Kill the Messenger

27

The apartment was quiet and dark, the only illumination a white glow that came and went like a searchlight as rain-swollen clouds scudded across the moon. Jace prowled the small space, a caged animal too aware that enemies might be moving ever closer.

Tyler had watched him closely after he’d come upstairs, his eyes somber, his mouth uncharacteristically silent. He had asked no questions about the new cuts and bruises. Jace thought maybe he should have told his brother something, but he hadn’t volunteered the information, and Tyler hadn’t asked, opting instead for accusatory stares. The tension in the apartment had felt like static electricity building and building until their hair should have been standing on end. At ten, Tyler had gone off to bed without a word.

Jace tried to shrug off the feelings of guilt. He would never do anything to put his brother in harm’s way. That was the most important thing. Tyler’s fears and feelings had to come second to that. He practiced those lines in his head for when he would wake up his little brother to tell him he was leaving.

He packed quickly. A change of clothes and not much more stuffed into a backpack. He still didn’t have a plan, but he knew what he knew: He couldn’t stay here. Something would come to him, it always did. He’d been raised to think on the fly. He needed not to think of himself as prey being chased down by dogs. He needed to think from a position of strength.

He had what the killer wanted, and if it was worth killing for, then it had to be worth something to someone else too. Abby Lowell was the key to that answer. He didn’t believe she didn’t know what was going on; otherwise, why toss her apartment, why the warning on the mirror? Next You Die. It had to be meant to scare her into some action. What good would it be to threaten her if she didn’t know what was going on?

He would have to lure her out somehow. Get her to meet him on neutral ground, somewhere with plenty of escape routes, somewhere he could see trouble coming. He would tell her he had the negatives, ask her what they meant to her. Ask her what they were worth to her.

Jace wondered what she’d told the police. She’d mentioned a particular detective. What was his name? Parker. He wondered if that was the guy in the hat behind the Speed office. And he wondered what Parker knew, what he had put together, what Eta had told him.

He still didn’t want to believe Eta had betrayed him. He wanted to contact her, talk to her. He wanted to be reassured.

“You’re leaving.”

Tyler stood in the doorway to the bedroom, wearing his Spider- Man pajamas, his blond hair sticking up in all directions.

“You’re leaving and you weren’t even going to tell me.”

“That’s not true,” Jace said. “I wouldn’t leave without telling you.”

“You told me you wouldn’t leave at all.”

“I said I would always come back,” Jace corrected him. “I will.”

Tyler was shaking his head, his eyes filling. “You’re in trouble. You weren’t gonna tell me that either, but I know.”

“What do you know?”

“You treat me like a baby, like I’m stupid and can’t figure anything out for myself. Like . . . like—”

“What do you know?” Jace said again.

“You’re leaving. You could take me with you, but you’re not going to, and I don’t get to say anything about it because you don’t think I should ever know what’s going on!”

“You can’t go with me, Tyler. I have to clear up some problems, and I have to be able to move fast.”

“We could too go,” Tyler argued. “We could go someplace nobody knows us, just like when Mom died.”

“It’s not that simple,” Jace said.

“’Cause you’re gonna go to jail?”

“What?” Jace dropped down on the futon. Tyler stood directly in front of him, his face tight with anger, a red flush mottling his pale skin.

“Don’t lie,” he said. “Don’t pretend you didn’t say it. I heard you say it.”

Jace didn’t bother to ask his brother if he’d been listening in on his conversation with Madame Chen. Obviously, he had, and Jace knew he shouldn’t have been surprised. Tyler was notorious for turning up in places he shouldn’t have been, and knowing things he shouldn’t have known.

“I’m not going to jail,” Jace said. “I said that to Madame Chen to scare her. She wants me to go to the cops or talk to a lawyer. I don’t want to do that, and I have to make sure she doesn’t do it for me.”

“So CFS doesn’t come and get me and put me in foster care.”

“That’s right, pal.” Jace put his hands on his little brother’s small shoulders. “I won’t risk you. I would never risk you. Do you understand that?”

Tears glistened in Tyler’s eyes as he nodded soberly.

“We look out for each other, right?”

“Then you should let me help you, but you won’t.”

Jace shook his head. “It’s complicated. I need to figure out what’s really going on.”

“Then you should let me help you,” Tyler insisted again. “I’m way smarter than you are.”

Jace laughed wearily and mussed his brother’s hair. “If this was about geometry or science, I’d come straight to you, Ty. But it’s not. This is a whole lot more serious.”

“Some man got killed,” Tyler said quietly.

“Yes.”

“What if you get killed too?”

“I won’t let that happen,” Jace said, knowing it was an empty promise. Tyler knew it too. Even so, Jace said, “I’ll always come back.”

One tear and then another skittered down his brother’s face. The expression in his eyes was far older than he was. A deep, deep sadness, made all the more poignant by the weary resignation of past experience. In that moment Jace thought Tyler’s soul must be a hundred years old or more, and that he had lived through one disappointment after the next.

“You can’t come back if you’re dead,” Tyler whispered.

Jace pulled the boy close and held him tight, his own tears burning his eyes. “I love you, little guy. I’ll come back. Just for you.”

“You promise?” Tyler asked, his voice muffled against Jace’s shoulder.

“I promise,” Jace whispered, his throat aching, the promise he didn’t know if he could keep like a jagged rock he couldn’t swallow and wouldn’t let go of.

They both cried for a while, then they sat there for a while longer, time stretching, meaningless, into the dark night. Then Jace sighed and stood his brother back from him.

“I have to go, pal.”

“Wait,” Tyler said. He turned and ran into his room before Jace could say anything, and came back seconds later with the pair of small two-way radios Jace had given him for Christmas.

“Take one,” he said. “The batteries are new. Then you can call me and I can call you.”

Jace took the radio. “I might be out of range. But I’ll call you when I can.”

He put his army fatigue jacket on and slipped the radio into a pocket. Tyler walked with him to the door.

“Don’t get into any trouble,” Jace said. “And mind Madame Chen. You got that?”

Tyler nodded.

Jace expected Tyler to tell him to be careful, but he didn’t. He didn’t say good-bye. He didn’t say anything.

Jace touched his brother’s hair one last time, turned, and went down the stairs.

Chinatown was silent now, the streets glistening like black ice under the streetlights. Jace climbed on The Beast and started slowly down the alley. One foot pressing down, and then the other, in a weary climb to nowhere. The Beast rocked from side to side with each step, until momentum became forward energy. He took a right at the end of the alley and headed toward downtown, where lights in the windows of tall buildings glowed like columns of stars.

And as Jace turned one corner, a five-year-old Chrysler Sebring turned another just a few blocks away. A big iron gate slid back on electronic command and the car slipped into its parking slot beside a former textile warehouse building that had been brought back from the edge of condemnation and converted into trendy lofts.

And on another block, a low-slung black sedan with a brand-new windshield turned a corner and prowled down a wet street, past a laundry and a greengrocer’s and Chen’s Fish Market.

Parker let himself into his loft, dropped his keys on the narrow black-walnut Chinese altar table that served as a console in the slate-floored entry hall. He didn’t glance in the mirror above it. He didn’t need to look to know that the day hung on him like a lead cloak. There was no energy left in him to feel anger or sadness or anything but numb.

The soft glow of the small halogen lights spotlighting the art on his walls led him down the hall to his dressing room and into the master bath. He turned on the steam shower, stripped out of his suit, and laid it across a chair.

He would send it to the cleaners tomorrow. The idea of wearing it again after having stood in that alley looking at Eta Fitzgerald’s body wasn’t acceptable to him. Even though the scene hadn’t been something truly grotesque, like finding a dead body that had been left for days in a hot room, the scent of death was on it, the idea of Eta’s death was on it.

The steam and pounding hot water melted some of it away—the smell of it, the weight of it—and soothed his muscles, warming away the chill both from without and from within.

The bedside lamps were turned on low—part of the elaborate electronic system a buddy had talked him into. Lights, music, room temperature—all were tied into a timed computer system so that he never came home to a cold, dark place.

The woman asleep in his bed was another matter. She had come of her own free will, let herself in, and made herself at home.

Parker sat down on the edge of the bed and looked at her, a little pleased, a little surprised, a little puzzled.

Diane blinked her eyes open and looked up at him.

“Surprise,” she said softly.

“I am surprised,” Parker said, touching her hair. “And to what do I owe the pleasure?”

She rubbed her hands over her face and scooted up against the pillows. “I needed to cleanse my palate of socialites. Decided I would find myself a hot metrosexual guy to hang out with.”

Parker smiled. “Well, baby, I am the prince of metrosexual chic. I have a closet full of Armani, a medicine cabinet full of skin-care products. I can whip up a dinner for four with no frozen ingredients, I can pick a good wine, and I’m not gay—not that there’s anything wrong with that.”

“I knew I’d come to the right place.”

She sat up and stretched, not in the least self-conscious about or self-promoting of her naked state. That was part of Diane’s appeal, there was no coy bullshit. She was a strong, attractive woman, comfortable in her own body.

“Did you get called to something?” she asked.

“Yeah. Ruiz’s first homicide as lead.”

“God help you,” she said. “I don’t like her.”

“Nobody likes her.”

“She’s not a woman’s woman.”

“What does that mean?”

Diane rolled her eyes. “Men. You never get this. It means don’t turn your back on her. Don’t trust her, don’t rely on her. It means she’ll be your best friend if she thinks she can get something out of you, but if she can’t, she’ll turn on you like a snake.”

“I think we’ve already come to that point,” Parker said.

“Good. Then you won’t be surprised,” she said. “Did she get an easy one?”

Parker shook his head. “Not really. It might be tied to the Lowell homicide last night.”

“Really?” She frowned a little. “How so?”

“The vic is the dispatcher from the messenger service Lowell called at the end of the day. Somebody seems to be after something and is pretty damn pissed off not to be finding it.”

“Did RHD show up again?”

“No. Too busy off hobnobbing on your side of town, I guess,” Parker said. “How long did they stay at the party?”

“Just what I told you. They exchanged a few words with Giradello and left. What did that name mean to you?”

“Damon is the name of the bike messenger sent to Lowell’s office last night.”

“I thought Lowell was a robbery.”

“I don’t believe it,” Parker said. “Maybe the perp stole the money out of Lowell’s safe, but that wasn’t what he went there for. Apparently he thinks the bike messenger has whatever that is.”

“You don’t think the bike messenger did it?”

“No. That doesn’t track for me. I think the bike messenger is just the rabbit. I want the dog that’s chasing him.” His mood darkened again as he thought of Eta lying in that alley. “I really want him.”

Neither of them spoke for a moment, as their respective wheels turned.

“Lowell called a messenger to pick something up,” Diane murmured. “The messenger left with the package—”

“We assume.”

“Someone killed Lowell, and now has killed someone connected to the bike messenger. The bike messenger still has the package. The killer is after the package.”

“Smells like blackmail,” Parker said.

“Hmmm” was all Diane said, lost in thoughts of her own.

Parker had always believed she would have made a hell of a detective. She was wasted poking at dead bodies for the coroner every day. But she liked the forensic side. She had been a criminalist with the Scientific Investigation Division for a long time before going to the coroner’s office. She talked about going back to school to get a degree in medical pathology.

She sighed then and reached out and settled her hand on the curve between his neck and shoulder.

“Come to bed,” she said quietly. “It’s late. You can be the world’s greatest detective again in the morning.”

He nodded. “I’m not going to be good for anything,” he said as he slipped beneath the covers.

“I’ll settle for having you close,” she said. “That’s all I’m up for myself.”

“I can manage that,” Parker said, already falling asleep as he spooned her and kissed her hair.