King City (19 page)

It wasn’t only the physical exhaustion that was getting to him, but also the stress of dealing with all the political and personal forces aligned against him, not to mention the responsibility of guiding two rookie officers and getting accustomed to a new home.

He’d yet to unpack anything besides his bedding and toiletries.

It all made him feel unmoored in a way he hadn’t felt before. And whenever he felt insecure or uncertain in anything in his life, he reached for the one thing he knew he could depend on.

The badge.

And everything that it stood for.

Now, standing there naked in the shower in his rat‐hole apartment above a former adult‐video store in Darwin Gardens, he had a minor epiphany.

His father always had a single, pat answer for every decision that he made.

What’s important is what you stand for and how strong you stand for it.

It defined Glenn Wade, and now it defined his son too.

Wade finally understood why.

It was the one thing in his life that he could control. No matter what else was happening around him, that was the one thing that nothing and nobody could change, except him.

It made the world something that could be defined, managed, and understood. It had worked for his dad, out there on the lake, where life was a lot simpler and there were fewer shades of gray.

But not so well for his son in King City, where everything was political and interconnected, where corruption was in the city’s DNA, where principles were seen as something malleable instead of absolute.

Except by Tom Wade.

And therein lay the problem.

What’s important is what you stand for and how strong you stand for it.

Living by those words was how he held strong and never lost his way, even when the moral compass of everyone around him lost direction.

He stayed true to course and did the right thing.

And lost everything he had.

Now living by those words was all that he had left. Everything else in his life was different, but there was one thing he could be certain of and that would never change: the job he had to do and the way he had to do it.

For now, that meant enforcing the law on his beat and finding whoever was killing women in Darwin Gardens, no matter where the investigation led.

Just like when he was in the MCU.

He hoped things would turn out better for him this time around, though he’d gladly settle for justice for the dead women and mere survival for himself and his two officers.

The water had gone from scalding hot to ice cold as he’d stood there, pondering his situation. He got out of the shower, dried off, wrapped a towel around his waist, and was about to go to bed for the afternoon when there was a knock at the door.

Wade thought about putting on a bathrobe but then realized he didn’t know which box it was in. The towel would have to do. He opened the door, expecting to find Charlotte or Billy standing in the hallway.

But it was Mandy.

“Are you too tired to talk?” she asked.

“Yes,” Wade said and kissed her, pulling her into his apartment and kicking the door shut.

She yanked the towel from his waist and pushed him down onto the mattress.

He let himself fall.

It was evening. They lay naked on the mattress, Mandy curled up against Wade, her head against his shoulder and one leg draped across his thighs.

“You haven’t been getting much sleep,” she said.

“You aren’t helping.”

“Is that a complaint?”

“Hell no,” he said. “What was it you wanted to talk with me about?”

“This was what I wanted,” she said and gave his penis a playful tug. “But if I couldn’t seduce you, I was going to tell you that Glory wasn’t such a good girl.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because there’s no such thing, except maybe in the eyes of a girl’s mother. If you want the truth, you have go to her friends, which I did. They told me that Glory had a rich boyfriend in Havenhurst.”

“Did they give you a name?”

“They didn’t know who he was, only that Glory believed that he was going to be her ticket out of here.”

“You got out,” he said. “What was your ticket?”

“A vivid imagination,” she said. “When I was a kid, I wrote stories about unusually clever girls who discovered portals to magical worlds in their closets or backyards and escaped into them.”

“Is that what happened to you?”

“You could say so,” Mandy said and rolled onto her back beside him. Her nipples were hard and her cleavage was damp with sweat. He had to control the urge to get on top of her and lick the moisture from between her breasts. “My stories got me a scholarship to Bennington, where I earned an English degree, married another wannabe writer, and moved to New York. We took odd jobs and worked on our great American novels.”

“How’d that work out?” He pulled a sheet up over his waist, uncomfortable in his nakedness.

“He sold his novel, had an affair with his editor, and I walked out. Not long after that, Mom died of a heart attack and left my dad all alone to take care of himself and run the restaurant. I can write anywhere, so I came back home.”

“How’s the novel going?”

“I burned it.” She sat up and reached for her panties.

“Stay with me awhile,” he said, stroking her arm.

She stood and put on her panties. “I’d really like to, but I saw how you were looking at my boobs. We’ll just end up fucking some more.”

“Perish the thought,” he said.

Mandy started getting dressed, stepping into her pants and pulling her shirt over her head. “Yeah, but if you get killed because you’re too tired to shoot straight, it’s going to mess me up sexually for the rest of my life.”

“I wouldn’t want that,” Wade said.

He watched her dress. When she was done, she gave him a warm smile.

“See you later, Officer,” she said.

“You left your bra on the floor,” he said.

“I know,” she said, heading for the door. “I did it on purpose.”

“What for?”

“So you won’t forget what you were thinking about doing five minutes ago.” She winked at him and walked out.

____

He managed to grab a few more hours of sleep, then suited up and went downstairs. Charlotte was asleep, her head on a pile of papers on her desk. Billy was leaning back in his chair, feet up on his desk, reading a file.

Wade gently nudged Charlotte as he passed her on his way to his desk, which was still piled with junk food. “Rise and shine, Officer Greene.”

Charlotte sat up, her hair flat on one side of her head, her eyelids heavy from sleep. “I’ll rise, but I can’t promise any shine.”

Wade grabbed a bag of Cheetos, sat on the edge of his desk, and looked over at Billy while he ate. “What can you tell me about Seth Burdett?”

“He’s a rich, spoiled, wannabe gangbanger covered with tats just so he can say ‘fuck you’ to his parents without actually saying it.”

“I meant, what have you learned from his file?”

“He’s the go‐to guy in Havenhurst for drugs. Arrested twice, walked twice.”

“I’ll bet that he’s getting his drugs from Timo,” Wade said.

Charlotte stretched and got up to get herself a Coke from his desk. “That’s a big leap.”

“Not if you know that Seth chromed Timo’s Escalade.”

“I haven’t seen it,” Billy said.

“Neither have I,” Charlotte said, popping the tab on her drink and taking a sip.

“That’s because I gunned it down,” Wade said.

Charlotte shook her head. “You sure like shooting cars.”

“It’s preferable to shooting whoever is driving them. It certainly cuts down on the number of wreaths I’ve got to send to funerals.”

“You’re joking, right?” Billy asked.

“What I’m wondering,” Wade said, ignoring Billy’s question, “is whether Timo is acting on Duke’s orders or going into business for himself.”

“What difference does that make?” Charlotte asked.

“I’m not sure yet,” Wade said. “What did you two learn about the women being killed down here?”

“There have been seven killings in the last two years,” Charlotte said, taking a seat at her desk again and referring to her notes. “All were prostitutes and drug addicts. Each one was shot in the chest at close range and left in an alley under a blanket or a flattened cardboard box.”

“Was there any forensic evidence?”

“Nothing at all from the crime scenes. It’s like they just picked up the bodies and ran. Semen was recovered from some of the victims, but considering how these women lived, that’s no surprise. DNA testing on the samples hasn’t been done and, as far as I can tell, hasn’t even been ordered.”

Wade’s face tightened. If the victims were seven Meston Heights party girls, doing as much drugs and screwing as many guys, the DNA testing would have been a top priority.

The class disparity between who got justice and who didn’t certainly wasn’t unique to King City or news to Wade, but the more often he encountered it, the more it rankled.

“Anything else?” he asked, setting his bag of Cheetos aside and looking for something to wipe his hands on.

She nodded. “They were all killed with the same gun and they all had olive oil on their faces.”

“Is olive oil some kind of organic moisturizer?” Billy asked. “I read that some Japanese women even put bird shit on their skin.”

“What it is, Billy, is a pattern,” Charlotte said, in the most patronizing tone of voice that she could muster. “A big, fat, obvious one. There’s a serial killer down here and nobody is doing a damn thing about it.”

“We are,” Wade said.

“But the woman we found wasn’t shot, covered up, or doused with salad dressing,” Billy said.

“You’re right. She doesn’t fit the pattern. So I guess that means we’re going after two killers,” Wade said, finding a piece of typing paper and wiping his hands with it. The paper made a lousy napkin.

He looked up and saw Charlotte and Billy both staring at him. For once, they were both in agreement about something.

“I forgot to buy napkins,” Wade said. “What do you wantme to do, wipe my hands on my pants?”

“Maybe you haven’t noticed,” Charlotte said, “but we aren’t homicide detectives.”

“We’re barely even police officers,” Billy said.

Charlotte glared at him. “Speak for yourself.”

“We’re the only law in Darwin Gardens,” Wade said. “So we’ll have to do.”

____

Mission Possible was a soup kitchen by day, but at night the tables were replaced with cots for the junkies, drunks, and transients who had nowhere else to go.

About sixty of those sallow‐eyed men and women, most of them Native American, were milling around waiting as Friar Ted and some volunteers made the switchover, folding up the tables and stacking them.

Wade and Charlotte walked in and the homeless tried to melt into the shadows, only there weren’t any to be found in the harsh fluorescent light. So they lowered their heads, hoping if they didn’t see the cops, the cops wouldn’t see them. It wasn’t as childish as it seemed. Invisibility was something they rarely had to work to achieve.

Charlotte carried a folder and followed a step or two behind Wade, who greeted Friar Ted and introduced him to her.

“May we have a word with you?” Wade asked.

“Certainly.” The preacher led them over to one of the remaining tables in a far corner of the former warehouse.

“That was quite a show you put on the other night,” Friar Ted said.

“Just doing my job, Padre.”

“Arresting cops seems to be your specialty.”

“Not by choice,” he said. “I need your help.”

“I’ll do anything I can.”

Wade glanced at Charlotte, who passed the folder over to Ted.

“I have to warn you,” she said. “These are disturbing images.”

“That’s just about all you see around here, Officer. You’ll learn that soon enough.” He opened the folder and looked at the morgue photos of the dead women. True to his word, he appeared unshaken by the sight.

“Do you recognize any of them?” Wade asked.

“I recognize the sunken faces of the suffering, the faithless, the damned. I see them every day.”

“What I meant was, did you know any of these women personally?”

Friar Ted shook his head. “I wish I did. And I wish they could have known the glory of God.”

The preacher slid the folder over to Wade, who made no move to take it.

“You can hold on to those. The killer is probably a john. I’d appreciate it if you’d show the pictures around to the women who come in here—maybe they know the guy.”

“Of course,” he said. “But I wouldn’t be too hopeful if I were you. They aren’t a very talkative group.”

“I have faith,” Wade said.