“No, senor, I’m not here to hurt you,” Raul gestured to Ivan with the barrel of the gun. “Ken did this for you. He wanted to show you that he was loyal to you, the way he expects you to be loyal to him.”
Drake scoffed.
“For me? Listen, bud, I don’t know what kind of fucked up place you were brought up in, but that isn’t the way it works here. Not in New York. Shit, not in America.”
Raul’s cheek twitched.
“Isn’t it? It’s working now.”
Drake scowled, but had no reply.
“You want a shot at him?”
“What? Are you insane?”
Raul shrugged and raised the gun, this time aiming it at Ivan. The man’s furious breathing sounded like a jet engine from behind the tape. He started to struggle, but the binds were tight.
“Woah! Woah!” Drake said, putting his hands up. “Easy now.”
Raul suddenly spun, and for a split second, Drake thought that the gig was up, that Raul was going to pull the trigger and put an end to this whole mess.
But Raul didn’t shoot. Instead, he flipped the gun around and held it out to Drake.
Drake lunged forward and snatched it from the man. Raul’s other hand snaked into his jacket and once again Drake found himself pointing the gun at him.
Only this time he aimed it at his head instead of his chest.
“Easy!”
Raul’s movements slowed, but he continued to reach into the pocket of his sweatshirt.
Sweat beaded on Drake’s forehead despite the frigid temperature inside the hangar, but he relaxed when Raul pulled out a yellow envelope.
“Go on, take it,” Raul insisted. “It’s yours, after all.”
Drake eyed it suspiciously, but recognition swept over him and he snatched it from Raul’s fingers.
As he did, Raul’s sweatshirt pulled up, revealing a strange tattoo on his forearm that looked to Drake like a coiled snake devouring an eyeball.
Raul pulled back, and Drake’s eyes focused on the envelope. There was a smear of blood on the corner, but he knew it was the same one he had given Ivan yesterday.
Drake tucked it into the pocket of his jeans.
“What are you going to do to him?” he asked.
Raul shrugged.
“It’s already been done. Ivan has learned his lesson. Haven’t you, Ivan?”
Ivan, still puffing as if he were on the verge of hyperventilating, nodded violently.
“Good.”
Drake’s phone buzzed in his pocket again, but this time he resisted the urge to look down.
“You should answer that,” Raul suggested. A moment later, the light clicked out, leaving Drake in total darkness.
Survival instincts took over, and Drake spun around, locating the sliver of moonlight that eked in from the open hangar door. Without thinking, he sprinted toward it.
Several seconds later, he found himself in the cold, and a few seconds after that, he was back in the relative safety of his Crown Vic.
What the hell just happened? What the hell have I gotten myself into?
His phone buzzed a third time, and with a trembling hand, the other still clutching the pistol tightly, he answered it.
“Drake,” he croaked.
“Drake, it’s Chase. We fucked up.”
Drake shook his head.
“What? What happened?”
“We got the wrong guy. Colin’s still out there and we need to find him. We need to find him before this shit blows up tomorrow.”
An image of Ivan, his mouth taped, his eyes bruised and blackened flashed in his mind.
“I don’t think we need to worry about that anymore,” he whispered.
“Why? What’s going on?”
Drake shook his head and cleared his throat.
“Nothing. Never mind. Just tell me what you want me to do.”
CHAPTER 57
Chase hung up the phone and then turned back to Agent Stitts.
“I’m going to talk to him again. Just because he isn’t Colin Elliot, doesn’t mean he isn’t our guy,” she said, but her voice lacked conviction.
Agent Stitts eyed her suspiciously for a moment.
“What’s your gut telling you?”
Chase sneered.
“My gut’s telling me that we fucked up.”
With that, she headed out of the room and back into Interrogation Room 6.
“Glenn,” she said with a sigh. “I’ve got some questions for you.”
The man smirked; he actually smirked.
“Did yer boss tell you that I ain’t Colin? That I’m not a spineless prick that hit his wife?”
Chase made a mental note of the comment, along with a reminder to speak to Ryanne Elliot after she was through at the hospital.
“How do you know Colin and his wife?”
Glenn pursed his lips, and while he was clearly trying to be defiant, she knew what type of man he was.
She knew that she could get him to talk.
“I told you already, I was sleeping with Ryanne.”
“And how did you first meet her?”
Another shrug.
“I’m their landlord,” a disgusting smile suddenly appeared on the man’s face. “That bastard Colin couldn’t pay the rent one month, and Ryanne came to me pleading for an extension. One thing led to another and…”
Glenn brought up two fingers and rammed them into a hole he made with his other hand.
Then he laughed.
“Ya, you know what I’m talkin’ about.”
Chase tried to keep her emotions in check. The more she spoke to the man, the less likely she thought that he was involved with either the books or the murders. And yet he was a despicable human being if there ever was one.
“Cute,” she replied. “Tell me about Colin.”
“Like I said, he’s a spineless dweeb. Only met him a few times. He let his wife deal with all of the finances. When she spoke about him, she usually just blathered on about how he was trying to write books, about how he didn’t even know how to do that good. Alls I know is that he couldn’t do anything good, including keeping her happy, if you know what I mean.”
Chase tapped a finger on the table.
“You know what gets me about this?”
“What?”
“We haul you in, start asking questions, accuse you of murder, and you don’t even ask for a lawyer.”
Again with the chipped-tooth smile.
“Why do I need a lawyer? I didn’t do nothing.”
“So you say. But I promise you this: if you had anything to do with the murders, even if you just knew about them and sat back and did nothing, you’re going to rot in a cell for a long time. A long, long time.”
With that, Chase stood and started toward the door. Only now did the smile slide off Glenn’s face.
“Hey, where you going?”
Chase knocked on the door.
“Hey, lady, can I go now? I answered your damn questions?”
The door opened, and Agent Stitts stood in the entrance.
“Hey! Hey! What do I do now?”
“Get a lawyer,” Chase said over her shoulder as she left the room.
CHAPTER 58
Drake was sick of being everyone’s errand boy, be it Chase, Ivan, or Ken that gave the orders.
And yet he found himself driving into the storm, heading toward another obscure address with instructions that were as vague as those from Raul, which had led him to the hangar in the first place.
Dunbar found a property in the outskirts of the city, a farm or something that had once been Colin’s father’s. I want you to go check it out, see if he’s there and bring him in. There’s an APB out for Colin’s arrest, and the police are busy combing the area around his house. If he pops up, we’ll grab him.
As he drove, Drake’s mind kept turning back to the scene in the hangar, about his curious decision to leave the place. To not arrest Raul.
And not telling Chase about wh
at had happened.
Then there was the strange tattoo of the snake eating the eye on Raul’s forearm.
When Screech is back from vacation, I’m going to have him look deeper into Raul and Ken Smith, to see what they were all about. About their past.
When he had first met Ken Smith less than a year ago, it had been in the wake of his son’s death. Even then, he knew that Ken Smith wasn’t normal, that there was something off about him, something that transcended a man hellbent on acquiring power, on becoming the mayor of New York City. Now, however, he was beginning to think that his radar had been off.
The man wasn’t just a callous prick, but Drake was beginning to think that he was far, far worse.
And somehow, inexplicably, he found himself working for Ken, indebted to him, even.
“How did this happen?” he asked out loud.
But he knew how. He had been so obsessed with finding the real Skeleton King, with avenging Clay’s death, that he had made himself vulnerable. And a man like Ken Smith didn’t need an invitation to wield that to his advantage.
The snow was so heavy now that Drake found that even with the wipers set to maximum they were doing a poor job of clearing the windshield. He pulled the wiper stalk, but instead of washer fluid spraying the windshield, all he got for his efforts was a light on the dash indicating that he was out.
“Shit.”
Drake was forced to slow to a crawl. Now that he was outside the city, the quality of the roads deteriorated substantially, and he could feel the tires beneath the Crown Vic starting to slide across the surface rather than drive.
And the bone… the bone that Ivan delivered on behalf of Ken Smith… where the hell is it?
He racked his brain, trying to remember, but he was drawing a blank.
It had been in his pocket when he had gone to the barn on both occasions, he was sure of it. He was positive, because he distinctly remembered the feeling of the hard surface as he pressed it between thumb and forefinger.
But after that… where the hell did it go?
Tail lights suddenly illuminated the snow in front of him, and Drake slammed on the brakes.
The Crown Vic immediately went into a spin and he cried out, yanking the wheel against the rotation.
There was an awful squeal, and he saw the ditch at the side of the road careening toward him.
Someone screamed—it was him, it had to be him—and he instinctively let go of the wheel and brought his hands up in front of his face.
CHAPTER 59
“What should we do with him?” Agent Stitts asked as they stared at Glenn Happ through the glass.
“Let him rot. We can keep him for forty-eight hours without pressing charges. I figure we keep him until the very last second.”
Detective Yasiv came into the room, and all eyes immediately went to him.
“Sergeant Adams? I’ve got practically every beat cop in the city on the look out for Colin Elliot—they’ve all been given photographs, and his car has been flagged. If he shows his face tonight, we’re going to nab him.”
Chase thanked the man.
“And the secondary residence? Elliot’s place up north?”
Chase turned back to the now fidgeting landlord.
“Drake’s taking care of that.”
Out of the corner of her eye she saw something in Agent Stitts’s face change. It was a subtle gesture, a simple tick in his cheek, but Chase’s time playing poker made her aware, without doubt, that this was a tell.
Yeah, he fucked up, fucked up big time, but he was trying to help. And now I need him.
The NYPD were good, sometimes great, at their job, but other times not so much. Drake, on the other hand, wasn’t bound by bureaucracy or strict rules. Which is why she had gone to him in the first place. And, yes, the whole business with Ivan Meitzer and the Times was a direct result of this flexibility, but it was a risk she was willing to take… again.
“Sergeant Adams?”
“Hmm?” Chase said, turning back to face Officer Dunbar.
“I said, I found out something about Glenn…”
“Go ahead.”
“You know that photo I showed you? That was from a computer engineering course that he took at MIT.”
Chase’s neck straightened.
“He went to MIT?” she asked, barely believing what she was saying.
This man with the ‘aint’s’ and ‘didn’t do nothings’ went to MIT?
Officer Dunbar shook his head.
“Not exactly. Took a course by them. Part of the free online courses that they started offering a while back. Got a certificate in computer programming.”
Even the fact that Glenn managed to get a certificate, even in an unaudited course such as the one Dunbar was describing, surprised Chase. And yet as shocking as this fact was, she failed to see the connection.
“And?”
Dunbar glanced around nervously, suddenly less confident than he was a moment ago.
“And remember Drake’s e-reader? How the IP was all scrambled… I doubt that Colin, a writer, would be able to do something like that,” Dunbar raised a finger and pointed directly at Glenn. “But this man might.”
Chase let this sink in for a moment.
“You think—” Detective Yasiv began, but Chase hushed him.
He wasn’t the killer, of that she was certain, and her gut told her that he wasn’t even involved.
Glenn Happ had no idea what she was talking about when she mentioned the books, let alone the murders.
And yet…
There’s something wrong with the profile… it just doesn’t feel right.
Chase immediately turned to the door and pulled it wide.
He might not know he’s involved, but maybe, just maybe he was manipulated into doing something that he wasn’t even aware of.
And there was only one way a man like Glenn would allow himself to be manipulated in that way.
“Chase?” Agent Stitts asked as she left the room. “You okay?”
Chase didn’t answer. Heart racing, she went immediately to the Interrogation Room and stepped inside.
“You’re back. I need to… I need to get out of here. I need—”
Chase held her hands up, a gesture so dramatic that Glenn leaned away from her, the chains on his wrists clanging loudly.
She knew what he was going to say—that he was going to ask for a lawyer—and she couldn’t let him finish his sentence.
Not right now.
She just had a few more questions.
“Before you say anything, just listen. You answer a few more questions, and I’ll let you leave. And not in two days, but now. Right now. But if you say anything else, I’ll hold you for the entire forty-eight hours permitted by law. Do you understand?”
Glenn opened his mouth to speak, but Chase held a hand up, once again stopping him.
“Just nod if you understand.”
Glenn, his jaundiced eyes now wide, nodded several times.
“Okay, good. Now answer this…”
CHAPTER 60
Drake blinked once, twice, and then a third time, confirming he had somehow managed not to rear end the car that had stopped in front of him.
Breathing heavily, Drake looked around, trying to catch his bearings. When he had jammed on the brakes, his car had spun, and eventually it had come to a stop perpendicular to the road, just inches from the top of the embankment, and only a few feet from a thick oak tree below.
That was close.
Drake patted the dash of his Crown Vic, thanking his lucky stars that it was an old, heavy beast. It wasn’t like the newer vehicles made of plastic and foam, light things that would hydroplane on a puddle.
No, his Crown Vic was like him: an old heavy beast.
Drake reached over and unbuckled himself, put his gloves on, and stepped out into the still blowing snow.
“Hello?” he shouted into the storm as he made his way toward the other car. He had seen the taillights, they ha
d been bright enough to make him stop, but now, with the snow coming down, they had degenerated to diffuse glowing red eyes in the night.
“Hello?” he repeated.
Out of habit, he checked to make sure that the gun was still tucked in the back of his pants. Drake quickly pulled out his cell phone, noted that he had only one signal bar, and then slid it back into his pocket.
He didn’t think that anything sinister was going on here, but after what had happened with Raul, he wasn’t about to take any chances.
Drake slowed as he approached the car. It was still running, and he was confused as to why it had come to a complete stop in the middle of the empty road.
And yet he wasn’t angry so much as he was concerned.
A heart attack, maybe? The driver had a hard attack? A stroke?
“You okay in there?”
The storm was so loud now that he had to shout to hear his own voice.
When Drake was finally within a few feet of the car, he realized why the driver had stopped. The left rear tire was a spare, a small rubber thing about two-thirds the size of the stock tires.
In fact, Drake realized that both back tires were doughnuts, and to top it off, the front two tires looked flat.
“What the hell?”
The snow at his feet was so thick that it had reached halfway up the bottom of the spare tires.
Drake moved to the front door, and tried to peer inside the window.
“Hey, buddy? You alright in there?”
The window was fogged and even by cupping his hands against the glass, he was unable to see inside.
Drake knocked on the glass several times.
“Hey? Hey buddy?”
When there was still no response, Drake reached for the door handle. It was unlocked, and he pulled it open.
Confusion washed over him.
The front seat was empty. The keys were in the ignition, and the car was on, but there was no driver or passenger in sight.
Drake leaned further into the car and peered into the backseat.
Nothing.
He pulled his head out and was in the process of straightening when a growl from his left drew his attention.
Drake’s eyes went wide and he stumbled backward.
A figure lunged at him wielding what he thought was a tire iron. It was an awkward, ungainly strike that would have missed, had Drake kept his footing.
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