Every Kind of Wicked (A Gardiner and Renner Novel Book 6)

Friday, 3:25 p. m.

“Feathers,” Riley said, turning a corner. A bit sharply, and the rear wheels scooted to the side a few inches more than they should.

“Cheer up. We can have lunch at that Thai place.”

“I wasn’t complaining. It’s better than tracking down dealers and fake scripts like Gardiner’s going to have to.”

“Might not be so bad. Nothing like chasing the group on the corner as they scatter down the alleys to warm you up.”

“Plus they can’t even run that fast because fourteen layers of clothes weigh them down. How else can you deal out of doors for hours in the winter without layering?”

The car had barely warmed up before it was time to get out of it again. They left it at the curb in one of the few spaces allowed for that sort of thing and then paused to assess their target. A brick structure with evenly spaced windows over the heavy block sills, solid and plain, and Jack could easily believe that it had been there for a hundred years or whatever. He had searched the address and found only a real estate company that didn’t employ someone to answer the phone. Now, no sign arched over the entrance on East Ninth. The grimy glass squares of the windows had been coated with something reflective, and the doors were bare of titles or hours of operations. Jack felt oddly glad they had come armed.

Jack put his hand on the pull latch of the bare door and tugged. It opened to an air lock, but when he pulled on the second set of doors, nothing happened. Their surface had been coated on the inside with a dark brown matte paint, so from the street it looked like an empty interior.

Jack could detect a low murmur, a collective rustling, something felt rather than heard that told him the building was anything but empty.

No directory, no lettering. The foyer had no more information than the outer door, but it did have a small black plastic grill attached to the wall. A circle in the grill might be a button. With no other options presented, Jack pushed it.

Nothing.

He pushed again.

This time it crackled and an annoyed voice said only, “What?”

“Police,” Jack snapped back. If the person didn’t have time to equivocate, neither did he.

A pause to reassess, and then the voice said, “I’ll be right with you.”

“He’ll be right with us,” Jack muttered to his partner.

Riley’s hand rested on his hip, one inch from his holstered gun. “Please tell me we’re not walking into a meth lab.”

“We’d smell it if it were meth. It could be cocaine.”

Riley slid the bottom of his sweater up and put his hand on the butt of the gun, still buckled into its holster. “Or fentanyl,” he breathed.

Fentanyl seemed to terrify Riley. A white powder, it could function like a magic spell or a superpoison from a bad spy film—one whiff, an errant touch with an ungloved hand, and a strong grown man could drop to the floor. All officers carried the antidote Narcan in the car, but that required one of them to get to the kit and back in time to save their partner. If both of them went down, they were as good as in the coffins. There was nothing magical about that.

He heard the snick of a dead bolt and the door flew open, revealing a thirtyish man in a suit, too well-dressed to be a drug lord. Every dark hair in place, teeth gleaming, he thrust out a hand armed with nothing more than a wide gold band around one finger. “Gentlemen! What can I do for you?”

A wall of noise billowed out the door around him. What sounded like a room full of voices, all in different conversation—but none that seemed in distress or even particular haste. After shaking the man’s damp hand Jack held up his badge and Riley did the same. Jack spoke with clunky syntax: “This building has turned up as of interest to an investigation. Are you the owner?”

“I’m the owner of the business. I rent the space. Mark Hawking.” He began to offer his hand again, then realized he had already done that and let it drop. “What can I do for you?”

“What is your business?”

“We do tech support for a number of companies.”

The noise continued unabated. Doors locked during work hours violated fire code, but Hawking’s hand rested on a push bar on the inside of the inner door. So employees could get out—Mr. Hawking simply didn’t want unexpected visitors. Nothing particularly wrong with that, especially as the reception desk behind him sat empty and dust-covered.

“Which companies?” Riley asked. He liked to ask people detailed questions. It made lying that much more difficult, and you never knew what such information might turn up.

“Mostly smaller ones, places you’ve probably never heard of.” Riley’s gaze compelled him to add more. “Mantra Services, Silver Thread, Kay Home Care, The Heartsaver Association.”

Jack had never heard of any of them, but again, that could hardly be considered suspicious. Conducting the entire interview in the air lock, however—“Could we come in? Maybe sit down with you, if you can spare us a few minutes?”

Mark Hawking, he felt sure, would not refuse. Mark Hawking wanted very much to seem like a good guy.

And indeed, the man hesitated only the splittest of seconds. “Of course. We can speak in my office.” He stood back, held the door, and ushered them into his world.

Stepping inside, Jack immediately saw where the noise came from. Cubicles filled the room, two rows of desks facing each other with a five-foot modular walls on three sides. They were centered in the room, leaving a wide aisle between the two sets and another circling them all, leaving the large windows and the inner wall free. The room only spread perhaps forty feet by forty, brick walls and exposed concrete and pipes, not enough space or cushioning to absorb much of the sound. No wonder it assaulted the ears. Hawking led them up a staircase in front of them to another floor with its own set of noise.

Looking around, Jack could completely see trace evidence lingering there for twenty or sixty years. The carpeting appeared ancient, speckled here and there with scraps of paper and pieces of snack wrappers. The windows were opaque with grime. Nothing that could be considered décor except an ancient motivational poster of a team rowing on a river, the poster’s corners curling, the lettering faded. Dust tickled his nose. The wall at the top of the stairwell had lost most of its drywall, leaving the gas pipes and a fluffy whitish insulation visible.

“Is that feathers?” he asked Hawking.

The man glanced at the gaping drywall, not pausing in his stride. “Yep. Used to be a feather factory here, and they used the discards for insulation. Why not? They had plenty of it and it works well enough for ducks.”

They followed him along the inner wall. The cubicle arrangement seemed identical to the first floor.

Despite the dust and noise, no one seemed uncomfortable. Each employee sat in a padded swivel chair, wearing new-looking headsets and typing on wireless keyboards with flat-screen monitors. The cubicle barriers were thin metal, not white or bulletin boards, but some had been personalized with photos of children or pets, significant others or funny memes. The temperature felt cozy without being overly warm. They had passed two clearly labeled restrooms and even a child care room with a high window in a sturdy door at the top of the stairs. The smell of decent coffee wafted from a long table against the inner wall, where Jack could see cups, plates, condiments, and a few individually wrapped cookies. Some workers watched the visitors with sharp, interested glares, while others glanced up and away from the two cops with an utter lack of concern.

Snatches of words became clear. “I can help you with that.” “What is the number?” “I am doing well, thank you for asking.”

Mark Hawking entered the last room along the interior wall. He waved them inside and shut the door behind them. The noise level instantly dropped to livable.

Perhaps eight by eight, the boss’s office didn’t do décor any more than the work area did. One small set of mounted shelves held haphazard stacks of paper, as did the desk, along with a well-used ashtray, a coffee mug with a broken handle overflowing with pens and pencils, and not less than three cups with actual coffee, all half-full. Two narrow chairs with metal frames and molded plastic seats were provided for guests, and Jack and Riley made use of them without an invitation to do so.

“So you’d like the rental company’s name?” Hawking asked, ever-helpful.

Riley settled in his chair. “How long have you been at this location?”

“Three years.” The answer came quickly, easily. “How is this building of concern to your investigation? What are you investigating?”

But they weren’t there to answer his questions, of course. “Do you know what company occupied this space before you?”

“No.”

“Is phone support the only business you conduct at this location?”

“Yes . . . what other business would I be doing? The call center is my only business. Our clients rely on us for, um, reliable support.” He tugged at his tie, seemed to realize that the nervous gesture didn’t fit his image, then smoothed it down with ink- and nicotine-stained fingers.

“Do you have an employee by the name of Evan Harding?”

“No.” No hesitation.

“You’re sure? Don’t need to check your books?”

“I only have the employees that you see here, forty or so people, fifty tops. I know all their names.”

Riley smiled as if at this impressive recall. “Could he have been a past employee?”

“No.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yes.” He spoke with such easy sincerity that Jack found himself convinced. The guy seemed hyper and cautious about his little fiefdom, but seemed utterly relaxed on the topic of a man named Evan Harding. More than that, he seemed curious. “Who is that? What does he have to do with Hawk Enterprises?”

It seemed a rather grand name for a staff of fifty, but no doubt Mark Hawking had big plans for the future. Good for him. To be thorough, however, Jack decided to persist. “We have reason to believe that he may have been in the building.”

A frown. “That should not be. No one should be in here except my workers. I don’t allow family members to breeze in and out, distracting them from their jobs.” The frown cleared. “We do provide day care for our staff who need it. It’s possible he came to pick up his child from a spouse . . . but that very rarely happens. And he still shouldn’t have been inside.”

Sounded like Hawking ran the place with an iron fist in a nice suit.

Riley handed him the photo, which they’d printed after cropping out Shanaya Thomas. “This is him.”

Hawking studied the sheet. “I’ve never seen him. He’s certainly never worked here.”

“Huh. Well, all right then. Thank you for your time.”

“No problem at all. I’m sorry I couldn’t be more help,” he said graciously, but wasted no time moving to open the door to usher them out. Again they caravaned downstairs to the door. Again the workers at their headsets barely noticed.

“What sort of tech support do you do here?” Jack asked.

“Mostly computer interface issues.”

A neatly ambiguous phrase. “More than one seem to be taking credit-card numbers or talking about payments.”

Hawking developed a tightness in his throat, or perhaps it came from the effort of raising his voice to be heard over the cacophony. “Some clients charge the customer directly for our services. Some don’t.”

Jack halted. “I could swear I heard a guy say he was a federal agent.”

“No, no,” Hawking scoffed, one arm swinging, trying to push the air toward the exit as if it might carry the cops along with it. “He told the customer he was calling on behalf of a federal agency. We have a few as clients.”

Riley had picked up on Jack’s concern. “Really? Which ones?”

“The Office of, um, Local Land Management, and the Gambling Tax Authority Liaison Administration.”

“Oh,” Riley said. “Huh.”

Jack listened, but the babble of voices blended together into an innocuous murmur. He couldn’t think of anything else to do or ask, so he let Mark Hawking show them out with friendly words and visible relief.

The relative quiet of a snow-cushioned midday street comforted their ears, and neither spoke as they turned the corner and headed up the sidewalk to the car.

“What do you think?” Riley asked him.

“I think the only believable thing that guy said was how he had no idea who Evan Harding is. Or was.”

Riley sighed, his breath expelling in a brief balloon of fog. “So you don’t believe there’s an Office of Local Land Management?”

“I do not.”

“Me, neither. So what are they doing in there? And where does that leave us?”

“Hey,” said a voice behind them.

Standing on the sidewalk with only a cardigan sweater for warmth, stood Shanaya Thomas.

She said, “Hi.”