by C. C. Mahon
“As a tool? As if it was a pair of pliers or something?”
“Exactly. The doc saw that once in his career with a bear’s jaw. A guy had killed someone and decided to try and pass it off as a grizzly attack.”
“But your coroner didn’t fall for it.”
“No one fell for it. The idiot left the body in a cabin, and he closed the door when he left. Strangely polite for a grizzly.”
I poured myself a glass to toast human stupidity and give me the courage to tackle the next point.
“Carver is alive,” I said.
Lola looked at me without saying a word for several seconds before asking, “Did he contact you?”
“No, Matteo followed a financial lead…”
I didn’t finish my sentence. I was suddenly out of breath.
“What?” asked Lola. “What’s wrong?”
“The flowers,” I breathed. “The roses that were delivered to me, do you remember?”
She nodded silently.
“Callum used to have them sent to me by the dozen. That’s why I didn’t want them: they brought back too many memories.”
“And who sent them this time?”
“The slip didn’t list the sender.”
“Do you remember the company?”
I closed my eyes to picture the scene. “It was a blue logo on a white background…”
“Like this?”
She had taken out her phone and was scrolling through transport company logos on the screen.
“No,” I said, “no, no… Wait. Yes, it was AT Logistics.”
“Got it. I’ll look into it. Can I do something else? Have you contacted Chicago?”
“Matteo offered to send a message to the IRS, I think.”
“He should do it. If it worked for Capone, it could work for Carver. Do you know if he’s in the country?”
“He could be in Shanghai or on the Strip. I don’t have the faintest idea.”
I let my eyes wander across the room. At the other end of the counter, Henry was telling Enola his life story. The seer seemed captivated. She could see beyond appearances. Maybe she would be charmed by the poor spider-man?
“Do you think he could come after you?” asked Lola.
I let go of my dreams of being a matchmaker and nodded silently.
Callum was a sadist. He needed to control others. I had escaped him; for him, my very existence was an insult, a challenge.
“He’ll want to get me back,” I breathed. “Make me pay. And he’ll end up killing me, like all the others.”
I saw the cop in Lola perk up at the mention of “others.” “He’s killed before?”
“According to him, yes. His employees didn’t talk much, but two of them confirmed having gotten rid of at least two women’s bodies for Carver, and several men—rivals, I think.”
“Do you have names? Dates?”
“Only a few allusions whispered here and there. I wasn’t allowed to speak to Callum’s men. I wasn’t allowed to talk to anyone.”
Lola drained her cocktail and contemplated the bottom of her glass for a long time before saying, “I never dared to ask you, but…”
“Why did I stay with him for so long? Because by the time I understood the dangers, I was stuck in the trap. You must come across them at the precinct, victims of manipulators, wives in the grasp of violent husbands, who don’t know how to get their lives back.”
“It happens more often in a trailer park than in a luxury condo.”
“No, it doesn’t. You don’t hear about what happens behind the golden doors because rich and powerful men know how to isolate their prey and shut up witnesses. In the slums, the walls are thin; the screams bother the neighbors. When the entire building belongs to the same man, he can do what he wants, and the police will never hear about it.”
“What do you think we should do about that?”
“I don’t know.”
Lola pouted and put her glass back down on the counter. “First of all, we’re going to take care of this Carver. At the slightest sign of him, you call me—on the spot! Understood?”
“Yes, Mom!”
Her voice didn’t have the same firmness when she spoke again. “Would you, uh, mind if I went to see Matteo in the kitchen? To ask him a few questions?”
Despite the dim lighting of the bar, I could’ve sworn Lola King, high-powered detective, was blushing like a schoolgirl.
“Go ahead,” I said without trying to hold back my smile. “But be good!”
She attempted to glare at me, but she clearly wasn’t in the right state of mind. I watched her go as she zigzagged between the customers and disappeared through the kitchen’s swinging door. Lola King was in love. That twinge of sorrow, it wasn’t jealousy. Not really. But I envied my friend her ability to fall in love. Even if it was just a crush. My heart was closed off behind seven layers of magical protections.
And with all that, we had forgotten to talk about Dale.
19
“I found Carver,” announced Lola as soon as I picked up.
Those few words washed away to remnants of sleep. I sat up in bed, unable to ask the question. “Where?”
Lola didn’t wait for me to catch my breath to continue. “A certain Dimitri Denikin recently purchased a building on the Strip. You already know the address. It’s where you followed the wolf metamorphs.”
“Meta-wolves,” I corrected reflexively.
“Yeah, that. The transaction was done remotely, but I found a cleaning lady who recognized your man from a picture. He’s living in the luxury penthouse on the top two floors.”
“If he finds out she identified him…”
“He won’t know about it. She won’t be mentioned in my report—if I ever write one.”
My brain refused to process this new information, and I remained in a paralyzing stupor. Fortunately, Lola was thinking for the both of us.
“Let’s say coincidences don’t exist and that Carver and the wolves are linked. That would mean that Carver is linked to your missing people, the succubus and the puma. Any idea what he could want with them?”
I searched my mind frantically. “Carver is a collector. When I knew him, he was fascinated by magical objects.”
“You think…what? That he decided to collect people?”
“Supernaturals,” I said.
“Supernaturals or not, they’re people to me. Citizens. In my city.”
I tried to imagine Callum kidnapping Kitty the puma and Patricia the succubus or getting them kidnapped. To do what? Put them in cages? Display them? Torture them? And Adam? And Phoebe? Was Callum also responsible for their deaths?
“Lola, what do you plan on doing?”
“Keeping an eye on our man. I want to contact someone at the Chicago PD, but what you said last night has been dancing around in my head.”
“What?”
“That powerful men know how to shut up witnesses. And what if Carver had ‘friends’ in the Chicago Police Department?”
“It’s more than likely.”
“In that case, I don’t want to let them know that we found him.”
“FBI?” I suggested.
“I have nothing to show them. I think Matteo is right and that the IRS is our best ally.”
“You think Callum doesn’t have any IRS agent in his pocket?”
“The IRS has an investigative division organized at the federal level. They have several thousand investigators based out of Washington. I think we should take the chance.”
“To do what? Get a tax adjustment?”
“Force him to come out, to start with. Then have him arrested. If he’s convicted of tax fraud, he’ll be put behind bars for several years, and that will give us time to build a case against him. It might not be glamorous, but it’s a tried and true method. In the meantime, I’ll keep digging into your two missing persons. At lunch, I’ll go over the surveillance video from the area where your puma would’ve had his accident. It’s likely to take a lot of
time, but as soon as I find something, I’ll call you back. What are you doing on your end?”
“What time is it?”
“Eight thirty.”
“Ugh. I’m going to try to fall back to sleep.”
“Sleepy head.”
“I slept three hours!”
“At your age, that should be enough.”
“Blah…”
With that eloquent reply, I hung up and put my phone back on my bedside table. I sought protection under my duvet, and that was the moment my brain decided to finally wake up.
Callum was here, on the Strip, barely a few miles away.
I had been outside his windows. Had he seen me? Had he followed me?
He could’ve caught me, he could’ve…
“STOP!” I shouted.
I sat back up, pushed back my duvet, and jumped out of bed.
I wasn’t going to let the panic take hold of me.
Not this time. Never again.
Short of breath and my heart beating too fast, I grabbed my boxing gloves and started to abuse my punching bag. If my heart rate was going to be 150, it might as well be for a good reason.
The simple act of hitting a bag allowed me to transform the panic into anger.
I had built a new life here. A life with a job, a nice apartment, and friends. I wasn’t going to let that dirtbag Callum come ruin everything. He had come to Vegas, in my city, and had decided to take back up his twisted games, as illustrated by that delivery of roses. I wasn’t going let myself be intimidated.
Not to mention Patricia and Kitty. I didn’t know them, but no one deserved to fall into Callum’s grasp. At one time, I had dreamed that a hero would come rescue me from the hold of this monster. No one had come. But this time, things would be different. This time, I was going to be the heroine. I didn’t have a cape, but I had a magical sword, which was clearly better.
That last thought pushed me to abandon the punching bag and the boxing gloves in favor of the case where the sword was housed. The weapon vibrated as soon as I touched it, as if to encourage me. I thought I heard a voice whispering to me, “Come, Erica, let’s go settle this immediately.”
I was halfway to the door of the loft when I thought better of it.
Attacking was a nice idea, until I remembered that I had no way of getting into Callum’s building, I didn’t know where exactly his apartment was, and I couldn’t easily walk around in broad daylight with a flaming sword.
I could probably find a ruse to get into the building. Pretend to be a delivery guy or a maid.
Knowing Callum, there was only one apartment on the top floors of the building. He would never accept something as trivial as neighbors.
As for my sword…I had more than once carried it around in the middle of the day in its drawing tube. I didn’t have to take it out before being face to face with Callum.
Yes, I decided, it could work.
But not in PJs.
I put the sword back down long enough to get dressed.
That’s when the phone rang for the second time.
“What?” I asked in an exasperated tone.
“Oh, hello? I think I’m bothering you?”
Impossible not to recognize the accent of my favorite British wizard. I took it upon myself to try again in a more civil tone.
“Sorry, Brit, I was about to go out. What can I do for you?”
“Well, aren’t you a morning person? Yesterday you left me a message about a search for missing people.”
So many things had happened last night that I forgot.
“What would you need for a succubus and a meta-puma?”
“A permit from Customs.”
“You’re kidding?”
“Alas, no. If I practice without a permit, I’m risking a lot.”
“If I don’t find them fast, Patricia and Kitty are at risk of losing their lives. But you’re right; it would be a pity if you had to pay a fine.”
I hung up and left the phone on my bed before leaving my loft in long angry steps.
I left my bike a few streets from the building, and invoked an illusion to hide me from those around me. I picked an elderly man with coarse and unpleasant features. With that appearance, I was almost sure that no one would bother me.
For some time, I had been able to maintain these illusions longer and longer. Practice, I supposed. So I took my time getting to the building. Arriving at the front of the door to the parking garage, I modified my illusion to blend into the concrete wall. Then I waited.
The tourists passed by on the sidewalk. The cars clogged the street. A shopkeeper threw out a beggar, who replied with a slew of creative curses. Two people distributing flyers for call girls picked a fight over territory. No one was coming towards Callum’s building. From where I was, I could watch both the door to the parking garage and the one to the lobby. No one went in or out. I felt my illusion weakening and decided to take my chances at the back of the building.
An alley led to the service entrance, an ordinary metal parking garage door. I tried to lift it and was hit by an electric shock to my hand. No, not electric: magic. The door was protected by a spell like the ones protecting Club 66. Callum had taken precautions.
I swallowed my groan of frustration and turned on my heels. I was going to have to come back with a plan. And maybe reinforcement.
As I got back to the place where I’d left my bike, I spewed out the same string of curses that the beggar had let out a little earlier. Some were new to me. At least I had learned something.
20
THE CLUB HAD been open for an hour, and Matteo wasn’t there. Since he had started in the kitchen, the vampire had never been this late.
For her second night of work, Enola was doing pretty well, but she wasn’t yet able to stay behind the bar alone. And in any case, I wouldn’t have been able to make anything other than omelets and toast in the kitchen.
I dialed Matteo’s cellphone number for the third time of the night. The first two times I’d gotten his voicemail, and I was ready to leave him a third message. That’s why I was caught off guard when someone answered and a voice I didn’t recognize declared, “Mister Boccanegra’s phone.”
“I…uh… What?”
“To whom do I have the pleasure of speaking?”
“Erica. Erica St. Gilles. I’m looking for Matteo.”
After a few moments of silence, Matteo’s voice replaced the stranger’s. “Erica…Sorry for being late.”
“Is everything okay? You sound strange. What’s going on?”
“I’ll be there in half an hour. We’ll talk.”
He hung up.
“Is everything okay, Ms. St. Gilles?” asked Enola.
The seer looked at me with curiosity.
“I don’t know,” I admitted.
Forty-five minutes later, Matteo arrived like a storm cloud. He quickly crossed the room, looking somber. I abandoned Enola to go join him in the kitchen. I found him, a big knife in hand, busy massacring a troupe of unsuspecting vegetables. I waited for the vegetables to be sizzling in the wok to ask, “So?”
“So my dad is having me followed,” he said without looking up.
He opened the door to one of the industrial refrigerators and took out two raw chickens.
“Oh, really?” I said. “Why? I thought you had burned those bridges.”
“Me too. Apparently, I’m not able to walk alone in the street, and he assigned bodyguards to tail me. They’ve been tailing me for months.”
“How did you find out?”
“Tonight, someone tried to kidnap me.”
“WHAT?”
He shrugged, still not looking at me, and began butchering the first chicken into small pieces.
“I was on my way here when two black 4X4s cut me off on the sidewalk. A group of guys came out. They grabbed me. They wanted me to come with them. That’s when my dear father’s ‘guardian angels’ intervened. They sent the thugs packing, tail between their legs. And they ‘e
scorted’ me to my father’s office.”
“Oh,” I said.
He brought down his cleaver on the second chicken’s back. The poultry opened with the cracking of bone.
“We ‘discussed’ it,” said Matteo.
“Ah. Are you okay?”
“Not really. Well, yes, but whatever. A face to face with my father is never pleasant. But…” He put down his cleaver and wiped his hands on his apron, looking reflective. “My father wanted to know if I knew the guys who assaulted me. I told him I had never seen them, which is the truth. And that worried him.”
“He actually said that?”
“He would never admit it even under torture. And he knows how to maintain the mask. But I know him better than I would like. He doesn’t know who these people are. So before leaving his place, I talked with one or two of his employees. Something is going on in the city.”
“What?”
“They don’t know. It’s little things. Disappearances among the supernaturals. Some are leaving, and they’re clearly scared, and they’re refusing to talk. Others just vanish.”
“Like Kitty and Patricia?”
“My father put people on the case. And his people didn’t all come back with a report.”
“These people, are they vampires?”
“Not all. There are also quite a few humans. My father seems to think a rival family is attacking his empire, but he can’t figure out which one. Rumor speaks of a certain Mister D, but no one knows who he works for. All this is making my father nervous.”
“It’s Callum,” I said. “He’s in Vegas.”
“Don’t go there. It might be…”
“You don’t understand: Lola found your Dimitri Din…something. You know, Callum’s new identity. He bought a building on the Strip. He’s here, in the city.”
Matteo gazed at his counter, as if the stainless steel surface held the answer to the meaning of life and everything else.
“What do you think he wants?” he finally asked.
“I don’t want to sound egocentric, but I’m positive he’s here for me. To get revenge. But he’s gonna want to challenge the other local big hitters along the way. And your family is one of the most powerful on the Strip.”
