Desperate Souls (39 page)

The anger on Malachai’s face had gone from a simmer to a boil. Jake waited for the explosion to come.

Marcus leaned over and whispered into Malachai’s ear.

Malachai nodded. “Katrina knows what you want from her. Now here’s what she wants from you: it’s called Afterlife.”

Jake’s body turned rigid. His mouth fell open, and his throat went dry. He had underestimated Katrina’s ambitions. It made sense: she had worked for Old Nick and had withheld some of her research, which was why Afterlife lacked concrete details about voodoo. She had murdered her fellow researchers to protect her secret and had moved to Manhattan sometime after Tower’s death, reducing the chances of her activities being discovered. She wanted more than money; she wanted power.

Just like Old Nick.

Malachai grinned at seeing the shocked expression on Jake’s face, but Jake doubted the drug kingpin possessed a clue about Afterlife’s significance.

Rising again, Malachai tossed a piece of paper onto the table. “Katrina says for you to call that number at 9:00 p.m. sharp, and she’ll tell you where to meet us.”

Jake glanced at the cell phone number written on the paper.

As Malachai and Marcus stepped into the aisle, Malachai turned back with an insincere smile on his lips. “When I see you again?
With my bare hands.”
He offered a demented grin.

Watching them leave, Jake pocketed the piece of paper.

Afterlife.

He pushed the remainder of his food aside.

Shit.

“Go up Second Avenue,” Malachai said from the backseat.

“You got it, chief,” Forty-five said.

Marcus turned around in the front seat and looked over his shoulder. “What are we doing?” Like he didn’t know.

“Relax,” Malachai said. “I just want to check out that building, like the dick said.”

“Don’t listen to him. He’s just trying to get inside your head, throw you off your game.”

“It won’t take but a couple of minutes, son.”

Marcus turned around without say anything, careful that his body language didn’t telegraph his disapproval. He knew better.

This is bullshit,
he thought. But he had to wonder if Katrina was playing all of them.

“What are we doing here?” Bernie said as he followed Maria into Dawn Du Pre’s apartment. The doorman had given her the keys to the apartment when she showed her shield and claimed to be part of the investigation into Edgar’s and Dawn’s disappearances.

“Dawn Du Pre is Edgar’s girlfriend. Edgar signed the ledger downstairs at 2300 hours on the night he disappeared. I know he had his own set of keys, so he had no trouble getting in here. According to Missing Persons, the doorman who worked that night says Dawn came home just a few minutes before Edgar showed up, but Edgar wanted to surprise her. Approximately twenty minutes later, Dawn left. Edgar never did. But a Caucasian male ran into the lobby from outside and claimed Dawn had fallen down and hurt herself. Guess what the doorman found?”

Bernie stood near the door, his hands stuffed in his pockets, making it clear he was just along for the ride. “No sign of Dawn?”

“Don’t let anyone ever tell you that you’re no detective.” Circling the table in the living room, she leaned forward and sniffed a purple candle centered on it. Frowning, she faced her companion. “So the doorman calls 911, and no sooner do they go upstairs than our Caucasian male runs out the emergency exit with what appears to be a bundle of clothes in his arms. The doorman tries to stop him, and the guy pulls a gun on his ass and tells him to step off.”

“Was our Unidentified Caucasian Male missing an eye?”

Maria gave him a small smile. “I don’t know. He was wearing sunglasses.”

“At night?”

“Go figure. After the UCM takes off, the POs discover that someone broke into Dawn’s apartment—and Edgar wasn’t in here. Somewhere between 2300 and 2400 hours, my partner disappeared from this building. And so did his car.”

Bernie glanced at the ceiling. “What are you suggesting?”

“I don’t have a clue. But I’m not giving up until I get some answers.”

Marcus followed Malachai into the building’s vestibule, where Malachai pointed at the directory. “Du Pre, D.”

“Stay cool, Mal,” Marcus said. “Forty-five says this is where Katrina’s sister lives.”

As Malachai strode into the lobby, the doorman looked up from a newspaper spread across his workstation.

“Can I help you, gentlemen?”

Malachai held out his cell phone for the doorman to see. “You know her?”

The doorman looked at the image on the phone’s screen, then back at Malachai. “Sir, I’m not really allowed to discuss tenants in the building with strangers …”

“Is this Dawn Du Pre!
Yes or no.”

The doorman’s expression became constipated. “Yes, it is. But that’s all I can say.”

Oh, shit,
Marcus thought.

Malachai glanced at the elevator doors. “When was the last time she was here?”

“I swear I don’t know. I just work the day shift when people are at work. She’s the subject of a missing person’s case. There are police upstairs in her apartment right now.”

Malachai and Marcus looked at each other, then exited the building.

“I’m going to kill that bitch,” Malachai said as they climbed into their ride.

The elevator door opened, and Maria and Bernie got off.

“I got drafted by Homicide and a rogue missing person’s case all in one day,” Bernie said. “I don’t know if my heart can handle the excitement.”

As they passed the doorman, he raised one hand, like a kid in grade school. “Um, Officers? I mean, Detectives?”

Maria and Bernie exchanged looks.

“Yes?” Maria said.

The doorman looked around the lobby, as if trying to maintain discretion. “Two men were just here. African American gentlemen. They were looking for Miss Du Pre.”

Maria felt her blood pumping faster.

“They seemed rather agitated. They showed me a photo of her taken on a cell phone and seemed surprised when I told them that yes, the photo was a picture of Miss Du Pre.”

With her voice tightening, Maria said, “How long ago?”

The doorman seemed surprised by the question. “Sixty seconds?”

Maria bolted for the doors, flung one open, and ran to the curb. Looking left and right, she saw no sign of anyone suspicious on the sidewalk.

No, no, no, no, no!

Bernie appeared in the doorway, and as she ran back to the building, he held the door open for her. She marched to the doorman’s station. “Did they give you their names?”

“No, I got the impression they didn’t want me to know who they were.”

“Describe them.”

Bernie joined her side as the doorman described the two men who had intimidated him.

Malachai,
she thought. “You need to get a security camera in here!”

“But I don’t own the building. I just work here.”

“It was Malachai,” she said to Bernie. “I know it was.”

Malachai entered Katrina’s apartment alone. Assuring Marcus that he wouldn’t kill her until they agreed they had milked her for every benefit they could, he sent his chief lieutenant and Forty-five on their way. But they didn’t tell him what to do any more than Katrina did. He was his own man, and he made his own decisions. He would give the bitch one chance to explain herself, and if that explanation failed to satisfy him, he would kill her with his bare hands.

“Hey, baby,” Katrina said in a silky voice, materializing in a bedroom doorway. She wore a sheer black top over midnight lingerie. “How did it go? Did you deliver the message?”

“I’m no messenger boy,” Malachai said.

“Of course not. You’re the motherfucking king of New York.” She walked toward him, hips swaying and lips parted. “Did you give him the message?”

“Yeah, I gave it to him.” Maybe he would fuck her one more time and then kill her.

“What did he say?”

He said you were rolling in the mud with a pig behind my back.
“He talked a lot of shit and said he’d call you at nine. He also said he dumped our drugs.”

She draped her arms around his taut neck. “We’ll make more Black Magic. We’ll make more zonbies.”

Then she kissed him on the mouth, pushing her tongue against his, and grinded her pelvis against him. He felt his cock hardening against her and his gun pressing against his hip. He didn’t know which weapon to use.

Before he could decide, she drove the long blade of a dagger between his ribs and into his heart.