Justice

by Dustin Stevens

  She was in an unknown place and short on time.

  Shit happens.

  Staring straight ahead, she walked forward, her boots echoing out against the floor. Keeping her pace even, she heard the door swing closed behind her, felt a low rumble emanate from somewhere deep within Blue.

  As they reached the end of the hallway, further lights sprang on. Set to a motion detector, they angled down and away from Rye, the ones behind her blinking out, never displaying more than ten feet at a time.

  Pulling in slow breaths, Rye began to descend, Blue doing his best to slow his pace, to stay close beside her.

  Once more, the same sequence played out, finally depositing them deep in a basement, the ground changing to concrete underfoot. In the air were the smells of diesel fuel and cigarette smoke, a combination that didn’t exactly insight confidence.

  “We hear you’re in the market for some guns,” a voice said.

  Without the veil of a digitizer, it was clear the speaker was female, a bit older.

  “I am,” Rye replied, not bothering to point out the obvious, that that was the reason she had posted the ad.

  “Reason?”

  Drawing in a deep breath through her nostrils, letting the movement roll her head back slightly, Rye said, “I have some business to tend to.”

  To that, there was a small chuckle, a couple of other voices becoming audible.

  “The kind of business we might be reading about in the papers tomorrow?”

  Rye considered a smart retort, asking if they even knew how to read, before thinking better of it.

  Even with Blue, the odds were still overwhelmingly one-sided.

  “Nothing that won’t be deserved, I can promise you that.”

  To that, there were more chuckles, followed by a loud click, bright lights flooding into the space.

  Pinching her eyes just slightly at the sudden glow, Rye looked on to see the basement was stretched more than fifty feet on either end. In the center of it stood the woman she presumed had been speaking, dressed in black, her long hair just beginning to be streaked with gray.

  Behind her, a half-dozen men and women of various ages lounged in chairs and against the wall, almost all of them trying entirely too hard to look tough, all wearing the same style clothing as their leader.

  Those things, Rye processed and dismissed in a matter of moments, her focus instead going to the back wall, to the cache of weapons lined out neatly on metal racks stretched from one end to the other.

  Allowing one corner of her mouth to curl into a smile, she said, “Looks like I’ve come to the right place.”

  Across from her, the woman matched the expression. “Welcome.”

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  It was the second summons Reed Mattox had gotten from Captain Grimes in three days, this one coming at a much later hour, the message delivered even more grim. Made just minutes after Reed left Deke’s house, it pulled him back from Hilliard toward the 8th Precinct, no part of him wanting to take the time to make the trip or have a second conversation.

  Not that there was any way around it. With the time now just past ten, the nightly news would have already started, meaning that the murder was likely the lead during both cycles for the day.

  As such, it had to mean that some folks in town were getting nervous, or angry, or both, a combination Reed knew could only lead to a handful of outcomes.

  All of them bad.

  Easing into the visitor’s parking spaces out front, Reed and Billie piled out and entered the front door to find the precinct deserted.

  Upstairs, a light burned brightly from the dispatch desk, Reed knowing that Jackie was up there manning the phones and working her way through the latest celebrity magazines, desperate for any morsel of gossip that could be shared about the case.

  As good a reason as any to stay far from his desk parked on the opposite end of the floor from her.

  The only other illumination was a faint glow from behind the frosted glass bisecting the first floor, the light an ominous beacon pulling Reed forward, even as he knew that nothing good lay there for them.

  Passing through, he held the door for Billie before stopping just outside the captain’s office. Flicking the back of his knuckles against the frame, he stepped inside, not waiting for acknowledgment.

  Seated behind his desk, his face drawn into a frown, his fingers laced over his stomach, Grimes offered none, simply watching as Reed and Billie entered.

  “Down,” Reed said, Billie folding herself to the floor by his side and looking up expectantly.

  Once she was situated, Reed lowered himself into the seat beside him, settling back against it and matching Grimes’s pose, minus the scowl.

  “Thanks for coming back in,” Grimes said, his low tone making the chafed bits of his voice sound even more pronounced.

  For a moment Reed considered pointing out it didn’t seem he had a choice before going with, “We were up visiting Deke, that’s what took us so long to get back.”

  Choosing not to acknowledge the apology or to ask what they were doing at Deke’s, Grimes instead shifted his gaze out over the parking lot, most of it cloaked in darkness, only a few patches of bare asphalt lined out into spaces visible.

  “What do you think of Sydney Rye?” he asked.

  Feeling his eyebrows rise on his forehead, Reed made no effort to hide his surprise. Taking a moment to process, he sat in silence, watching as Grimes turned to look at him.

  The same thought had been sitting in his mind since the phone number she provided was proven solid, though the captain’s earlier agreement to work with her had made it seem he was onboard with her involvement.

  Now, it appeared that things weren’t quite so clear.

  “Is that what this is about?” Reed asked. “The brass heard we agreed to work with her and brought down heat on us for it?”

  Blinking heavily twice, Grimes let out a long sigh, the sound much closer to a groan.

  “No,” he eventually said, “they don’t know a damn thing about her. What they know is the media is having a field day with this thing, and if they’re not careful they’re going to start a damn class war over Lynda Cantwell’s death.”

  For the second time in as many minutes, Reed was unable to hide the surprise he felt, the statement far from what he’d expected.

  “A class war?” he asked, a crease forming as he pulled his brows tight, trying to make sense of things. “Based on what?”

  “Based on, apparently they’re framing this as a good and decent civil servant trying to go back to the community she served, and they killed her for it.”

  Pausing, waiting for some sign from Grimes, some signal that there was more to it, that he was exaggerating, that anything else was possible besides just what he had been told, Reed sat and stared.

  Soon realized there was nothing more coming.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me,” he whispered. “Our investigation has only just started.”

  “I know.”

  “And not that long ago, they were crucifying Lynda Cantwell, making her out to be the Antichrist for what she’d done.”

  “I know that, too,” Grimes replied.

  Opening his mouth to respond, a third example lined up and ready to go, Reed pulled up short. Jerking his head out toward the parking lot, he pressed his lips shut, shaking his head slightly.

  More than once he’d wished he didn’t work in an era with complete access, regardless of place or time of day. A world where people weren’t constantly staring at a phone or a tablet or a television or some other electronic device, meaning that providers weren’t constantly scrambling to drum up the next thing that would attract viewers.

  Someplace where he would be given more than forty-five hours to seek out the perpetrators of a multiple homicide.

  “So they think we should already have this thing closed?” Reed asked, feeling his acrimony rise within.

  “They being the media or the brass?” Grimes asked.
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  “Yes,” Reed replied, pausing, realizing how his response might have sounded, before adding, “both.”

  If he noticed it, Grimes did nothing to let it show.

  “The media hasn’t much mentioned us, beyond saying we have no leads or suspects at this time,” Grimes said.

  “A statement they made without so much as a call to see where we actually stood,” Reed inserted.

  “Right,” Grimes agreed. “The brass right now is trying to spin this as a positive. With the news just breaking, they say if we can nab someone soon, it will make it look like we wrapped this thing in record time.”

  With his attention still aimed out the door, Reed pressed his palms into his thighs, shoving himself to a standing position. Shaking his head, he walked to the window, feeling the cool air seeping in through the thin crack at the bottom.

  Though it felt good, it did nothing to ease his spiking body temperature.

  “Didn’t the Chief sit in this office not a year ago and try to do this very same thing?” Reed asked, shifting his gaze to the reflection of Grimes in the window beside him.

  “She did,” Grimes replied.

  “And didn’t it not go over very well?”

  “It did not,” Grimes agreed, “though in her mind, the case was still solved shortly thereafter.”

  Snorting slightly, Reed saw both nostrils peel back, rocking his head up a quarter-inch.

  “So if the ends justify the means...”

  “Welcome to the Columbus Police Department,” Grimes replied.

  Again, Reed couldn’t help but snort, pushing a sharp puff of air out through his nostrils. Staring at his own reflection a moment, he again shifted focus, this time to Billie, her body raised up onto her front paws, her gaze intense as it matched his.

  “So again,” Grimes said, “what do you think of Sydney Rye?”

  This time, Reed wasn’t so quick to respond, letting the question hang in the air. Shifting his focus from the reflection to the world outside, he saw the barren parking lot, an accurate depiction of how alone he felt at the moment, the people in the room the only ones that could help.

  Aside from possibly the woman in question.

  “The more I think on it, the more I agree she’s right that Lynda Cantwell wasn’t the intended goal,” he eventually said. “Nothing more than a world class smokescreen.”

  Even just ten hours earlier, he would never have thought those words would come from his mouth.

  Now, even with just limited time spent digging into the fracas that followed her dismissal from office, it made too much sense to ignore.

  The kind of people that got caught up in those kinds of affairs weren’t the ones to track people down and commit murder months later.

  “Agreed,” Grimes said, offering nothing more but a neutral face, an unspoken acknowledgment that that was the reason he had opted to work with her in the first place.

  “How much time do we have?”

  “Before things get really ugly?” Grimes asked. “I’d say tomorrow evening. There’s no way the media’s letting go of this anytime soon, so we’ve got to have something to feed them by then.”

  Chapter Forty

  Only a couple of hours had passed since Reed dropped Sydney Rye off, even less time having elapsed since he left Deke’s. Too early to call on either one, to see what they had going, which direction they were pursuing, he was left with precious few options.

  Looking into Vinson Gerard was already being taken care of, and something that wouldn’t do Reed much good. Hailing from England, there wouldn’t be anything in the CPD database, nor likely even the NCIC or ViCAP – the national databases maintained by the FBI for domestic crimes and criminals.

  If the man even existed – a fact still in question, as far as Reed was concerned – any information to be had on him would be squirreled away with the CIA or Interpol.

  And it wasn’t like he had a great many contacts at either place he could readily call up.

  With that angle gone, he went back to the only logical place he could, the place he had attempted to return to six hours earlier, before his encounter with Rye had thrown his day off course.

  The site of the initial incident.

  For the first time since the shooting, there were no cars sitting out in front of the place, allowing Reed to pull up just shy of the front walk. Remaining seated for a moment, he stared through the windshield at the front façade, wondering how different the place must have looked even a couple of days before.

  A wooden sign announced the place to be the Franklinton Luxury Suites, two out of the three words being questionable at best. In green lettering against a tan backdrop, a string of yellow police tape was strung through the legs, used to help partition off a wide trapezoid of ground in front of the door.

  On the outside of the line, the grass had been smashed into the earth by curious onlookers and gawking media, the interior the sole chunk of green to be seen.

  Beyond it, only the front stoop light was visible from the outside, every window blacked out.

  Which Reed expected, imagining that whatever other tenants called the place home weren’t likely to return even after the scene was released, the likelihood of replacing them anytime soon being even lower.

  Gruesome murders tended to have such an effect on property values.

  Taking up a sealed plastic evidence bag and the short lead from the passenger seat, Reed slid out, closing the door quickly. Going straight to the back, he clipped Billie to the lead before stepping aside, letting her spill out beside him.

  The night air was cooler than a couple days before, the spring continuing its cycle of constant fluctuation. Feeling it against his skin, Reed realized for the first time that a thin film of sweat had developed on his features.

  A state that Billie seemed to pick up on as well, her torso tight against his leg, muscle striation shifting with each step.

  Reaching out, Reed lifted the police tape up over his head. Digging into his back pocket, he extracted a pocket knife. Folding open the blade, he jabbed it into the corner of the door frame, running it the length of the perimeter, cleaving a clean slice through the paper tape sealing the crime scene shut.

  An act that might rankle a few people later on, but Reed felt reasonably certain Grimes would be willing to overlook given everything they were under.

  With a small push, the front door released into the apartment, emitting a twisted mix of aromas as it swung inward, the hinges creaking like something out of a bad horror movie. With only a single light present on the landing above them, the area was framed in yellowish light, long shadows stretched across everything.

  Beside him, Reed could feel Billie tense, her nose twitching slightly as she profiled the cocktail of scents in the air.

  Precisely the reason he had been sure to bring her along.

  Still on the passenger seat in his car was the crime scene workup from Earl and his team, a detailed report that had given him a great deal of information and nothing at all at the same time.

  There was blood spatter galore, more than thirty different sets of fingerprints at the scene, but nothing that so much as hinted at a shooter.

  No footprints in the blood, no outlines where someone might have stood, not even a smear to indicate anybody had been through.

  Given the angle and the spatter profile, it looked like the shooter was either very short or standing a step or two below the landing.

  It also appeared that Hartong had died first.

  Otherwise, there was precious little that would help Reed in the slightest, which was why he now had Billie by his side. Without a prior sample of the scent of Vinson Gerard, or Clarence Koob, or any of the other people Rye had mentioned, there was no way he could send Billie off to look for signs of their passing.

  But what he did have could prove just as valuable.

  Bending at the waist, Reed unclipped the lead from Billie’s neck. Tucking it into the back pocket of his jeans, he remained pitched f
orward at the waist, bringing forward the evidence bag and pulling open the top seam.

  There, inside, was the paper cup Sydney Rye had used at the precinct an hour earlier, a few droplets of water having run and collected in the bottom of the bag.

  Without question, Billie thrust her nose inside, most of her snout disappearing from view before she retreated, letting him know that she had the aroma in her nostrils, was ready to go to work.

  “Search.”

  Chapter Forty-One

  Clarence Koob was standing on the front steps of Vinson Gerard’s home, staring down at the tracking device on his phone, when the call came in. Starting with a vibration, the image onscreen soon shifted, pushing aside the map of Columbus and the pulsating red dot, replacing it instead with a bland silhouette of a man with a string of digits beneath it.

  Recognizing the local area code as belonging to the burner phone given to Hirsch, he thumbed it on, pressing the phone to his ear.

  “Yeah?”

  “I think I’ve got her.”

  For a moment, Koob felt confusion pass over his face, uncertain what Hirsch was alluding to.

  “You’ve got her?”

  “Yeah,” Hirsch replied, a hint of annoyance creeping into his voice.

  So preoccupied with the next steps, with his meeting with Gerard, it took a moment for Koob to process what he was being told, to push things into position in his mind.

  “Where are you?” he asked.

  Koob knew that Hirsch also had the tracking software on his phone, would be able to see where Rye’s vehicle was at all times.

  He also knew that he had told Hirsch to fall back until after he met with Gerard.

  “At the lookout,” Hirsch said. “I came back here to eat and sack out, just happened to look over and see her enter the building.”

  Pulling the phone away from his cheek, Koob slid the image of the tracking device back up to the fore, staring down at it. Just as it had been a moment before, the dot in the center was on the move, in the area but nowhere near the apartment complex.

  “You’re sure?” Koob asked.

  Seeming to sense what was being alluded to, Hirsch said, “Hey, I see the thing, too. I don’t know if she found it and ditched it or what. All I know is, I just saw someone with a gigantic dog walk through the front door of the apartment complex.”