The Wolf, page 33
“Kane is not mine,” Lucan corrected.
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
In retrospect, José had cursed himself.
That was what he decided as he finally left the homicide division’s bullpen and hung a louie to head down the empty corridor to the chief’s suite. When he got to the outer door, he wasn’t surprised to see that the window to the waiting area was dark, but he had permission to go in so he tried the door handle.
Fortunately, things had been left unlocked and the motion-activated lights came on as soon as he put a foot inside. No doubt Stan had told Willie to leave things open because he’d been expecting the updated report on Leon Roberts sometime after she left for the day.
José certainly hadn’t thought it’d be this late before he’d finished his typing—he glanced at his watch and cursed. Nine frickin’ p.m. He’d had to call home twice. Once at six, when a tip on a cold case had come in, and then again at 7:30, to let his wife know he needed to stay and do write-ups.
There had been a great deal to add to the report, and not just in terms of the autopsy or ballistics. Lot of people were calling with leads on Roberts’s death. José had fielded them all afternoon long. He didn’t think anything was going to materialize from any of it, but you never knew. So he and Trey had returned thirty-three calls, all of which he’d logged manually into the system from notes he and the kid had scribbled.
Not that Trey was a kid.
And now he was here, giving Willie’s empty desk a wave in the darkness and going over to the glass door to Stan’s crib, feeling like he was a hundred years old.
The wave thing was pure habit, really. Every time he came in here, he walked by Willie’s desk, waved at her, and went to open Stan’s door. She never stopped him, no matter what Stan was doing—even if there was a meeting going on or the chief was on the phone.
Willie always said he was the only one allowed to interrupt like that.
So there was no hesitation as he passed by. Like the trained seal he was, he followed his greeting routine and went directly to Stan’s inner door. It wasn’t until he started to turn the knob that his tired brain woke up and pointed out that this entry was absolutely going to be inaccessible after hours—
Things opened no problem.
“Of course you don’t lock your door,” José murmured as he entered and overhead lights came on automatically.
Stan was such a product of the eighties, when battening down the hatches the second the sun went behind the horizon for the night had not been a thing. Then again, this was the police station, so everyone was getting checked in as they came into the building itself. And there were cameras everywhere.
Well, out in the hall there were cameras. Not in here.
“Whatever.”
José walked across the red-and-blue carpet and then stood over the piles of paperwork on the desk. Man, compliance would have a fit if they knew all this… departmental shit, whatever it was… was unsecured. But that was the way Stan was. Too trusting. Then again, who could find anything in this—
The sound was so quiet that, had José not been standing still as he contemplated where he should put the report in the midst of the mess, he never would have heard it.
And if it had not repeated, he wouldn’t have bothered to do anything about it.
But the soft noise was a phone. A cell phone on vibrate.
Setting the report down on the corner of the desk, not that there was any rhyme or reason to that particular location, he followed the brrrrrr’ing, brrrrrrr’ing to the door to Stan’s private crapper.
“You forgot your phone, Stan,” he said as he pushed the door wider.
The sound was still muffled even as he leaned into the sacred space—and then, before he could zero in on the where, things went silent. He glanced around the counter. Nothing there, out in the open. And on the back of the toilet—only golf magazines. And he wasn’t going into the guy’s drawers—
The sound started up again.
José bent down. Bent farther. The phone was vibrating in the lowest of the cabinet’s drawers.
He pulled the handle slowly, sliding things open. But for godsakes, he’d known the guy his entire professional life. What was he going to find other than toilet rolls—
There was a button-down shirt wadded up in the drawer. Blue-and-white-checked. No doubt another mustard casualty.
Reaching in, he pulled the cotton folds out.
Underneath them was a black nylon wallet… and a cell phone. And as the caller hung up again, or things went to voice mail, the vibration stopped.
With a sense of total disbelief, José took a pair of nitrile gloves out of his pocket. Yet after so many years in his job, he’d learned to trust his gut.
And his gut was telling him that what he was about to find was going to break his fucking heart.
Leaving the phone alone, he picked up the wallet, tore open the Velcro, and—
Officer Leon Roberts’s face stared up at him from a driver’s license that had been slotted into the see-through half of the two flaps. And across on the other side…
… was the Caldwell Police badge the man had earned and done proud.
* * *
“You know, you’re quiet. Even for you, you’re really frickin’ quiet.”
As V stopped under the fire escape and looked up, he wondered, if he stayed silent, whether Rhage would move on to another topic. Like, food. Or… food.
Or maybe… food?
You know, just to mix it up.
“Hello?” Hollywood prompted.
“I’m focused on what we’re doing here.”
Rhage stepped in front, and given his size, it was like the earth had coughed up a big, blond, beautiful mountain. With a piehole that, with no pie around, was flapping in the wind.
“And we’ve walked aimlessly for how many blocks now?” the brother said. “What’s wrong.”
“Fine, you want to chat? Answer me this. How does getting in our three hundred and fifty thousand steps tonight correspond to conversation—”
“V, what’s up your ass.” Rhage crossed his arms over the black daggers that were holstered, handles down, to his massive chest. Then he winced. “Actually, how ’bout you just tell me what’s on your mind. I think I better leave your ass and what may, or may not, be inside of it out of this. No offense.”
V leaned back against the club. As the music was really bumping, the vibrations coming through the cement walls were like a massage chair.
“What did you dream about, Vishous,” came the question he dreaded.
He shook his head. “You don’t know me.”
“The hell I don’t. What did you see.” When there was no reply, the brother said, “Who died.”
“Who said anybody died?”
“You don’t get visions about happy shit, V. Like never once have you told me you’ve had a dream about a bag of Lay’s Sour Cream and Onion. Or Doritos. Hell, some Snyder’s of Hanover pretzel nubs would do nicely.”
“Nubs?”
“Yeah, with peanut butter in them. They’re awesome.” Rhage shrugged. “I mean, I’m assuming you’d mention it if you’ve seen any of these snack foods in my future. Like, have you?”
“Let me get this straight. You’re putting nubs in your mouth, but you’re worried what’s doing with my ass?”
“Don’t hate the pretzel. And let’s get back to the issue at hand.”
“Right. We’re trying to find the missing female officer posing as a dealer, and this is where we saw her last.”
“What the hell did you see over day.”
Okay, this was the problem with Rhage. The brother was a tenacious motherfucker—and he actually had spot-on instincts.
Oh, and then there was the ass-slapping fact that V kinda wanted to talk about it. Hey, Rhage’s shellan was a therapist, right? That was halfway to goal.
Not that he was looking to get his head shrunk.
The words came out of his mouth fast: “I dreamt that José de la Cruz’s head got blown off his shoulders.”
The brother rubbed his eyes like they stung. “Butch’s former partner.”
“No, another human with that name in Caldwell—” V put his hand out. “Sorry. I’m being bitchy.”
“It’s okay. You must be freaking out. I mean, what do you do with information like that?”
“And no timeline. None. It could be ten years from now. Or tomorrow night.”
“Or tonight—”
“Holy shit,” V cut in. “It’s that guy.”
Rhage wheeled around and squinted through the darkness. “You’re right. From that thing.”
V stepped around Hollywood and shitkickered his way across the street, falling into the wake of a human male who was six feet tall, but only about a hundred twenty pounds. The addict was in the same clothes as he’d been in the other night, when that undercover cop had walked him to the Holy Mother of Salvatory Stuff a couple streets over.
“My guy,” V called out. “Hey.”
The man glanced over his shoulder, got one look at the two pieces of trained killer on his tail—and took off at a surprisingly fast bolt. Then again, maybe he’d had training in these kinds of sprints.
V just loped along in his trail, knowing damn well that that body didn’t have a marathon in it. Sure enough, three blocks down toward the river, there was a sudden drop in forward motion. And as the classic respiration triangle manifested—the guy bracing his arms on his knees and making plenty of torso space for his labored breathing—Vishous and Rhage pulled up alongside.
Flash Gordon looked up from his panting. “I dint—I—dint—do—it—”
“Take your time,” V muttered. “We’ll wait.”
Palming his tin of hand-rolleds, he popped the top and put the offering in the human’s face—and like the cigs were the hookup to a ventilator, or at the very least an oxygen mask, the guy reached for the nicotine with quaking fingers.
“Here, I’ll get you one.” V did the job with his gloved hand. “Only tobacco. But it’s Turkish. The best.”
“Th-th-thanks, man.”
The cigarette went in between thin lips, and then the man kicked his head forward for the Bic that was offered. As he puffed up, the habit kicked in and calmed the hyperventilating.
Three inhales later, and the guy said, “I dint do it. Really.”
“I’m not accusing you of anything.” V thumbed over his shoulder. “Neither is my brother.”
Eyes that would have been considered rheumatic in an eighty-year-old went back and forth.
“We’re not related by blood,” V explained.
“Oh.”
“Listen, I know you’ve got to be somewhere.” V motioned around in a circle, indicating all of downtown. “So I’m not going to waste your time.”
“Okay.”
“I want to know about a woman you were with the other night. She’s about this high.” V put his hand out flat at about five feet, nine inches tall. “Short dark hair. Had a leather jacket on. She helped you over to that dry-out tank—”
“Resource facility,” Rhage cut in with a glare. “And hey, pound me for getting some help. That takes courage. Good luck with your recovery.”
As Hollywood put out his toaster-oven-sized fist, the human put his open palm over the knuckles in confusion. And then when Rhage clapped the man on the shoulder, V had to catch Flash Gordon before he eggshelled onto the sidewalk.
“You know the woman I’m talking about?” V prompted. “You need her description again?”
“I, ah… yeah, I know her.”
“Great. Do you know where we can find her? You got a cell phone number or an address for her?”
The man fell quiet, and paid a whole lot of attention to the end of the hand-rolled. Then he smoked some more. Meanwhile, the city kept going. A couple of cars—a sedan and a truck—went by, and then some twenty-ish men in tight jeans and narrow-shouldered jackets slicked across the intersection.
“Hello?” Rhage said.
V reached into his back pocket. “Here. This hundy’ll help. I get how times are tough.”
The human’s eyes flared as he focused on the folded bill.
“Just answer any of my questions and it’s yours.” V held the Benji between his fore- and middle fingers. “Telephone number. Address. Regular place of business. Anything you know would be a big help.”
The human cleared his throat. Then he dropped the hand-rolled and stamped it out with a Converse All Star that had seen better days. And nights.
Flash Gordon shook his head. “Nah. I ain’t telling you nothing. Rio, she’s good to me. She cares about me. She makes me take care of myself better even when I don’t feel like it. I can’t tell you nothing. Sorry.”
The human straightened from his sagging posture, and even though he was still shaking, like he expected to have a gun put to his head at any second, his lips were shut and staying that way.
“Okay.” V nodded. “I can respect that.”
To a point.
By passing the human’s nobility and free will, he entered the man’s mind, and took a brief stroll around. The guy was currently sober, but that was not going to last—and he was feeling bad about being determined to score, like he was letting that undercover buddy of his down. In the end, though, the man didn’t know anything specific about the woman, other than her street name, Rio, and the fact that she was supposedly high up in an organization run by a guy named Mozart.
Pulling out, V didn’t bother patching anything up. It was better not to mess with the man much, because God knew that brain was damaged enough from the drug use.
In response, the addict winced like he had a headache, and those eyes went back and forth again between V and Rhage, all other-shoe-drop, bracing for some kind of retribution.
Vishous tucked the hundy in the man’s pocket. “Keep the money. Go get a hot meal, it’s going to be a long night.”
Flash Gordon stammered some thanks, and then he shambled away, looking over his shoulder a couple of times before he disappeared around a corner into an alley.
“You’ve got a good heart under those daggers, Vishous.”
“Whatever,” V muttered as he started walking again. “Let’s keep looking. At least we have a street first name now. But if she’s undercover and she’s missing? She’s going to wake up dead.”
Rhage caught up with him easily enough. “Hey, that’s what Butch says all the time. It’s a funny saying.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“It doesn’t make a lot of sense.”
“Yeah, I know.”
Christ on a crutch, V thought to himself. Finding that prison camp was a real pain in his ass on so many levels, true?
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
Hello?”
When Rio’s third call to her direct report, Leon Roberts, was finally answered, she had a split second of relief. Except then the man who’d picked up repeated the greeting—and she knew it wasn’t Leon.
“Hello…?”
Without conscious thought, she stomped on the brakes. The SUV’s knobby tires immediately grabbed on to the pavement and brought her to a screeching halt in the middle of the narrow strip of country asphalt. As a surge of fear gripped her, her peripheral vision sharpened, the pine trees on either shoulder coming into almost painful clarity in the glow of the headlights.
Roberts was never without his cell phone. And she’d called him so many times over the last three years, she’d know his number and his voice anywhere.
“I can hear you breathing,” the man on the other end said. “I know you haven’t hung up.”
No, she hadn’t. But where was Roberts?
“And I think… I think I know who this is. Even though this number is not in Leon’s contacts.”
Rio covered her mouth with her free hand. Oh, God, she knew this voice. She knew who this was.
Tears speared into her eyes and she blinked quick.
“If I’m right about who you are,” the man continued, “you need to listen carefully. Do not… don’t come home. Wherever you are, if it’s safe, stay put. It’s not good here… at home. Do you understand what I’m telling you? I think I know who you are, and that means you know what I’m telling you and why I’m telling it to you like this.”
Drawing the cell phone away from her ear, Rio stared at the time count as the seconds moved quickly.
Then she snapped the thing back in place. Lowering her voice to disguise it, she said, “Detective José de la Cruz.”
There was a brief pause. “Yes. And I think you can guess why I’m answering this phone.”
All at once, she was back downtown, racing to meet Luke for the first time, accepting a call on her own cell phone. Clear as a bell, she heard Roberts’s voice in her ear, telling her her identity had been compromised. And there had been something else when she’d been busy talking over him. He’d told her he’d sent her something. Hadn’t he?
What had he sent her?
Suddenly, there was no air in the SUV so she put down the window a little, the cold night coming in.
“Home,” she said in that falsely low tone. “Go home.”
Then she quickly ended the call.
Maybe he’d figured out what she was trying to tell him. Maybe he wouldn’t.
But either way, Detective José de la Cruz of homicide had just saved her life.
Someone on the inside was after her. And had killed her colleague and friend because of it.
Holding the cell phone to her chest, she tried to breathe, tried to think. And sometime thereafter, she realized she had come to a stop next to a green-and-white highway sign.
Walters 10
Upstate. She was seriously upstate.
The idea that she couldn’t go back to her apartment made her feel as if she were in a foreign country and did not speak the language. Then again, she had no idea where she could go, who she could talk to. What was safe. What she should do—
