Hard Bitten (26 page)

“The other part?” Ethan asked, his gaze shifting from Kelley to Luc.

“The other part,” Luc confirmed, picking up the tablet and tapping its screen. The image on the projector shifted from the newscast to a black-and-white live feed of a dark neighborhood street. During my stint as an on-duty House guard, I’d seen that feed enough times to be familiar with it.

“That’s outside Cadogan House.”

“Good eye, Sentinel,” Luc complimented.

“Indeed it is.” He tapped the tablet again and zoomed into the feed, fixing on a boxy sedan that held two passengers. Both wore suits.

“Kelley went for a run. She noticed the sedan when she left, and she noticed the sedan when she came back.”

“Twenty-six miles,” Kelley put in. “It took me an hour and twenty-four minutes.”

Not bad for a marathon-length run. Chalk one up for vampire speed.

“That’s a long time for two guys in suits to be sitting in a car outside the House,” Ethan said, then looked back at Luc. “It’s an unmarked CPD

car.”

“That’s our thought. Neither the car nor the suits seemed like McKetrick’s crew, so we figured detectives. We called the Ombud’s office to confirm, but they had no idea about the car.”

I muttered a curse. “They had no idea about Mr. Jackson’s rave, either. Tate isn’t being entirely candid with the office right now.”

“A lack of trust?” Ethan wondered.

“Or perhaps a fear that the Ombud’s office is tied too closely to Cadogan House,” I suggested.

“Tate’s office doesn’t give the Ombud’s office all the information, which acts like a check and balance on my grandfather.”

Lindsey grimaced. “That’s a slap in the face.”

“Yes, it is,” I agreed. “I guess the cop car signals Tate’s lack of trust in us, too?”

Ethan shuffled in his chair. “Given the fact that he’s got a warrant for my arrest ready to go, I’d say so.”

My cell phone buzzed. I pulled it out and checked the caller ID. “Speak of the devil. It’s Jeff.” I flipped it open. “Hey, Jeff. Got anything for me?”

Jeff chuckled. “Of course, I do. But I’m strictly off-limits now. You know, ’cause of the little lady.”

“No disrespect meant to you or yours. Hey, I’m in the Ops Room with Ethan and everyone.

Can I put you on speaker?”

“Knock yourself out. Probably helpful for all to hear.”

I put the phone down in the middle of the table, then pressed the speaker button. “Okay.

You’re live. What do you have?”

“Aw, if only I’d prepared a monologue.”

We heard Catcher’s voice in the background.

“Focus, kid.”

“Well,” Jeff said, and I heard the clacking of keys, “it turns out the security cameras are live, and Colin and Sean do record the video. It’s stored in the bar on a dedicated server, and there are also external backups just in case some bad stuff goes down. I was actually pretty impressed.

You don’t expect bars to have that kind of security protocol.”

From the looks of the crusty back room, Temple Bar definitely did not seem like the kind of establishment with a “dedicated server,” not that I could differentiate a dedicated server from an undedicated server.

“So, anyway, I grabbed the video and uploaded it.”

I leaned forward, linking my hands together on the table. “Tell me you found something, Jeff.”

“It took some spooling,” he said. “Trucks use the alley quite a bit to make deliveries. There’s also the occasional catering-truck pickup, garbage trucks, taxis, bar drop-offs, et cetera, et cetera. But beginning two months ago, every couple of days, usually in the wee hours, a vintage Shelby Mustang—wicked car—pulls into the alley. Sometimes the car sits there for a few minutes, nothing happens, the car drives away.

Sometimes a driver gets out.”

My heart began to beat in anticipation. We were getting closer, I knew it. “What did the driver look like?”

“Well, although the backups are impressive, the video is for shit. Very grainy. But I did manage to pull a still for you. I’m going to send you a pic.”

“Use this e-mail,” Luc said, reading off an address to Jeff and picking up one of the tablets from the desktop. “That way we can project the image.”

“Done and done.” Jeff had barely gotten out the words before Luc’s tablet dinged, signaling a new message. His fingers danced across the tablet, and an image popped onto the screen.

The guy was short—maybe five feet in shoes—older with slick, dark hair and bulbous features. There was nothing especially remarkable about his face, but I would have sworn I’d seen him before.

“Does he look familiar to anyone?” I asked, but got muttered “no’s” around the room.

The others might not have recognized him, but I had a sense Sarah would have.

“He matches the description of the guy Sarah—the human at the Streeterville party—met,” I said. “Make my night and tell me you got a license plate on the car, Jeff.”

“Because I am, in fact, awesome, I was able to zero into the video. I got the license of the car, then ran it through the DMV system. The car is registered to one Paulie Cermak.” Jeff read out an address. “The interwebs say his address is near the Garfield Park Conservatory.”

I made plans to pay Mr. Cermak a visit. I also opened my eyes again and smiled at the phone.

“Jeff, you are a paragon of man.”

“The funny thing is,” Jeff continued, “the car’s title shows a recent sale—only a few months ago to our Mr. Cermak. But there’s no information about the prior owner or who he purchased the car from.”

I frowned at the phone. “That seems weird.”

“Definitely weird,” Jeff agreed. “When we’re looking at records, too much data usually signals a plant. Not enough data signals a scrub. Vehicle sales are almost always in the system; there’s no reason not for them to be. This file had scrub all over it. Oh, and that’s not all.”

“We’re listening.”

“Because I am, in fact, not just supremely awesome, but also all that and a bag of chips—

preferably kettle-cooked jalapeño of some kind—I checked Mr. Cermak’s criminal record in the Cook County DB. I mean, probably not supposed to go into their system without permission, but what else is a boy to do when his favorite vamp makes a call?”

“Indeed. What did you learn?”

“Factually, not much. There’s one sealed criminal record in the file, and that’s it.”

“Do you think that file was scrubbed, too?”

“Eh, not necessarily. You can seal criminal files for all sorts of legitimate reasons. To protect the victim, because the perp’s underage, because the perp’s a brains-eating mind-dead zombie with no mens rea whatsoever—”

“Sealed record?” Ethan prompted.

“Yeah. So, the file is sealed, and I can’t access any data. They’re actually rocking some pretty good encryption on the sealed records. I’d need the access key or password, or you’d have to get a court order to pull the file.”

“So a dead end there?”

“Ha! You made a joke. But yes. Very dead.

Dead as a doornail. Dead as a doorknob even, although I’m not sure I know what the difference is between those two things.”

“We got it.”

“Oh, one final thing.” I heard more key tapping, the sound overlaid by Jeff’s humming. It sounded like “White Christmas.”

“Little early for Christmas carols, isn’t it, Jeff?”

“Never hurts to get into the holiday spirit, Merit. Okay, so the video isn’t great, and the alley by the bar door isn’t very well lit. But occasionally, on a full moon, the light shines just right. . . .” As he trailed off, I heard more tapping. “Okay,” he said again. “I’m going to send you another image.”

This one was a fuzzy black-and-white shot of a car in the alley. Jeff was right—the image was grainy, but the vehicle it showed was undeniably a classic Mustang, complete with racing stripes and side vents. And that wasn’t all.

I squinted at the picture, trying in vain to bring it into focus. “Is that a woman in the passenger’s seat?”

“It appears to be so,” Jeff said. “It’s more of a shadow, but it does appear to be a woman.

Curves, ya know?”

“We know,” Ethan said dryly.

“Anyway, I was checking out the shadow of the lady in the video, right? I’m running the film at like half speed, and I find something else. I’ve got a close-up, and I’m going to send it to you.”

Again, the tablet beeped, and a new black-and-white image replaced the previous one on our screen.

I squinted at it, but predatory eyesight or not, I still couldn’t get a good read on the woman in the car. In fact, I couldn’t get a good read on anything other than pixels.

“What are we supposed to be looking at?” I wondered aloud.

“Check the middle of the image,” Jeff said,

“approximately where her collar would be.”

I’d just opened my mouth to protest that I couldn’t see anything—and that was when I saw it—around her neck, an undeniable glint of light.

“Jeff, that looks like a House medal.” Not unlike the one I’d seen Celina wearing the night she returned to Cadogan House.

“That’s what I thought, too.”

“Can you zoom in any closer?” Ethan asked.

“Unfortunately, I can’t give you any more details. The camera’s sensor just didn’t record any more data. But that’s something, isn’t it? It kind of suggests you’ve got a House vamp involved in this drug business.”

Malik and Ethan exchanged a heavy glance.

“It does suggest that,” Ethan agreed. “But for now, let’s keep this between us, shall we?”

“You’re the boss,” Jeff pleasantly said.

“Thanks, Jeff. We appreciate it.”

“Unfortunately, I’ve got bad news to go along with the good news.”

“What’s that?” I asked.

“Paulie Cermak’s the only suspect we’ve got for distributing V. I narrowed down the video late last night, and had to turn it over to the CPD this morning.”

“Of course,” I said. “Detective Jacobs would have been interested in the video.”

“Is and was. They sent detectives to Cermak’s house this morning.”

Ethan frowned at the phone. “Did they find anything?”

“Not a thing. The house was clean. The car was clean. They’re still processing some of the stuff they lifted for trace evidence, but there’s nothing that ties him to the drugs or the raves. As far as we know, he’s just a guy in a public alley.

He had every right to be there.”

Be that as it may, my gut said Paulie Cermak was more than a passerby, and I’d bet that if we called up every Cadogan vampire who’d been in Temple Bar in the last month, they could pin him as the guy who’d been loitering outside and pushing V. Of course, that would require calling out each Cadogan vamp. I wasn’t willing, at least at this point, to drag the individual vampires into it.

“Thanks, Jeff. Any objections if I pay Mr.

Cermak a visit on my own?” At my suggestion, Ethan’s head shot up, but he didn’t voice an objection.

“Not from us. And CPD doesn’t have to know.

Hey, Chuck’s paging me, so I’ve gotta go. We’ve got a couple of fairies who want him to mediate a property dispute, and I need to upload some docs. We’ll be in touch.”

“Thanks, Jeff,” I said, then tapped off the phone.

The Ops Room was quiet for a moment.

I looked up and around at the vamps in the room. “Any thoughts before I visit our apparent drug pusher?”

“How opposed are you to capital

punishment?” Luc growled out.

“I’d prefer not to play judge, jury, and executioner,” I said. “But if you have any strategic or diplomatic suggestions, I’m all for them.”

Ethan patted my back good-naturedly. “Good Sentinel.”

L
indsey escorted me to my room so I could change back into boots and grab my sword. I usually skipped bringing it along on public outings, but Paulie Cermak was quite possibly a drug kingpin, and I was heading to his home turf.

No way was I going on that field trip without steel.

It wasn’t until we were inside with the door shut, Lindsey on my bed while I sat on the floor, sword unsheathed before me to ensure it was in fighting shape, that she made the confession she’d apparently been holding in.

“We made out,” she said.

I wiped the blade down with a sheet of rice paper. “I don’t recall making out with you.”

“I made out with Connor.”

I looked up at her and couldn’t help the disappointment that crossed my face. Connor was a vamp from my Initiate class, a sweet kid with whom Lindsey had been flirting since our Commendation into the House. He was cute and charming in his way . . . but he was no Luc.

“When did that happen?”

“I got back from Temple Bar, and a bunch of us were talking in the downstairs parlor, and then everybody got tired and left. Everybody but him, I mean. And then one thing led to another. . . .”

The blade clean, I resheathed the sword again.

“One thing led to you making out with a newbie vampire?”

“That would appear to be the case.”

What was new, I thought, was the fact that she was chagrined about it. Lindsey wasn’t much of a worrywart, and it wasn’t her style to Monday-morning-quarterback her own decisions. Maybe Luc was making progress.

I tilted my head at her. “So why do you seem weird about it?”

Hands in her lap, shoulders slumped forward guiltily, Lindsey looked away.

I thought of the edge I’d heard in Luc’s voice earlier, and figured out the reason for it. “Luc found out?”

She nodded.

“Crap, Linds.”

“Yeah, crap.” When she looked back at me, a tear slid down her cheek. She wiped it away nonchalantly, but there was no mistaking the guilt in her eyes.

“This thing with Connor—was it a fling? Just because you’d had a really long night?”

“I don’t know what it is. That’s kind of my problem. I’m just—I don’t know—I’m not ready to be in some big”—she swirled her hands in the air—“committed relationship thing.”

“Not ready? You’re over a century old.”

“That is so
not
the point. Look, Luc and I met a long, long time ago. He had a girlfriend; I had a beau. He’s hot, sure. Obviously he’s hot. But we started off friends, and I’d just rather we stay friends than become some kind of mortal enemies.”