Alone in the Dark (76 page)

‘And she’s a sni—?’ Scarlett caught herself. ‘Wow.’

‘That was our reaction too. She still hasn’t said anything besides that she wants a lawyer, but her cell phone had photos of the suspect she tried to shoot today. And of Marcus.’

Scarlett’s breath rushed out in a shudder. She cleared her throat, kept her voice level. ‘I understand.’ She looked at Marcus talking to the two old people and felt a fear so intense that her knees threatened to buckle. Demetrius had tried to kill him nine months ago and then again. yesterday. This woman had obviously taken up the challenge since Demetrius had failed.

There was a woman, she stood in the hall. Told him someone was coming
.

Scarlett assumed that the woman who’d warned Demetrius that day in the hospital had been the same woman who’d accompanied him when he’d transported the Bautistas. A woman the Bautistas had called Alice.

‘Do you have any recordings of this woman’s voice?’ she asked her boss. ‘Even if it’s only saying that she wants a lawyer?’

‘Yes. We’ve been recording her since we brought her in. Why?’

Because even if she refuses to say another word, I can have Marcus listen to her to see if she’s the one he remembers being in the hospital when Demetrius came after him
. ‘Like I said, I can’t speak freely here, but I’ll tell you as soon as I leave. I’ll call back in a few.’ Scarlett hung up as Marcus walked away from Tommy and Edna, his expression one of pained amusement that changed to concern as soon as he met her eyes.

‘What?’

‘Nothing bad, but we need to get back to CPD now.’

Minutes later they were in Scarlett’s department car and headed toward CPD. ‘What happened?’ he asked.

She told him everything Isenberg had shared. ‘The woman in your memory, the one who warned Demetrius when he had the pillow on your face . . . Do you think you’d recognize her voice if you heard it again?’

‘I don’t know,’ he said honestly. ‘Does it matter? She had my photo on her phone. I was probably going to be her next target.’

‘Remembering her voice would allow us to connect her to Demetrius, which involves her in the conspiracy to traffic humans. Otherwise she can claim to be a third party hit-person.’

He lifted his brows. ‘Murder for hire is no chump charge.’

‘No, but I want justice for Tala. I want every single person who profited from her three years of misery to pay. I want them to die. In the absence of that, I want them to rot in prison forever and know exactly what it means to have someone else control your destiny.’ Her eyes stung, her voice trembling. ‘I want to be able to look in Malaya’s face someday and know that I did everything humanly possible to ensure that her mother’s sacrifice was not in vain.’

He let out a slow breath, then reached over and wiped the tears from her cheeks. ‘All right. I’ll do my best.’

‘That’s all I can ask,’ she whispered.

She drove for a few minutes in silence, gathering her composure. She hadn’t intended to get so emotional. She seemed to do that a lot around Marcus O’Bannion. Hell, maybe it was good for her to vent it off. She certainly felt better right now, and he didn’t seem to mind.

‘You okay now, Miss Scarlett?’ he asked lightly, mimicking Tommy’s endearment.

‘Yeah. I am.’ She glanced at him curiously. ‘What did Tommy say to you?’

Marcus snorted a laugh. ‘All the things that your dad and brothers will say when I finally get to meet them. I’d better not break your heart or he’ll break me in half, tear off my arms and beat me with them. That kind of thing.’

‘Tommy? Really? Awww, that is so sweet.’

‘Sweet? He threatened my life and you call him sweet? You really are bloodthirsty,’ he teased.

‘Well you don’t have to worry. I doubt Tommy’s got any follow-through left in him.’

‘I don’t know about that. The old guy’s still got strong hands, and he says he knows how to use them. I’m inclined to believe him. Did you know he has a Purple Heart?’

Scarlett blinked. ‘No. I had no idea. Vietnam?’

‘Yep. He carries it around in his pocket.’

‘He showed you his Purple Heart, just like that? He never showed it to me.’

‘He asked me what I’d done with my life. I told him I’d served. That had him backing off just a little to only a partial disemboweling if I hurt you.’ He smiled when she laughed, but then he sighed. ‘I hate the fact that so many vets are on the streets. Makes me want to fix that.’

‘You can’t fix everything, Marcus.’

‘I know. But I still try. And so do you.’ He was quiet for a moment. ‘He told me all the things you’ve done for him and Edna and some of the other street folks.’

Scarlett’s cheeks began to heat. ‘Tommy exaggerates.’

‘I don’t think so. He told me about the water you make sure he drinks and the food you just happen to have with you. About how you nag him to go the shelter and make sure he gets appointments at the clinic.’

Scarlett rolled her eyes, her face now hotter than a flame. ‘I don’t nag. I remind.’

‘Hm. He told me about the blankets and the shoes and the gloves you “happened to have with you” last winter when it was so cold. About how you never forget his birthday or Edna’s. And he told me that when his sister died, it was you who came to sit with him in the hospital. That was how long ago, Scarlett?’

‘Twelve years this fall,’ she murmured.

‘You were only eighteen then. Not a cop yet.’

‘No, not yet, but I knew I’d be one. I miss Tommy’s sister. She kept him stable for so long. Tommy didn’t use to live on the stoop all the time, you know. He had a shoeshine stand downtown. On Saturday afternoons when my dad was off duty, he’d drive me to dance lessons and take the long way home so he could get Tommy to shine his shoes. This was way out of our way. We lived in Bridgetown and my dance studio was there.’

‘Wow. So basically he’d drive all the way from the west side into the city.’

‘Exactly. He would park near Tommy’s corner and pick me up and carry me on his shoulders, then I’d sit on his lap and listen while he and Tommy talked about nothing at all while Tommy shined his shoes. But it wasn’t really nothing. It was my dad getting the pulse of the neighborhood. Creating some trust. I get that now, but I didn’t understand when I was a kid. One day when I was a little older, maybe nine or so, I asked Dad why he paid Tommy to shine his shoes when I could do it cheaper, plus he’d save gas money and time. I was a
bargain
.’

Marcus’s lips curved. ‘Enterprising. What did your dad say?’

‘That Tommy needed the money and I didn’t. I told him that I did so need it, that I was saving for a girl bicycle with tassels on the handlebars, that I was tired of boy-bike hand-me-downs. That I was his kid and Tommy was some man on the street. Then Dad said he helped Tommy because “but for the grace of God, there go I”.’

‘Your dad’s a vet too?’

‘Yeah. He was in Vietnam at the tail end of the war, only for a few months. I didn’t understand when I was nine, but hearing that Tommy was a vet, it makes sense now. Anyway, Tommy would go home every few days or so and sleep in a real bed and eat a real meal. Then it became every few weeks, then months, and then when Sondra died, he had no place to go. It was like his only tie to the world snapped. I never really thought about taking care of him. It was just something that you did.’

‘
You
do. How many cops do you know who do the same?’ Marcus had twisted in his seat and now stared at her profile. She could feel his stare and it was making her uncomfortable.

‘I don’t know. I don’t talk about it.’ She frowned. ‘Tommy wasn’t supposed to either.’

‘Because you have a reputation as a ball-buster.’

‘Yeah, and I worked damn hard for that reputation,’ she said indignantly, making him laugh. ‘You think I’m kidding. People like Tommy start breaking radio silence all over the damn place and everyone will start thinking I’m a sap.’

‘Your secrets are safe with me, Miss Scarlett.’

She smiled. ‘He’s called me Miss Scarlett since I was sitting on Dad’s knee in a pink tutu eating an ice cream cone. The truth is, I do what I do because I’m selfish. There are times when I am so angry that I want to walk up to some meth-head who’s beaten his girlfriend’s child to death and put my hands around his neck and squeeze so hard that his head pops like a zit. And there are the times I get rough with a suspect and I have to yank myself back. That’s when I drive through the neighborhoods and do something . . .’

‘Kind?’ Marcus supplied.

‘I guess.’ She shrugged, feeling awkward. ‘It keeps me tethered to the light. So I’m really getting more out of it than Tommy is. Ergo, selfish.’

‘You keep on saying that if it makes you feel better,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘You know, you haven’t said much about your father. I assumed he was a . . . distant man.’

Scarlett had to swallow hard. ‘No. My dad is pretty wonderful, actually. He worries about me. Mom does too. I used to be their little girl and now I’m this angry, resentful person.’

‘You keep saying so. I don’t see it.’

She thought about that. ‘Maybe when I’m around you I don’t feel so angry.’

He smiled. ‘I like that explanation.’

‘Dad never wanted me to be a cop. He said I had too soft a heart, that I’d be chewed up and spit out. But it’s all I ever wanted to be. And when Michelle died and Trent Bracken walked . . . I made a promise to Michelle’s memory that I’d be a cop and I wouldn’t have a soft heart. That I’d do my job so well that future Trent Brackens wouldn’t go free.’

‘But your dad is right. You do have a soft heart, and cases like Tala’s tear it open. So you do that long-blink thing and shove it all down. How long will you be able to keep that up?’

‘For as long as I can. For as long as it takes.’

He sighed. ‘I figured you’d say that. I also don’t figure I’m in any position to tell you any different.’

‘Pot meet kettle,’ she said in resignation. She pulled into the CPD parking garage, started to take the keys out and stopped cold as her mind snapped back to the case. ‘Wait just a minute. The Feds brought that suspect in from Constant Global Surveillance yesterday. They could have brought him in this way, through a protected parking garage, but they took him in through the front, where he became a target.’

‘You’re right.’ Marcus folded his arms over his chest. ‘When we asked how they knew the shooter was on the roof, Coppola said they got a tip.’

‘They set it up,’ Scarlett said. ‘Made the tracker guy bait. Not that I’m complaining, but it was risky.’

‘They must have really trusted that tip,’ Marcus said, watching her carefully.

Scarlett considered what she was about to say and decided he had a right to know. ‘They have a man inside.’

‘The Feds?’

‘Yeah. I don’t know who. Don’t know where. Don’t know how they contact him. All I know is that I wasn’t supposed to tell you that.’

His expression went carefully blank. ‘I would have guessed eventually. But thanks for telling me now.’

He said it so stiffly that she was certain ‘thank you’ was not what he was really thinking. ‘I didn’t ask you about Diesel.’

‘True, but this is different. This impacts my life.’

‘I didn’t know for sure that it would, not until just now. They were watching more than one trafficking group – which is what they do. They’re the human trafficking task force. That’s not news to anyone. I didn’t know that the undercover Fed was watching the same people who want you dead. I know now. And so do you.’

He relaxed. ‘I’m sorry. You’re right.’

‘Damn straight I’m right. But now you have to act surprised if someone tells you.’

He feigned a shocked look. ‘How’s this?’

She snickered. ‘Don’t give up your day job. Come on. Let’s go meet Alice Newman.’

Thirty-three

Cincinnati, Ohio
Wednesday 5 August, 6.00
P.M.

Ken found Decker sweating and shirtless in the bedroom where Demetrius had died. The younger man had a circular saw in his hand and was cutting up the last of the bloody mattress into strips. The room was stifling hot, largely because Decker had opened the window to air the place out. The air conditioning simply wasn’t keeping up.

Decker turned the saw off when he saw Ken standing there. ‘Almost done, sir,’ he said, pulling a hand towel from the back pocket of his jeans and wiping the sweat from his face. ‘I’ll haul it out and burn it.’

‘No. The smoke will attract attention. Just bury it.’ Ken was glad to see the mattress go. Killing his oldest friend had been far harder than he’d thought it would be, even though Demetrius had betrayed him.

‘Will do.’ Decker started to turn the saw back on, but hesitated. ‘Anything else?’

‘Where are Burton and the Anders girl? I just checked the basement and it’s empty.’

‘I did what you said. They’ve been taken care of.’

‘Already?’

‘Like I said, I like working the woodchipper.’ Decker frowned. ‘Please don’t tell me you changed your mind.’

Ken laughed grimly. ‘No. I thought I’d have a last chat with Miss Anders. She was . . .’

‘A bitch,’ Decker muttered. He turned to show four deep claw marks down his shoulder.

‘Wow. I guess that teaches you to wear a shirt.’

Decker glared. ‘I
was
wearing a shirt. She grabbed me, up under my sleeve. Those nails of hers were fake. She’d been sharpening them on the concrete foundation of the cage.’

Ken wished he could have seen it. He wished more that he could have gotten to her before Decker had killed her. A good fuck always cleared his head before he went hunting, and thinking of Stephanie Anders clawing at Decker made him even harder than he’d been when he’d gone to the basement looking for her.

‘Make sure your tetanus shots are up to date,’ he said.

‘They are, luckily. Between that bitch and her mother.’

‘Oh, that’s right. Marlene bit you.’

‘Give me a male prisoner any day of the week,’ Decker grumbled, then shook off his bad mood. ‘When I’m done here, I’m going into the office. With Burton and Reuben gone, the work is piling up. You’ll need to hire new security personnel. I thought I’d start compiling a list of ex-military that I know would be interested and trustworthy.’

‘Yes, do that,’ Ken said, but he was thinking
no
so loudly his teeth ached. He was done, his leadership team decimated. Alice incarcerated. And as much as he wanted to believe she’d be stalwart under questioning, he knew she’d give him up in a heartbeat if she thought it was her best option. He’d be out of the country before she decided on that course of action.

He already had a first-class ticket from Toronto to Papeete, Tahiti, leaving tomorrow night. From Papeete he’d take a charter to Bora Bora, where he’d rented a small bungalow. All under the false ID that he had arranged for himself a long time ago – just in case of an emergency such as this. No one knew about it, not even Alice or Sean.

Ken hadn’t yet decided if he’d send for Sean. He’d always had a more hands-off relationship with Sean than he’d had with Alice. Sean had never liked getting his hands dirty. Alice thrived on it.
Damn, I miss her already
. But he wasn’t willing to trap himself trying to bust her out of jail. She had access to assets. She was a lawyer, for God’s sake. She was better equipped to get herself out of jail than he was.

Decker and the others who were left could do what they pleased. If they wanted to take the contacts Ken and his team had built over the last decade, they were welcome to them. Joel still had the accounting records, after all. Joel might even end up as the leader of the group after Ken was out of the picture. He was welcome to that too. Not that Ken thought Joel would last too much longer. The young pups would either eliminate him or Joel’s heart would simply give out. Either way, Joel was a big boy. He’d have to be fine on his own.

Ken had a singular focus – kill Marcus O’Bannion, then get out. O’Bannion was the type to follow him across the world if he put enough of the puzzle together.
I’ll snip that loose end so that I don’t have to be looking over my shoulder for the next thirty or forty years.

He’d start hunting at the
Ledger
’s office. Many of O’Bannion’s employees had been with him for years. There had to be someone there he’d want to get back were they to be borrowed. And if he didn’t find what he was looking for at the
Ledger
, he had a plan B.

He’d found photos on Demetrius’s iPad of O’Bannion and that homicide detective sitting in the detective’s car outside an animal shelter. Ken had forgotten that Demetrius had tracked them there until he’d seen the photos. It seemed that O’Bannion and the detective were in some kind of very personal relationship. He didn’t want to tangle with a cop if he didn’t have to, but the pretty homicide detective would make the perfect bait.

‘Um . . .’ Decker said, and Ken realized he’d been standing there too long. ‘Is there anything else you want me to do?’

‘No, no. The list of potential hires would be fine. I’ll let Sean know to expect you down at the office.’ He gave a last, mournful look at the bedroom, falling back on nostalgia to excuse his wool-gathering. ‘Demetrius and I had a lot of good times over the years. I’ll miss him.’

The look Decker gave him was warily sympathetic. ‘I understand, sir.’

No, you really don’t
. ‘Goodnight, Decker. Please lock the front door on your way out.’

Cincinnati, Ohio
Wednesday 5 August, 6.00
P.M.

Marcus had been nervous the last time he’d emerged from the elevator into the MCES squad room, but this time he was doubly so. He knew Scarlett wanted him to identify the woman in Interview Room Four as the one who’d participated in the attempt to kill him nine months ago, and he understood how important it was – both to the case and to Scarlett herself.

Trouble was, he didn’t know if he could. He had no compunction fudging a story when the target of their investigation had been guilty of so many, even worse offenses. This woman was definitely a killer – or would have been but for the tip the Feds got from their unnamed source. It should be a no-brainer just to tell Scarlett what she wanted to hear.

But where his conscience had allowed him to fudge facts in the past, this was different. This was for Scarlett, who looked at him like he could do no wrong.

Isenberg was waiting for them at the elevator. ‘Mr O’Bannion, Detective Bishop.’

Marcus didn’t miss Scarlett’s minute wince, and once again he found himself biting back the urge to tell Isenberg to fuck herself. Scarlett had enjoyed an informal, friendly relationship with her boss.
Until I came along
, he thought.

He clenched his teeth and followed the lieutenant to the darkened observation room on the other side of the glass from Interview Room Four. He stepped up to the glass, Scarlett standing at his side, her hands shoved in her pockets. She leaned into him just once, surreptitiously touching his upper arm with her shoulder. Support, he thought.

‘If you’re not sure, it’s okay,’ she murmured, so quietly he almost didn’t hear. But he did hear, and it was like a weight sliding off his shoulders.

There were a few people sitting along the wall behind them, cops and Feds, including Deacon and Agents Coppola and Troy. The three of them came forward, Deacon taking the spot next to Scarlett. Coppola positioned herself next to Marcus, and Troy hovered in the background.

Marcus was relieved to see that Isenberg had disappeared into the shadows in the back of the room. Scarlett had said that her boss was looking out for her career, but he thought the woman could find a better way to do it.

But he wasn’t here for Lieutenant Isenberg. He was here to identify someone who might have tried to kill him if she’d had enough time – the woman on the other side of the glass.
I was her next target.
The realization left him shaken. And pissed.

‘That is Alice Newman,’ Kate Coppola said. ‘She’s not happy to be here.’

Alice sat turned away from the glass, her face hidden. She was handcuffed to the chair, her back ramrod straight. Her blond hair was cut in a bob that seemed vaguely familiar.

But he hadn’t
seen
her, had he? He’d only
heard
her.

Deacon pointed to the man sitting next to her. ‘That’s Karl Hohl, the lawyer she called. She asked for the Yellow Pages, since we’d taken her phone, closed her eyes and pointed.’

‘I’ll have her turned around,’ Kate said.

‘Not yet,’ Marcus said. ‘I’d like to hear her voice before I see her face.’

‘All right,’ Kate said. ‘Then I’ll try to get her to talk.’

‘She hasn’t been cooperative,’ Deacon said. ‘You may have to make your judgment based on the recording.’

‘Understand. Try to get her to say “Hurry up”.’ Or something like that.’

As if sensing she had an audience, Alice Newman turned to look over her shoulder, and Marcus’s mouth fell open, dumbstruck. ‘Whoa. Holy shit. Holy fucking shit.’

‘You know her,’ Scarlett murmured, sounding unsurprised. ‘Who is she?’

Marcus sure as
hell
was surprised. ‘Allison Bassett, the older sister of one of Mikhail’s friends from school. Or so she said. I didn’t know her brother and I thought I knew all of Mikhail’s friends. But after he was gone, people came out of the woodwork to give their condolences. I met a lot of Mickey’s friends that I didn’t know, so I didn’t think anything of it.’

‘How did she make contact?’ Deacon asked.

‘She came to see me in the hospital when I was out of ICU, told me how torn up her brother was. Said that they’d just moved to the area at the beginning of the school year, that her brother was nervous about being the new kid in school, but that Mickey had befriended him. She came to see me several times. We just talked. She never tried to smother me or anything,’ he added lightly, but his voice shook a little. The woman had sat three feet away from him. Close enough to kill him in his weakened state had she really wanted to.

‘What would you talk about?’ Deacon asked.

Scarlett was uncharacteristically silent, watching the woman grimly.

‘Mostly me and my family, how my recovery was going, when I was going back to work. She’d read a few of our exposés in the
Ledger
and asked a lot of questions. She even asked about the McCord article, saying how disgusting he was.’ He shook his head, still reeling. ‘She must have been digging, trying to find out if I planned to pick up the McCord investigation where I left off. Holy God. I had no idea. All those times she was a few feet away from me. God.’

‘And after you got out of the hospital?’ Kate asked. ‘Did she see you again?’

‘She stopped by Mom’s house a time or two. After I was healthier, I’d see her when I went to the gym and we’d talk while we ran the inside track.’

In the reflection in the glass he saw Kate frown. ‘You didn’t think it odd?’ she asked. ‘That maybe she was stalking you?’

Marcus blew out a breath, wondering how Scarlett was going to take what he was about to say. ‘No, I didn’t think it was odd because, yes, I thought she was stalking me, but not for any reason other than the normal one. I had several women visit me in the hospital. I also got emails, Facebook posts, you name it. When the news story came out about how I got shot . . .’

‘Women thought you were a super-stud hero,’ Deacon said dryly. ‘A savior of damsels in distress.’

Marcus shrugged uncomfortably. ‘Something like that. I got a number of interesting propositions, but I knew I was just the flavor of the week. It tapered off quickly enough, except for this one. That she was interested in me was pretty blatant. I flat-out asked her how she’d chosen my gym and she said it was so that she could run into me, that she’d bribed the guy at the counter to tell her when I came in so that she could work out at the same time.’

In the reflection of the window he watched Scarlett do one of her long blinks. He wasn’t sure what emotion she was hiding this time – fury that the woman had stalked him, fear that she’d come so close. Hopefully it was not hurt that Marcus had allowed it, because he hadn’t.

‘I told her I was flattered but not interested,’ he said firmly.

‘But she kept showing up,’ Scarlett said, her tone crisp and professional. Then he felt the fleetest of brushes against his hip – her fingers, still in her pocket, flexing to touch him. All she felt safe doing in the situation.

He let out the breath he was holding. ‘She did. I changed my workout time and she’d change hers. I finally told her that there was someone else.’ He dropped his voice to a murmur meant only for Scarlett’s ears. ‘And I meant it.’

Another one of those tiny brushes of her fingers. ‘Did she back off?’

‘She did, actually. She started working out with another guy and they were all over each over in no time. I was just happy that she wasn’t chasing after me anymore. Now I’m wondering who that other guy was, because he’d chat me up too. He just wasn’t as obvious about it. The gym – Silver Gym, a block away from the
Ledger
– would have a photo in their system of the guy. She called him DJ. Big guy, African-American, maybe twenty-one. Six-two, had to be two-sixty. Kid could bench three hundred. I can point him out if the gym can pull photos that match.’