Authors: Ken White
“What did he look like?”
“Real black. Jed said he was like midnight on a moonless night. Big guy, looked like
he’d played pro football or something. Bald, with a goatee. Deep voice, though he didn’t say
a whole lot.”
Joshua.
Chapter Twenty-seven
I’d been working under the assumption that Joshua was murdered as an afterthought, as
part of a clean sweep, removing anyone who’d had anything to do with whatever the hell was
going on. It looked like I’d been wrong.
Chelsea was watching me, her eyes slightly narrowed. She’d seen my expression change
when she described Joshua.
“So it was a party,” I said quickly. “Three Vees, five humans. Jed had worked parties
like that before?”
“A couple,” she said. “Carpenter’s has some rooms upstairs, on the third floor. People
with enough money, or who knew Carpenter, could use them. Carpenter chose the
refreshments for the party. It was extra pay, but sometimes it got kind of . . . nasty. Nastier
than you could imagine.”
“Did this one get nasty?”
“Yeah, but not that way,” she said after a moment passed. “Jed said it was just a regular
party. Nobody acting freaky or anything. Santa was enjoying himself with his two girls,
White Hair was . . . doing whatever with Jed, and Midnight was just sitting there, watching,
not saying much.”
“So how did it get nasty?”
“That was later. Jed said they were sitting around, doing what they were doing, when this
guy with a cut-up face came in and started hollering at White Hair.”
“Cut-up face?”
“Yeah, all scarred up or something. Jed said he looked like he put his face into a fan.”
“What was he yelling about?”
Chelsea shrugged. “Jed wasn’t the brightest guy. And Carpenter lets his refreshments
have a drink or two before they start working, some usually, nothing heavy. Jed was a
little out of it and didn’t know what it was all about.”
“He must have gotten something out of what was being said.”
“Well, I guess Scar Face wasn’t happy about Santa and Midnight. Said he should have
been told, that Santa shouldn’t be partying at Carpenter’s, that kind of thing.”
“Did Jed know the guy with the scars?”
She shook her head. “He’d seen him around the club a couple of times, usually late, but
didn’t know who he was. Buddy of Carpenter’s.”
“What happened after the yelling?”
“The party broke up pretty damn quick,” she said. “Jed said Santa seemed sad, Midnight
looked like he didn’t care, and White Hair was totally freaked out. Scar Face hustled Jed and
the other refreshments downstairs, then went back upstairs. A couple of minutes later,
Midnight and Santa came down and left together. White Hair came down a while later with
Scar Face and they both left. Jed said White Hair looked like he had been crying.”
“Okay, so why did Jed get scared, stop going to work?”
“That happened later,” she said. “Maybe a week or two after the party. One night Dotty
and Liz, two of the girls who’d been at the party with him, didn’t show up for work. He was
pretty friendly with them, so he stopped by their place the next morning to see what was up.”
She paused. “Neighbor told him they were both dead, left in dumpsters, sucked dry.”
“That sounds familiar.”
“About a week later, it was Jackie, another girl who’d been at the party. Jed didn’t know
her well, but one of the guys at work told him she was dead. Same thing, sucked dry, in a
dumpster. It took a while, but Jed finally got it through his thick fucking skull that maybe he
was next. That morning, he moved in with me.”
“Anybody come after him?”
“He stayed mostly to home,” she said. “I got work waitressing at a little café down the
street from Jed’s old apartment and kept my ears open. There were some guys asking around
for him about a week later, but they didn’t get anything. I was the only one who knew where
Jed was. They finally stopped coming around, and that was that. At least till you showed up a
couple of days ago. When it happened, I thought you were one of them.”
“What was Jed doing out on the street with you? Doesn’t seem real smart.”
She nodded. “It wasn’t. But he wanted some air. Been mostly cooped up in the
apartment for a couple of months. The dumbfuck thought they’d forgot about him, said it was
safe to go out for a little while. I told him they hadn’t forgotten him, but he wouldn’t
listen.”
“I’m having trouble buying this,” I said slowly. “None of it seems like a reason to start
killing.”
“Leeches don’t need a reason,” Chelsea said. “They feel it, they do it. If you don’t know
that, you don’t know a fucking thing about them.”
“Feel it, sure.” I paused, thinking of what Bain had said. “It’s not really murder as far as
they’re concerned. But this wasn’t a case of ‘Oh, I think I’ll kill myself a human’. This was
planned. This took effort. They sent people out looking for Jed.”
I shook my head. “I just don’t get it. Jed didn’t know the Vees at the party. I doubt the
others did either. It was a party, a Vee got mad about it. So what?” I paused. “Unless you’re
not telling me something.”
“I’m telling you everything Jed told me,” she said. “Carpenter told him he had to work a
party, he went up there, the girls were there, the three leeches showed up. The leeches talked
and did their thing, Scar Face came in, party was over. He said it was supposed to last three
hours. Instead it lasted about an hour.”
“You didn’t mention that they were talking.”
“What are you, stupid? It was a party. People talk at a party, even leeches.
You think it was cut and lick, cut and lick until Scar Face showed up?”
“Did Jed hear what they were talking about?”
“Midnight didn’t say much,” she said. “He did remember that.
Midnight watched, talked when somebody said something to him. Didn’t smile. Like I said,
Jed didn’t think the guy was having a good time.”
“What about the others?”
“White Hair was talking to Santa, mostly. Something about a delivery he had made or
was going to make. Jed said they were talking doctor shit, whatever that means.”
“Doctor shit?”
“Jed didn’t have much of an education,” she said. “Dropped out of high school when he
was fifteen. If you were talking about something that went over his head, he’d tune you out. When he
said they were talking doctor shit, that was all he was going to say about it, cause he probably
didn’t understand what they were talking about.” She paused. “If I had to guess, there was
probably something in the conversation that sounded like medicine or hospitals. That would
have been doctor shit to Jed.”
“That’s what got him killed.”
“What?”
“They wouldn’t know that Jed didn’t understand a word of what they were saying,” I said.
“The possibility that he did understand, and might tell somebody, was too much to risk. Him
or the others. So they all had to die.”
“You know what they were talking about?”
I shook my head. “Nope. But I got pretty good idea how find out.”
Jimmy Mutz hadn’t been happy when I asked him to stash Chelsea Wilkins at his house
for a couple of days. It took some heavy convincing, convincing that got so heavy that a
passing officer knocked on the door and asked Jimmy if everything was all right.
We couldn’t keep her at the police station. If the people who’d killed Jedron didn’t
already know where she was, they would by sundown. Keeping the Security Force in place
would only take a phone call, but I didn’t have a lot of faith in their ability to keep Chelsea
safe. Especially since I had questions about Takeda’s loyalties.
My office was no good. I briefly considered asking if Cynthia, or even Sara could take
her in for a while, but that didn’t seem like a good idea either. Anybody looking for her
would know that I was involved, and if she wasn’t at the Downtown station, my office and the
homes of the people I worked with would be the obvious place to start looking.
That left Jimmy. What finally convinced him was a graphic description of exactly what
would happen to Chelsea if the people hunting her were successful. Jimmy can be by-the-book and cold as the South Pole, but he hasn’t lost his heart. He agreed to sneak her out the
back, into an unmarked car, and take her to his house. Once there, she’d be safe. I knew
Jimmy’s wife. The guards from the Security Force were amateurs compared to Carolyn Mutz.
I left Jimmy to do what he had to. On my way out, I considered telling Captain Hill that
he could stand his men down, but decided against it. As long as the Security Force was there,
anybody with an interest would believe that Chelsea Wilkins was there too. I gave Hill a
friendly wave as I crossed the street to the Jeep and never said a word.
It wasn’t a con that would last much past sundown, if that long, but every minute helped.
I stopped by Hanritty’s on my way back to the office and had a big plate of meatloaf and
mashed potatoes. His wife, she of the foul mouth and the encyclopedic knowledge of the
neighborhood, was at the counter. She stared at me as I came in, but didn’t say anything.
Surprisingly, the guy who was usually in the booth next to mine in the morning was there
as well, sopping up some gravy with a slice of bread. Apparently he didn’t like to cook any
more than I did. He nodded to me as I passed. I nodded back. The camaraderie of Hanritty’s.
As I paid my tab, I made a point of loudly thanking Hanritty for helping me that morning.
I didn’t say for what, but he knew. So, no doubt, did his wife. Prick in a cheap suit. Right.
Sunset was maybe half an hour away by the time I got back to the office. The night
security guard hadn’t reported for work yet, which was kind of a relief. I hadn’t seen him
since we’d had our encounter in the lobby the night after Joshua’s murder, and I felt a little
embarrassed about threatening him. Finding out that Night and Day owned the whole damn
building which made him, technically, my employee, didn’t make me feel any better.
I spent nearly an hour going through Joshua’s desk, hoping to find something that would
give me a hint about what he’d been doing, what had gotten him killed. There might be a
good explanation. Maybe a bodyguard job for the guy Chelsea called Santa, for example. I
figured Santa for either one of the mad scientists or somebody closely connected to them.
And maybe it was just a coincidence that Dowling was at that party too, around the time he
needed Joshua’s help squaring things with one of the uptown mobs. And maybe Joshua didn’t
know that Jedron Marsch was at the same party, not as a bartender but as a refreshment.
Maybe, maybe, maybe. It was at least one maybe
too many. I learned a long time ago
that the farther you reach, the more everything looks like what you’re reaching for.
Whatever Joshua was into, there was nothing about it in his desk. A few notebooks with
stuff from unrelated cases. A couple of ties, one of them with a brownish stain that was
probably dried blood. A box of ammunition for the heavy .45 automatic he carried. A small
cardboard box, with a military medal I didn’t recognize inside, resting on red velvet.
It was all there. Joshua Thomas, war hero. Joshua Thomas, private investigator. Joshua
Thomas, vampire. I knew about all of those things. But there was nothing in the desk to tell
me what his final role had been.
It was a quarter after seven, and I was starting to get a little annoyed. Nedelmann had
said he’d meet me at the office no later than seven-thirty. I wasn’t normally a clock-watcher,
but I was anxious to get to work. It was time to take a trip down memory lane and see what
was happening these evenings at Camp Delta-5. The ID in my pocket would get me inside.
A couple of minutes before seven-thirty, my cell phone rang. I figured it was Nedelmann,
with some excuse about why he was going to be late. It wasn’t.
“Bingo on the pictures,” Jimmy Mutz said. “Showed them to Sgt. Starkovicz at
shift change and he identified both of them right off the bat. Gutierrez was Burt Martinez,
Washington was Lou Fields.”
I wasn’t surprised, but it was good to have confirmation. I thanked Jimmy and hung up.
Neither of us mentioned Chelsea Wilkins. Phones can be tapped, cell phones monitored.
A couple of minutes later, the phone rang again. This had to be Nedelmann.
“Takeda,” she said. “You were satisfied with the apprehension of the woman?”
“Yes, thank you,” I said. “Your Security Force did a good job.”
“I’ll relay that to them.” She paused. “Chelsea Wilkins is no longer at the Downtown
District police station. She was removed sometime before sundown, without the knowledge
of Captain Hill.” She paused again. “This was at your instruction?”
“Yes,” I said, and left it at that. I wanted to see what kind of questions she was going to
ask. I was especially interested to see if she’d ask me where Chelsea was.
“I assume this was done to keep her current location secure,” Takeda said. “May I ask,
did you feel there was a threat to her security from Captain Hill’s forces?”