No Safe Place (Joe Hunter Thrillers Book 11) (7 page)

Bryony VanMeter put away her cell phone and thought about what Joe Hunter had just told her.

She was standing in the service yard at the rear of Tampa PD HQ on Franklin Street. Jurisdiction for the murder of Ella Clayton came under the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office, but being part of a larger picture where the home invasion crew had struck throughout the various districts of Tampa Bay, all investigations were being conducted under the direction of the Major Crimes and Strategic Investigations Bureaus based at One Police Center, of which she was a single spoke in a much larger task force wheel. She was waiting for Dennis Holker to join her, but he was taking longer than he’d promised. She didn’t hold his tardiness against him; Holker had no control over when their captain got through tearing strips off him. She was thankful that he’d attended the summons to Captain Newburger’s office alone, and for once saw a benefit in being junior in rank to her partner. Before joining CID she’d attained Master Police Officer rank, whereas Holker had been a uniformed sergeant before making the switch. If there was a ranking system in CID, Bryony could probably claim she was equivalent to a sergeant now, but Holker had stepped up to lieutenant. Lieutenant or not, it didn’t stop a captain mauling you half to death when things weren’t going to their satisfaction. She was fortunate not to be on the end of a stripping down too, so waited patiently for Holker to join her without complaint, though she was antsy and raring to go.

There was a storm brewing. The evening sky was deep orange and purple; the heavy clouds fit to burst at any second. The light pollution from the city added to the ominous cast of the bruised heavens. It felt as if the humidity had gone up by about forty per cent in the last few hours, and most of it was gathering in her clothes and hair. To avoid the promised downpour she stood beneath an overhanging concrete ledge that was one of the integral supports of the tower block behind her. She was at the bottom of a slope, up which trash was ordinarily wheeled to a series of trashcans and Dumpsters arranged out of public view in the service yard. Her lower angle gave her a skewed view of the yard where she could see only the tyres of the squad cars that came and went. She was standing in what was affectionately known as “the lepers pit” by the other officers and clerical staff that enjoyed sneaking a cigarette when opportunity arose. It didn’t happen very often, smoking on duty being frowned upon by the politically correct brigade upstairs, but it was tolerated – as long as members of the public didn’t see, when disciplinary procedures usually followed.

Bryony smoked. Not very often. Days, and sometimes weeks, went by before she relented to her habit, when she was careful only to have one cigarette. More than that and she suspected she’d be back up to twenty-a-day in no time. Under so much pressure from above, she could forgive herself the cigarette she sucked on now, and relished the cold buzz of nicotine through her system. It wasn’t cold enough to balance the sticky heat, but it was better than nothing. She stepped from under shelter, walked up the ramp to squint around the corner at the CID squad room door, but there was still no sign of Holker. She trembled from the hit of nicotine, and her thoughts were a bit woozy. But she didn’t douse her cigarette, returning to her hiding place she made certain she smoked it down to the stub.

She heard the squeaking of the door, followed by the clip of heels on asphalt. Time to go. She emerged from the ramp, popping a Breath Savers peppermint in her mouth as she searched for Holker. He knew where she’d be waiting, but walked away, across the yard towards their pool car, and she followed. His back was rigid, his steps more mincing than usual, as if he’d been reamed a new butthole. She guessed the shit storm he’d weathered had been epic.

Thinking of storms, the first fat droplets splattered her as the heavens geared up to end Holker’s day on a similar note. She jogged for the car, aiming for the passenger side as Holker was already settling into the driver’s position. As she slid inside, the rain intensified, drumming on the windshield like the claws of a horde of starving scavengers. She pulled the door shut, and sat steaming in the cooler air within the car. She glanced over at Holker.

‘Don’t ask,’ he said.

So she didn’t. Instead she said, ‘Hunter called me while you were upstairs.’

Holker hit the ignition, and pulled away. ‘What did Rambo have to say for himself?’

Bryony settled her mint in the corner of her mouth. ‘He said there was an interesting visitor to the Clayton house earlier. Apparently Parker Quinn showed up full of piss and vinegar.’

‘Don’t tell me, we’ve another shooting to investigate?’

Bryony snorted in forced humour. Holker’s disliking of Joe was growing tiresome on her, and he damn well knew it but still persisted.

‘Hunter managed to calm the situation down before it could develop. He’s beginning to doubt that Quinn’s our man.’

‘Shows you how much
he
knows then,’ Holker said, as he drove through the deluge. ‘I rushed that glove through forensics and they got a match on a hair they found caught in the inner lining, and the sample we took from Quinn today. I’m not talking a DNA match, that’ll take longer as you know, but the hair samples are a colour match. It’s enough to pull Quinn in again, even if it’s only to ask what the hell he was doing lurking in the woods last night.’

‘He’s due to report back in two days,’ Bryony said, ‘and we haven’t had the results back from the computers we seized from his home yet. Don’t you think we might jeopardise things by jumping the gun and grabbing him now?’

‘If Quinn’s just been acting up at Clayton’s place as you say, it tells me he’s struggling to contain himself. If we pull him in, throw the evidence from the glove at him, it might be enough to make him fold, and tell us everything. I don’t know about you Bryony, but even catching whoever’s harassing Clayton is a win for us. It’ll show that we’re taking this case seriously, and a result is a result.’

‘But it puts us no closer to catching Ella’s murderer, and that’s the only result I’m interested in right now. I know it’s the same for you, Dennis.’

Holker aimed a thumb over his shoulder, before quickly returning his hands to the steering wheel. ‘Captain Newburger wants Quinn interviewed, and preferably charged before the evening’s out. For once I tend to agree with him.’

‘Fair enough,’ Bryony agreed, ‘but I think we’re making a mistake.’

‘You know I don’t like Hunter, right?’

‘I think you’ve made your feelings known,’ Bryony said, and couldn’t help a rueful smile.

‘It’s not so much the guy; it’s his goddamn blasé attitude to law enforcement. I don’t know why he feels he’s got a God-given right to dispense his own brand of justice. You ask me it’s criminal, and he’s a borderline psychopath who should’ve been locked up years ago.’

‘Hunter works from a different rule book than us,’ Bryony reasoned. ‘You can’t judge him because his rules of contact don’t fit neatly into our police guidelines. He comes from a totally different world, don’t forget, but intrinsically he was doing the same thing as us: taking out the human garbage. If I’d to be honest, there are times when I wish we weren’t as restrained by rules and regulations…’

The tumult suddenly intensified. Bryony could barely hear herself think. The view through the windshield was obliterated, but for ribbons of leaping foam as the wipers fought the downpour. Holker slowed marginally, aware of brake lights flaring up ahead as other drivers responded to the washout. He said something but his words were lost under the drumming rain. Holker shook his head, and steered the car to the kerb. It didn’t help alleviate the noise, but at least they wouldn’t rear-end another vehicle.

Bryony stared at him, as much to read his lips as to hear.

‘I said I don’t like Hunter,’ he said loudly, ‘ except there was a “but” I was going to add. It doesn’t mean I don’t trust the guy’s instincts. He said he doesn’t think Quinn has anything to do with harassing Clayton, and he’s possibly right. But we have to follow the leads we’re given, Bryony. Quinn might not be our man, but someone is going to great lengths to make him look guilty. We need to get Quinn in and see where it leads us next. If someone’s trying their hardest to make Quinn look responsible, it’s to divert attention away from them. For all we know he’s not behind the harassment, but he has his suspicions who is. We have to investigate
every
angle if we’re going to get to the bottom of this.’

Bryony couldn’t argue. Holker was a good detective, with good instincts of his own. But solving any case took more than instinct. It was about following every lead, investigating them to a point they could be discarded as unimportant. Solving the case of the harassment of Andrew Clayton was a minor consideration against the much bigger problem of finding who’d murdered his wife, but the two cases were linked, and it only got in the way of the other. Some major cases could be broken through identifying the culprit in a minor related incident; once one thread was severed all the others could suddenly begin unraveling.

‘Joe said he advised Quinn to return home; that where we’re going now?’

‘We are once it’s safe to drive. Can you believe this?’ Outside, the storm met Holker’s disbelief with a crackle of lightning that sundered the heavens. The thunder that followed was like a barrage of cannon-fire that Bryony felt as vibrations in her chest.

‘Hellish,’ she muttered in agreement, as more lighting ripped a jagged course overhead. Thunder boomed almost instantly. This time she’d swear the actual car shook, and she was glad they had rubber firmly planted on the road beneath them. The rain clattered on the roof with renewed ferocity. ‘But it’ll pass in no time.’

Sustained rainfall could prove a law enforcement officer’s ally. As a rule, criminals didn’t like to operate in the rain, and when there was a continuous downpour criminality was drastically cut for the period. It didn’t mean that a cop’s workload got any easier though, because the rain brought its own problems. Traffic tended to back up, clogging or stalling the roads, and when that happened it was inevitable that the number of traffic collisions multiplied. Basically cops swapped one priority for another, but at least with the criminals laying low it allowed them the time to deal with the traffic chaos. Thankfully, detectives didn’t answer road traffic calls, so for the duration of the storm they’d get some thinking time. That at least was the norm.

Holker had turned on the in-car radio, and the chatter between dispatch and patrol officers was a background buzz of accompaniment to the drumming on the windshield. It was too early for the reports of car crashes to begin, though it was inevitable, and the chatter was primarily people commenting on the unexpected deluge. Bryony had switched off from it all, but apparently Holker still had one ear tuned to the radio. He leaned down, hit a button and turned up the volume.

‘Man, we could be on,’ he announced, as the dispatcher announced a burglary in progress. A silent alarm had been tripped, but there were also separate 911 calls coming in from concerned neighbours who’d witnessed a group of people making forcible entrance to a family home in the upmarket Sunset Park neighbourhood. Patrol officers were already responding in force, and Tampa PD’s Tactical Response Team was being mobilised.

As Bryony snapped to attention, reaching to switch on their siren and the blue lights in the front grill of their unmarked car, Holker announced they were en route. The rain hadn’t lessened, the conditions on the road still atrocious, but it didn’t mean a thing now. He peeled out, sending the car hurtling towards West Kennedy Boulevard, to pick up Henderson Boulevard and an arrow straight shot into Sunset Park. The rolling thunder followed them as the tyres sent up sheets of water in their wake.

It looked and sounded as if the gods were engaged in celestial warfare.
I’d witnessed plenty of electrical storms since basing myself in Florida, most of them benign, but the occasional one being frightening in its intensity. I was hard put to recall one as violent as the storm that had hit with little warning only minutes ago. The rain came down in torrents, battering flat the Star and Stripes banner on Clayton’s front lawn, throwing small fragments of crushed shell in the air as the raindrops impacted the drive. It was as if a thousand Irish dancers were doing a jig on the roof. So what the bloody hell was Andrew doing outside?

Cole was in bed, but he had been allowed to watch a Disney movie before lights out, so I was confident he was safe enough to leave alone while I went out on the porch for a minute or two. I’d been in the kitchen eating supper, and downing my second coffee from the jug I’d brewed, when I heard the thunder and watched the rear lawn, the pond and the surrounding tress flicker beneath the neon glare of lightning. The storm had arrived without warning, and it had held me mesmerised for a moment, and I’d barely registered the clicking open of the front door, and had only turned away from the lightshow in the heavens when hearing the thud of the door closing again. I padded through to the hall, couldn’t see Andrew for the plyboard covering on the door, so went into the living room and looked out the huge plate glass window there. I couldn’t immediately see Andrew, the deluge was solid, but a sudden squall of wind parted the sheeting rain and I caught a glimpse of him jogging up the drive, bent over in his pointless fight against getting a soaking, pulling the collar of his jacket as far up the back of his shaved head as he could. Moving away, I checked the control panel on the wall and saw that Clayton had disarmed the locking mechanism on the gate. I’d had him reset the code earlier, after telling him about Parker Quinn’s unannounced arrival at the front door. I wondered if Quinn had returned against my advice, and Clayton had slipped out to meet him before he’d come all the way up to the house. Shaking my head in frustration, I grabbed my own jacket and shrugged into it, made sure my SIG was secure in its carry position, and opened the door. I stood on the porch searching for Clayton, but could see nothing of him now.

‘Son of a bitch,’ I muttered under my breath and went down the steps. The storm gods punished me mercilessly for my bad language the instant I stepped out from under cover. But I didn’t learn my manners. Cursing again at Clayton’s stupidity, I jogged after him, but avoided the waterlogged drive, sticking instead to the equally soggy but firmer lawn. My boots were awash in seconds, my trousers soaked through, and my jacket did little to hold off the rain either. But I pushed on with dogged resolve: I wanted to know what the hell Clayton was up to.

Lightning flashed but it did little to aid visibility, it simply washed everything over with stark blinding white. As I approached the perimeter wall though, I could begin making out identifiable form and shape amid the torrent. The gate was open, though the vehicle beyond hadn’t entered from the outer track. Two figures stood close to each other, one of them recognisable as Clayton’s thick-necked form. The other I couldn’t make out beyond dark clothing and some kind of peaked cap. Neither man was aware of my approach. I began treading forward slowly, settling my feet on the spongy grass, while trying to hear anything above the constant pummeling rain and grumbling thunder. I couldn’t hear a damn thing of their words, but Clayton’s hands were held up in a placating gesture.

I’m unsure how Clayton sensed my approach, but he turned abruptly, his head cocked to one side. His spectacles were beaded with rain, as was the rest of him. I couldn’t tell an expression from his gaze, but I watched his mouth slip open, then snap shut in the next instant. When he spun back to his visitor, his entire demeanour had changed, and it heralded a response from the man facing him. The guy cold-cocked him with a punch that flew from beside his hip and impacted Clayton’s chin with a noise I heard even over the storm. Clayton was a tough guy, but it didn’t help: anyone could be caught cold, and knocked out. Clayton went down on his butt, flopped over backwards, and lay with his arms spread and his mouth hanging open.

‘Hey!’ I shouted, and lurched forward, even as I reached tentatively for my gun. ‘Hold it right there!’

The guy ignored my shout, rushing instead to open his car door. He glanced back at me from under his cap even as he yanked the door wide.

I got a glimpse of Clayton’s assailant, and it was as brief as I’d seen of the man clambering over the wall last night. Then the guy was climbing back in his car, and hitting reverse. He must have kept the engine running while talking to Clayton because there was little pause between him piling inside then the car hurtling backwards up the track. I ran to Clayton, saw him begin to come round from the sneaky punch, and decided he’d survive, but not if he lay there in the pouring rain with his mouth open. I grabbed him by one wrist and tugged him over on to his side, and then immediately left him lying in the dirt as I chased the car up the drive. I’d no hope of catching it, but all I wanted was for a look at the licence plate. The driver hit a skid, yanked round the vehicle, engine roaring and tyres digging for traction, and then took off for the highway at speed. It had Florida plates but I couldn’t make out the numbers, though I did make a note of the colour and positioning of the bumper stickers riding its rear fender. I regretted not taking out my gun and putting a round through the vehicle’s body, that would have made it identifiable again. But doing so would have definitely ensured trouble from the police, and Holker in particular. It’d only prove his point that I not only lacked restraint but I was too hotheaded for my own good. I’d be kicked off the job, and to be honest, I was too involved in finding out the truth now to step aside.

Returning to Clayton’s side, I found him stirring. One elbow was propped under him as he raised his head from the ground. His other hand probed at his jaw, checking for serious injury, even before he was fully aware of what he was doing. I crouched alongside him, helping to support him as he sat. ‘You OK, Clayton?’ I asked.

His spectacles were awry. He adjusted them, felt at his jaw again. He worked his lips, writhing them over his teeth, and tilted his face to one side to spit. If there was any blood in his mouth he’d swallowed it. ‘I, uhm, I’m OK…I think. What the hell happened to me?’

‘Sucker punch,’ I told him, as I checked him over. There was reddening to his jaw, but his injury was superficial. I guessed he’d suffered worse during his career in the ring.

‘That sneaky son of a…’ Clayton attempted to stand, but his legs betrayed him and he sat down heavily in the sopping grass. I offered him a hand and hauled him up: the guy weighed a ton. I kept hold of his elbow as I steered him within the gates. He waved me aside, propping himself against the wall. He again probed his jaw, checking for injury, inserting fingers in his mouth to check for loosened teeth. He spat a string of saliva between his teeth. When he looked at me again his vision was a little clearer.

‘Some bodyguard you turned out to be,’ he muttered. ‘If that asshole had a weapon I’d be dead now.’

The ferocity of the storm had abated in the last minute or so, but I still stood with rain pattering on my face, plastering my hair to my forehead. I expelled air in disgust. ‘I thought we understood something: I’m not here for you. I’m here for Cole’s sake. And besides, if I were looking after you, you aren’t making my bloody job easy. What were you thinking sneaking out the house like that?’

‘Who was sneaking?’ he said gruffly.

‘You didn’t tell me you were leaving,’ I pointed out.

‘Am I obliged to? I can’t come and go from my own home without your permission?’ He snorted. ‘I don’t need your fucking permission and I certainly don’t need you to babysit me.’

I looked at him.

He touched his mouth again.

‘I was caught napping,’ he said. ‘When you came up behind me you distracted me. That punk wouldn’t have had the guts to hit me if my back wasn’t turned.’

He was massaging his ego, trying to redirect his downfall onto me. If I hadn’t turned up when I did his injuries could have been much worse. But was he purely being ungrateful or trying to further throw our conversation off track? I wasn’t going to allow it. ‘So, are you going to tell me who that was?’

‘How the hell would I know?’

‘Don’t come it, Clayton. You left the house in a fucking storm to speak to the man, so don’t tell me you don’t know him.’

‘You’re the one who told me I had to control access to the house, and check out those I let through the gate,’ he said angrily.

‘I didn’t necessarily mean you had to do that in person,’ I said. ‘You could have checked over the intercom…’

‘I did. Guy said he was delivering a package. How was I to know otherwise, when I receive deliveries for my company all the time?’

I bit my lip. He had a fair point; trouble was I wasn’t buying his explanation. He’d opened the gate from the control panel in the house before checking whom the visitor was, not after he arrived at the gate. So he could have made an error in doing so, but I thought he was lying. ‘So there was no package,’ I said, ‘so what did he say?’

‘Told me I was a murdering asshole and I’d get what was coming to me. I felt like slapping him upside the head, and putting the record straight, but that was hardly going to convince him otherwise.’

‘And you didn’t know the guy?’

‘Never seen him before. But he sounds like the same guy you chased over the wall last night.’

‘I only got the briefest look at him,’ I said, but didn’t acknowledge if it was the same man or not. I couldn’t be certain.

‘We should call the cops,’ Clayton said, ‘and let them know what’s happened.’

I looked sharply back at the house. The rain was diminishing, and I could see the hazy lights from the upper floors above the treetops. ‘We should get back to Cole,’ I corrected him. ‘I’ll phone Detective VanMeter as soon as I’ve checked on him.’

Clayton nodded at my wisdom, pushed away from the wall, and set off down the drive. ‘Wait up,’ I said, ‘there’s something you have to do first. Lock that goddamn gate.’

He turned and peered at me, angrily working his jaw. ‘Who pays your wage?’ With that he didn’t wait for an answer but turned and marched off, the shells crunching under his deliberate footsteps.