The Blue Ridge Project: A Dark Suspense Novel (The Project Book 1) (7 page)

Andrea sat in her living room, photos and papers strewn across the floor in the center of the room. More papers were piled on the table. The way she saw it, she had less than forty-eight hours to try to make some headway before news of the murders was leaked. She was surprised that no one at the mayor’s office, or someone from Solas’ crowd had done it already.

Afterward, she was sure of two things.

First, all the crazies would come crawling out of the woodwork. They would claim to be the mastermind to the murder, as well as a slew of other murders. Then they would confess to being the reincarnation of that rock-and-roll singer who’d died fifty years before, brought back to life by alien technology and cigarette smoke. Policy would dictate that she would have to at least take an interview with each one of these crackpots, more than likely on her own. From what she could gather, the budget had been sliced again this year. Everybody was doubling up on duties, unpaid overtime, and good luck if you wanted sick pay. She had reached an agreement with Cap not to be back on the payroll just yet, as a favor, and he had paid this month out of his own pocket. Which was fine with her right now, but she doubted it could go on for long.

Second, the city would be in an uproar. This would be a final straw on a tired donkey’s back. There would be marching in the streets, riots, and strikes. With all the crap that was already around about scandals in the halls of government and police, and the murders that had already happened since last year, the people had had enough. Every newspaper, every pundit had nothing but bad things to say about the people running the city. The murder of the son of one of the last few honest-seeming political voices would be too much.

Andrea rubbed her eyes and looked over the mess of information in front of her. Laurence Kale, dead in a bathtub in a hotel not fifty feet from an unknown body. The same word on his chest as the supposed perpetrator of the Solas murder-suicide. She leafed through the papers on the desk and found the file on Kale.

Single, never married, thirty-four, no children. Not much in the way of family or assets. No criminal record, no tattoos, no known associates. Spotty employment record, his last job had been two years before, working out of some warehouse outside of the city on a construction contract.

She’d found quarterly payments made to him since he had left that job on the sheet with his bank details. The amounts were more than the usual unemployment package, and there was no name for the source of the funds.

Andrea tossed the papers to the floor and reached for her phone and called Cap on his private number.

“Hello?”

Cap sounded groggy, and she checked her watch. It was a little after midnight. “Hey, Cap, it’s me.”

“I can tell. Hold on,” he said, and she could hear movement and a low voice in the background. Then she heard Cap mumbling something, and a few seconds later he was back on the line. “Just had to go downstairs. What’s the latest?”

Andrea sighed. “I’m not sure. This stuff is all over the place. So far, I have Kale getting money regularly from some unknown source.”

“Hmm,” Cap said, and there was a pause. “What about the note on the John Doe outside the hotel? Anything there?”

“Not yet. Haven’t found any reference to a BR or anything starting with those letters.”

“All right, I’ll have a look and see if I can dig up anything else. I’ve got a name for you on the other one, the one they found with Solas. Kenny Arellano. Guy used to work for a company called Sonic Solutions a few years ago. They used to work with audio technology before they went bankrupt. Then he just kind of dropped off the grid. I'll try to see what I can dig up about his financial records.”

“Okay. Hopefully it’ll be the connection. This one is weird. I mean full on freak show. If we could get some info on the guy outside the hotel...”

“We’ll get there, Annie. I know it. You get some rest now. And hey, don’t forget about tomorrow.”

Andrea frowned. “Tomorrow?” She walked over to the calendar on the wall, and groaned when she saw the red circle around the next day’s date and the little word scribbled inside.

“Yeah, tomorrow. Mandated therapy. Don’t miss it.”

“Yeah, yeah. Don’t worry about it. Goodnight, Cap.”

“’Night, Annie.”

After she hung up, she flipped her middle finger at the calendar and held it for a good ten seconds.

*****

When she woke the next morning, she felt more rested than she had in days. She looked at the clock on her bedside table, and saw that she had slept right through her alarm. She stretched and got out of bed, seeing the calendar and the red circle again as she walked to the shower. The time for the appointment was in an hour and a half. She was out the door in forty minutes, and managed to arrive ten minutes early to the address she had been given.

It was a big Georgian-style house, with three large bay windows stacked on top of each other. The garden was rectangular with the house at the long end. Hedges on either side covered up most of the neighbors’ view into both the front and the side of the house. Andrea walked up the stone path, which had the appearance of being laid over the grass, and got to the door. She searched for a bell and when she couldn’t find one, she used the hand-shaped knocker, letting it fall twice onto the light-blue wood with a loud tap.

She heard a rustling sound inside, and after a few seconds the door opened a few inches. A woman in her fifties appeared in the gap, the view of her face split by the door chain. She had an amiable but professional-looking smile on her face and short, graying hair.

“Can I help you?” she asked in a soothing low tone.

A practiced voice
, Andrea thought. “I’m Andrea Nox. I’m here for a therapy session.” She stood with both feet planted shoulder-width apart. She looked the older woman straight in the eye, unsmiling, and holding her identification out in front of her.

The older woman checked her watch, undid the chain and pulled the door all the way open. She waved a hand to invite Andrea in. “Come on in, Andrea. I’m Doctor Silvers.”

Andrea stepped over the threshold and looked at the collection of porcelain cats on the hall table.

“A little foible of mine,” Silvers said. “Do you like them?”

Andrea shrugged. “They’re okay, I guess. I’m more of a dog person. Real dogs, though.”

Silvers smiled a little smile. “Come on, we can use this room.” She pushed open a pair of white doors to reveal a spacious lounge.

There were two comfortable-looking brown-leather chairs across from each other with a small, round, wooden table held up by a wooden sphere, instead of legs, that had been carved and polished with great care, and a round, flat piece of wood for the tabletop. The orange and light-brown curtains were pulled almost all the way across, although the light allowed into the room was warm and illuminating. If Andrea had to give only one word for the room, it would be “relaxed.” The angles of the walls and the bookcases spoke soothingly to her subconscious. She walked slowly past Silvers, removed her jacket and laid it across the back of one of the chairs. She stood in front of a painting of a stag standing on a hilltop, looking down over the sheer drop below him and the green spreading away into a warm orange sunset.

“It’s from an old patient,” Silvers said from behind her. “I’m not much of an art expert, but I like it. I find it calming.” Silvers moved to stand beside the chair opposite, facing the painting.

Andrea nodded, admiring the loveliness of the green grass winding up to meet the horizon, with no emptiness in between. She did indeed feel a little bit of the calming effect Silvers was talking about. Then again, maybe it was suggestibility. She was a shrink, after all. She turned to face Silvers.

“Please,” Silvers said, “sit.”

Andrea sat down and crossed her legs with one foot over the other knee, tapping her fingers lightly in a steady rhythm on her ankle. Silvers sat down opposite, her legs and arms open. Body Language One-Oh-One
,
Andrea mused.

“I was sent over some information about you and what happened from your superiors, but I want to hear it from you. In my experience, you can’t learn about a person from a file.”

Andrea eyed Silvers for a second before answering. “What would you like to know?”

“Well, I suppose a good place to start is why you believe you’re here with me.”

Andrea guessed Silvers’ smile was supposed to disarm her. “I’m here because I didn’t learn about a person from his file and I had to shoot him instead of arresting him. I got injured, and I didn’t agree to the mandatory counseling being held at my bedside so I signed up to come here when I got out.”

Silvers continued smiling her friendly professional smile. “You must be special, getting to choose your mandated therapy days. Would I be right in saying that somebody is looking out for you?”

“A friend on the force I helped. I guess he wanted to do me a favor.” Andrea stilled her tapping fingers.

“How do you feel about the shooting?”

“The act itself? I’m not sure it lasted long enough to warrant a feeling. There were gunshots, and it was done. The person was there, and the next he was dead. It was the most favorable outcome of a bad fucking situation.”

“Do you think it was the right thing to do?”

Andrea looked away, wishing in an irrational way that she had sat on the side facing the painting.

“Andrea, while we’re both here we may as well try to talk about what happened, to help you understand it. I’m not here to judge, just to help you with adjustments you might need to make.”

Andrea turned her head back to Silvers, the slightest sliver of contempt piercing her voice. “But you
are
here to judge. If you deem me unfit to return to work I’m out. Maybe permanently.”

“My primary goal is to aid. I will only declare people not ready for duty if there is truly no progress to be made here in these sessions with me.” Silvers looked at her with what seemed to be an honest and open face.

Andrea kept her gaze. “All right,” she said finally, “but there’s still doctor-patient confidentiality, right? That exists here, doesn’t it?”

Silvers nodded, and Andrea began to speak.

“All right, everybody,” Hynes shouted to the packed room of police at the Sunken Well, “raise your god damned glasses to the newest detective in Homicide: Andrea Nox!”

The crowd let out a hearty shout and spilled plenty of whiskey and beer as they raised their glasses in Andrea’s direction. She smiled at them and finished off her own larger tumbler of whiskey in one go, to more shouts of approval. The spilled booze disappeared from sight as soon as it landed on the dark wooden floors. A lighter shade peeked out from behind the battalion of black and white photos of servicemen and sports teams that covered the walls and the column in the center of the island bar.

Hynes appeared at her side with a fresh one and put one meaty arm around her shoulder.

“So that’s an official welcome,” he said, “the paperwork don’t mean shit until it happens.” He winked at her and took a swig of his own beer and tequila concoction.

“Thanks, Hynes,” she half shouted into his ear. The music had been turned up, some band singing about the little green island they had left behind but was always in their hearts or something like that. “I’m looking forward to working here.”

“Bullshit, but I won’t hold it against you. I'll say this much though, you came to Beacon at an interesting time.”

“There’s a proverb about that.”

“Yeah, I know that one. I always thought it was a curse. Anyway, first and most importantly, you’re coming at a time when I am in need of a new partner, and word is that you’re tipped to be that lucky person. Good thing, too, because of the next thing.”

“What’s that?”

“Hey, Berges!” Hynes shouted at a group that was gathered around a pile of empty glasses on the bar. “Berges!”

A balding man with a pair of dark-rimmed glasses turned to Andrea and Hynes. His face was a shade of red similar to Hynes’, and most of the rest of the people there. “What do you want, you cantankerous cadaver collector?”

“Always with the wordplay, this guy,” Hynes said in a low voice to Andrea. Then he shouted back to Berges, “What’s the name of this new babysitting program the city is pushing on us in the next few months?”

“The Regional Police Training Initiative. A fucking mentoring program, if you can believe it.”

“Well, I don’t, but thanks!” Hynes raised his glass.

“I’ve read about this,” Andrea said. “It’s an internship for cops from small towns, right?”

“Correct, Detective. Small town Podunk cops coming up here to work with real police. Learning how to do the job, by being assigned to detectives as their partners. All hail the mayor and the city council, in their infinite fiscal wisdom.”

“Can’t be all bad. Surely if cops get better from being here with us for a while, and the department is short-staffed, it’s a win-win, no?”

“Careful, Nox. With an attitude like that, you’ll end up in city politics in no time.” Hynes laughed and then coughed until his head darkened to an almost purple color. Andrea smacked him on the back but he waved her away.

“Come on,” Hynes said when the fit had passed. “Let’s get a drink.”

Two hours later, Andrea waved goodbye to Hynes as he puked behind a taxi parked outside. He raised a hand to her as the driver got out and started shouting and pointing at the vomit that splashed onto the car and dripped into the puddle that gathered under his wheels.

*****

Richard Lyons had been interested in police work ever since his father's murder.

He had watched the policeman work, witnessing the sterility, the distance the man kept internally from the still collection of bones and blood that had been his father. A quiet, hot little ball of joy inside the skinny boy’s chest was hidden under a cool, rigid exterior. The detective’s calm attitude to the situation—a man on his back with his open eyes bulging and bloodshot, his legs mostly under the breakfast table—spoke to Lyons.

He remembered how the policeman, still wearing his gloves, had pinched the little black box that had been strapped to his shoulder and spoke into it. “Base, this is Jay-Two. This looks like natural causes, over.”

The radio had crackled, and the responding voice had blared back, the policeman’s gaze never leaving the boy’s eyes. Eyes which had black rings under each, dashed through with purple, and a long curved scar wound up one cheek.

“Roger that, Jay-Two. You can head on out when the paramedics are there.”

“Roger that, Base. Over and out.”

Over and out. Little Richie had loved the phrase instantly. He thought of that radio wave carrying the message that his father was over and out. He imagined it bouncing around the world, up into the universe. A single tear rose in his eye, giving it a shine in the blue-white light that made it through the clouds and the buildings and the blinds and into the kitchen, on this morning where the world clicked into place for Richie Lyons.

The police man saw this twinkle and wrongly guessed at the boy’s emotional state. He squatted down so he could be eye to eye with him. “You gonna be okay?” he asked Richie.

Richie nodded, his lip trembling with a smile.

“Your mom in there, she’s gonna be okay, too.”

Richie now smiled steadily, the tear evaporating before it could fall from its perch. His mother would be fine. She was not the brightest, as far as young Richie could tell, but she did love her boy. She would do anything for him, if he asked her. Or if he told her.

The policeman stood back up as the paramedics entered the room. He looked at the boy one last time, nodding his head once at him like the cowboy sheriffs on TV used to, and he was gone.

The paramedics set to work almost immediately, wrapping the body up while the kid watched from the doorframe of what had once been both his parents’ bedroom. He could hear his mother still weeping behind him, very softly. They asked the kid, Little Richie Lyons who had felt his calling, if he wanted to maybe go in his room. It wasn’t going to be nice getting the body down the stairs, maybe he didn’t need to see that. Lyons told them he didn’t mind, he wanted to see him go.

When they were maneuvering the body around a corner, Richie called down to them, “How do ya get to be a policeman?”

*****

“Hell of a catch, Lyons,” the sergeant brayed as he clapped Richie on the back.

“Just doing my job, Sarge.” Richie looked down at the ground, the modesty well practiced, rehearsed in front of a mirror many times over.

“Either way, damn fine work. I wouldn’t be surprised if you’re tipped for this program they’ve got up in Beacon.”

“Thank you, Sarge.”

“I’m gonna recommend you myself, come to think of it. And don’t worry about that scumbag making any more allegations. We’ve got him dead to rights, he’s just trying to weasel some kind of a deal for himself.”

Richard shrugged and smiled, embarrassed.

“Go on,” the sergeant said, “get out of here. Go get a beer or something, you’ve earned it. Tell the bartender first round is on me, I’ll be down as soon as the shift changes.”

“Okay, Sarge. Will do.”

After Richie left the station, the sergeant went back to the paperwork on his desk. The paper on top was the first statement the prisoner had given. The paper underneath was the second statement. It was similar to the first, with plenty said about the voices of the gods and demons who had instructed him to kidnap and hold those girls. One difference is that it left out certain details, such as the accusation he made against one Officer Richard Lyons. Kidnapping and torture was underlined in red.

The sergeant shook his head and laughed. Richie Lyons, who wouldn’t say boo to a goose egg. Kidnapping and torturing a girl he had just rescued from the basement of some deranged psycho, only to bring the body back to the basement and pin it on that same nut?
That’s a good one,
he thought.

He crumpled up the first paper, tossed it in the bucket beside his desk, and turned his attention to more serious matters.