Title:
Trust Me (Cover Me Book #2)
Author: L.A. Witt
Chapter 1
“This is
James, sorry I’m away from my phone, but leave a message and I’ll call you
back.” Beep.
I cursed under my breath and dropping my phone
unceremoniously into the cup holder. He’d left a voicemail this morning about
going out tonight, and he’d asked me to call him back, but he hadn’t answered
his phone all damned day.
Letting my head fall back against the headrest, I
sighed. I wanted to say this wasn’t like him, but lately, it was. For the first
several months we’d dated, everything had been fine. Over the last three, though,
things had changed. Long periods with his phone shut off at odd times of the
day or night. Calls and texts returned hours after the fact when he used to
call back right away. A suggestion of plans, only to invariably have something
come up. Voicemails he conveniently didn’t have a chance to return until I
called, at which point he was always just
about to call me.
I rubbed my eyes with my thumb and forefinger. It
wasn’t like I was a high maintenance man or anything. I didn’t expect him to be
at my beck and call. There was something about his silences and cryptic
explanations that didn’t sit well, though. The question was, did my suspicions
come from being a once-bitten boyfriend, or was it just the habit of a homicide
detective whose entire job revolved around picking apart little tells and
details to see if someone was lying?
Whatever the case, sitting out here in the diner’s
parking lot with an empty stomach wasn’t going to get me any closer to figuring
out my other half’s transgressions. Muttering a string of profanity, I got out
of the car and went inside.
My partner, Max Kessler, had already commandeered
a booth and ordered coffee.
He pushed one of the three cups toward me. “Problems
with the boyfriend again?”
“Yep.” I took a seat and pulled a couple of sugar packets
out of the ceramic holder beside the napkin dispenser. “How’d you guess?”
He laughed. “What else pisses you off and has you
ready to throw your phone through a window when we’re supposed to be enjoying a
relaxed dinner?”
“Good point.” I tightened my jaw. “Yeah, still
having problems with him.” Max was one of the few guys on the force who knew I
was gay, and it didn’t bother him in the slightest. He’d invited me to
countless barbecues with his family, and whoever I was dating at the time had
always been welcome. Yet another reason we’d worked so well together for this
long.
“When are you going to just dump his ass?” Max
eyed me over the rim of his cup. “If he’s making you this miserable…”
“Unless he comes up with a damned good excuse,” I
said as I stirred cream into my coffee, “he’s gone tonight. I’m over it.”
Max raised an eyebrow, but said nothing. I didn’t
blame him for his skepticism. How many times had I said that in recent weeks?
Even I didn’t believe me anymore.
The diner door opened, and Max glanced up.
“Ah, there he is.” He waved, and I didn’t have to
look to know who’d joined us.
A second later, Andrew Carmichael slid into the
booth next to me. “Sorry I’m late. Physical therapy ran over. Again.”
“Don’t worry about it,” I said. “We’re just getting
here ourselves. How’s the arm?”
He scowled at his right arm, which was in a sling.
“Improving slowly. Emphasis on the ‘slowly’, not the ‘improving.’”
“Could be worse.” Max slid the third cup of coffee
across the table to Andrew.
“That it could,” Andrew said.
“I can’t believe they still have you in a sling
after all this time, though,” Max said.
“Oh, that’s just because of the surgery last week.
They had to go in and get all—”
“Don’t want to know right before I eat,” Max said,
putting up a hand.
Andrew laughed. “Don’t want the gory details?”
“No, thank you.”
“Bit of a weak stomach for your line of work,
don’t you think?”
“I can handle it, it’s just not appetizing
pre-meal conversation, thank you very much.” Max gestured at Andrew’s injured
arm. “Any idea when you’ll have full use again?”
Andrew shrugged with the other shoulder. “Another
six months? A year? Who knows? It’s better now that they’ve taken out some of
the scar tissue, but…”
Max shuddered. “Ugh, man, I do not envy you.”
“You don’t?” Andrew grinned. “Come on, everyone
wants a badass battle scar.”
“Battle scars are fine and good,” Max said.
“Losing the use of my arm? No thanks.”
“You don’t know the half of it,” Andrew muttered,
and focused on stirring sugar into his coffee. He was getting more and more
adept at using his left hand for tasks like that, but it wasn’t quite second
nature yet. Laying the spoon beside the cup, he said, “So, what’s new on the
streets these days?”
“Same shit, different day,” I said.
“He asked about the streets, not your love life,”
Max said.
Andrew cocked his head. “Christ, Brian, don’t tell
me you’re still having problems with James.”
“I’m still having problems with James.”
Andrew’s eyebrows pulled together in a sympathetic
expression. “You know, I think you’re onto something with him. I mean,
everything you’ve told me, I’d be surprised as fuck if he didn’t have someone
on the side.”
“Yeah, I know,” I said quietly.
“You really think he’s got another man?” Max
asked.
I winced. “Maybe. That, or a woman.”
“I didn’t know he swung both ways,” Max said.
“I’m pretty sure he doesn’t, but quite honestly, I
don’t know anymore.” I sighed. “So help me, though, if he is, and uses that as
an excuse to cheat…”
Andrew sniffed. “He plays that card, I’ll turn
Nick loose on him. Nothing pisses him off more than cheaters using the bisexual
excuse.”
“No kidding.”
Andrew’s boyfriend was as bi as the day was long,
but there wasn’t a man or woman alive who could turn Nick’s attention away from
Andrew. In spite of the tension between them since their respective injuries, I
envied the two of them. I couldn’t say if they were simply that in love, or if they just refused to take anything for granted
after nearly losing each other, but even when they were sniping constantly,
their relationship was what I ached for, whether with James or anyone else.
They’d put their lives on the line for each other before and would do it again
in a heartbeat.
“Well,” I said, “I don’t even know if he’s
cheating or not. Maybe he isn’t. Fuck knows what he is doing, though.”
Andrew shook his head. “I’m not kidding, man, if
he’s that much of a headache, just cut him loose.”
“He’s right, Brian,” Max said. “You have enough
stress in your life. You of all people do not need this shit, especially these
days.”
I absently stirred my coffee, but didn’t say
anything. They were right. I knew they were right. God knew I’d discussed this
with both of them a dozen times in the last month or so, and I was running out
of justification for keeping James around. The fact that he hadn’t even met my
two closest friends after all this time—neither of us had met the other’s
friends or family—was one of the many chinks in the armor of our relationship.
I’d suggested it, he’d balked, and whenever he’d relented enough to make plans
with someone, he found a reason to bail at the last minute.
Oh, no, I wasn’t being jerked around.
About the only reason I stuck around lately was
the mind-blowing sex, and even that was happening less and less. For me,
anyway. He probably had plenty these days.
“Well, it would help if I could reach him.” I set
the spoon beside my coffee cup. “Kind of hard to dump a guy’s ass when I can’t
even talk to him.”
Andrew shrugged. “Just stop calling him, then.
Quit returning his calls, block his number, whatever you have to do.”
“Exactly.” Max inclined his head. “Okay, I’m not
exactly Dr. Phil here, and you know I wouldn’t normally pry into your personal
life, but this guy’s games are taking their toll on your ability to do your
job. He’s gotta go.”
Pursing my lips, I rubbed my forehead. “God, I
don’t need this shit.”
“No, you don’t,” Andrew said.
That was an understatement. The city was a few
months into a grisly, escalating crime wave, and the last thing a homicide
detective needed was to be distracted by a philandering boyfriend while trying
to solve these damned cases.
I exhaled and shook my head. “Well, I’ll deal with
him after work. For now, I need some food before I put my fist through
something.” It was damn near six in the evening, and we had just now found a few
minutes to stop for a bite to eat.
Max laughed. “Skipped breakfast again, did we?”
“I was in a hurry.”
“Uh-huh.” He eyed me, then laughed. “Do I need to
have Anna keep after you like she keeps after me?”
“Oh, no, you signed up for that, not me.” I chuckled.
“You’re the one who married a woman
with an iron fist.”
“Come on, now, she’s not that bad.”
“Sure
she isn’t.” I looked at Andrew. “By the way, how are things going with your
better half?”
He laughed half-heartedly. “Same shit, different
day.”
I furrowed my brow. “Everything okay?”
With a dismissive gesture, he said, “Just ironing
things out. Same as it’s been for a while.”
“Good God,” Max said with a wry grin. “Every time
I tell myself gay guys have it easy not having to deal with women, I just have
to listen to the two of you.”
Andrew laughed. “Says the man married to the pit
bull.”
“The toy
pit bull,” I said.
Max chuckled. He started to say something further,
but his ringing cell phone stopped him, and he picked it up. “Kessler.” Pause.
He stiffened, and I knew that change in posture well. He looked at me and gave
a slight nod.
I groaned. I was never going to get to eat today,
damn it. To Andrew, I said, “Looks like we have to bail.”
“Don’t worry about it. I’ll get the coffee.”
“Great. I’ll pay you back next time I see you.”
“Don’t sweat it. See you guys back at the
precinct.”
On the way to my car, my heart pounded. Preemptive
adrenaline flooded my veins like it always did before we arrived at a crime
scene. I’d been to countless murders in my career, but I never knew what to
expect. It could be anything from a house with a stabbed body to a meat locker
filled with mutilated corpses. I couldn’t say there was never a dull moment in
this job—the infinite amounts of paperwork ensured there were plenty—but there
was no shortage of chaos, either.
“We’re about ten minutes from the scene,” Max said
to the voice on the other end. “On our way now.” He shoved his phone into his
pocket. “Multiple homicide in Masontown. Club on Jackson and Sixth.”
“Of course it’s Masontown.” I pulled out of the
parking lot and turned. That area, the “bad” part of town by a mile, was the
hub of the city’s massive drug problem. In the last three months, there’d been
more bloodshed there than in the entire city last year. A major drug ring had
gone down about a year ago, and now there was a turf war going between the
three remaining rings. While I wasn’t involved with narcotics, homicide had
been spending more and more time in the neighborhood recently.
If I had to rank every crime scene I’d set foot in
during my career, most of the top ten grisliest had been in this very
neighborhood. Three of those had been in the last few months, and hazmat and
crime scene cleanup were still scrubbing
the walls and floors of one of them. Two homicide detectives and three patrol
officers had resigned or transferred out. One undercover had been murdered.
Another was still on disability after a near-fatal wound. The chief had almost
pulled the plug on all undercover ops for officer safety, but those still
working under cover had insisted on staying. In spite of the risk, they were
close to taking out the neighborhood’s entire drug economy from the top all the
way down.
For their sake, I hoped they were right.
A few blocks from the scene, an ambulance went
screaming past us in the opposite direction. A block away, another went by, its
flashing lights reflecting off the countless “for sale” and “for lease” signs
in the windows of businesses and apartments.. I couldn’t say I blamed all the
residents and business owners for wanting to get the hell out of here by way of
a moving van as opposed to an ambulance like the one disappearing in the
rearview.
“I get the feeling this one’s going to be messy,”
Max said.
“It’s a multiple in Masontown and they’re calling
us in.” I glanced in the rearview again. “I’d say that’s a safe bet.”
Up ahead, it didn’t take much to figure out we’d
found the right club. Had it been after dark, this would have been a hell of a
light show. There must have been a dozen sets of light bars in front of the
club, some blue, mostly red.
What little of the street wasn’t occupied by
emergency vehicles was crammed full of news vans. Fucking vultures. I’d never
been fond of them, but I’d developed an allergy to the media ever since their
insatiable need for sensational headlines had kept Andrew’s boyfriend in the
spotlight long enough for a stalker to find and nearly kill both of them.
I parked beside one of the news vans, and we got
out and shouldered our way through the gathered crowd. We were plainclothes
detectives, so some bystanders tried to keep us from pushing through and
blocking their prime view of the carnage, but a flash of the badge was enough
to get them out of the way.
A perimeter of barricades and yellow police tape
divided the eerily normal-looking sidewalk from the crowd of onlookers. Several
patrol officers loitered outside to keep people back and make sure no one made
it past the line who didn’t have a reason to be in that club.
Upon seeing our badges, a uniformed officer held
up the yellow tape to let us duck under it. When we were on the other side of
the line and safely away from the prying ears of bystanders, he extended a
hand. “Officer Rowland.”
“Detectives Kessler and Clifton,” Max said. “What
do we know so far?”
“Looks like a sting gone bad,” Rowland said.
“Dealers and undercovers. Wasn’t pretty.”
Max and I exchanged glances.
“Casualties?” I asked.
The officer exhaled. “Two wounded cops, one dead.
Four dead civilians and a few with varying injuries.”
My stomach flipped. “Jesus.” We’d been to some
bloody crime scenes recently, but this was bad.
Lowering his voice, Max asked, “The cops, you got
names?”
The officer pursed his lips and released a long
breath through his nose. “All undercover detectives.” He flipped through the
pages of a notepad in his hand. “Rick Paulson had some minor injuries, and John
Kelly is in serious condition. Vince Gray was DOA.”
Max winced. I squeezed his shoulder gently,
offering a sympathetic grimace. He and Gray had been friends longer than Max
and I had.
After a moment, he took a deep breath and we made
eye contact. He gave a slight nod, the classic Max Kessler I’m okay gesture, and I released his shoulder.
“What about witnesses?” he asked Rowland.
“No eyewitnesses left standing,” he said. “The
shooting happened in the VIP lounge. Apparently there was some sort of meeting
going down, and something went to shit. Bystanders were hit when a shooter ran
through the kitchen area in pursuit of someone. Otherwise, anyone who saw anything
is gone, wounded, or dead. A few of the detectives were out of the room when it
started, but didn’t see much. Got in just in time to squeeze off a few shots
and lose the shooter and a witness out the back door.”
“Let’s go have a look,” Max said.
Without a word, I followed him inside.
Chapter 2
The club was swankier than most places in this
area, and was a known hangout for dealers, pimps, and anyone else who could
afford a velvet-rope night in this chain link and razor wire neighborhood. Above
the tables, top shelf liquor flowed. Below it, stacks of bills and bags of
white powder changed hands. With the right combination of cash and a wink, a waitress
could be compelled to meet a customer in the restroom or the alley behind the
club. The place was all dressed up and pretty, but that illusion was only skin
deep.
The VIP lounge was a completely separate room,
divided from the rest of the club by a narrow hallway, and the wall
perpendicular to that hallway was backed up against another hall dividing the
lounge from the kitchen. The room was dimly lit to give it an intimate
atmosphere, and the handful of chairs and booths were appointed with deep red
leather. I’d heard from the undercovers that all kinds of things went on in
here. Over beers one night, a former undercover told me that in the course of
an hour in this room, he’d witnessed a marriage proposal and a negotiation for a hit.
Now? The place looked like a fucking warzone.
Either this had been a gunfight or a damned massacre. Since there were bullet
holes and bloodstains on every wall and broken glass all over the room, it was
likely the former.
The air was pungent with the brassy, all-too-familiar
smell of blood. A hell of a lot of blood. The odor overpowered the fading
scents of grease, bread, and spices coming in through the open door between the
lounge and the kitchen, as well as lingering traces of gunpowder and hot metal.
Three forensic photographers inched their way
around the room, documenting every last detail that could prove significant.
Numbered plastic placards had been placed beside shell casings, blood spatter,
broken glass, and toppled furniture. The dead remained wherever they’d fallen,
creating macabre shapes beneath bloodstained sheets while they waited for the
coroner. A pistol lay beside an unmoving hand sticking out from beneath a
sheet. Next to one booth, inches from a corpse’s leg, a dropped magazine raised
the hairs on the back of my neck. Whatever had happened here, someone had run
out of ammunition and had taken the time—had had the time—to reload.
Blood covered a half-eaten sandwich and an
abandoned beer beside a slumped, sheet-draped body. That was something that
never failed to creeped me out—food at crime scenes. It was one of those eerie
reminders that life had been something close to normal before all hell had
broken loose. To the person hunched over beneath the blood-stained sheet, this
day had probably started out like any other. Most people didn’t order a
sandwich when they knew they were about to be murdered.
Max knelt beside one of the bodies to have a
closer look. I followed the sound of voices out of the room, hoping for a
witness who could run me through the events that had turned the lounge into a
bloodbath.
My partner and I often split up at murder scenes.
One of us inspected the immediate crime scene while the other checked the less
obvious places for signs of what may have happened before and after—discarded
weapons, bloody clothes stuffed in closets, smudges of blood in bathtub and
sink drains.
In the kitchen area, I ran into Andrew’s
boyfriend, Nick Swain. He worked as a paramedic, and the firehouse he reported
to was woefully understaffed, so it was never a surprise to run into him if
there were survivors at a crime scene. He leaned against the doorway with a
clipboard in his hand. Furrowing his brow, he alternately wrote on the
clipboard and kept an eye on his partner, who attended someone with minor wounds.
“Hey,” I said.
He looked up. “Oh hey, Brian.”
“I might need to borrow him when you’re done.” I
nodded at the patient. “Doesn’t sound like we got a lot of witnesses.”
“He won’t be much use. He was a bystander. Tangled
with some broken glass taking cover when a cop pursued the shooter through the
kitchen. He didn’t see or hear much.”
“Still, I need everything I can get,” I said.
“Even if it’s just the number of shots he heard.”
Nick nodded. “Leon’s almost done with him. The wounds
are minor, so we’re not taking him in.”
“How serious were the other injuries? Did you get
a look at any of them?”
“Paulson was conscious and coherent. The bleeding
was mild and under control, but he was showing a few early signs of shock. He
should be fine, though.”
“So I’ve potentially got at least one reliable
witness who’s still alive.”
“Two, if Kelly pulls through,” Nick said quietly.
“And I do mean if.” He grimaced.
“He’s in real bad shape.”
I gestured for him to step away from Leon and his
patient so we were out of earshot. “How bad is he?”
“Massive thoracic trauma. I only got a look at him
while I triaged the scene, so I don’t know the actual extent, but…” He shook
his head again. “Judging by his vitals and the blood loss, it’s not good.”
“Christ. He wasn’t wearing a vest?”
“Didn’t do him any good.”
“Armor-piercing?”
Nick nodded. “He was still alive when they left,
though. Anything’s possible.”
“Good to know.” My own vest made my skin crawl.
Sometimes these things were unnervingly useless. “I’ll let you get back to work.”
“Yeah, ditto.”
I clapped him on the shoulder and then continued
through the club. As I made the rounds, I found Detective Kent Avery leaning
against the deserted bar. He’d been working undercover for the last several
months, but I’d seen him around the precinct before. He looked a hell of a lot
different now, though, with smears of blood all over his shirt.
As he thumbed the screen on his cell phone, his
hands were remarkably steady, and he breathed slowly, evenly. On the outside,
he appeared completely calm, but I had no doubt he was rattled, just not
showing it. I was surprised no one was with him, either to ask him questions or
to make sure he was all right.
I
approached cautiously. “Avery?”
He looked at me, and a hint of recognition
manifested itself in a vague nod. “Clifton. Long time no see.”
“Would have preferred it under better
circumstances.” I extended my hand. “How are you holding up?”
“I’ve had better days.” Ignoring my offer of a
handshake, he pushed himself away from the bar. “If you’ve got questions about
it, I’ve already answered all of them.”
I withdrew my hand. “Hey, I was just seeing how
you were doing.”
“My partner’s on his way to the hospital with
three bullets in him. How do you think
I’m doing?” With that, he turned and stalked off. As I watched him go down the
hall and disappear out into the alley behind the club, I was simultaneously
taken aback by his hostility and sympathetic to his mood. He and his partner
were as close as Max and me. Being on the verge of losing someone who’s covered
your back that many times was bound to fuck with someone’s head.
Which made me wonder why he was even still here,
but there was nothing he could do for John anyway. Maybe he needed to fall back
on his work. We’d all been known to throw ourselves into our investigations to
escape stress and trauma, though I wasn’t so sure about the idea of sticking
around if I’d been in his shoes. Whatever got him through, I supposed.
I shuddered and went back into the lounge. For a
moment, I just took in the scene, trying to picture what had gone down.
A bullet hole, splattered blood, and a long smear
down one wall led my eyes to one of the bodies. Another body was sprawled
across a bench in one booth. A few feet away was yet another, this one crumpled
between a booth and a side door, below a Johnnie Walker mirror that had two
bloody spiderweb cracks around bullet holes spaced about twelve inches apart.
Bullets had obviously flown in several different
directions, so I’d have to wait for ballistics to plot a diagram of
trajectories and bullet holes before I could piece together exactly what
happened. Witness statements would help. So far we only had one potentially
reliable witness. If Avery’s partner had been shot, odds were that Avery had
been nearby, if not in the room. How he’d managed to avoid taking a bullet, I
didn’t know, but thank God at least someone had escaped injury.
That may have explained his hostility, too.
Survivor’s guilt was a strange thing, and he probably didn’t want someone else
to ask him to rehash the moments in which his partner had taken three bullets
while he’d gotten away unscathed. I
still needed to ask him some questions, and he probably knew it, but there was
no reason I couldn’t give him some time to breathe first. After he’d had a few
cigarettes, and maybe Max and I had taken him someplace that didn’t have Detective
Kelly’s blood all over the floor, I could try again.
For now, time to check out the scene itself.
“Find anything?” Max asked, glancing up from one
of the two bodies beside a booth as I walked into the lounge.
“Not so far.” I pulled on a pair of gloves.
“Avery’s pretty shaken up. He went out the back, so I figure I’ll try talking
to him again in a little while.”
“Good call.”
“What about you? Anything interesting?”
He shook his head. “Counting weapons and bodies,
seems like almost everyone who was here is either in an ambulance or…” His eyes
flicked up to meet mine. “Still
here.”
I gave a grunt of agreement, but didn’t say
anything else.
I squatted beside one of the bodies. There was a
long smear of blood beside him, like he’d tried to drag himself to cover after he’d
been wounded, only to die here. What a horrible way to die. I shuddered and
lifted the sheet.
My heart stopped.
“Holy—” I stared at the body, eyes wide and lungs
paralyzed.
“What’s wrong?” Max asked.
I lowered the sheet, but the face was still there
in my mind’s eye. The world spun around me, turning gray and black and white,
and I grabbed a table for stability.
A hand rested on my shoulder. “Easy, man.” Max
kept his voice low and even. “Breathe.”
With considerable effort, I took and released a
breath. Gradually, my vision cleared, but my heart still forced ice cold blood
through my veins.
“Brian? What’s wrong?” He glanced at the body.
“You recognize him or something?”
“I…” I swallowed hard. With the sheet back over
the body’s face, I questioned if I’d read all the features right. Was it him? Did I recognize him?
Was that really my boyfriend lying in a pool of
blood?
