Deadly Web (2 page)

“You had fourteen rocks of crack on you. We saw you selling one to a client,” Bernard said.

“I was just showing them off, you know? I never intended to sell them. And stop calling me Devin.”

“Of course you weren’t,” Bernard said. “I’m sure you show your crack cocaine to everyone. Me? I show people pictures of my kids. But I guess different people like to show different things, right?”

“Well… Yeah. There’s nothing illegal about showing stuff, right?”

Bernard glanced at Hannah. She drove serenely, a small smile on her face. It was nice to see her smile; it happened so rarely these days. She was constantly exhausted, constantly angry. Her green eyes momentarily gleamed as a car drove past them, its headlights lighting up her face. She was so pale—was she even eating? Her brown hair seemed frazzled, unkempt. He felt the concern gnawing at him.

“Great to see you smiling, for once,” he said, trying to sound casual.

“You know what’s great?” she asked, grinning. “Public toilets. Don’t you think they’re wonderful?”

“Sure. They’re awesome. You were in there for like… ten minutes. I was sure you’d drowned.”

Bernard looked out the passenger window at the empty street. There really wasn’t any good reason to be anywhere but home so late at night. It was freezing outside. Come to think of it, it was freezing inside the car as well, and it wasn’t even winter yet. A night like this one, a guy should be under the covers with his wife, not driving around in a car with a drug dealer.

The only reason Bernard had agreed to this stakeout in the first place was because it was so important to his partner. Hannah had always been intense, and the vast distance between the pace of their work was sometimes hard to bridge. It had gotten worse the month before, after the whole Jovan Stokes affair. Bernard had tried to tell Hannah repeatedly that she couldn’t blame herself. Just like the rest of the women in his life, talking to her had little effect. He saw how on edge she’d been since that day—always trying to push her own boundaries, working eighty hours a week, driving herself to exhaustion. He would have to intervene if this kept going.

“I feel like I’m going to be sick,” the dealer said.

Bernard looked at the man. Pudgy black face, head covered in an uneven stubble, a small mole on his chin. An ugly dude, Bernard thought.

Bernard himself was quite handsome. High, wide shoulders, dark-skinned, with an immaculate short beard and thick black hair. When he’d been a child, everyone let him know he would be bald when he grew up. His father was bald, his uncles were bald, both his grandfathers were bald. The knowledge of his incoming baldness had niggled at him constantly. But he grew up, and the hair clung to his head. The fact that the baldness prophecy had never come true seemed to infuriate his family, and they kept telling him that one day he would wake up to find all of his hair scattered on the pillow. He seriously doubted it.

“We’re getting to the station,” he told the man. “You can throw up in the holding cell.”

“Hey,” the dealer said. “Are those Garlic Caesar potato chips?” He pointed at the small bag on the floor.

“Yeah,” Bernard answered.

“They’re really good.”

“That they are, Devin.”

“Can I have some?”

“No, Devin, you cannot.”

“Why the hell do you keep calling me Devin?”

“Because that’s your name.”

“My name is Mikey.”

“Don’t bullshit us. You’re Devin Derkins. We know who you are.”

“Devin Derkins? That’s my mate,” the man said, sounding surprised. “Hang on. You thought I was Devin Derkins? Ha! You’ve got the wrong guy! Devin’s got the flu, he asked me to cover for… Well, never mind. You got the wrong guy! Let me go!”

Hannah and Bernard exchanged looks. That could complicate things. Bernard saw how Hannah gritted her teeth, noticed the angry glint in her eye. He sighed.

“Listen, Mikey,” he said. “I don’t care. You were caught with fourteen rocks of crack. So you were doing it as a favor for a friend? I guess there’s a lesson here, right? About friendship and crack, and how you shouldn’t mix the two.”

“But you got the wrong guy!”

“Don’t worry, we aren’t picky.”

They drove to the police station, not to the local jail. Mikey should probably go to jail as soon as possible, but the jail was located on the very edge of town, which would mean they’d have to drive there at night to book him, then drive there again in the morning to interview him. The detectives weren’t keen for this double trip, so they decided to put him in a station holding cell, interview him in the morning, and have the Sheriff’s staff pick him up later and transport him to jail.

They parked the car in the station’s parking lot and got Mikey out of the back seat, then escorted him into the station and walked straight to the elevators.

“Can we take the stairs?” Mikey asked.

Bernard and Hannah ignored him.

“I get nervous in elevators. Once I was stuck in one for hours.”

“tough shit,” Hannah said, her voice sharp.

“It’s a good workout, using the stairs,” Mikey said.

“Yeah,” Bernard replied, “you look like you’re really concerned about a workout.”

They got into the elevator and took him down to the cells. The sharp neon light illuminated the sad space where drunkards, prostitutes, gang members, and worse spent some of their nights, waiting for their fate to be determined. Some of them would find their way to jail. Some would be released when the sun came up.

It wasn’t a nice place to be, by any means, but tonight it was relatively empty. Richie sat behind the counter, staring at the consoles, sipping coffee. Bernard felt as if he hadn’t drunk coffee for weeks. The mug was steaming hot. Being hot was another thing Bernard felt like he hadn’t been for weeks. Richie had a thick, blond mustache which hid the top of his mouth completely. It almost seemed as if he wasn’t drinking the coffee so much as letting his mustache soak in it.

“Hey.” Richie said. “Whatcha got there?”

“This is Mikey,” Bernard answered. “We caught him with some crack.”

“Huh. Okay. Only one guy in the holding cells. Lucky fellow will even have a bed to sleep on.” Richie stood up and led the way to the large cell’s iron door.

“Mikey, is that you?” someone called from inside the cell.

Mikey looked pleased. “Rufus? Well, that’s funny, meeting you here!”

Funny, Bernard thought, absolutely hilarious.

Richie fiddled with the lock. It was kind of wonky, always took a few seconds to unlock.

“What are you in for, Mikey?”

“Cops here thought I was Devin.”

“Devin Derkins? What, are they fuckin’ stupid? You ain’t Devin Derkins.”

“I know, I told them.”

“You don’t even look like him. I mean, Devin’s taller, and his hair is brown.”

“I know, man, I told them.”

“And he has that tattoo. You don’t have a fucking tattoo.”

“I know, Rufus. They have the wrong guy.”

“How is Devin? Haven’t seen him for a while.”

“He has the flu. Got it real bad, man.”

“That sucks. My sister had the flu last week.”

Richie opened the door. Hannah pushed Mikey inside, a bit too roughly.

As they walked away, they heard the happy reunion commence again.

“What are you in for, Rufus?”

“I hit someone in a pub.”

“Yeah? They arrested you for that?”

“You know how those cocksuckers are. If they ain’t filling their cells, they feel empty inside.”

The detectives went up the elevator.

“Damn it!” Hannah said, thumping the elevator’s wall. “This is exactly the kind of screwup we don’t need!”

Bernard shrugged “We got the guy.”

“We got
a
guy. Not
the
guy,” Hannah said. “Damn GD! He said that Devin Derkins would be there tonight, selling crack. He said that Devin was always there on Tuesday night, that this was his spot, that it was a sure thing.”

“Well, you know, even drug dealers take a sick day sometimes. We have a guy who had fourteen rocks on him. Who cares what his name is?”

“I do! This is the guy we have? Mikey? I don’t want a Mikey! Does this guy know who the supplier is? Probably not. He probably got the stuff from Devin. Damn it!”

The elevator doors opened, and they got out.

“You know,” Hannah said, still fuming. “I bet his lawyer will use this in court somehow . There’s probably a Latin phrase for it. Your honor, this is a clear case of
Arrestum Mikus Instedum Devinum
. Fuck!”

“Chill, Hannah,” Bernard said, his voice firm. He stopped in the hallway, looked at her. She turned to face him, and he could see it all in her eyes: anger, desperation, exhaustion.

“We got the guy,” he said, his voice softening. “We got a dealer off the streets.”

Her shoulders slumped. “Yeah,” she said, her voice barely a whisper. He could see a tear starting to form, and she turned around quickly and marched into the detective squad. He followed her, pretending as if he hadn’t noticed.

The squad room was a medium-sized open space with four wooden desks, one for each of the detectives. Two whiteboards stood on opposite sides of the room; when a complex case presented itself, the detectives would use the whiteboards to draw the timeline, list the suspects and their connections to the case, and brainstorm ideas. When there was no major case, the whiteboards were used to list random bits of information, draw sketches of cartoon animals, and leave each other messages. One whiteboard was currently empty; the other had the words
Jacob, your wife called
scrawled on it.

A filing cabinet stood on the far side of the room, the squad’s precious coffee maker on it. Next to the filing cabinet was the door to Captain Bailey’s office. The entire detective squad consisted of only four detectives and the captain. Unlike most squads, there was no sergeant or lieutenant. The chief thought it was beneficial for the captain to work closely with his detectives, with no middle management layers. Bernard secretly thought she was wrong, though he knew that Captain Bailey was happy with this arrangement. Bernard was a strong believer in management hierarchy. As it was, Fred Bailey was spread too thin, and sometimes this prevented cases from moving forward.

Bernard yawned as he watched Hannah sit down in her chair and turn on her monitor. He’d let her do the initial report. If he left for home right now, he had five hours of sleep to look forward to.

“Hey, Hannah, I’m taking off, okay?”

“Yeah—” Her phone rang. “Hang on.”

Bernard winced. It wasn’t fair. He was just about to go home.

Hannah picked up the phone. “Detective Shor,” she said, then: “Oh, hey, Candace.”

Candace was one of the police dispatchers. Bernard felt his shoulders tense.

Hannah listened for a while, then mouthed the word
murder
at Bernard.

“No, no, no!” he whispered. “Tell her we can’t. Tell her that we just finished with a stakeout and we haven’t slept yet—”

“Uh huh,” Hannah said, writing something on a pad in front of her. “Traynor Road. Uh huh.”

“Tell her to wake up Jacob!” Bernard whispered frantically. “Rory was up all night yesterday. I’m exhausted. I can’t go to another—”

“Yeah, sure, we’re on our way.”

Bernard groaned as Hannah hung up.

“Jacob already took the last two murders,” Hannah told him brusquely. “This one’s ours.”

Bernard shut his eyes, hating his partner for a second. Mikey would be going to sleep on the little cot in his cell right about now. No murder case keeping him out of his bed. No children waking him up crying every twenty minutes.

Being an incarcerated drug dealer sounded like paradise.

Chapter Two

The address Candace had given Hannah was a building on Traynor Road. Hannah knew the neighborhood. It was a popular place for young people looking for reasonably cheap apartments close to the city’s hub. Although the buildings seemed old and dirty, it wasn’t a bad neighborhood, and crime there was not as frequent as people thought. As they got closer to the crime scene, Hannah slowed the car down. Her eyes began to scan the surroundings, looking for anything out of the ordinary.

She fought the urge to accelerate and get there as fast as they possibly could. The murderer could be fleeing the scene right now, hiding behind that billboard, or the tree on the corner. Even if he was long gone, she wanted to get a mental image of the area. Were there security cameras on the street? Perhaps an all-night drugstore whose clerk might have seen something?

The streets were completely empty. It was one in the morning on a Wednesday, and most of the city’s drunk or homeless didn’t hang out in this neighborhood. The windows around them were dark. Only she and Bernard traversed the empty street, on their way to meet a dead man.

“Jacob would have been happy to investigate this murder,” Bernard muttered. “I mean, he has nothing better to do. He would have jumped from his bed like lightning at the thought of a dead man waiting for investigation. But noooo. Detective Hannah Shor didn’t want his precious sleep to be interrupted. Because God forbid Jacob’s sleep be terminated before dawn.”

Hannah didn’t answer. Bernard was in a grumpy mood, but she knew it would soon dissipate. He was tired. He had three small children, and he rarely slept for more than two hours straight.
Does he ever regret having children?
she wondered. He certainly complained about them a lot.

She parked next to a patrol car, in front of a four-story building whose front wall was sprayed with graffiti. It was an odd mix of artistic signatures, obviously drawn with care and thought, intermingled with a black-sprayed sentence that read
Fuck Dan Smi
. Either the spray can had run out in the middle of the composition, or the subject really was named Dan Smi.