Alpha Kill - 03 Page 7

  The warmth of the wine spread down into Beth’s belly and along her limbs, soothing her.

  Dr Paul Brogan was an attending psychiatrist at the same hospital as Beth. They’d known one another casually for the better part of two years, from back when she was a resident. After the events of last July, after the separation from Venn, it was Paul who noticed things weren’t going so great with her at work. Paul who’d listened to her pour out the craziness in her head, something she was embarrassed to do with any of her other co-workers. Paul who’d recommended – urged – that she consult his colleague, Dr Abrams.

  Paul, whom she’d kissed one evening, quite without warning and surprising herself more than him, when they were having coffee.

  They’d been seeing one another now for a little over five weeks. Two months ago, if anybody had told her she’d throw herself into an affair with another man so soon after separating from Venn, she’d have been appalled. But the progression in her and Paul’s relationship – from friends, to confidantes, to lovers – had been so subtle, so natural, that it didn’t feel at all strange to her. She sensed that she should feel guilty about it, but she didn’t, and this lack of guilt unsettled her.

  In any case, she hadn’t thrown herself into the relationship at all. Paul seemed to understand her need to go slowly, and he didn’t push her in the least. They still kept separate apartments, Beth’s here on the Upper East Side, Paul’s in Tribeca. They didn’t see one another every night, but more like one night in every three. They hadn’t been away together anywhere for the weekend.

  Beth didn’t think about a future with Paul, nor did she rule one out. She was content simply to enjoy the company of this gentle, funny, thoughtful man with his easy charm and unflappable demeanor. They’d talked about Venn, of course, and Beth had been honest with Paul – he was a psychiatrist, after all – and admitted she still had strong feelings for the detective.

  “And how could you not?” Paul said.

  It wasn’t as if Paul represented the antithesis of Venn, and therefore somebody in whom she was seeking convenient refuge. True, Paul was laid back, naturally calm, whereas Venn gave the constant impression of being tightly coiled even when he was at rest. (“Like a car with an accelerator that’s pressed down, and that’s only stationary because you’ve got your other foot down hard on the brake pedal,” suggested Paul. And he was right. That encapsulated Venn precisely.) But Paul was far from boring. He was highly opinionated, sometimes maddeningly so. His passion for movies and books and music was infectious. Nor was he a geek, playing as he did a mean and surprisingly aggressive game of tennis.

  She put down her wineglass on the coffee table and snuggled against him, speaking in a languid murmur about the cases she’d seen that day, and that week. Paul had been in Milwaukee since last Tuesday for an American Psychiatric Association congress, and while they’d spoken briefly on the phone in the meantime, they hadn’t had a proper chance to catch up.

  All the while, Beth wondered whether she should tell Paul about the other stuff. About Olivia Collins, and her abnormal stats. She wondered, too, why she had such a resistance to telling him.

  Was it because she’d then have to tell him she’d approached Venn for help? But that wasn’t quite it. Even before she’d decided to involve Venn, she’d felt reluctant to share her concerns with Paul. And it didn’t make sense to her. He was the most approachable, most non-judgmental listener she’d ever met. Even if he thought she was nuts, that her less-than-rock-steady mental state was causing her to overinterpret things, he’d find a way of conveying his opinion diplomatically.

  Beth decided not to dwell on it. As a physician, she was a problem-solver by nature. She hated uncertainty, needed to find answers as soon as questions presented themselves. If there was one thing she’d learned from being with Paul, though, it was that sometimes you had to let go of things you didn’t understand. Sometimes the answer would present itself to you if you just allowed it in, passively, without busting a gut searching for it.

  *

  It was only hours later, as Paul lay asleep beside her, that Beth remembered she hadn’t yet emailed Venn the information he’d asked for, the screenshots of the patients’ names.

  Beth slipped out of bed as quietly as she could. She tiptoed out of the bedroom and back into the living room, where her laptop lay on a table. Opening it, she called up the files.

  She hesitated with her fingers over the keyboard. What she was about to do was share confidential patient information with a third party. Granted, Venn was a serving police officer. But he wasn’t officially assigned to the case - there was no case - and he had no legal right to access the information. She could lose her job, her license to practice medicine. She might even face criminal prosecution.

  But she was right. She knew it. Something was up, and Venn sensed it too. It was why he’d agreed to help her out.

  She attached the files to an empty email addressed to him, and hit send.

  Though she had no idea if he was still willing to help her.

  Beth returned to bed and a restless sleep, from which she awoke only once, whimpering, the sheets wadded in her fists, and Paul’s comforting presence wrapped tight around her, his voice murmuring in her ear.

  Chapter 11

  Venn woke at six a.m., the time his internal clock had become programmed to rouse him. He sat up, his head still groggy. He’d taken a long while to fall asleep, and he felt the pull of his bed, tempting him into one more hour.

  No. He was nothing if not disciplined.

  Venn rose and pulled on a tracksuit. He fixed himself a cup of instant coffee and blended a mix of oatmeal, banana, strawberries, blueberries and two raw eggs,. The concoction tasted as disgusting as it sounded, but it seemed to give him a boost in the mornings.

  He stepped out into the cold, dank morning and headed for Owl’s Head Park, where he ran for thirty minutes, dodging the dog walkers and even a few early-morning skateboarders strutting their stuff. By the time he reached his apartment once more the clouds of fog had disappeared from his brain, blasted away by the pumping of his blood.

  He showered and made another cup of coffee, drinking it while he checked his emails. Yes, there was Beth’s, with a time signature of one-fifteen that morning. Venn copied the attached files to a flash disk.

  He debated calling Beth, but decided against it.

  By the time he’d negotiated the Jeep Cherokee through the Lower Manhattan traffic and reached his office it was eight-thirty. The office of the Division of Special Projects was off Ninth Avenue, in a simple, nondescript building which thankfully had its own parking lot out back. He dumped the Jeep and took the stairs.

  The DSP was a tiny outfit, more of a pet project than a department proper. Venn headed it, with the assistance of two other detectives and a receptionist. He’d been asked to put it together more than a year earlier when he’d been hired by the NYPD. The Division was the brainchild of one Captain David Kang, Venn’s immediate superior. Its remit was to investigate crimes in which political discretion needed to be exercised.

  Shawna, the receptionist, was at her desk, in all her garish, gum-popping glory. She batted fake eyelashes as thick as caterpillars at Venn.

  “Good weekend, Lieutenant?”

  “Up and down.” He could say whatever he wanted to her - could say he’d spent the weekend dismantling a nuclear bomb - and it would make no difference, because she never listened. Instead, she launched into an account of her own shenanigans, which always involved men. A new man every week, it seemed.

  Venn extricated himself with difficulty and headed into the office area. Neither of the others were in yet. He wasn’t particularly bothered. There was nothing big going down at present, nothing they were handling but a couple of slow-burn corruption cases, and he let them keep their own hours. Results were what mattered, not butts on seats.

  Alone in his personal office, Venn picked up his phone and dialed a number in Rockford, Winnebago County, Illinois.
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  “Federal Bureau of Investigation,” a woman answered.

  Venn asked to be put through to Special Agent Yancy. After a minute or two on hold, he heard an impatient voice bark: “Yeah.”

  “Yance. Joe Venn.”

  “Hey, man.” Yancy’s tone was harassed, but friendly enough. “They didn’t say it was you.”

  “They didn’t ask. What are you up to? Anything juicy?”

  “Funny guy,” said Yancy. “I’ve been here all night. Up to my goddamn eyelids.”

  Dennis Yancy had been a fellow detective lieutenant with the Chicago PD at the same time as Venn. He’d been supportive of Venn during Venn’s troubles with the force, which had gotten him kicked off, and had left in disgust at his buddy’s treatment. Or so he said. Venn knew Yancy was ambitious, and would probably have jumped ship soon anyhow. He’d applied successfully for the FBI, and now held a senior position in the Bureau’s Rockford office.

  “They’re spreading us too thin here,” Yancy was saying. “Sending agents out to follow up on pissant leads, when we should be concentrated in a few spots, ready to mobilize when something useful comes in.”

  Venn knew he was referring to the Horn Creek break and the hunt for the fugitives. “Hey, man,” Venn said. “Nobody actually forced you to join the Feebs, you know. You were a good street cop back in the day. Now, I’ll bet you’re thirty pounds heavier, and you spend eight hours a day stuck behind a big desk.”

  Yancy snorted. “For your information, I’ve lost ten pounds. The stress took care of that.”

  “So. This Horn Creek thing.”

  “It’s not a thing. It’s a shiny, eighteen-carat screwup, is what it is.” Yancy snapped something at somebody who’d just come into the room, by the sound of it. To Venn again: “Christ, you know... We put these guys away. That’s our part of the deal. The Department of Corrections is supposed to see to it that they stay put away. Now we’ve got to find them and round them up, all over again.”

  “How the hell did it happen?” said Venn.

  He heard Yancy rub his hand across a stubbled jaw. “Looks like an explosive of some kind. It took out the generator. Somebody sabotaged the fuel for the reserve unit. A complete power outage. They got more fuel in pretty quick, but by then the damage was done. Adios, seven of the biggest assholes on the planet.”

  Venn said, “An inside job.”

  “Must have been. They’re looking at one or more of the guards to have done it.” Yancy paused. “I know why you’re calling.”

  “Gene Drake.”

  “Yeah. You must be super pissed, and I don’t blame you.”

  “You could say I’m a little... frustrated,” said Venn.

  “We’re thinking he was probably behind the whole thing. He’s smart. Not like some of those others. Hey, you know what? They caught Steenkamp.”

  “Yeah?” said Venn. Jules Steenkamp was one of the escapees who’d been identified on the news bulletins, a serial rapist from Kentucky.

  “Yeah. He tried to knock over a gas station near Aurora in the early hours of this morning. The attendant kept his cool and sounded the alarm. Turns out there were a bunch of state troopers in the vicinity. They took him down without too much fuss.” Yancy chuckled. “Can you imagine? You get handed a golden ticket, a free pass out of a facility like Horn Creek, and the first thing you do is hold up a gas station. While your face is on every TV screen in the state.”

  Venn said, “Steenkamp never was the sharpest knife in the drawer.”

  “Dumber than a box of rocks,” Yancy agreed. “So, anyhow. Gene Drake. We figure he’s gone off on his own. I mean, he’ll have a support team outside. But we’re thinking he didn’t team up with any of the other cons who escaped. He’s not the sociable sort. He prefers to trust his own guys.”

  “Do you have any idea about his team on the outside?”

  “Nope,” said Yancy resignedly. “We’re checking out his visitor list, for the years he was inside. Seeing if there are any obvious suspects there. But there’s nothing so far. Just the usual bunch of lawyers, and prison-reform bleeding-heart types, and a couple others.”

  Venn tried to remember. “Does he have family?”

  “No. My guess is, he’ll head out of state eventually. Illinois is too hot for him to pick up where he left off. He’ll start up again down south, or maybe California. But I’m thinking he’ll lie low for a while. Maybe even stay here, under our noses, till all the fuss dies down and the media lose interest in the story. Who knows, he may even be sitting across the road from us now, eating breakfast and giving us all the metaphorical finger.” Yancy let out a sound that was half-sigh, half-groan. “In any case, and it pains me to say this, he’s not your problem this time. He’s mine.”

  They shot the breeze for a couple more minutes, before Venn said goodbye and hung up. He’d heard signs of life in the office outside his door, and knew his people had arrived.

  *

  Harmony Jones could have stepped out of a cable TV drama depicting a dysfunctional police force working in a gritty, inner-city hellhole. An African-American detective sergeant in her late twenties, she was small and wiry and foul-mouthed, and utterly disrespectful toward Venn, her boss. Disrespectful on the surface, in any event.

  She eyed Venn balefully as he emerged from his office. “I get it. The boss is in first, and we’re supposed to feel guilty.”

  “Morning to you too,” Venn said. “Pull up a pew.” He grabbed a chair himself and sat down.

  The remaining member of his three-person team wandered over from his desk. Filiberto Vidal - Fil - had joined them just ten weeks earlier. He was a replacement for Walter Sickert, Venn’s previous sergeant, who’d been killed in a shootout with Mexicans working for the drug baron Salazar last July. Like all replacements in such circumstances, he started off at a disadvantage. Namely, that he wasn’t Walter Sickert. Venn had hired him on the recommendation of Captain Kang, who said he’d heard good things about the Puerto Rican detective. Vidal’s special talent was IT, which was something Walter had been good at, and his resume looked sharp, so Venn took him on.

  Where Walter had been boorish and slovenly, Fil was neat and quiet and solemn. So much so that Harmony had stormed into Venn’s office one day and said, “I can’t work with this guy. His desk’s too tidy. His shirt’s always tucked in. He looked offended just now when I dropped an F-bomb.”

  Venn had succeeded in pacifying her, and while she hadn’t exactly warmed to the newcomer, she did indeed manage to work with him. It was early days yet, but Venn thought Fil was coming along just fine.

  Harmony seemed to sense something in Venn because she said, “You got a job for us, boss?”

  “Yeah,” said Venn. “Maybe. Worth checking out, anyhow.”

  *

  He told them about his meeting with Beth the night before, and what she’d revealed to him. Venn left out the details of what happened afterward, outside the bar with the drunk kids.

  When he’d finished, Harmony leaned back in her chair, her arms crossed. “You gonna run this by the Cap first?”

  Strictly speaking, Venn was supposed to get the go-ahead from his superior, Captain Kang, on every investigation he undertook. Most of his investigations came from Kang in the first place, anyhow. But Kang had made it clear from the outset that he would allow a certain degree of discretion on Venn’s part. If Venn came across something he believed was worth looking into further, but which was of a nature that required absolute, one hundred per cent secrecy, he had the leeway to pursue it without checking with his boss first. Provided of course that he patched Kang into the loop before any major political consequences went down.

  Besides, Venn was in Kang’s good books at present. More than that: he was his golden boy. Or, as Kang had put it so pithily at one of their recent meetings, “I’d swear under oath, Joe, that your shit don’t stink.” The reason was that Kang had come out of the operation last summer against the drug lord, Salazar, smelling of roses. It could have gon
e either way, and there’d been a lot of awkwardness about the way Venn had conducted the proceedings. But the powers that be had decided that the taking down of Mexico’s biggest drug lord by a detective lieutenant from New York City was such a coup, such an opportunity for political capital, that they’d decided to throw their full support behind Kang and his unit. Captain David Kang had received a commendation, and rumors were growing that he was being tipped for promotion, and quite possibly a seriously elevated position within the NYPD.

  There were even rumors that the Division of Special Projects might receive additional funding, and even additional staff. Those rumors had yet to be substantiated.

  “No,” said Venn, in answer to Harmony’s question. “Captain Kang doesn’t need to know about this just at the moment.”

  Harmony grinned. “Off the books. I like it.”

  Beside her, Fil Vidal looked grave. His dark eyes were just short of hooded, when he was at rest, and the lids had dipped a fraction. “Is it worth it, Lieutenant?”

  Both Venn and Harmony looked at him.

  Fil went on: “There may be nothing to all of this. And your friend, Dr Colby, could get in serious trouble. Potentially unnecessarily.”

  Venn put his hands together. “Yeah. I’ve thought of that. So has Dr Colby. But it is worth it. There’s something going on here. Something wrong.”

  Fil shrugged slightly, nodded his head. “Okay.”

  Venn was beginning to learn that Fil was a cautious man, where Harmony was impetuous. He hoped the guy wasn’t going to be hesitant when it came to the actual investigation.

  “Here’s how I think we ought to approach it, to begin with,” said Venn. “Harm, you find out everything about Bruce Collins. And I mean everything. His charitable donations, his business interests, his assets. Does he have a rap sheet, even if it’s for jaywalking. What color boxer shorts he wears, if you can.”

  “I might have to get him in the sack for that part,” said Harmony. “Mmm. Never had a rich guy before.”

  “You’d be too much for him,” said Venn. “Oh, and find out what you can about his wife, Dr Olivia Collins. Her career trajectory, for one thing.”