For Love or Vengeance (15 page)

Chapter Twenty-six

“What can I help you with, Special Agent Sanchez?” Jeff asked with an emphasis on “special” as Miguel approached the register.

Beside him, Helene laid out the business cards from three of the shops they had visited the day before, including the one from Tim Gold’s memorabilia shop.

Jeff nearly sneered at her, obviously wishing she would go away. Not a chance. She didn’t like the way the clerk was staring at her partner—with even more lust in his eyes than last time.

“What can you tell us about these shops?” she asked, keeping her cool.

Jeff did sneer at that and totally ignored her until Miguel said, “Give us a break, Jeff. Just answer the question.”

The young man reluctantly scanned the business cards, moving them around on the glass surface of the counter. He tapped his index finger on two of them. “These shops are typical tourist schlock—T-shirts, counterfeit posters, and other crap.”

Which left only the card from Gold’s shop. “What about this place?” Miguel asked, then with a frown asked Helene, “What was the guy’s name again?”

“Gold. Tim Gold,” Jeff immediately answered, but he turned up his nose in derision.

“You’ve got a problem with Gold?” Helene asked.

Jeff shrugged. “He’s got a great shop. Stage Left has quality goods and lots of authentic pieces of Broadway memorabilia. But he lets you know it every time you talk to him.” With a theatrical wave of his hands and dramatic pose, Jeff added, “He’s
old
Broadway. His family was on the stage for generations.”

“You don’t care for him much, I gather,” Miguel said.

“Not much. Although you’ve got to feel sorry for the bastard.”

Helene scooped up the business cards. “Why’s that?”

Jeff shrugged. “Rumor has it Gold was going to be the next big thing until he had some kind of freak accident backstage.”

“Is that why he’s in a wheelchair?” Miguel asked.

“I think so.”

She and Miguel exchanged a look. An acting-related accident might easily make someone bitter. Maybe even angry enough to lash out at those who were living his crushed dream.

“Who else works at Stage Left?” she asked, thinking they should interview someone closer to Gold to find out.

Jeff shuddered. “Just Andrew.”

“The one with all the tattoos and piercings?” Miguel asked.

Jeff nodded. “The guy’s a raving psycho. You should be watching him.”

“Why do you say that?” Helene asked, pulling out a notepad and pen.

“He got into a huge fight down on Christopher Street. Beat up some guys pretty badly because they thought he was gay and tried to pick him up.” Jeff made a disgusted face. “Fucking bigot.”

“You witnessed it?” she asked.

With a graceful flick of his hand, Jeff said, “Not me. I wouldn’t go anyplace where guys look like Andrew. I’m more the Wall Street type.”

No shocker there. Jeff had been nicely put together both times they’d seen him—pressed shirts, elegant ties, and expensive pants. A Goth like Andrew would not be his thing. But Miguel totally was. Which annoyed the hell out of her as Jeff eyeballed her partner again.

“Do you know Andrew’s last name?” she asked, trying not to grit her teeth.

“Smith, I believe.”

“Great,” Helene said with a shake of her head.
Nothing
about this case was going to come easily, was it?

Miguel pushed away from the counter. “Thanks, Jeff. You’ve been very helpful. If you hear anything—”

“I’ll be sure to call,” he said with a simper that set Helene’s teeth on edge.

Which only confirmed her fears from this morning—that her feelings for Miguel were already proving to be a huge distraction. She needed to do something to get her unruly emotions under control.

As they left the store, Miguel slung an arm around her shoulders and met her gaze. “Ready for a trip back to Stage Left?”

Helene and Miguel had only gotten about halfway to Gold’s memorabilia shop when they spotted Andrew Smith walking into a café a few blocks away from Stage Left. According to their notes, it was one of the places on their list of spots where Broadway hopefuls gathered. They hurried after him.

Miguel stayed by the entrance while she went inside and approached the tattooed man. She could already feel ripples of his slimy negative energy lap against her. She had to force herself to keep walking, but didn’t get too close.

Smith didn’t notice her at first, but as he slung his backpack off his shoulder and reached for its zipper, he finally looked up and saw her coming toward him. His eyes opened wide. He jerked the backpack into place on his shoulder, tucked his head down, and quickly walked toward the opposite side of the café, where there was a second exit.

Miguel signaled he was going around the building to head him off. She ran after Smith and called out for him to stop, identifying herself as an FBI agent. But the kid bolted out the door.

And ran smack onto the sidewalk where he met up with the barrel of Miguel’s gun. He had it trained on Smith as he called out, “FBI! Put your hands in the air!”

Smith cursed, but did as instructed. Beneath the extensive tattoos, his skin paled, making the multicolored designs even more prominent. Pulses of malevolence flowed from the images.

Helene didn’t want to touch him, so she snared his arm by the sleeve of his hoodie, jerked it down, and slapped a handcuff on his wrist while reciting his Miranda rights. As she pulled his other arm around to cuff it, the backpack fell onto the floor. Smith glanced at it uneasily.

Miguel narrowed his eyes at it, then at Smith. The kid had started to sweat, and the stench of evil came off him in waves. “What’s in the bag, Andrew?”

He pretended not to hear.

After she had secured the second cuff, Miguel put away his gun and picked up the knapsack. He glanced at the zipper, but it was zipped up tight. And they didn’t have a warrant.

Helene met his gaze, and he said, “Let’s take Mr. Smith downtown and ask him a few questions.”

“I didn’t do anything wrong. You have no right to arrest me,” Andrew whined, and yanked away from Helene’s grasp, glaring daggers at them. His negative energy swelled, nearly choking her, so she let him.

“Then why did you rabbit?” she asked.

More silence.

She looked at Miguel, wanting to get him away from the malevolent aura. “You getting the car?”

He nodded. “Yeah. Back in a few.”

Helene ordered Smith off to one side and let him lean against a brick wall while they waited. She stood as far away from him as she dared, staring fiercely at him. At first he sullenly met her gaze, but eventually glanced away.

Despite the nausea that roiled in her stomach at what she might see, she reached out with her second sight to find out more about him. The murky, angry lines of his aura shifted and jerked around him like a knot of striking snakes, matching the disturbed psyche of their suspect. It was thick and viscous, impenetrable without intensifying her power, or touching him.

Not a chance
. Besides, she knew Miguel wouldn’t approve of her using otherworldly, possibly painful means to get information from him. Or a confession. But she stepped close to Smith, leaned into his face, and said, “You do
not
want to mess with me.”

“I got nothing to say,” he mumbled, refusing to meet her gaze.

“You have a lot of anger inside you. I can feel it surrounding you, swallowing you up in a sea of hatred. You’re pissed about life.”

“Back off, you fuckin’ bitch,” he snarled. His head shot up and their noses nearly collided.

She forced herself not to jerk away. “Hell, no. I live for breaking little pissants like you.”

The blast of a horn broke their staring match. She swung around. Miguel had pulled the sedan up to the curb.

“Move,” she said, took hold of Smith’s upper sleeve, twisting it tight as a tourniquet, and pushed him through the door and toward the back seat.

He resisted at first but she tightened a little more, earning a strangled yelp from him.

Shoving him into the car, she bent over and whispered, “Just wait till I get you alone.”

Helene, Miguel, and ADIC Hernandez stood behind the one-way mirror looking into the interrogation room where Smith sat in a chair, fidgeting nervously. They’d taken off his handcuffs, and his fingers drummed spastically on the scarred interview table. His gaze jumped all around the room before settling back each time on the mirror.

He had been in there for close to an hour while they finished running his name through the various databases and drafted up a search warrant for the contents of his backpack. Diana had left with the warrant request a few minutes ago to track down a friendly judge.

“He’s too jumpy not to be guilty of something,” Helene said, her arms tucked across her abdomen to tame the circus of nasties in her stomach. His bad energy had gotten under her skin. She needed to shake it off and stay well away from the twitchy creep.

Miguel grunted. “You’d be jumpy, too, if you had his rap sheet. Possession. Assault and battery. Hate crimes.”

“Don’t forget the peeping Tom charge they dropped,” Hernandez added.

Helene glanced from one man to the other. “Escalating crimes of violence. History of a dysfunctional family life. He fits the basic pattern for a serial killer.”

“Except for his IQ. Andrew Smith is dumb as a post,” Miguel said.

“So maybe he’s the muscle and not the mastermind,” ADIC Hernandez suggested.

Helene mulled over the possibility that the kid was just a pawn. It fit with the weird vibes and images she had pulled from the victims, photos, and locations. That sense that maybe there were two distinct energies engaged in the killings. Maybe Andrew was just following orders, playing someone else’s game.

But whose?

Miguel read her thoughts, as usual. “Do you suppose Tim Gold is the one calling the shots?”

Hernandez shook his head. “We’ve got nothing on him. Everything came up clean when Reyes ran his name.”

“That doesn’t mean he’s not a sociopath. It just means he’s good at hiding what he does,” Helene said, frustrated she couldn’t make sense of the images her second sight had revealed. Wishing she dared lay hands on Andrew Smith and probe the hell out of him. Delve into his black energies to decipher what was really going on.

They stood there in silence for a few more minutes, contemplating their suspect. Then ADIC Hernandez said, “Go in there and sweat him. Make him think we’ve got something on him, and he needs to deal with us.”

Miguel glanced at her. “Good cop or bad cop?”

She laughed and shook her head. “There’s no way I can do good cop.”

Miguel grinned and motioned her toward the door. “Let’s go break this guy.”

At the interrogation room door, she paused. “We will break him. I promise.”

His eyes narrowed, his earlier playfulness gone. “I don’t doubt it. But by the book, Helene. It’s the only way I do things.”

She nodded to appease him, but she had her own book of rules to follow. Rules that had only one purpose—to secure justice. She couldn’t let her feelings for Miguel, her need to please him, interfere with what she had to do.

They walked into the room and Smith jumped up from his chair. “I want a lawyer. My rights say I can have a lawyer.”

Helene stifled a huff of irritation. It was always harder when they decided to lawyer up. They needed to watch what they said, so they couldn’t be accused of questioning him after his request. “No need for that, Mr. Smith. You’re free to leave at any time. But it would be better if you talked to us.”

A wary look crept onto his pierced face and he glanced at Miguel, who was standing a step behind her. “Is she bullshitting me? You’d let me walk out of here?”

Miguel walked around her and sat down kitty-corner to Smith at the table. Leaning his chair back on two legs, he laced his fingers together and brought them to the back of his head in a deceptively casual pose. “If Special Agent Alexander says you can go, you can go. But I sure as hell wouldn’t want her watching my ass every hour of every day if I were you.”

Miguel sent his gaze up and down Helene’s body. With a low whistle, he said, “On second thought, don’t say a word. Maybe I wouldn’t mind so much after all.”

His comment only earned a sneer from Smith, so Miguel held up a hand. “Sorry, dude. Didn’t realize you drove stick.”

Smith erupted, his face bright red as he slammed his hands on the table. “I’m no fuckin’ homo!”

Helene buried a smile. As an interrogator, Miguel definitely had skills. She casually perched a hip on the edge of the table, exposing a length of leg. “I know that, Andrew. May I call you Andrew? I saw pictures of what you did to those gays down in the Village. Beat them up pretty bad. You had a knife, didn’t you? Too bad you didn’t get to use it.”

“The knife was just for protection,” Smith said automatically, as though he’d recited the words many times before. He dropped back down in his chair and slouched back, looking away from her.

Bracing herself, she opened her middle eye, and sensed his unease—around her, especially. The color of his aura changed and muddied as he grew more anxious. Although she hated the thought of touching all that dirty nasty ugly energy, she would to accomplish her mission.

She leaned close to his face. “You had the knife because you like to carve people up. Especially women. Just like the Butcher carves people up.”

He started shaking his head, his actions growing more agitated the longer she stared him down. She hadn’t even released any of her power, or touched him.

She was holding back for now. But when she released her full wrath on him, the bastard would know the true meaning of punishment.

She could feel Miguel’s alertness as he sat next to her, keeping a careful eye on their suspect—and on her. A spike of irritation stabbed through her. He didn’t trust her. Didn’t believe she knew where the line was, how far they could go before violating Smith’s rights. She knew. This wasn’t her first interrogation.

But she would go right up to that line if it meant getting what she needed. And maybe even cross it.

She leaned in closer, ignoring the spill of hatred oozing over her. He put an arm up to ward her off, and she clamped her fingers around his wrist. “I’ll bet it makes you feel so powerful, Andrew. When the knife slips in. And the blood—”