Night and Day (9 page)

That was as far as I could think it though with the limited information I had. One thing was
for sure. I hadn’t done anything wrong, so whatever they were holding me on was a frame,
probably the handiwork of Ray Holstein.

I heard footsteps outside the cell and opened my eyes. Spit-shined shoes and blue uniform
pants. I tilted my head back a bit. The patrol lieutenant from the day before, Iverson, stared at
me, his face impassive.

I cleared my throat. “How you doing?”

“Better than you,” Iverson said. “Want some water?”

I noticed the plastic squeeze bottle in his hand. “Sure.”

Iverson pitched it through the bars. He had a good eye. It landed in my lap. And it hurt
when it landed.

“Thanks,” I said, raising the bottle to my mouth. I squirted a little into my mouth,
swallowed, then squirted in some more.

Iverson watched silently.

I set the bottle down next to my leg. “So, Iverson, any idea why I’m here?”

“Sure,” he said. “Murder.”

“Who did I kill? Those two Vees yesterday?” I closed my eyes.

“The homicide squad is trying to make that case, but the lab guys at Central are still working
the evidence,” Iverson replied. “But that’s not why you’re here. They haven’t quite connected
you to that one yet.”

“I must be a busy guy,” I said. “If not them, who?”

“Your partner,” Iverson said. “Joshua Thomas.”

I opened my eyes. “What?”

“Your pistol is at the ballistics lab at Central, and the report says the caliber and make is
right. I don’t know if they’ve finished the tests on it yet.” He paused. “They also haven’t found
the axe or whatever you used to chop off his head.” He paused again. “Might go easier if you
told me where you stashed the blade. And what you did with the head.”

“Joshua’s dead?” It was a stupid question, but my mind wasn’t processing his words very
well.

“You tell me,” Iverson said. “You killed him.”

“Who’s lead on the case?”

Iverson didn’t say anything.

“Is Ray Holstein the lead?”

He remained silent for a moment, then said, “Detective Sergeant Holstein is the lead on the
Thomas case, yes.”

I closed my eyes and leaned my head back against the wall. “Thanks, Iverson.”

“I’ll stop by before my shift ends, see if you need anything.” He paused. “Think about what
I said. If you cooperate, they might not be so rough on you.”

I noticed that he didn’t say I’d get a break. He couldn’t. We both knew that I was a dead
man.

Around what I guessed to be noon, a cop came by and shoved a tray under the bars. I
opened my eyes, saw the slop on the plate, and closed them again. I wasn’t hungry. An hour
later, the cop came back and took the tray away.

Iverson, true to his word, stopped by a while later. He pitched another bottle of water into
the cell and said, “I’d drink that quickly. Night shift will be showing up in half an hour or so.
They probably won’t let you keep it.”

I nodded.

“You give any thought to what I said?”

I knew he wasn’t doing me any favors. Easy or hard, I’d be dead before morning. But if I
gave him something useful to the investigation, it would give his career a nice little boost. I
didn’t hold it against him. In his place, I might have done the same thing.

“Sorry,” I said, sipping from the bottle of water.

“Sure,” Iverson said. “No hard feelings, huh? I had to ask.”

“Yeah,” I said. “No hard feelings.”

“So long,” he said. I closed my eyes and listened to his footsteps as he walked down the
hall. A door opened and moments later, slammed shut. Then it was quiet again.

About twenty minutes later, Ray Holstein came into the cell.

“You look like shit, Charlie,” Holstein said. “Face swollen up like that, I hardly recognize
you.”

“Sorry,” I said. “I must have walked into a wall or something.”

Holstein laughed. “That’s what I always liked about you. Always with a comeback.” He
paused. “Okay, on your feet.”

I wasn’t sure I could stand, but I was going to give it a shot.

“That’s it, Charlie,” Holstein said, watching. “Push yourself up that wall. There you go.
Almost there. Good.”

I stood, swaying slightly, keeping my back firmly against the cold concrete-block wall. My
legs felt pretty wobbly, but I didn’t think I’d fall.

“That was the easy part,” Holstein continued. “Now we’re going to go for a little walk, and
then a little ride.”

A uniformed cop came into the cell. “The wagon’s here. You about ready?” He glanced
over at me. “Shit, you’re going to take him looking like that?”

“What do you expect me to do?” Holstein said harshly, turning to the other cop. “Buy him a
new suit, put him in an ice bath for an hour to reduce the swelling?”

“Sorry, Sarge,” the cop said.

“He’s alive,” Holstein said, turning back to me. “Those were the orders, that’s what they
get. We’ll be out in a minute.”

The cop nodded and quickly left the cell. Holstein took a couple of steps forward. “In case
you were thinking of trying something, I want you to know that my piece is in the gun safe up
front. If you think you can take me one-on-one, you’re welcome to try. I don’t have a problem
dragging you out to the wagon.”

I pushed away from the wall. My legs held. Just barely. “Let’s go.”

“Not so fast,” Holstein said with a smile. “Turn around, face the wall, hands behind your
back. You know the rules, Charlie. Prisoners in transit are always cuffed.”

As I started to turn around, he came up behind me and shoved me against the wall, hard. His
hand, between my shoulder blades, burned like it was on fire. Holstein kicked my legs apart,
then jerked my right arm down and slapped the handcuff around my wrist. A moment later, he
had my left wrist in the cuffs as well.

He spun me around.

“Nothing personal, old buddy,” he said, flashing his teeth in a humorless grin, his face
inches from mine. “You’re moving like an old lady and we got a schedule to keep.”

“You ought to think about breath mints, Ray,” I said. “Your breath smells like rotten meat.”

His grin changed, his lips curling back over his teeth. Then he laughed and shook his head.
“Not the meat, Charlie. Just the juice.”

He pulled something out of his jacket pocket. “One more thing and we’re ready to go.” It
wasn’t a hood so much as a ski-mask without eye holes. Holstein pulled it down over my head
and said, “There we are.”

I could make out the difference between light and dark through the mask, but that was about
it. Light while he frogmarched me out of the cell and through the halls of Uptown station. Dark
when we went outside and he shoved me into the back of the paddy wagon.

There was somebody else in the wagon, apparently another cop. I was lifted up onto one of
the benches that ran along the sides of the van, and my cuffed hands were fixed in place by a
metal bar. I heard the clasp on the bar snap shut.

Holstein was speaking. “He shouldn’t give you any trouble, but keep an eye on him anyway.
And no conversation. I’ll be up front. If you need anything, just bang on the wall.”

“Yes sir,” another voice said. The cop who’d be sharing my last ride with me had a young-sounding voice.

I leaned back on the bench, my body on fire. The pain was a good thing, though. It gave me
something to concentrate on and kept me from thinking about where we were going and what
was going to happen when we got there.

There’s a lot of speculation on the street about what Vee cops do with the people they arrest.
Some think they put them in prisons and drain them daily until they finally die. Others believe
they ship them out to farms where they’re fattened up for the slurp-clubs. Whatever they do, it
doesn’t bear much resemblance to what used to pass for the criminal justice system. Vee justice
is simple. If you’re human, and you’re guilty, you’re food. And the people they arrested were
always guilty.

I wasn’t, but that didn’t matter. They had three Vee corpses. Ray Holstein was the lead
detective on Joshua’s murder, and probably the Cross/Ponittzo case as well. He didn’t like
Joshua, and he didn’t like me. I’m sure it made perfect sense to him. Solve three cases, get the
commendations that would come his way for his brilliant detective work, and get rid of me in the
process. It was a no-brainer.

My innocence wasn’t part of the equation. Holstein had always been more about solving
cases than finding the guilty. It looked like that hadn’t changed.

We were on the road for what seemed a long time. It was at least an hour, maybe two. I
could tell from the motion of the wagon and the sounds outside that we cleared the city in about
fifteen minutes. Then it was open highway, probably the interstate, the van swaying gently as the
driver picked up speed.

The cop in the back of the wagon obeyed Holstein’s instructions. He never said a word.

Toward the end of the ride, we got off the highway, and I had the impression of a narrow
country road. There were lots of bends, and the driver was taking them slow. Then the van
slowed, made a hard left turn and stopped. I heard one of the doors up front open and close and I
straightened.

False alarm. A minute later, the door opened and the wagon rocked as somebody climbed
in. The door slammed shut and we were moving again.

The wagon seemed to be climbing slightly. Not like climbing a mountain. More like going
up a slight rise. The driver was taking it very slowly. We were barely moving.

Another stop. This time the driver killed the engine. We were there, wherever there was.

Chapter Eight

The door in front opened, somebody got out, and it closed. A moment later, the back door
of the wagon opened and Holstein said, “Okay, get him out.”

The cop in the back unhooked my cuffs from the bar and walked me to the opening.
Holstein grabbed me and half-lifted, half-pulled me out of the wagon. Something crunched
beneath my feet. Gravel.

“Stay out here with Kelsey,” Holstein said quickly. He sounded slightly nervous. “I don’t
know how long I’ll be inside. Just stay in the van.”

“Yes, sir,” the young-sounding cop said.

Holstein grabbed my arm and pulled me along with him. The ground changed from gravel
to concrete. Up a few steps and I heard a door open in front of us.

“This way,” a man said and Holstein grunted. I could make out the steady gait of
the guy walking in front of us, apparently guiding us to wherever we were going. Another door
opened, we went inside, and Holstein maneuvered me to a straight-backed chair. My arms were
pinned between my body and the back of the chair and it hurt like hell. I didn’t make a sound.

“Remove the handcuffs,” a deep voice said from somewhere behind me.

Holstein pushed me forward and unlocked the cuffs. The sudden release caused the muscles
in my shoulders to scream, but I kept my mouth shut and very slowly moved my hands to my lap.

“And remove that . . . thing from his head,” the deep voice continued.

I had to blink a couple of times when the light hit my eyes. As my vision cleared, I saw that
I was in a nice office, sitting in front of a large, marble-topped desk. Ceiling-to-floor
bookshelves lined the walls.

“Good,” the deep voice said. “That will be all.”

“Sir?” Holstein sounded slightly confused.

“You’re dismissed, detective.”

“Yes, sir.” Holstein said. He was silent for a moment, then said, “Sir, you’ll need to sign
for the prisoner.”

“See the man at the door,” the voice said, coming up behind me. “He’ll sign your
. . . receipt.”

Holstein sighed. “Yes, sir. Have a good evening.”

He waited a moment, and when he realized that he wasn’t going to get an acknowledgment,
he walked away. The door opened. The door closed. I was alone with the man with the deep
voice.

He was standing over me, directly behind the chair. I resisted the urge to turn my head and
look up at him.

Then he walked past me and went behind the desk. As he sat down, he picked up a long,
thin cigar and lit it from a desktop lighter shaped like an airplane. It looked like a fighter jet of
some kind.

“I trust the smoke won’t bother you,” he said, his eyes reflecting the flame of the lighter.

I shook my head as I studied him. He seemed to be in his early sixties, a compact-looking
guy with coffee-colored skin and close-cut gray hair.

Taking a long pull on the cigar, he smiled and said, “I’m afraid it’s the only vice I have left.”

I didn’t say anything.

There was a white phone, a red phone, and a black phone at his right hand. He picked up the
white phone and said, “Have McKenna report to my office. Tell him to bring his kit.”

Hanging up the phone, he leaned back and stared at me through the thin haze of smoke.
“Are you in pain?” he asked.