Shrouds of Darkness (18 page)

I finally get some emotion out of him as he responds: “Because I told you it was not your concern, you little prick! Now follow your orders and get the hell out of my office! And you can be sure that you will be paying for my door.”

I turn my head at a sound behind me and find Wyatt with his hand on his sword waiting to escort me out. I can tell when I am being asked to leave. Damn it. Vincent was supposed to give himself away, a facial gesture, any kind of reaction to let me know what is going on inside that too intelligent head of his, but he gave me nothing.

“I know my way out,” I growl and slap Wyatt’s hand away as I stalk back to the elevator.

“Leo, tell me what’s going on, maybe I can help,” he calls at my back but I ignore him. “Leo, why won’t you let me help?”

“Because I haven’t decided whether or not you’re part of the problem,” I shout back as the doors slide open and I step into the elevator.

Out of pure spite, I snap the key off in the lock before tossing the chain and remaining piece of key to the guard that has already been posted to replace the one I shot. Wyatt probably gave him the rest of the night off despite probably having recovered from his wound already.

I pace around my loft totally frustrated. Vincent has me looking for a werewolf that is probably not involved, at least not willingly, in several attacks but gets bent out of shape and forbids me to look into known vampire attacks.

Toss in the vampire equivalent of cyanide mixed with Ebola and this whole thing makes no sense. Vincent has the Cure on lock down but my gut is telling me he is unaware of it having walked out of his lab—maybe. For fuck sake, I could wallpaper the empire state building with all the maybes I have. One thing I am sure of; there is a lot more going on than a nerdy werewolf and a few idiot vampires running amok in Brooklyn.

I fiddle with the phone I took off the vamp’s body but it’s no good. It’s locked and I don’t know how to crack it, but I know someone who can. I’ll have to stop by for a visit and employ him. I have a few other tasks that his technical genius can handle for me as well. I need information and if anyone can get it, it’s Marvin.

A very loud banging on my ground floor door interrupts my contemplations. Given the construction of my door and building, the fact that it is loud means someone is either hammering it with a battering ram or repeatedly backing a truck into it.

I double-check that Shalonda is in my pocket holster before springing up the steel steps to a narrow, barred window set about twenty feet above the street in front of my building.

Sure enough, a squad of cops in full assault gear is abusing my door with a handheld ram. I wonder how long they will continue their futile attempts before realizing that nothing short of one of their battering ram tanks will crack the thick steel door or bust it off the one-foot thick reinforced concrete wall.

“Castillo, is that you knocking?” I call down to the mass of cops below.

Several cops train their weapon on me immediately as Castillo backs up to get a better look at me. “Get your ass out here, Malone. I have a warrant for your arrest.”

“Is there a search clause in that warrant?”

“No,” Castillo calls up in obvious annoyance.

“Then stop banging on my fucking door and I’ll come out.”

 Castillo motions her squad back and I climb back down the stairs. I take my time emptying my pockets of their assortment of weapons if for no other reason than to deny Castillo the pleasure of an excuse to shoot me. With a sigh of regret, I toss my
Miguel Caballero into the furnace. You can bet that’s going on my bill. I grab another trench coat from my closet, a regular one not the bulletproof variety, and put it on.

Lastly, I call my lawyer. I have stuff to do and I would rather not spend any more time twiddling my thumbs in jail than I have to.

I push the door open and step out into the early morning gloom. Before Castillo can order her men to jump me, I slam my door shut with an audible click of its lock. Gotta keep the cops honest.

Castillo surprises me by simply cuffing me and reading me my rights. I really expected her to have me roughed up a bit.

“What’s this about, Castillo?” I ask her as she handcuffs my hands behind my back. “You got me on camera jaywalking?”

“Even better, Malone. I have three witnesses placing you at the scene of a home invasion and murder.”

“Really? Three people said ‘yeah that guy, Leo Malone was here.’ Or did they say a white guy of average height and average build wearing a black coat and you just naturally pegged me for it?”

“Doesn’t matter. As soon as I get you in front of a lineup and they pick you out, I’m sending you up for the rest of your life,” Castillo answers as she starts patting me down. “Now I know you’re packing so where is it?”

“Front right pocket,” I reply, glad she can’t see my smirk from her vantage point.

“Where? I don’t feel anything.”

“Sorry, I tried but I guess no amount of fondling from you is going to do it for me.”

“No wonder I couldn’t find anything.”

“You know, you’re a really mean person, Castillo, and coming from me that’s saying something.”

Castillo shoves me roughly into the back of her unmarked cruiser and hauls me off to the precinct. I have to slog through the typical mountain of paperwork before she tosses me into an interrogation room and finally gets around to cluing me in on what has her even more fired up than usual.

“I know you were at that house, Malone, and I know you killed at least two of the three men that had broken in. How many people in this city carry around a goddamn sword?” she shouts.

I return her wrath with a smile. “Oh you would be surprised at how many. So you haul me in, give me the third degree, and threaten to send me to prison for allegedly saving some people from a group of murderous thugs? That seems petty even for you, Castillo.”

“No, I want to know why it was you just happened to be there too. I want to know what happened to the third perp you chased out of the house. But most of all, I want to know who the hell those people are that chased off my men claiming to be feds! I called every federal agency in the state and not one claims to have been involved, and when my guys finally do get access, the bodies are gone and no one knows who they were or where they went. The only thing left behind is a woman and two preteen kids that say one of the men tore out the throat of their father and drank his blood, then a guy that fits your description steps in and acts like he just caught a couple kids playing hooky right before he kicks one through a wall, blows the head off one, and decapitates the other. Now you tell me what’s going on!”

“You really want to know what’s going on?”

Anna leans on the small table I’m sitting behind and gets in my face. “Yeah, I want to know what’s going on.”

“What’s going on is you look like you shop at the Cagney and Lacey outlet store and your breath smells like, cigarettes, old coffee, and hooker vagina. Now get out of my face and call me when my lawyer gets here.”

I needed to piss off Castillo to get her to stop asking me questions and that certainly worked. I really didn’t expect her to hit me though. Two more detectives rush in when she punches me in the face and pull her off me. One calls for a uniform to take me to holding while they try to calm their coworker down.

“Take him to cell six!” Castillo shouts as the uniform leads me away from the interrogation room.

“Man, Castillo must really hate you,” the uniformed cop says as he leads me to a holding cell.

“Why do you say that, doesn’t she punch everyone in the face?”

“Cell six is where the really nasty guys go and the camera’s broken.”

“I see,” I reply and can’t help but smile at Castillo’s level of vindictiveness.

The officer puts me in a cell with six of the meanest-looking thugs you ever saw outside of a federal penitentiary. One white guy, two black guys, Two Mexicans, and a Native American makes the cell look like the UN assembly room for the criminally insane.

I barely have time to assess my surroundings before I hear Castillo’s voice outside the door.

“Jones, go take a break,” I hear her say just before her face appears in the small window of the cell’s solid steel door. “Malone, I see you have met your new roommates. You boys make Mr. Malone feel real welcome and I’ll see to it you each get an extra desert and a smoke break.”

Wow, that is low even for her. Anna leaves me with my new friends who are looking at me as if I am a porterhouse steak that just was tossed into a pen full of starving pit bulls. It is only a matter of time before Will springs me so I just need to play nice and wait it out. No need to create any unnecessary trouble.

I look at the group of hoodlums and say, “What the fuck are you bitches looking at?”

Shit. I really need to get my brain and my mouth on the same page. Same page? Hell, they’re not even reading the same book.

I hear Castillo a short time later as I’m laying on the steel bench plowing over my case in my head.

“Why the fuck is it that all three of my witnesses put your client at the scene then five minutes after talking to you, come up with three totally different descriptions? I swear, if you have threatened them in any way I will bury your slimy little ass beneath this precinct. You won’t even get to a trial!”

“I don’t know, detective, maybe you coerced them or fed them information so you could get back what you wanted to hear,” Will answered just as adamantly. “What I do know is that you really pissed away whatever favors you called in to get that bullshit warrant issued. And you put him in cell six? You better pray to God nothing has happened to my client or you just made us two of the richest men in the city!”

The heavy door opens with a squeal and Castillo cries out, “What the hell happened in here?”

Spots of blood dot the floor, walls, and ceiling and all six thugs have crammed themselves into the corner like they are trying to set the world record for the most convicts stuffed into an invisible phone booth.

“Leo, are you all right?” Will asks me as he looks back and forth between the battered hoodlums and me.

“Other than having my morning totally wasted, yeah I’m great. Let’s get out of here.”

“Christ, Leo, what did you do?”

“Hey, no means no,” I answer with a smile.

I thank Will for getting me out so quickly and Castillo escorts me to property to pick up the few possessions confiscated when I was booked in.

“What the hell happened in that house and what the hell happened in that cell?” She demands to know just before we reach the front doors.

I turn and look her in the eyes. “There are things in this world that if you even got a hint of their existence, you would curl up in a corner hugging your knees and cry yourself to sleep at night.”

“And I suppose you think you are one of those things?” she responds defiantly.

I shake my head. “No, I’m what give those things nightmares.”

I know Castillo senses a measure of truth in my warning and I know it is a mistake as soon as I say it, but I am pissed and I lost my patience with her meddling. You see, there are two kinds of people in this world. One kind, when faced with something truly terrifying, will run and keep running or simply collapse in fear and let whatever it is devour them. The other kind, when faced with the same thing, will stop at nothing to destroy it or die trying and I know Castillo is the one of the latter. It is that very attitude that makes a small part of me actually respect her.