by Layton Green
“It’s possible,” Preach said. “According to his rental history, he’s only been in his current house for two months, with a blank period before that.”
“I think I’d recognize him if he’d been here for any length of time.”
“Do you mind if I ask around?” Preach asked.
“Actually,” she clasped her hands, “I do. Many of our guests have had unpleasant experiences with law enforcement, especially men, and further contact might . . . upset a delicate balance.” Her smile was tight-lipped. “I’d be happy to place a blown-up image on the front door for a few days.”
Kirby snorted and started to respond, but Preach laid a hand on his arm. This woman, if he got her on board, could reach far more people than they could.
“I’ve worked with at-risk individuals myself,” Preach said calmly, “as a prison chaplain. I know what it’s like to try to reach someone and have your progress impeded by callous authority figures.”
She had looked ready for a fight, but his words softened her stance.
“I’ve got a homicide investigation to conduct,” he continued, “and the photo needs to be shown around. In person. But I don’t mind passing the torch to someone the residents trust.”
He pushed the photo toward her. She hesitated but took it.
“If anyone has seen this man, or you think they might have, please let me know as soon as possible. I’ll be happy to conduct further interviews here, with you present.”
“I . . . guess that’s acceptable.”
“Thank you. Do you keep a list of your guests’ names?”
“Only those who stay the night. We don’t require verification, so as you can imagine, those identities might not be accurate.”
“I hate to ask, but I’ll need you to compile a list of every guest on file in the last year.”
“I suppose I can do that.”
“What about photos? Does the center take any?”
“No.”
He pursed his lips and thought for a second, then stood. “I didn’t catch your name.”
“Deborah. Deborah Kingfisher.”
Preach slid his card onto the desk. “We appreciate your cooperation and understanding, Ms. Kingfisher. It’s very important that you show the photo to anyone who might have seen this man. Your guests, your staff, cleaning crews—anyone on the premises. It could save lives.”
She gave a curt nod. “I’ll do my best.”
“You’re slick,” Kirby said, as they returned to the car. “Is Belker buying time by running us around Creekville, or is this for real? You thinking there’s someone who can verify that he blew his savings on blow, women, the track?”
“My theory after seeing this place?” Preach said, his voice grim. “If this is for real, I don’t think he spent the money on himself.”
Kirby stopped with a hand on the roof. “You think the killer might have stayed at the shelter. Belker either met him while he was homeless or came here to hire him.”
Preach locked eyes with his partner across the roof of the car.
“Why not just tell us?” Kirby asked. “If he wants us to track someone down and then confess, why delay?”
“Why re-enact the crime scenes of famous novels?”
Kirby’s hand pressed into the thin layer of dirt on the roof. “As you’ve said, someone’s sending a message.”
“Someone who wants to be heard,” Preach said.
They returned to the station. As he eyed the cubicles around him, Preach kept thinking about the placement of his desk chair and how brazenly Mac and his thugs were acting. The crime boss always seemed a step ahead of the police.
The more Preach thought about it, the more uncomfortable he grew. The office was too quiet for the middle of a workday. It was starting to feel as if he were caught behind enemy lines.
He thought about it further, and one name kept coming to the forefront, linking everything together. He grabbed a pair of mug shots off his desk, then strode to Kirby’s cubicle.
“You ready to go?” Preach asked, keeping his voice low.
“I was born ready, cuz. Say the word.”
“I have something important for you.”
“You mean us?”
“I mean you.” He handed Kirby the mug shots of the two prostitutes captured on camera with Damian. “Think you can find them?”
“I’ll beat the bushes till they’re flat.”
“Find out what they know, and, more importantly, who they’ve seen. See if there was anyone else who liked to party with Farley and Damian.”
“I’m on it. You’ve got something else lined up?”
“We’ll talk later.”
Preach felt Kirby’s eyes on his back as he walked away. It wasn’t his partner that worried him; it was the station itself.
And he didn’t want a sharp-eared mole or a listening device informing Elliott Fenton that Preach was about to tail him.
33
Ari’s professor’s voice seemed muted, her classmates cardboard cutouts of people, the entire tree-lined campus a pale imitation of the real world of murder investigations and monsters in broad daylight and sad-eyed, brooding detectives.
Class ended, and she shuffled down the hall in a daze. Exams were coming up, but she couldn’t focus on anything except the case that had turned her life into a thriller novel.
Or was it horror? Real life had a way of blurring genres.
Trevor kept texting her, but she had yet to respond. A waning infatuation was a strange thing, when something fades that you never thought would. It was like the removal of a veil she hadn’t even realized had been covering her eyes.
She felt flushed at the memory of her latest encounter with Preach. Desire mingled with fear, and it felt strange, incongruous. Was that all it was with the detective? Passion heightened by the thrill of the chase? The quite literal chase that had her looking over her shoulder and down every hallway, afraid to go home alone, terrified of seeing a man with a scar on his lip and eyes that burned like hot coals?
She left the law school and took a high-traffic path toward the nearest cafeteria. She’d been living on coffee and air.
There was something else about the detective. She sensed something holding him back, not just with her but with life. When she saw him next, she would—ohmygod.
A man, standing on the other side of the leaf-strewn quad, in front of a low stone wall. Hunched shoulders, beige overcoat, bowler hat. Too thick to be the man with the scar.
Her stalker. Tracking her in broad daylight.
Ari’s stomach jackknifed. She took three steps backward, hands open and shaking, and then stopped.
Class had just let out. There were dozens of people around.
What was he going to do, attack her in front of the entire campus?
Enough.
She left the paved path and made for the street, walking straight through the quad toward her stalker. One hand grasped her canister of mace, the other dialed 911.
Her stalker watched her approach, arms crossed and face shielded by the hat.
“Emergency 911.”
“I need police assistance,” Ari said.
She walked faster, wading through the people milling about on the quad, laughing and talking, unaware of the scene unfolding. Cardboard cutouts.
“Ma’am? Where are you? What’s going on?”
Ari was halfway across the quad when her stalker slipped over the wall and into a cluster of evergreens. Ari kept moving forward, secure in the crowd.
“Ma’am? Are you okay? Can you speak?”
She lost sight of her tormentor in the foliage. Panting from adrenaline and the rapid walk, Ari strained for a glimpse of the beige overcoat.
There was nothing but green.
She hung up and backed away, her breath returning in long and tattered inhalations. She was struck with the knowledge that none of this was about her. Not really. She was only leverage.
Her stalker had just wanted her to see him. Let her kno
w that he was there. A warning that they were watching her all the time and could get to her anywhere. Even at school.
She also had the sudden certainty that if Preach didn’t back down, there wouldn’t be many more warnings.
If there were any at all.
34
At four p.m., Preach parked in a small public lot a block away from Elliott Fenton’s office. Three hours later, the attorney still hadn’t left, leaving Preach simmering in anticipation inside his car.
Earlier, he had fielded a call from a slightly hysterical Ari. Instead of trying to calm her, he escalated her fears about her stalker. He wanted her worried, cautious.
When he asked her to leave town for a while, she said that would kill her semester. He didn’t respond, letting her imagination take over. The best thing he could do for her was work harder and faster.
Elliott finally left in a late-model, forest-green Jaguar. Preach let him get almost out of sight before trailing him in the baby-blue Prius he had rented for the stakeout. He couldn’t afford to have Elliott make him, and a blue Prius was a common sight in Creekville.
The attorney drove less than a mile before parking in front of the Tar Heel Inn, a mahogany-walled gentlemen’s club full of cracked leather and heated debates on college basketball, the best style of barbecue, and the price of flue-cured tobacco. The place had been around since before the cotton gin.
Preach would love to know who Elliott was meeting, but the club was too small to enter unnoticed.
Two hours passed. Night fell cold and hard around him. He wished he was inside the lounge, drinking a single batch bourbon on the rocks and eating a bone-in rib eye as rare as a blue diamond. Instead he was drinking bottled water and staving off his hunger with snack crackers.
Thirty minutes later, Elliott exited alone. He stumbled and then righted himself on the curb. The Jaguar lurched onto the road, and Preach grimaced at the flagrant display of intoxication.
He let it pass. He was hunting for bigger game.
The Jaguar flew past the huge house on Hillsdale that Preach knew was Elliott’s home address. A few miles later, the attorney turned into a gated upscale development signposted as the Mediterranean Village.
Elliott stopped at a guard shack and rolled through when the gate opened. Preach took a risk and pulled quickly to the gate, afraid the Jaguar might disappear into a garage. After the guard eyed his badge and shooed him through, Preach asked, “Any idea where that Jag’s headed?”
The guard hesitated and then lowered his eyes in deference to greater authority. “Try the second left, last house on the right. You didn’t hear it from me.”
Preach gave a curt nod. “Thanks.”
Inside the development, stucco mansions hunched side by side on treeless lots, like ogres squatting on lily pads. Wide curving streets, rotundas, and backlit stone fountains in the front yards.
It was exactly like the Mediterranean, Preach mused, minus the landscaping, architectural restraint, culture, and good taste.
He followed the guard’s directions and saw the door of a triple-car garage closing on the Jag. The garage belonged to a particularly garish house, a turquoise Italianate with a barrel-tile roof and French balconies that looked tacked on. Preach returned to the guard shack and parked in a visitor spot, then took his gun and binoculars and backtracked to the house on foot.
Thankfully, whoever lived there didn’t keep a dog outside, and believed in foliage. After checking for watchful eyes, Preach hopped the wooden fence and slunk into the jungly depths of a young magnolia.
No sign of movement on the first story. No lights, either. That told him this was a social visit, probably a romantic rendezvous.
A light winked on in the second story, then went out again. Preach climbed until he had a better view. Braced himself on a limb as he swung the binoculars around.
Shadows of bodies entwined on a bed. The two figures grasped and clutched, and then Elliott’s face became visible through the window. He was behind someone, one hand pressed into a mass of long blond hair, the other clutching a slender waist.
Seconds later they were finished. After lying on their backs for a spell, the woman rolled over and flicked on a light, revealing aging but attractive features, and lips that were still slack with pleasure, a far cry from the rigid expression Preach had noticed the last time he had seen her.
Her name was Rebecca Worthington, and she was married with two children.
She was also the mayor of Creekville.
After an unsuccessful afternoon rousting junkies and petty thieves, Kirby decided to talk to a bartender—always a great source of information—at the Striped Coyote, a local vegan bar. Organic beer, organic fruits and vegetables, organic tablecloths.
Which Kirby was all about. The body was a temple, and he was down with keeping it free of chemicals manufactured in some lab in New Jersey.
Unfortunately, eating the way God intended had a price, and it was about triple that of the local Food Lion. So Kirby did the best he could.
He slid onto a stool at the bar. A tall, slim bartender with almond-colored eyes ambled over. She was pale, her long brown hair tied back in a bandanna imprinted with the Jamaican flag.
“A little early for you, isn’t it?” she asked in a British accent. “Or did you pop in for a veggie shake?”
Her name was Maggie, and she was one of a recent influx of European wanderers and artists who had come to Creekville because they couldn’t afford to live in Brooklyn or Santa Cruz. Kirby knew she sold handmade puppets at the Farmer’s Market, and hung with the drifter crowd. He was hoping she had run across Tram and Kim.
Kirby placed mug shots of the two prostitutes photographed with Damian Black on the bar. “I’m on duty.” He flashed a grin. “Plainclothes.”
Her eyebrows rose. “Look at you.”
“Yeah, right? You can still make me a veggie shake. Hey, and take a look at these photos. You seen these two around? Kim and Tram Vu, brother and sister team?”
She stopped wiping her hands on a towel. “You never bring work in here.” Her eyes flicked to her other customers before glancing down at the photos. “What’s in it for me? If I’ve seen them.”
“The best karma ever. Bob Marley level. A karmic orgasm.”
She gave him a wry smirk and left to serve her other customers. Kirby tapped his foot on the bar stool, trying to expel his nervous energy. He wanted to show Preach he had something to add.
That, and his guilt was eating him like a cancer.
Maggie returned five minutes later with Kirby’s veggie shake. He slid her a twenty. She looked down at it. “You’ll tell your rich hookups to buy my art?”
“Every single one.”
She wiped her hands on the towel again. “This didn’t come from me.”
“I swear,” he said, sincerity and charm rolled up in his smile like a pita wrap of trust.
She lowered her voice. “You know a Cuban guy named Donnie? Short, built like a bull, always wears those poncey tank tops? He comes in now and again. I think he works out at the gym.”
There was only one commercial gym in town, the same one Kirby used. The Fitness Zone. Kirby got a mental image of a short, swarthy, cocksure guy in his twenties, with thick arms and a square face, preening around the gym. Kirby had seen him around, usually in the evening. “I know him.”
“He comes in at night and takes up a booth in his girlfriend’s section.”
“He’s straight?” Kirby asked, surprised.
She shrugged. “I only said he had a girlfriend.”
Kirby tapped one of the photos with a finger. “You think he knows where to find these two?”
“I assume so. He’s their pimp.”
Later that day, Kirby pumped out another set of biceps curls at the Fitness Zone. He had already ridden ten miles on the stationary bike, and he figured he might as well get a workout in while he waited.
Just as he was beginning to wonder if today was Donnie’s rest day, he walked thro
ugh the door flanked by two women who resembled steroid-infused power lifters from behind the Iron Curtain. The Amazons had on tie-dye Lycra workout gear, and Donnie came as advertised: five foot five, stomping in like a buffalo, George Michael stubble, rocking a Rainbow Brite tank top over black sweats.
Kirby waited until they were warming up at one of the bench-press stations, then walked over. The rest of the benches were occupied. “Mind if I work in?”
The two women glared at him. Donnie grunted as he slid onto the bench. His swollen muscles looked cartoonish. “Yeah. We do.”
Is this guy for real? Kirby thought. He’s living in an Eighties movie. “It’s a free gym.”
“So?”
“So I’d like to work in.”
Donnie clapped his hands and then rubbed them together as if trying to start a fire. “The three of us, we go one at a time. Bam bam bam. No time to rest.” He took a few quick breaths, pushed the bar off the rack and knocked out ten reps.
As soon as he stood, one of the women pushed past Kirby and lowered herself onto the bench.
Kirby slid his badge out of his pocket. “I was trying to be polite.”
Donnie eyed the badge, then put his palms up. “So what you want?”
Kirby showed him the two mug shots. “I need to talk with these two. I’m not looking to bust them—or you. Just a little chat.”
Donnie put his hands on his hips, his chest puffing out like rising dough. “Oh yeah? Bust me for what?”
Kirby scrambled to think of something to say. The two women were smirking at him. “Listen, I thought we could talk, man to man, without taking this somewhere less pleasant. You feel me?”
Donnie’s eyes lowered, and he seemed to deflate. “Okay, okay.” He flung a wrist at the bench. “Let me finish my set. Give me a spot?”
“Sure.”
Donnie stretched his shoulders, and Kirby stepped behind the bench. Donnie positioned himself under the bar and took a series of short quick breaths to get ready. As Kirby bent over to help with the lift, he realized one of the women was missing. He whipped his head around and saw her hustling someone in a gray hoodie out of the gym.
