Fatal Exchange (Fatal Series Book 1)

by Russell Blake

  Skid, real name Thomas Franzone, twenty-six, born in Detroit, had a charge for vandalism when he was nineteen and that was it. A few speeding tickets back in Detroit, a traffic ticket from two years ago. Not exactly Jack the Ripper, but then again, who knew?

  Luis, born German Luis Allecante, thirty-two, from Havana, Cuba. Parents had come over as refugees. He’d grown up in Miami, had a battery charge that never went anywhere and an auto theft charge that landed him in county, two years served in 2011. No more trouble since then, although Ron remembered from the interview he’d been distracted and nervous. Maybe he just hated cops? Or maybe he had a roomful of scalps?

  Tiny, real name Curtis Young, twenty-eight, born and raised in Washington, D.C., had turned up in New York two years ago. He’d had multiple drug possession charges in D.C., two that stuck, and served a few months each time. No history of violence, but had been placed under observation while incarcerated for possible schizophrenia.

  Turbo, real name James Earl, from Vernon, Texas, twenty-nine. Four years in the Army out of high school, honorable discharge. Had several bar brawl charges in his early twenties, and then several drug busts, one for possession of methamphetamines, the other for possession with intent to sell meth and PCP. He’d pled the dealing charge and served six months; the possession had been dropped. That had been when he was twenty-four. Ron had gotten a really bad, skittish vibe from Turbo, and the meth thing made sense. Meth was ugly shit, made you crazy, as did PCP. Turbo had appeared in New York almost two years ago, but had been unaccounted for since release at twenty-five—leaving three years in between where he was off the radar. Drifter?

  Ron liked all of them for it, but especially Turbo, Tiny, Luis and Dirter. Duff he got a reformed feeling from, but that could be an act. Some of the most evil of the serials had otherwise been models of good behavior, so he knew better than to trust it. Skid he just didn’t have much to go on, one way or another. He didn’t seem like a really bad guy, but he looked like a doper and a boozer and seemed pretty dull, almost medicated. Could be a crazy.

  Tiny seemed out of it, and Ron had instantly gotten a weird feeling from him. He’d been slow and vague in many of his answers. All of them had been at the club the night of the killing, however nobody could vouch for any the entire night. They also all had alibis for the Tuesday Loca had been killed, but most were pretty flimsy. And he hadn’t been back to drill them about Monday night yet, so that was a question mark. Luis was sullen and hostile and seemed skittish. Turbo was amped and jittery throughout the interview and came off as deranged, what with full sleeve tattoos and a nose piercing and a distracted look in his eyes. Dirter was also a favorite, definitely no stranger to drugs, also covered with tattoos, also with a stink of fear, and something else, in the interview—barely concealed rage? He’d seemed hostile, but then again so had half of them.

  There were another dozen that could just as easily be killers. It was a full playing field.

  The dispatchers had all seemed nuts, just not necessarily serial-killer nuts. Frank was out to lunch, but too old to fit the profile. Stu was twitchy, geeky, an oddball. Henry from the night shift was clearly augmenting his work experience with chemicals, and Vance had seemed like a creep, with greasy hair, a few tattoos, and a nicotine stink that declared, “I do not shower regularly.” Both had very odd attitudes; Henry seemed a little scared and Vance seemed hair-trigger easy to enrage.

  So you had a company where a good third of all the male employees fit the profile for a serial: late twenties to forty, single, chemical issues, unusual behavior, fringe lifestyles.

  What a mess.

  His cell rang. It was Tess, completely panicked and out of breath.

  “Ron, you need to get someone down to the shop, my dad’s shop, immediately. I think someone’s in there and may have hurt Nick. A man tried to grab me, but I got away. They may be my dad’s killers.” She was talking so fast it was hard to make sense of it all.

  “Slow down. What do you mean a man tried to grab you?”

  “An Asian man, maybe six feet tall, grabbed me right outside the door to the shop. I was looking in for Nick, who was inside when I left there earlier, and I saw another Asian inside the shop in the back room. Ron, Nick would never have locked the door. You have to do something, I’m really scared. Nick could be hurt, or…”

  “Stay on the line; I’ll call a car to check it out. Do I have your permission to break in if the door’s locked?” Ron wanted that on the record.

  “Absolutely. I’m scared, Ron.”

  “I know. Hold on.” He switched to his landline, called it in, and then left a message for Barry. He got back on with Tess.

  “Are you okay?”

  “I’m really shaken up. I think I hurt the tall guy—I headbutted him with my helmet to get away.”

  “Where are you?”

  “I’m on my bike. I don’t want to go home or to the shop until I know what happened to Stan and make sure Nick’s okay. Nothing feels safe right now.” Tess was still hyperventilating and talking rapidly.

  “Keep your phone on, and lay low until we find out what’s going on at the shop, okay, Tess? You’re welcome to come here if you don’t feel safe anywhere else. There’d be about a million cops around you.”

  “I may do that. I hope Nick’s okay. Call me when you hear something, please? I’m going to ride for a while and burn off some adrenaline.”

  “Sounds good. I’ll call.”

  He disconnected, worried. Would the men who’d killed her dad really have the balls to go back to a crime scene and kill someone else? He’d never heard of anyone doing that—not while the tape was still up. If it was the same guys, and they’d also taken out the two construction workers in the van, then he didn’t like Nick’s chances.

  Ron called down to the desk, and dispatch told him there’d be a car at the shop within five minutes. He advised the dispatcher that the intruders were to be considered armed and extremely dangerous.

  ~ ~ ~

  Barry flipped out his shield and waved it at the truculent doorman, who looked like he drank a bottle of vodka just to get out of bed every day. Barry supposed he’d be knocking back a few as well, if the rest of his life consisted of wearing a bellboy uniform and saluting geriatrics.

  “I’m looking for the tenant in 902, Stan Isaaks. Has he been around today?” Barry asked.

  “Haven’t seen him.”

  “Did you have workers in here yesterday, maybe some water damage guys, construction guys?” Barry inquired.

  “Yeah, a pipe burst. How’d you know?”

  “Lucky guess. I’m going up to see if there’s anything wrong with Mr. Isaaks. Do you have someone with a pass key?”

  “Yeah, Lavon in maintenance. You want me to have him meet you up there?”

  “That’d be great.” Barry slipped him a five and walked to the elevator with his partner Darren.

  So the construction workers had been in this building. He had a hunch Uncle Stan wasn’t doing so good.

  They got off the elevator and looked both ways down the hall, then approached the door with the number 902 on it. Knocked. No answer. Rang the bell. Nada.

  The elevator’s return to the floor was announced with a pinging sound, and a forty-something man with coal black skin got off and walked over to them.

  “Gentlemen.”

  “Think you could help us out here, open Mr. Isaaks’ door? I think we might have heard him calling for help.” Barry handed Lavon a ten.

  “Was that what I heard? We best get on in there then, if Mister Isaaks needs help.” Lavon had a southern drawl, no doubt from the Deep South.

  Barry and Darren slipped on latex gloves and Barry pulled his pistol out of his shoulder holster.

  Lavon selected a key from an enormous ring and opened the door, only needing to unlock the knob lock, as none of the deadbolts were engaged.

  Barry slowly walked into the hallway of the apartment, stepping carefully, moving sideways so as to present as small a
target as possible. It was freezing inside; the AC was cranked. He entered the living room after briefly glancing around the kitchen, and made a low noise; he then moved cautiously toward the bedroom, inspected it, and then the bathroom, the closet. Darren stayed in the hallway, gun now drawn as well once he saw his partner move toward the bedroom. Barry emerged, holstering his weapon.

  “Call for a crime lab. It’s a bad one.”

  How many old men did Barry have to find tortured in one week? Ron was right, this had to be professional, in town for a deadly purpose. He or they were killing like it was nothing, not trying to be subtle or hide the bodies.

  Barry added up the tally.

  The watch dealer, security guard, undoubtedly the two construction men, now Stan. And more than likely the killing on the Upper West Side, another torture. It was one thing to see this kind of body count in a gang war, another altogether to see ordinary citizens being butchered—and horribly so, judging by Stan’s face.

  He called Ron.

  “Stan’s a goner, Ron. Tortured and snuffed. Face looks burned with a liquid, both eyes punctured, bound and gagged. Someone wants information or is looking for something, or really wants revenge in the ugliest way possible.” Barry didn’t know what to think at this point.

  “Damn. This girl loses her father on Monday, and now a guy that was like her uncle on Wednesday? And you’re going to love this. She just called. She was assaulted over at the watch shop by an Asian—got away, but said there was another unsub in the shop with her boyfriend Nick.”

  “Did you call a car?”

  “Yeah, I should hear something in the next few minutes. That’s your crime scene, not mine. How do you want to handle it if something’s happened?”

  “Darren can do the paperwork here. Have dispatch call me if they find anything at the watch place.”

  “You got it. Jesus. This sucks.”

  “Just call me. It could get a lot worse in the next couple of minutes.”

  Ron was puzzled. Why would a pro hit squad be killing an old watch dealer’s network? And why Nick, who was just a kid? Ron took it for granted he’d hear something terrible from the shop now he’d confirmed Stan was dead. There had to be a connection, something in common with them all.

  He realized he was getting sucked in. This was a distraction from his real job. It wasn’t his case. He had a serial loose and a chief who wanted results yesterday. He couldn’t get more involved. Just couldn’t. Tomorrow night, another girl would turn into a pumpkin unless he could catch a break.

  Ron glanced at the time. There was a task force meeting at two o’clock, to hand out action items and get more bodies working the case. More bodies working meant slower communication and an increased likelihood of somebody missing something important, but it also meant better coverage and follow-up.

  That was welcome. He really should have been checking on messenger alibis and interviewing his rogue’s gallery again to see what everyone had been doing on Monday night, but hadn’t had a chance because of the press conference, then the background checks, and the Tess issue. At least now he could delegate some of that, although he really wanted to do the second interviews on a few of them himself.

  His six starred candidates were going to get his special treatment, up close and personal.

  ~ ~ ~

  Amy was filing her paperwork, catching up on some office housekeeping from the recent spate of bodies while it was slow. Her computer beeped, signaling she’d gotten official mail. She checked her inbox; it was the toxicology report for Candy. She perused it, muttered to herself, and then called Ron.

  “Stanford.”

  “It’s Amy. I was right. He’s injecting them with epinephrine and potassium chloride. That’s what’s driving their BP through the roof and stopping their hearts. It disperses so quickly there’s almost nothing left by the time we get the bodies, but I picked up a marker on Candy’s tox screen.”

  “So now we know the how. The Klonopin is the knockout punch in their drinks, and then once they’re out he shoots them sublingually with his cocktail.”

  “Yeah. A real sweetheart. That takes a lot of planning, and on a three-day schedule he doesn’t have a lot of time.”

  “Now if only we knew the why and the who, we’d be golden.”

  “That’s your job, my friend.” Amy seemed to be waiting for something. Maybe another dinner invite? He was way too busy right now. The moment passed.

  “Amy, my other line’s ringing. Gotta go.”

  ~ ~ ~

  The chief tech, who was peering into a microscope, called Mark over to where he was working on the bill and had him look through the lenses.

  “See the watermark? The hair’s a little wrong. Not much, but it’s there. Unbelievable. Saul must have been a stone genius. I was about ready to pack it in.”

  “Yeah, I see it. It looks like we have a bona fide fake here. See what else you can find, anything that would be a more obvious glitch. Keep on it. Put in overtime; I don’t care. Saul told Ken he’d found two discrepancies. We need to find the other one,” Mark said.

  Treasury’s worst fears had been realized: a near-perfect bill, created and printed somewhere else. There were any number of issues now.

  To begin with, whoever was printing them had to have classified information from someone at Treasury. There were several top-secret markers that weren’t known to anyone but a chosen few, and this bill had them. Everything else was perfect. This had to be someone with virtually limitless resources, who could manufacture the paper, somehow get into classified information, and execute flawlessly.

  They had a leak; someone had sold them down the river—maybe multiple people for all he knew. And now a black hat was in the dollar printing business.

  Mark walked out of the lab and took the elevator up. He got off on Ken’s floor, walked down the hall and into Ken’s office, and closed the door.

  “Houston, we have a problem.”

  Chapter 26

  The squad car double-parked in front of the watch shop, lights flashing, and both officers got out with guns drawn. One of the cops pointed at the large drops of drying blood glistening in the heat on the sidewalk by the doorway. The second nodded. This was trouble.

  They approached the darkened storefront cautiously, and one stood to the side of the door while the other tried the lever. It was open. The crime scene tape was hanging off the top and the sides of the frame, lending a discordantly festive appearance to the entry—a bit of color. The first officer swung the door wide and the second entered the shop in a crouch. They peered around the cases. Nothing.

  The stouter of the two men gestured at the drying blood leading into the back room.

  It was hotter than hell inside, making the surroundings seem even more oppressive. They crept toward the door at the back. The same man who’d opened the front door stood to the side and cautiously turned the knob, softly, softly, and then threw it open.

  The second officer, gripping his pistol in one hand and the flashlight in the other, moved into the doorway in a crouch, his head at waist level. He scanned the room, and then reached in and hit the lights. The only sound in the store was the buzzing of a few flies that had found their way into the back room.

  Big ones.

  Nick looked like he’d been through a meat grinder. The second cop ran for the entrance and vomited in the gutter; the first, the older of the two, shook his head and gingerly tiptoed back into the front area, trying to avoid as much of the blood and oil as possible. He activated his shoulder handset for the radio and called it in.

  “Officers need backup.” He gave the address. “187, and we need a forensics team down here yesterday.”

  “Copy that. 187, and forensics.”

  “On the double, please. Over.”

  ~ ~ ~

  Tess was on the East Side, by the river. She’d just circled around Sutton Place and was making her way up the island to 79th Street, where she’d hook across and move down the West Side. She was sick w
ith worry over Nick and Uncle Stan, and the only thing keeping her from curling up in a ball and crying was the serotonin from the ride. She was pouring sweat, her tanned skin gleaming in the hot sun, and it was taking everything she had to keep going.

  If Stan and Nick were hurt, or worse yet, dead, then she didn’t feel secure anywhere near her house. The only thing Saul, Stan, her Dad, and Nick had in common was the Asian bills. That meant whoever was doing the killing wanted the bills back, and was willing to butcher half the city to get them.

  She wasn’t safe as long as they were out there, and they were likely to remain until they either got their money back or were killed. The problem, as she saw it, was that even if they were killed, they’d likely just be replaced by someone else; so she wouldn’t ever be safe—not until the counterfeiters had been caught.

  So Tess needed to work on several things: she had to do everything she could to make sure the killers were stopped, sooner rather than later. And she had to get information to the Treasury Department that there was a million dollars of fake currency in her possession, while staying safe until she was satisfied she wasn’t a target anymore. Finally, she had to watch herself and suspect everyone from Red Cap until the serial had been captured.

  Quite an agenda.

  Tess was impatiently waiting for a call from Ron, and yet dreading her phone ringing. She put some muscle into it, propelled by a breeze off the river and a desire to keep moving, to get away from it all and leave it behind.

  If only it were that easy.

  ~ ~ ~

  Ron’s cell went off as he walked out the door to grab a sandwich. The task force was going to consume his entire afternoon, so he snagged calories where he could. He fished the phone out of his shirt pocket.

  “Ron, this is Barry. Bad news on Nick. I just got lit up by dispatch: 187 at the watch store, and ugly by the sound of it. Somebody hacked him up, and boiled his face off. I’m on my way there in a few minutes.”