Blood Passage (5 page)

“
Yeah,” Josh whispered. “My God, they’ve come back for me.”

“
Stay put,” Hank said, getting up. “Give me your room card.”

“
Room card?”

“
The replacement key card for your room,” Hank said, holding out his hand.

“
Oh, yeah. Right.” Flustered, Josh passed it over.

“
Don’t move.” Hank started toward the restaurant entrance. Edging between a group of people clustered around the cash register at the front, Hank took out his cell phone and punched a number.

“
Stainer.”

“
Karen, I’m still at the Airport Inn. I have a visual on the two goofballs who assaulted Josh Duncan. What’s your twenty?”

“
En route, Lou. ETA ten.”

“
They’re at the elevators. Might be going up to the kid’s room, since they took his keycard. I’m going to have a little word with them.”

“
I’ll be there ASAP.”

Hank closed the phone and shouldered his way into the lobby. The two men got into the elevator. The one with the leather jacket leaned forward and punched a button. The doors slid silently closed.

The guy wearing the plum jacket and red sneakers looked familiar to Hank, but he couldn’t place him at the moment. He walked over and pressed the button for another elevator. The doors opened, three people got off, and Hank got on. He pressed the button for the eighth floor and the doors closed.

They’re a little slow getting here, Hank thought as the car rose smoothly. The assault happened late yesterday afternoon and only now they’re paying a visit to the kid’s room. They work for someone who has to tell them what to do. The guy in the plum jacket, who the hell does he work for? Hank racked his brains without luck.

The elevator reached the eighth floor and the doors opened. Hank drew his Glock and peeked left and right down the corridor. Empty. He turned right and started down toward Josh’s room, 824. He walked slowly, heel to toe, with his gun extended in a low ready position. He could see that the doors of 824 and 822, the next room up on the same side, were both open. A housekeeping cart was parked between the rooms.

He reached 822 and paused, lifting his gun close to his sternum. He looked into the room and saw a woman in a housekeeper’s uniform making the bed. He lowered his gun and passed the doorway, eyes flitting between the cart and the open door of 824. He reached 824 and paused, gun elevated again. He looked into the room and saw the two men inside, poking around. The guy in the leather jacket was tossing stuff around on the desk while his partner watched, exuding boredom.

“
Police officer!” Hank stepped through the door and raised the Glock in his right hand in a relaxed Chapman stance, right arm stiff, left elbow bent, left hand cupping the fingers of his gun hand.

“
Show me your hands, now! On top of your head!”

Plum Jacket turned to look at Hank with a slightly puzzled expression on his face. Leather Jacket froze in the act of opening the desk drawer, then slowly turned, hand creeping toward his pocket.

“
Don’t do it!” Hank called out. “Hands on top of your head!”

At that moment a housekeeper stepped out of the bathroom in front of Hank to see what all the noise was about.

Plum Jacket lunged forward and shoved her into Hank, knocking him down. As the woman floundered and rolled over his head, Hank felt the two men rush past him out of the room. He struggled to his feet, grabbed the housekeeper around the waist and hauled her upright.

“
Stay here!” he ordered. “Don’t move!”

“
They said they were friends!” she complained.

He quick-peeked out the door, saw the two men running down the corridor away from him, and hurried out.

“
Freeze!” he shouted.

As luck would have it, the housekeeper in 822 chose that moment to step out of the room to see what was happening.

“
Get out of the way!” Hank yelled.

Plum Jacket turned and squeezed off a shot that punched into the ceiling a few doors away.

Hank pushed the housekeeper into 822 and followed her into the room. “Are you okay?”

She nodded at him wordlessly, eyes wide.

“
Stay here!” He quick-peeked and dashed back out of the room in time to hear the two men crash through the stairwell door at the end of the corridor.

Hank ran down the corridor as a bell chimed and an elevator door opened. It was Karen.

“
Stairwell!” Hank shouted. “Go back down to the lobby!”

“
Yep!” Karen punched the elevator button and the doors closed again.

Hank opened the stairwell door and heard their footsteps echoing below. He started down. He went down one floor and paused. Their footsteps continued to boom up at him, so he went down another floor, then another. As he passed the fifth floor landing the stairwell door flew open, hitting him. He careened into the far wall shoulder-first and rebounded into the metal railing, striking his back with a sharp blow that drove the wind from his lungs. He sat down hard on the top stair, mouth open. He gasped for breath, then struggled to his feet and listened. Nothing in the stairwell. He pulled open the door to the fifth floor. No one there. He hurried to the elevator and pressed the button, rubbing his aching shoulder. When the elevator arrived he got in and pressed the button for the lobby. He leaned back gingerly against the wall of the elevator and concentrated on breathing.

The doors opened onto the lobby and he stepped out, eyes flicking around. Plum Jacket and Leather Jacket were nowhere in sight. Karen emerged from the stairwell and saw him. She shook her head.

“
Damn it,” Hank said, holstering his gun.

“
Backup’s on the way,” Karen said. “Where’s Duncan?”

“
Restaurant, hopefully,” Hank answered. “They fired one shot into the ceiling. There were two housekeepers. I don’t think either of them was injured.”

Karen nodded again. “Check on the kid, I’ll go back upstairs.” She punched the elevator button and turned to look at him. “You okay?”

“
Couldn’t be better.”

“
You sound a little winded.”

The elevator doors chimed open. “There’s your ride,” Hank said.

Karen got into the elevator, chuckling at him.

Josh was still in the restaurant at their table. He said he’d tried to leave but they wouldn’t let him, because the bill had not yet been paid and he had no money. Hank settled the bill and took Josh over to the front desk, where he arranged to have him moved to another room on the third floor. Josh agreed that as soon as he replaced his stolen traveler’s checks he would pay his bill and move downtown to a hotel not far from police headquarters that was often used by the department to sequester witnesses. Hank jotted down the telephone number of Josh’s PDA and said he’d call him later.

As Hank went out the door to rejoin Karen upstairs, he glanced back and saw that the painkiller Josh had taken at lunch was beginning to make him drowsy. He lay stretched out on the bed of his new room, hands folded on his chest, eyes closed. Hank quietly closed the door on his way out.

At eight forty-five the next morning Hank was sitting in a comfortable leather chair in the office of Douglas Barkley, commander of the Detectives Services Bureau, feeling distinctly uncomfortable. Sitting next to him at the oval meeting table in the corner of Commander Barkley’s spacious office was Karen, looking equally as uncomfortable, and next to Karen was Captain Ann Martinez, looking very pissed off. It promised to be an unpleasant start to the morning.

“
I suggested this pre-meeting,” Commander Barkley began in his rumbling baritone, “because I thought you might wish to clarify things a little before our meeting at nine.”

A 51-year-old African-American, Barkley was built like a nose tackle and had the mentality to go with it. Tough, aggressive and unmovable, he had steadily acquired power and influence in the department after parachuting into the organization five years ago along with Chief Bennett and several others from the FBI. As commander of Detective Services he was in the hot seat in a city that had seen the homicide rate rise each year over the last three years. Barkley loved the pressure and he loved to pass it on to his subordinates.

“
I appreciate the opportunity to clarify the situation from our point of view,” Martinez said.

“
Your detectives appear to have interfered with a case belonging to one of Captain Williams’s detectives, Captain.”

Martinez shrugged. “The file does currently belong to them, but it’s my understanding that the detective from the Cold Case Unit was the one who initiated contact with Homicide. Isn’t that right, Lieutenant?”

Hank described Waverman’s visit to the Homicide bullpen yesterday, their trip to Angel of Mercy hospital, his trip with Josh Duncan to the hotel, the appearance of Josh’s two assailants and Hank’s unsuccessful attempt to arrest them.

“
If the Lieutenant hadn’t interrupted them,” Karen chipped in, jumping to Hank’s defense, “they probably would’ve stolen Duncan’s laptop from the room and hauled him off to work on him some more.”

Barkley glanced at her, frowning. When in the presence of the commander, lowly detectives were expected to be seen and not heard. “That’s fine,” he said in irritation, “I get it. Nonetheless, Captain Williams is well within her rights to insist that the case remain in CCU.” Barkley glowered at Martinez. “Don’t expect me to play referee between the two of you.”

“
No, I understand,” Martinez replied. “The last thing anyone wants is a pissing match between Major Crimes and Special Investigations. I don’t think at any time we gave them the impression that we wanted to take over the case. Correct, Stainer?”

Karen shrugged. “I may have said something like that at first, but Waverman had to leave only a few minutes after we got there, and Hank pretty much saved his ass by going with the kid back to the hotel.”

“
And yet,” Barkley complained, “Captain Williams will no doubt feel that her detective has already been excluded from information obtained from the assault victim at that point.”

Martinez shrugged elaborately, knowing full well that Elspeth Williams had already called Barkley to complain bitterly about the intrusion of Homicide into a CCU investigation. Williams and Martinez were fierce rivals and there was no love lost between them.

“
We have no interest whatsoever in keeping anything from Detective Waverman,” she said dismissively.

“
Hank got some additional stuff on the student’s connection to the Martin Liu case,” Karen said. “He would have passed it on to Waverman except for the fact that the shooting at the hotel made us both late getting back. Waverman was off duty by then.” She wanted to make it clear that it was Waverman’s bad luck if he hadn’t gotten an update on current events.

Barkley harrumphed and shifted his considerable weight. “What position do you intend to take vis-à-vis CCU in this meeting, Captain?”

Martinez spread her hands on the surface of the table as though reluctantly showing her cards. “I’d like my people to stay involved.”

“
Captain Williams won’t be happy with that.”

“
Given their case load, some sort of compromise should be possible.”

“
Compromise.” Barkley seemed dubious. He looked at his watch and turned to pick up the telephone on the corner of the desk behind him. “Cheryl, have Captain Williams come in now, please.”

The door opened and Captain Elspeth Williams and Detective Waverman entered the room. Williams sat down in the vacant chair on Barkley’s right and Waverman took the chair on her right, next to Hank.

Waverman had exchanged his blue corduroy jacket for a Harris Tweed edition that he wore over a white shirt open at the collar along with black denim pants. He carried a briefcase in one hand and a cup of coffee in the other. He sat down, nodded to Hank and Karen, positioned his coffee cup on the table close to his right hand, opened his briefcase on his lap, removed the red CCU accordion file that contained his show and tell photocopies from the Martin Liu murder book, placed it on the table in front of him, then followed that with a pen, a notepad, and a black three-ring binder that Hank guessed must be the complete Liu murder book. He closed the briefcase and put it down on the floor against the wall behind him. He opened the notepad, clicked his ballpoint pen, and smiled at Barkley.

“
Good morning, Captain,” Barkley was saying to Williams, with a brief nod of acknowledgement for Waverman. “Captain Martinez has been providing me with some of the background related to the Liu case. I see Detective Waverman has thoughtfully brought the file along with him, but I understand you have some concerns about Homicide’s involvement in the case you’d like to discuss.”

Williams nodded curtly, shooting a look at Martinez. “I certainly would.”

Twenty minutes later, Karen dropped into her chair and threw a half-empty container of coffee into her waste basket. “Christ, I hate meetings. And what kind of sadist has a meeting to
prepare
for a meeting? Jesus.”

Hank said nothing as Captain Martinez crossed the floor to stand at the point where their desks met. “All right, you two. You wanted in on this case, you’ve got it.” She handed Karen the black three-ring binder Waverman had brought to the meeting. “It’s a copy, of course. This guy apparently does everything in duplicate and triplicate.”