Shadows May Fall

by Corcoran, Mell

  “I know my people are solid and unwavering in their loyalty.” Joe spoke with utter conviction. “If there is anyone within reach that even smells like they could know something, my people will find them.”

  “Then do what you need to do.” Max gave him the green light. “Let Niko know what you need from us to facilitate the hunt.”

  Joe had insisted that Max use his desk and set up his workspace on the coffee table. Eight flat screen televisions built into one of the office walls were cycling through various reports and mapping data. Joe turned on his headset and started making calls while Niko stood looking through the data on the screens, cross-referencing that information with the data that Finn was transmitting from the port of St. John on his tablet. Max was sifting through the reports on his former agents that he had systematically removed when he first arrived in Los Angeles. Given the level of corruption, Max was certain the After Action reports would lead them to more bad Sanguinostri apples further down the food chain.

  It was more than disconcerting to all three of the men that their people were not only partaking in the Black Blood but were active participants in the production and distribution. The necessity of human blood was something sacred to their people and those who volunteered to give of themselves, willingly, were honored and protected. The stereotype of a vampire was abhorrent to the San-guinostri and utter crap. Turned Sanguinostri didn’t solely rely on drinking human blood. They were ordinary in most every sense who ate, drank, slept, needed sunshine and air, had beating hearts and fully functioning physiology just like regular people. Turned San-guinostri were, however, in need of human blood on a semi-regular basis. The advanced immune systems that made them impervious to most every disease, drug or toxin needed something that only human blood could provide. Without it, a turned Sanguinostri would slowly deteriorate and eventually, over a great deal of time, decay. The enhanced physicality of turned Sanguinostri also relied on whatever magical properties the elixir of human blood could provide. It was impossible to narrow down why or how, even by today’s technological standards. Not for the lack of their trying. Whatever had happened to change the first people into what they now called ‘turned’ San-guinostri, the enhanced, morphed blood had a built in mechanism that self-destructed before any type analysis could be done. Despite all their efforts, they just could not create any viable condition to learn about their own blood. Regardless, just like research for any medical anomaly, they would continue to try.

  “I think I have something!” Abby exclaimed as she charged into the office.

  “What?” Max asked, spinning towards her in his chair.

  “Well, remember the analysis we did on the bottles from the warehouse?” Abby asked as she shuffled a stack of papers she was holding.

  “Yes, Abby, we remember. Just tell us what you found.” Niko insisted she get to the point.

  “There are a bazillion of wine bottle manufacturers on the planet, but we were able to trace the general origin of those bottles based on their chemical composition. Much like the way we can trace dentistry based on the compounds they use. Or like car paint colors!” Abby was trying to find different analogies to explain but caught Max’s look of disapproval, so she focused on the point. “We were able to identify those bottle manufacturers, but they ship to hundreds of different distributors. Wineries and even non-wine product producers like salad dressings, sauces.. I even found a lamp manufacturer that specializes in wine themed stuff.”

  “And?” Max was waiting for what exactly it was that she had found.

  “Well, it took a lot of sifting and, well, frankly lying my ass off. But I found one distributor that ships to not only a bogus company in Denmark but a vacant patch of land there! So whoever has been delivering the bottles there has been totally on the take and doctoring the paperwork to indicate bullshit receivership.”

  “Who’s the delivery person?” Niko darted for his laptop.

  “This is everything I could find on him.” Abby handed Niko several papers from her stack. “I figured you guys would want to transmit the data to Dominor Sorenson and his Aegis yourselves.”

  “Joe, can you put the video call up on one of the big screens?” Max asked.

  “Patching you through now.” Joe hit several keys and the main screen on the wall turned blue as the speakers indicated the call was ringing through.

  “Max!” Henrik Sorenson’s face appeared on the screen. “Niko, Abby, Joseph! Good to see you again! What have you got for me?” Joe waved politely but said nothing.

  “Henrik, Abby has a name for a lead.” Max informed him. “I’ll let her and Niko relay the specifics.” Max looked at Abby and nodded.

  After only four minutes of communication, Henrik Sorenson had dispatched his closest Council members to hunt down their civilian lead. Jakob Koch was as average as a Dane could be and made a meager living running deliveries from the port to local businesses. He had no arrest record or anything to indicate he was even remotely involved in anything nefarious. Niko was pulling the man’s financials while Abby gathered any information she could on his family and known associates. Joe continued working on his angle while Max and Henrik listened in on the comms with the agents on the ground in Esbjerg.

  “Koch just left one of the fisheries and is en route to port.” One of the agents relayed as their video feed showed them flying down a rural highway. “We need to get to him before he reaches town if we are to keep the element of surprise.”

  “Based on what I am reading about this guy, no way he’s any mastermind.” Abby told them.

  “No.” Niko agreed. “I’m seeing regular deposits to his mother’s account. About a thousand kronor a month, cash deposits. I’m requesting the security footage so we can see who made them.”

  “That’s only like a hundred-twenty bucks?” Abby snorted. “Again I say, no way he’s any kind of mastermind.”

  “Koch probably made them himself. We need to get him under wraps and find out what he knows. Where are we people?” Henrik demanded from his agents on the ground.

  “We are setting up now.” A female voice announced. “Accident is staged. Koch is ninety seconds out.”

  “Good.” Henrik was satisfied. “I want him brought here immediately. Someone take over his route. We should have a solid few hours before anyone misses him. By then we will have him wiped and sleeping like a baby in his own bed.”

  “Unless he is involved far deeper than we suspect right now.” Max corrected him.

  “Of course, but based upon what we are seeing about this young man, I don’t see any indicators he is aware he is doing anything more than transporting bottles for extra money.”

  “He was approached by someone.” Max was unconvinced Koch was as innocent as Henrik wanted to believe.

  The video feed from the chase car came to a screeching halt behind the truck, and they watched as the two agents rushed the cab. A confused young man was quickly ushered to another car that pulled up then sped away in under thirty seconds. The passenger of the chase car hopped into the truck and drove it away while the other agents cleared the staged accident. It all took less than five minutes to set up and barely two to pull off.

  “I will reconnect when he is in a chair in front of me.” Henrik leaned into the camera. “I would recommend a more private viewing location for your end. This may get messy.”

  “Understood.” Max acknowledged and trusted Henrik would take whatever measures necessary to extract every ounce of information possible out of Jakob Koch. The fewer witnesses the better.

  Max cleaned up Joe’s desk and headed for the guest house while the rest of them continued working in the office. It was getting late in the day, and Niko wanted tangibles to take with them to Las Vegas. Before they gathered with the other Principates and formulated a plan to eradicate any Black Blood production on their turf. Niko knew that Ana was in St. Petersburg tracking down leads on both the Black Blood and Albert von Massen
bach. She was going to be livid something was going on under her own nose and she missed it. There was no way in hell bottles were just being delivered to Esbjerg, and there was no Black Blood being produced anywhere in Denmark. It just was not feasible unless a lot of money was being wasted on misdirection.

  “The likelihood of there being no American blood being siphoned isn’t possible, right?” Abby asked. “Is that a double negative?”

  “Highly unlikely.” Joe agreed with her.

  “We need to get our hands on a bottle somehow.” Abby hated where her train of thought was going.

  “Abby...” Niko looked up from the computer. “If we had a way to get a bottle, we could throttle the source until they gave up their source and so on.” Niko shook his head and resumed messaging Ana.

  “True, but I am not saying a new bottle. Even an old used bottle so we could do what we just did here. Trace it back to the source then follow the supply chain.”

  “That might have been possible if we knew where Timms was peddling his wares around here.” Joe didn’t like second guessing things that had already transpired, but he couldn’t help fixating on who was taking delivery of those shipments. “Those crates were going somewhere around here.”

  “Some of them at least.” Niko agreed. “Based on where that warehouse was located, they could have been loaded up on one of those trains and been going anywhere in the country.”

  “We should look at the refrigeration of the crates.” Abby suggested. “How long could they keep things cold? That could provide some idea of distance, right?”

  “That’s a thought.” Niko sent a message to their techs that were tearing apart the refrigerated crates they recovered from the warehouse. “You gotta expect that if there were additional shipping operations around there, they went dark as soon as they learned of this one getting discovered.”

  “Yeah, but that too would leave a fingerprint.” Abby said as she sat down at one of the empty computers and began typing furiously. “Just like marijuana grows, they need power, a lot of it. Then if they shut down the operation shortly after Lou and Dillon torched the warehouse, that power would have cut off abruptly. That’s going to show up somewhere.”

  “You could use that same logic with any harvesting operation!” Joe got excited at the possibilities. “Can you cross reference any properties owned by any of our people that seems out of sorts and is using more power than the norm?”

  “That is a lot of ground to cover but with Connor’s help...” Abby grabbed her phone and sent Conner a message. “... we might be able to find the haystack our needle is hiding in, at least.”

  “Better than having to dig through the whole barn!” Joe was trying to keep it positive.

  “Exactly!” Niko agreed. “We keep detailed records of all our people’s business interests so something not accounted for there might lead to something.”

  “Damn.” Abby cursed.

  “What?” Niko asked her.

  “If we had Max’s place up and running, this would go so much faster.” She explained.

  “We’ve made due with much less.” Niko reminded.

  “I know, but I want to find these people and make them pay! Now!” Abby growled.

  “We all do.” Niko agreed. “We just need to keep at it and not stop.”

  They had a lot more to go on than they did when the day started, but it was going to take a lot of work digging through mountains of data. Even then they expected whoever was involved would be taking enormous precautions to cover their tracks. They just needed one small breadcrumb to get them on the right path.

  Lou was all for the clean up of Downtown Los Angeles, especially the old Hall of Justice which had been stalled for ages. She just wasn’t sure how she felt about luxury highrises a couple blocks away from Skid Row. As Dillon’s SUV fought against the flow of traffic into the city, Lou made calls to get any leads they could about their two unnamed men from the Medina party. Based on their femme fatal’s timeline, neither of them thought she was going to wait a whole week to claim her next victim. If they were right and Vanessa Sturn was their killer, they had to find her fast.

  “Look for anyone who’s a major player in the film or music industry in their contacts.” Lou asked Vinny. The call was picking up interference as Dillon wove his way through the buildings.

  “The problem is, kiddo, I wouldn’t know a studio exec if he smacked me in the face!” Vinny’s voice squeaked through the speakers. “I got three guys running every name in Rawlings contact list and three more workin’ on Griffen’s. We’re goin’ as fast as we can here.”

  “If you find anyone that fits the bill, send a protective detail right away!” Lou insisted. “She finds out we are on to her, she is going to escalate to finish the job.”

  “I hear ya!” Vinny understood the gravity of the situation. “I’ll let ya know as soon as we come up with something. In the meantime, be careful with this broad. If she turned her back on her own mother, she wouldn’t hesitate to pop you in the noggin!” Lou grinned. “I get it. We’re parking at the building now. Wish us luck.”

  “Luck!” Vinny shouted then cut the line.

  “You think she’d even be here?” Dillon wasn’t so sure.

  “Who knows.” Lou smirked. “We’ve gotten lucky before, right?”

  Lou and Dillon had no probable cause to get a warrant to search Vanessa Sturn’s apartment. All they had was the passing mention from a few less than reputable girls, four if you counted Jinx, the Transvestite bartender. It was just a hunch on both Lou and Dillon’s part, but they both had it. Lou was positive her gut would know for sure after they talked to the woman. At least that was the hope, but even then, they needed evidence, and that was going to be tough. The fact that the woman had left zero trace at any of the scenes and no one saw a thing; they were pretty much spitting in the wind.

  The thirty story highrise was extremely posh, to say the least, and came with an extremely protective concierge that met them less than thirty seconds after they entered the lobby.

  “Ms. Sturn is not in residence this week.” The hipster gatekeeper informed them.

  “We are a little concerned about Ms. Sturn’s well-being.” Lou stretched the truth a bit. “Are you sure she isn’t at home tonight?”

  “Is something wrong?” The man suddenly became concerned rather than curt. “Has something happened?”

  “It’s an ongoing investigation.” Dillon bolstered Lou’s fib with a little mystery. “I’m afraid we can’t give you any more information than that. But is there any way you can help us do a welfare check?”

  “A welfare check?” The man blinked several times.

  “You are familiar with Ms. Sturn’s profession, yes?” Dillon spoke softly.

  The man blinked a few more times. “That isn’t a crime though...”

  “Absolutely not!” Lou whispered as well. “But as you can imagine, there are certain hazards of the job, and we have reason to believe one of her clients might not be entirely happy with services rendered.” She said it with a wink and a nudge sort of thing.

  “Oh my!” The hipster’s eyes went wide. “You think they want to hurt Vanessa?”

  “We can’t rule that out.” Dillon sighed. “Which is why we are here and would appreciate your assistance.”

  “And discretion.” Lou added.

  “Of course!” The man flapped his hands as if directing them to follow him. “Please, let me just log in your identification and then I can take you up right away!”

  The man took them to the reception counter and typed in their names and badge numbers into the system then hurried them to the elevators. They got off on the thirtieth floor and he opened the door to one of four penthouse apartments.

  “Lady Vanessa?” He shouted as he stepped into the apartment. “Are you alright?”

  When there was no response, Lou and Dillon played things up by drawing their w
eapons and instructing the man to wait outside, for his own safety. After walking through each room and finding no one there, Lou and Dillon worked as quickly as they could. They were looking for any lead to where they could find her as well as anything that would incriminate her as their killer. The place was oddly clean and void of personal effects. It was a warm and bright space with a spectacular view of the city through the floor to ceiling widows. The golden rose sunset washing down over the city made it almost worth the price of the joint. Still, at over eight-grand a month, Lou just didn’t see the appeal to not having a nice chunk of land to call you’re own. That was something she could never understand about people who paid so much to live in New York City. Apartment living was just not for her.

  “The guest closet is where she keeps all her dominatrix attire.” Dillon called out quietly, trying not to let the concierge hear they were snooping. “And it looks like this is where she entertains her paying guests.”

  Lou looked in the master bedroom closet and found an impressive business-like wardrobe, with a few very expensive cocktail dresses and six or so pairs of pricey heels. It seemed rather sparse for a woman of Vanessa’s means, especially considering what Deidre Love had said, that she used her femininity as a weapon. Lou’s best friend, Caroline, embraced her femininity and had well over a hundred pairs of shoes and enough clothes to dress a small third world country. It just didn’t feel right. “I don’t think this is her primary residence.” Lou said as she closed the closet doors and went to see what Dillon had found.

  The second or guest bedroom was wallpapered in a dark gray that almost looked like brushed metal with baseboards and crown moldings in a glossy black. Heavy velvet drapes pooled down from the ceiling, blotting out most of the daylight, but there was enough to see the basics. The ceiling was coffered and inset with mirrors, very much like Josh Rawlings’ playroom had been. There were no hooks, eyes, winches or a swing here they could see, just an oversized round ottoman in the center of the room, the same dark gray as the walls. There were no other furnishings, pictures, anything other than the ottoman but when Lou turned on the light, the single crystal chandelier that hung from the center of the room let them see the riding crop that was left on the cushion. One toy, or tool, left out. It was left out on purpose. Based on the condition of the rest of the apartment, Vanessa Sturn didn’t leave things laying around, or out of place. As far as evidence went, it meant nothing, and they couldn’t touch it since they had no legal reason to even be there. But it was a taunt, Lou knew it. She just wasn’t sure it was for them, or someone else.