by TG Wolff
I had the code from Gavriil’s poker days. The penthouse was the favored place for debauchery in general. I punched in the code.
The damn light stayed red.
I tried it again. Same result. Sometime in the last year, Ian changed his code.
“Shit. We’re not getting in.” I pounded on the door. Nada.
“Lemme try.” Dixon shouldered me out of the way. “Yeah. Yeah. I know this model. Last summer I was into security systems.”
This kid was an enigma wrapped in a puzzle tied with genius. “Into security systems?”
“You know, hacking into them.” He used my car keys to pry off the cover. “They look tough because of the interface, but it’s just another computer. Once you learn how to talk to it, it’ll do what you want.” The door latch slid open.
Inside was too dark to see your own hand. The weak light of dusk couldn’t penetrate the tinted windows. No problem, I turned on the lights.
“Should you do that?”
“What? Turn on the lights? We aren’t trying to sneak up on Ian.” To prove my point, I called out. “Ian! It’s Diamond and Dixon. You here?”
The first floor stretched a long way. Bare concrete, stained with oil, time, and things better not known, was slippery under foot. Each floor of Ian’s humble abode rounded to ten thousand square feet. The ground floor was an acre or two of garage. Ian had ten vehicles, three motorcycles, two boats, and an ATV arranged around the roll-up door. Yellow tape on the floor marked the designated parking spot for each vehicle.
Dixon followed me across the open floor. The 9mm I’d taken from my car hung at my side. I wasn’t expecting trouble; I could see nearly all of the room. I took a knee, looking under the vehicles.
Dixon mirrored me. “I don’t see anything. This is the cleanest garage I’ve ever been in. All the cars and stuff are here, aren’t they?”
I nodded. The tenant for each yellow square was present and accounted for. “A place for everything and everything in its place. Let’s go upstairs.”
Three staircases and an elevator led to the second floor. One was near the main entrance and was officially the front stairs. The black metal staircase was four feet wide with stone steps. Its twin was tucked into the corner behind the boat. The “back stairs” was off-limits to all but a select few. Yours truly excepted.
In the center of the water-side wall was the elevator. The third staircase crept up the elevator like an anaconda, twisting and rising until it disappeared into the patterned ceiling.
I led the way back to the front stairs. This door was least likely to be locked and would put me in a position to see the space laid out in front of me. Ian’s home felt empty, but I wasn’t going to take any chances with Dix. I motioned him to a position hidden from the second-floor door. “Stay here until I call clear. If I tell you to run, get the hell out of here, back to the car, and away from the river. Go to the nearest police station and wait there. If I don’t call you in one hour, bring them in, guns drawn. You got it?”
His long face fell. Understanding had dawned. “Don’t go up there, Diamond. Call the cops now.”
He still didn’t understand who I was. “I’ll be fine. You make sure you are.”
Gun cradled in a two-handed position, I soundlessly ascended the stairs. The door to the second floor was open. This was Ian’s office. The space was divided into six distinct areas by furniture, equipment, and more floor tape. Here, again, there were few hiding places. Which made it obvious we weren’t the first to come through. “Shit.” I went back to the door. “Come on up.”
“Did you find him? Holy crap, someone was pissed.” It was an understatement. The office space looked like Boggle dice after being given a tumble. Desks sat on their sides or tops. Legs of chairs poked in the air. Paper covered the floor like confetti.
Back to the front stairs and up to the third floor.
The place felt dead, empty. Whatever happened here was done. “Dixon, come on up.”
His entrance was slow this time, looking before he leapt to the space by my side. The third floor wasn’t in any better shape than the second. “Do…do you think whoever did this, you know, like, got Ian?”
The kid was a mind reader. “Nobody gets in here without Ian knowing about it.”
“We did.”
Point. Counterpoint: “Ian didn’t get where he is by being stupid. If someone came in while he was here, he knew it. He’d be ready. He’d have a plan and a backup plan.” I completely believed the crap I spewed. Had to. Because the alternative was…“Stay behind me. We’re going room to room.”
We began in the kitchen. One hell of a mess but no people—breathing or otherwise. Next was the living area. A screen designed for a theater dominated the interior wall while two rows of man-sized couches sat in homage. Bullets had ripped a line across the soft leather of the front one.
Half-bath. Clear, no damage, but really, there wasn’t much to break in it unless you had a thing for porcelain.
Middle of the floor was the game room. Pool table, card table, bar. All matched with green felt and chocolate brown leather trim. A sharp knife had been dragged across the leather while angry stab wounds marred the soft felt.
The door to the master bedroom was wide open, the setting sun casting shadows that didn’t belong. “Dixon, don’t—”
“Is she dead?” His voice trembled.
I didn’t answer the rhetorical question. The woman laid across Ian’s bed, her head off the bed at an uncomfortable angel. She was very naked and totally dead. I had to walk to the river side of the room to see her face. A single shot to the forehead had thrown her across the bed. Following the dictates of gravity, blood had drained to the lowest point, her head. “Don’t come over here. Is this your first dead body?”
“Second, the first one wasn’t naked. Look at the chair. Is that her blood?”
Grabbing the edge of the bed spread, I pulled it over, covering her body before following Dixon’s gaze. The upholstered chair aimed to a television screen was stained with blood. Whose blood? I’d need a laboratory for the answer. I wouldn’t bet on it being our dead lady. The only visible cut on her body was the one on her forehead, and everything I saw said she died where she fell.
“Probably not.”
“You think it’s Ian’s?”
The scene began playing in my mind like a movie. The front bell rang. Ian used the security system and recognized the woman. He let her in and one thing lead to another. Either he forgot to reactivate the system, or she deactivated it. While they were getting busy in the bedroom, enter our shooter. He shot the woman and got busy working Ian over. Or maybe he started working Ian over and the woman objected. POW. Objection overruled. He went back to Ian…but something happened. “If he has Ian, why destroy the apartment and the office. It takes time and it takes anger to do this. If you have Ian, why not just leave?”
“Maybe there was more than one of them. Maybe there were even three or four, downstairs and up here at the same time.” Dixon’s gaze flickered to the body, still seeing what the blanket hid. His face had an unhealthy green undertone.
“Bathroom, Dix. Now.”
He covered his mouth as he ran and bounced immediately out. “There’s another one. In the bathtub. Another body.”
“Is it Ian?” I didn’t wait for his answer, racing past him to see for myself. Not Ian but an ugly man in black with knuckles raw to bleeding. His head had connected with the bathtub spigot and stuck there. He considerately bled down the drain.
The bathroom resembled ground zero for a World War III battle. Bullets and casings and shards of porcelain littered the marble floor. Streaks of blood stood out in sharp contrast to the white tiles. But there was more, if you understood what you saw. The streak brushed across two tiles and ended abruptly before the tattered laundry basket. The basket was empty. I jiggled it. Lifted it. Shook it. It was just a basket.
Then I noticed one tile was raised a fractio
n of an inch above the others. I stepped on it and one of the white panels making up the ornate wainscoting recessed. I pushed it in to reveal a chute.
“Dixon?”
“Yeah?” He leaned in just enough to see me.
“Don’t follow me.” I sat on the floor, scooting until my legs were in the black abyss.
“W-wait. What should I do?”
“Stay by your phone.” I shoved off.
I took Gavriil to a water park once. They didn’t have them when he was a kid and had been “too old” once he arrived here. My “too old” man loved it, racing ahead of children to line up for the tube rides. His favorite were the enclosed ones, completely black so you had no idea what was coming.
Add cobwebs and “pellets” and you know where I am.
Forty-five-degree slide, sharp turn to the right, drop, sharp turn, drop. With each drop, my stomach rolled. With each turn, my head felt like a pinball. My legs hit something hard and I spilled out onto a rough concrete mat. It took a second for the marbles to stop spinning and my eyes to adjust to the dim light.
“Nice of you to join me.” The voice was more air than sound. Ian’s lips were cracked, a bloodied towel bunched under his head, his body hidden beneath a Mylar blanket. He tried to push to sitting with hands bound by plastic cords, but he fell back to the concrete. The blanket dropped off his shoulders and pooled around his bare hips. Bruises the size of fists littered his chest and ribs. There wasn’t a part of his face and upper body free of abrasions.
“Must have been one hell of a party.” I dug out my phone. “Dixon?”
“You’re alive. Thank God, you’re alive. I heard you scream and I thought…I thought…” Between the gasping breaths, Dixon cried.
I did not scream. And if I did, it wasn’t my fault. Even Indiana Jones would scream if he was getting a face full of spiderwebs and spiders and things spiders eat in spiderwebs. “Just a weird echo. Maybe my gun scraping against the pipe. Call an ambulance. I have Ian.”
Ian shook his head adamantly. “No. No ambulance. Just you.” He closed his eyes, his body sagging back to the concrete. “All I need is you.”
“Fuck. Move the car to the front entrance,” I said to Dix. Stowing my phone, I pulled out a knife to cut the ties. Ian swayed at the tugging on his wrists. “Suck it up. You’re not hurt bad.” I snapped out the lie to keep him conscious. “I hope you don’t expect me to play nurse. I already got plans.”
Buford Winston Loves His Ass
A stubborn man can drive a good woman to drink. Hence, I stood in the door way of my own bedroom with Grey Goose on the rocks. “Do you have to make so much noise?”
Ian, the stubborn man, refused to go to even an unqualified health facility. “Yee-oww.” The sound squeezed out between gritted teeth. His chest heaved in shallow breaths under the attention of Brunhilda, the nurse. “That fucking hurts.” Spittle flew from his cracked lips.
“Without X-ray, this is the best way to know if the bones are broken.” Brunhilda spoke with a faded, no-nonsense German accent as she pressed her fingers along the ridges of his ribs, pressing on skin purpled and swollen.
Ian tore my pillow case apart at the seam. “God damn it. Knock me out, Diamond. Just do it.”
“Damn it, Ian. My pillow. I should pop you.”
Brunhilda shook her head, unimpressed with our banter. “I need him responsive.”
I grinned at Ian. “She needs you responsive.”
Ian gave me a one-finger salute as he glared at Brunhilda. “Where the hell did they find you? The Flying Dutchman?”
Brunhilda looked at Dixon with maternal affection. “Andrew and I are long friends.”
Dixon bounced in his position next to the bed. “Mrs. Gunther works at the animal emergency room. The one open all night.”
Ian’s head shot off my pillow. “Animal hospital?”
“Ah, ya. We see car accidents all the time with injuries like yours. I usually have to muzzle my patients. It is nice to ask ‘does this hurt’?” She worked a puffy area on his cheek.
Ian yelped and scooched away as manly as possible. “Yes, damn it, it hurts.”
Brunhilda pointed to the warm spot on the bed. “Stay put. I have muzzles and leashes in my bag.”
Ian sheepishly slid back into the divot he’d made. “Gimme some, Diamond.” I gave, he took, then drained the glass. He closed his eyes, inhaled deeply twice. “Your bedside manner sucks.”
It was a toss-up who he was referring to. “You’re the one who didn’t want to go to an urgent care.” I took the glass back, refilled it, and drank. “So, how is our patient?”
“Mr. Ironsides is a very lucky man,” Brunhilda said. “Maybe a few cracked ribs. Mostly bruises. He will be colorful for a few days. Moving will be painful but is good for you.” She spoke to Ian now, patting his leg like he was a good boy. “If you have sharp pains or they do not lessen, be a smart man and go to the human emergency room.”
With Ian warm and dry, color returned to his face. Sure, there were blues and reds and purples, but underneath was the rosy glow of someone among the living.
“You sleep now, Mr. Ironsides. Sleep is the best medicine for dog, cat, or man.” Brunhilda Gunther left quickly after imparting wisdom. Her job was done, her patient out of the woods, so she moved on. Dixon and I sat on the edge of the bed, watching Ian.
Ian’s gaze flickered between the two of us. “Don’t tell me you’re going to sit there all night. It’s creepy.”
“It’s my bedroom.”
A pervert’s smile adorned his chapped lips. “You planning on sleeping with me?”
Dixon snickered. I rolled my eyes. “I’m taking the couch. I’ll be close enough to hear you if you call. I want to review the file on Buford again. I have a bright-and-early flight for Tulsa and want all the ammo I can get to take him apart.”
Ian sat up, signaling Dixon to adjust the pillows. “Go and get your computer. We’ll do it together.” Ian watched Dixon walk out of the room, then turned his attention fully on me. “There’s a recovery order out for you.”
“Get real, Ian. I’m dead, remember?” The idea somebody would put up money to have me captured and turned over alive was ludicrous. “Ridiculous.”
“A hundred thousand ridiculous.”
Bright and early refers to the sun’s position and the time on the clock, not my disposition during said period. I was happy to bypass the chirpy ladies at the airline desk for the stern and no-bullshit faces of the TSA.
“Flight seven-eight-five-nine with service to Chicago now boarding premium platinum members with our company logo tattooed on their person. Please queue on the red carpet and be prepared to show your tattoo.”
I checked my ticket. Not me. I don’t know why I bothered—I didn’t have the tattoo. Still, I abandoned the mass-manufactured blue chair for the amorphous swarm of people anxiously awaiting the call of their class—or lack thereof.
Four hours, two cups of coffee, and one plane change later, I tooled across Oklahoma’s open roads. The temperature was about the same as in the greater DC area, but the scenery couldn’t have been more different. Once outside of Tulsa, outside of Sapulpa, and away from the I-44 corridor, I could see. Like, really see.
Sometimes I forgot how beautiful our country was.
The farther off the beaten path I got, the narrower the roads became. The asphalt driving surface faded into the adjacent earth. It was difficult to tell where one ended and the other began. Driveways emptied to the road every now and then, truck-wide worn paths of dusty earth marked by a mailbox and the occasional garbage can. Nature going where it wanted to go, doing what it wanted to do.
The GPS in the rental car brought me to the entrance of Buford Winston’s ranch. I expected the larger-than-life AgNow! chief to live in a high-end estate with as much in common with a ranch as a raindrop has with a monsoon.
I’ll woman-up and say it: I was wrong.
Buford Winston liv
ed on a working ranch. From the long line of fencing stretching in both directions, it was a big ranch. Some fields were planted; others had cows. One side of the driveway was a long pen with mules. A lot of mules.
Couldn’t say I’d ever seen one close up before. They were oddly attractive creatures. Intelligent eyes and a spring in their steps. They followed along as I rolled up the driveway, kicking dust even as slow as I was going. They trotted ahead, knowing where I was going better than I did.
The driveway headed straight for a sprawling ranch house with a low porch running the full length. I stopped and parked where the gravel path turned along the house. At the fence line, the man of the hour stood in deep conversation with one of the asses. Buford Winston wore jeans up to the widest point of his big belly. A plaid shirt was tucked into the pants and everything was held in place by a pair of beige suspenders. His head was covered by a cowboy hat the same color as the suspenders.
I stepped out of the car to face the man who’d likely arranged my husband’s death. I felt naked. Not with respect to clothing—Jessica Fielding’s professional suit, sensible heels, and blond wig were impeccable—it was my personal safety. I didn’t have my gun on me. The bulge would ruin the lines of the suit and tip off the experienced hunter I wasn’t just a lil’ writer from Chicago. I was sure Winston had guns around, but none were on his person. The only bulges were home grown. I planted a big smile on my face and started the game.
“Mr. Winston. I’m Jessica Fielding with American Science Quarterly.” I came around the car, extending my hand.
Winston took my hand, though, by the expression on his face, it was out of the habit of manners. “Jessica Fielding from American Science Quarterly.” He shook my hand slowly, his head moving at the same rate. “I don’t recall having anything on my calendar for a face-to-face meeting.”
