Murder and Mayhem (19 page)

“Both,
cuervo
.” Dante pulled on his cop face, failing to hide the spitting fire in his eyes. “Two is what the doctor ordered. That one you took the last time didn’t last.”

“I’m a lightweight.” Rook nearly shook his head, but there was a real fear his brains would leak out of his ears. Instead, he dry swallowed the pill and chased it down with a sip of water. “Don’t argue with me. I don’t like what this kind of shit does to me. I’m old enough to know that, Montoya.”

“Dante,” he corrected, then looked over his shoulder at his uncle. “He has a hard time remembering my first name.”

“That’s ’cause your last name is so cool.”

His hands were trembling, so Rook knotted his fingers into the bed linens, hoping to hide his shaken state from Montoya’s sharp gaze. He might as well have held his hands up to the man’s face, because Dante’s expression turned from teasing to deadly serious.

“I’ll take the other one if I don’t feel better soon.”

“Deal. And don’t think Manny won’t pin you to the bed and shove it down your throat,” Dante warned. “I’ve watched him pill the neighbor’s five cats in three seconds flat without getting scratched. You’d be nothing to him.”

Lethargy began to creep through Rook’s marrow, and he inhaled slowly, testing his lungs and ribs out before sighing in relief. He could handle the fatigue that came with the painkillers, but falling asleep would be—dangerous. He didn’t know Manny, and as the pain slipped away from his body, Rook could barely grasp that he’d fallen asleep in Dante’s arms.

Not something he did. Not a situation he’d ever wanted to put himself in, but somehow the cop went and dug down under his skin. As nice as it was to have the pain leaving him, the drugs also brought a silky stickiness to his brain, and Rook fought to stay awake.

From the long black span across his eyelids and then the startling jump of Dante sitting on the bed to standing by the now upright couch, Rook knew he was losing the one battle he’d chosen to fight that day.

Time shifted again. Or space. Rook wasn’t certain, but he’d only taken another breath when Dante appeared at his side again. Gone were the worn jeans and paint-splattered T-shirt he’d been wearing a moment before. At some point between one second and the next, Dante’d donned his cop face, a pair of black jeans, white button-down shirt, and the brown corduroy jacket he’d worn a few days ago.

Rook got another shock when Dante leaned over and his jacket fell away from his side, exposing a black shoulder harness and holstered gun.

He didn’t like guns. Getting shot was no great joy, but guns themselves made him nervous. They were too volatile, too uncontrolled, and from his past experience, handled by people who really just wanted to kill things—or him. The smell of metal and oil made him queasy. His leg muscles clenched, his body remembering another time when he’d woken up to hot shards and torn flesh. The scars were small, the largest a dapple of dark brown on his hip, but even after more than fifteen years, he still hated the smell of guns.

Of course, Rook reasoned, his most recent gunshot wound wasn’t a parade through the park either.

“You okay?” Dante brushed his fingers through Rook’s hair, bringing him back to the present.

“Yeah, just… what’s the saying? Goose walking over my grave.” He tried for a smile but failed. His mouth was too tired to do much more than purse automatically when Dante leaned over. Their lips touched briefly, but the caress warmed away the chill down Rook’s spine. “Just tired.”

“Get some sleep,” Dante whispered into his ear. “And you can trust Manny. The worst thing he’ll do to you in your sleep is cover you with a blanket. You’re as safe with him as you are with me. Okay?”

“Don’t think I really want to be safe with you, Montoya,” Rook mumbled, trying to stay conscious for a second longer, but he was quickly losing the battle. “Don’t do something stupid while you’re out there. We’ve got another condom to go through.”

“
Cuervo
, as soon as you get better, I’ll buy you a whole damned case,” Dante promised. “’Cause one is just not going to cut it.”

“One job, Montoya. You had one damned job.” Hank’s disgust thickened the air in their unmarked police car. “No fucking the… shit, witness? Informant?”

“Not a person of interest. If anything, he’s now considered a victim in this case. Breaking and entering. Which is kind of ironic.” As reminders went, it was slim. “Things got away from us… from me. It was an accident. Sort of.”

“How do you accidentally fuck a guy? You’re sitting naked on the bed and he trips, impaling himself on your dick?”

“I said sort of. And accident’s the wrong word… look, I knew what I was doing. He and I—there’s something there.” He sighed, suddenly tired of the complications in his life. “He pisses me off, and I like him. I’m also the one he called after he got hit by that car. So it’s not like I’m on a one-way street here.”

“Someone hit him with a car? Okay, so let me get this straight. Yesterday he was exonerated of murder, shot twice—”

“Not badly. But definitely creased.”

“Whatevers. More shot than I’ve ever been, and I’m walking around with a fucking gun.” Hank waved away Dante’s interruption. “He then sneaks out of the hospital he’s supposed to stay in because he’s got some serious control issues, where he gets hit by a car on the way to a hotel he’d picked out years ago to rabbit to in case things went to shit for him. Got sick because he hadn’t eaten anything, then called you? Do I have that right?”

“Pretty much. Okay, I called him. But he’d been ignoring everyone before that.” He nodded. “From there, I took him to the ER, where they said he was fine but needed watching. Then I took him over to a hotel without insects living in its walls.”

“Where you fucked him senseless.” Hank’s laugh guttered in his belly. “Jesus, are you trying to get thrown off this case?”

“Not senseless but mostly… it was rough for him when he woke up. He’s kind of bruised up. I left him with Manny.”

“Of course, because this story
needed
an ex-drag queen to make it complete.” His partner threw his hands up in surrender when Dante shot him a hot look. “Hey, no judging. Don’t get mad at me. I’ve got a lot of respect for Manny and his friends.”

“
Tío’s
proud of who he is. And was. Mock him and pay the consequences, Camden,” Dante warned.

“Dude, all women should have legs like Manny. I’ve seen him in heels. Deadly.” Hank returned Dante’s look. “A lot like your fuck buddy, Stevens.”

“Don’t call him that. It’s… I’d say complicated, but that’s a cliché. He calls it tangled. But I’m worried less about him than I am the case.” Dante reached over to the pile of papers straddling the console between them. “We have more questions than answers here. And every time we turn around, one of our facts becomes a lie.”

“Like that fucking diamond. Why’d it take them so long to figure out it was costume? Isn’t that kind of shit obvious?” The other detective growled through clenched teeth. “Something’s hinky in all of this. We’ve got three dead, one ex-crook with a target on his back, and we’re going to go see a woman named Pigeon.”

“A pigeon who’s the first victim’s sister,” Dante reminded him. “The rock’s a copy, so the original’s still out there. And from what Rook told me, chances are good the owner either still has the stone, or it was swapped out when things got a little tight in their wallets.”

“He’s off the hook for it even if he did take it. Too much time’s gone by, and no one’s going to nail him for it,” Hank pointed out. “Circumstantial evidence at best.”

“It’s what he was known for. Smoke and mirrors,” Dante agreed. “Also, the DA has a hard-on for Stevens’s grandfather. I might like Rook, but I have a feeling that even if I found him driving a pickax into a toddler’s head, they’d let him walk because he’s Archibald Martin’s little boy.”

“Something you guys didn’t know back in the day when Vince was gunning for him.” Hank appeared to mull things over, then cocked his head. “So where did our first victim get the fake diamond? And why did she bring it with her?”

“I don’t know. He also said he’d never made contact with it, so his print being on it is odd. I asked the lab to see if there were DNA or oil traces on it.” Dante debated with himself for a moment. He’d made a promise not to share what he’d learned from Rook the night before, but there was one key thing the former thief and Charlene said that kept coming back to him. “Stevens’s assistant said something about using some kind of adhesive to mask someone’s prints, but what if they could lift a print from that after it hardens? How hard would it be to transfer a fingerprint?”

“You’re straying into cow abduction conspiracy theory shit here, man.”

“Weirder things have happened,” Dante pointed out. “Take a look at what the lab said.”

“It’s just too much fucking trouble to go through—the print thing. Not the lab work. And for what? Why pin something on Stevens?” Hank picked up the papers, then shuffled their order until he found the lab report. “Fingerprint was smeared, and the partial they got was from Stevens’s pinkie finger. The thing is… what? Three or four inches? How the hell does someone pick up something like that with their little finger?”

“Still thinking aliens didn’t get that cow, Camden?”

Hank frowned. “So Stevens is the cow? I thought he was the white whale.”

“The biggest question isn’t whether or not the aliens took the cow, it’s why they took the cow.” Dante turned down Washington, slowing as the traffic tightened up around them.

“It just doesn’t make sense. There’s a big fat fucking why in the middle of this. I’m thinking we need to see how viable this theory of yours is before I commit myself to the crazy. And more important, is it worth enough to drag me out here on my day off?” His partner pointed at a traffic light ahead of them. “Make a right there. She’s the third townhouse on the right. How are we going to play this?”

“She’s the first victim’s sister and, from all accounts, either knew the couple found in the bin or ran cons with them.” Dante parked the car in a loading zone, then tossed a police placard on the dashboard to ward off zealous meter maids.

“She’s got some priors. Mostly grifting stuff, but not much. Some petty things, but nothing earth-shattering. So either she skims in and out of the system, or she’s so fucking good she doesn’t get caught.” Hank looked around the neighborhood. “Not rolling in dough here.”

“If she’s smart, then she wouldn’t live high,” Dante pointed out. “Sometimes the best criminals don’t start spending money until after they can’t get nailed for it.”

“Kind of like Stevens.”

“Hey, I’ve never said otherwise.” Scanning the street, Dante noticed the overwhelming stillness in the neighborhood. “It’s like a Stepford community here. Everything matches perfectly. How can people live like this?”

The street was riddled with a maze of townhomes, each section only slightly different from the one next to it. Ruthlessly green lawns were trimmed to an inch high, and each sidewalk leading up to the front door was pinned with a black mail box, their red metal flags pushed down at nearly exactly the same angle. A short flight of stairs led up to each front door, most painted brown or cream with an occasional rogue olive green thrown in to add a splash of variety. Mottled pansies circled the two-storied structures, half circles of purple and pink providing the only color to the drab landscape. Even the cars parked on the street were sand- or gray-hued, mostly smaller imports, although one turquoise late model VW bug stood out like a sore thumb at the end of the cul-de-sac.

“People like conformity.” Hank shrugged. “Some people like living by rules. She might think she’s safe hiding here. She’s probably on the neighborhood watch and calls in cars who’ve been parked in front of her house for more than seventy-two hours. Blending in is the best thing for a con artist. That’s why people always say shit like
but she seemed so nice
when their neighbors are caught with dead bodies in their basement.”

“Probably, but I could do without the dead bodies,” Dante agreed. “Let’s go in to console her about the deaths. Captain said there was a next of kin contact made, but we were on the scene, so—”

The first boom shattered the car’s windows, blowing glass inward into their faces. Another followed close by, too soon and too quick for Dante’s hearing to recover from the ringing going off in his ears. Around them, the neighborhood rattled and fell, walls crumbling in as the reverberations continued to shake the street. The unmarked rocked on its tires, lifting away from the curb, then slamming back down onto the road.

To their right, a row of newer townhomes lay in ruins, crumbling inward as Dante tried to catch his breath. He had about a second of peace when a third, smaller explosion blew, and one of the shingled two-storied buildings spat out columns of black smoke and thin fiery tendrils, startling Dante into action.

Covering his face, Dante shook loose of the shock holding him frozen in place. He reached for Hank with one hand while smearing away a trickle of blood falling into his eyes from his forehead.

“Camden!” He sounded tinny, shouting at the top of his lungs, but there was nothing but the rushing echo of his breath in his ears.

Hank lay on his side, slumped down over the console, and was much too still for Dante’s liking. Reaching under his partner’s shirt collar, Dante felt for Hank’s pulse, his fingers numb and shaken from his overwrought nerves. There was a heartbeat, strong and fluid, but the splatter of blood across Hank’s face worried him more than Dante cared to admit.

A second later, Hank coughed, and his eyes opened, wild and frantic, as he pulled himself up. The glass had done a number on his face and neck, starbursts of blood speckling over his fair skin. His partner was groaning but moving, and Dante pulled at Hank’s shirt, looking for more wounds. Pushing away Dante’s hand, Hank shook a handful of tempered glass out of his ginger hair, then reached for the car’s radio.

“Calling it in.” Gasping, Hank grunted and pressed at his ribs.

The explosion had been powerful enough to bend the car’s door inward, knocking the armrest into Hank’s side. He could barely hear Hank, and he nodded, knowing anything he said in return would be lost in the buzzing hum affecting both of them.