by L. K. Hill
She backed away several steps before turning, as though to be sure he wouldn’t follow, then retreated into the darkness.
Gabe opened his mouth several times, but nothing he could think to say seemed appropriate. She was just so…together. What was he going to do? Cuff her? Force her into the back of his sedan kicking and screaming? With the evidence he was responsible for delivering? This woman was intelligent—frighteningly so. He could see it in her startling blue eyes. He had a feeling if he tried to force her to do anything, she’d just Houdini out of the cuffs, and somehow he’d end up cuffed and blindfolded in his own trunk.
“Supra,” he called, just before she disappeared completely. She’d faded into the dark shadows of an alley across the way. He couldn’t even make out her silhouette, but the movement stopped. “Be careful out there. If you need anything, you know how to find me.”
No response. After a moment, the shadows moved again. He could hear the soft pad of a retreating footstep. Then she was gone.
Two hours later, Gabe stared at his computer screen. His desk was clustered with three others, facing each other amidst a swirl of activity. Another busy night. Across from him was Tyke’s desk. Next to Tyke was Cora. The desk to Gabe’s right was unoccupied. Another detective had used it up until two months ago when he’d transferred to another precinct. No one had taken over his desk yet, though it was only a matter of time.
Upon arriving at the precinct, he’d turned the evidence over to the appropriate people, and then went straight to Shaun’s office to tell him about meeting Supra at the scene.
“Supra?” Shaun asked. “Strange name.”
“Probably not her real one,” Gabe said.
“How’d she know you’d be there?”
Gabe hadn’t thought of that until Shaun asked him. “If she wanted to talk to me, or just one of us, maybe she just looked for squad cars? I don’t know. Good question.”
Shaun sighed. “Well, hopefully she’ll contact us, though I suppose there’s small chance of that. Start a file on her, Gabe. Nothing official. Just keep it at your desk. Take some time and write out a statement—everything you can remember about both encounters. Might be important later. If we do eventually take her on as a C.I., we’ll already have a file started.”
Gabe had every intention of doing as Shaun suggested, but there was always so much to do at work, he had a feeling it would be a home-on-the-weekend sort of project. For now, he scanned arrest reports that specifically had to do with men who’d been picked up for solicitation in the Carmichael district over the past three months.
“Wow, Nichols.” Gabe jumped when Bailey’s voice came inches from his ear. “The way you’re staring at that screen, you’d think there was porn on it.”
Tyke chortled and even Cora grinned. He ignored them. “Shouldn’t your nose be buried in a microscope somewhere?”
Bailey swatted him on the back of the head with a file folder, then dropped it in his lap.
“What’s this?”
“I was on my way over anyway, so I thought I’d bring all your forensic reports by.”
Tyke and Cora immediately perked up as Bailey pulled two more files off her small stack and tossed them to Tyke and Cora respectively. “Tyke, no help for you.”
Tyke opened and scanned the folder with dismay. “None? Totally clean? Aw, man!”
“Cora,” Bailey continued, “confirmation on your vic and evidence of the step-father in the bathroom.”
“Ye-ah,” Cora said. “Totally gonna nail this guy.” Nose buried in the file, she left her desk.
“As for you, Nichols,” Bailey said, taking the chair from the empty desk next to Gabe and turning it around so she can straddle it. “All kinds of interesting things going on in your case.”
“Yeah? How so?” Gabe asked, scanning the file.
“First of all, feel free to congratulate me.”
“Congratulations,” Gabe said in a monotone voice. “On what?”
“My hunch to print the body totally panned out.”
Gabe leaned forward when he found the right place in the report. “You found two sets of prints?”
“Yup. One came back unknown. The other set belongs to one Jace Anderson, whose file I just happen to have.”
She held up another manila file folder. Gabe grinned and took it from her. “So what’s his story?”
She shrugged. “As far as criminals go, he’s small potatoes. Just a drunk that never finished high school. But he’s been arrested three times in the past year for soliciting prostitution in the Slip Mire. He’s also had several complaints filed by the working girls for physical assault during the sexual encounter.”
“Sounds like a real sweet guy,” Tyke muttered, but not very softly.
“Yeah, real charmer,” Bailey said.
“The charges are always dropped,” Gabe said, reading the file. “Sounds like because he’s a paying customer, the girls never want to follow through with them. But the reports are there. Maybe he escalated to murder this time.”
“Yeah,” Bailey said. “Plus, it’s his sperm all over the vic’s clothes.”
Cora returned to her desk just then. She froze in the act of sitting down, wrinkling her nose. “Ew. Totally entered this conversation at the wrong time.”
Tyke and Bailey both grinned at her. Despite being a gritty detective in her own right, Cora had never gotten completely used to talking about bodily fluids.
Gabe smirked. “Okay, so this Anderson guy’s looking like a good suspect, but what about the unknown prints?”
“What about them?” Bailey asked.
“There’s no way to tell whether it was Anderson or the unknown who did the killing.”
“With Anderson’s DNA all over her?” Tyke asked, raising a skeptical eyebrow from behind his file folder. “I’d say it’s pretty obvious, Gabe.”
“Those prints could belong to anyone,” Bailey said. “Another john from earlier in the evening, one of her hooker gal pals…”
Gabe shook his head. “Most of those girls have been picked up at least once or twice. They’d be in the system. I suppose you could be right about an earlier john. It’s odd, though, isn’t it? If there are two sets of prints, shouldn’t there be two sets of DNA?”
Bailey shrugged. “There might still be. The ME did a vaginal swab when he autopsied, but it’s not back yet. Assuming the unknown managed to put it where it’s supposed to go, we might still get another DNA profile.”
Cora made another sound of disgust and Tyke glanced at her, then tried, unsuccessfully, to hide a grin behind his file folder. She glared at him.
“Okay,” Gabe said, standing up. “I’ll bring Anderson in for questioning. Thanks, Bailey.” He gave her shoulder a squeeze as he passed. “I owe you one.”
As he moved away, Bailey’s voice grew defensive. “What?”
“Nothing,” Tyke said.
Gabe glanced over his shoulder to find Tyke grinning stupidly at Bailey, and wondered what that exchange had been about. But he brushed it off. He had calls to make.
Chapter 8
“Come on man. My employers will sell it to you for half price.”
The middle-aged, stringy-haired, gaunt-faced man Kyra was speaking with seemed to be considering her offer. His clothes were ragged, dirt seemed permanently ground into the wrinkles of his face, and she was sure he weighed less than she did, despite topping her height by six inches. It was all she could do to keep her hands away from her nose, his stench was so overpowering.
“Well…I…” The man considered her, twisting his lips as he thought. Kyra did her best not to tap her foot. She didn’t have anywhere else to be, but she had no patience for people who refused to make a decision. She’d been at this for hours and was nearing the end of her rope.
She felt something behind her, then. Movement, perhaps? She ignored it, thinking it was probably just another Mireling making his or her way down the alley. Perhaps an audience would help the man make a decision more quickl
y. In truth, Kyra didn’t care what he decided. Whether he chose to do business with her or not was not relevant. The point was to be seen trying to persuade him.
The man looked at something over Kyra’s shoulder. Fear flooded into his face, and he shook his head vigorously. “Nope. I don’t want to buy nothin’ from you. I buy from Sons of Ares. No one else. Leave me alone!” He spun and limped away as quickly as he could manage, barely staying upright.
Frowning, Kyra turned around. Five men, each dark and imposing, stood in a line across the alley, blocking her way. Kyra’s heart slammed into marathon mode. She took two tentative steps backward before she could stop herself. The five men matched her step for step, moving forward as one.
The man in the middle stepped out from his comrades, coming toward her several feet. The other four closed ranks, as it were, behind him. Kyra eyed the line before glancing over her shoulder. There might be an exit farther back in the alley—it twisted around into a darkness her eyes couldn’t penetrate—though she doubted it. The alleys along this stretch of the Slip Mire all terminated in dead ends. Chances were Kyra’s only exit was the one the five men were blocking.
The man who’d come out in front of the others was obviously the leader. The others kept glancing at him, waiting for cues. Skinny and menacing, his hair was buzzed close to the scalp. Even in the dim red illumination cast by a single streetlight just outside the alley, Kyra could make out two small dots just under his left eye. Tattooed teardrops. They meant different things for different gangs, but generally had to do with how many people the wearer had murdered. The gangster wore black leather boots with a spur attached. Odd, considering nothing else about him—or his boots, for that matter—was even remotely western.
“Do you know who I am?” the man asked in a voice like sandpaper.
Kyra swallowed, purposely shifting her eyes left and right before shaking her head. The trembling in her hands was real, though.
He gave her a lazy grin. Something about it seemed…sinister. “I am called Norse. My family—” he turned to indicate the men behind him, “—and I have been watching you these past weeks. Do you have a name?”
“S-Supra.”
“Nice to meet you, Supra.” He held out his hand. Kyra eyed it warily. Despite his calm, open face, she could sense the menace rolling off him, but what could she do? Refusing to shake his hand would probably be considered an affront. And gangsters such as these killed for such offenses. Moving slowly, she placed her hand in his.
The instant her palm met his, he grasped it roughly, yanked her forward, and slapped her across the face. With a cry, she flew sideways and would have landed hard on the ground, except that he was still crushing her hand in his. Every muscle and tendon around her shoulder screamed with pain, and she wondered how many she’d just torn. Using his grip on her, Norse yanked her to her feet, wrapped his massive fingers around her throat and slammed her into the alley wall, pushing her up it until her feet dangled inches above the ground. Kyra clawed at his hand, eyes watering and lungs spasming.
“I don’t know who you think you are,” Norse hissed, his mouth just below her jawline. “But this is Ares’ territory. You will not buy, sell, or distribute in this district without our say-so. And you. Don’t. Have it. Understand?”
She didn’t answer—because she couldn’t—and Norse tightened his grip on her throat. Strangulation was becoming a very real possibility.
“Yis,” she managed to croak. “Yis…under…st-stnd.”
Five agonizing seconds later, he lowered her slowly to the ground, and loosened his grip on her neck, though he didn’t take his hand away. She gulped air through a raw throat, her flailing throat muscles expanding against long fingers. After only two breaths, Norse shoved her chin skyward, digging his fingers into her cheeks.
He put his mouth down near her ear and hissed again. “Because I’m such a gentleman, and because you haven’t actually managed to sell anything, this will be a warning. But it’s the only one you’ll get. If I so much as see your face around a street corner, I’ll turn you over to Otter, here.”
He nodded over his shoulder and one of his goons stepped forward. Otter was a bald Tongan man, far over six feet tall, with tattoos covering every inch of exposed skin. Only a small gut protruded over his belt, but his arms nearly equaled his waist in circumference and his mouth was set in a stony line.
Norse leaned over her until she could actually feel his lips moving against her ear, and dropped his voice to a whisper. “He’ll screw you ‘til you bleed, then wring your neck and keep your head for a trophy. Understand?”
Kyra nodded as best she could with her neck wrenched up. “Yes,” she whispered.
“Good.” He let her go, then turned away. Also as an afterthought, he turned back and hit her again, this time in the stomach. If felt like she’d been thrown into a brick tabletop. Her elbows and knees slammed into the pavement, and the five goons chuckled appreciatively. Norse kicked her one more time in the ribs. “Stupid bitch.”
He sauntered down the alley, his lackeys trailing behind them.
Kyra watched their boots recede. She waited until they disappeared around the corner before falling onto her side with a groan. She’d known this would happen—had counted on it, in fact—and knew more danger lay ahead of her. None of that made the actual punches hurt less, though.
She’d been offering drug sales to buyers in the area—very low-key buyers, the kind that were entirely too dependent on their drug of choice to be part of the sales hierarchy. It was true she hadn’t made any sales—which was actually good because she had so little in her possession that, even if the cops picked her up for it, it would barely register as a misdemeanor—but she’d been uncertain her efforts were being noticed at all. Obviously, they were.
So, she thought. It begins.
Chapter 9
Gabe studied his suspect through the glass. Seated in the interrogation room, Jace Anderson was a skinny, squirrelly-looking guy with ears too big for his head. He had a black eye, a split lip, and wore a nose brace. It took less than three hours to get him to the station. He still lived at the address on file from his previous arrests, and they’d found him there, hung-over and lying in a pile of his own puke. The unies had cleaned him up and brought him in. He wasn’t the brightest of criminals, which made him easy to track down.
Tyke came into the room. “Ready?” he asked when his eyes fell on Gabe.
Gabe nodded. “Let’s go.”
They entered the interrogation room and took the two vacant chairs across the table from Anderson. A uniformed cop was inside the door. As soon as they entered, he moved to stand watch on the outside.
“Mr. Anderson!” Tyke quipped as soon as they were seated, quoting an iconic sci-fi film.
Gabe rolled his eyes while Tyke starting punching buttons on his cell phone. “Thank you for coming in, Mr. Anderson.”
“You didn’t exactly give me a choice, Detective.”
Gabe smiled politely. “That’s true. The thank-you was a courtesy. Do you know this woman?”
Tyke held up his phone, displaying a picture of Mallory Butler on the coroner’s table. As Anderson’s eyes fell on the picture, he swallowed. His breathing quickened and his eyes shifted nervously around the room. He studiously focused on the table in front of him when he saw Gabe scrutinizing him. “No. No, of course not. Never seen that woman in my life.”
Gabe sighed. Typical. “Really? Because we’ve identified her as Mallory Butler. She was a prostitute, killed in the Slip Mire last night. Your fingerprints and DNA are all over her, Jace.”
The color drained from Anderson’s face. “I didn’t kill her. I swear.”
“What did you do to her? Mr. Anderson?” Tyke asked, saying the name like the film again. Gabe glanced over at him irritably, but said nothing because Anderson was licking his lips, eyes darting nervously around the room.
“I’ll admit to the solicitation. I paid Mallory for her services. But I didn’t kill
her. It must have been that other guy.”
“What other guy?” Gabe asked.
“There was another guy there besides me.” Anderson said, pointing to the nose brace. “He did this to my face.”
Gabe nodded, as though he believed the story. “From the top, please,” he said calmly.
“Mr. Anderson,” Tyke added with a grin.
“Okay. I paid Mallory and we went into the alley. We started…going at it, but I never got to finish. I was just about to…you know, but then out of nowhere some guy shows up and slams my head into the wall. He beat the hell out of me. Broke my nose, split my lip. I have a cracked rib!” He lifted one side of his shirt to reveal a nasty purple bruise beneath.
“Who was he?” Gabe asked.
Anderson looked incredulous. “I don’t know.”
Chuckling softly and shaking of his head, Tyke punched buttons on his phone again.
“You don’t believe me,” Anderson pouted. “Why?”
Tyke stopped and gave Anderson a look that was both amused and disbelieving. “Mr. Anderson, you have a history not only of solicitation, but of beating on the girls you pick up. You’ve left your fingerprints and DNA all over this woman, and yet you expect us to believe that someone else showed up, victimized you and then killed her?”
“I’m telling you the truth!” Anderson shouted.
“Calm down, please,” Gabe said.
“I guess we’ll see,” Tyke muttered. “Mr. Anderson.”
Gabe turned to him. “Dude, you’re having way too much fun saying that.”
“Yeah,” Anderson muttered, “why does he keep saying my name like that?”
Gabe rolled his eyes. “It’s from The Matrix.”
Anderson shifted a confused look between the two detectives, then shook his head. “Yeah, I never finished math in high school.”
Gabe and Tyke exchanged amused glances. Clearing his throat, Gabe put his gaze on his notes. He didn’t think it would be hard to get a confession from this guy.
