The Wolf, page 37
With a nod, Luke went around the block a second time—and then rolled up in front of the guy.
“Wait!” Rio said. “He’s going to see me. Drop me off—”
“It’s not going to matter. Trust me.”
As she ducked anyway, Luke cranked his window down. “Hey, you got something for sale?”
Rio turned her face away, as if she were inspecting the car door.
“What you looking for,” was the gruff response.
“Actually, I changed my mind. I think I’ll just take what I need.”
When there was only silence, Rio glanced over. And then stared. There was no contact between the two, no weapons out on Luke’s part… and yet Chins was standing there as docilely as a trained seal.
“Thanks,” Luke muttered. “And you’re not selling to anyone under eighteen anymore. You’re going to start carding ’em, motherfucker.”
Chins stepped back from the car as Luke hit the gas, and Rio twisted all the way around to look out the rear windshield. The dealer remained standing at the curb, his hands up to his head like it hurt, confusion on his face as he glanced around like he couldn’t figure out what had happened.
“I don’t know Caldwell,” Luke said. “But he’s been to a house. A big-ass house with white columns in front. There’s a gate and a stone wall. Trees in the lawn. I don’t have an address, though, or a number or anything. I also don’t have a real name. And there’s no phone number. He never calls, is only called.”
“You’re sure it’s in Caldwell?”
“Yeah, it’s somewhere in Caldwell.” Luke looked over. “He wasn’t going there to report on business. They’re fucking. He’s in love with this guy, Mozart, and it seems like the man feels the same.”
“So, wait… what is the house like again?”
“All I can tell you is that it’s got columns across the front. Six fluted columns with curlicue tops. And a pair of carved dogs.”
Well, Rio thought, at least that narrowed the neighborhoods down. There was only one in Caldwell that would have a house like that.
“Take a left up here,” she ordered. “I have an idea of where to go.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE
Come on, José, you think I’m a mind reader? I can barely remember what I had for breakfast. Getting in your brain is way over my pay grade, even as chief. Hey, can you kill the lights. Christ.”
“I know you’re aware of what I’ve found.”
“Religion?” Stan put his mail on the trunk of his car and started for the inner pockets of his jacket. “Oh, wait, you already were a churchgoer—”
“Keep your hands where I can see ’em.” José upped the volume on his voice. “Stan, don’t make me—”
It happened so fast, and in any other suspect confrontation, José would have handled things differently. But the past and present had milkshaked on him, the presence of a suspect looking like his old friend, sounding like the guy, too, making him sloppy and slow: Just as José drew his service weapon, Stan unholstered his and pointed it at José’s heart.
“What the fuck is wrong with you,” the chief said. “What the fuck is going on with you.”
They were squared off, nothing between them but thin air, two muzzles pointed at two mortal torsos.
“Why did you do it, Stan. You killed Leon Roberts, and you sacrificed Hernandez-Guerrero to Mozart. Was it for the money? Was that the end game?”
There barely was a pause, as if Stan had been holding on to his truth for too long.
“Oh, easy for you to say. You got a wife and a family. You got holidays and weekends, and people waiting for you to come home. You got hot meals made for you, the ones you like, the way you like, and a warm body sleeping next to you. Fuck off with the judgment, okay? I come home every night to an empty fucking house—”
“Stan, you gotta put that gun down—”
“—and you know what I think about?” The man jutted forward on his hips, his tie hanging loose. “You know that pension I got? Half of it went to Ruby. The money I spent twenty-five years earning by showing up to work and kissing ass until I got promoted high enough to get kicked in the ass by the mayor’s office is now paying the mortgage of the house she lives in with her new fucking husband.”
“Stan, listen to me. I know you’re not going to shoot me, and I don’t want to shoot you. Let’s just talk.”
“We are talking, José,” the guy snapped. “You know what the best thing about under-the-table money is? It’s mine. I don’t have to report it to the fucking government and I don’t have to give it to my ex-wife. Thank fuck she couldn’t have children or I’d be up to my ass in college bills right now, just like you are—”
“I can help you.” José raised his voice. “Listen to me, with what you know about Mozart, you can get a deal. He’s the big fish, not you.”
“You think I don’t know that? Have you seen his house? I keep telling him that only the president has a bigger, fancier facade.” The guy spat out a curse. “And besides, I don’t need much. I just want enough to get me out, my golden parachute that I’m owed.”
“I know you didn’t mean to hurt Roberts—”
“Fuck Roberts. He’s just another goddamn weight around my neck. You all are. Arguing about money, equipment, days off, time off, pensions—it’s never enough. Nothing I ever fucking did was enough for any of you, and you know what, I don’t have to give a shit anymore. I’ve taken care of myself, and I’m not sorry, and now I’m going to take care of you—”
There was just an instant, a split second, of dropped attention, that gun listing off to the side as Stan continued to rant.
Slow motion. It always happened in slow motion, didn’t it.
Knowing that he was seconds from his own death, José pulled his trigger, and the bullet discharged—and given that he was just a few feet away from point-blank range, there was no question of that slug not hitting home in the center of Stan’s chest.
The impact blew the man back off his feet, the headlights’ harsh illumination making him look like he was in a Marvel comic strip, a super-villain in a cheap suit and a bad tie taking justice right through the heart.
With a sickening thud, he bounced off the trunk of his own car and slumped to the pavement, his body ending the roll on its back, facing the heavens above.
José stayed where he was, the smoke from the barrel of his gun rising up, the smell of the powder in his nose. Then he got his phone out of the pocket that he’d have put a handkerchief in if he’d been that kind of a man.
Before he called for help and backup, he turned off the microphone recording he’d triggered on the unit just as he’d entered the driveway. After that, he stared at Stan for a moment and then slowly lowered his weapon. The man’s mouth was working, so José went over and knelt down.
Last words, and all that. Guess he was hoping for an oops-I-take-it-all-back.
It was just autonomic function, however, muscles in the neck and face spasming randomly. The hit had been right in the center of the chest. José couldn’t have done a better job if he’d been a surgeon with a scalpel.
Looking down at his phone, he had to put a numeric password in because he hated the new kind with facial recognition. When it became clear that his hand was shaking too badly to hit the keys in the right sequence, he decided to just make an emergency call to the police station.
’Cuz this sure as shit was an emergency.
Except his fingers were still trembling—and he had a thought: If he couldn’t put in four digits for a password, why did he think he could do seven? Or maybe even ten if the local 518 area code was needed?
He was concentrating on the phone screen so intently…
… that he didn’t see Stan marshal his last strength…
… to lift his gun right up at José’s head.
CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX
Stephan Fontaine.”
As Rio spoke up, Lucan looked away from the lineup of cutesy pie shops and well-tended restaurants he was driving them by.
“Who are you talking about?”
“Stephan Fontaine. The columns.” She pointed up a hill. “Head there. I think I know the house.”
“Roger that.”
He had no idea where they were, but Rio was in charge, telling him in no uncertain terms which turns to take, where to go. And he knew, without seeing any big houses yet, that she’d taken him to the right neighborhood. From the streetlights with their graceful arches, to the trees that had been planted alongside the sidewalks, to the complete and utter lack of litter, it went without saying that they were in rich people territory.
As he piloted the piece-of-shit Monte Carlo up the rise, the estates started—and they were in the same exact vein as the white birthday cake he’d gotten from the memory banks of that dealer.
“Who’s Stephan Fontaine?” he asked.
“He’s this philanthropist who moved to town a couple of years ago. He’s always in the papers and on TV for giving away money? He’s got his name on a wing at St. Francis hospital, and he endowed a chair in economics at SUNY Caldwell. He’s done a bunch of other stuff, too.” She glanced over. “But he lives in a house with columns. Six of them. There was an article in the Caldwell Courier Journal about the renovations he did on this mansion he bought. And the house is up here.”
So Lucan kept going. And as they went along, in the back of his mind, he was missing her already.
It seemed ridiculous to be mourning Rio’s loss while she was right next to him. For fuck’s sake, he could reach right out and touch her—not that he would. He’d terrified her enough.
He was such a prize.
“Here! Stop!”
He hit the brakes and looked across the car’s beat-to-shit interior. “That’s it. That’s the house.”
The mansion was set far back on a rolling lawn, behind a set of sturdy gates and a stone wall that was federal-penitentiary-worthy. The columns were indeed six, right across the front, tall as evergreens and more than capable of holding up the pediment and slate roof above them.
It was exactly as the memories of that dealer out on the street had detailed.
“Service entrance,” Lucan said. “Let’s go around back. That’s how the guy would get on the property when he came to visit.”
It took them some time to find an alley cut-through in the street, and then he trolled by the back of several estates, staring into the trees and wondering how many hidden cameras were tracking this old junker as it violated the pristine neighborhood’s roadway.
“Is this it?” Rio asked as she leaned into the windshield. “This entrance here.”
“Yeah.”
Lucan pulled into a service port on the far side of the rear gate. There was a carriage house locked in by the stone wall, and through the iron bars of the fence, he could see a pool area, and then the back of the mansion.
“How do we get in?” she murmured.
“It’s not going to be a problem.”
“But how are—” She stopped herself, as if she were remembering the way the drug dealer downtown had been handled. “Okay, let’s do this.”
After he turned off the engine, they got out and met at the front grille—and he pressed the keys into her palm.
“You take these. If anything goes wrong, I want you to get in and drive away. Don’t worry about me.”
Her eyes bored into his own, and he had a feeling she had questions, so many questions. But now was not the time. Never was the time.
“All right,” she said after a moment. “I will.”
Lucan made a move like he was going to kiss her—and stopped himself in time. Stepping back, he nodded.
And dematerialized away. Right in front of her.
When he re-formed on the far side of the locked gates, she was covering her mouth with both hands. He hated the fact that he’d freaked her out again, but they needed to get inside and it was the work of a moment for him to—
Two German shepherds came barreling around the side of the pool house, the dogs trained to not bark when attacking. Their scents gave them away because he was downwind, however, and then there were their pounding paws over the short grass.
Lucan wheeled on them and crouched down. The growl that came out of his throat was not from him. It was his other side talking.
And that pair of perfectly trained killers pulled up like they were about to go off the edge of a cliff.
Moving forward, he backed them away, his snarl submitting them, his eye contact promising them what would happen if they misbehaved: He would school them like they were pups. Instead of eighty-to-ninety-pound fully grown males.
After he’d driven the dogs behind the pool house, he turned around and jogged to the gate—and that was when a guard came out of the side door of the cottage. The guy was pissed off and out of uniform. Or maybe he was just a paid caretaker.
The man noticed the Monte Carlo and Rio right away.
Meanwhile, Lucan stalked up behind the human male. And just as the man said, “Can I help you—”
Subduing him was the work of a moment. Lucan just threw an arm around that throat and hauled the torso back against his own.
Which was when he discovered that the “caretaker” was, in fact, armed.
Lucan caught the gun that came up, took control of the weapon, and calmly put the muzzle to the man’s temple. “You’re going to let her in now.”
There was a little too much going on in his own brain for him to get into the guard’s noggin and grab access codes or some such. So the Smith & Wesson worked just fine. Or should have.
When there was some argument, Lucan bared his fangs—
“No!” Rio said. “Don’t kill him! Everyone on-site is taken alive. They could all be in on the enterprise. Everybody lives.”
Bummer. And inconvenient.
But like all bonded males, he did what his female said—and put his sharp-and-shinies back in his upper jaw.
Shit, he could really have used a nice bloody fight to take his edge off.
* * *
As the gate started to open, Rio slipped in as soon as there was a space big enough to fit through. On the far side, she looked into the wide eyes of the guard and knew this was madness. But she wasn’t turning back.
“Let’s go,” she said.
As Luke brought the guard along, he handled the other man like he didn’t weigh a goddamn thing, and when they passed by the pool house, she glanced around, wondering where the dogs were. God, she remembered the attack on that hit man back at Mickie’s apartment building, the ferocity of it all had been so shocking, from the flashing teeth to the grinding jaws, the muzzle running red with blood, the victim’s midsection ripped open, his throat a raw wound.
Abruptly, she recalled coming to, just as it was all over. The wolf had wheeled around on her.
Tears had run from her eyes, both for what she had seen… and for what was going to be done to her.
The wolf had approached her, its massive body moving in a coordinated prowl. But instead of attacking her, it had whimpered. Nuzzled at her legs as if it wanted to get her loose if it could. And then it had lain down beside her, like it was protecting her, its regal head up, its eyes shifting to the door, its nose sniffing like it was testing the air for the scents of enemies.
She clearly had passed out again at that point. Because the next thing she remembered was Luke releasing her from all the ties.
“You took the clothes of the attacker,” she said. “Back when you saved me… you needed something to wear, and that’s why everything was too small on you.”
Luke looked over. And so did the guard—who, she realized abruptly, was in flannel pajama bottoms and a SUNY Caldwell t-shirt.
“Yeah,” Luke said with a nod. “And I didn’t want you to know what I was.”
On that note, they arrived at the mansion’s rear flank. There was a terrace that ran all the way down the back of the house, but there was no outdoor furniture on it. Obviously, things had been put away for the winter.
And inside, everything had been shut down for the night: All the rooms were dark, no lights on in the lower level. Up on the second floor, however, there was a bank of fixtures still glowing.
“Where are we going?” Luke said to the guard. “How are we getting in.”
“I can’t tell you.”
“Yeah, you can.”
The guard threw out his proverbial anchor. “You’re going to have to kill me now. Because if I let you into his house? He’s going to do so much worse to me. Just… fucking shoot me.”
Well, Rio thought, at least they knew they were in the right place.
CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN
In a split second that lasted an eternity, José saw the gun of his old friend coming up in his peripheral vision, but it was too late to catch the weapon. And yes, it turned out that the old wives’ stories were true: Your life did flash before your eyes right before you died. In a quick series of heart-wrenching images, he saw himself and his wife on their wedding day, and at the births of their children. He visualized holidays and weekends, and Christmases and Fourths of July.
It was everything that Stan didn’t have and had decided he’d been cheated of, as if some robber had come into his life and taken at gunpoint all of the stuff he’d been due solely by reason of him being alive, character and responsibility and commitment having nothing to do with any of that end result.
God, José didn’t want it all to be over. And not like this.
Knowing he was fucked, José winced and got ready for pain. Or maybe it would happen so quick, he would feel nothing.
He’d been so close to getting out of the CPD alive—
The discharge was so loud because it was right by his ear, and he felt heat, a flash of heat, right by his cheek—
Ping!
