by M. S. Parker
The case...I didn’t like anything about it.
I’d talked to the cops who’d handled the investigation and any number of steps had been missed. The autopsy had pointed at somebody other than Leayna, but no one had made much noise about that. She was tall, but still not tall enough to have created the right angle for the wounds. And then there had been her clothes. She hadn't had enough blood on her face or her clothes. I knew Bethany would argue that Leayna had changed into something else before calling me and the cops, but there wasn't any forensics to support that either.
I pointed all of this out just a day ago when I managed to get a judge to talk to me about the case. He’d nodded and smiled, and then told me to present my findings in court. When I said I planned to file for a dismissal, he flat-out told me that he wouldn't rule for that. In his mind, if a grand jury had seen fit to indict, then there should be a trial.
So, unless there was a plea deal – or the real killer came forward – we were going to court. Possibly as early as next week, although I’d already put things in motion to stop that from happening. Bethany seemed determined to get through this as quickly as possible, and that made me that much more determined to slow it down, let other evidence have time to come to light.
Thunder rumbled overhead, and I lifted my gaze, staring up at the clouds gathering overhead. A fat raindrop fell, hitting me right between the eyes. Somewhere off to the east, lightning cracked down and the smell of ozone tinged the air.
“Can’t even get a brood-on going with this case,” I scowled. Even Mother Nature was against me.
Shoving away from the railing, I turned. I paused, though, when I saw the guy with the cigarette still there. Leaning against the railing, his gaze was fixed in my direction.
I had the weirdest feeling he’d been staring at me.
And that wasn't creepy at all.
His face was too far away for me to make out details, but as rain began to beat down on the rooftop, he didn’t move. The cherry-red tip of his cigarette went out, but he stayed there, half-hidden in the shadows, and I knew I was right. He was watching me.
Shit.
Starting toward the door, I kept my steps slow and even, my body balanced so I could fight if necessary. I'd never been mugged, and I had no intention to experience it any time soon.
But he never moved.
Once I was inside, I debated on calling building security, but if the guy had just been staring off into space or even watching me because he was trying to figure out if he knew me, I didn't want him to get in trouble. Besides, I was determined not to be that tenant who acted like everything was all about them.
I shook my head as I headed for the stairwell, ready to get inside my apartment now. Take a hot shower, have a scotch. Call Dena.
I almost reconsidered that last thought, but I really didn't want to.
I needed to talk to her. I couldn’t think clearly when it came to her, and I was just realizing that when things weren’t right between us, it was even worse. I needed to call her and make things right, then focus on the case so I could get through it.
Once that was done, I could focus on Dena. I’d figure out a way to make things work, even if she was with the DA’s office. There were ways. I just had to find them.
Mind made up, I swung around the landing for the third and last flight of stairs. In the natural pause between my steps, I heard a faint squeak. The same squeak I'd heard when I opened the rooftop door a few minutes ago.
Shit.
I didn't know why that guy had been looking at me, but I didn't want to be alone in a stairwell with him.
I wasn't an idiot.
I pulled out my keys and hurried down the last few stairs. I hadn't been in New York long enough to have any former clients or family members of former clients pissed at me. And I seriously doubted anyone from Chicago would've followed me. Most of my stuff had been white-collar crimes.
Then I remembered the threats Leayna had gotten.
Shit.
I pushed inside, thinking only about getting the door closed behind me.
If I'd taken a moment, I might have noticed a few things.
Like the fact that all of the lights were off even though I always left the entryway light on.
I might have noticed that the alarm wasn’t beeping its annoying little reminder to disarm it.
I might have noticed the shadow in the corner before he spoke.
“It would seem my associate was both right and wrong.”
At the sound of the voice, I tensed, but didn't run. I reached over and turned on the lights.
A man sat in a chair, a gun pointed square at my chest.
I didn't try to fight the panic that automatically came when I saw the gun. It was a human response. All I needed to do was hide it. Voice calm, I said, “I didn’t realize I had an after-hours meeting scheduled tonight.”
“You’re a cool one.” He jabbed the revolver at me, grinning wide enough to show a gold-capped tooth on the bottom. “Drop the phone.”
I glanced down at it, almost negligently and shrugged before tossing it down.
He didn’t say anything about the keys, and I wondered if he’d noticed them. I held them cupped loosely in my hand which meant it was possible he hadn’t seen them, although how he thought I’d gotten in, I didn't know. Not really my problem if he didn't notice them. I was more interested in what was going to happen next.
He held the gun like a man who knew how to use it, and I suspected he was a man who didn’t care if he had to use it or not. I didn't think he planned on killing me tonight, but I also didn't think he would care if his plans were changed. It wouldn’t matter to him if I lived or died. That much was clear.
“Have a seat,” he said, a faint smile curving his lips. “We should talk.”
There was a faint accent to his words, very faint. It was like he’d grown up speaking another language, but had long since switched to English. I couldn’t quite place it though.
“If we’re talking, mind if I get a drink?” I asked as I took a step forward. “I was planning on doing that as soon as I got home anyway.”
“Sit. I’ll get.” The words grew shorter, more tense and the accent was a bit more pronounced. “I’ll have drink, too.”
Slavic, I thought. Maybe…
Fuck. Everything came together all at once.
Leayna’s husband had connections to the mafia, the Russian mafia. And now I had an accented man with a gun in my living room. Probably a hitman.
Deciding it wasn’t wise to argue with him, I settled in a seat, still gripping my keys, and watched as he circled around the room toward the wet bar I'd set up in the corner. It was fully stocked already. He studied everything with a faint smile before cocking his head at me. I never once got the impression he was distracted. He was making a show of letting me think he was distracted by the bar service. I wasn’t that stupid, though. I’d wait to make my move.
“At least you have good vodka,” he said.
“Well, you never know when you’ll have your friendly local Russian mafia hitman stop by for a drink.” I shrugged as I said it, although I was hoping those wouldn’t be the last words I said.
He flashed me a wide smile. “Yes. I am the friendly one. If they had sent Olaf, he would have already just beaten the information out of you and cut your throat. I prefer...less messy tactics. We are more civilized these days.”
“So you don’t plan on cutting my throat?” I wasn’t buying it.
“Only if I have to.” He picked up a bottle and studied it. “You like this one?”
He’d picked up the Macallan.
“Yes.”
He opened it, sniffed. “Not bad. I shall try this instead of vodka. We’ll share a drink, talk.”
Wonderful.
As he splashed the expensive scotch into two highballs, I carefully lowered the keys so they were in the seat next to my thigh, out of sight. I wasn't considering using them as a weapon, not unless they were a last reso
rt. I wanted to keep them with me because the key fob for the panic alarm was on it. He’d disarmed my system. Not just disarmed it, but deactivated it entirely. I could see the control panel was open, wires sticking out. But hopefully the panic button on the key fob would still work.
Once I pushed it, cops would be here in maybe ten minutes.
If it worked.
If it didn’t...well, I would just have to see what Mr. Civilized wanted, and maybe just how good I was at extricating myself from sticky situations.
“You look like a man thinking serious thoughts.”
I blinked everything back into focus as he came around the wet bar, holding both of the glasses in one hand. He paused by the chair where he'd been sitting, and after a deliberate look at me, put the gun down on the arm of the chair so he could relieve himself of one of the scotches. I didn’t do anything. He was too far away, and I wasn’t about to delude myself into thinking I could get to him quicker than he could pick up that gun and kill me. Or maybe shoot out my kneecaps so he could still question me.
“You are a cool one,” he murmured again as he picked up the gun before coming over to offer me my drink.
I accepted the scotch with a steady hand and tossed back half of it. Apparently, he had an iron liver because he’d filled the highball well over halfway. I drained half of it in that first swallow.
He chuckled as he backed away and then settled back down in the chair across from me. “Now, we can talk.”
“Like civilized men.”
“Exactly.” He took his scotch and lifted it in my direction in a salute.
I saluted him in similar fashion, and held still as he took a slow, savoring sip.
“It is good,” he said approvingly. “I cannot do business with a man who doesn’t have decent taste in alcohol.” He took another sip and then put the glass down. “We need to discuss your client.”
“I can’t discuss my clients.”
He grinned. “Client confidentiality. You will use that when I have this pointed at you?”
Dropping my gaze to the gun, I swallowed. I’d never thought I might have to consider client confidentiality over my own life, but I’d taken an oath.
“It is a good thing they sent me instead of Olaf,” he murmured.
I looked away from the gun to meet his eyes. He was nodding to himself as if he’d reached some deep, meaningful conclusion.
“He would have decided to beat you on principle the first time you showed any sign of having a spine. Me, I appreciate a man with courage. But it might end up getting you killed, Mr. Porter.”
Yeah, that's about what I expected.
He leaned forward and pinned me with cold, hard eyes. His accent thickened. “Don’t discuss the case. I do not give a flying fuck. Here is what we need to discuss. Your client needs to plead out. We already told her this and she was ready to do it. You must have talked her out of it. Change her mind again. She will plead out, plead guilty to murder, manslaughter, whatever the fuck. She pleads out.”
I stared at him, working at keeping the blank expression that usually came so easily to me.
“Do you understand what I’m telling you?”
That was easy enough to answer. “I understand what you’re saying.”
His lids flickered. I had a feeling he wasn’t fooled by my response into thinking I was agreeing to do what he said.
“Her husband had something that belonged to my employer. And because the son of a bitch decided to play hardball, he’s dead. We told him what would happen. He didn’t believe us. Now she gets to suffer the consequences.”
My mind had been piecing everything together and with this, the rest came together. “Are you telling me that Leayna has been caught up in this solely because her husband was an asshole?”
“She married the asshole. She stayed with him.” He shrugged, looking unperturbed. Scraping his short nails down the stubble on his cheek, he said, “You know, I have a good relationship with the boss. I could…well, perhaps I could suggest he leave her alone if she’ll give him what her husband tried to cheat him out of. He tried to find it already, but it wasn’t there.”
The final piece. “The break-in.”
His eyes gleamed. “She is lucky she wasn’t there. Olaf had been given permission to do whatever was needed.”
Olaf could get fucked.
“Would you like to know what my boss is looking for?” he asked softly, leaning forward.
Chapter 10
Dena
Solve the puzzle.
My mind kept going back to those words Arik had spoken during my little nap. Solve the puzzle. Personally, I would've preferred to linger on that crop and all of the wonderful things I was sure my imagination would've come up with, but first things first.
The puzzle of Bethany and her desktop lover.
It wasn’t surprising that she'd already found somebody to take Pierce’s place. Although, it was highly possible that Pierce had never really had a place. Not that he'd known that. There'd been real surprise in his eyes when I’d mentioned the other guy. No denying that.
Solve the puzzle, Arik’s voice whispered again.
Not his voice, really. My subconscious.
“The puzzle of what?”
I knew it had something to do with Bethany and the guy, but what about them? Or was it more him than them?
“The guy,” I mumbled, answering my own question.
The swaying of the subway came to a stop. Automatically, I looked up to make sure I hadn’t missed my exit. That was when I realized a couple of people were watching me. The second I looked up, though, they busied themselves with something else, anything else, even if it was just to study their own fingernails.
Apparently, I'd been musing my problems out loud. Looking out my window, I rolled my eyes and ignored the other people. It was the New York subway, for crying out loud. All sorts of people talked to themselves on the subway. Granted, not too many of them were dressed in a chic little suit and carrying a briefcase that cost a few hundred dollars, but seriously. If you couldn’t be eccentric on the New York City subway, where could you be eccentric?
As the train started to pull ahead, I took note of where we were. One stop from where I needed to get off. Gathering my things, I stood up and moved closer to the exit.
Once through the doors and onto the platform, I went through the tangle of people, and started for the surface, my mind already back on Bethany and her man. More specifically, on him. I'd seen him somewhere before. Where did I know him from?
The jangling of my phone interrupted my reverie, and I came to a halt in front of a big, plate glass window as I stopped to tug my phone free. Eyes on the TV on the other side of the window, I answered the phone without looking to see who was calling. It was Carrie's new ringtone.
I didn’t get it out in time to keep Carrie’s call from rolling over to voicemail. Sighing, I pulled up my call log and hit her number, eyes still on the daily news that the electronics chain had blasting across the screen.
I rolled my eyes at some of the headlines, fought a pang at one of them. Typical day in the Big Apple. A cop was in trouble in this precinct, while in another, one had taken down some career criminal who never should have been released from prison to begin with.
There was another terrorist threat, and the mayor was assuring New Yorkers and our numerous visitors to continue life as always. We’d mourn, we’d get pissed and we’d carry on.
Carrie came on the line just as a prominent NYPD lieutenant’s face came on the screen. The text down at the bottom of the screen read:
Second alleged NYPD snitch found murdered, dismembered in dumpster in Harlem precinct.
“Hey, stranger,” Carrie said. “You never write. You never call...”
“You too good to talk to voice mail now that you're engaged to a seriously hot and rich man?” I asked distractedly, my head cocked as I stared at the TV. Every single thought in my head seemed to stutter to a stop.
Solve the
puzzle.
The words seemed to echo in my head now, growing louder and louder and louder.
“And when was the last time we talked?” she demanded.
“Over the weekend. I texted two days ago.” Moving closer, I squinted my eyes, although that wouldn’t make it any easier to hear what was going on. The sound was probably muted. The captions were rolling, but they were patchy. Better than nothing. Reading them, I managed to catch up enough to have an idea of what was going on.
“Yeah, yeah. So what?” Carrie didn’t sound impressed. “Hey, we haven’t talked, seriously, in forever. If you’re not doing anything, why don’t you come down to the club?”
“Can’t.” My eyes raced back and forth over the captions. Shifting the weight of my briefcase and purse, mind whirling, I tried to keep up with Carrie and with what I was reading. This was it. This was the puzzle. “I’m too distracted. The case, Carrie. Something big just came up.”
She said something, but I didn’t really process it. Everything inside me seemed to be on edge, processing what I’d just figured out.
The puzzle.
I was pretty sure I was getting close to figuring out the puzzle.
I didn’t realize I’d spoken out loud until Carrie asked, “What puzzle? Dena, are you okay?”
“No. Yeah.” I shook my head, trying to clear it. “Have you seen today’s news?”
“Same old crazy shit for New York.”
“Yeah.” I shifted my weight from one foot to the other. “The guy they think was a snitch. He’s dead. There was another one, too. Two snitches, dead. I wonder if he was connected to the mafia.”
Carrie groaned. “The mafia. Hell, Dena. You know how trite that is? The mafia and New York. People still think they might run afoul of the mafia if they simply come to New York. I’ve lived here all my life, and I’ve never so much as met a single Mafioso type.”
“That’s because the Italian mafia isn’t what it used to be. People just think it is. This...” I blew out a breath, barely hearing what I was saying. “The Russian mafia, the Mexican cartels? Those are the big problems now.”
