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

Friday, 12:55 a.m.

Jack and Riley searched the small efficiency once again, more quickly this time since it now held a slightly smaller amount of stuff. Shanaya had clearly restricted herself to what she could carry, makeup, the photo (minus the frame, now scattered on the bed), some clean clothes and, Riley swore, a few packs of granola bars. He said, “If I were inclined to extend the benefit of the doubt, maybe she figured she’d better skedaddle before the management figured out she’d been living here without their knowledge. She said she can’t afford the rent on one income anyway so maybe she decided to avoid this month’s payment. Maybe. Except I’m not feeling inclined to extend much in the way of benefits after she lied to us about the victim’s job.”

Jack said, “And she took the notebook. Even though she had no idea what it was.”

“Fabulous. Because we still have no idea what it was.”

“But she sure as hell does. And I’ll bet she knows who killed her boyfriend, too. Question is, is she running from us or from them?”

Riley examined the bathroom, opening and shutting drawers. “And is she out there renting another apartment, or asking a friend to flop on their couch, or heading back to wherever home is?”

“Girlfriend travels pretty light,” Jack said, observing again the lack of significant clutter over the entire room. “She could have left the city entirely.”

Riley had finished and leaned in the doorway. “If she has a home, I’ll bet it’s not close. Kids who go home on weekends pick up more stuff, bring it back. My parents drove me to college in my dad’s Mustang. They had to use my brother’s van to bring me home at the end of the year. Though these two weren’t really students, so all bets may be off.”

“Wait,” Jack said, “you went to college?”

His partner scowled. “Oh, ha ha. For a while, yes. And my now-honed brain says we should canvas the other kids on this floor, see if they know anything about Mr. and Ms. Check Cashing.”

Jack didn’t relish the idea. “They won’t talk to us.”

“They might if we tell them Shanaya may be in danger. Besides”—he glanced around the room, so hastily abandoned—“that’s probably even true.”

Friday, 10:15 a.m.

Jennifer Toner adjusted to the shock of learning her brother was not dead much more quickly than the shock of learning that he was. Ignoring the detectives’ questions, she had simply called the man, and when a voice sounded on the other end of her palm-sized phone, pure joy suffused her face and her lungs sucked in the first full breath she’d taken in a half hour.

But cresting on this wave of soul ointment bobbed the fly of how she had just told two police officers that brother was a raging drug addict and, for extra splash, who his supplier might be. She blurted to her brother that a dead addict had been found using his name and her address and that cops were with her now, then abruptly rang off without letting said cops speak to him. She did reluctantly give them her brother’s phone number, warning that he often didn’t charge it or didn’t pay the bill. Rick took that to mean that Marlon Toner would not be answering any calls from numbers he didn’t recognize, effectively immediately.

“It must have been some guy with the same name,” she said, almost happily.

“But his license had this address.”

That was puzzling. “Then he must have stolen Marlon’s identity.”

“Has your brother reported getting bills that weren’t his? Charges on his credit card?”

“I’m pretty sure he’s outdoors, Detective. I don’t think he gets bills at all.”

Rick asked if she knew anything more about this doctor, the location of his office, what kind of medicine he practiced.

No hesitation on this topic. “Phillip Castleman. I remember thinking it sounded like a character in a made-for-TV movie. I did a web search for his name, but the address listed there is now an accounting firm. I haven’t had a chance to look any more than that. I hope you can find him—if the doctor has to stop giving my brother the pills, maybe he’ll have a chance to break off from the stuff. You’ll track him down, right? See if he’s a real doctor? Report him to the licensing board or whoever?”

Rick said, before Will could start making promises, “We’ll give all this information to our Vice unit. They handle drug offenses.”

She didn’t argue, too busy spilling everything she could about Dr. Castleman to get annoyed at this passing of the responsibility buck. “I never got exactly straight what he treated Marlon for. Marlon said an old football injury acted up, but he never had an injury. Not once. He broke, like, a record about it. They called him Untouchable. So I know that wasn’t it.”

Will asked again about the pharmacy on East Fifty-fifth, which didn’t garner them any new information, but Rick figured his partner wanted to go the extra mile, keep Jennifer Toner from suing the police department for scaring the everliving crap out of her. So far she seemed too busy feeling relieved to get angry.

Which made it a good time to exit stage left. Rick stood, Will took the hint, they expressed more apologies and regrets and best wishes, sidled out the door, and reached the stairs without speaking. But then a roofer tossed a section of old shingles down to the dumpster and it clanged with such a heart-punching boom that Rick let out a very short scream. The echo of the noise covered it, to his everlasting luck. Will would have ragged him for the next four months.

Back in the car, he tried to sum up. “Okay, so we’ve got a drug addict getting fake scripts, which isn’t our problem, and a dead guy who’s using the first guy’s name, which is. What now?”

“We go old-school,” Will said, putting the car into drive and sliding a bit on the slush as he pulled away from the curb. “Fingerprints. DNA. They’re probably doing his autopsy right now, unless he needs to thaw a bit first.”

“Aw, hell,” Rick said.

Friday, 1:55 p. m.

“Have you eaten yet?” Carol asked as Maggie entered the police Forensics Unit.

“Uh . . . no.”

“Records had their Christmas party and, as usual, had too much food so they sent a plate of sandwiches over.”

“Isn’t it kind of early for Christmas parties?”

“Holiday party, to be more accurate. And you know Records—it’s never too early to eat. They sent cookies, too.”

“Say no more,” Maggie said, and veered into the tiny space that held a sink, a mini-fridge, and the coffeemaker. It had been a long morning; she needed sustenance and especially a hot beverage. The city car she’d driven to the Medical Examiner’s and back had no heat.

She made sure a fresh pot brewed and then dumped the tapings on the desk. Carol typed at her desk, the only sound in the place. “Where is everyone?”

“Denny’s at court on that baby death case.” Denny was their supervisor, a tall, too-slender black man with three children, including a newborn, at home. Maggie would check in with him when he returned, in case he wanted to talk about having to talk about a very small, very dead child. She guessed he probably wouldn’t. “Josh is lecturing to the police academy group and Amy is somewhere collecting a toothbrush in a missing person case. How was your dead guy?”

“Too young to be dead. Other than that, probable mugging.”

Carol stopped typing. “We don’t have muggings in Cleveland. I mean, not fatal ones.”

“I know.” Maggie filled her mug with steaming coffee, added cream, and sank heavily into her desk chair. She sat perhaps fifteen feet from Carol but they could easily hear each other, with no fume hoods, thermocyclers, or chromatographs currently running. “But his wallet’s been emptied, he hadn’t been in a fight, and he had a key taped to his ankle.”

This got Carol’s attention. “A key?”

Maggie described the plain, small key affixed with tape.

“What’s it go to?”

“I don’t know,” Maggie said, “and we couldn’t exactly ask Evan Harding.”

“Let me see it.”

“I don’t have it. It’s at the ME’s with the rest of his personal property. I doubt it has anything to do with anything . . . if the killer had known about it and thought it worth killing for, you’d think he would have tried harder to find it.” She nibbled a cookie.

“You eat a sandwich too, young lady,” Carol said. “You can’t live on sweets.”

“Holiday calories don’t count.”

“The calories you could use, but I’d prefer that you throw a little nutrition in there as well. What are you getting Jack for Christmas?”

Maggie choked on colored sprinkles, recovered, and said, “I’m not sure yet.” Largely because she wasn’t, of course, planning to do any such thing. People locked in uneasy and illegal conspiracies, she assumed, didn’t usually exchange gifts on holidays. Except that she and Jack had used dating as a cover story, and dating people usually did.

“What’s he getting you?”

“I don’t know! Aren’t gifts supposed to be a surprise?”

“Sometimes,” Carol conceded. “It depends on the gift.”

Maggie didn’t know what the older woman might be getting at, but felt pretty certain she didn’t want to know, so she helped herself to a placating wedge of turkey on whole wheat. Then the arrival of their boss rescued her from further speculation on appropriate gifts within newly-together, not-so-secret workplace romances.

“How did it go?” she asked Denny.

“Continued.”

She and Carol groaned in unison. The only thing worse than testifying in court—always inconvenient, uncomfortable, annoying at best and gut-wrenching/grueling at worst—was getting psychologically prepared to be thrust into that vortex of uncertainty only to be told never mind, we’ll try again tomorrow. When a case pled or was dismissed, that was different; one had bothered to change clothes and review the notes and done the deep breathing, but a plea meant it had ended. That induced a put-down-your-pencils-the-test-is-over, leaving-the-dentist’s-office feeling of elated relief. But a continuance simply prolonged the agony, since not only did you conduct all the requisite psyching-up for nothing, you had to go through it all over again tomorrow or next week or next month. Maggie spoke with feeling. “That sucks.”

“We have sandwiches,” Carol added.

“Here.” Denny shifted his briefcase to another hand and gave Maggie a large white envelope. “I passed Rick in the hallway. He said to tell you he has to know who this guy is.”

She took the envelope as if it might spark and catch on fire. Was this some trick of Rick’s? Some piece of evidence that might bolster his case against Jack? “Guy—?”

“OD victim found at the West Side Market this morning. I guess he had a fake ID on him.”

She said okay, trying not to sound suspiciously relieved, and bit into one of Records’ hand-me-down sandwiches.

Friday, 1:15 p.m.

Jack and Riley drove through streets padded with snow back to the station. The students they’d been able to find on Evan Harding’s floor uniformly reported that “the guy and that Sherry girl” were polite but not particularly outgoing. They were only passed in the hall or laundromat; they didn’t hang out and talk, didn’t attend movies or games or social events in the common areas, and were never seen in the computer lab or fitness center. From there he and Riley had gone to the Medical Examiner’s office, to be told that the autopsy had been completed without their presence—no surprise, the place couldn’t afford to get backed up—and that their victim had died of two stab wounds with a sharply pointed, sticklike object—also no surprise. Aside from the aforementioned wound, the victim had been completely healthy, no signs of mistreatment, illness, malnutrition, or drug abuse.

Since he had died of homicide, they collected his personal property, consisting of the largely empty wallet, a plain silver ring, an inexpensive watch, the name tag, and the small key still affixed to its piece of tape. Jack thought to ask if anyone had called to pick up the body or ask about the property, but the deskmen said no one had.

“Girlfriend doesn’t care?” Riley speculated as he steered the car up Carnegie. “Or she’s still too discombobulated?”

“I don’t even have a guess. Maybe she’s skipping out on the rent and is on her way back to her family or his family. Maybe she can’t afford a funeral so she’s not acknowledging the body. Maybe she has a pretty good idea who killed him for reasons anything but random, and she’s making herself scarce.”

Riley frowned. “For all we know, she may have been the target all along. The guy killed the cashier to get to her.”

Jack reasoned aloud. “But this wasn’t any drawn-out confrontation. Evan Harding wasn’t tortured to get him to give up the girl’s location. And if he caved immediately, the killer didn’t go get the girl.”

“Maybe he couldn’t get in. The building had security, pretty solid doors. There probably wouldn’t have been students to follow in, not after midnight in the freezing cold.”

“Or maybe the murder was quick and simple because they meant to kill Evan and only Evan.”

“The question is did he pick the wrong girlfriend, or did she pick the wrong boyfriend? Right now we have no way to know.”

“Nope,” Jack agreed. “Let’s go see Maggie.”

“Any reason other than the obvious?”

“I want to see what she thinks of this key.”

* * *

She didn’t think much of the key. “Yeah, I saw that. He had it taped to his ankle.”

“What does it go to?”

“I don’t know.”

The two detectives stared at her blankly. She stared back, equally blank. “What do you think, I have a database of keys?”

“Yes,” Riley said around a mouthful of corned beef. He had snagged the last of Records’ leftovers. “Don’t you?”

She gave him a look, part pity, part annoyance, and slid a sheet of paper across her desk toward them, trading for the key inside its clear plastic Property bag. “Here. I cropped the clearest photo I could grab from the video, cleaned it up as best I could—meaning I played with the contrast a bit. The video analysis unit might be able to do a little more, but probably not. Out here in the real world, video quality is what it is.”

Jack picked up the photo of the woman from the check cashing store. She had short hair and wide eyes, appeared to be of average height and build, though height could be difficult to estimate with the camera angled down from the ceiling.

The second photo showed both the woman and Evan Harding. When Jack had watched the video it seemed that Evan had been nearly cowering, looking right and left for escape, but now that this one frame had caught his expression . . . he seemed more concerned than scared. He seemed to be looking for something, scanning the rear of the counter for some item that would satisfy the woman.

Maggie had been typing while he looked, and Riley ate. “It probably goes to a safe or a safe deposit box.”

Riley coughed up a rye seed. “I thought you said you didn’t have a database of keys!”

“I guess I do. It’s called Google. The Mosler Safe Company started in Cincinnati and lasted over a hundred years. Filed Chapter 11 in 2001, but part of it merged with a Canadian company and Diebold bought the rest.” She picked up the clear Evidence bag again, gazing at the small, flat key, its head rounded on either side like a cherub’s cheeks. The teeth were squared off, not shaped with jagged angles like most house or car keys. “I don’t find a way to distinguish a safe key from a safe deposit box key. It could even open a smaller box inside a safe.”

“So we’re looking for a safe made or a bank built prior to 2001,” Jack summed up.

“Most likely.”

“That’s—” Riley said.

“Not very helpful, I know. We could try contacting Diebold.”

A knock sounded, and Carol opened the door to admit Rick and Will. Will, Carol, Riley, and Josh, now back at his desk checking his Facebook posts, immediately looked uncomfortable. Rick scowled. Jack frowned. Maggie sighed.

The detectives signed in and approached, Riley and Will, at least, exchanging hellos. Rick pointedly ignored Jack and spoke to Maggie. “Did you ID those prints?”

“Maybe.” She stood and moved to the computer terminal with the fingerprint program. A few taps and her voice brightened by a few photons. “Yes, actually. I only scanned his right thumb to begin with and the pattern lights up like a Christmas tree . . . pardon the topical reference. Raymond Winchester, date of birth 4-27-83. I’ll print you a copy.”

Rick and Will exchanged a glance. “So why is he using Marlon Toner’s name and address?”

“Stolen ID?” Riley suggested.

“It’s got something to do with fake scripts,” Will said. “Don’t know what yet. Maybe the doctor can give us a hint. What’s up with your guy in the cemetery?”

“Might be supersimple, might be superweird. All I’m sure of so far is that it’s not going to be something in between.”

Rick had pulled out his phone, fiddling with some of its icons. Maggie figured this provided a way to avoid eye contact with anyone, especially Jack, seated at Maggie’s side, but then he suddenly raised its rear surface to the two of them and said, “Say cheese.”

The digital click sounded before her jaw could drop.

“What are you doing?” Her tone sounded disproportionally sharp, a bit panicked, and guilty as hell.

“Getting a picture of the happy couple.” He stared at Jack with equal parts challenge and triumph. There was nothing Jack could do; with both Riley and Will standing there, he could hardly protest or demand the photo be deleted. He had to play it as cool as ever, as if he had nothing to hide, no reason for concern. He sat as if made of stone.

Maggie tried to copy him, but her heart pounded and she knew her face could not conceal this turmoil. She must look stricken. She tried to breathe in, tried to distance herself. This was Jack’s problem, and Jack would have to deal with it.

Except if Jack’s true past were revealed, it would become her problem. Very much indeed her problem.

“Let’s go,” Rick said to Will, almost giddily. Maggie handed him the copy of Raymond Winchester’s fingerprint card. When he glanced down to take it, however, the giddiness evanesced as if it had never been. “What the hell?”

Then Will saw it, too. He picked up one of the pictures that Maggie had printed. “What are you doing with a picture of Toner’s sister?”