by EH Reinhard
Chris escorted the guard at gunpoint from the office.
David held his position. He observed Tim and Solomon with their backs toward him at the wall where the safe was mounted. Solomon was working the combination lock. David surveyed the rest of the room. A red leather couch took up one wall, and a television and a few potted plants took up the other. His eyes went to the floor and the man that he’d shot. He spotted an ankle holster with a small pistol—it appeared as if Tim’s pat down wasn’t sufficient. David looked back at Solomon and Tim.
“Hurry up!” Tim shouted. He was focused on Solomon and the safe.
David went to the downed man and crouched. He took the pistol from the holster on the dead man’s ankle. He dropped the gun into the pocket of his black sweatshirt and pulled the man’s pant leg back down. David rose and brought his rifle back into his shoulder. His actions had apparently gone unnoticed.
David glanced toward the room’s door. There was no sign of Chris. He looked back at Solomon and Tim. Solomon swung the safe door open and took a step back.
“Against the wall. Don’t you move,” Tim instructed Solomon.
David stared at the open safe. He could see stacks of cash inside.
Tim had his hand in the safe, reaching for money. He looked at David. “Get a bag from the garbage can or something. We’re going to need something to carry this in.”
“Yeah, I got it,” David said. He kicked over a small trash can near the desk and pulled out the liner. He walked to Tim, and on the way he pulled out the pistol he’d grabbed from the dead guy’s ankle holster. David looked toward the doorway, still not seeing Chris. He raised his arm, brought the pistol to Tim’s temple, and pressed it against Tim’s flesh. David could feel Tim’s body freeze up through the weapon. “I told you that starting shit with me wasn’t very smart.” He pulled the trigger, sending a round through Tim’s head. Tim’s body twisted as it fell, spraying blood from the entry wound on the wall behind the open safe door.
David’s head snapped to the right, at Solomon, standing against the wall as he was instructed, a couple of feet away.
“What the…” Solomon said. He lifted his hands.
Tim tossed the pistol at Solomon’s feet and brought the rifle to his shoulder. He fired twice—once in the center of his forehead and then another in Solomon’s chest as he was falling to the ground.
“Shit!” David yelled. “Son of a bitch!” he yelled, louder.
Chris burst into the room a moment later, shoving the security guard in before him.
“What the hell! What the hell happened?” Chris shouted.
David brought his weapon up and took aim on the security guard. His sights landed on the man’s chest. David squeezed the trigger. The man stumbled backward before dropping to the floor. David advanced on the guard and stood over him. The man lay on his back, staring up. He coughed, and blood came from his mouth. David put his boot on the man’s chest and pressed down, causing him to cough again.
“What the hell happened to Tim?” Chris asked.
“Solomon pulled a damn gun from the safe and shot him. I put Solomon down.”
Chris rushed to Tim’s side. He ripped his glove from his hand as he knelt, and his hand went to Tim’s neck to check for a pulse. Chris pulled his hand back before he ever touched him. “He’s dead,” Chris said.
“I know,” David said. “Solomon shot him point blank.”
Chris put his glove back on and stood.
Both Chris and David’s radios came alive. “We just had a shots-fired call come over the scanner. We gotta go. Now!” Brad’s voice said.
“Shit,” David said. He pressed down with his foot again. More blood bubbled from the man’s mouth beneath his boot. David centered the barrel of his rifle inches over the guard’s forehead. He squeezed off a single shot.
David took his foot from the man and went to the safe. Using the garbage can liner as a container, he began loading up the money.
“What the hell are we going to do with Tim?” Chris asked.
“We need to get his body out of here. We can’t leave him behind,” David said. “Did you get the security tapes?”
“It was on a hard-drive DVR. I smashed it.”
“No,” David said. “Go get it. It’s coming with us. We can’t chance that someone may be able to get something from it. Grab the DVR, and then we’ll get Tim out of here. Let’s go, let’s go.”
Chris ran from the office.
David finished loading the money into the bag. He knelt next to Solomon and liberated him of his watch and wallet. He did the same with the other two men.
Chris came back into the office with a black box about the size of a DVD player tucked under his arm.
“We have cars dispatched,” Brad said over the radio. “Two minutes, max.”
“Give me the recorder,” David said. “I got it, and the money. Toss Tim over your shoulder.”
Chris scooped Tim’s body from the ground.
“Come on,” David said.
David led. Chris, carrying Tim, followed behind to the back of the building. David stopped and looked left to right as soon as they stepped outside. He saw no one.
“Let’s go,” David said.
The pair jogged across the parking lot. David could hear Chris huffing and puffing behind him as they made their way back toward the van.
David yanked open the back sliding door and jumped in with the recorder and money. Chris flopped Tim’s body inside, pushed his feet in, and got in himself.
“What the hell happened?” Brad asked.
“No time. Drive,” David said.
Chris pulled the sliding door closed.
Brad threw the van in reverse and backed from the parking spot with his lights out. He flicked the headlights on as they hit the street. Not more than a block away, two patrol cars flew past toward the club with lights on full.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The sound of my phone chirping and vibrating against the surface of my coffee table woke me. I cracked my eyes and looked down. Butch was curled up against my leg, asleep. I rubbed my eyes with my palms and looked up—the television showed an infomercial for a set of copper-coated frying pans and an overly upbeat woman sliding various things from their nonstick surfaces.
I grumbled and leaned forward for my phone. The time on the screen said 3:32 in the morning. The call was coming from Detective Donner, one of my night shift detectives. I clicked Talk.
“Kane,” I said. My voice was raspy from being wakened.
“Sorry to wake you, Lieutenant. We, um, got a little something here.”
As a department lead, I was basically always on call. Most of the time my night shift detectives, Donner and Reynolds, took it upon themselves to not wake me in the middle of the night if it wasn’t warranted. I had a feeling that I was going to be staring down at bodies inside of an hour.
“What’s the something?” I asked.
“Three DBs in a gentleman’s club. Another outside in the parking lot. This looks like a robbery.”
“Witnesses?”
“Zero.”
“What do you know?” I asked. “Who are our vics?”
“We’re still working on finding out who they are. Two are wearing security shirts. Head and chest shots on the three inside of the building. There’s also a bunch of blood that may have been from another—maybe one of our suspects. Basically, a lot of blood leading from the main scene, out of the building, and across the parking lot. No body, though. The place has security cams, so we need to get after that and see what was caught on tape.”
“Okay. Did you call the local hospitals?” I asked.
“My next call.”
“All right. Who all is there?” I asked.
“Me, Reynolds, and a couple of patrol guys. We’re going to want some forensics guys in here. Honestly, Lieutenant, this place is a mess. I wouldn’t call you if I didn’t think it necessary.”
“Nah, no worries, Donner. What’s the name of the
club?”
“Emerald Palace. It’s on Adamo by the railroad station. Know it?”
“Can’t say that I’ve been inside, but I know where it is. Let me call Rick and have him meet us out there. I’ll be there in a half hour.”
“Thanks, Kane,” Donner said. “I’ll see you in a bit.”
“Actually, one second, Donner. Did Rick call you with any word on prints from the cigar factory?”
“He did. I sent you a text message at like eight thirty, maybe nine o’clock. Nothing found that didn’t belong to our victims.”
I took my phone away from my ear and gave it a look. The icon showing that I had a text message appeared in the top left corner. I brought the phone back to my ear. “Yeah, I see the message now. I must have already been asleep on the couch. “Okay, so nothing there, huh?”
“Nothing, Kane.”
“All right. I’ll be there in a few.” I clicked off the call, stood from the couch, and stretched. I looked down at Butch, who’d woken from my movement and stared up at me. “Go back to sleep,” I said.
He moved to the spot that I’d just occupied and curled back up.
“Good cat.”
I quickly dressed, pulled my shoulder holster and service weapon on, and put on my suit jacket. After fixing a quick cup of coffee while I called and woke up Rick, I was out the door. I caught Adamo Drive downtown and took it straight to the location of the scene—five miles away. I slowed and downshifted the Mustang as the driveway for the club came up on my right. The exhaust gurgled and popped. A patrol car with its lights on blocked half of the entrance. I slipped into the driveway, just behind the cruiser’s rear bumper. One of our unmarked gray Chargers was parked near the front doors of the club along with another two patrol cars. I pulled next to them, killed the motor, and took the last sip of coffee that remained in my travel mug. I stepped from my car, and the chill from the forty-some-degree air ran up the back of my neck. I pulled up the collar on my suit jacket and looked at the rectangular black cinder block building with the flat roof. A neon sign, lit up bright green, read “The Emerald Palace.” The main entrance, beneath a small awning, was to the right of my car. I walked to the dark-tinted glass double doors and gave them a yank—locked. I saw a bit of light coming from inside but saw no people. I looked toward the lit-up back corner of the building and a parked red Maserati sedan with its trident emblem grill facing me. Another two cars that I couldn’t make out sat farther back in the lot, out of the light. A uniformed officer stepped from behind the building and waved me toward him.
“Back here, Kane,” he said.
I recognized the officer as McCarthy, a wide-framed, gray-haired, fifty-some-year-old patrol cop. I walked to him. A single light affixed to the building’s corner lit up McCarthy and the back entrance. McCarthy cupped his hands in front of his mouth and blew on them. “Heard your car pull up. Damn chilly tonight, eh?” he asked.
“That it is,” I said. “So what are we working on here?”
“Officers Baker and Berris have been following the blood. I think you can see their lights over there.” McCarthy pointed off toward the south beyond a small ditch and railroad tracks. “The blood starts inside the club, travels to the back of this parking lot, and picks up again on the far side of the tracks in that parking lot over there. As far as me, I’ve been sitting back here babysitting this body by the garbage cans. Your homicide guys are inside.”
“Did we run the cars’ tags in the lot?” I asked.
“We did. Your guys inside have the registered owners’ names.”
“Are they the victims?” I asked.
“Not sure,” McCarthy said. “They ran them right after they arrived on scene and have been inside since.”
“Okay. Show me the body out here,” I said.
McCarthy led me past the club’s back door, which was standing open. I glanced inside as we passed, seeing a tiled hallway and some blood. Ten feet straight ahead, I saw a pair of feet on the ground, sticking from the side of the dumpsters.
“This is number one,” McCarthy said, rounding the dumpster’s back edge.
I followed McCarthy to the back of the dumpsters, where he pulled a flashlight and flicked it on.
McCarthy aimed the beam down on the dead man’s face. “He’s got what I figure to be some parking lot rash on his face there. A couple marks on his forehead where he may have been struck with something. That, and there are some weird bruises around the back of his neck that I can see. I didn’t want to try to roll him and look further. Figured we’d leave that to forensics or the coroner,” he said.
I stared down at the man, who looked to be somewhere in his thirties and overweight by a good hundred and twenty pounds. Tattoos covered his forearms and vanished under the sleeves of his black shirt with the word “Security” written across the front in yellow. He stared straight up at the night sky. He had chin-length dark hair hanging over part of the scrapes on his face and nose. I knelt and got my face down low for a better look at the bruises around his neck area. “Shine the light here,” I said.
McCarthy did.
I cocked my head from side to side, looking. In addition to the bruising, there were more scrape marks.
I looked up at McCarthy looking down at me. “Not shot?” I asked.
“He’s the only one without a GSW. It’s looking like this guy may have been choked out? About the only thing that makes any sense.”
“Hmm. Would need to be a big guy to do that. We have some abrasions back here.” I pointed at the areas of scratched red skin along the side of his neck. “Kind of weird. Maybe forensics can give us a better idea.” I looked along the man’s body for any other damage, spotting nothing. My eyes stopped on his waist. His pockets were turned out. “That’s interesting,” I said.
“What’s that?” McCarthy asked.
“I saw the same thing at a multiple yesterday morning.” I stood. “Where are the guys inside?”
“Straight in the back door and make your first right down the hall. Watch your step walking in and through. There’s blood everywhere.”
“Got it. Do you know if anyone called the medical examiner?” I asked.
“Not sure about that, Kane,” McCarthy said.
“Okay.”
I headed for the back door, leaving McCarthy outside. I kept my eyes down, being mindful of the blood that was in a thin line and led me toward a propped-open door. I noticed keys hanging from the door lock. I made a right through the doorway and walked the short hall that led to an office. I paused at the office door, which was standing open. The area around the handle was broken, as if kicked in. Inside the office, on the floor to my right as I entered, was a guy in a security shirt like the man outside. My line of sight went left into the room. Next to a red sofa, I saw my two detectives with their backs toward me. Detective Reynolds was wide bodied with mostly snow-white hair. Donner was twenty years younger and a good fifty pounds lighter. They stood over a thin man in a suit, lying against the wall near a poster. Blood covered the wall at the man’s back. Above the blood, the wall had a safe mounted into it with the door standing open. I looked farther left to the back wall and saw a single desk and a man in a suit on the ground near a guest chair.
“Donner, Reynolds,” I said.
They both turned. Donner gave me a nod.
“Kane,” Reynolds said.
“What do you guys have for me?” I asked.
They walked to me.
“Head and chest on each,” Reynolds said. “Pockets rummaged through. Safe empty. Robbery and homicide.”
“We’re going to need to get the forensics guys out of bed,” Donner said.
“I already called Rick. He’ll be here shortly. McCarthy said that you guys ran the tags for the cars in the lot. Are the owners of the vehicles the victims?”
“It looks like it.” Donner pulled a small spiral-bound writing pad from his pants pocket and flipped it open. “I ran the tags through and pulled up the DLs for the owners. Looks like
the guy lying outside by the dumpsters is a Terry Brandt, and our other security guard there is a Steven Mitte, and the Maserati belongs to an Abel Solomon. He looks to be our guy by the safe.”
“You have that written there?” I asked.
“Tag numbers and owners’ names, yes.”
“Run through it again for me so I can copy it down,” I said. I pulled out my notepad and wrote down the names and numbers as Donner repeated them. I included the vehicle and tag numbers as well as where the bodies were, in and outside the building.
“And who is that one?” I asked. I jerked my chin at the dead man in a suit by the desk.
“We don’t know right now. Club manager maybe, accounting for the suit and being here this late,” Donner said.
I stuffed my notepad back into my suit pocket and walked from body to body. I had a look at each, finishing with the man at the desk. The turned-out pockets and the way each man was killed kept bringing me back to the scene of the old cigar factory. I stared down at the pants on the man at my feet. His right pant leg hung in an unusual way over his ankle. I took the pen from the binding in my pocket notepad, knelt, and slid his pant leg up, revealing an empty ankle holster.
“Do we have a pistol floating around here?” I asked.
“Lying next to the guy by the safe, Abel Solomon,” Reynolds said. “Looks like a small caliber. Serial numbers filed off.”
“So if he’s dead here, with an empty holster, how does his gun get over there?” I asked.
“Maybe it was taken from him and used to kill these guys. Or just taken from him and then tossed when our guys were finished up in here,” Donner said.
“Find any casings from it?” I asked.
“Not at first glance. But we have a number of five five six casings.”
I walked to the man and the pistol on the floor a couple of feet from him. I knelt next to the gun—a small twenty-two caliber. “This damage to these guys damn well wasn’t from that little pistol,” I said. My eyes went to the left. I spotted more blood on the carpet, with no one to account for it. I looked up and stood, seeing on the wall a bit of blood spatter, which was at almost eye level. “Someone else was shot and taken out of here,” I said.
