Murder and Mayhem E-Book

Rhys Ford

• Herausgeber: Dreamspinner Press
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 422

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015

Beschreibung

Murder and Mayhem: Book One Dead women tell no tales. Former cat burglar Rook Stevens stole many a priceless thing in the past, but he's never been accused of taking a life—until now. It was one thing to find a former associate inside Potter's Field, his pop culture memorabilia shop, but quite another to stumble across her dead body. Detective Dante Montoya thought he'd never see Rook Stevens again—not after his former partner falsified evidence to entrap the jewelry thief and Stevens walked off scot-free. So when he tackled a fleeing murder suspect, Dante was shocked to discover the blood-covered man was none other than the thief he'd fought to put in prison and who still makes his blood sing. Rook is determined to shake loose the murder charge against him, even if it means putting distance between him and the rugged Cuban-Mexican detective who brought him down. If one dead con artist wasn't bad enough, others soon follow, and as the bodies pile up around Rook's feet, he's forced to reach out to the last man he'd expect to believe in his innocence—and the only man who's ever gotten under Rook's skin.

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

Blurb

Dedication

Acknowledgments

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Fifteen

Sixteen

Seventeen

Eighteen

Nineteen

Twenty

Twenty-One

Twenty-Two

About the Author

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By Rhys Ford

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Copyright

Murder and Mayhem

By Rhys Ford

Murder and Mayhem: Book One

Dead women tell no tales.

Former cat burglar Rook Stevens stole many a priceless thing in the past, but he’s never been accused of taking a life—until now. It was one thing to find a former associate inside Potter’s Field, his pop culture memorabilia shop, but quite another to stumble across her dead body.

Detective Dante Montoya thought he’d never see Rook Stevens again—not after his former partner falsified evidence to entrap the jewelry thief and Stevens walked off scot-free. So when he tackled a fleeing murder suspect, Dante was shocked to discover the blood-covered man was none other than the thief he’d fought to put in prison and who still makes his blood sing.

Rook is determined to shake loose the murder charge against him, even if it means putting distance between him and the rugged Cuban-Mexican detective who brought him down. If one dead con artist wasn’t bad enough, others soon follow, and as the bodies pile up around Rook’s feet, he’s forced to reach out to the last man he’d expect to believe in his innocence—and the only man who’s ever gotten under Rook’s skin.

This book would not have been possible without the diligence and graceful patience of Karla Yenelie Muñoz, Armandina Muñoz, Felix Duarte, and the gorgeous Jacob Flores. Thank you all. God I love you.

Also to any of my readers who know the struggles of choosing between Doctors, still cry over Wash and Ianto, who’s Pavlovian response to hearing the word werewolf is to immediately say “There, wolf. There, castle” or knows better than to eat that one thin mint—this one is for you.

Acknowledgments

AS ALWAYS, any book with my name on it goes to the Five; Jenn, Penn, Lea, and Tamm—as well as my beloved younger sisters, Ree, Ren, and Lisa. Couldn’t have gotten here from there without you.

To Elizabeth North and the Dreamspinner staff, a huge thank you. So many to name… Grace and my long-suffering editing team, lyric whom I torture, Hayley and everyone else I torment on a daily basis. Thank you.

A shout out to the San Diego Crewe who listen to me ramble. And once more with feeling a huge hug to my Beta readers and the Dirty Ford Guinea Pigs.

This book was mostly written to AC/DC, VAST, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, and Tool with sporadic sprinklings of Celtic Music and my terrier howling along to the sirens of passing ambulances.

One

ALL ROOK could smell was blood.

Hot. Metallic. Dirty. Blood.

It stung his senses, an angry hornets’ nest of odors he couldn’t outrun—even as he pounded down one of Hollywood’s tight back alleys. Rook could hear shouting, piercing rushes of sound caught in the maze of brick, glass, and cement behind him.

A sun-faded aluminum can crinkled when he stepped on it. Folding up over the edge of his high-top, it clung to his foot for a stride before gravity dislodged it. Nearly tripping over his own feet, Rook stumbled, then caught himself with a grab at a rolling trash can, tipping the enormous black receptacle to the ground. Garbage poured out of the heavy bin, foul, sticky liquids gushing out from its depths, and as Rook jigged around the stream, he was very aware of the sounds of footsteps closing in on him.

He’d be damned if he let them catch him.

The river of garbage he could outrun. The blood was something else. It coated his hands and then his pants when he tried to wipe them clean. The bottom of his shoes were probably clotted thick with it from walking through the dark pool he’d found on his store’s main floor, driving the drying, viscous fluid deep into the grooves of his faded black Chucks.

A groaning drew him deeper into the store then. He wasn’t sure where it’d come from, but Rook would swear on a pack of Bibles signed by God himself, he heard it. It was a rattling sigh that made him pause and look again. His curiosity would be the death of him, Hawkins once told him.

Which was absolutely, ridiculously true, because when he came around the corner of the display case filled with horror flick memorabilia, he stepped directly on a dead woman’s hand.

And his curiosity laughed its fool head off as it dumped him into another mess of trouble.

He didn’t need any more light than the faint glow of emergency LEDs built into the bottom of the cases to see she was dead. It was as obvious as the life-sized Chewbacca statue standing a few feet away from where she lay splayed out. No one could survive what he’d seen. There’d been nothing left of her stomach and chest. Washed over silver from the curacao blue LEDs, her flesh lay in chunks across the floor, a profane slaughter of skin and meat leaving her insides spilling out in ribbons of dank meat and ichor.

There was a flicker of recognition in the small part of Rook’s brain that still worked, a sensory overload hot enough to crackle his nerves. He knewthe woman—had argued with her, bitched about how she’d cheated him and, worse, cursed her to hell when she’d run off with one of the largest takes he’d ever brought in.

Dani Anderson.

Her doll-like face was cracked open and bruised, the enormous cornflower-blue eyes she used to gull easy marks flat and blank, staring up at the store’s high ceiling. She lay on her side, her arms awkwardly thrust out in front of her. Her legs were spread apart and bent at the knee, forcing her tight skirt up nearly to her hips. He’d reached out to tug at her skirt hem, not thinking about anything other than giving her some dignity in death, and drew his hand back when he felt a wetness spread over his palm. Something in her torn-apart corpse must have collapsed, because Dani’s body tumbled forward, and Rook made a grab for her, as if catching Dani would save her from further pain.

That was how he was found, arms full of dead woman and skin painted with her still warm blood.

A hot, burning glow flooded the store, and Rook pulled back, startled enough to drop Dani to the floor with a wet splat. He didn’t have time to take a breath before the front windows exploded and silhouettes poured in, too many to count in the blur of panic and fright.

He did see the guns, though. And felt the whisper of a bullet shear past his exposed cheek.

The collectibles shop was a warren of display cases and back rooms, as familiar to Rook as the back of his hand or the tumbling sound of an old safe’s lock giving way to his skilled fingers. Potter’s Field’s back-room labyrinth was too dark. There should have been more lights—blinking LEDs from a high-end R2-D2 and an array of old bulb signage he’d scored from a movie set auction. If anything, he should have been able to see enough of the room from the soft glowing cold boxes bought to keep delicate collectibles in. Instead of the slightly pink suit worn in an old Charlie Chan movie or the sequined dress flashing bright colors and spangles from their sealed tight cases, Rook was met with a bank of black with only a thin orangey thread of light to see by.

He didn’t need a lot of light to lead him to the sliding metal door at the side of the building, but he certainly was going to have a good talk with Charlene, his assistant, about leaving the padlock off the inside latch when she snuck out to have a quick smoke.

If he survived getting shot at.

Hell, if he survived running through Los Angeles covered in blood while a pack of gunmen hunted him, Char was probably going to get a raise for being so bubbleheaded, because he hit the automatic release bar on the door and was outside before another bullet tried to make its way into his head.

His legs were burning. Years of sliding through tight spaces kept him limber, and he’d worked to keep flexible. Which, Rook discovered as a cramp bloomed across his ribs, did shit for stamina. He’d been stupid—complacent, really. Stupid to think he’d gone straight so could give up old ingrained habits like intimately knowing his surroundings and moving about.

It was costing him dearly now.

Hollywood was built building upon building, tight, cramped spaces behind broad fronts facing the street, a set design for the masses, constructed on a grand scale. Pockets of asphalt parking lots were scattered about, giving Rook a clear path to sprint through if he wanted.

He knew better. Wide-open spaces were the easiest way to get caught. Subterfuge and shadows were his only hope in the never-quite-darkness of a late Hollywood evening. The sky shimmered with yellow splashes of light caught in the low cloud cover of an early fall. The alleys were dodgy, twists and turns speckled with debris, both garbage and throwaway people clinging to back doorways hoping their fragile shelter would hold up against the occasional sparse drizzle.

A dash of Chinese spice in the air gave Rook some idea of where he’d gotten to. Only a block and a half from where he’d started. The city’s grime was thick in its bowels, stains of dirt and fallen smog leaving behind long mottled streaks nearly impervious to Los Angeles’s drifting rains. In some cases, the buildings themselves were nestled in too tight to allow even a hint of fresh breeze between them, and Rook choked on a pocket of stagnant air trapped behind a run-down side street head shop, a cloud of patchouli and stale pot smoke drifting in the heat of a never-ending coil.

Behind Hollywood’s streets, a different city thrived, a far cry from the glamour and glitz. Not the one sold on television and movies as a glistening, golden-bodied beauty with suntan-oiled skin and orange-kissed breath. The tightly packed town nestled into Beverly Hills’s armpit had absolutely nothing in common with that Hollywood. If anything, that golden image was simply his town’s too thickly spackled on makeup, weathered and cracked from the heat, and if anyone looked too closely, they could see the aging has-been beneath the pancake foundation and sparkling fake eyelashes.

After years spent on the carnival circuit, he’d always loved returning to Hollywood’s streets under the hills, packed with expensive apartments with their wide-open windows and the frivolous wealth of every flash-in-the-pan wannabe whose face sparked up a screen for a brief instant, then faded back into the chorus along with the rest of the trash.

He’d fought hard to rise above being trash. If he hadn’t been running for his life, Rook would have laughed at how easy it was to fall from grace in a split second—especially when covered in the blood of a woman he’d wished dead for years.

Twisting to the left, he nearly toppled over a grizzled old black man pulling mannequin parts out of a battered shopping cart. Reeling from the hit, Rook sidestepped the gnarled fingers reaching for him, the man’s face mottled dark with anger.

“Watch where yer goin’, boy,” he spat at Rook, a wave of foul breath washing over him, strong enough to briefly drown the stench of blood and offal out of Rook’s nostrils.

“Sorry,” Rook muttered, squeezing past him. He didn’t get more than a step when he felt the old man grab at his head, twisting his fingers into Rook’s shaggy hair. The pain was sudden, sharp, and hard. He lurched back, surprised at the skinny man’s strength. “Let go… I’ve got to—”

“That blood I smell?” The man’s voice boomed, a grenade of sound echoing through the zigzag of crossing alleys. “You kill someone? Shit! Police!”

Rook spun about, tilting sideways when the man tightened his grip. The shouts were getting louder, indistinct cries directing the men to their prey. Panic seized Rook’s belly, and he struck out, slamming his knee up into the hollow between the old man’s legs. An instant later, Rook was free and he was off, determined to shake the shadows off his trail. He broke from the maze, grabbing at fresh air and a straight run to safety.

Then one of the shadows lunged out from the darkness pooled at the edges of a cluttered sidewalk and took Rook out.

The shape grew large and came too fast for Rook to avoid. He got a glimpse of jeans, a white shirt, and a suit jacket, flashes of color across his vision before the massive block of muscle and sinew hit him hard enough to pull both of them down to the gritty broken sidewalk. Rook tucked in on himself, rolling into the blow to protect his chest and belly. Years of hardscrabble fighting and honed instincts took over, and he lashed out, shoving stiff fingers into his attacker’s throat. Rook heard a gagging sound—loud enough to give him hope the man would let him go, but the sidewalk had other plans.

A break in the concrete caught Rook’s shoulder, and it broke his momentum, jerking him to a stop. His sneakers squeaked against a wall plastered with placards and graffiti, but he couldn’t get enough traction to get to his feet. Caught with his back to his attacker, Rook scrambled to get a hold on the sidewalk as he untangled his legs, but the man was on him, pressing Rook down with a fierce shove. His head snapped forward, and Rook saw stars when his skull made contact with the ground under him. As he blinked away the sharp crack of pain, Rook’s stomach sank down deep into his trembling guts.

It wasn’t the man’s gun that gave him pause. Nor the gold badge he wore at his belt. A gun and badge clearly exposed as the dark-haired giant’s jacket pulled up when he reached for a pair of zip ties from a leather pouch near his back pocket.

“Fuck, a cop,” Rook swore through the wavy sparkles flickering across his eyes. “Oh… shit.”

He knew the Hispanic cop straddling him. He’d felt those large strong arms on him before, and even as he heard the click of a plastic zip tie being looped shut around his wrist, he recalled the last time he’d seen the handsome, stone-faced man, and his cock grew hard with the memory. Dark, changeable light brown eyes with almost ridiculously long lashes scanned Rook’s face, and Rook caught the exact moment when the cop recognized him, just seconds after Rook realized who’d pinned him spread eagle to the ground.

This wasn’t just any cop.

But the one cop in Los Angeles who wanted him dead.

And the one and only cop he’d ever let touch him.

“FUCKING ROOK Stevens,” Detective Dante Montoya growled at the one-way glass looking into a small gray interrogation room off of the station’s bullpen.

His hands smarted, rubbed raw from the scrapes he’d taken when taking Stevens down, and his throat ached where the supposedly former thief’d jabbed his fingers into Dante’s Adam’s apple, but the minor discomforts were just that—minor. He’d finally gotten a hold of fucking Rook Stevens, and from the looks of things, Stevens wasn’t going to be able to wiggle his way free like he’d done in the past.

The man was a boneless sprawl of insouciance in one of the interview room’s hard metal and vinyl chairs, his long legs stretched out in front of him and one arm looped over the chair’s back. From Stevens’s casual demeanor, no one would believe he was facing a murder charge, but small things betrayed him. His mismatched stare glanced at the door every few seconds before settling back to stare at the mirrored wall, and there was a slight tightening around Stevens’s full mouth every time a shadow passed under the door.

Problem was, Rook Stevens was still as handsome as fucking hell, and Dante longed to smack the man’s smugness off his face with a well-aimed fist.

If anything, the police-issued set of gray scrubs should have taken away a bit of his attractiveness, but the drab fabric only drew out the paleness of his skin and the startling blue and green-hazel oddity of his eyes. The room’s bright overhead lights highlighted Stevens’s high cheekbones and strong jaw, his nearly elfish features hiding the cunning intelligence Dante knew lurked behind his seemingly wide-eyed expression. Stevens’s caramel-brown hair was longer than the last time Dante’d seen him, certainly longer than the recon photos from the disastrous case that ended his prior partner’s career and set Dante’s more than a few steps back.

Almost five years. Five long years since Dante was forced to close the case file he’d built up on Stevens and the other members of the carnie crew suspected of running a burglary ring up and down the West Coast. His old partner, Vince, had taken the case harder, more personally than Dante, and that’d been his downfall. By the time their two-year investigation went down in flames, Vince was tired of being a cop, tired of chasing criminals, and certainly sick to death of banging his head against the solid wall of lies and subterfuge spun by Rook Stevens and his partners.

“I’m too old for this shit,” Vince had muttered when they’d gotten word Stevens walked free of all charges they’d brought against him. “I’m spending my life trying to nail some damned uneducated smartass who hawks sideshow games for a fucking living. Asshole knew we had him dead to rights, and all we had to do was find out where he fenced that damned last haul of his.”

They hadn’t found Stevens’s fence or anyone who’d even admit to doing business with Stevens to launder the high-end goods from the mansions he’d hit when the carnival wintered in Los Angeles. None of the carnies would spill a single word from their close-lipped mouths whenever Vince and Dante came around, and if anything, the victims themselves wanted the cases swept under the rug when the detectives began to poke a little too deeply for their comfort.

Then Vince did the unthinkable. He’d crossed the line between good and bad, planting evidence so flimsy it unraveled before the accusations against Stevens could even take hold, and Vince’d almost brought Dante down with him.

He’d liked Vince. The older detective’d taken a slightly angry, gay, Cuban-Mexican baby detective under his wing and poured everything he knew about catching criminals into Dante’s eager brain. In the end, Vince’s career ended in a sour mess, and Dante skirted the edge of demotion when they’d been accused of taking bribes to let the crew slip out from between their fingers. Vince tried to talk Dante out of telling their captain about Dante’s encounter with Stevens in a dark Hollywood club, and even then, Dante kept the details sketchy, admitting he only realized he’d almost fucked Stevens when someone accidentally turned on the bathhouse’s floodlights and bleached the back rooms in a harsh white glow.

It was the last time Dante went to a club to get his needs met. It was also the first time he’d seen Stevens’s sexy, nearly apologetic smile.

The asshole still got the tickle going in Dante’s belly, and damned if he didn’t want to dig his hands into Stevens’s hair, strip him down, and fuck him until he couldn’t breathe.

“So you finally got your white whale, huh, Moby?” Hank Camden, his partner of three years, wandered into the side room, a bone-white tangle of clumsy limbs topped off with a shock of red hair bright enough to set off a fire sprinkler.

“Moby Dick was the whale, puto,” Dante replied, picking up the paper cup of sour cop house coffee he’d poured himself before coming into the viewing cubby. “And we haven’t harpooned him yet. What’s the lab say? Anything come back yet?”

“No, nothing. But shit, he was practically coated from head to toe. If there’s no gunpowder residue it’s because he washed it off in her damned blood.” Hank saluted Dante with his own cup, a tea bag tag dangling from a string over its rim. “Huh, he doesn’t look old enough to be a nemesis.”

“He’s old enough.” Dante grunted. “Pisses me off I can’t be in there. I’ve waited a hell of a long time to take Stevens down. Who’s taking the case? O’Byrne? She’s the only one I can think of who could go toe-to-toe with him.”

“Just because you made the collar doesn’t mean it’s our case. ’Sides, Captain knows you’ve got a history with the guy. You and me are on door-knocking and story-taking duty until he says—”

“Montoya. Camden.” The man in question, a thick-chested walrus of a cop, thrust his head into the cubby. Captain Book, a veteran of LA’s long, tenuous relationship with the law, pointed at the interrogation room and LAPD’s latest acquisition. “Everyone’s caseload is backed up to hell and gone. You’re all I’ve got open, so get in there and crack him. Do it clean. Do it fast. Shut him down quick.”

“Yes, sir.” Dante suppressed a grin as he tossed his cup into the trash. “Thanks, Captain.”

“Don’t fuck this up, Montoya. Get in. Get what we need, and keep it professional.” Book stabbed at the air near Dante’s chest with a thick finger, his severe frown thick with warning. “Camden, you watch your step. Don’t give the DA any damned wiggle room to let this bastard out. Son of a bitch lawyer is rubber-stamping shit left and right. Make something stick here.”

Dante waited until the captain was gone before he let his smile slip free. Jerking his head toward the mirror, he patted Hank on the shoulder and grinned widely. “Come on, man, let’s go see what Stevens has to say about all that blood.”

Two

THE TWO detectives entered the room as if it were a rancor pit and they were the predators coming to feed on Rook’s helpless body. He barely glanced at the flaming matchstick of a man lurking behind Montoya. The Hispanic detective had all of Rook’s attention, especially when he caught a flare of something hot in Montoya’s gaze when he stared Rook down.

It’d been a long time since he’d seen Montoya. Rook couldn’t remember which police station it’d been in. Hell, he could have even been sitting in the same damned room they’d used to try to tear him apart that last time he’d been brought up on charges. There’d been anger in Montoya’s body language then, and a sense of defeat hung heavy on the cop’s shoulders. His partner’d been an older man, his eyes puffy with age and drink. If anything, he’d worried the senior detective wasn’t going to make it out of the police station that afternoon. Rook’d caught Montoya sliding a hand under the old man’s arm when he’d fumbled a step leaving the booking area. Back then, the rage in the older detective’s eyes promised Rook would come to a very unhappy end if he had anything to say about it.

If he were honest, Rook was kind of surprised it took the cops more than four years to try to nail him for something he didn’t even do. He wouldn’t have credited the old man for that kind of patience. Hell, when he thought about the senior detective’s gray pallor and racking cough, he’d be kind of surprised if the old man was still alive.

Showing panic would send them at him like sharks on chum, so Rook forced himself to a calm he didn’t feel. His belly twisted up, and his nerves keyed in to the aggressive body language of badges strolling into the room knowing they were holding all the cards. His protests about being innocent fell on deaf ears, and if possible, those ears got even deafer when Rook claimed not a single cop identified themselves when coming through Potter’s Field’s front windows.

Instead he’d been stripped, scraped, then raked over by a team of grim-faced forensics lab rats before being hosed down while standing on a plastic mesh evidence trap. When a hatchet-jawed man snapped on a pair of latex gloves and told Rook to spread his legs and lean forward, Rook knew he was in deeper shit than he’d ever been in before.

As if he’d even had time to shove something up his ass between the moment he’d been shot at until Montoya face-planted him into one of Hollywood’s dirty sidewalks. He didn’t know what the cops thought he’d have up there, but a few stinging pokes, and the Dick Tracy wannabe seemed satisfied Rook didn’t have anything hidden up his butt.

His rim stung a little, but he wasn’t going to give the detectives the satisfaction of seeing his discomfort. Instead Rook focused on taking a read on the men as they worked the room, settling into their roles to mind-fuck information out of him.

There wasn’t a damned thing anyone could teach Rook about mind-fucking and social engineering. It was his tool of trade, something he’d learned before he ever crawled into houses to find treasures hidden in freezers and safes behind badly painted landscapes and since perfected as he wheedled people into handing over rare collectibles for a price he could turn into a huge profit.

As far as he knew, the cops had nothing on him about his past, and Rook knew as sure as shit they had nothing on him about Dani’s murder. But that didn’t mean they weren’t going to try to stick it on him.

“Hello, Mr. Stevens.”

The matchstick spoke up first, a singsong, gravelly voice Rook supposed he used to lull cranky babies to sleep.

“I’m Detective Camden. This is Detective Montoya.”

Rook had to admit Montoya looked damned good. A bit leaner in his face but packed with more muscle everywhere else. He’d changed his jacket and shirt, probably because tangling with Rook smeared dirt and dried blood over the others. The latte-brown suede and corduroy jacket was tailored to fit Montoya’s broad shoulders and trim waist, and the weathered gray T-shirt he wore under the corduroy was nearly thin enough to see through, its soft cotton weave sticking to Montoya’s chest and flat belly. The jeans were the same, Rook noted, scuffed and speckled with a bit of grit Montoya hadn’t bothered to brush off. His thighs were thick with muscle, and his 501s clung and tugged in spots, drawing attention to a creased bulge slung down Montoya’s left leg.

As delectable as the man’s body was, it was Montoya’s face Rook enjoyed the most. Chiseled cheekbones and a full mouth softened his nearly too harsh features. Montoya’s light brown eyes, wide and doe-like, made Rook smile someplace deep inside himself. Even as the man stared down at him with nothing on his face but a cold professionalism, those liquid hot amber eyes tickled away some of Rook’s wariness.

Not enough for Rook to let his guard drop, but still, hot enough to send tingles up and down Rook’s spine.

“Hey, Montoya. Long time, no arrest.” Rook held up his hands, teasing the detective. “Look, normal number of fingers. Didn’t kill your father. Or Dani either.”

“What are you talking about, Stevens?” the man growled, a deep, resonant thrum accented with a rolling Cuban lilt, far different from the staccato chop of the SoCal Mexican Rook grew up with. “Do we need to get a doctor in here, or is this just another one of your games?”

“Do you think Stevens here is playing games with us, Montoya?” Camden cocked his head and studied Rook as if he were an odd bug he’d found in his food. “To what end? Get out of a few questions? It’s not like he has anything to hide, right?”

“Neither one of you have heard about Inigo Montoya?” Rook looked from one cop to the other, sighing when he was met with blank stares. “Shit, what’s this world coming to? And no, I’ve got nothing to hide there, Detective.”

“You’ve already been read your rights. Do you need us to go over them again?” This time the redhead shot his partner an odd look when Montoya said something in Spanish beneath his breath, the whisper too low for Rook to hear. “Do you understand your rights as they’ve been read to you?”

Rook leaned back into the stiff-backed chair they’d given him to sit in. Its metal braces dug into his shoulders, and its thick square legs made it nearly impossible for Rook to rock it back, but he gave it his best effort, scraping the steel ends on the room’s linoleum tiles. He felt something give a bit under him, and Rook grinned, a little satisfied he’d be leaving a mark on the cop house floor.

“Yeah, I understand my rights. Go ahead, Weasley. Question away.” Keeping his eyes on Montoya’s face, he purred, “Like I said, I’ve got nothing to hide. Well….” He gave Montoya a sly wink. “Mostly nothing, anyway. I try not to dredge up the past too much.”

From the startled look on Montoya’s face, the detective caught the flirtation Rook tossed his way, and the amber flicker in his gaze flared briefly in response. Montoya shut it down as quick as it came up but not before Rook saw it. After pulling out one of the two chairs across the table from Rook, Montoya sat down and began to flip through the portfolio he’d brought in with him. Matchstick Camden paced the length of the room before coming back to roost his hip on a corner of the table, angling his body slightly to face Rook.

Of the two detectives, Rook would have chosen Montoya to loom instead of the redheaded scarecrow trying to intimidate him by leaning into Rook’s space. The skinny man barely cast a broad shadow over Rook’s arm, much less psychologically pushing him into talking. Keeping one eye on Montoya, Rook let a tiny smile creep over his mouth as he stared up at Camden.

Camden continued to rattle off the particulars of recording their session and asked Rook to state his name and personal information for the record.

Shrugging, Rook replied, “Rook Martin Stevens, birthday April first… maybe twenty-six or seven years go.”

“You don’t know the year you were born?”

“Mom did a lot of drugs,” Rook shot back. “I’m happy she got the gender part right.”

The cop rolled his eyes, then continued, “Birthplace unknown. Father unknown. Mother, Beatrice Martin, location currently unknown.”

“And where do you work, and what is your current residence, Stevens?” Montoya interjected.

Rook rattled off his store’s address twice, painting a pleasant expression on his face when the cops asked him to clarify. “I live above my shop, Potter’s Field. Used to be a dance studio, so it had a shower, and I got it renovated. Made sense at the time. Now, not so sure.”

“Let’s talk a little bit about your past. We’d like to go over a few things. You’ve got quite an arrest record here, Stevens. Even as a juvie.” Camden rattled a piece of paper in the air. “Fifteen counts of breaking and entering, burglary and fraud, to name a few. Lot of charges here and not far off of a step to murder, really.”

The room’s florescent lights were bright enough to turn the white page transparent, and Rook quickly read a bit of a transposed menu from an Indian restaurant on Sixth. For an arrest record, it was rather sparse. It did, however, inform Rook of their five bucks all-you-can-eat luncheon buffet.

Playing along with the cop, Rook inclined his head slightly. “Yet no convictions. What does that tell you?”

“That you’re slippery.” Montoya’s rumble ran dark beneath Camden’s nearly bright pennywhistle voice. “But not that smart.”

“Or you guys are shitty at your job.”

That scored a direct hit on Montoya. The man was proud of being a cop, and his eyes went flat as he peered at Rook over the red file folder.

Pushing a little bit further, Rook slid in, “Or maybe just the ones who come after me.”

One of the first things Rook learned while growing up barefoot and loose among the carnies was to poke the bear when he was cornered. People—especially cops—usually wore their egos close to the surface, and a few judicious jabs at their tender spots tended to make them lose control. While a dangerous thing to do to a cop out on the street, it was the perfect line of attack when sitting in an interrogation room. Loss of control could do marvelous things for someone caught in a sticky situation.

This time it was Camden who bristled up and flushed red with anger. Montoya, if anything, got colder, and Rook slid a quick look over to the redhead sitting a few feet away from him before gifting Montoya with a broad smile.

“Let’s talk about Dani Anderson, shall we?” Montoya headed Camden off before the man could dig into Rook. The partners were definitely on more equal footing than the old man Rook’d seen Montoya with before. “Why’d you kill her?”

“I already told the last five people who accused me….” Rook tried to keep his voice steady, but the strain of being held was growing, especially since he couldn’t seem to get the smell of Dani’s death out of his nostrils, despite the Silkwood shower he’d taken in the police evidence pen. “Dani was… she was like that when I found her.”

“One of the officers states they saw something in your hand when you bolted,” Montoya read off a report. Unlike what Camden held in his hand for a prop, Rook was pretty certain Montoya wasn’t pulling that particular accusation out of his ass. “Any idea where you put that thing?”

“I didn’t have anything in my hands… except Dani. And that’s only because she rolled over and I caught her.” Rook leaned forward. “Like I told you guys before.”

“That’s when you say you got her blood on you.” Camden’s sneer was small, barely a twist of his upper lip. “Care to explain how you got so much of it on you if you only caught her as she rolled over? Assuming a dead woman would roll over. What do you think, Montoya? How likely is that to happen?”

“Gravity happens,” Rook cut in before Montoya could speak. “She was on her side. I was crouching over her, and she toppled over—”

“Any reason you did that? Crouch over her, I mean. Allegedly, of course,” the redhead said smugly. “Instead of maybe calling the cops because there was a dead woman on your shop floor? And don’t tell me you didn’t know she was dead. You blasted a hole through her abdomen.”

“With what? An elephant gun? Blow darts? The Klingon disrupter I had in the front case? Did you find a weapon? Because I sure as shit didn’t have one.” Rook twisted in his chair to look at Montoya. The cop’s shoulders were squared off and firm, but his face was unreadable. Rook hated the slight pleading waver in his voice, but he was getting desperate. “Look, Montoya, you know me. I wouldn’t kill anyone—”

“And how would I know that?” Montoya’s softly accented voice ruffled Rook’s nerves.

“Because you’ve hounded my ass for years.” He shoved down a wince at the unintentional double entendre. “I might have done some things—things I’m not going to apologize for—but I don’t do murder. Especially now that I’ve gone—” He almost crossed a line, confessing he was out of the con and thieving business, something the cops never had proof of, and Rook realized he wasn’t the only one playing at breaking another man’s self-control.

Montoya was affecting him more than he liked. The whole damned thing was getting under his skin, and for the first time since he’d been brought in, Rook was scared—scared he’d found the one time he couldn’t talk his way out of something, and it wasn’t even something he’d done. “I didn’t kill her.”

Camden shifted his stance, rocking the table. “So you say. Thing is, Stevens, we don’t believe you.”

“Then I’ll say it again.” Taking a deep breath, Rook centered himself before speaking calmly and slowly. “I didn’t kill Dani Anderson. I don’t even know why she was there in my shop. Shit, I haven’t seen Dani since… hell, I don’t remember the last time I saw her. She screwed me over on something, and I walked away.”

“But you definitely knew her?” Camden pressed. “And had problems with her. How about we talk about why she might have come over to your place?”

“No idea,” Rook replied smoothly, keeping his attention on the redhead. “I don’t even know how she got in. Charlene, my assistant, closes up on Sundays at five. Knowing Char, it was probably closer to three. Hell, it could have been noon. Dani must have gotten in after that, because even as bubbleheaded as Char is, she’d have noticed a dead woman in the middle of the store.”

“We’ve yet to locate your assistant to find out when she closed down.” The redheaded detective put his menu facedown on the table. “Any idea on where she is?”

“Try a street corner. Sometimes she hands out flyers and condoms to hookers,” Rook snarked. “Char’s what you call a free spirit. If she shows up for work, I call it a good day.”

“And she’s the only one who works there?” Montoya slid in.

“No. Well, yes. For now,” he replied. “Look, there’s a couple of part-timers that worked the store sometimes, but they moved to Oregon together. I haven’t gotten around to hiring new ones.”

Montoya cut in, “You told the officer who took your statement that you don’t have an alibi for the afternoon. The last person who can verify your presence is a Mrs. Viola Cranson. She said you bought a few items from her estate sale and then went back to negotiate the purchase of a decoder ring, is that right?”

“Yeah. I knew her husband. He passed away, and she was selling off some of his things,” Rook agreed slowly. He’d paid way too much for the ring, but Viola was old-school stubborn. Handing her a check would have gotten it thrown back in his face. “What about it?”

“Five thousand dollars. For a piece of plastic in a bag?” Montoya leaned back, meeting Rook’s glance. “Do they normally run that much?”

“No,” he ground out. “The lady’s broke. Her husband just died. He used to work the lots and scored me a lot of deals over the years. I thought I’d do her a solid. It’s worth about twenty-five bucks, tops.”

“And you gave her five grand for it?” Camden whistled. “Some solid. Kind of looks like you were buying an alibi.”

“Like I said, her husband did me a lot of favors, especially when I was first starting out.” Rook shrugged. “I’m not the only one who gave her money. A couple of collectors were there too doing the same thing. Mark, her husband, was a good guy. A lot of people liked him.”

“It’s less than an hour’s drive from Cranson’s house to your shop. You left there at four. Where’d you go in between four and eight?” Montoya asked. The ping-pong of questions was meant to frustrate Rook. It was a move he’d used himself when sharping someone for information. Hell, he and Dani’d been great at it until she screwed him over. She’d been the last straw, the final betrayal. “You burned four hours doing what?”

“Driving, mostly.” He shrugged. “I don’t get days off a lot. I wanted some space, so I went to Potter’s warehouse in West Hollywood, checked on a few things, then drove a bit up the coast.” Rook tilted his head. “I’d have said the store’s cameras would have a record of me coming in, but the cop told me the power was shut off.”

“Dead cameras also are good at not showing someone being murdered,” Camden pointed out. “The lines were cut at the box outside. You’ve got keys to that box, right? With the power out, you could have done a lot of things in that shop without anyone really knowing what you were up to.”

“The whole damned block has keys to that box,” Rook protested lightly, spreading his hands on the table. “Shit, it’s not like it’s Fort Knox. They probably use the same key for all the line boxes in Los Angeles. And those are the same fucking dead cameras that would have recorded the cops coming through the front without IDing themselves, so yeah, I’d say taking the power out fucked me over something royal, but I didn’t do that either. Costs a lot of money to get an electrician out to fix that kind of thing.”

“Yet you paid an old woman five K for a piece of plastic,” the Hispanic detective pointed out.

“She’s worth the five grand,” he retorted. “Killing Dani Anderson isn’t.”

“No, but the fifty-carat diamond found in her pocket would be worth a hell of a lot more than the five grand you paid Cranson for her story.” Montoya drew out an evidence photo showing a large, sparkling pear-shaped gem positioned against an L-shaped ruler to show its width and height. “Strangely enough, it matches a diamond you were suspected of taking six years ago. One we never recovered… until just now.”

“And guess what, Stevens?” Camden slid closer, something in his pocket scratching the table with a loud screech. “It’s got your fingerprints all over it. Now I’d call that something worth killing Dani Anderson over.”

Rook dropped his gaze, confused and alarmed. He’d stashed that diamond years ago, nearly hours after he’d taken it from a Beverly Hills mansion. There’d been no connection to Dani on that job. Hell, he hadn’t told anyone about the take from that night, not even Char, who’d been his lookout on more than one occasion. Shifting in his chair, Rook looked up and damned himself with the one word he’d wanted to avoid but now couldn’t.

“What do you have to say to that, Stevens?” Montoya asked softly.

“Lawyer,” Rook growled at the two cops sitting across of him. “I want my lawyer.”

Three

THERE WAS a gaggle of drag queens in Dante’s house.

A gaggle—if that was the right word—getting drunk off their asses and chattering loud enough to wake the dead.

To be fair, Dante reminded himself, one of them did live there, but no man needed to come home to find a man the size and hirsuteness of a water buffalo dressed only in a gold lame thong bending over his leather couch.

Dante avoided a pinch from a four-foot-tall Asian man slinging margaritas from the dining table, then liberated a couple of sodas from a Styrofoam cooler near the kitchen door. Another hop, skip, and dodge, then he was free, closing the screen door behind him before joining his partner on the front porch. Handing Hank a root beer, Dante winced as the questionable party inside the house erupted with bursts of high-pitched screams, giggles, and spiced profanities. He checked the cushions of one of the rattan chairs for any of the neighborhood cats, then sat down to open his drink.

“Thanks for the soda.” Hank looked over his shoulder when another auditory assault hit. “Do I even want to know what’s going on in there, Montoya? They need help or something?”

“Waxing,” Dante muttered. “Trust me. You do not want to go in there.”

They’d come back to Dante’s house, worn down to the bone, tired, and thirsty. A brief stop at a fish taco shop on the way up Wiltshire was enough to ease their hunger, but a street party near the park stalled traffic to a standstill, cooking the detectives in Los Angeles’s muggy evening stew. By the time Dante pulled up in front of the two-story bungalow he shared with his uncle, Manuel, he and Hank were drenched to the skin and more than a little bit tired of being in a car.

East Hollywood was quiet—with the exception of the burlesque and body maintenance cabaret going on behind them. Old-school Mexican music whispered out of a tiny pink adobe bungalow across the street, and a few houses down, a young woman in a yellow bathrobe stood next to a shivering tiny dog on a leash, encouraging the oversized rat to piss so she could go back inside. The sidewalks lined both sides of the street, slightly broken in spots where an old tree trunk lifted the cement or a quake rattled a panel too hard. The yards ran small, sometimes even to tiny squares of gravel or concrete painted green or terra-cotta, and nearly all of the houses boasted low chain-link or white-post fencing, mainly to keep dogs and children from wandering out into the broad street.

Gentrification was slow to move into the area. The houses were legacies passed on from one generation to the next, and Dante considered himself damned lucky to score his house from a property-seized auction nearly three months after he’d moved to Los Angeles. Neglected to the point of almost being uninhabitable, he’d installed his uncle in the mother-in-law cottage at the back of the property and spent most of his spare time breaking down walls and tearing up piss-stained carpet.

Now the back cottage was a beauty salon for Manny’s occasional clients, and Dante concentrated on the smaller projects he’d put aside—like tearing out the ugly concrete water fountain languishing in his sunburned front lawn.

“Want me to run you up home?” Dante asked, sipping at his soda.

“Nah, the Red will take me right to my doorstep,” Hank refused with a shake of his head. “And don’t take this wrong, but the last thing I want to do is crawl into that POS speck you drove us in.”

“Not my piece of shit, remember? The truck’s in the shop. Just be thankful Manny loaned us his car. It was either the Z/28 or your wife’s minivan.”

“God no, not the Cheerio-mobile. The dog puked into the AC vent last week. I think we’re going to have it exorcized or something. I can’t even get into it without wanting to vomit.” Hank slurped on his can, then rolled the cold aluminum across his face. “Hey, how is Manny doing? Better?”

“Yeah, doing good. Tío got the all clear from his oncologist last week. Cancer free, five years running. He’s just happy his hair’s back, but I know he was scared.” Dante caught himself crossing his fingers over his chest and shot Hank a sheepish look. “I don’t know what’s worse, not being able to shake off old habits or just being too stupid to learn new ones.”

Their phones buzzed and sang at the same time, and Dante frowned, dragging his cell out of his back pocket while Hank hunted his down. Scrolling through a long text message, Dante resisted the urge to fling his phone across the yard and possibly take out a piece of the damned fountain while he was at it.

Stevens was out of jail and, most likely, in the wind.

“How the fuck did he get out?” Hank gritted his teeth. “Motherfucking shit and hell. He’s up for fucking murder! And they just let him walk?”

“Released on his own recognizance. You saw those lawyers marching in. You think that wasn’t money they were wearing? Some of those damned suits probably cost more than my mortgage payment,” Dante murmured, rereading the text from their captain. His partner stood up, and Dante watched Hank pace up and down the porch. “Surprised it took them this long to get him out. He can’t go back to his place. That’s locked up tighter than the rosary beads Manny got from the Pope. Where can he hide? ’Cause if we lose track of him, we’re screwed.”

“Next of kin was listed in his records,” his partner pointed out. “Archibald Martin. Address is up in the Hills. Maybe an uncle or something? No, grandfather. The guy was listed as his grandpa.”

“Living up in the Hills?” Dante snorted. “How much money do you think Stevens is making fleecing people with those plastic rings and stuffed monsters? And he’s got a relative living up there?”

“Could be a gardener or an ass-licker. People up there are so rich, they pay people to live in their houses and suck up to them. Stevens looked like he could suck up really good if he wanted to. Shit, this uncle-cousin probably conned his way into some old lady’s bed and is waiting for her to die so he can spend the rest of his life taking care of her poodles.” Hank grimaced when Dante gave him a reproachful look. “What? Like you weren’t thinking it.”

“I wasn’t. Mostly because it didn’t dawn on me. Listen, Stevens can’t go back to his place. The shop and apartment are still a crime scene, so he’s got to go someplace else.” Dante shrugged. He tapped at his cell’s screen to look up Archibald Martin of Beverly Hills. What came up made him blink. “Holy shit.”

“See if we can run a profile—” Hank stopped short as Dante held up his phone for his partner to see his search results. “What the fuck? Stevens is loaded.”

“Or his family is. Something’s off here, because I can tell you this relative was nowhere to be found when Vince and I were hunting him down. Now all of a sudden he’s got some guy with a nice address? Something’s fishy. But if Stevens is even still in LA, he’s with this guy or that assistant we couldn’t find.”

“What was her name? Charlotte? No, Charlene? We don’t have any other known associates tagged on his file. Shit, we barely have a file.” Hank sighed. “Shit, you worked for Toss-It Harry then. I heard that asshole tossed files out like they were three-week-old Chinese food.”