Malevolent (Lieutenant Kane series Book 1) (4 page)

“Butch!” I called.

With the jingle of a bell, Butch the cat bounded down the hall toward my feet. He wasn’t coming to greet me. I jammed my foot in the space between the door and wall to block his escape. I squeezed myself inside. Eighteen pounds of feline fury attacked my foot upon entry. He bit at my shoe and flopped onto his side to scratch at my foot with his back legs. That was his typical welcome-home greeting. Butch thrashed at my foot for another few seconds before running back into the living room and taking his place on the couch.

“I should have bought a dog.”

I’d never been a cat person. Between sending me photos of my nephew, my sister had caught a daytime talk show about all the benefits of pet ownership. She claimed that owning a dog or cat would help me relieve stress, which she said I had too much of. A dog was out of the question, due to my work schedule. Through continuous prodding and e-mails of different designer cats, she’d convinced me that I should buy a savannah cat. It was a hybrid between a domestic and wild cat; however, I think they forgot Butch’s domestic genes. At least he was a good-looking animal.

I kicked off my shoes and tossed my keys, badge, and pocket notepad onto the breakfast bar. I hung my shoulder holster over one of the breakfast bar’s stools and pulled a beer from the refrigerator. The sound of the refrigerator door perked Butch up from the couch. He ran over and did a few circles around my feet, trying his best to get a treat. I pulled the bag of cat treats from the cupboard and dropped a few in his dish. He didn’t deserve them—they were a distraction so I could get out onto the patio without having to block him and get my shoeless feet torn to shreds. My condo overlooked Hillsborough Bay, the eastern section of the Tampa Bay. The beer snapped and hissed as I popped the top. I sat outside and slid the glass patio door closed.

I took a sip. Hank’s mention of my ex-wife from earlier was still stewing in the back of my head. We’d moved to Tampa from Milwaukee in the spring of 2009. Her parents had retired to Florida, and she couldn’t deal with the separation. Samantha and her mother were close. She started looking into jobs as a dental hygienist in the Tampa area, and I looked into transfers. When a job became available, I put in my paperwork, and we headed south. I used half my inheritance from my mother to buy Samantha her dream house in the suburbs. We had plans to start a family, but those plans dwindled. I suspected her of cheating on me with her boss. She denied it. Her denial of it did nothing to ease my mind. Trying to deceive someone whose sole job is to sniff out that sort of thing was her downfall. I attended one of their dental conferences at a resort without her knowing. Her and her boss sat poolside, kissing and hugging. They shared a room. Divorce papers were filed the next day. Two months later, she moved in with the guy, and they married. I sold the house and got rid of every last scrap that reminded me of her. I wished it was that easy to remove her from my life. Samantha and my sister became close and still talked. I got frequent updates from Melissa about my ex-wife’s life, new husband, and children.

I ran a hand over my bald head and crushed the empty beer can in my other hand. I slipped back into the condo fast enough to not have to deal with Butch. In my bedroom, I tossed on a pair of old jeans, a T-shirt, and a ball cap. It was my normal
out on the town
attire. I dialed the cab company from memory to pick me up. I wasn’t in the mood for walking and being alone with my thoughts. Ten minutes later, a cabbie honked out front. After five more minutes, plus seven dollars, the driver dumped me off in front of Lefty’s.

I pushed the front door open and took my usual spot at the end of the bar. Classic rock music blared from the single speaker in the jukebox. At most, ten people spread throughout the place. A few regulars sat at the other end of the bar, a group played pool, and a foursome sat at one of the tables by the dartboard. I spotted Callie coming from the back. In our flirting across the bar, I’d learned she was from southern Florida, but moved to Tampa a few months back for the proverbial fresh start. It didn’t take too many of my detective skills to tell me she was living beyond the means of a bartender—she owned a sixty thousand dollar car, and a house, by herself. I figured she had wealthy parents. She walked over. I noticed something was different about her.

“Hi, Kane. Two nights in a row, huh? You come to sweep me off my feet tonight? Take me out of this place?”

“Yup, let’s go.”

“Oh, you’re all talk. What can I get you, sweetie? The usual?”

I smiled. “Yeah, you know what I like.”

“Eating too?”

I nodded.

She wrote out a ticket for the food, walked it back to the little window, and handed it to Bill, who worked the kitchen. When she got back to the bar, she grabbed two shot glasses, poured them to the top with Jägermeister, and set them in front of me.

“There you go, hon. Let me get your beer.”

She poured a frosted mug full and tossed down a coaster, setting the beer on top. She scooped up one of the shots from the bar. “Food should be up in about ten minutes. Long day?”

I picked up the other shot glass. “Kind of.”

She held her shot glass up for a toast. “Booze will help. Down the hatch.”

We knocked them back.

She used the bar to pull herself closer and spoke quietly. “You’re not very observant for a cop.”

I took a drink from my beer and set it back down on the coaster. “What do you mean?”

She rocked back from the bar and twirled around. “I got my hair cut earlier. They took off almost three inches. You like it?”

Her black hair was still well past her shoulders. It fell to rest over a number of shoulder tattoos as she put her hands back up on the bar and leaned in again.

“Yeah, I was going to say something. I noticed it right away. It looks good.”

“You’re such a liar. You didn’t notice, but thanks for pretending to.”

“Seriously, I noticed.”

She smiled wide. “Smell it.”

I raised my eyebrows. “Smell it?”

“Yeah, smell it.” She leaned in and stuck a handful of her hair under my nose. “Smells good, huh?”

She was right. Her hair smelled like magnolias. It would stick with me the rest of the evening.

She leaned her head toward mine and talked through her hair. “Are you ready for another shot? It’s on me.”

“If you’re buying, I’m drinking.”

Callie bounced back behind the bar and poured two more shots to the top of the glasses. “I’m going to try to get you drunk and see if I can take advantage of you.”

I laughed. “Good plan.”

We tapped the glasses together and drank the shots. Callie went to make a round through the bar, seeing if any of the other people needed drinks. She was upping her flirting to a new level. Bill came from the back and dropped off my steak sandwich, utensils, and a couple napkins. His white apron had grease stains from the day on it. His brown hair was damp from sweat.

“There you go, Lieutenant. Do you need ketchup, steak sauce, or anything?”

“I should be good, Bill. Thanks.”

He turned to head back to the kitchen. “No problem. Enjoy.”

I dug into the steak sandwich, remembering I hadn’t had a bite of food since the burger before visiting the morgue. Within five minutes, a wadded-up napkin and a few drips that had escaped my mouth were all that remained on the plate.

“Was it good?” Callie asked.

“Perfect.”

She tossed the silverware onto my plate and took it away.

One more beer, and I’ll head out, call it a wrap
.

Callie walked back to me at the bar and smiled. “You want another beer?”

“You read my mind.”

She filled another mug and set it front of me then headed to the end of the bar to grab drinks for a few others. The small television hanging back behind the bar was playing sports highlights. I tried to make out the scores scrolling at the bottom of the screen, but my eyes wouldn’t focus. The yawning started. I was beat. I dialed up the cab company for a pickup. The beer went down in four big swigs. I stood from the bar stool and motioned to Callie as though I were writing in the air.

She walked back over. “Leaving me so soon?”

“Yeah, have to. Can you close me out?”

She pulled my tab from back by the register and laid it in front of me. It was twenty-two bucks and change. I tossed thirty dollars on the bar.

“When are you stopping back in?” she asked.

“Tail end of the week.”

“Good. I’m here every night. Don’t stand me up.”

I smiled and headed out front to wait for my cab.

Hank poked his head through the doorway of my office. “Captain wants us. We may have an ID on our vic.”

I’d just walked in and didn’t even get a chance to sit down. The clock on my office wall read a couple minutes after eight. I tossed my keys on my desk and followed him next door, to Captain Bostok’s office. The door was open.

The captain sat with his elbows on his desk and his fists jammed into his jowls, leaning over a file. Bostok had been leading our homicide division since I transferred. He was in his late fifties, overweight by fifty pounds, and sported a snow-white mustache that finished at the bottom of his chin. His reading glasses sat at the bottom of his nose as he looked over some paperwork. He flipped the folder closed, leaned back, and took off his glasses. “Kane, Rawlings.”

“Morning, Cap. We have a possible ID?” I asked.

He pointed to the guest chairs. “Grab a seat.”

We did.

“Steinberg put a call through to me a couple minutes ago. A man named Ken McMillian from Chicago is down here looking for his wife. She flew in on business. I guess she was supposed to put on a presentation for an ad agency in town here. She never showed. When he didn’t hear from her the entire next day, he contacted the hotel. After some back and forth, they told him that she never checked in. He caught the first flight out.”

“Does the description match the guy’s wife?” Hank asked.

“He saw the release we gave to the media on the news this morning—matches down to the clover tattoo. I sent him over to the medical examiner’s office to make a positive. Should be hearing back soon.”

“Do we have the guy’s contact info?”

The captain nodded. “He’s going to give me a call when he is through with Ed. I’ll set something up for an interview. I’ll let you know.”

I stood. “Thanks, Cap.”

Hank and I left his office and headed back toward mine.

I didn’t enjoy that part of my job. Working homicides was one thing, but dealing with grieving family members was something else. Interviewing them required a delicate balance of providing empathy mixed with a line of questioning to see if they had any part in the crime. Husbands and wives were the worst, provided they weren’t the perpetrators. The loss of a significant other brought forth a range of every emotion, and I often had a front row seat for each one. What happened to this man’s wife was something different altogether. Her death wasn’t a botched robbery or a drug deal gone wrong. That woman had been held captive and had a drill bit driven into her head. This wouldn’t be an easy conversation. I stopped just short of my office door and turned to Hank. “Grab a cup of coffee?”

He cocked his head. “Is it working today?”

“One way to find out.”

Hank followed me to the lunch room. A few detectives were sitting around one of the tables, shoveling down a quick breakfast.

I pointed to the coffee machine. “Working?”

John King, a detective from our drug task force, answered. “Not sure, Lieutenant. I gave up on that thing weeks ago.”

Our station had acquired the finicky coffee machine a few months back as a gift from the mayor. My guess was that he was looking for the department’s support for his next election bid. Three feet tall and made of stainless steel, the Deluxe Coffee Station looked as though it would be more at home in a coffee shop than in our dingy lunchroom. An LCD screen covered the front. Miscellaneous buttons and windows sat below it. The machine ground the beans on demand, allowing choices between a single cup and a carafe, as well as different strengths. It did make one hell of a cup of coffee when it functioned. The problem was that the thing didn’t work most of the time.

Hank and I walked over to the machine.

“It says ‘ready’ on the screen. That’s good,” I said. I grabbed a foam cup from the rack and placed it at the base of the machine. I thumbed the button for a large. “Okay, so far so good.”

I pressed Columbian Roast, the strongest offered, and hit the big blue Start button. Beans dropped into another window and bounced up and down until they were ground to perfection. The machine whirred and hummed. Noise from the machine working drew the detectives from their table to come over and watch.

“That thing making coffee?” Detective King asked.

Hank watched the process over my shoulder. “Looks like it.”

I heard a rush of water. “Someone must have fixed it.”

We looked on in awe as the machine went through its process and released caffeinated goodness into my waiting cup. A bell dinged, and the blue light under the cup flashed. I snatched up my coffee and went to the counter to add two creamers. Hank and the detectives shouldered each other for position to be the next to get a cup. Hank won, sticking his cup in and hitting the buttons. The machine dropped the beans and whirred again.

“About damn time,” Hank said.

The sound of water rushed again, and steam rose from Hank’s cup as the liquid flowed into it.
Ding!

Hank pulled the cup from the machine. “Ha!” He brought the cup to his mouth, blew on the top, and took a sip. “What the hell?” He gargled his words around the mouthful of hot liquid. Hank ran over to the sink and spat out the contents of his mouth. “It’s filled with grounds!” He grabbed a few handfuls of water to rinse his mouth.

The detectives chuckled.

“Let’s see if I have better luck,” King said.

He stuck his cup into the machine and let it go through the process. Twenty seconds later, disappointment crossed his face as he pulled his cup from the machine. “It poured me a cup of water.” He stuck his finger into it. “It’s not even hot.”