by Rhys Ford
“There. See.” Dante saw a sliver of darkness move, detaching from a bank of shadows nearly outside of the camera’s range to the right. It was hard to make out anything other than a dark hoodie, sweatpants, and running shoes, but then the figure gestured and he spotted the person’s bare hand. “No gloves. So that means prints someplace.”
“That’s why we’ve got the crews in. Uniforms to keep everyone off and the tech crew working to get anything they can off really crappy surfaces.” Cranston bumped the feed down, slowing the action. “Watch what’s next.”
The argument played out like a Punch and Judy puppet show. The attacker struck first, but Sadonna saw the hit coming, blocking the other’s fist with her arm. The fury on the movie star’s face was palpable, anger turning her face ugly, and she gestured furiously, her hands slicing through the air. The yelling was a pantomime of open mouths, flapping hands, and silent roars, but Sadonna’s attacker kept to the shadows, giving tantalizing glimpses of a nose and chin every so often. Their body language was angry, stiff shoulders and then a shove at Sadonna’s chest, pushing her back a step.
“Sadonna’s pointing to something. Back towards the shore,” Dante murmured. “She’s pissed, but she’s standing open, throwing her arms out. She’s not defensive yet. She knows this person. Look how close they’re standing. You don’t stand that close or that loose unless you know someone.”
“Then why meet out here? Because it’s public?” Hank pressed. “There’s some distrust but not so much that she wouldn’t come out here at the crack of dawn.”
“Here. Right here.” Cranston slowed the video further, gesturing with the slender remote. “Something the other person says ticks Sadonna off, and she takes a swing at them.”
This strike found its mark, and the other person’s head rocked back. Hank whistled under his breath and muttered, “Damned good right hook.”
“There’s the knife. Yes?” Cranston nodded, and Dante tracked a glint of something light in the other person’s hand. The angle made it impossible to see the attacker’s face, and as close as they were standing to Sadonna, Dante guessed they were taller than the injured woman. The jab was quick, nearly too quick to see, and Cranston backed the tape up so they could watch it again. “Jesus. Straight through. No hesitation, and that knife, that’s sharp. And you said he or… she… didn’t get it out?”
“No, she went over the railing first.” The detective advanced the speed, taking the play back to normal. “There. She turns around and catches her foot on the bottom bar. The railing’s new, it should hold her weight, but either she’s lost her mind or she’s willing to risk the cold water because—”
“There she goes.” Hank puffed out his cheeks, exhaling hard. “I’ll be damned. She pitched herself over to get away. That thing was down to the hilt in her. Did you see the guy trying to jerk it loose? Well, maybe a guy. It’s hard to tell. We’ll need to do some measurements. Get a gauge of height and weight at least.”
“How heavy is the current? Did they give you any clue if there’s a chance it’s down there?” Dante glanced over at Cranston. “We could really use a print.”
“Divers went in for it, but so far, nothing. Not even her purse, and you saw how big that thing was.” She thinned her lips, then said, “Frustrating, because I’d hoped we’d catch a break.”
“Detective! We’ve found something!” The shout brought them to the door, and Cranston shoved herself off the desk just as the ginger-haired tech they’d seen earlier pushed into the office. His elbow caught Hank in the ribs, and he blurted out an apology, backpedaling into Dante. “Oh, crap. Sorry. Sorry.”
“Back up. We’ll follow you out,” Hank ordered, shooing the young man back out the door. He caught Dante’s reproachful look and shrugged. “Look, we’re like sardines in here. Let’s go see what they brought up.”
“If it’s the knife, I’ll pull every favor I’ve got downtown to get the prints run,” Cranston promised. “I want a win on this, boys. My house’s hungry to pin Vicks’s killer.”
Emerging from the office was a step into a brine-scented sauna. The sun was out, breaking apart the marine layer into patchy clumps, its heat turning the smaller puddles along the wooden walk to a swampy steam. The tech Hank thought was named Chase hurried ahead of them, going past a circle of booths to the other side of the pier, leading the detectives. A cluster of cops stood around a drape of decorative netting and plastic starfish, its folds shoved aside into a mound, and one uniform held an umbrella up to keep the rain off of a small cardboard mailing box laying on its side, its flaps open, its walls bowed in from being soaked from the damp. Natterly’s logo was bright across the fragmenting white cardboard, and a scattered nest of thin wood packing curls was darkened from the water the porous material wicked up from the wet pier.
It was too familiar of a sight, and Dante slowed his steps, bracing himself for another shock. The last box he’d come across had a dead cop’s head in it. Taking a deep breath, he lengthened his stride, matching Hank’s long ramble. The uniforms around the box didn’t seem distressed, more curious than troubled.
“Crap, why isn’t that bagged?” Cranston snapped, hurrying across the pier. “Why is it open?”
“It was like that when we found it.” Chase hustled out of Hank’s way. “One of the guys kicked the pile, and the box tumbled off those post things. It kind of broke open when it hit the ground. I went and got you before—”
“Get some cover for it. Water’s going to eat through that box,” Camden snarled as another tech, an older woman with a scowl on her face, came around the other side of the booths, her arms full of plastic bags.
“Wait, I know what that is.” Dante grabbed at Hank’s arm, holding him back.
If the box looked familiar, the broken pieces of what it once held were like a shattered memory of hours spent watching black-and-white movies on Rook’s big-screen television, his lover rambling on about things Dante couldn’t even imagine retaining. The squat black resin bird was intact, its judgmental, haughty gaze staring out over the ocean, but it was sheared off its base, its claws and tail forming a jagged crown around the detached square pedestal. The delivery label on the box lay under a crinkled plastic sleeve, but Dante could still make out Rook’s name and the shop’s address written in heavy blue lettering.
Even in the faint sunlight, the base’s contents glittered and sparkled, grabbing at every bit of light and churning out prisms across their faceted sides. Most were small, about the size of a pinky nail, but there were a few larger pieces, including a faint pink-washed emerald cut about the length of Dante’s thumb. A few were wedged in the cracks between the pier’s planks, winking under the water gathered in the wood’s grooves.
He didn’t know a lot about diamonds, other than what commercials told him were good to buy or the lines rattled off during a film, most of which he took with a grain of salt. Rook would know their value, mulling over each rock and discarding the ones he didn’t think were worth his time. They’d talked about those days, times when he slept with one eye open and a crick in his back from sliding through windows and launching himself over fences to escape dogs he didn’t know were there. There’d been no mention of actual jobs, nothing to incriminate him, but the sharing of the thrill he got opening a door locked against him was all Dante’d needed to understand the man he’d fallen in love with.
“Jesus, do you see that?” Hank whistled low, his eyes widening in shock. “Those can’t be… real. Shit, if they’re real… crap, they were going to Rook, Montoya. Your boyfriend’s—”
“Is not a thief.” Dante rounded on his partner, his fury at Camden’s words tempered by the years of friendship between them. There were a lot of explanations for what was going on with the statue. A few even made sense in the noise of Dante’s racing thoughts, but there was one thing he was sure of. “Rook’s clean, Camden, but somebody isn’t. And that right there is why people are dying around him, and we don’t have a damned clue who’s killing them.�
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Eighteen
“WHAT DIAMONDS? What bird? Where…. I swear to God if this has a ‘There Wolf, There Castle’ punch line, I am going to find you and piss on your shoes.” Rook rubbed at his eyes, stumbling out of their temporary bedroom. He grazed his elbow against the doorframe, hissing when his funny bone began a tingly, numb dance, and he shifted his phone to his other ear, tilting his head to wedge the device against his shoulder. “Dude, I haven’t even had coffee yet. What the hell are you talking about?”
“We found the missing falcon statue. The real one.” Dante sounded strained over the line. “Any reason it would have diamonds in its base?”
“Well, I’ll be fucked,” he muttered back. “That old son of a bitch.”
“Which old son of a bitch? Archie?”
“No, Travis Bluthenthal. He was the falcon’s owner. Well, right up until he died.” Rook padded down the front staircase, mentally counting the steps as he always did, satisfied he had the same number as before when he got to the main floor. “Remember I told you guys he’d kind of raised up Hawkins? Where did you think I learned my shit? Hawkins’s guy was a cat burglar. Legend really. Old-school kind of shit. Ropes, rappelling in, seducing the housekeeper to get inside the house he was going to hit. Very Cary Grant. Like I said, legend.”
Dante’s sigh could have been used as a sound capture for a flattening tire. “Only you would think someone like that is a legend.”
“Hey, I’m not the only one. He’s Old Hollywood. People used to invite him to all the big parties because he agented for a few stars for kicks. Got them some big bucks, from what I hear. Shit, he was still at it right up until he died a while back, but it took a bit for the estate to clear. When it did, stuff went up for auction.” He sniffed at the air, noticing the lack of coffee aroma. “Crap, Archie’s at an appointment, and I think Rosa’s off grocery shopping. She asked if we wanted anything, so I asked for black pitted olives, ube ice cream, and tamarind candies. Not the plain kind. The spicy ones. I think she might have told me to go fuck myself, but it’s hard to hear her when she mutters. Have you noticed that?”
He wasn’t uncomfortable talking about his old life, but there was something protective bubbling up inside of him over Bluthenthal. Rook had an odd fondness for the thief, mostly fueled by the stories he’d heard from Hawkins and a few of the carnies who’d been done right by the aging burglar. From all accounts, he’d been a class act, willing to lend a few bucks to help someone out, even when things were tight.
Someone he’d wanted to be when he grew up.
Dante held a long, telling silence, then said, “You’re fooling no one, cuervo. You knew about this man. Maybe even liked him?”
“Never met him.” He chuckled at Dante’s disbelieving snort. A barefooted saunter through the first floor came up empty of people, and after taking a last peek into the conservatory at the back of the castle, Rook began the long hike to the kitchen. “Seriously. I thought he’d died years ago while I was in Seattle or I’d have tried to reach out to him. He taught Hawkins a lot of tricks… and those were kind of passed down to me when… you know… so it kind of felt like Bluthenthal was… my grandfather. Sort of. He died… shit… a year ago? I’d gotten wind of it and tracked the estate, mostly to see if there was something I could remember him by. The parody falcon seemed… ironic. Fitting, even.”
“Let’s get back to Travis. So you knew he was a thief, and that’s why you bought the statue?” A horn honked near Dante, and he let a profanity slip, his low muttered Spanish outburst a sharp cut about a driver’s intelligence. “Did you know or think at any time he might have stashed something inside of it?”
There was a little bit of a threat in Dante’s words, or perhaps Rook was simply imagining the ominous tone. It didn’t help that he was standing in front of the library with his grandfather’s narcissistic lord-of-the-manor oil painting staring down at him through the open french doors or that, when he turned around to ignore Archie, the cabinet of tchotchkes across the hall was dominated by teary-eyed porcelain dolls dressed in elaborate Russian costumes, their sightless gazes plaintively judging Rook’s existence.
“Babe, what kind of idiot would hide his stash in a movie prop? It’s the first place the cops would look, don’t you think?” He winced, crossing his fingers in front of him. “Wait, those things are resin. How the hell did you guys get it open? Or was it a plaster like the one they found at Harold’s?”
“We’re going on the assumption the one at Harold’s was a decoy meant for you, something someone at the auction house cooked up so they could swap it with—what was his name?—Bluthenthal’s original. I’d have put money on the goods being in the plaster statue, but it makes more sense it would be in the resin. That would be harder to break. This one was cut open. That’s the only way we knew what it was holding.” Dante’s voice went soft. “You never answered me, cuervo. Did you know Bluthenthal had those diamonds stashed in there? Is that why you wanted that statue?”
Honesty was a funny thing. People around Rook demanded it of him constantly, and while he’d spent a good portion of his life dodging the law and stealing, he’d always been mostly honest. With Dante in the picture, the mostly was tested time and time again, especially when he’d tried to dodge telling a lie. This time there was no dodging, not with Dante pressing in on him.
“I knew he had stuff stashed somewhere. Or at least figured he did. We all do. At least if you’re smart you do. For that day… when everything goes to shit and you need… out,” he admitted softly, swallowing at the deep thumps of his heart when its beats thundered through his throat and chest. “But in the falcon? I really did get it because I wanted… I don’t know… a piece of this guy I had a connection with. Even if he didn’t know me.”
More silence and the street noise stopped. It was unsettling, nipping at Rook’s nerves, tearing snippets off to feed his fears. He heard the distinct click of a door closing and another sigh, followed by a stretch of silence so heavy Rook couldn’t ignore its pressing down on him.
Then Dante spoke.
“The stolen gems returned to Central. That was you, wasn’t it?” Rook didn’t answer. He didn’t need to. The truth hung between them, a guillotine sharpened by Rook’s mistruths and whose blade was poised to fall, slicing them apart. “Where were they?”
“In the warehouse.” The truth seemed to be difficult to put back in once it came out, bubbling out of Rook, a malevolent genie he’d shoved into a rusty lamp the moment he pocketed his first haul. “There’s an Ark of the Covenant prop at the warehouse. It’s got a false bottom, probably to stash explosives or something, but they never used it. The ark’s where I stashed my stuff. That stuff.”
God, he hated the silences. The dread of them. How they held his life in the nothingness, and Rook stumbled toward the wide staircase a few feet away, blindly finding one of the steps to sit on. There was nothing on the line, not even breathing, and he didn’t know the damned rules… the magical words to fix what he might have fucked up in the past. There was no damned manual to work the lock of a relationship, no tricks of the trade to coax something along so he could breathe easier.
“I think you and I need to talk. Face-to-face,” Dante finally said. “Are you at Archie’s?”
“Yeah.” Rook held his tongue, biting back the edged words his brain flung to protect him. His stomach roiled, acid burning his throat, and he swallowed, tasting ashes and bitterness. “You told me to stay put, remember?”
“Like you ever listen to me,” he rumbled. “I’ll be there as soon as I can, okay? Don’t go anywhere.”
“Nope,” Rook choked out. “Staying right here.”
“Good,” his maybe-not lover replied. “And cuervo….”
It was harder to speak, especially when his mind was racing with all he’d have to do to abandon his life. “Yeah?”
“I love you,” Dante murmured. “We just need to… let me clear something with Camden and I’ll be right up. We’re at one of Nat
terly’s warehouses. It won’t take me long. It’s right off of Larabee. But remember, I love you.”
“I love you too,” Rook whispered back, rubbing his hand through his tangle of hair. “I just….”
“Fifteen minutes, babe. I’ll see you then.” This time the silence was finite, a click and the call was over, leaving Rook stewing in his own worry.
“Fuck!” The urge to throw his phone into a wall was strong, overpowering Rook’s common sense. Gripping the device, his knuckles were white by the time reason returned. Taking a deep breath, he scrubbed at his eyes with the back of his hand, not surprised to find them wet. “Didn’t used to cry before I met that damned cop. Jesus, this was so fucking easy before.”
It was also incredibly lonely, his brain whispered, ignoring the pangs from Rook’s torn emotions. You want to die alone like Hawkins?
Fifteen minutes seemed a long time to wait just so his heart could be broken, and Rook didn’t know if he’d be relieved when he heard Dante’s car pull up or if he’d empty his stomach out into the nearest trash bag and do the one thing he’d promised himself he’d never do… apologize for who he’d been and beg for forgiveness.
“Okay, grab your own balls and pull up, Stevens,” he muttered at himself. “Get some coffee made and… you can do this. He fucking loves you. He keeps telling you that. You love him. Shit… he knows who you are. Who you were. Stop fucking sabotaging yourself. It’s not like Montoya’s coming to kill you.”
“No, Montoya might not,” agreed a cold voice coming from Rook’s left.
He stood, alarmed at the pale, taut-faced woman standing by the front door. Margaret was dressed all in black: a pair of yoga pants, long-sleeved pullover, and ballet flats, but the wicked, heavy gun she pointed at him brought him to his feet. Her eyes were flinty, hard and boring into him, and she calmly strolled forward, the weapon steady in her hand as she moved noiselessly across the hall’s marble floor. Smiling didn’t soften her features, and they turned ugly, her expression soured by the caricature of a grin she’d plastered on her face and the purpling bruise swelling along her right jaw.
