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THE COLISEUM WAS BOOMING, literally, the techno-beat loud and disorienting in the dim light. The crowd shifted and swayed. Andrea hung onto Karie’s arm as they entered and walked fifteen feet in to survey the room, Hoyle trailing them. Every ten feet along the walls a massive surround-sound speaker hung near the ceiling. A long bar ran down either side of the club for thirty feet, with tables and high tops staggered around the space between them before the club opened up at the back into a much larger space. Round booths hugged the sides of a huge dance floor dominated by a platform in the middle. Andrea had seen plenty of bands perform there, but tonight a DJ was running the program, and club girls shared the platform, dancing like their lives depended on it.
She pointed to the left-hand bar, where there were scattered stools available. Weaving around tables and working their way closer, Andrea scoped the faces around her, knowing eventually she’d spot someone both she and Taka knew.
At the bar Karie and Andrea claimed free side-by-side stools. Hoyle leaned over between them and caught the closest bartender’s eye. The tall blond worked his way down before nodding at Hoyle, placing the last draft beer he’d pulled on the bar for him. Andrea caught Karie’s frown and directed the same at Hoyle. He picked up the beer and shrugged. Andrea pointed at Hoyle’s beer and Karie, shouting, ordered a vodka and cranberry before Andrea spun back to Hoyle, who was squinting back toward the DJ and his girls.
She pulled on his sleeve and lifted a brow when he shot her a questioning glance. Shuffling closer, he bent over to talk into her ear. “I come here a lot on weekends. The bartender’s a friend of mine from back home.”
“He works for Dewey.”
“Yeah, he does, but I don’t, I swear. And he’s only ever talked to Dewey once, anyway.”
Andrea pulled back and he took the hint, eased away without giving up his spot at their backs. She smiled at Karie’s concerned look and flapped her hand in a whatever gesture. When the drinks came, Andrea slipped a twenty on the bar. She sipped enough of her beer to make it easier to carry. “Ready?” she shouted at Karie, who nodded and stood up. Standing in their way, Jimmy Hoyle closed his eyes for a second like he was gathering his patience before he opened them, his misgivings right on top, and then moved.
The back room was cooler, big vents on the ceiling throwing cold draughts down on the sweating crowd. Andrea dropped her shoulder to slip into the writhing mass, swaying to the beat as she crossed left to right and skirted the platform.
Someone caught her right bicep. She stopped, juggling her beer, and the guy let go, laughing as she recognized him. “Sorry!”
“Hey, Matt!” Andrea yelled back. He was someone from school, a hard drinker, looking a little worse for wear than when she’d last seen him. “You seen Taka here?”
“No, not yet. He coming?”
She shrugged and lifted her beer towards a booth being cleared. “Catch you in a bit,” she said, Hoyle moving past her to snag the booth.
Karie sat down across from Hoyle, but since Hoyle was facing the rear of the club, Andrea slid in next to him, forcing him to scoot closer to the wall, his eyes narrowed and lips tight.
She flipped her hair and took a tiny sip of her beer and watched the dancers near them before she let her gaze roam, looking for Dewey. Hoyle leaned close. “All the way back. VIP.”
The sheer curtains on both VIP lounges were tied open tonight. Curved couches filled the back and side walls. The big man sat with three of his posse in leather club chairs at a low eight-person table. A pretty brunette in short shorts and a halter leaned over the table, a tray expertly balanced on one hand. She laughed, her long hair cascading over her shoulder as she set their order down. Dewey brushed it back with one hand and kissed her cheek. She gave him a big grin and left the table, sashaying back towards the bar on her super high heels with a confident stride.
“She attends to Dewey’s every need while he’s here,” Hoyle offered. “Fetches food and drink and pretty girls, though we think the girls are mostly for show?”
All for show. Andrea kept her gaze on Dewey. If Hoyle wanted info, he needed to give info. “What other properties does Dewey own?”
“Do you really think you can find Taka this way? The most you can do is drive by. How would you be able to tell? Go home. Report him missing again tomorrow if he still is, tell them you suspect Fitch was in your house. Find out if they can process those prints from the break-in faster.”
She wasn’t good at lying, but he didn’t know her. “We found his home address,” she tried, turning to face him. “What else does he own?”
Hoyle sighed. “A warehouse buried in Boone county. Storage units on seventh and in South Charleston. A second house on the Gauley outside Summersville. His Dad owns multiple properties all over the state.”
“Can you get me a list?”
“No.”
She sipped her beer and went back to sizing Dewey up. He didn’t look much different than he had back when they were high school seniors and he’d come around every few days to pick Taka up. Tow-headed blond and blue eyes. Handsome. Andrea hadn’t liked him then and didn’t like him now. He wasn’t tall, maybe five-nine, but built, with broad shoulders and a big personality. He liked adrenaline sports, which is what had drawn Taka into his web.
Kayaking on the New River, in the gorge, they’d swept around a wide rocky bend and been treated to Dewey on a climbing line, scaling a sheer face with deceptive ease. He missed a hold, dropping several yards before his friends yanked the slack. When they’d caught their collective breaths, Dewey leaned back in the harness and let out a long whoop and then laughed and laughed.
“Dewey!” someone called from up top. “Are you okay?”
“Fuck, yeah!” Dewey yelled back and laughed some more.
“That’s Dewey Sanderson,” Taka told her, his eyes bright. “I met him at the range.” And then he was shouting to him, “Hey! Hey, Dewey, shit, man!”
Dewey spun on the rope, looking down at them. “Hey, Taka! You climb? I’ll call you!”
And Taka, at eighteen, had fallen as surely as the middle school boys had, though his lures were alcohol and motorbikes, shotguns and BASE jumping. Ten months in he caught Dewey with a boy who was only sixteen and finally realized that not only were they far from exclusive, but at twenty-three, Dewey was committing statutory rape. And didn’t care. A little digging gave him Dewey’s sordid past and enlightened Andrea to her passion for research. Taka promptly got as far away as he could by joining the Army.
Since then Andrea knew he looked sometimes, occasionally touched, but he’d not had a serious boyfriend since Dewey. And only one serious girlfriend, though he had a proclivity for letting any of his girlfriends move in with him for months at a time. Alison lasted two years before deciding she needed more purpose in her life and moved home to South Carolina. Taka took six months to get back into the game that time.
Taka didn’t go to great lengths to hide his bisexuality, but West Virginia’s general anti-gay sentiment followed by his exposure to “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” had shaped his silence at a young age. And he’d be humiliated if his fellow cops found out he’d been one of Dewey’s boys. Her heart clenched at the fact that she’d spilled his secret to Hoyle.
Dewey laughed and took a sip of his drink, his gaze meeting hers for a millisecond before a dancer blocked it. A moment later, he was on his phone. Taka didn’t have much occasion to run into Dewey, but when they had, so far, they did an admirable job of acting like they had no familiarity with one another. Until Louie’s. Andrea hoped she was the only one who’d seen the way Dewey turned Taka inside out.
She dreaded what Dewey could do to Taka in revenge for his latest boy.
Karie took her hand, startling her. “Stop staring, you’ll draw his attention.”
“I want to talk to him.”
Someone filled her peripheral vision. “He wants to talk to you, too,” Dewey’s brunette said, the empty tray tucked against her side. “We could’ve all caught fire over there, you were so laser focused.”
“Oh, sorry,” Andrea said, not sorry at all.
A genuine smile rose on the girl’s face.
Andrea tilted her head in appraisal. “When did Dewey start going for the smart ones?”
“Oh, he doesn’t, believe me,” the brunette said. “He likes his boys kinda clueless. I think he must’ve been burned before in that regard.” Although they had leaned close together, to hear each other, Andrea didn’t miss the understanding that lit up Hoyle’s face. “Anyway, he requests your company, Andrea.”
“Ah, I was wondering if he remembered me.”
“I’ll go with you,” Hoyle said.
“This is a single invite, cop, sorry about that.”
“I’m not—”
She winked at him. “Sure, and I’m just a barmaid.” She spun on her heel, headed again for the bar. “Don’t keep him waiting, Andrea,” she threw back over her shoulder.
“Do you want me to go?” Karie asked.
Andrea smiled as she watched the brunette sashay away. Dewey might regret that hire. “No,” she said, glancing at Karie. “Sorry to drag you into this. I’ll be fine.”
Leaving her beer behind, Andrea wove a path through the gyrating crowd to Dewey’s lounge, watching him watch her progress. He gestured at the chair across from him and waved off two of his bodyguards. Pointing at the third, sitting beside him, he said, “You remember Trevor. He knows everything.”
“Wow. What’s the square root of the hypotenuse on an angle of one hundred forty-six degrees?”
Trevor sneered at her. She tried to sneer back, but wasn’t sure she succeeded when Dewey just grinned at her. “Are you bringing me apologies from that son of a bitch?”
She shook her head, trying to think through his question. Was he playing a game?
“Well. What are you here for then?”
“I want Taka.”
“Best to take that up with him then.”
“I know you have him.”
Dewey narrowed his eyes. “I don’t understand your statement. I haven’t had William in any way in a very, very long time.”
Could the man not think in anything other than a sexual manner? Really? “Your man Fitch has taken him.”
“My man, Fitch.” He sat back in his chair, stretching his legs out so that his calves bumped hers. “Hear that, Trevor? My man Fitch. I can assure you he has not, in fact, taken,” he said, using air quotes for emphasis on “taken,” “William anywhere.”
“Taka was in my home when Fitch called me from my home, on my landline, and now Taka’s gone, leaving his phone and gun behind. Tell me what you want for him and I’ll get it for you.”
Dewey’s eyebrows inched up his forehead as he leaned forward again. “I don’t have him. If I did, what I would want is Zach back.” His expression shifted, his brows drawing down and chin drawing up as he clenched his jaw down tight. “They never should have shot him, but I—” His breath caught and Andrea thought he’d stop, but he only swallowed hard and continued. “I have more reason than his family. I’ve seen that boy on a low. I know how he could be. He probably did kill Deborah. He got out of his head when he crashed. As for Verny?” Dewey grated the name out in a furious growl. “Verny was supposed to make sure that didn’t happen. Verny probably overdosed him on the damn insulin because he wasn’t paying attention.” Dewey took a deep, calming breath before smoothing his hair back over his scalp. “Verny no longer works for me.”
Trevor cleared his throat. “Why did Verny call you from your house?”
Looking back and forth between them, Andrea decided she’d shared enough. “I don’t know.”
“How do you know it was Verny?”
Andrea chewed the inside of her lip. She couldn’t exactly tell him a ghost told her. “Security.”
“Dewey, would Verny ever go in somewhere without taking down the system?”
Relaxing once again into his comfortable slouch, though his face was still flushed, Dewey crossed his arms. “No, Trevor, I don’t believe he would.”
“Mr. Sanderson hasn’t disappeared your boyfriend, and I seriously doubt Verny has either.” Trevor pushed his chair back as he stood, proving himself the same size and disposition as the closed door behind him. “May I see you and your friends to the door?”
******
CURLED ON HIS LEFT side, Taka woke to darkness on a rough wood floor, his nose filled with must. A thin rim of flickering light outlined a closed door, with voices and music beyond. His stiff neck bristled with pain as he lifted his head, the movement awkward because his hands were again cuffed above his head. Small room. A bed to his left. He frowned at the dark hulk to his right. A water heater. Another door standing partially open to the dark beyond.
Letting his head hit the floor again, Taka tried rolling onto his back, finding it easy to do. He tilted his head back to look at his numb, but tingling hands. About six inches above the floor, a three-inch diameter metal pipe ran along the length of the bedroom’s wood-paneled wall to the right. The fingers of his left hand rested on an elbow joint. The connecting pipe ran through the wood panel to the outside. The pipe was cold on his skin. Cold water pipe to the water heater. Check.
Fumbling his hands against the wall, he pushed himself away from it so that he could straighten his arms, every movement seeming far distance from the control of his brain. He tilted from side to side, letting his shoulders stretch one at a time against his restraints. Rocking his hips, he tried to work some feeling into his left butt cheek. As slow as a dream, Taka scissored his legs open over the uneven planks of the floor. Snow angel. A bubble of sound escaped him. Half. Half an angel. He bent and straightened each knee to ease the aches. He didn’t seem to be actually hurt, though his wrists were still complaining about the handcuffs and his hands about the lack of circulation. At least this time he wasn’t hanging. His arms appreciated that.
The chain-linked cuffs, probably his, wouldn’t allow him to turn over, but by twisting his body and working one knee under himself, he managed to slouch upward, which helped the insistent thumping of his head. “Hey,” he croaked. He worked some spit into his mouth and yelled again, getting some range this time. “Hey! I need to piss.”
He closed his hands into weak fists and tried to slam them into the wall. The limited movement made a soft unsatisfying thud, but the cuff rattled on the pipe. That was an easier motion. He jangled the cuffs. Rang the bell. “Hey!” Thank God his hinged cuffs were in his truck. He’d have no mobility in those. “I gotta go.”
Light and the swell of voices filled the room as the door swung open. Taka winced and shut his eyes, disappointed to find it was just the TV. More people meant more mistakes. He squinted through one eye at the painful light. “Hey,” he croaked again. “I gotta piss. Come on, man.”
“Cody,” Verny said from the doorway. “Come un-cuff him.”