Danny sat with his father in the kitchen reading the Detroit News with dread. On the front page was a picture of the crime scene at Dr. Henry Vance’s house on Edison Street in Detroit. The place was swarming with police and press when the snapshot was taken. The police department had kept a lid on the case, but this time, the media were all over it.
Henry Vance had been killed by the same killer who was stalking the members of the Castle.
Danny cursed silently as he realized that calling for protection to be put on the listed names had been too late. He’d left the case at the worst possible time.
Danny was staying with his father these days, the two men sharing a room and their guilt over Lucy’s death. It was difficult living in a house with his mother’s face on every wall and some memory of her in each corner. In a strange way it was a good thing, he thought. He was being forced to live with what had happened.
Danny had quit the case, but officially he was on leave. Jim Cole was not giving up. He wanted Danny to come to the most recent crime scene as his last official act. Danny knew what he was doing. He was hoping to give him the scent again, get his blood hot to get the killer. But it didn’t work. Danny had to step away from the job to find out what the hell in his life made any sense.
Danny’s attention went back to the news story. Dr. Vance’s body had been found by a neighbor. He had disappeared while on his way to see a patient early yesterday morning. Dr. Vance’s companion, Rudolph Garrison, was seriously injured and was in critical condition at Receiving Hospital. The article went on to say that Henry Vance’s death was at the hands of a serial murderer. Danny could see Janis somewhere smiling about this.
The news story also contained a report from sources in the police department that the killings of Olittah Reese and the Bakers had “shockingly similar details.” Then it went on to cite an unconfirmed report that Dr. Vance’s crime scene had been despoiled after the killer had covered the crime scene with flour. Dr. Vance was a widower and there were no witnesses.
Jim Cole and Chip Unger had formed a joint task force of SCU cops and FBI. They would mobilize and start the manhunt today.
Danny fought the burning in his gut to run out and take back his job. But his father needed him. Robert was all he had now, and that seemed to be much more important.
“He’s a smart one,” Danny heard his father say. Robert was reading the Detroit Free Press. Henry Vance was front-page news there as well.
“Yeah,” said Danny. “I felt like I was closing in on his ass, too.”
“Sounds like he kidnapped that man and took him to his own house to kill him. He had a reason for that, don’t you think?”
“I don’t know,” said Danny, not wanting to get into it. “Let me fix you something to eat.”
“Why ain’t you out there?” asked Robert.
“Because I’m here with you,” said Danny. “How about some eggs with cheese in them?”
Robert looked at his son and blinked once. Danny knew that look. He was processing something, analyzing his son’s evasive response.
“You quit, didn’t you?” asked Robert, “’Cause of what I told you about Lucy.”
“Yeah,” said Danny. “Last night.” He watched his father. Even though Robert had turned away, Danny could feel him thinking about him.
“Marshall know?” asked Robert.
“Not yet. I’ll tell him today. I’m sure Erik has been trying to get hold of me all day.”
“You know, every time I got it bad in life, I blamed the job, too. Shit, I musta quit or thought about it more than fifty times.”
“I know what I’m doing,” said Danny defensively. “So, don’t try to talk me out of it.”
“Didn’t plan to,” sad Robert. “The job is more than an occupation. You get into it for whatever crazy-ass reason then you realize that you never had a choice, that you didn’t choose the job, it chose you. You think you can make your life better by quitting it, but you find out that the job is life.”
Danny didn’t say anything. He made his father breakfast and felt like a good son. He cleaned up the house and drove his father to church.
Danny walked his father into the cathedral and felt a sense of relief. Robert was going to confession. Apparently, he’d been going every day since Lucy’s death.
Danny watched Robert disappear into a confessional. He turned to walk away when he caught sight of an angel in the stained glass. Suddenly he was ten again and his mother was standing next to him in the packed church. She was telling him that the angel with the red hair was him when he was in heaven. Danny recalled the story with great joy. He actually believed that for a while.
But soon his happiness was pushed aside by grief. Her memory was going to haunt him forever, he thought.
Danny took a deep breath, turned on his heel, and walked into a confessional.
“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned,” said Danny after the priest entered the other side.
There was a moment of silence as Danny tried to remember the rest of what he was supposed to say.
“How long has it been since your last confession?” asked the priest. He sounded young to Danny. His voice was light and reedy like a girl’s.
“It’s been most of my life,” said Danny. “Since I was a kid.”
“And your sins?” asked the priest, urging Danny on.
“Yeah, right. I, uh, I killed a few guys, but you know it was in the line of duty. I’m a cop. I beat down some other people pretty bad, and that wasn’t exactly cool, you know. I drink too much, but I’m trying to cut down. I live in sin with a woman, but you know, I love her.”
There was more silence as Danny could hear how badly he was screwing this up.
“Why don’t you tell me why you came here?” asked the priest.
Danny was taken a little aback by this. He didn’t remember everything about confession, but he did know that the priest wasn’t supposed to push you.
“I kinda killed my mother,” said Danny.
There was a long silence then, “How?” asked the priest. The shock was apparent in his voice.
“I guess you could say I disappointed her to death.”
“So you only think you killed her?” said the priest, calming down.
“Yeah. I—she invested a lot in me and I just let her down. And while it ain’t my fault, I still feel bad about it.”
The priest took a long moment and Danny guessed he was at a loss as to what to say to this.
“Death is only the doorway to salvation, my son,” said the priest. “I am more concerned with your soul than your life. Life is fleeting but it is the pathway to the greater glory of God. Therefore, when death comes, we must get back to life.”
Danny was quiet as he contemplated the priest’s wisdom. The priest told Danny to say a few prayers and sent him along his way.
Danny walked out of the church into the bright sun of the day. And all he could think about was getting a drink. He knew how bad it was to leave God’s house and drink the demon rum, but even the philosophy of the church could not do what a stiff scotch could. He headed to the one place you could get a drink early in the day and no one would think you were a lush.
Danny tossed back his drink at the bar in the Motor City Casino. The place was surprisingly full for a weekday morning. The musical sound of slot machines filled the air, and the chatter of the patrons was like sweet whispers rather than the tired, drunken mutterings of gamblers.
The casino sat in place of the old Wonder Bread factory. Danny could remember driving into downtown on any given morning and smelling the heavenly odor of freshly baked bread. Across the street, old houses from the neighborhood stood in the contrast to the new building. The tiny, aged homes seemed to look at their new neighbor with envy. The image was clear. The city was determined to rise from its urban ashes.
Danny thought about what his father had said, about the job being life. He was probably right, but for now he was a civilian and that was just fine.
More interesting was what the priest had said to him. “When death comes, we must get back to life.” But which life? Danny thought. Police life or some other life taking care of his father, a life without Vinny?
Danny finished his drink and wanted another, but thought he’d better cut himself off. He was relying on the stuff more than he should anyway.
Danny got up to leave then stopped short after he opened the door. He literally jumped back as he saw two men talking on the street. Danny stayed inside, but watched the two men with interest as they strolled toward the casino parking lot. Danny didn’t know what to make of it, but it was an intriguing picture. Thomas Reese was talking with Judge Charles Eastergoode, the man who’d had an affair with Thomas’s dead wife, Olittah Reese.
Now in his automobile, Danny followed the unlikely couple as they got into separate cars and made their way uptown. Reese led the way and Eastergoode kept behind him.
Danny was on fire with what it meant for these two men to be together. He was off the case, but it seemed his father was right. The job was bigger than his tiny intentions about quitting and his pitiful guilt about his mother.
It could be Reese had forgiven Eastergoode for what the latter had done. Danny didn’t know much about Reese, but he was not betting on that one. The average man will at least think about killing the man who slept with his wife.
Suddenly Danny grew nervous. What if Reese planned to kill Eastergoode? Maybe this ride was the last one Eastergoode would take. One thing was for certain, whatever the real story was, it was rotten. There was no good reason these two men should be together.
Thomas Reese turned on Seven Mile and Woodward, rolling into Palmer Park. Eastergoode followed. Resse and Eastergoode parked their cars then got out.
Danny drove past them, and parked on a residential street. He caught back up with them as they walked through the park. Their backs were to Danny, but it looked as if Reese was doing all of the talking. He was gesturing and looking at Eastergoode, who kept his hands at his side, and stared straight ahead.
Danny ducked behind two trees as they found a park bench and continued to talk. He wished he had some high-tech listening device, so that he could hear what they were saying. But in the real word, all a cop usually had was his brain, and his knowledge of people involved in crime.
It was possible, Danny thought, that Reese and Eastergoode had killed Olittah and made it look like the Baker murders. That was nice and neat, but it didn’t explain why the Bakers and Dr. Vance were killed.
Danny noticed an old black man stroll out and take a seat near Reese and Eastergoode. Reese immediately shut up, eyeing the old man with suspicion. The old man sat a moment, then got up and left. This gave Danny an idea. He took out a pad and pen and made a note of the old man, what he was wearing and the like. Then he looked around to see what else he could use. There was a kid on a bike wearing a red striped shirt. He zipped by the suspects. A garbage truck stopped nearby and emptied a basket. Danny got it all down.
The two men talked for another twenty minutes then they got into their cars and drove away in different directions.
Which one? Danny thought. Who would his target be? Eastergoode had already exhibited guilt for being in an affair with the deceased. On the other hand, Reese was clean in the eyes of the investigation so far. This made him a more likely person to have something bigger to hide. He was the man to go after.
Danny followed Reese back to his office at DaimlerChrysler. Danny waited until Reese was inside, then he left, hanging around the city, giving himself the rest of the day to make his story plausible.
Danny came back to Reese’s office building at six and waited. Soon Reese emerged from the building, got into his car, and went home. Danny followed closely, practicing what he was going to say, talking to himself like a crazy man.
Reese drove into Sherwood Forest and Danny was not far behind. He was always mindful of the rich folks in the city. The homes were huge and fancy and the cars in the driveways made you wish you earned more money. Danny noticed for the first time that Reese was not driving a fancy car, but a common one, a compact Chrysler.
Reese went inside his house. Danny waited another half hour to let him get comfortable, then he walked up to the door. He rang the doorbell and waited for him to answer it.
“Officer?” said Reese innocently as he looked out a little window in the big wooden door.
“We need to speak with you, Mr. Reese,” said Danny in his most official tone. “It’s about your wife’s murder. We have a suspect.”
“Really, who—?” He stopped himself and opened the door to let Danny in.
Danny moved in quickly, drawing him away from the front door so he wouldn’t see that there was no “we” as he’d just stated. Danny went into Reese’s living room and stood by the sofa.
“Who is it?” he asked urgently. “Who killed my Olittah?”
Danny stood there for a moment, not speaking. He wanted Reese to become anxious.
“You know I’m not here about a suspect, Mr. Reese,” said Danny finally.
“What?” said Reese. “Then I don’t know what you’re talking about. You say you have a suspect—then you say you don’t. What the hell is this all about?”
“It’s about you and Judge Eastergoode and what you talked about today.”
This hit Reese like a dead weight. He even took a step back away from Danny, as if the cop were going to grab him and slam him into jail. This was the reaction Danny was hoping for, but he still didn’t know a thing about where he was going. He had to be cool, or Reese would see through him.
“Right now,” said Danny, “my partner is questioning Judge Eastergoode. Normally, we’d pick one of you up, then squeeze you, but there’s no need for that after what we got today at Palmer Park.”
“You were there?” he asked, his eyes filled with terror.
“We sure were. It was hard to get all of it, so we had to use several operatives. The old man who sat by you was used to distract you, while the kid on the bike put our microphones in position.”
Danny saw Reese’s eyebrows go up, remembering the people in the park. Realization washed across his face, then stark fear.
“The garbage men had video cameras on their truck,” said Danny. “And they left another listening device when they put the trash can down. It was hard, but worth it for what we got. What I don’t know is why you did it.” Danny was going out on a limb, but he felt it was worth a shot.
Reese was floored. His knees wobbled, and he grabbed the mantel for support. He walked over to a black leather chair and sat down heavily. He buried his face in his hands, and started to cry, sobbing like this was his last hour on earth.
“I wasn’t going to do it,” he said. “I was mad, but I wasn’t going to kill Olittah.”
“You wanted to kill your wife,” Danny said forcefully as if he had known this all the time. “And then she turns up dead. Do you see why we’re so interested in you and your buddy? We’re going to close this case, and I don’t care which one of you goes down for it.”
“I didn’t do it!” he yelled suddenly. “She was fucking Charles, and I didn’t like it. I was angry. So I called this guy.”
“Look, man, if you tell me everything, maybe I can help you,” said Danny. “Otherwise, we can just go downtown right now.”
“No, no, no,” said Reese, still crying a little. “I want to tell you. I can’t hold on to this anymore.” He took a breath, then looked at Danny with his red eyes. “I knew Olittah was having an affair. She told me it was Charles Eastergoode. She and I had been fighting a long time about my gambling at the new casinos. I’m in way over my head. Every night I’d be at MGM, Windsor, or the Motor City, losing money hand over fist. It reached the end when Olittah’s car and mine got repossessed and we fell behind on the mortgage. She was going to leave me. I got desperate for money, you know, and I lost my head.”
“What did you do?!” Danny demanded. He was no longer acting, he could tell where it was going and he was angry about it. “You wanted to kill her for the insurance?”
“No,” said Reese. “Olittah didn’t have any. She dropped her policy when my gambling got out of control. I wanted the money she and John Baker stole.”
“John Baker and Olittah stole money from the New Nubia investors.”
“Yes, a lot of money. Two million or so. I heard her talking with him about it. She did it with him, but then she didn’t want any part of it. John Baker offered her a half million to keep her mouth shut. But she said no. So, I hired a guy, this guy I met at a casino, to do it for me. His name was Clint, although I think it was a phony name. Anyway, Clint was going to kidnap Olittah and get the information out of her, only he took the thousand I gave him and disappeared. Then Olittah turned up dead.”
“This Clint killed her?”
“No. Olittah came home the night he was supposed to grab her. Clint got picked up on an old arrest warrant and went to jail, so I know it wasn’t him.”
“Who then?” asked Danny. “Who did it?”
“I don’t know,” said Reese.
“Don’t give me that bullshit,” said Danny. “You wanted your wife dead. I know you’re tied into this thing.”
“No,” said Reese. “I swear. I didn’t want to kill her. I just needed the money.”
“So, since you didn’t get the money,” said Danny, “you were blackmailing Eastergoode, threatening to tell his wife about the affair.”
“Charles gave me a measly five thousand. Today, he cut me off, said it was over, that he was going to tell his wife everything.” Reese shook his head and looked down. He was pitiful in his addiction to gambling and too crazy from it to see that he’d moved beyond rational thought. “I knew I picked the wrong person,” Reese said calmly. “Olittah was really a decent person when you got right down to it. I should have gone after the prostitute.”
“What prostitute?” Danny asked. And before Reese answered, Danny knew he had made a mistake long ago in this case.
“Some whore John was seeing. I remember Olittah yelling at him because John told this ho about what he was doing. And he was planning to skip town with her. I assumed John Baker told the prostitute where the money was.”
Danny’s eyes grew wider. Bellva. She was the one all along, he thought. She’d played him and Erik good when they had her. She was the stupid drugged-out whore who knew nothing, a poor unfortunate girl in over her head. But she knew all along. She was waiting to get to that money. And now he had to get to her.
“The prostitute, do you remember her name?” Danny was making sure he was on the right track.
“It was Xena or something like that,” said Reese. “What a damned fool John Baker was.”
“Don’t talk to anyone about this,” said Danny. “Someone from the police will contact you.”
“You mean I’m not under arrest?” asked Reese.
“Just keep your mouth shut,” said Danny. He ran out of Reese’s house hoping that Bellva, who was certainly a lot smarter than she had let on, was not smart enough to have already gotten the money and skipped town.
Danny sat next to Desandias Locke in his hospital bed. He’d gone looking for information on Bellva. He’d checked the drug houses and her old haunts, but no one had seen her. Then Danny went to ask the man who knew everything and found the Locke’s home had been turned into a crime scene.
The Locke had been shot up pretty good and left for dead, but he was still alive. He had sustained damage to his liver and spleen and had lost one of kidneys. Part of his spine had been shattered, and he had only partial movement on the right side of his body. If he lived, he’d most certainly need specialized medical attention forever.
Danny looked at the man with tubes running out of his body. One of the many monitors attached to him beeped softly. Danny managed some sympathy for the beaten man. He was a criminal but no one deserved this. It would have been better if he’d died.
“I need to talk to you,” said Danny. “Can you manage?”
The Locke drew in a breath then let it go. It was a strained, frightening thing to see. He nodded his head.
“I’m looking for Bellva,” said Danny. “I need to know where she is.”
The Locke looked over at Danny and shook his head.
“She’s dead?” asked Danny.
The Locke hunched his shoulders to say he didn’t know. Then raised one hand and gestured to himself.
“The same people who did this got her?” asked Danny.
The Locke nodded.
“So, they got her, then they shot you up?”
The Locke shook his head then pointed to a pad and pen by his bed. Danny held the pad and gave the pen to the Locke, who scribbled as best he could:
bady brothers killers crazy mfs
“Bady brothers, killers, crazy muthafuckas,” Danny said out loud. He took this to mean that the Locke was racked up by the Bady brothers.
“Where can I find them?” asked Danny.
He gave Danny a pissed-off look, as if to say, if he knew that, he would not be where he was.
Danny said his good-byes to the Locke and was about to go when he made a loud grunt. For a second, Danny thought he was having a seizure or something. But when he turned to him, he was pointing to the pad and Danny held it out for him. The Locke wrote something on it:
kill them
Danny drove back to his home, thinking that he should call his old boss and tell him what he knew. It would be the smart and sensible thing to do. But he also knew that by the time the cops got out a task force to look for the Bady brothers, they’d get wind of it on the street, kill the girl, and skip town. He couldn’t risk that, and he didn’t have much time to get to them. Men like the Badys, men who would challenge a man like Locke, were not to be trifled with.
Danny stopped at his house and took out his other gun, the S&W .45 ACP. He stared at the gleam of the steel body against the darkness of the black handgrip. Contrast, he thought. All of a sudden it was everywhere in life.
He put on the second gun, trying not to think of what Gordon had said about them. He also remembered what the department said about carrying both weapons, the danger involved. But everything about what he was going to do was dangerous.
An unofficial investigation could lead to casualties and because of that, he didn’t have a lot of time. If Bellva was still alive she wouldn’t be for long. So he had to get on the street and get answers to a lot of questions about her abductors. The only thing he did know was that he didn’t want to do this alone.