyway.
When Ed didn’t answer, Hugh sighed and stared out the window. It wasn’t the greatest start to their partnership, Ed supposed, but there was something to coming up with the plan yourself, of putting the pieces together on your own, that held incredible value.
Ed was reminded of a time long ago, back when his daughters were three and five. They loved puzzles, and he would often admire them as they worked together, trying to fit the pieces in place. For easy puzzles, the girls would pretty much share the work. But when things became difficult, his five-year-old daughter Haley would take over, and Jordynne would take a back seat. Haley would tell her where to put the pieces, order her even. It didn’t matter if the piece would fit in or not; Jordynne would just jam it into place to make her sister happy.
He couldn’t be certain, but Ed thought that this simple act had molded her to what she was to become, that it had shaped her personality.
Just the perfect mixture of gullibility and refraining from speaking up.
He swallowed hard, trying to push the image of his youngest daughter’s face peeking out from behind those steel bars, her head shaved, her eyes sunken.
The god-awful orange jumpsuit.
He didn’t want that to happen to Hugh; there was something to doing it for yourself, rather than being told or having your hand held while together you skip to the conclusion. And Ed couldn’t help but think, no matter how childish, that he was getting a bit of a second chance here with Hugh.
And to think, this was all borne out of street meat, of Hugh asking him if he wanted a sausage while he pored over the photographs.
“Hey, wait,” Hugh said, a tinge of excitement on his tongue, “isn’t this the ATM where Michael took out three grand the last afternoon he was seen?”
Ed smiled and exited the vehicle.
Yeah, he was starting to learn, all right.
Hugh hurried after him.
“But, wait—we checked the ATM camera, nothing on it except for a stressed-looking Michael Young. Couldn’t make out his car in the background, anything of interest—he didn’t even go inside the station to take a piss.”
Ed shook his head.
“No, he didn’t,” Ed said. He patted Hugh on the back. “Just watch and listen, Hugh. Watch and listen.”
***
“It’s all yours. The tapes from Tuesday are there on top,” the man with the handlebar mustache said, indicating the stack of videotapes on the desk in the office at the back of the store. “Four cameras, two inside, two outside. One by the ATM.”
“Tapes?” Hugh grumbled just loud enough for Ed to hear. “These guys still use tapes?”
Ed hushed him.
“Thank you, Mr.…?”
“Edmonds.”
“Huh, Ed and Edmonds.”
“Pardon?”
Ed shook his head.
“Nothing.”
That was another thing that Ed had strong thoughts about: coincidences. They didn’t just happen. The Baader-Meinhof phenomenon and all that.
“Don’t know what you think you’re gonna find, though. Cops already went through it all. And I already gave a statement: didn’t see no man in a suit. I’m lucky if my clientele is wearing a shirt.”
Ed just smiled and thanked the man again. Then he gently guided Mr. Edmonds out of the room and shut the door.
Turning back to Hugh, he said, “You aren’t going to let a neophyte like myself go through the tapes, are you? I’m more apt to erase them than find anything on them.”
Hugh raised an eyebrow.
“Tapes? You think I have experience with VHS tapes? How old do you think I am?”
Ed laughed.
“Take a seat, start with the camera at the ATM, get a pic of our man.”
Hugh turned back to the tapes, his hands outstretched. His frustration was palpable.
Deal with it.
If there was something else Ed had learned from this job was that frustration was nearly ubiquitous.
Hugh shifted the tapes around. From his vantage point near the door, Ed could only make out the date and a number written on them, which he assumed corresponded to the camera from which it was obtained.
“Which one? Christ—what’s the point of this, Ed? The cops have already—”
“Just put a tape in and let’s get started,” Ed replied, leaning up against a dark brown cabinet. He noticed an unopened can of Coke on top and popped it. The carbonation tickled his tongue. “We’re gonna be here a while, and the longer you take to get started, the more likely I am to develop some sort of glucose intolerance,” he joked.
The truth was, Edward “Ed the Nose” Gray was already diabetic, had been for years.
Chapter 8
“Four of us, three of them,” Cal said. “Makes sense. And we have two cameras that are still working. Don’t forget that.”
Robert had bit his tongue for long enough. He shot to his feet.
“Cal, are you crazy? Shelly isn’t going anywhere—she’s staying here.”
Now it was Shelly’s turn to rise.
“I’m not letting you guys go alone.”
Cal shook his head.
“Not this shit again. Robbo, she’s a grown fucking woman, she can make her own decisions.”
Wendy made her own choices, too, and look where that got her and Amy.
“I know you think you have to look after everyone, after…after…” Cal lowered his gaze and let his sentence trail off.
It didn’t matter; he didn’t have to say it. He knew what the man was thinking, but he wouldn’t let him bring Amy back into this.
“She’s pregnant, for Christ’s sake! Think about someone other than yourself for once, Cal!”
Robert’s blood was starting to boil. He was so fuc
king tired, he couldn’t think straight. The only thing that seemed clear to him for some reason was Wendy’s car accident, only it wasn’t Wendy in the front seat, but Shelly. And it wasn’t Amy in the back, but a newborn, wrapped tightly in a blanket.
Take it easy, Robert, Helen said, sensing his anger and frustration. This isn’t Wendy, and you shouldn’t treat her like she is.
Helen was right, of course, but Robert was having a hard time shutting down his anger. It seemed that at every turn there was an obstacle, something fantastic in his path that prevented him from living any semblance of a normal life.
With a deep breath, he turned his back to Cal and Aiden, and spoke directly to Shelly, deciding to take a more direct approach.
“Please, Shel, I know that you want to help, and we could definitely use your help if we go forward with this plan. But you’re pregnant, and you need to think about the baby.”
Shelly pressed her lips together.
“I am thinking about the baby, Rob. I’m thinking about what happens if you three dicks fuck up and Carson unleashes hell on Earth. Is that the kind of world you want your child being brought up into? Ask yourself that question, then decide whether or not I’m being selfish.”
Robert gritted his teeth in frustration.
“Fuck,” he grumbled.
Let it go for now, Rob. Let it go, and deal with it later.
Seeing that there was no way that he could win this battle, he threw his hands up in defeat. Only then did he realize the extent of his anger; he must have been clenching his fists, as the white bandage on his nub of an index finger had turned bright red.
“Fine! Just fucking great. A fucking dead guy, a pregnant woman, and me and Cal to take on Satan and his fucking minions. Sounds good to me. So how about one of you guys fill me in on this master plan of yours, then?”
Aiden spoke for the first time in a while.
“It doesn’t have to be the four of us. I can get us at least one more.”
Cal sucked his teeth.
“I don’t know about that. I don’t know if I’m comfortable bringing someone else into this mess.”
Aiden made a face.
“This ain’t no schoolboy, Cal. You needed worry about him—he’s solid.”
“Fine, four of us, then. So Shelly can stay home.”
“Robbo…”
Robert thought about Helen, her quiddity trapped inside his mind, then his thoughts flicked to Allan.
He swallowed hard.
“Cal’s right. No more people.”
Aiden looked like he was about to protest, but instead nodded his head.
“Okay, then. But in order for our plan to work, we first have to figure out where they’re holed up. Maybe that’s something you can help with, Robert.”
Robert frowned, the anger flooding back again.
Been feeling strange lately? Doing things that you wouldn’t normally do? Getting angry a lot, Robbo?
“Me? How the fuck can I do that? I have no idea where these people are. I only went where Sean…”
He let his sentence trail off when Cal nodded at the mention of the man’s name and shot a look at Aiden.
“No, no way. I’m not reaching out to him. Besides, I couldn’t find him if I wanted to. He always came to me.”
“And when did he come and see you?” Aiden asked.
“When the bastard needed my help, he just showed up. He came first when he needed help cleansing the Estate, then when the hospital was being overrun. Then again at Seaforth, but you know all about that one.”
“Yeah, well, maybe all I have to do is hang around here, and he’ll show up.”
Robert mulled that over for a moment.
Maybe. Maybe Sean would detect the quiddity and show up, eventually. But he couldn’t wait for eventually.
“But maybe it would be better if we were proactive. After all, he has something that you want, doesn’t he?” Aiden said, as if he were the one inside his head reading his thoughts instead of Helen.
“What does he have, Rob?” Shelly asked.
Robert ignored her.
“Yeah, no thanks to you.”
Aiden shrugged, as if the horrible ordeal that he had put Robert through back at Callahan’s church was just an afterthought. In a way, Robert supposed it was, given what had happened at the Estate afterward.
Aiden suddenly snapped his fingers, a strange, hollow sound that, like the rest of him, wasn’t quite real.
“You know what? I have a better idea. Instead of getting Sean to come to us, why don’t we go see him?”
“Wait, you know where he lives?” Shelly asked, incredulous.
Aiden shook his head.
“No, but I have a number I can call him at. He usually picks a spot for us to meet.”
Robert squinted at the quiddity across from him. Even though he was faded, and the light bounced strangely off of him, he somehow seemed more real than he had been back in the helicopter or at Seaforth. As if back then he had been inhibited, and his death had somehow freed him.
Robert didn’t know if Aiden could actually contact Sean, or even if he wanted him to. Just thinking about the man put a sour taste in his mouth.
Leland’s words suddenly echoed in his head as a soundtrack to the images of Sean at Seaforth, shooting the bound man in the head.
You look at me with such disgust, disdain, leaving me to wonder if you look at him the same way?
Both men had played him, it seemed, and Robert got the nagging suspicion that he was but a pawn in their longstanding game.
A game he’d never wanted to play, and yet one he was determined to win nonetheless.
Yeah, we’ll find that bastard Sean, and this time he’s going to answer all of my questions.
His eyes darted to Aiden, and he wondered how Sean would react to seeing his hired gun like this, given that he had been so opposed to even Robert touching him after Leland had grabbed his calf.
Or us, Robert, Helen reminded him. How he’ll react to us. If this guy has all this experience, he might be able to see me, too.
Robert chewed the inside of his lip. Helen had a point.
But in the end, he had no choice. He had to find Carson, he had to find the book, and for fuck’s sake, he had to get Amy back.
Robert plopped himself down on the chair and shook his head.
“Make the call, Aiden. Just make the call before I change my mind.”
Chapter 9
“Stop the tape—rewind.”
Hugh did as he was told, and Ed leaned in close.
“Roll forward, slow—slow.”
He paid close attention to Michael as he entered the frame.
“There! You see that?”
Hugh moved his face to within inches of the screen.
“See what? That’s our guy, our resident cannibal psychopath. What about him?”
Ed finished his third Coke in one big gulp. Then he brought a fist to his chest and let out a small burp.
“You know why they call us ‘detectives,’ Hugh?”
“I guess—”
“No, no guessing. It’s because we detect things, get it?”
Hugh turned on his swivel chair and glared at Ed.
“Only thing I’m detecting right now is my increased blood pressure.”
Ed laughed. This was a side of Hugh that he hadn’t seen before—sarcastic, funny. Raw.
He liked it.
“Just watch the tape, Hugh. Rewind it once more.”
Hugh threw his hands up, but did as he was instructed.
“Aaaaaaaand, right there,” Ed said, his voice brimming with pretension.
“Hmm. He said something.”
Ed mock clapped.
“Bravo! He did say something, but more importantly, he said something to someone. And this Michael cat doesn’t strike me as the type of person who makes small talk with a random stranger, does he?”
Hugh shrugged.
“No, but he could just be talking to himself…he’
s a bit of a strange one, this Michael. After all, he does eat people, lest we forget.”
Ed held up a finger.
“Or, smartass, the woman in the park is right, and our pal was with two other people.”
Hugh let the tape play. On the video, Michael looked much like the woman with Tootsie had told them, offering her story even more credence: his hair was messy, his tie loose, and the top button of his shirt was undone. The camera wasn’t HD, and he couldn’t be sure, but Ed thought that the man was sweating. The rest of the video was uneventful, and showed most of what the ATM video showed. Michael simply walked up to the machine, put his card in, took out some money, and then left the way he had come, vanishing out of frame.
When the video had first surfaced, PD’s initial reaction had been to shut off Michael’s bank accounts and flag his cards. The theory was simple: cut off his money supply and cross your fingers, hope that he did something stupid that would give him away.
Problem was, Michael was anything but stupid.
It went without saying that Ed had very much been opposed to this idea, despite the obvious flight risk that the man posed. The man was an egomaniac, had to be an egomaniac, and the longer he went without knowing that they were after him, the better. Besides, Michael Young had netted 1.2 mil last year, and yet the subpoenas of his bank accounts had revealed a paltry combined balance of 323k. There was a lot of cheddar that wasn’t accounted for, and Michael didn’t seem to Ed like the kind of man that spent frivolously, or gambled, or blew his wad on a pound of coke.
Nope, the man had different, and decidedly cheaper extracurriculars. If they cut off his cash supply, he would just use his other accounts that they couldn’t trace.
“What’re you thinking, Ed?”
Ed shook his head.
“I’m thinking that there is no way that Michael is going to use this card again.”
Sacred Heart Orphanage (The Haunted Book 5) Page 4