“Hey, Keen,” Trevor said. “How you holdin’ up?”
“Fine,” I said because that’s what we’re taught to say. I’m fine. We’re fine. Everything is fucking fine. OK?
Trevor leaned back against Pierce’s car and watched the scene beside me. He said nothing more, just chewed on his toothpick and watched ESR crawl over Carl’s body and the edge of the cliff face, and Rescue tidy up all the ropes that hadn’t been compromised by Weston, and Pierce and Damon lead their men and organise the scene.
I felt removed from it all.
“Checked out that halfway house,” Trevor said suddenly. “Damn dump of a place but nothin’ out of the ordinary.”
I said nothing.
“Not sure where to go from there, but I was thinkin’ I might try locations that mean something to Michaels.”
Because Stretch was taken to get back at Damon.
“Can you suggest any?”
I didn’t want to talk or think or even breathe.
I shook my head.
“He’s gotta be holdin’ your man somewhere,” Trevor said.
Weston was meant to be holding him at that halfway house. Why else leave that business card on the scene? Unless the card was a coincidence and we’d been chasing the wrong trail of breadcrumbs.
The dots didn’t line up.
I felt nothing.
“All right,” he said, in that upbeat, good-old-boy way of his. “You know where to find me.” He patted me awkwardly on the shoulder. Manly shoulder thumps were for the men of CIB. Not the solitary woman in their midst.
I watched him swagger off to join the Club. Stretch wasn’t at the halfway house, but I was pretty sure he was meant to be. Had Trevor missed something? I doubted it; he was a good cop. Thorough, even if he did look a little rough around the edges. That roughness had got more pronounced lately as his wife’s recovery took a right turn at chemotherapy.
Life sucks. Death sucks harder.
I looked back at where Carl’s body lay.
What had led him to this? Last time it had been Declan King. This time was it Rhys Weston? Carl hadn’t been the one in Eagle’s alley that night, but had he caught up with my informant before then? Did Eagle know something?
Why are you here, Carl?
He didn’t answer me. He’d never answer me again.
This was final.
And still, I felt nothing.
Hennessey would say this was my PTSD rearing its ugly head again. I would say to that; it had never left me.
You’re close to breaking, Lara.
Screw you, Hennessey.
A car pulled up behind Pierce’s. I didn’t bother to turn around and see who had parked behind the cordon. It sounded like a Holden Commodore; it had to be a cop car and the only cop missing from the Club was Inspector David Hart of CIB.
The driver’s door slammed shut and shortly after I felt his presence beside me.
“Sir,” I said, without looking at him.
“How do you do that?” he asked.
I said nothing.
He shoved his hands into his coat pockets. It wasn’t a trench coat, but it was something similar. Carl’s coat was missing as was his fedora.
“We have an imposter,” I said.
He watched me. I knew he was, even if I wasn’t looking at him to see it.
“Tell me,” he instructed.
“Fedora hat and trench coat seen on K Road and at Mount Eden Prison and across from the fire station on Pitt Street.”
“Timeline?”
“Over the past forty-eight to seventy-two hours.”
Silence and then, “Carl’s been dead for two hours, tops.”
I turned to face him at that.
“ESR?”
“Preliminary evidence at the scene,” - he didn’t look at the scene, he was too busy watching me - “indicates he was alive two hours ago.”
Two hours ago when Damon and I were at Rachel’s.
This complicated things.
I turned back to look at the scene; to look at where Carl’s body lay on the stretcher, covered in a white sheet.
“It wasn’t him in Eagle’s alley,” I said.
“Tell me,” he repeated, with no less order in his tone which pleased me.
I didn’t need him going soft on me. I needed the bulldog, and I needed the distraction of worrying his bone free.
“He spanked him,” I said without inflection. “Got him off.”
“Not Carl’s MO,” Hart agreed. “What else?”
“Stood in the shadows. I never saw his face.”
“Did he speak?”
He had spoken in the alley, but his voice had been raspy; a hoarse whisper. I couldn’t be sure it had been him, but I also couldn’t be sure it hadn’t been either.
“Inconclusive,” I said.
Hart looked at the scene.
“This is a message,” he finally said.
“The location and timing.”
“Timing?”
“Damon and I had just been to visit Rachel Myers.”
He let out a long breath of air, aware of how hard that would have been.
“Eyes on her house,” he murmured.
“Or she told someone as soon as we left.”
“You think Weston got to her?”
“He got to Carl, didn’t he?”
Hart looked back at the scene.
“Carl was alive when he went over,” he told me. “But only barely. They suspect an overdose. The fall finished him off.”
That numbness enveloped me.
“This is a message,” Hart repeated.
“It’s a message,” I agreed.
“What does it tell us, Detective?”
My heart missed a beat. I was suspended from CIB. Officially.
Hart was saying ‘fuck that’ to me.
“That he can get to anyone,” I said.
“Already knew that. What else?”
I thought about it for a moment. It was the last pattern puzzle piece. Murder.
Abduction. Blackmail. Manipulation. Murder.
Weston hadn’t committed them in that order though. It should read: Manipulation. Blackmail. Abduction. Murder. I was fairly certain the CIB traitor was being manipulated, and he’d come first. His participation in all of this was too great just to be blackmail. And, as we’d established, Hennessey was the blackmail piece anyway. The abduction was Stretch, and the murder was Carl.
So, that was the order of things. Not that the order helped me.
What else?
“Murder is the final pattern puzzle piece,” I said, thinking aloud. I needed a whiteboard. There were dots, and they were starting to connect, but I couldn’t see the bigger picture clearly. “It’s a statement: shock and awe. The CIB traitor is a thorn in our side. Constantly scratching; irritating. Hennessey was the pothole in the road, upsetting things. And Stretch was a lure into a trap he set, and we failed to trigger. He expected us to respond to Stretch’s abduction without forethought; to rush in. We didn’t. So, he moved on to the showpiece.”
Hart just grunted. He hadn’t shot me down, so he thought I was onto something. But I wasn’t there yet. There was more, and he wouldn’t jump up and down with joy until I had it all. Not that Hart was the jump up and down sort of detective.
I tapped a finger against my thigh.
“He’s been playing a game,” I said. “He thinks he’s about to win it. Why else use your Queen unless you’re ready to checkmate the King?”
“You think Carl is his Queen?”
“I think killing Carl now when he could have continued to impersonate him and screw with me is the act of a man about to wrap things up permanently.”
“Has he tired of the game?” Hart asked.
I shook my head. “There’s always new games, but this one hasn’t gone the way he wanted. Maybe he’s tired; maybe he’s just pissed off and lashing out.”
“He doesn’t make mistakes.”
“No one’s perfect
. Least of all Weston. He’s still holding onto Carole.”
“His Achilles heel.”
“Exactly.”
“How do we use it?”
I didn’t know and when you didn’t know something…
“Retrace our steps,” I said after some thought. It’s what Carl would have done. “Eagle. Mount Eden Prison. Pitt Street. They mean something.”
Hart grunted.
Not good enough. What did they mean? What did any of this mean?
Damon broke away from the Rescue guys and headed towards us. Pierce saw him and fell into step at his side. Carl’s body was being loaded into the back of the meat wagon; a term that I decided, right then and there, I’d never use again if I could help it. Cawfield was laughing it up black humour style with Simpson and Jones. The cowboy kept flicking his eyes towards Hart and me. Concern flashed across his face and in his eyes.
I looked away from the boys and drank in Damon. Even that simple connection made all the difference. I was still numb, but I could hear my heartbeat, feel my chest rise and fall, know I was at least still alive.
“Sir,” Pierce said in greeting. “Didn’t know you’d arrived.”
“You were busy. I didn’t see the need to interrupt. Anything new to report?”
Pierce flicked concerned eyes to me and then looked back at Hart. Pierce’s concern was much more familiar than Trevor’s.
Pierce shook his head. “Did you tell Keen?”
“Yes. She deserves to be kept abreast of this.”
She was standing right there, but I didn’t cause a scene. Which in and of itself was telling.
“You OK, Lara?” Pierce asked carefully. If I’d been a man, he wouldn’t have asked.
I suddenly burst out laughing. You can’t have it both ways, Sport. Either you’re one of us, or you’re one of them. And if you’re one of them, then you can cry all you like, and it won’t bother us.
From the day I walked into CIB, I wanted to be accepted. One of the boys. Part of the club. But being a woman in a man’s world takes something from us. Doing this job takes more.
We don’t break down; we do our jobs.
How many times had I lamented that? How many times did the failure to address our emotional and mental wellbeing make me mad? Disillusioned?
And here was a coworker addressing my mental and emotional wellbeing and all I could think was if I were one of the boys he wouldn’t have asked.
“What’s so funny, Keen?” Hart demanded.
I was. I was so fucking funny; I amused myself.
“Nothing, sir,” I said. I nodded to Pierce to let him know I acknowledged his care for me and his question.
But I sure as shit didn’t answer.
I was one of the boys. But unlike my father, I couldn’t lock every single emotion away in a mental filing drawer at the end of the day. That was him. This was me. I do feel, even if I try to wrap those feelings up in ice.
To do this job, sometimes you have to.
To be a human being, you have to also feel something.
Weston, on the other hand, was a psychotic sociopath incapable of feeling, with murderous tendencies and a high opinion of himself.
“The game is changing, gentlemen,” I said, pushing off from my lean against Pierce’s car. “The trap failed to spring, so’s he’s shifted tactics. Carl’s death is meant to cripple us, or at least cripple me. With me crippled, Damon will be careless.”
I looked at Damon. He looked back at me with pride and love and things that should have been hidden from the boys’ club.
I didn’t bristle, but I did look away quickly.
My eyes met Pierce’s. He was waiting for me to continue to speak.
The respect I saw in my senior sergeant’s eyes astounded me. And then I flicked a glance at Hart. It damn near knocked me off my feet.
These men respected me despite my failings, and I had some. I had plenty.
But they listened when I spoke. And they still considered me a detective when I wasn’t. If there was any club I wanted to be a part of, it was the club that consisted of Ryan Pierce and David Hart exclusively.
“We’re being watched,” I said, having to clear my throat slightly. “He knew when Damon and I left Rachel’s. He knew where we were going, and I don’t think that was by chance.”
“He could have assumed you would come here when you were upset,” Pierce offered.
“Could he? Would you have thought I’d come here?”
He slowly shook his head.
“I was driving your car,” I pointed out to him. “I took it from the public carpark at ASI. CCTV cameras all over Remuera Road and Broadway. He knew, and all he had to do was hack into the Police’s GPS system and trace the movements of Detective Sergeant Ryan Pierce’s assigned police vehicle.”
“He saw you head towards Mellons Bay,” Pierce said, stunned.
“Correction,” I said, “he saw me drive away from Carl’s girlfriend’s house as fast as my stolen police-issued sedan could carry me and then stop when I got to Panmure to have a mini breakdown beside the Basin. And then he saw me head back to Howick when I had found my courage again.”
“Son of a bitch,” Damon muttered.
“He’s clever,” I said. “But he’s not all-knowing. Someone was watching the GPS system at Central Police and told him what he needed to know.”
“Son of a fucking bitch,” Pierce growled.
“The GPS system wasn’t hacked,” Hart said gruffly. “It was logged into by a legitimate officer.”
“Son of a…” both Pierce and Damon started and then abruptly stopped when they realised what they were doing; in unison no less.
I smiled. It wasn’t pretty.
“We’ve just caught our traitor,” I announced.
Chapter Twenty-Two
“Pay Attention, Sport. Don't Fucking Fall Asleep On The Job.”
I was still suspended from CIB, and we had to assume that the traitor was watching, so I didn’t accompany Pierce and Hart back to the Bureau. I wasn’t too put-out about that. They’d look into the logs for the GPS system and find their answer. It was hardly impressive detective work.
I, on the other hand, had people to see.
Damon parked his HEAT ute down Mercury Lane; we’d let Pierce have his vehicle back; somehow it felt tainted. Damon’s company car was also tracked via GPS back at Fire Comms, but I didn’t think Weston would have a foothold there. It didn’t matter; Damon’s truck stood out all on its own what with its distinctive red and gold paintwork, not to mention the flame decals and helpful Get Firewise safety tips.
He beeped the locks closed, and we started up the incline to Karangahape Road and the nightlife that was well underway there. The scents of the city invaded my nose; petrol, tobacco, alcohol, concrete. So familiar and yet I still felt removed from the setting.
Carl was dead.
How many times had I thought that before he’d come back to life?
Too many.
I couldn’t stop seeing his broken body at the bottom of the cliffs and superimposing that image with the gunshot that sent him flying but didn’t kill him at the beginning of all of this. We’d come full circle. The mystery of Carl Forrester’s not-death-death was over. I could file it away and move on.
It should have been easy. Carl had been a problem I had been unable to fix. He’d killed people for me and more than once I’d let him go when I should have arrested him. Now, I didn’t need to hunt my former partner down like a common criminal. I just needed to find a way to mourn him properly.
Carl was dead.
We stepped into the throng of partying people up on the main nightclub drag in Auckland City and made our way towards Eagle’s alley. Drunks stumbled out of strip clubs; someone was chugging from a paper bag covered bottle of vodka. It was clichéd, and normally I would have had them on about it. But I was without a badge and without direction, so I walked past and pretended I didn’t smell the weed wafting out of their pocket.
&nb
sp; Damon’s eyes tracked me, the people around us, and the entrance to Eagle’s alley.
I walked through it all as if I was a zombie.
I had to shake myself out of this. Carl would have been appalled at my behaviour. Hennessey would have been worried. I was better than this, I knew it.
But Carl was dead, and Weston was still out there.
I stopped and sucked in a breath of air to steady myself and then looked around at all the buildings. Anyone could have been watching us, but I was looking for something in particular: trench coat and fedora hat.
I knew Carl was dead. Weston knew Carl was dead. But wouldn’t seeing that again so soon after finding Carl’s body send me into a tailspin?
Not happening, I told myself, and straightened my spine, sucking in a deep cleansing breath.
“Everything all right?” Damon asked. He wasn’t asking about Carl, and that made it easier to nod my head.
I could lie to myself but could I lie to Damon?
Not anymore.
I met his deep brown eyes and offered a small smile.
“Lara,” he said softly.
The world moved around us, two rocks in the middle of a raging river. He stepped closer. I stood still. When this was over, we’d take a trip down to Cardrona. We’d ski and drink hot toddies beside a blazing fire while naked. We’d make love slowly, touching every part of each other. We’d forget about Carl and Carole and remember what it was to be just Lara and Damon.
When this was over, we could finally live our lives.
“Do you ever wonder,” I said, only loud enough for him to hear, “whether we can do normal?”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m a CIB detective. You’re a HEAT investigator. We’re not normal people.”
“I don’t see it like that, love. I see a woman who does her very best to help others. To put right the wrongs in this world. And then when the door to our home closes behind her at night, I see the woman I love. It’s that simple. We are not the sum of our parts nor are we the segmented parts of the whole. We are what we need to be when we need to be it.”
I shook my head.
A Lick Of Heat: H.E.A.T. Book Four Page 19
