Justice

by Dustin Stevens

  That fact alone was why Grimes had gotten a call, who had then passed it down to Reed.

  “COD?” Grimes asked.

  “Shotgun,” Reed said. “ME was there about ten seconds before announcing it and saying the bodies could be taken away. Earl seems to think buckshot. Given the spray pattern and the blood spatter, I tend to agree.”

  “Jesus,” Grimes muttered, a deeper wince causing the lines around his eyes to grow more pronounced.

  “You have no idea,” Reed said. “It all went down on a small landing outside Cantwell’s apartment, the space no bigger than five feet square. Practically painted the hallway red.”

  This time, Grimes’s eyes slid completely shut, a low sound emanating from deep within.

  “Looks like a murder-robbery, Cantwell being the target,” Reed continued. “The second victim lived on the third floor, either got home at the wrong time or heard the noise and came down to see what was going on.”

  Opening his eyes, Grimes raised a hand to face, rubbing it across his features, the loose skin on either cheek pulling with the effort.

  “I would have come down myself,” he eventually said, “but the brass warned me to stay far away.”

  He added nothing more, though he didn’t need to, Reed having seen similar directives given a number of times before.

  A double murder was bad enough, but a ranking official showing up to the scene would have immediately piqued interest.

  As was, it was only a matter of time before Eva Cantwell or some other enterprising individual let it be known who one of the victims was and things got crazy.

  No need to hasten the process.

  “It’s okay,” Reed said. “Our guys did a good job on the place, no sign of coverage while I was there.”

  Playing the evening back through his mind, he pieced his way through the arrival and eventual entry into the building, the full breadth of the visual back before his eyes.

  Just one more on a growing list of images he didn’t want or need.

  “And on the inside...” he began, letting his voice trail away. “Top...three.”

  Drawing in a sharp breath, Grimes turned his head to the side, staring out through the window overlooking the parking lot, a pair of orange sodium lights throwing out broad cones, illuminating most of the space.

  As far as Reed could tell, there was only a single vehicle present, a truck that he knew belonged to Lou, the rig even older than the man himself.

  “Anything from the daughter?” Grimes asked.

  “Not a lot,” Reed replied, opting to bypass mentioning the litany of comments that had been lobbed at both of them. “She was able to give me a short list of jewelry items her mother owned, some things we can begin trying to track down.”

  “Hmm,” Grimes said, turning back and nodding slightly, his chin dipping no more than a centimeter. “And from there?”

  “She said the safe was mostly just important papers, so I figured I’d do some digging into the tempest that waged after she was booted from the Council, see if anybody had a particularly good reason to want her dead.”

  Raising his eyebrows, Grimes cast a pointed glance to Reed, refraining from adding anything further to the look.

  Not that he needed to.

  It was going to be a longshot at best, the woman having aggravated a lot of people on her way out, and they both knew it.

  Chapter Fourteen

  The weight of the pick gun was familiar in Sydney Rye’s hand, almost as natural as the Beretta she had swiped hours before. Balanced in her palm, she held the elongated tines up to the mechanism, gently squeezing the trigger, letting the metal tumblers fall into place.

  Not until she heard the telltale click, the device having found the magic sequence that granted access, did she twist the object to the left, the smooth bore rotating deftly.

  As it did so, she drew her breath in tight, casting a glance in either direction, before releasing the tines, letting them fall back into place as she slipped inside.

  The tile floor was cool against her bare feet as she pressed her body flat to the wall and waited as the door clicked shut beside her. Above, the red glow of an exit sign cast a sanguineous pallor over everything, her head rotating in a wide arc, taking in her surroundings.

  It was obviously the first time she had ever been in this particular building, though she had seen dozens like it in her line of work.

  The Franklinton Coroner’s Office might have gone to the extra time and expense of making the outer façade a little nicer, may have sprung for a fountain on the front lawn, have invested in using steel and glass rather than the usual brick, but that did nothing to change what went on behind closed doors.

  Doors like the basement access she had just entered.

  No part of her had wanted to make the stop, but she had to be certain before going any further. Thus far, all of the evidence seemed to confirm what she had feared since getting the message on the beach, though it wouldn’t be the first time that such suppositions had proven faulty.

  Whether it be through bad data collection or her own personal biases didn’t really matter.

  What did was ensuring she knew exactly what she was dealing with now.

  Rising up onto the balls of her feet, Rye curled her fingers inward. Using the outside of her knuckles, she grazed them against the concrete outer wall and began to move to her left, following the faint glow of white light.

  With the wall as a guide, she stayed just inches away from it, using the cover it provided as she stole forward, silent in the desolation of the hallway.

  At half past four in the morning, the odds of anybody being around weren’t good. Most likely, the two victims had been unloaded without a second thought, the medical examiner having been at the scene and made preliminary findings before having them moved.

  Later, once normal working hours resumed, they would return for an actual autopsy.

  It was that window, that time in between, where Rye currently found herself, needing to take advantage for a few short minutes, visual confirmation the final hurdle before moving forward.

  Reaching her right hand behind her hip, she tapped at the butt of the Beretta slid into the top of her waistband. In no way did she want to use it – on a law enforcement employee, or anybody else for that matter – but entering without it would be a level of foolish she was unwilling to consider.

  Not in a town she’d never been to, with Blue tucked away in the back of the rental, an as-yet-unknown enemy nearby.

  Feeling her heart rate spike just slightly, she made her way down the hallway, finding the steel door she was looking for on the opposite wall.

  Crossing over in three quick steps, she again grazed the weapon, her shoulder blades against the wall as she stopped and listened. Peered into the darkness, waiting for any sign of life.

  As best she could tell, there was none.

  Using her hip as a fulcrum, she rolled her shoulder into the door and slid inside, careful to touch nothing, especially a surface that held a fingerprint as well as stainless steel. Opening the door just wide enough to slip her body through, she used her foot to ease it shut, standing in the dim light of the lab, the faint glow of assorted machinery the only illumination.

  Not that there was a great deal to see.

  The room, just like the hallway before it, played out much the way Rye expected. On one wall was a row of polished gurneys, each ready to receive a newly deceased, to provide a platform for future study.

  On the opposite was a row of wash basins and instrument trays, all there to perform their specific function as well.

  Inventorying and dismissing each thing in quick order, Rye drew her attention to the back wall. On one side was a panel of lights and levers, all attached to various instruments.

  To the other, a three-by-three grid of polished steel drawers.

  Precisely the thing she had come to see.

  The air in the room was ten degrees cooler than the hallway, though that didn’t ke
ep beads of sweat from forming on Rye’s brow as she crossed the room. Underfoot, she could feel the smooth polished concrete of the space against her toes, a faint hum settling in her ears as she squared up the last drawer in the grid.

  Wrapping her hand in the bottom of her shirttail, she grasped the elongated metal handle and pulled back, the pressurized seal letting out a faint gasp as it swung open.

  Using the same hand-under-shirt arrangement, she curled two fingers beneath the front edge of the tray inside and tugged, a pair of slender ankles coming into view.

  With her heart rate climbing slightly higher, her pulse pushing through her temples, she slid the silent drawer as far as it would go, palpitations rising through her chest.

  On the table before her was a woman that looked to be somewhere in her late-fifties to early-sixties, her hair an unnatural shade of dye that resided somewhere close to cranberry in color.

  The sort of look Rye vowed she would never sport, even if it meant shaving her head and growing a goatee.

  Still dressed in street clothes, most of the woman’s torso had been minced by bullet shrapnel, the yellow pullover she wore soaked through with blood, fragments of it sticking up at odd angles.

  Clearly, she had just come in, the fresh scent of blood and cordite making it likely she was one of the victims Rye had seen wheeled out hours before.

  Feeling nothing more than a slight bit of relief that the woman wasn’t who she was looking for, Rye slid the drawer back in the opposite direction. Latching the door shut behind it, she turned her attention to the next one in order, feeling the same ripple pass through her core as she pulled the handle open.

  The first thing out as she eased back the tray was a pair of shoes, square and clunky, matte black in color. At the mere sight of them, Rye felt her chest constrict, like a weight had been placed down over her sternum.

  Followed in order by a pair of stockings last seen on normal women a half-century before, they gave way to a dark skirt of heavy material.

  Again, the intertwined feelings of dread and anticipation passed through Rye, the answer to the question she’d been chasing already apparent.

  A moment later, it was confirmed, the face of Nora Heatherington coming into view.

  With her eyes closed and her porcelain skin, she looked every bit the young and innocent girl Rye remembered, even if the heinous things that dotted her past didn’t quite buttress such an appearance.

  To look at her from the neck up, the few spots of dried blood on her face would be the only indication she wasn’t sleeping, her features almost serene.

  To see her pockmarked chest and abdomen, the cotton blouse she wore stained almost black with blood, was to know there was no way any breath was left in her lungs.

  Raising her face toward the ceiling, Rye drew in a long breath, her lips mashed down into a tight line. Curling her hand into a fist, she squeezed until the tendons bulged on the underside of her arm, her every inclination to open her mouth and scream toward the heavens.

  To bellow every bit of fury she had into the night, a fiery promise that she would avenge the injustice laying on the table before her.

  Knowing there was no way she could do such a thing, not now, not with so much more to accomplish, she managed to swallow down the impulse. To release it as one long sigh, expelling until there was no air left in her body.

  Leaning forward, she brought her face to within just a few inches of Heatherington’s, close enough she could make out the individual eyelashes lining the girl’s lids, before whispering, “This is on me. I got you.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  The suit and the dress shirt with the open collar were gone, as were the Ferragamo loafers on Vinson Gerard’s feet. In their place were a white velour bathrobe and leather slippers, the fabrics soft against bare skin, his body tingling with sensation just minutes from the sauna.

  On the table beside him were a kale smoothie and a plate with his morning regimen of vitamins, everything from Vitamin E to calcium pyruvate all lined up in order, ready to be consumed.

  Much like his choice of décor, his morning ritual was a conscious decision to step away from the tropes upheld by so many of his peers. Whereas most imbibed in expensive cigars and single malt whiskey, he refused to ever touch either.

  Expected the same of anybody in his employee.

  An organization – regardless of the field it operated in – ran at its best when everything was done to optimize output.

  That, and the inevitable victories that ensued, was a far better image to uphold than standing by some long overdrawn stereotypes.

  Lifting the smoothie from the table, he raised the glass to his lips and drank more than half of it, letting the cool concoction slide down his throat. When he was done, he returned it to the saucer it set on, placing it carefully on the same wet ring that was already present, before snapping up the first three pills in order and tossing them back, swallowing them dry.

  Like everything in his life, there was a specific order to things, his morning dosing beginning with B-vitamins, all else following from there.

  Outside, the sun was starting to come through, passing into the space unobstructed by the thin curtains, giving an almost ethereal glow to the room.

  The estate was one that had been acquired just months before, it the first thing done in a long line of things that needed to be completed before beginning action on this particular project.

  As he had learned many times over, order was important.

  Once it was purchased and the necessary alterations underway, only then did he begin assembling the assorted other things he would need for this venture.

  A team of men.

  His staff.

  Proper security measures.

  A stockpile of the things a man of his taste becomes accustomed to.

  Leaning back in his chair, Gerard raised his right ankle to his opposite knee, not caring as his robe fell open, his manhood on full display. Giving it only a passing glance, he instead returned his attention to the room around him.

  The place was smaller than he would have liked, but it checked the requisite boxes for what he was looking for. If all went to plan, it would be back on the market in only a matter of weeks, his total time spent there less than two months.

  An eventuality he had no doubt would come to pass, an extreme amount of money and planning having been invested to make it so.

  Returning his attention to the glass of dark green liquid before him, Gerard extended a hand, ready to take it up, when a single ping drew his gaze toward the computer beside him.

  With his arm still raised to shoulder height, he used his foot to swivel around to face forward, his total focus on the email list on the screen.

  On the single boldfaced entry at the top of it.

  The incoming name was a phony, an alias created long ago to allow for his employees to email him with sensitive files from the field. That was of no importance to Gerard.

  What was was the subject line of the listing, a single word typed in all capital letters.

  HARTONG.

  Gone was any interest in the drink or the vitamins as Gerard lowered his foot to the floor and turned to face the screen squarely. Placing his palms flat on either side of the keyboard, he stared for a moment, anticipation building as he looked at the word, almost relishing what it would reveal.

  With one corner of his mouth peeling back into a leer, he extended a hand and brought the file to life, a video player opening on command.

  Taken from a chest camera, the visual was void of sound or color, though that did nothing to impede his excitement as he nudged himself forward, staring on in rapt silence.

  A position he was still in an hour later, the only thing changed in his appearance being the size of the smile on his face as he sat and watched the video of the girl now known as Alice Hartong’s demise play back again and again.

  Chapter Sixteen

  There was a time in Reed Mattox’s life when his body clock was
second only to the sun in its precision. Every night at eleven, his faculties would power down, letting him know that it was time to get to bed.

  And fast.

  Once he hit the mattress, he would lay in a single position, not to be disturbed for seven hours, at which point his eyes would pop open, ready for another day.

  No alarm clock needed, no rooster crowing outside his door.

  Just an old school upbringing with a father that believed time spent sleeping while the sun was up was nothing more than time wasted.

  Since becoming a police officer, any semblance of a schedule had long since faded, a pattern that began when he and Riley were still working the beat, got completely obliterated once they shifted over into the detective division.

  Unable to turn off his mind at the end of the day, his synapses still firing, the visuals of whatever crime scene they had just departed fresh in his mind, he would lay awake and stare at the ceiling. Eventually learned it wasn’t worth the effort to even try.

  A pattern that had only become more exacerbated as he shifted to the 8th, working the night shift, a patrol that had him start at nine each evening, usually ending with him sitting in Grimes’s office offering an overview of what had taken place throughout the night.

  From there, if he was lucky, he would be able to return home and crash until noon, at which point he would rise and repeat the same cycle over again.

  Today, he had not been so lucky.

  Any attempt at rest had subsided after just a couple of hours, whatever exhaustion he felt no match for the vivid display of blood spatter covering the interior walls of the second-floor walkup across town. Three short hours after attempting to lie down, he was back on his feet, feeding Billie and letting her into the backyard.

  Thirty minutes after that, he was showered and changed, his sedan pointed back toward town, a new day on the case underway. Bypassing the station for the time being, he stopped off at a corner minimart for a bottle of sweet tea and a dark chocolate muffin, hoping the carb and sugar combination would give him whatever jolt he needed to get through the day.

  Halfway between thirty and forty, he knew it was only a matter of time before he too had to succumb to the same lure of coffee that gripped his coworkers, though he was intent to do all he could to stave it off for as long as possible.