by G. K. Parks
Sleep came intermittently while I drifted in and out of the haze of memories. At some point, my own scream woke me, but Mark was used to such occurrences and didn’t bother to check on me. By dawn, I had pieced together a few more vague recollections. Sitting up, I put my face in my hands and took a moment to become reacquainted with reality.
Wanting someone to talk to, I trudged into the living room. Jablonsky was snoring slightly on the couch, but after loudly clearing my throat, he shook himself awake and gazed at me. I curled up on the loveseat and waited.
“What now?” His voice was scratchy and rough.
“The detective was murdered in the kitchen at Pepper. I don’t know who pulled the trigger. It could have been anyone, but I remember being near the doorway to the dining room. He was bound closer to the exit sign. That damn glow from the sign,” I swallowed, “it might have been the only light in the room.” I closed my eyes. “It’s like I’m there now.”
He sat up. “What else do you see?”
“Blood dripping down the drain.”
“Alex, what do you hear?”
I squeezed my eyes tighter, nervous to experience more. “Men speaking. An argument maybe.” I scrunched my brow and opened my eyes. “I don’t know. Three gunshots, clear as day. That’s about it.”
He nodded. “What do you smell?”
“Cordite from the discharge and some kind of antiseptic or cleaner. It’s almost like rubbing alcohol but different somehow.”
“What about booze?”
“Ugh.” My stomach twisted, and I glared at him. “My head was forced backward, and the bottle was shoved in my mouth. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t swallow. I was drowning and burning from the inside out.” I covered my eyes with my hand and leaned my head back, inadvertently triggering more memories. “They bound me to a chair with my own handcuffs. I felt a nail or screw, something at the base of the chair.” I opened my eyes and looked at my torn nails. “I pried it out of the wood.”
“Shit.” Mark grabbed his phone off the coffee table and hit one of his speed dial numbers. “Good morning, sir. This is SSA Jablonsky. Look, we need that warrant to search Pepper. We were rejected yesterday, but new information has come to light. It’s imperative we search the property for blood residue, specifically in the floor drain of the kitchen, and we need to examine any damaged furniture. My agent remembers being restrained and clawing a nail out of the wood.” He paused for a few moments. “Uh-huh.” Another pause. “Sir, a LEO was killed. A federal agent was assaulted and nearly killed. This can’t wait.” Another pause. “Fine.” He hung up, mumbling under his breath.
“What’s the verdict?”
“Don’t worry about that now. What else can you tell me?”
“I freed myself from the cuffs and struggled with someone.” The man’s features were nothing but a blur. “My gun was drawn. It fired. I didn’t want it to happen. I tried to stop it.” My mind reeled from the sheer terror. It was the same memory I had when I awoke in the middle of the night at Martin’s. “Someone was killed with my gun. My hands were on it. I thought he had it, but maybe, I did. Maybe I fired. I can’t be sure.” I frowned, realizing that the order of events was screwy. “Dammit.”
“Was this before or after the detective was shot?” Mark asked, hoping to piece the puzzle together.
“I don’t know. There were three shots total. During the struggle, one shot was fired. From the way I remember the gunfire, the two shots had to have been before I freed myself from the cuffs.”
“What happened after that?”
“I have this sense of backward motion, pain, and then nothing.”
“What’s the next thing you remember?”
I thought for a moment, finally deciding on an answer. “A dome light.”
“So you were at Pepper, things went sideways, and the perp stuck you in the SUV. What about the gift-wrapped bodies? Were they in the vehicle with you?”
“I don’t know.” My thoughts were breaking down into incomprehensible dribble. “I just can’t make sense of it.” I pressed my palms into my eyes and leaned my head back again.
“Hey, we’re getting there. Look, I need to visit the judge and plead our case before the docket opens. We’re going to get that search warrant, and the evidence will fill in the blanks. We’ll get this son-of-a-bitch. In the meantime, why don’t you go back to doing whatever it was you were doing that made you remember all of that? It looks like we’ll need all the help we can get.”
“I thought I wasn’t working this case.”
“Semantics,” Mark replied. He attempted to shake the perpetual wrinkles out of his jacket and went to the door. “We’ll nail this asshole. No one kills a cop and attempts to murder a federal agent and gets away with it. You did good. Now it’s my turn.”
“Good luck.” I followed him to the door and locked it after his departure. “I know I’ll need it.” Returning to the bedroom, I climbed under the covers. Usually, I wished the demons away, but this time, I waited for them to come.
The events I recalled weren’t in any logical order. How did I end up in the kitchen? Who bound me to a chair? And how did that happen without a fight? There must have been a reason — an impetus to keep me docile. How come no one noticed what was happening and called the cops? Again, nothing made sense.
Burrowing under the covers, I curled into a ball and started at the beginning. I walked to Pepper from the federal building. It wasn’t extremely close, but it wasn’t unreasonable either. Then again, I was on the phone with Martin during my trek. Our conversation hadn’t lasted long enough for the entire trip, so maybe I was meeting the detective first.
Reaching across the nightstand, I grabbed the phone and dialed Lucca. “Did I walk into Pepper alone?”
“Parker?” He sounded groggy. “Do you have any idea what time it is?”
“I don’t know. Six? Seven? Jablonsky’s on his way to meet a judge. The law doesn’t sleep, so neither do we. Did you see the footage? You said the techs placed me in the vicinity of Pepper. Was I alone? How did I arrive there?”
“Listen, I am going back to sleep for another hour and a half. When I get to work, I will find out, see if we’ve made any more progress, and get back to you.” Silence ensued, and I thought he had hung up. Then he asked, “Why is Jablonsky meeting with a judge? We were denied a warrant.”
“I’m starting to remember what happened.” No response followed. “Lucca, are you there?”
“No, I hung up. Good night, Parker.” The line disconnected, and I put down the receiver.
“But it’s morning,” I said to my empty apartment. I checked the time. It was half past six, and there was only one person I knew who would be awake right now. Dialing the familiar number, I debated if I should grovel or just cut straight to the chase.
“Why are you awake?” Martin asked in lieu of a greeting.
“I miss you, and I’m sorry.” Groveling, it is. “Mark just left a few minutes ago. I’ve been remembering things about that night, and I need someone to help with the timeline.”
“You don’t like discussing this stuff with me. Work is separate, remember?”
“Can you rake me over the coals another day?”
“I wasn’t, or rather, I didn’t mean to. I just wish that we were having this conversation in person. You should be lying next to me, not half a city away.” He sighed. “We’ll figure this out eventually, so tell me what I can do to help.”
“Why did we disconnect that night? We were arguing, but it wasn’t a fight. I don’t remember being pissed off at you. Maybe you hung up on me.”
“I didn’t hang up on you, Alex. You said you had to go. You were meeting someone.”
“Did he show up?”
“I don’t know. The way you made it sound was that someone else was there, so we couldn’t talk any longer. Does that help?”
“It does.” I bit my lip. “But I didn’t mention a name or tell you where I was?”
“No, you just
said you had a meeting with a CI. What happened after we hung up?”
“Have we ever been to Pepper?”
“The strip club?”
“No,” I paused, “there’s a strip club named Pepper? Have you been there?”
“We were talking about you,” Martin insisted. “And no, there’s no strip club here named Pepper.” I was used to his double-talk which meant there was a strip club somewhere with that name that he had visited, but that was a discussion for another time.
“It’s a bar and grill. It’s a bit of a dive. They have stemless drinkware and square highballs with artisan ice. I have memories of the bar, but I wanted to make sure they weren’t from some other outing.”
“Well, if you were there in a social capacity, it must have been with one of your other suitors. I’ve never heard of it. What do you remember about it besides the pretentious ice cubes?”
“Nothing good.”
“Does this have to do with your nightmare the other night and why you won’t sleep here?”
“Yeah, I also realized why I couldn’t stand the smell of your scotch. Honestly, it might be quite some time before I can tolerate the presence of liquor. You should probably break up with me now.”
“I’m not an alcoholic. I can live without it. What does scotch have to do with any of this?”
“It’s the reason for my missing memories. I was highly intoxicated and not by choice.”
“Were they spiking your drink?”
“No,” I narrowed my eyes and went into the living room to see what Pepper’s business hours were, “but they must have used some kind of leverage to make me comply.”
“Sweetheart, I know you don’t like it when I worry, but what happened? What did they do to you? Who are they?”
“I’m gonna find out.”
Eighteen
Pepper only operated between the hours of three p.m. and ten p.m. Most restaurants, particularly those with bars, stayed open much later. Frankly, that made me suspicious, but I had a vague idea of what had happened. I must have been meeting the cop and his informant at Pepper. It was a public place, busy enough that a chance encounter and conversation wouldn’t seem out of the ordinary but cozy enough to afford some privacy. Then again, it was possible that the location was a key element for our meeting. Obviously, two murders occurred on the property, so Pepper wasn’t exactly that warm and inviting.
Dialing the office, I waited to be transferred to the IT department and requested that they run a complete business profile on the restaurant. It must have some unsavory connection that needed to be fleshed out. In the meantime, I grabbed my notepad and started on a new timeline, deciding that I must have met with the cop, sat at the bar, and waited for the place to close before somehow ending up in the kitchen. Someone must have threatened me in order to gain access to my handcuffs and chain me to a chair without sustaining so much as a scratch. Then things got interesting. Shots were fired. I woke up in a SUV, rolled out, and made my way to the side of a parking garage. Yeah, I was clearly missing a few steps.
Yawning, I fought the desire to go back to bed and anxiously stared at my phone, waiting for Jablonsky or Lucca to call. When the waiting became too intense, I showered and changed my bandages. The bruises were dark and painful, and I wasn’t certain that they hadn’t gotten worse since the last time I looked. Once that was done, I curled up on the couch and closed my eyes. I’d either give meditation another shot or take a nap. There was literally nothing else that I could do without further information.
The ringing I heard wasn’t in my head. That was a plus, and I reached for my phone. A quick glance at the display meant Mark had news.
“A search warrant was issued yesterday,” Jablonsky said.
“What? I thought it was denied.”
“We were denied. The PD was not.” From his tone, I knew he was pissed. “They had better reasoning. Apparently, the SUV containing the two victims also had telematic software equipped with the GPS. Once the police gained access to the tracking system, they discovered Pepper was the last known location. Suffice it to say, the judge thought they had probable cause to conduct a search.”
While we were on the phone, there was a knock at the door. I answered, waving hello to Lucca while Mark continued to speak. Lucca raised an eyebrow, and I mouthed “Jablonsky” to him. He nodded and made himself at home at the kitchen table.
“At least someone is scouring the restaurant for evidence of what happened,” I said.
“Great,” Mark said sarcastically. “I’m outside the restaurant right now. Their crime team is tearing the place apart. It’ll be a miracle if anything is salvageable for our case once they’re through with it.”
After disconnecting, I checked the time. It was noon, and Lucca was searching my kitchen for sustenance. The single file he brought with him was on the table. It contained a few printed photos from nearby traffic cams of my walk to Pepper. To the untrained eye, I appeared to be alone, but there was a man in close proximity.
“Do we have an ID on my shadow?” I asked.
“Negative.” Lucca turned around. “Didn’t I leave my sandwich here the other day?”
“It went bad. I had to toss it,” I lied. “Help yourself to last night’s Chinese food if you’re hungry.”
“That’s okay. I’ll grab something on my way back to work.” He stood beside me and pointed to another photo. “You should have picked a better rendezvous point.” He flipped to another shot, showing the unidentified man waiting at the side of the building for me. “I’m guessing that’s the detective you were meeting.”
“He’s carrying,” I said, analyzing the way his jacket bunched at the side.
“That doesn’t make him a cop.”
I looked at his face, flashing to the wide-eyed, muffled scream. “Yeah, it’s him.” I took a breath to steady myself and slumped into the chair.
“Facial rec should get us a name. I told Ridley to compare it to the PD’s roster. Although, by now, I’m sure someone at the police department would be willing to talk. Word spreads when shit happens.”
“Jablonsky’s on it.” The silence was unbearable, and despite my training to withstand torture and interrogations, I had to say something. “I ate your damn sandwich. Please, eat the Chinese.”
“Parker,” Lucca cocked an eyebrow up, “what’s going on? You’re acting strangely, even for you.”
I filled him in on everything that I remembered, including the unsettling parts. “Where are we on identifying that busboy? Do we know his real name?”
“Yeah, Jakov Horvat. We ran the photo through the database, and he came back pretty quickly. He’s a citizen, so I don’t understand the reason behind his fake name and phony work visa.”
“Obviously, he’s up to no good, and he didn’t want anyone from Pepper to identify him too easily. Have we grabbed him yet?”
“Our surveillance team might have been made. They thought someone matching his description had returned to the area, but before they could make a positive identification, the guy climbed into a cab and left. He hasn’t been back since.”
“I spoke to the IT department. Have you seen the business profile for Pepper? They must be a front for something. Who owns the place? Who runs the place? Why the hell haven’t we arrested any of them yet? They should be wanted in connection with the double homicide and assaulting a federal agent.”
“Alex, we’re not beat cops. We’re not homicide detectives. We’re the FBI. Yes, you were assaulted, which makes this our case, but it’s theirs too. They can handle it. We have other things to focus on.” He looked at me. “Well, I do.” He shook his head ever so slightly. “Shade’s been moving a lot of cargo lately. We’ve received intel that at least one shipment has made it into the United States. We don’t know what it is, but from the whispers we’ve been hearing, it can’t be good.”
“How was it shipped?” I asked.
“Cargo plane.”
“Has it been searched by DHS?”
“The crate didn’t make it to the airport. We have satellite imagery showing it being loaded onto the plane, but it wasn’t there when they landed.”
“Did you contact the FAA to make sure they didn’t make any unplanned stops?”
“Yes,” Lucca growled, annoyed by my rudimentary question, “I’m not an imbecile.”
“Great, because that was my next question.” I offered a playful smile, even though the topic was dire. “That means it had to be dumped somewhere before landing. Wouldn’t that require parachute deployment and low altitude flying?”
“Yes, it would.”
“Get their flight plan and figure out where it could be. Send the locals to investigate.”
“Done and done.” Lucca gave me a look. “They haven’t found anything. The search is ongoing.”
“It was probably picked up already. On the bright side, chucking it out of the back of the plane probably means whatever they dropped can’t be that volatile. That should eliminate most WMDs. What do our intelligence gathering friends have to say about this?”
“They aren’t saying much. I don’t think they know anything more than we do. Frankly, Shade probably isn’t one of their top priorities. I’ve put out feelers and checked with every agency I could think of, but I hoped you’d have some idea what they might be shipping in or where they might have taken it. You’ve been primary on collecting the intel for the last few weeks, so surely, you must have some theories.”
I’d been so focused on my own problems that I hadn’t given a potential threat to national security and potentially thousands of lives much thought. Talk about self-centered. After a few more seconds of internal scolding, I considered what I knew about Shade.
“It could be anything. I’m guessing small arms, drugs, or counterfeit goods. Honestly, I don’t think what they dropped is the real issue. The problem is they have contacts here. Someone was already on the ground to pick up the package, and that means they have a functioning cell within our borders.”
