He stepped out of the shower, dried off, and checked himself to see if he needed a shave. He could have used one, but he didn’t really have time and he figured the day after your partner’s funeral you shouldn’t look more chipper and clean cut than you did most other days. He had to remind himself that he needed to continue to play the part a bit longer. Everyone would expect him to be a bit moody, which for the first time in a long time he was not at all.
Well, he could fake it, or just spend as much time in his office pushing papers as he could today. No one would expect him to get much field work done.
He was just about to step out of the bathroom to get dressed when his phone began to ring on the sink. He glanced at the caller ID. It read unavailable. Typically he did not answer unknown numbers, but it was too early for telemarketers to legally call so he grabbed it up.
“Hello?”
“I saw what you did,” the voice purred in the phone. It was a deep voice, barely above a whisper. Unrecognizable.
“What?” Declan asked. Who the hell was pulling a prank on him today?
“I saw what you did, and now I want you to do the same thing for me.”
With that the line went dead.
Declan stood there suddenly feeling very cold after the hot shower. His skin felt clammy, breaking out in goose flesh. A shiver ran through him he felt a bit light headed and nauseouss as he sat the phone down and steadied himself against the sink.
It had to be a joke. Just a sick joke.
But how could it be? No one knew what he did.
They had to be talking about something else. The idea that someone saw what happened. He looked around; he saw no one in the woods with them that day. There was no way in hell this person could be talking about the murder of John Farnsworth.
But what else could they be talking about? What else could it be?
I want you to do the same thing for me.
“Get a grip,” Declan said, looking at the mirror image.
He had to keep a tight lid on everything. For all he knew this could have been a wrong number. It might have nothing to do with him at all.
The day ahead of him just got a lot longer.
He imagined that he would be thinking about this phone call for the next week or two, wondering what it was about, and if it was a legitimate threat.
I want you to do the same thing for me.
What did that mean? Did this person want him to kill someone for them? It had to be a joke. It had to be a joke.
But he knew that no matter how many times he told himself that in the back of his mind he was going to freak out and wonder about it.
What if it was real?
Would he have to kill someone else?
Declan looked in the mirror and stared deeply into his own eyes.
He knew that he could kill again if he had to.
Chapter 6
“Partners in Crime”
“Declan?”
He looked up from the case file he’d been studying for the past hour, trying to pinpoint who the henchman was that shot John. He knew that the prick had to be working with Josh Rames, but so far he had yet to locate a previous record or any sort of other ID on the guy that would lead them to Rames. It was like he’d just offered some random guy a couple bucks to do the deal for him. Maybe they’d underestimated Rames’ influence on the neighborhood and that was precisely what had happened.
But the odds that a random guy would be packing heat made it more difficult to swallow. Of course it was possible, but highly implausible.
He talked to the confidential informant they had, Alex Watson, to see if the guy looked familiar. After looking at the photos of his dead body Alex said he had no idea who he was. Rames was always recruiting new people and losing others to violence and sometimes he would just off someone if he thought they knew too much. Working for Rames was a dangerous job, but refusing to work for him was a sure way of getting a bullet to the head. You did not say no to Josh Rames.
So they were basically at square one, and Rames continued to destroy the community.
Declan noticed Captain Mathews standing there with a woman he had never seen before. She was tall, athletic, curvy, and just plain beautiful. Her curves were banging in every single spot.
“Hey, what’s going on?” Declan asked standing up from his desk.
“Declan, I want you to meet your new partner. This is Rachel Sinclair. She just got moved up to vice and since we now have the opening she was transferred to our precinct.”
Declan shook her hand. She had a surprisingly firm shake for a woman and the touch of her hand had him feeling a bit turned on. It was going to be pleasant working with her to say the least, but he was sure that novelty would wear off quickly if she wasn’t at least twice the cop that Farnsworth had been.
“I’m sorry to hear about your last partner. I understand he was a good man,” Rachel said.
Declan tried not to laugh and keep his morose expression. “Thanks,” was all he could muster.
It had been three days since he’d been back to work after John’s funeral and everything was just starting to feel normal around the precinct again. People had stopped giving him a sympathetic look and had stopped quieting their conversations around him. It was like a family member had really died or something. He wanted to tell them all to lighten the hell up. He was glad things were finally getting back to normal again, though.
“Well, I’ll let you two get acquainted,” Captain Mathews said as he walked away.
“So, what is on the schedule for today?” Rachel said. “I’ve been brought up to speed a little bit about the Josh Rames case. That is what you are still working on?”
Declan was impressed; the girl had done her homework already. “Yeah, so far we don’t have any strong leads to tie him to anything, but our confidential informant says that it is definitely him, which confirms the suspicions we’ve had for a while. We just have to keep building the case against him.”
“Ok, so what’s next? We have any leads on who the guy is that attacked you and John the other day?”
“No, not yet. I haven’t been able to pull up any criminal history on the guy. He is a grocery store clerk who lives a few blocks away from where he sold the drugs to that kid.”
“Is the kid talking? Does he know him?”
“No, he has never seen him before, or so he says.”
“You don’t believe him?”
“He’s a junkie. Now normally a junkie going through withdrawals will spill their guts about everything they’ve ever done if they think it will get them on the streets faster to score more dope, but this kid knows that we are keeping him locked up and ordering him into a treatment plan and a halfway house upon completion of that rehab plan.”
“What about his parents? Are they in the loop?”
“His parents want him to come back home eventually, but only if he is clean. He ran away from home a while back when his drug problem became too much to handle.”
“So, what’s different with him? He didn’t talk?” Rachel asked.
“Well, he did, but I’m not too sure I believe everything he says. There is something he is keeping quiet.”
“You get anything useful from him at all?”
“Yeah, we got a couple of names. I checked them out. One is a Larry Kane, who lives on Greene St. He has a history of pimping and a few arrests for assault and battery. He is new to the drug game though.”
“Ok, you don’t think that’s a hit?”
“Well, it could be but right now it’s unverified.”
“Well, we will verify the info then,” Rachel said.
Declan looked at her for a second and he was not sure whether to be mad that she was bossing him or impressed at her restless ambition. Hopefully she had a good enough head on her shoulders to keep that ambition in check and utilize it properly.
“I plan to,” Declan replied with a grunt hoping that she got the me
ssage to not overstep her bounds. “Now the other information I got from him was that he just joined a crew ran by a guy named Roger Wright. He is an intellectual sort who has started working with a mysterious other guy that he won’t talk about. He hired this kid to make that drop the other day.”
“Ok, so we should check him out first,” Rachel said.
Declan sighed. “Yeah, let’s go.”
He was really hoping to keep the day nice and chill and stay in the office. He would check out those names tomorrow after spending the day doing research, but truthfully he had already finished the research on the backgrounds and known associations of both men. So it was actually time to go to the field.
A half hour later they were knocking on Roger Wright’s door. Declan hated that neighborhood. You could practically smell the stench of drugs in the air. At first glance it looked like a normal neighborhood, but it was in fact what they referred to as “a sleeper”. It was like a dormant bear that was hibernating for winter. The whole place was one big money laundering scheme, most of it owned by the same couple of people. And they were very careful about the way they did business.
The door opened and a young woman stood there. She looked to be college age, intelligent, maybe a bit book wormy. Declan had to admit he was caught off guard. She did not look like the type of person who would be mixed up in any sort of drugs. Most likely she didn’t know anything about it, but of course he couldn’t be sure. He learned a long time ago not to judge a book by its cover. He’d seen vicious murderers who looked like accountants.
“Yes?” the girl said. Her voice was a high pitched almost giggly sound. Declan wanted to laugh. He just never expected a voice like that to come out of a real, human person who was not performing as a cartoon character.
“Yes, I’m Officer Pierce, and this is Officer Sinclair. We need to speak with Roger Wright, please.”
“Well, Roger isn’t here. Is there something I can help you with?”
Declan smiled. He looked deeply into the girl’s eyes trying to decide if she was telling the truth. She had a pretty good poker face, but he was pretty sure she was lying her ass off.
“We really need to speak with him. Are you sure he’s not here?” Declan asked again.
Rachel eyeballed him nervously, as if trying to figure out why he was even giving this girl a choice on letting them in. Declan smiled at her. He had this.
“Yes… of course I’m sure. What is this about?” The girl asked.
“What is your name miss?” Declan asked ignoring her question.
“Amy Banks. Why does it matter? Why are you here?” she asked getting nervous. Her voice was now rising to a higher level; if it went much higher only dogs would be able to hear her.
Declan pulled out the warrant he’d had Judge Mathias sign and send over as soon as he had the information from Donald Mosely, the junkie currently going through withdrawal at the station. He was supposed to be transferred to an actual rehab facility tomorrow.
“We have a warrant to search the place, so you are letting us in one way or the other. I suggest you sit down and make yourself comfortable,” Declan said as he opened the door and forced his way past the girl.
“You can’t do this! You have no right to come in here!” Amy Banks screamed.
Declan threw the warrant at her. “Yeah, we kind of do.”
Rachel stepped into the house a bit more timidly, but she quickly picked up the pace followed Declan’s lead. Declan pulled his gun out as he stepped into the house. There could be several people hiding, waiting for them to make one mistake and pounce on them.
Rachel pulled her gun out as well. Declan smiled at the enthusiasm. The girl was getting her first taste of serving a high risk warrant in a bad part of town. It was a bit different than being a beat cop. This was a playing field on a whole other level. Declan just hoped she was ready for it.
He led her down a hallway, glancing into an opened, small kitchen. There was nothing there to see except a stack full of dirty, putrid smelling dishes. The house looked bigger from the outside than it actually was.
Declan moved along down the hallway slowly, turning into a bedroom. He pointed to Rachel over his shoulder to check the bedroom across the hall at the same time. She got into position and stood beside him as they both entered the room in front of them.
Declan quickly turned on the light. The room was kept neat with a full sized bed, a small television, a few book shelves, and small dresser and closet. Declan saw nothing in the room immediately, so he quickly scooted in and checked behind the door, eliminating the blind spot.
He walked to the closet door and opened it up slowly. There was nothing out of the ordinary. It was a small closet with a mix of men and women’s clothes and a few shoes at the bottom. Declan carefully inspected above every single pair of shoes, and in between all of the clothes. It was amazing how well someone could hide in a closet. It had happened to him before.
After eliminating any presence in the room and closet he knelt down and quickly checked under the bed. It was the most obvious place that people could hide… if they were twelve, but some did it. Checking the bed also left you open and vulnerable to attack if someone was hiding elsewhere in the room, hence the reason he always checked the bed last.
He exited the room just as Sinclair was coming out of the other.
“Nothing under the bed?”
Sinclair smiled. “I checked there too,” she said. Her voice sounded as if she was a little annoyed at being quizzed, but being a rookie she was going to have to get used to that shit. She would make stupid mistakes here and there; everyone did. If Declan ended up liking her enough he might even tell her about some of his mistakes one day.
They made their way to the end of the hall. There was a closed door. Declan didn’t think it was another bedroom; he thought it might be the basement. He’d checked the layout of the house online before he had left the office. It was another little trick he’d picked up. If you went online you could find out when certain addresses were purchased and then you could cross reference that with the real estate listings for that year and month and you could often see pictures of the inside of the house and a blueprint of the layout. Technology was such a good friend to have. But little shortcuts like that they did not teach cadets in the academy. You just had to learn stupid hacks like that along the way.
Declan stood his ground and held his gun high. He flicked the light switch on and slowly opened the door ready to fire at anything that tried to attack him. Rachel did the same, following his lead. It was nice to have a partner who realized that they did not know everything yet. John had tried to get Declan to follow his lead from day one. What a joke.
There was nothing there except a set of stairs.
Declan led the way down the steps to the basement. It ran the length of the house. It was for the most part clutter free, which he did not expect. His own basement was not this clean. It was almost as if the basement was nicer and more organized than the upstairs had been. Declan recognized this as a tip off that the basement was used for some sort of work purposes. And there was plenty of evidence to support his theory.
There were several work benches, cleaned and cleared. As Declan bent down over one of them he could smell the bleach even more strongly than when he first walked in. There was a lab coat in the corner that someone had carelessly laid down. A large double sink sat in the corner of the room, as well as a full bathroom.
“Well, this is interesting,” Declan muttered.
Rachel pointed to him just then. He followed her gaze to the side of the room where another door stood. It was painted to blend in with the wall, but if you were being observant you could spot the doorknob jutting out a bit.
Declan walked casually over to the front of the door and motioned for Rachel to stand back. He again held his gun up firmly in front of him and started to open the door. If anyone was here then they would have to be right behind this door.
The
door flew back and hit Declan in the face, ripping the knob from his hand. A second later a large figure was hurling itself at him knocking the gun to the floor. A wave of pain ripped through Declan’s back as the wind was knocked clear out of his body. He blacked out briefly from the lack of air as he struggled to breathe again.
He could barely make out the figure on top of him before a hard punch came down at his face. Somehow Declan was able to get his arm up to block the punch, further exhausting the small amount of air he had left in his body.
There was no way that he would be able to win this fight. He felt like he was going to pass out. His body had forgotten how to breathe as he sucked in hard trying to get any little bit of air into his body that he could, but that mechanism ceased to work. He waited for his attacker to try to deliver another blow, but the attack stopped.
Declan crawled away and tried to stagger to his feet. But the most he could manage was his hands and knees. His vision was blurry, pain was roaring in his back and his head. Was this what passing out felt like? It was usually quicker than that he’d always thought. But this was taking forever, unless his body was just fighting it. He couldn’t afford to pass out when his life was in danger. He could feel the adrenaline rolling through his body, trying to keep him awake and alert to danger.
But the danger seemed to be over for the time being.
Suddenly a gust of air inflated his body, stretching his burning lungs and filling them full of sweet, glorious air. Declan inhaled as hard as he could, flooding his body with oxygen, giving rise to a heady high as if he were being consumed by a wave of drunkenness that he was not even used to.
“Don’t move or I’ll blast your head all over the floor!”
Declan heard the words shouting from Rachel Sinclair’s slender body and it even scared the hell out of him. His vision was finally coming around as his body slowly recovered from the attack. Richard Wright was still on his knees, a right hand fist pulled back ready to deliver another painful blow to the spot that Declan’s face had been only a few seconds before.
False Witness Page 5