“It doesn’t look as though she planned to go anywhere,” Novak said, “otherwise she’d have taken her purse.”
Two shots rang out from the front of the building. I raced toward the breezeway between Janice’s building and the one next door. A third shot sounded as I reached the breezeway.
I emerged in the front parking lot in time to see a man with a gun in one hand dragging Janice down the stairs. She wasn’t putting up a struggle, but it didn’t appear as though she was going willingly.
“Stop right there! Let go of the girl,” I shouted, drawing the Raider.
He turned toward me, raising his pistol. I fired, and the bullet took him in the shoulder, blowing his arm off. He let go of Janice, and she staggered away from him.
His blood was the burgundy-wine color of a vampire, which explained why he was still able to stumble toward a car sitting in the middle of the parking lot. Rifters were damned hard to kill. I took off running to catch him.
“Get the girl!” I heard Whittaker shout. I assumed he was talking to Novak, so I didn’t change my direction.
I caught up with the vamp as he reached his car and jumped inside. He tried to start the car, but I used my magik to disable the engine. I pointed my pistol at him through the closed window.
“Freeze! Don’t move or I’ll blow your head off.”
He looked toward me, saw the gun aimed at his head, and froze. I cautiously opened the car door without letting the muzzle waiver at all.
“Slowly get out of the car and lie face down,” I ordered.
He did as I commanded, blood pouring from his wound. A human would have been dead, or close to it. I put my foot on his back and placed the muzzle of my weapon against the back of his head.
Whittaker came up beside us and stepped on the vamp’s remaining arm. My boss then pulled out his phone and called for an ambulance and backup.
There really wasn’t anything I could do for the vamp, other than get a pressure bandage from my saddle bag and press it to the wound. The explosive bullet had taken the arm off at the shoulder joint, so there wasn’t any stump to put a tourniquet around. But even as I applied the bandage, the amount of blood leaking from the wound was already slowing.
I looked around and saw Novak about thirty feet away holding the girl. I scanned the area but didn’t see anyone suspicious. A few people peeked out of their apartments, and the door to Janice’s place was open.
More cops showed up in about five minutes, and the ambulance followed close behind. The EMTs stripped off my attempt at a wound dressing and threw a pressure bandage twice as large on the vampire’s shoulder, strapped him to a gurney, and took off with him. Novak put Janice in a patrol car with a uniform watching her.
“Shall we go see what the shooting was about?” I asked Whittaker.
“You know where?”
I nodded and headed up the stairs.
The door stood wide open, and it didn’t look like it was forced. Remembering how innocently Janice opened the door for me, I wasn’t surprised. Martin Johansson had seen better days. He was lying in a pool of blood in the middle of the living room floor, his eyes staring blindly at the ceiling. Novak and I searched through the rest of the apartment but didn’t find anyone else.
“Three slugs,” Whittaker said when I came back to the living room. “Belly, chest, and a final one in the head.”
“Must have surprised him,” I said. “He was an electrokinetic, and I don’t see any evidence that he employed his magik.”
Whittaker shook his head. “So, what was it that you wanted to tell me about Martin Johansson?”
“That little girl out there was his mistress. That’s Sarah Benning’s car parked behind the building. So, other than him being a pedophile, I suspect he was involved in the white slavery business up to his eyebrows, along with smuggling a bunch of other stuff. I don’t have any concrete proof, but if you can get access to his bank accounts, I’m pretty sure you’ll find he was doing business with Fredo, Ashvial, and the vampire who owns a place called Dorothy’s Dungeon. Those are probably just the tip of the iceberg.”
“You know he’s connected to Akiyama,” Novak said. “That would explain the smuggling. They could have used Johansson and maintained deniability.”
The Akiyama Family was one of the Ten, and the main shipping competitor of Findlay. In fact, the two Families competed in several spheres of business. Akiyama was headquartered in Asia, with their strongest North American presence on the West Coast, so it made sense to use their ally as a proxy in the Mid-Atlantic.
“So, why would one of his business associates want him dead?” Whittaker asked. “And what makes that little girl who lived here so special?”
“She might have overheard something,” I said. “I did speak with her last week, and I’ve had a camera on the place since then. I haven’t looked at what it captured for a couple of days. But somehow, Johansson and Sarah Benning are connected, and me snooping around might have made one of Johansson’s friends uncomfortable.”
“Where’s the camera?”
I led him outside and pointed at the miniature camera, no larger than a small marble, stuck on the ceiling of the walkway in front of the apartment.
He grinned. “Perfectly legal.”
“Yes, sir. You told me to keep my nose clean.” I didn’t tell him about my forays into Johansson’s bank accounts. But camera surveillance in public places was assumed by most of the populace.
“Get me the video as soon as you can. And try to identify that vamp. I don’t think he’s going to survive, and even if he does, I doubt he’ll be very cooperative.”
I assigned the vamp, assuming he survived, to Novak to interrogate and took Janice for myself. She looked tiny and miserable sitting in an interview room all alone. No evidence of tears.
“Hi, Janice,” I said when I entered the room. “Are you thirsty or hungry?”
She shook her head. I set the bottle of cold water I’d brought on the table in front of her.
“Do you remember me?” I asked.
She pulled her head down into her shoulders like a turtle and glowered at me.
“I’m Detective Lieutenant Danica James of the Metropolitan Police. I’ve been working on an investigation of girls who’ve gone missing. That’s what led me to Martin Johansson. You do know who Martin Johansson is, right?” It wouldn’t have surprised me if Johansson gave her a fake name.
A grudging nod.
“And you know who Camille Cordero is, right?”
An angry sneer.
“Well, with your help, I’m going to put Camille Cordero and her friends out of business.”
“Won’t do no good. Someone else just take her place,” Janice muttered.
“That may be, but I’ll take them one at a time.”
“You’re gonna end up dead like Martin.”
“Someday, but I’m not going down easy. Who was the vamp?”
We chatted for a couple of hours, then I turned her over to Ruth Harrison. I stood with Whittaker, watching as Ruth led her away.
“So, what do we have?” Whittaker asked.
“The social worker who sold her to Johansson. The vamp I shot works for Doan Felspeth, the owner of Dorothy’s Dungeon, who bought girls and boys from Johansson. Janice knows the shooter as Felspeth’s errand boy. She also said Johansson would take her over to Felspeth’s place sometimes to watch other men play with her.”
“A fifteen-year-old hooker isn’t going to be a good witness against a member of the Hundred.”
It bothered me to hear an abused child called a hooker, but I let it go because Whittaker was my boss. “If Johansson was alive. But with him dead, we can investigate him a lot easier and get into his accounts. And with Camille Cordero as a corroborating witness, Janice’s testimony will carry more weight.”
“And when are we going to have Cordero in custody?”
“In about forty-five minutes. That’s where I’m going right now.”
Chapter 25
The receptionist at the Social Services office told us that Cordero was out on an inspection visit. Novak turned on the charm and got a copy of the social worker’s schedule and the addresses of the homes she planned to visit.
I leaned against our car in the parking lot as I scanned the printout we received.
“What do you think?” he asked.
“There’s something off about this schedule. See here,” I pointed to two adjacent appointments, “these are only a few blocks apart, but there are two hours between the appointments. All the other visits are set for half an hour.”
We stopped by a drive-through coffee shop, then drove to the address of the one o’clock appointment. The neighborhood was old twentieth-century rowhouses, a few boarded up and the rest in poor repair. There were more rats out on the streets than people. We identified Cordero’s car parked on the street, so we drove down the block and waited.
At one-thirty, a short dark-haired woman with light skin came out of the rowhouse we were watching with a dark-skinned girl. The woman put the girl in the back seat of Cordero’s car, then drove away.
“The family at that address is a Lucille Brown and her three children,” Novak read aloud. “The oldest girl, Natalie, is fourteen.”
“I wonder if the mother just sold that girl, or she’s merely renting her out,” I said.
“Pretty disgusting either way.”
“Yeah.”
We followed Cordero to Dorothy’s Dungeon. She parked behind the building, urged the girl out of the car, and knocked on the back door.
“Call for backup,” I said as I jumped out of the car and drew my pistol. “Watch the front door and detain anyone who comes out.”
“Where the hell are you going?”
“I’ll watch the back door. Now, move!”
As soon as Novak disappeared around the corner with his phone held to his ear, I raced toward the back door and cast a spell that disrupted the closed-circuit camera above it. As with most business locks, the door had a numeric keypad. I sent a spell at it, and the lock clicked.
Squatting down, I carefully eased the door open. The gunshots almost deafened me as three bullets hit the door above my head. Almost immediately, I heard shots from the front of the building. I let the door slam shut and dove for the ground. More shots coming from across the alley behind me hit the building right above my head.
I twisted around and fired three shots randomly, hoping my attackers would duck and give me time to understand what was going on. It didn’t take more than a split second to figure out that we had walked into an ambush, but knowing that didn’t help my situation.
The nice thing about the explosive-incendiary bullets I fired was that they didn’t necessarily need to hit someone directly to have an effect. The shooting stopped, at least momentarily. I took advantage of the lull by springing to my feet and racing around the corner, where Novak had gone. A lone bullet clipped the building behind me, then a mule kicked me in the side, knocking me off my feet and carrying me past the corner.
If I wasn’t wearing my Kevlar corset, I’d probably have been dead. From past experience of being shot, I could envision an enormous bruise covering my entire left ribcage, and a chewing out by Kirsten when she doctored me after I got home.
No sign of Novak or any attackers on that side. I took a deep breath and pulled three mini-grenades out, primed them, and tossed them back around the corner as fast as I could. Then I lay down and crawled to the corner.
The first grenade exploded, and I peeked around the edge of the building, my pistol ready. One man lay bleeding in the alley. The other two grenades went off, and I saw something move in a doorway. I fired into the doorway and heard a muffled curse.
At the same time, I could hear more shots coming from the front of the building. Some sounded like Novak’s Raider, but most were from smaller caliber pistols. Then a submachinegun fired a short burst. I hoped my partner was using his air shield for protection and wished I had the same ability.
Someone stuck his head over the edge of the roof across the alley, then pulled it back. I shifted my aim and waited. When he looked again, I fired two rounds. One sent shards of masonry flying, but the other took the top of his head off. I redirected my attention to the doorway I had fired into before.
I thumbed another mini-grenade and tossed it at the doorway. My arm wasn’t as good as Novak’s, and the grenade bounced a foot short of the opening. No matter, the explosion was accompanied by a cry of pain. I fired two more rounds into the doorway and was rewarded with a grunt, and a short time later, with a whimper of pain.
The alley was quiet, but the shooting continued from the other side of the building. I jacked another magazine into my pistol and pocketed the old magazine with two rounds remaining. Then I primed two more grenades. One I threw into the middle of the alley, and the other I tossed at Dorothy’s back door.
I waited for the second explosion, then whipped around the corner, grabbed the door handle, pulled it wide open as I went past, and hid behind it with my back to the building. Several shots came from inside, but I was out of the line of fire, and the door protected me from anyone in the alley. I could see the doorway through the crack between the hinges, so if anyone came to look outside, I had the advantage.
No one came. The machinegun in front fired another burst, and Novak fired back. A lone siren in the distance got louder, then I heard another faint siren. All we had to do was hang on. It was tempting to toss another grenade inside, but I had no idea where the girl Cordero had brought might be.
Someone inside had the same thought. I saw a body through the crack. Then I saw the person had a pistol. I shoved the muzzle of my gun into the crack and fired. Before anyone had time to react, I rolled around the door and through the doorway, crashing into the falling body.
A woman with a pistol stood behind the guy I’d shot. I pulled the trigger, and she went down. The sirens got louder—loud enough that I could hear them over the echoes in my ears.
I heard a long burst from the submachinegun and a fusillade of pistol fire, then three men carrying guns appeared in the hallway running toward me. I dove to the floor, firing as fast as I could pull the trigger. One of them got off a shot, but all three went down.
Noise from the front of the building—a shot, a lot of yelling, and pounding of feet—was followed by silence.
“Throw down your weapons and come out,” Novak shouted.
“Don’t shoot,” I responded.
I heard people in the alley behind me and rolled across the hallway until I hit the wall. A moment later, a uniformed cop cautiously stuck his head and pistol through the doorway.
“I’m a cop!” I called.
And then there were cops everywhere, pointing guns at me until Novak showed up and came over and knelt down beside me.
“Are you okay?”
I did a quick check and, unbelievably, discovered I wasn’t bleeding anywhere. “Yeah, I think so.” My side hurt like crazy.
Chapter 26
Whittaker showed up about 15 minutes after all the shooting was over. We counted a total of twenty-four blood vampires either dead, wounded, or in custody, including Doan Felspeth, who had taken one of Novak’s bullets in the forearm.
We found Camille Cordero in a room in the basement. She lay in the middle of the floor, an astonished expression on her face and a bullet hole in her forehead. The girl she brought to Felspeth was curled in a fetal position in the corner. The EMTs checked her over and found that she was unharmed, then they took her out.
“What in the hell happened?” Whittaker asked.
I shook my head and gestured at Cordero’s body. “We found her at one of her appointments. She came out with the girl, and we followed her. But when we got here, the vamps were waiting for us.”
“An ambush.”
“Yeah. Someone tipped them off, but I don’t see how. All I can think of is that it has something to do with Johansson’s murder this morning.”
&n
bsp; “And that was carried out by a vampire connected to Felspeth.” Whittaker’s statement wasn’t a question.
Novak cleared his throat. “I think we need to operate on the assumption that we’re under surveillance. This was well-planned. There aren’t any customers here, just vamps with guns.”
I shrugged. “Neither of us spoke to anyone between the time we interviewed Janice Iranski at the station and left to find Cordero, but we didn’t make any special effort to hide what we were doing or where we were going.”
“We spoke to the receptionist at Social Services,” Novak said. “She might have tipped Cordero off, or she might have called a contact at our headquarters.” He picked up the dead woman’s purse, rummaged through it, and pulled out her phone. “If we can crack this, we can see whether anyone called her.”
Whittaker held out his hand and took the phone, then passed it to me. “See to it. Johansson’s murder hit the news before you left to track down Cordero.”
“You don’t suppose that someone in the police is reporting to Johansson’s Family, do you?” I asked.
Both men snorted.
Novak’s eyes shifted momentarily to Whittaker, then he said, “Every one of the Families has people inside the police. Danica, my first loyalty is to Novak, or I wouldn’t be here. If I couldn’t be trusted to guard our interests, they would insert someone else.”
Whittaker nodded. “Dani, I know your relationship with your Family is rather tenuous, but the fact is that the Families run everything. If you ever make captain, it will be because Findlay put you there. Ability only gets you to lieutenant.”
I felt a little naïve. When I thought about it, it was as plain as the nose on Whittaker’s face. All of the top officers were from the Hundred Families. Sam Berger, my unlamented ex-partner, didn’t have the brains or ability to make sergeant on his own, let alone lieutenant, but his Family was one of the Hundred. I should have paid more attention to all that, especially after twelve years on the force.
Magitek (The Rift Chronicles Book 1) Page 12