by Rhys Ford
A few seconds later and after passing one particular red-berry-laden hedge, Kuro took the Challenger through a hard left.
His tires smoked, the rubber catching on the grooves dug into the cement break in the asphalt. The shallow lines were meant to channel water down the hill, diverting any rushing rainfall into the culverts and drainage ditches. They also played hell on a top-heavy vehicle’s balance when taken too quickly. The truck tottered again, this time the left side lifting a good six inches. Kuro held his breath until he knew the truck made the turn, counting on the driver to be rattled by the near misses he’d taken.
Instead, the truck sped up again.
“Shit.” Kuro gripped the steering wheel with his left hand and passed his right thumb over the sensor built into the front of his modified center console. “You should’ve taken the fall, buddy.”
He was too used to having protection, and despite being tagged out of the game, there was no way he was going to walk through the rest of his life as a sitting duck. There were too many scores to be settled and people he’d pissed off, even if he’d done his jobs under the watchful eye of his government. Angry people tended to strike out not at the puppet masters but rather the puppet, hitting the people they could reach, as if taking someone off the board would somehow cripple the shadows behind the curtain. He’d run deep, barely lifting his head above water or light, nearly secure in the knowledge he’d never been made until the very end, and even then his superiors wrote off his involvement as an embassy employee being in the right place at the wrong time.
The truck driver or whoever sent him definitely had Kuro in their sights, and the only way he was going to get an answer about who was pulling the strings would be if he and the driver came to an abrupt, final understanding.
The console flipped open, its smart switch activated by his thumbprint. He reached into the space and pulled out the fifth-gen Glock he’d picked up a few months ago, flicking a glance down at it to make sure it was primed to go. Keeping the gun down, he took the next turn, swinging wide so the truck could keep him in sight, then hugged the inner curve, counting on the bend to keep him hidden.
At some point the driver must have realized he couldn’t keep up with the powerful Challenger on any straight stretch of road and took the one chance he had to ram the muscle car’s back end. As Kuro lifted the Glock up, prepared for the truck to clip his fender, a gunshot shattered the Challenger’s front and back windshields.
“Son of a bitch.” Shaking the tempered glass pebbles out of his hair, Kuro cut to the left, then slammed on his brakes, forcing the truck to shoot past him on the right. Aiming his gun out of one of the larger holes of his crackled front glass, he let off a shot.
It hit its mark.
The truck’s right rear tire blew as it took the next outward curve, and already slightly out of control, the force of the exploding rubber threw the vehicle to the side. Its driver was probably panicking, especially since Kuro dropped the Challenger down to a low growl, easing back the throttle. The truck hit the dirt track on the side of the road. Then Kuro shot again, aiming at the man’s silhouette outlined against the rear window.
The inside of the cab went muddy with red. Then the truck went over the edge of the hill, leaving shreds of rubber behind in its wake.
Kuro parked the Challenger in the turnoff and slowly got out of his car to view the carnage below. The utility truck was still rolling down the side of the sloping hill, tools bouncing out of its bed and scattering through the sagebrush. It landed on its side, scraping across the Laurel Canyon Park’s asphalt lot, coming to rest against a cement-and-rock trash can set up against a sidewalk.
He could see the driver. The man had fallen out in the truck’s tumble, and Kuro didn’t need much more than a glance to know it was one of the men he’d shot at the night before. Sighing, he reached for his cell phone and put the Glock on the Challenger’s glossy black hood.
She answered on one ring.
“Holly, I need you to pull everything you can on a former child star named Trey James Bishop.” Kuro was always amazed at how silent the world became after a death, especially a violent one. He heard a squawk on the other side of the line and grinned despite everything. “No, I don’t need a cleanup on aisle five. But what you can do for me is call the LAPD and tell them I’ve got some roadkill they need to scrape up off the ground. I’ll be waiting for them at the Laurel Canyon Park. They can’t miss me. I’ll be the one holding my hands up in the air.”
Five
THE SMELL of police stations haunted Trey in his sleep. The odor lay as a fetid undernote to the reek of burnt coffee, gun oil, and the musky cologne most cops wore. The air was kept cold, a glacial chill meant to do something, perhaps push a man’s sanity over the edge because he couldn’t get warm, shivering in his bones, much like fear taking over his body. Or maybe cops just burned from the inside out and needed the cold to keep their bodies going, slices of a demon’s soul walking around with pitchforks they made out of accusations and prejudice.
Regardless of why a cop house was the way it was, Trey hated the smell. He’d had it in his nose often enough, usually while being walked in with his hands pulled behind his back in too-tight handcuffs, as if the police had something to prove by wrenching his shoulders out of joint. But the smell of cheap linoleum and cop house had nothing on the worst part of being walked through the gauntlet of badges… the eyes.
The eyes followed him, stabbing into Trey like barbed fish hooks baited with curiosity and suspicion. They haunted him, narrowed and accusing stares he could never shake loose. He felt them tugging at his flesh, piercing the glass veil separating the interrogation room from the observation niche behind a wall of one-way mirror.
There were people lurking there, probing shadows with nothing better to do than watch Kimber Bishop tear pieces of her baby brother off like marinated jerky, hanging them out to dry under the fierce, hot sun of her distrust and suspicion.
She certainly had the heat set up to eleven, having a cop show up on the doorstep of his carriage house at seven at night to escort him to the police station in the back of a squad car. There was never any question about Kimber playing favorites with her baby brother. She treated him no better than a common criminal, even when dragging him in to be asked a couple of questions.
Surprised the hell out of Trey when she stood there, saying nothing, her breathing slow and steady but her gaze landing on everything in the room but her younger brother. Kimber had a thin folder tucked under her arm, a flimsy blue paper thing worn around the edges and its tab covered by a sea of stickers, an illegible scrawl in black Sharpie across the most recent addition. Or at least Trey couldn’t read what it said.
There was no warmth in the interrogation room. It wasn’t meant to be comfortable. Not in any way, shape, or form. Maybe they used it for things other than prying information out of a reluctant person, but whoever threw together its walls and furniture wasn’t focused on those rare instances. The walls were a pale puke, a hint of green in the lackluster beige paint. Something had happened near the door at some point, its smooth surface marred by irregular rounded pitting the size of a fist or perhaps a chin. A five-foot steel table sat in the dead center of the room, its metal legs bolted to the gray, tiled floor. Four utilitarian metal chairs sat arranged around the table, two on each side, their red vinyl backs and seats the only spot of color in the space.
Other than Kimber and Trey, but judging by his reflection in the wall-length mirror across of him and his sister’s sallow complexion, he figured they were both now the exact same putty hue as the walls.
Then a man walked in and Trey realized that was who his sister was waiting for. Her demeanor shifted, the set of her face hardening into a stony mask not unlike the one their father wore when Trey was being dressed down for what the family thought was his latest fuckup.
“So this is the prodigal son?” the piece of meat wearing a finely tailored charcoal suit barked at Kimber. “Thought your family w
as supposed to be something, Bishop. Between you and him, it doesn’t look like much.”
It took everything Trey had not to flip the man off.
“Trey, this is Captain Garrett. He wants to ask you a few questions.” Kimber didn’t move from her perch against the wall, but her body tensed, her shoulders lifting up as she spoke. She didn’t look happy, but Trey couldn’t think of the last time he’d seen his sister so much as crack a smile, much less laugh. “Sir, we’ve got this room for another hour. After that, Narc’s got it reserved for something they’re running.”
“They’ll get the fucking room when I’m good and ready to give it to them,” the cop growled back. “We don’t get answers here and now, Central’s going to yank this out from under us, and I’ve had enough of Book’s assholes riding in like the damned cavalry. We get a jump on this and we make sure this case stays with us.”
It was a cliché and a bit demeaning to say the man was built like a bull. That imagery came from a dark place in America’s past, but there were some men for whom that label applied. This was definitely one of them. Minotaur came to mind. Actually, any other kind of mythological bovine with a thick neck and flared nose would do. All the man was missing was a labyrinth and a ball of thread. And from the disdainful look on his face, the cop wasn’t auditioning Trey to be his Ariadne.
Garrett was older, his still-muscular body running to a downhill battle with age, and spongy, a too-pale ooze of skin over flaccid flesh. There was muscle wrapped tight around his bulky frame, but his fingers were puffy, and the gold watch peeking out from his cuff cut a little bit into his wrist when he moved his hand. His stride was a lope, his legs sweeping out as if to accommodate an enormous swinging ball sac between his thighs. There was a discreet gold cross pinning his bright red tie together, and it gleamed as brightly as the skin rippling over his bald head. He had a ghost of stubble along the back of his skull, the shadow of a receding hairline edging up over his pate. Judging by his thick blond eyebrows and nearly colorless blue eyes, Trey imagined he’d been a towheaded kid with freckles across an easily reddened nose.
His nose was still red, but Trey doubted it was from the sun. There was a meanness in his gaze, stropped to a razor sharpness by a sense the world owed him, and Trey somehow embodied every misstep and failed opportunity he’d been given.
Yet somehow this man was Kimber’s superior. That much was evident when she rolled her shoulders back, nearly pressing them against the mirrored wall. As much as he and his sister butted heads, Trey didn’t like seeing the man roll over her, so in true younger brother fashion, he took the first jab.
“I don’t know what swamp you dragged yourself out of, but if you’re going to walk among us humans, you should learn to treat people with respect,” Trey drawled. “My sister is worth ten of you on her worst day. Maybe you should worry less about trying to prove you have a dick, and think more about how not to be one.”
The cop’s plump hands tightened into loose fists, the gold ring on his wedding finger straining to hold back his moving flesh. His lips thinned, a liver color slashed across his red-speckled face, and a flush rose up from his neck, coloring his cheeks before rippling across the top of his shaved head.
“They said you had a mouth on you,” Garrett growled, slamming those fists into the table, leaning his weight on his hands and spitting wet flecks on Trey’s face. “I’m thinking maybe that mouth of yours got you into trouble and now your big sister is trying to clean up another one of your messes.”
“This would make a hell of a lot more sense if I knew why you dragged me down here,” Trey replied, flicking his glance toward Kimber. “Bad enough you’re playing games making me wait for an hour. Probably would have been better if you’d told me why I should be sweating beforehand instead of walking in here throwing your shit around. I’m guessing this has something to do with the dead guy I saw in Koreatown.”
“Something. Just not your dead guy. Bishop, why don’t you lay some of those photos down and see if your baby brother can figure out what we’re talking about?” His eyes narrowed when Kimber held the file folder out to him rather than do what he’d ordered. Snatching the portfolio from her hand, he fixed a hard gaze on Trey. “Recognize this guy?”
Garrett dumped a handful of photos out onto the table, arranging them into a line in front of Trey’s hands. They were glossy slick, but the man’s face in the images was dull, his muscles slack and his skin a sickly gray. The one closest to Trey’s fingers showed a splatter of dark brown marbling his left cheek, and for a brief second—up until he saw the next photo—Trey wondered why the man’s eyes were mostly closed, a sliver of white showing beneath his pale lashes. Then he glanced over and caught sight of the man’s profile, a good chunk of his head blown out on the left side, bits of bone and brain matter dribbling down his neck and across his bare shoulder.
Trey lost everything he’d eaten, emptying his stomach into the interrogation room’s trash can.
Feeling as green as the walls, Trey jerked slightly when he felt a hand between his shoulder blades. Then Kimber murmured something into his ear. He couldn’t make out what she was saying. Not through the rush of blood coming into his head. Nodding when she asked if he was okay, he swallowed hard. “Can I get some water?”
“Yeah, someone’s going to bring you a bottle in a bit.” His sister glanced up when the door opened. “Here. Why don’t you sit up and breathe. I’ll pull out the photo we need you to look at. Captain, I’d like to talk to you after we’re done here.”
Trey swallowed again, recognizing the cold edge in his oldest sister’s voice. It was the same tone she’d used on him countless times before, one with the promise to skin him alive if he didn’t do as she’d asked. Regardless of rank or her job, Kimber Bishop was going to have her say once Trey was out of earshot.
He pretended to be fascinated with the tile lines in the floor, studying the flecked patterns of sand stuck into the gray grout. Cracking open the water bottle took some effort, its cheap plastic twisting in his hand when he unscrewed the cap, but eventually Trey was able to wash the sick from his mouth. Taking another shallow sip, he turned back around, steeling himself to look at the images again.
There was only one photo left on the table, a close-up shot of the man’s face. Only a few specks of brown showed on his cheek, but if Trey hadn’t already seen the damage done to the side of his head, he’d have thought the man was asleep. Problem was, he couldn’t not see what’d been done. Not anymore. Every time he blinked, his mind filled in the space around the image, sketching in lurid slashes of dried blood caked on broken flesh.
“Wouldn’t think a guy who grew up on that shitty show you were on would get sick at the sight of blood. How many people did they gun down in that first episode? Fifteen? Twenty? Pretty graphic shit. Or did living the high life dull your senses?” The Captain sneered, and Trey didn’t think it was possible, but his sister’s face went even sourer.
“You know television’s make-believe, right?” He lifted his chin, smirking back at Garrett. “Or did you really think they shot that many people to death in front of an eight-year-old kid?”
Garrett blinked, his Adam’s apple bobbing and weaving over the clench of his buttoned-up shirt and too-tight tie. “Recognize him?”
Gingerly picking up the photo, Trey studied the man’s rubbery face. Looking past the shock of his death, there were pieces of the man’s brow and nose his mind latched on to. An uneven blue-black star was folded into the creases of his cheek, a blotchy companion to the ugly pink scar starting under his right eye to curve around down to his jaw. Trey’s hands began to shake and he sucked in a breath, hoping the cold cop house stinky air would settle the pounding in his chest, but his nerves continued to roll with shock.
“Well, Harry?” Kimber prodded gently. “Do you recognize him?”
“It’s Trey,” he replied absently, his brain churning on automatic pilot.
The last time Trey saw the man in the photo, he’d been thre
atening Trey with a gun after dropping a dead man in the street. He’d fled in terror at the sight of the weapon, but the sheer evil in the man’s expression lingered in Trey’s thoughts. They resurfaced, coating his recent memories with an oily slickness, making it hard for Trey to gather his words.
“He’s one of the guys who was carrying….” Trey clamped his mouth shut, then took another shuddering breath. “He’s one of the men who shot at me. The one I thought was carrying a dead body.”
“A dead man your father confirmed as being alive, right?” Garrett twisted his proverbial knife in further. “Or at least that’s what the lieutenant here says. Could you be wrong? Like you were wrong with the other dead guy?”
“No.” He shook his head, then slid the photo back over the table toward Garrett. “Unless there’s another bald guy with that tattoo and scar. I remember seeing those right before I ran. Because, you know, he had a gun. And before you ask, no, I didn’t know him, and I sure as hell didn’t kill him. I never saw him before that night or after he and the other guy ran off.”
“See, I find that kind of hard to believe, because I know who killed him. Seems like that ramen shop guy who allegedly saved your ass that night also murdered our friend here. He says the guy was trying to run him off the road, but somehow he ended up maneuvering his car to the back, then blew Mister Francis Bargle’s head off while driving up Mulholland.” A smug malevolence spread through Garrett’s smirk, curling his lips up so far into his cheeks Trey wondered if the man owned a dog named Max. “So how about if we start from the beginning? Like at the point when you ran into some shit while trying to score a hit and run it down to the point where your sleaze of a boyfriend goes out and pops this guy for revenge?”
THE COPS took his gun.
Again.
And this time, Kuro was pretty sure it was going to be a long fucking time before he saw his Glock again. But as sick as he was of the LAPD taking possession of his weapons, he’d grown even sicker of seeing the department’s Captain Garrett lumber in and out of the interrogation chill box they’d thrown him into. The man was an idiot, a blowhard who’d somehow stumbled on a golden path to a higher rank while clearly stepping on the necks of other people to get there. On one of the man’s blundering forays into dubious fishing trips for information, he was accompanied by Lieutenant Bishop, the blonde detective who’d been on the scene the night he’d lost his first gun to the cops.