When Nick didn’t answer, or change expression, Morley let out another exasperated sound, motioning towards the building with his hand.
“Well? Jordan’s coming down now. Go. Ride back to the station with him. Oh, and there’ll be I.S.F. agents there, at the interviews. So you better make damned sure your memories match up to the shit you put in your reports.”
Nick felt his jaw harden, but only nodded.
“Yes, sir.”
Scowling, Morley motioned towards the front of the Tower a second time.
“Well?” he snapped. “Go!”
Sighing, if only inside his mind, Nick began to walk, aiming his feet for the front doors of Phoenix Tower and taking care to walk like a human. As he approached the tall, black-stone covered building, he had to fight to keep the neutral expression on his face.
He knew even now there might be media drones hanging around, noting the police activity, or possibly picking up the lieutenant’s image on facial rec. He couldn’t afford to be seen reacting to any of this in a way the media might decide to speculate about.
No doubt the dark news feeds would have doctored footage of him as it was—probably with him spewing obscenities, foaming at the mouth, fangs extended as he threatened the governor’s kid.
Behind his human-friendly mask, Nick fought to chew through everything Morley told him, fighting to make sense of it.
The thing about Wynter and Kingsworth bothered him.
Truthfully, it bothered him a lot.
Still, something else didn’t feel right to him, and not only the fact that somehow, someone had live recordings of him and Wynter talking—and Wynter hitting on him—but none of him or Wynter talking about her race. Apparently, whoever that someone was, they’d released none of the footage of Wynter giving him a hand-job, either.
Why would they release the part about her offering him her phone number, but leave out the fact that she was a hybrid and a psychic? If they wanted to grab headlines, why leave out the most salacious and sensational parts of their interactions together?
Could Wynter herself have leaked it?
If so, why? As a favor to her boyfriend, the Governor?
The thought made him scowl all over again.
He was nearly to the front doors of Phoenix Tower by then. He’d just stepped up on the curb when those doors opened abruptly, swinging outward. That time, Jordan walked out, followed by two uniforms leading out Ms. Lara Phoenix St. Maarten.
Unlike the last time Nick saw her, she looked noticeably disheveled.
The silky, wood-brown curls still framed her face, but they looked mussed and lopsided, like she’d been in some kind of struggle. Sweat sheened her forehead and upper lip. Her previously-immaculate make-up was smeared, including her blood-red lipstick, and a red mark on her cheek was already turning into a bruise.
It was pretty clear she’d been hit.
Frowning, Nick turned, staring at Jordan.
“Did one of you punch her in the face?” he growled, in spite of himself. “Was that really necessary?”
Jordan frowned, then shook his head, once. “She had it when we got here.” Pausing, he added, “She claims her ex- did it. If so, she got hers back… and then some. You should see the poor bastard. I think that bodyguard of hers broke part of his face.”
Nick’s anger dimmed, but only a little.
“He’s in there?” he said. “Kingsworth?”
“Yes. He’s with the medics right now, and forensics. The techs are trying to pull evidence from his injuries—”
Before he could get any further, Lara St. Maarten spoke up.
“Him!” she called out, her voice breathless, a little pained. Unable to point with her cuffed hands, she motioned vehemently with her head and neck, staring directly at Nick. “I’ll talk to him! Only him!”
Nick frowned.
Jordan frowned, too. He looked from Nick back to her.
Then, his voice flat, cop-like, he aimed his words at her.
“I’m afraid that’s not possible, Ms. St. Maarten. Detective Midnight here has other duties tonight. He’s just riding with us on the way back to the precinct station—”
She was already shaking her head.
“No.” She stared directly at Nick, her green eyes seeming to look through him. “If you want to interview me tonight, it has to be him. He’s the only one I’ll talk to. I mean it. You’ll have to drug me to get me to talk, otherwise.”
Her own words seemed to embolden her.
Her voice strengthened when she next spoke, holding more of the confidence and command Nick remembered from the first night he’d met her.
“…Assuming you want to risk a lawsuit for drugging me into some kind of bogus confession, detective,” she added acidly, staring at Jordan. “I should warn you in advance. My lawyers are good. Better than my ex-husband’s. A hell of a lot better than anyone you have in the Protected Area Attorney’s office. You try and play games with me, and I’ll end up picking your next police lieutenant… assuming you still have a precinct. Whatever my ex-husband promises you, trust me, it won’t be enough.”
Jordan scowled.
For a second, he looked like he might have a few words to say in return.
Still, his expression looked more puzzled than angry.
After a few seconds of silence, he looked back at Nick, motioning sharply towards the open doors of a nearby police van.
“Well?” he snapped, mirroring Morley from a few minutes before. “You heard her. Get in the van, Tanaka. Apparently you’re the man of the fucking hour tonight.”
Nick didn’t argue.
Chapter 23
Somebody’s Listening
He was already waiting in the interrogation room when they brought her in.
Morley gave the go-ahead on the interview.
Nick only heard Jordan’s half of that conversation—and then only part of it, since Jordan switched to sub-vocals about a third of the way in—but he could imagine the senior detective had more than a few choice words to say about the request.
Whatever Morley’s exact string of expletives, Ms. Lara St. Maarten hadn’t exactly done Nick any favors, in terms of how his fellow police officers were viewing him at the moment. Not even on his first day here had he been on the receiving end of so many stares. That didn’t even get into the intensity and type of stares he fielded as he walked through the bullpen on his way to the interrogation cells.
Even Charlie looked at him like she thought he might be a murderer.
Well, more of a murderer.
Presumably they thought he was a murderer already, given what he was.
Nick waited in the interrogation cell partly for that reason.
It wasn’t much of an improvement, really, given that he spent the next ten minutes obsessing on the fact that Wynter Ciara James was fucking Gavin Kingsworth and didn’t tell him, even though they’d talked about the man that very night.
Obviously, they had some kind of open thing, which made sense, given that Kingsworth was already married to a hybrid. Nick wondered if Kingsworth knew Wynter was a hybrid, too. Probably. Which made Nick wonder if the Governor had some kind of fetish.
It was none of his business, he told himself.
None of this was any of his fucking business; he knew that.
So why was he so pissed off?
When they brought Ms. St. Maarten in, he was almost relieved to have something else to think about. He took in her appearance in a single flickering, assessing stare.
The bruise on her face had darkened.
She was still wearing the dark grey suit he’d seen her in when Jordan and the uniforms escorted her out of the building.
Her hair looked more smoothed back, almost like it was damp, and she’d been stripped of all jewelry, as well as her wraparound monitor, her headset, and whatever other tech she’d been wearing—at least the stuff that could be seen, removed, and/or neutralized. Her face had been washed, leaving it devoid of make-up. The raccoon
-eyes and blood-red lipstick Nick had seen outside of Phoenix Tower were gone, leaving her strangely young-looking, if tired.
Someone had spread oil or cream on her bruised cheek, making it shiny.
Two uniforms brought her in, cuffed at the wrists and ankles.
They motioned for her to sit, then locked the chains to the floor and table.
Given what he was, Nick might have found it funny under different circumstances.
Here they were, chaining up this bird-sized, middle aged woman like an animal to render her safe for her vampire interrogator—a vampire who had about six inches on her and outweighed her by about a hundred pounds, most of it muscle.
Nick waited for the uniforms to leave the room.
So did she.
Once the door closed behind them with a click, Nick mimicked a human sigh, combing his hand through his hair before he faced her.
She was looking at the corners of the room, at the cameras there.
“I turned them off,” Nick said.
She looked back at him, her lips pinched.
“Audio, too,” he added politely. “I got permission to do this one cold. They want this to be cordial, Ms. St. Maarten. They want no accusations of impropriety, or coercion. If any confessions are offered, they will, of course, ask to have the session recordings switched back on. But this interview is considered preliminary… and informal.”
She gave him a knowing smile.
Nick returned her look, his mouth firming.
“You don’t believe me?” he said after a beat.
“Oh, it’s not you I don’t believe, Detective Tanaka.”
“So you think someone is listening?”
“I know someone is.”
“How?” Nick said, frowning.
“I can think of a few ways.” She motioned towards his arm, where Nick’s tattoo was visible from where he clasped his hands together on the metal tabletop. “That tattoo goes both ways, Detective. Potentially, at least. For all you know, you’ve been watched and followed and recorded since you got to New York. I should know,” she smirked. “I helped design those.”
Nick frowned, staring at her.
“You think the NYPD—”
She shook her head.
“I’m not saying that. It likely wouldn’t be them anyway.”
“I.S.F.?”
“I have no actual knowledge of that, either, detective.”
“Archangel Industries—”
“Not us, either, Detective.” Her smile grew shrewd, holding a cynicism on the surface. “You’re getting warmer, though. If someone is listening, Detective Tanaka, they’re using tech we originally designed. Which they obtained illegally. Probably the same way they got those assassins who killed all of those hybrids.”
Nick frowned.
When she didn’t speak, he leaned back in his metal chair, making it squeak. He folded his arms across the front of his chest.
“Are you going to tell me who?” he said after another beat.
“You haven’t guessed who I might say?” she said, holding up her cuffed hands. “Given how I ended up in here?”
“You think your ex-husband is behind this.”
“I know he is,” she said, leaning towards Nick, her eyes cold. “If you knew him at all, you wouldn’t doubt it for a second.”
“Why would he kill his own wife?” Nick said, regarding her skeptically.
She laughed. “You’re kidding, right? You mean apart from him being a racist piece of shit, who blackmailed her into marrying him in the first place? Who picked her as a wife because he likes the idea of having a hybrid sex-slave rather than an actual partner?”
Nick stared at her, his expression unmoving.
Then he exhaled, holding up his hands.
“You don’t believe me?” she said. “What does your super-spectrum vampire vision tell you, Detective Midnight?”
“It tells me that you might believe what you’re saying,” he allowed. “You probably believe it. Unless you’ve had special training, or you’re an unusually skilled liar.”
He paused meaningfully, adding,
“…That doesn’t make it true. Also, you run a company that specializes in defense tech. And you know you’re talking to a vampire. Unlike most people, it’s not really that implausible that you could have been trained on how to fool my vision. Or you could have some kind of implant that keeps your body temperature changes from registering—”
“She’s in this too, you know,” Ms. St. Maarten broke in. “Your girlfriend. Did you not wonder how the recording of your conversation got out so quickly? Somehow, I doubt the school would have released it.”
Nick scowled for real.
“I don’t have a girlfriend,” he muttered.
She smirked at him. “From what I heard on that recording, you do.”
Nick gave her a death look.
“What do you want from me?” he growled. “If you’re just going to yank my chain—”
“Gavin doesn’t like loose ends,” she snapped. “That means our friends in the Cauldron. That means me.” She paused, giving him a meaningful stare. “That means you, too, Detective Tanaka.”
“You still haven’t told me what any of this is about,” Nick snapped. “Why the hell would he kill all these people?”
“Why?” She stared at him like he was an idiot. “I told you why. Gavin hates nonhumans. He hates vampires. He hates seers. He hates hybrids.”
“That doesn’t even make sense,” Nick said. “If he hates them so much, why the hell would he marry one?”
Again, that incredulous stare, like she thought he was dumb as a rock.
Maybe he was.
“You’re a vampire,” she said, that incredulity leaking into her voice. “You can’t seriously be asking me that question, given what you are?”
Frowning at Nick’s silence, she clenched her jaw.
“Look at where Gavin’s money comes from,” she said next. “Look into the shadow accounts he keeps in the Austro-German Protected Area. And in the Southern Protected Area. Not to mention banks here in New York. See where that money originates.”
“Or,” Nick said, losing patience. “You could just tell me.”
Her full lips pursed.
She stared at him harder, her green eyes somehow brighter without the makeup.
“One of his biggest donors,” she said through gritted teeth. “One of his largest sources of shadow income and support, is that piece of rotting excrement, Dimitry Yi. Yi and his fascistic Eifah movement rotted my husband’s brain. Now they’re rotting my son’s brain, too.”
A lightbulb clicked.
Nick nearly cursed aloud that he’d taken so long to get there.
“Your husband. He recruited Harrison. He’s the reason your son is such a fanatic.”
He didn’t voice it as a question.
“Yes.” Her eyes brightened, just before she looked away. “Gavin has completely indoctrinated him. He’s been brainwashing him with racist, human-only, blood purity crap since Harry was twelve years old. When Dimitry Yi and his Eifah cultists came along, Gavin couldn’t run to Harry with it fast enough.”
She sounded openly bitter by the end.
Nick fought to think through everything she’d said.
He could still feel something missing in her story.
He could feel big chunks missing, but he honestly couldn’t tell if St. Maarten was deliberately holding out on him, or if she didn’t have the full story herself.
“Say he killed his wife because he’s racist,” Nick said, still watching her warily, noting her heartrate, her temperature and stress fluctuations. “Say everything you say is true, about his fanaticism, his fetish for fucking hybrid females…”
Nick’s jaw clenched involuntarily.
“…His hard-on for Dimitry Yi and Eifah,” he added. “That doesn’t explain why he did this the way he did. Why kill his wife now? Why dump her with the other murder victims? Why not just leave her in Phoenix
Tower, if he was so determined to blame it on you?”
Still thinking, he added,
“And why would he kill anyone, hybrid or not, at his son’s school? That’s damned risky for him, especially if he’s got financial connections to this Dimitry Yi. And anyway, he’d already potentially covered his tracks with the killing in the Bronx.”
Still thinking, Nick clenched his jaw.
“It’s fucking stupid to bring the school into this. Especially if he’s screwing the school’s principal—”
“What?” She stared at him. “Gavin? Gavin’s sleeping with your hybrid?”
Nick gritted his teeth. “You know what she is?”
“Of course I know.” St. Maarten frowned. “I didn’t know they were sleeping together.”
Nick forced himself to shrug, nodding. He made his voice flat.
“Apparently, yes. He gave testimony to that effect.”
Her eyes grew openly skeptical. “He told the police he was sleeping with your hybrid friend at Kellerman? The same one who wants you?”
Nick frowned, fighting the urge to correct her.
He didn’t.
“Yes,” he said, gruff.
Still frowning, she stared down at the table.
Nick could almost see the gears moving in her mind.
After another pause, she looked up, her green eyes hard.
“Then she’s in more danger than I realized, Detective Tanaka,” she said, her voice as cold as her eyes. “In fact, I’d be surprised if she survives the night.”
Nick stared at her.
“What?” he said.
“Have you seen the painting?” she said, leaning towards him over the metal table. “The third one?” She paused, gauging Nick’s eyes. “Jack told you that night. Only one victim is depicted in that painting, detective. Just one. Can you guess who it might be?”
Nick stared at her.
Then, as what she was saying clicked into place, he felt every muscle in his body tense.
He realized he believed her.
“Where’s the painting?” he growled. “Where is it?”
His fangs were already extending, but Nick barely noticed.
Chapter 24
Vampire Detective Midnight Page 25
