A Lick Of Heat: H.E.A.T. Book Four

by Claire, Nicola

  I noticed that Nick Anscombe had disappeared again. It wasn’t like him to vanish when there was excitement to be had. But his discreet exit did remind me that he was our ace up the sleeve and not something to be officially recorded in a detective’s case notes taken at the scene.

  Trevor might have missed him, but I doubted it. I didn’t think it really mattered that Jones had seen our ASI sidekick. Had it been Cawfield, though…

  “Sarge,” I said when I made it to Damon and Pierce. I looked at Damon though when I spoke next. “Impromptu gathering,” I whispered. “Spread the word before Jones starts asking why you’re all here.”

  “You want to hide what we’re working on from him?” Damon queried.

  It wasn’t Jones I was worried about, but any interviews and statements he took here would make it into the Wanganui and then the CIB traitor would have access.

  “Best to keep it out of the system,” Pierce agreed quietly. “Jones was on night shift,” he told me. “It makes sense he’s been assigned.”

  Even though we both thought Jones was just a good old boy cop and part of the furniture, we clearly still felt the need to cross our Ts and dot our Is on this one.

  I nodded.

  “Why Stretch?” Damon asked, as ESR - our forensics department - arrived, covered in white paper overalls, wearing crepe booties and toting large toolboxes on wheels behind them.

  The uniformed officers Trevor had called in had started checking the property in a grid-like pattern, but Jones hadn’t started his interviews yet. Damon, though, had already caught Marc’s attention and had him spread the word with the men about their impromptu party to explain why they were all here for the record.

  Why Stretch? I thought to myself as Pierce offered up a few suggestions that didn’t trigger any alarm bells for me. Abduction was part of Weston’s MO, we knew this, and if the cases we’d attributed to him but he’d not been charged for were anything to go by, not all of the abductees had been women. Carole certainly made you think this was sexual in nature, but I didn’t get the feeling that that was what made Weston tick.

  Carole was in love with him and had presented him as her boyfriend to Damon back in the beginning. Of course, if Weston had manipulated her mind from the start, then there was no telling what the truth of the matter was.

  Eagle, I thought, as the men shared quiet ideas in the background, was not an abduction as such, as he’d entered Sweet Hell following his boyfriend Dave willingly. But he was an indication that Weston didn’t shy away from anything sexual in nature or of the male persuasion. I thought, perhaps, the abductions and mind manipulations were closely related, but I wasn’t able to provide any solid evidence to back that up. It was all a gut feeling which was never a good way to work as a detective.

  Sure, Sport, follow your gut, but always cover your arse with a little evidence.

  The blackmails and murders, however, had been exclusively male. I shunted them off into a compartment of their own. It was the mind manipulation and abductions that really mattered. Weston had killed, definitely. But Angelo’s death could be considered collateral damage.

  He hadn’t been the one to kill Samantha Hayes, so I didn’t count her in the number. But from the case files I’d downloaded, it wasn’t clear whether the murders he’d performed were intentional or not. Some I could say were opportunistic. Some could simply have been in the wrong place at the wrong time.

  “What do you think, Lara?” Pierce asked, clearly wanting me to get out of my head and into the conversation.

  I spared a glance around the carpark to ascertain where Jones was at. He’d moved on to interviewing the HEAT members, making it casual as only the cowboy could, leaning against a HEAT ute and sucking on his toothpick.

  Trevor chewed toothpicks because he no longer smoked cigarettes. Ciggies were what were to blame for his wife’s illness. Cancer was a mean bitch.

  “Why Stretch?” Damon asked. I think needlessly offering me a lifeline in front of my superior. I hadn’t missed what they were talking about; I’d just been internalising my thought process.

  “It’ll mean something,” I said. “The victims of the mind manipulation and the abductions are carried out with care. He plans each one. He targets only those who mean something to him in the larger scheme of his life.”

  “And the murders don’t?” Pierce asked.

  I shook my head. “Some of them could have been accidents. Not what caused the situation that led to their deaths, he knew what he was doing when he set the scene for each one, but the fact the victims died instead of just being hurt or scared or maimed. That’s where the chance factor comes in.”

  “Angelo could have been out the front of the restaurant where his sous chef was,” Pierce said. I nodded. “Talking of that,” Pierce went on. “Cawfield and Simpson got in to see him. The chef’s out of ICU and on a ward. He had nothing to say, really. Except to confirm that Angelo suspected something and sent them all out of the kitchen while he investigated.”

  “He could still be alive today if he’d followed his own advice,” I muttered.

  “Or more than Angelo could be dead. He saved them.”

  It was a poor consolation for the loss of a vibrant life. But sometimes you had to take your wins where you could get them.

  “Back to Stretch,” I said. “Did Weston target him specifically? Or did he target HEAT in general.”

  “What difference does it make?” Damon asked.

  “Everything,” I told him. “If Stretch was his target then Stretch is linked to Weston in some capacity.”

  “Stretch is not a traitor,” Damon snapped. Not like the detective-turned-traitor we had in CIB.

  “Keen’s not saying he is,” Pierce said placatingly; stepping in to shield me, no doubt. I didn’t need shielding from Damon.

  “You know him better than me,” I said to Damon. “But I thought I knew the guys in CIB too.”

  Damon scowled at me and then abruptly looked off into the distance. He couldn’t argue the point even if he strongly disagreed with it.

  “Besides,” I said. “There’s a damn good chance that Weston just wanted someone, anyone, from HEAT.”

  Damon looked back at me. “But to take them?” he said, shaking his head. “Tampering with Horse’s equipment is one thing, but abducting a member of my team just to get back at me?”

  “What equipment?” Pierce asked. We both ignored him.

  “What’s your next move?” I asked Damon.

  “Go looking for the bastard,” he growled.

  “Exactly,” I said. Both men stared at me.

  “Oh,” Pierce said, the first to get it. “He’s setting a trap.”

  “What’s different between taking Carole and taking Stretch?” Damon demanded. “I haven’t been able to locate him since he took my sister again, so why would I be able to locate him now?”

  “Because he wants you to,” I said.

  “You told me last night that he might use Carole on the party scene to reel me in. Now you think he’ll use Stretch instead?” He sounded doubtful.

  “Why take Stretch?” I asked both of them. “He’s already got, Carole. Why take someone else?”

  I thought I knew; I just wanted someone else to come to the same conclusion and help make my suspicions easier to swallow and then consequently easier to deal with.

  “Because Carole’s more important than Stretch is,” Pierce finally said.

  “Bingo,” I whispered. “Carole is the key. She always has been. Maybe he’s had keys before. Maybe he discards them eventually.”

  I winced at the horrified look that crossed Damon’s face at those words. But I wouldn’t disrespect him by not addressing the facts as I saw them, even if the facts led him to a place he’d much rather not be.

  “But right now,” I pressed on, “Carole is the key.”

  Damon cleared his throat, working on keeping his demeanour neutral and steady. He knew what cops were like; one whiff of instability and you were cut ou
t of the investigation. Look at me. Hennessey only had to suggest I was near breaking for the Department to move on suspending me. Shouldn’t there have been a little back and forth discussion beforehand? Highly educated and experienced shrink or not, I should have been able to defend myself at least.

  But cops, aka the Police Force as a whole, were a bunch of intolerant arseholes when it came to emotional and mental instability. I thought perhaps most emergency services were to some degree. If you couldn’t handle it, you hid it. Like my father did. Shoving all the nasty things, that made you feel, in a mental drawer each night and throwing away the key.

  Sweep it under a rug. Never speak of it to anyone. We don’t break down; we do our jobs. Can’t have the public thinking we’re fallible. We’re part of a community of saviours, but we can’t even save ourselves.

  “What does being the key mean exactly?” Damon asked.

  “She’s outside the pattern,” I said, refocusing. “Originally, she was the mind manipulation puzzle piece. Now, I think our CIB traitor might be.”

  “Do you?” Pierce asked. I hadn’t shared my thoughts with him yet.

  “Possibly,” I said.

  “That’s convincing,” he muttered.

  “Think about it,” I said. “Hennessey is definitely being blackmailed.” I looked sharply at Pierce then. “Any news on that, by the way?”

  “Nada,” Pierce said. “We’re following up on his brother down in Christchurch right now as a possible angle. But I’m not holding my breath. Whatever Weston has on Hennessey, it’s been hidden for a long time.”

  “The best blackmailing fodder usually is,” I said.

  “Got that right,” Pierce grunted.

  “So, Carole’s outside the pattern?” Damon pressed, getting us to focus on his sister again.

  I couldn’t imagine how frustrating it would be for an outsider to watch us brainstorm. Detectives had varied and unusual thought processes making us come at things from dozens of different directions.

  “Yeah,” I said, keeping tabs on the Environmental Science and Research guys, the interviews Trevor was still undertaking, and the sun as it started to rise. Sleep was a no-go for me. I’d be hitting the pavement running as soon as I managed to get a damn coffee. “Hennessey’s the blackmail. I’m placing my money on the CIB traitor being the one manipulated. Stretch has clearly filled the abduction role, and Angelo slotted into the murder piece. So, where does that leave Carole?” I answered for them. “Outside the pattern; that’s where. Which means,” I said, registering that Trevor was winding up on his last interview, “that she means something else to him.”

  “I don’t like the sound of that,” Damon murmured, as Trevor approached us.

  I didn’t like the sound of it either, because it meant that Weston was acting in a way we hadn’t yet been able to profile correctly. He might have had keys in the past, but we hadn’t been able to spot them. Which meant we didn’t know what happened to them. You could bet your arse, though, that they hadn’t returned to their lives unscathed.

  If they’d escaped, we would have heard about it.

  If they’d been found dead in a fashion outside of the murder victims we’d associated with Weston as part of the pattern; they would have set alarm bells ringing.

  Part of me hoped he hadn’t had keys before. But if he hadn’t, then he was changing. Adapting or unravelling? I couldn’t say. But he was entering territory that was unpredictable. I snorted softly at that because really we hadn’t been able to predict squat about this man yet.

  “What’s so funny, Keen?” Trevor asked as he made our sides finally.

  “Your hat,” I said, staring up at the worn and dusty thing.

  He ran a finger along the brim in a way that I was sure I’d seen John Wayne do in old flicks.

  “Darlin’,” he drawled, “don’t diss the hat.”

  I smiled up at him.

  “Found somethin’,” he said, all business again.

  The smile dropped. We’d done a preliminary search of the property before anyone had arrived. We’d found nothing.

  “Down by where we think your Stretch might have been taken from,” Trevor said.

  He handed over a small, sealed plastic bag. The type of bag used for evidence taken from a scene.

  Inside was a card for a boarding house in Ponsonby. A halfway house, I thought, for ex-druggies.

  “That could have been dropped on the street by anyone,” Damon said.

  “True,” Trevor agreed amicably, switching his toothpick to the other side of his mouth. “But it looks in good order, not been weathered by time spent out of a wallet, and it was in the bushes beside the drive, right where we found scuff marks on the concrete.”

  We’d spotted the scuff marks and left them for the forensic geeks; pretty sure that was where Stretch had been standing when he’d been jumped by Weston. But we’d not spotted the business card.

  I didn’t take Weston as the sort to make a mistake like this; dropping a card that would lead us directly to him.

  Unless, of course, he wanted to lead us directly to him.

  I stared at the address on the business card. A boarding house in a suburb no more than ten minutes away. Could he have set up a base so close? He’d done it before with Carole, just ‘round the corner in Greys Ave. It matched his pattern of behaviour.

  Carole calling me over the course of a couple of weeks worked to lure me in, why not a card with the address of a boarding house at the scene where he’d abducted his latest victim? A victim designed to lure out Damon specifically.

  “Anyway,” Trevor said, stuffing the card back inside his jacket pocket, “we’ll look into it and let y’all know what we find out.”

  “Do you want to take my statement?” Damon asked.

  “Nah,” Trevor said, “just don’t leave town.” He laughed at his poor taste joke and saluted with his cowboy hat, sauntering off.

  “Considering I’m his superior officer,” Pierce remarked, “you’d think he’d be more careful following the rules in front of me.”

  “Maybe he thinks you can vouch for Damon,” I offered.

  “I’m not writing up a fake statement if that’s what you mean.”

  I looked back at Jones as he manoeuvred his car out of the carpark and onto Pitt Street. Why did he let Damon go without bugging him for at least a word or two to write down? Damon was head of HEAT. Was it a favour to me? And what would I owe him exactly?

  I shook my head and pulled out my cellphone, entering a search for the boarding house.

  “Halfway home,” I said, just as I’d suspected.

  “Part of the health system?” Pierce asked, already on the same page as me.

  “Privately owned and operated.”

  “Perfect,” Pierce offered.

  Yeah, because it meant anyone could stay there. They didn’t need a referral from the hospital.

  It was an invitation to play. A spider’s web that you could clearly see but not avoid getting tangled up in. Stretch would be there. Carole wouldn’t.

  But what the hell would happen when Damon accepted the invite?

  “It’s a trap,” I muttered.

  “Yep,” Pierce said.

  Damon said nothing. Because we all knew he’d be going there. Carole was his sister by birth, but Stretch was his brother by choice. Nothing would stop Damon from going after him.

  Not me. Not Pierce. And not a bloody big spider waiting in the wings to wrap him up and slowly eat him.

  Chapter Fifteen

  “We All Have Our Limits. We All Have That Line In The Sand That If We Cross It, We’re Done For.”

  The coffee was good, but the company was a bit iffy. I sat on a stool in the heart of ASI and listened to Pierce and Anscombe hash out a plan for approaching the halfway house. Damon interjected every now and then and Eric, the ASI tech geek on duty right then, added his two cents worth.

  Thankfully, Nick had ensured all his other operatives were AWOL for this. Enough people knew
what was going on as it was and I only consented to the tech geek because we needed more professional eyes than those available to us at HEAT watching the CCTV footage in Ponsonby.

  I sipped my coffee and contemplated the state we’d left Damon’s team in. Controlled chaos was too generous a term for it. There’d been barely little control and a hell of a lot of chaos.

  Still, they were firemen, and when Damon issued an order, they all followed it. Hunker down and keep watch. Not much of a directive, but it kept them marginally busy.

  This next stage of the operation required a little less emotional involvement and a hell of a lot more professional detachment. I studied Anscombe and his geek. I thought I had a relatively good handle on Nick Anscombe’s motives for involving ASI in this. His friendship with Pierce was one part of it. But Inspector Hart’s insinuation that he’d put pressure on the private eye was definitely another. Plus, I was pretty sure, Nick Anscombe liked a little chaos and a good mystery.

  Eric Shaw, the tech geek, on the other hand, was a relatively unknown quantity. Sure, I knew all about his technical skills and his length of service and devotion to Anscombe and the PI company. But he had an ex-military air to him and an obvious limp. The man had been injured; I’d stake my money on him having been injured in the line of duty. Extrapolating on that and what I’d uncovered of Anscombe’s shadowy business to date, Shaw had hit rock bottom at some stage in his life, and Anscombe had dug him out of it.

  Loyalty, intelligence, and a backbone that was wasted in this small room full of computer equipment and state of the art TV screens.

  He had a wife. And that, there, was where I was uneasy. Anything we did now could be traced back to us by Weston. Either through the CIB traitor, if it got out at Central Police, or through whatever network of spies I suspected Weston of having.

  Amber Shaw could be a liability.

  It didn’t matter that she was also part of Nick Anscombe’s team: The second half of the tech geeks. She was no ex-military. She was ex-stripper. Exotic dancer, I believed. I was sure Anscombe and Shaw both had given her some self-defence lessons. But Amber Shaw was definitely a potential weak link.