She really was stuck, wasn’t she?
Just her luck, the luggage hadn’t yet made it to the carousel by the time she did. The other passengers on her flight stood in wait, scanning their smartphones, stifling yawns, and chatting with each other. A gray-haired man in an impeccable suit spoke French while staring at a tablet. Whitney stared straight ahead, trying to will the conveyor belt to move.
Aligning herself with David Gregor had been a mistake. She knew that back when she first agreed, but now that an undercover cop had been killed—in her precinct’s jurisdiction, no less—it really hit home how deep in it she was. Best-case scenario, she would lose her badge and perhaps her freedom. Worst case? She’d be just as dead as Jonas.
“So,” a voice called to her from behind, “how was France? I hear Paris is lovely this time of year.”
Biting back a curse, Whitney rolled her eyes before letting the bag drop from her shoulder and turning around. “Hi? What are you doing here?”
“Wondering what you were doing over there.” Watson narrowed his gaze and pocketed his phone. Several missed calls and text messages from his colleagues at the Seventh taunted him, but he couldn’t let this go without any answers.
Shit. How did he know where she had been? Blankenship bit down on her lower lip, shifting her weight from one foot to the other before shaking her head and shrugging her shoulders. “Is it so wrong to take some time off?”
“Without telling any of us?” Watson shook his head.
Shit, Watson had her there. But what could she even say to that? He didn’t even really know her secret. Unless she had been sloppy somewhere along the way and he was simply playing coy for the time being. She hated the way he looked at her anymore, but she supposed that was partly her own fault. Sneaking off to talk to David Gregor aside, she hadn’t been the model partner of late.
But what other choice did she have? And it wasn’t like she could fill her partner in on what had been going on in recent weeks, either. She was under strict orders to keep things under wraps, and she quickly learned that secrecy had not been one of her strengths.
“Whitney.” The edge in Watson’s voice was unlike anything Blankenship had ever heard. “What’s in Paris?”
“The Eiffel Tower.” Blankenship turned her back on her partner, mostly so he couldn’t see the shame and the tears building in her eyes, folding her arms over her chest. A hand on her arm twirled Blankenship back around, and her right hand cocked back in a fist.
“Go ahead.” Watson took a step back, arms extended. “You wanna hit me? Hit me. Get out whatever it is that’s crawled up your ass these past couple weeks.”
Blankenship wanted to. Her brain told her fist to go ahead, swing away. Yet her arm stayed right where it was. Her jaw clenched until her teeth ground together, and Blankenship grimaced when the muscle started to hurt. Her eyes narrowed, and she sucked in a deep breath to stem the burning in them. Yet the tears still threatened, and she shook her head in hopes of hiding her quivering lip.
“Whitney.” Watson lowered his arms and took a step forward. “What the hell’s going on with you?”
At the root of it all, Blankenship felt neither hatred nor anger. She had lashed out against her partner in recent weeks, said things about a former colleague she had instantly regretted, but at the end of the day, she couldn’t look at herself in the mirror. The truth was so much more complicated than Watson knew, and she couldn’t even tell him. She stared at her feet and chewed on her lower lip, letting the tears build and fall as they may as her arm slowly came back down to her side.
“Whit,” Watson whispered, grabbing his partner’s shoulders. “Hey, talk to me.”
“I’m a damn fool.”
“I mean, you’ve been a bit off the last couple weeks, but...”
“No.” Blankenship balled both hands into fists and slammed them into her partner’s chest. She stared at him with watery eyes and gritted teeth. “I did a really, really, really stupid thing, because I’m an idiot.”
“Did you kill Adam Jonas?”
Blankenship blinked, her mouth open but no words forming. Swiping a tear rolling down her cheek, she shook her head. “What? No!”
“Then whatever’s got you like this can’t be that bad.”
Blankenship grabbed her bag off the floor, rummaging through its contents before pulling out a large wad of cash held together with a rubber band and tossing it at Watson. He caught it with a frown and a quirked eyebrow, pushing his glasses down his nose as he leaned in for a closer look.
“What...?”
“That’s five thousand dollars,” she explained, tossing the bag at her feet. “Last couple weeks, I’ve pulled in almost twenty grand.”
“Where are you getting this?”
Blankenship stared at her feet again, because the thought of looking Hitori Watson in the eye turned her stomach. They had been as close as partners could be in the years since Captain Richards paired them together. They had attended family functions together, spent far too many nights surrounded by takeout cartons and empty beer bottles.
Next to her own family, Watson was the most important person in Blankenship’s life. Then again, family was the whole issue, wasn’t it? Her father had been laid off two months ago, losing his health insurance in the process... and with his savings as meager as they were, recent news had proven devastating on multiple fronts.
David Gregor, like a shark smelling blood in the water, had approached at the absolute best time. Or was it the worst time? Blankenship couldn’t tell half the time.
“Whitney.” Watson was in his partner’s face now, waving the wad of cash in her face. “Where’s the money coming from?”
Sucking in a deep breath, and hating how ragged it sounded when she exhaled, Blankenship swallowed the lump in her throat and forced herself to look Watson in the eye. She could already see the disappointment staring back at her, and she couldn’t tell if it was his or her own reflection.
“Gregor,” she finally admitted. “It’s Gregor, okay?”
Watson took a step back, staring at the money in his hand. When he looked back up at his partner, his lip curled into a sneer and he shook his head. “You’re on the fucking take?!”
“Look, Hi—“
“You, of all people, are taking money from that bastard?!” Watson’s voice carried enough that a couple other passengers glanced over their shoulders. “All that tough talk about dirty cops, all that... geez, Whitney, what the fuck?!”
“I know, I just—“
“Is that why you’ve been acting mad about Jill? You think if you direct all that anger you have at yourself somewhere else, you can keep hiding? Have you been lashing out at her just so you can stand to look at yourself in the mirror every night?”
“My father’s dying!” Blankenship shouted, tear streaks on both sides of her face. “Okay?! He’s fucking dying...”
Watson stood slack-jawed, his shoulders deflating.
“Lung cancer,” she explained before taking a deep breath and wiping at her eyes. “Stage 4. He’s unemployed, lost his insurance, has almost no savings. Without treatment, he maybe has another month to live.”
“Whit, I...”
“So yeah, I’m a shitty cop,” she continued. “Taking money from a guy like that. I know who he is, I know what he does. So you do whatever you have to do, Hitori... hell, turn me in if it helps any. I’m just... I wanted to help.”
“This?” Watson said, holding up the wad. “This is blood money, Whitney. You think your dad would want this if he knew where the money was coming from?”
Blankenship hung her head and slid her hands into her pockets. She had no answer for that; she knew in her heart of hearts that her father would disown her if he knew where the money was coming from. He would just as soon put a gun in his mouth and pull the trigger than accept money like that. But she had been desperate, and in that weakness, she allowed someone to exploit that desperation.
She was sick with the realization, sick
with the knowledge that, in a way, she was no better than the four cops who had killed that boy. Blood might not have been on her hands, but the fact that she was in David Gregor’s pocket meant the day would eventually come where she would have to make that choice.
Blankenship wanted to believe she would walk away when that day came, but seeing as how she was already accepting money... what was to say she would do the right thing then?
Watson tossed the cash at his partner’s feet with a shake of his head. “I’m sorry about your father. Really, I am. But even he would tell you what a fucking mistake this is.”
“Hi...”
“Go home.” Watson turned and stormed out of the terminal, unable to stomach looking at his partner anymore. “I have to get back to work.”
CHAPTER 38
“The fuck happened to him?”
“Morphine overdose,” Juanita explained as she examined Stanley Erikson’s body, which was still lying on the slab with a needle stuck in his right hand. His skin was pale and his eyes were wide, tongue hanging slightly out of his mouth. She grabbed the hand in question, gingerly pulling the needle out from under the skin and shaking her head. “Looks like he was tortured with it first.”
Stevens grimaced and shook his head. “Why?”
“The vigilante wanted information,” Ramon answered, crouched on a knee and studying a spot on the floor under the slab. “If Jill’s story checks, Piotr wanted Erikson to give up his sources, his intel... all of it.”
Juanita nodded. “And when he didn’t talk...”
Ramon picked up one of the shards on the floor with a pair of tweezers, holding it up to the beam from Stevens’ flashlight. “...he turned the dosage to the max and let the rest run its course.”
“That’s all well and good,” Stevens said, grunting when he kneeled and both knees cracked, “but what good does knowin’ who did it do ya when you can’t hope to hold the guy?”
“The guy is racking up quite the body count,” Ramon added, scooping up the rest of the pieces of what had been the drip control for the morphine, stuffing them into a clear plastic bag.
“And there ain’t a damn thing we can do about it.”
No one wanted to admit how right Stevens was. Piotr had been in the Seventh Precinct once before, having snuck in without being noticed and easily handling several highly-trained detectives and officers. If he decided he didn’t want to be held, there was likely nothing any of them could do. When it came to those like Piotr, the BPD was out of its league.
“Maybe we’re gonna miss Jill more than we thought,” Juanita offered as she ran an extra-long cotton swab along the inside of Erikson’s mouth.
“She’ll still be around,” Ramon muttered, leaning in to get a closer look at a dark spot on the ground. Not that any part of it wasn’t dark, but Ramon thought he saw something else in addition to what was left of the drip control.
Sure enough, a dark gray device was there for the taking.
“But it would be nice to have someone in the department who knew what this guy is,” Juanita argued.
“We know exactly what this freak is,” Stevens said. “And none of us are equipped to handle him. He’s the perfect patsy for Richie McBitchtits.”
Ramon studied the device he had lifted off the ground, furrowing his brow and chewing on his lower lip before getting back to his feet. “Hey, Earl, check this out.”
Stevens joined Ramon, hitching up his pants and making a tsk sound as the other detective shined his flashlight on the device in his hand. The scowl on Stevens’ face deepened. “The fuck?” He leaned in even closer. “Is that a recorder?”
“Well, our victim was a reporter.”
Ramon pressed the circular button on the center of the device, lifting it so it was closer to his and Stevens’ ears. The crackle of a recording sprang to life, and the two detectives exchanged a glance.
You know why I’m calling, a woman’s voice started.
“That’s Lori,” Stevens muttered.
Her digitized voice was met with silence before she chimed in again. The timetable hasn’t changed. You know what you need to do.
Ramon frowned. “Is she on the phone?”
That’s right. Jonas.
Stevens’ eyes widened ever so slightly as he straightened his posture. “She just order a hit?”
He’s been a bug in Gregor’s ass for months. The sooner you can get Jonas out of the way, the sooner we can progress to the next step.
Ramon shook his head. “Next step of what?”
See that you do.
The recording ended, leaving Ramon and Stevens accompanied by nothing more than the hum of the nearby furnace, a far-off generator, and the occasional click of a coroner’s camera.
“So Erikson had proof that Lori Taylor ordered the hit on Jonas,” Ramon said. “That can’t be what got him killed, can it? Jill made it sound like it was more than that.”
Stevens shook his head. “All I know is, Lori’s a lot dumber than we thought. Girl’s already on the hook for one murder, now we got her for conspiracy to commit on a cop. Next time she sees the outside of a jail cell, it’ll be from the inside of a pine box.”
“So, I’m this badass Russian vigilante,” Ramon theorized, stuffing the recorder in another clear plastic bag, “I toy around with Jill a little bit, I’ve already got ties to David Gregor, I’ve killed several cops, and then I terrorize a reporter before ultimately killing him. Why? What’s his play?”
Stevens shrugged and glanced over his shoulder, where Juanita was finishing her preliminary report. “You could ask him yourself, next time we see him.”
“Nah.” Ramon handed the evidence bag to a CSU tech who walked by. “In this case, I’m inclined to take Jill’s advice. Let the Super Friends be; I think we need to talk to Lori again.”
CHAPTER 39
If there was one silver lining to having spent the last few weeks constantly on the run, it was that Jill had vastly improved her stealth. Slipping out of a downtown hospital crawling with police was no small feat, which was why Jill allowed herself the smallest of sideways grins as she stepped into a back alley. But the smile disappeared when she heard someone behind her cleared their throat.
“You’re good,” a familiar and genial voice teased. “But you forget how well some of us know you.”
The hitch in Jill’s shoulders disappeared once she realized who was standing behind her, and she quirked a brow when she turned around to find Captain Richards leaning against the wall, an unlit cigarette tucked in his lips.
“You know those things’ll kill you.”
The grin on Richards’ face grew. “Only if I light ‘em.”
Jill nodded toward the building behind her former boss. “Any word on Erikson?”
The smile disappeared as Richards pulled the cigarette from his mouth and tucked it behind his right ear. He stuffed his hands into his pockets and pushed off the wall, making sure to glance over each shoulder before approaching Jill. He had swapped out his department-issued phone for a burner before coming to the crime scene, deciding that if the Bishop was taking to tracking his movements, he wanted to shake them whenever possible.
They weren’t going to run him out, and they weren’t going to spook him. The man had once made a living out of chasing and staring down the truly depraved; an administration drunk on its own self-importance was little more than a nuisance to him.
“Found in a subbasement,” he muttered, shaking his head. “Looks like he OD’d on morphine.”
No. Jill’s human eye went wide, and any words her brain could formulate got stuck in the back of her throat. No... no no no no...
“But why would he—“
“I don’t think he did.” Richards tossed the cigarette to the ground and stepped on it as if he were putting it out. “He was strapped to a gurney of some sort and we found the dial controlling the drip destroyed.”
Dread sat heavy in Jill’s gut, and not just because of who she suspected was behind Stanley
Erikson’s murder. She had inadvertently led this man to his death, insisting he go to the hospital to have his smashed-up hand looked at.
Then again, Erikson had known what he was getting into. Maybe not the specifics, but he knew enough to know he was better off using an alias when the nurses checked him in.
Even that didn’t help.
“Whoever was after him wanted him bad.” Richards pursed his lips. “And far be it for me to mourn a reporter, but... I got my start in Narcotics, Andersen. I’ve seen what a drug like morphine can do to someone. Stanley Erikson didn’t deserve that.”
“Don’t let the notepad and the byline fool you.” Jill ducked her head and brushed a strand of hair behind her ear. It was starting to grow back out, but the color was starting to fade. With any luck, she wouldn’t have to dye it again. “He was a good man.”
“Who was after him? And why?”
“The other vigilante,” Jill answered with a sigh, glancing at the moon. Full moons usually calmed her, but there was nothing soothing her frayed nerves. Because if Stanley Erikson was dead, then where else could Jill turn?
Richards’ hand reached for the gun on his side, seemingly on its own, and he wished he had that cigarette back in his grasp. Even if he didn’t smoke it, it served as a security blanket of sorts. And without a drink nearby... oh, how Evelyn would rip him a new one if she could get inside his head right now...
“That makes no sense,” he said. “If he’s on your side...”
“I think he’s playing both sides,” Jill said. “We take him at his word, he wants to bring Gregor down, but he doesn’t want anything to lead back to him.”
“Shoulda thought of that before he signed up.”
Behind the Mask Page 17
