Night's Favour (12 page)

“You and Val are close?”

“Close?
 
Like friends close, or lovers close?”

“Whichever.”

“Sure,” said John.
 
“We’ve been friends since school.”

There was a tapping like pen on paper from Carlisle’s chair.
 
“We might not be talking about the same person.
 
Do you have a photo of him?”

“What?”

“A photo.
 
Like, in your wallet.
 
You said you were close.”

“I said we were friends close.
 
How many of your girl friends do you carry a photo of around in your wallet?
 
It kind of says the wrong thing, you know?”

Carlisle laughed.
 
“I know what you mean.
 
It’s hard to explain, right?”

“Exactly.”
 
John coughed, and took another sip of his water.
 
“Wait.
 
I’ve had a thought.
 
You got a phone?”

“You want to call someone?”

“No.
 
Yesterday, at the gym.
 
Someone took a video of him.
 
Uploaded it to YouTube I think.
 
You should be able to check that out, see both of us there.”

“Wait a sec.”
 
There was the sound of cloth rustling, then the distinctive clicking sound of an iPhone unlocking.
 
“YouTube?”

“Yeah.
 
I think so.”

“What should I search for?”

“Try something like, ‘Fat guy benches six fifty.’”

“He’s fat?”
 
More clicking as Carlisle tapped in the search.

“He’s huge, man.
 
I keep telling him to lose the weight, but since Rebekah…”

“The accident?
 
…Here it is.”
 
The sound of yesterday’s gym session played out in miniature through the iPhone’s tiny speaker.
 
“Christ.
 
That’s him.”

“See?
 
Both arms, right?”

“Right.”

There was a knock at the door.
 
“I’ve got your sugar.”

“Thanks Vince.
 
Check this out.”
 
Footsteps padded from the doorway to Carlisle’s seat, then the sound of the video replayed again.

“What am I looking at?”

“You’re looking at you losing another bet.”

“Oh for pity’s sake.”
 
The other cop, Elliot, sounded pissed off.

“Seriously.
 
See that fat guy on the bench?”

“It looks a lot like Everard, from the file. Except he’s put on some weight.”

“Yep.
 
This was shot yesterday.”

“Wait, yesterday?”

“Yesterday.
 
John, my partner and I are going to go now.”

“We are?”

“We are.
 
Because we’re going to see Val’s doctor.”

John broke in.
 
“Why are you going to see his doctor?
 
Shouldn’t you be out looking for him?”

“We already are.”
 
There was more rustling as Carlisle put on her coat.
 
“This way, we hopefully get some evidence to clear Val of another crime.
 
Focus our efforts, if you like.
 
I’ve left my card on your bedside table.
 
John — thanks for your help.”

“Wait.
 
What about the guys who mugged me?”

A final pause, before Carlisle and Elliot left.
 
“They won’t be troubling you again.”

“You got them?”

“Someone got them.
 
See you later, John.”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

The big car nosed through the afternoon mid-city traffic.
 
The traffic got a bit nastier as the day wore on and people got tired of not getting car parks and being cut off by assholes.
 
Carlisle was running out of patience with it all, the old temptation to fire up the lights a familiar grin-touched craving that wouldn’t end in anything but more paperwork.
 
She sighed, her hands tapping in absent-minded rhythm against the steering wheel in time with the radio.
 
Her mind poked through the details of the two cases she had, comparing the details.

Case one, a bunch of happy night-lifers executed.
 
Forensics had completed time of death as near as they were able; most of those people had died within the same narrow window.
 
A homicide on a grand scale, the ferocity of the killings strangely at odds with how the killer — or killers — had stacked the bodies neatly in a pile.
 
Carlisle was liking her multiple-killers theory on this, because it just didn’t make sense otherwise.
 
You didn’t get one guy who killed people that messily, but who also tidied up after himself.
 
If you did, she was going to be famous with a new killer type — there might even be that job promotion at the end of it.
 
The case was bizarre — no survivors, which meant no witnesses.
 
Except for one Valentine Everard, and there was doubt if Everard had ever been there now, because the man clearly had both hands.
 
Best to assume Everard was a red herring here, guilty only of police procedural error when they initially recorded his evidence details.
 
If it was a simple error, it meant the lab or —
God
— a cop had mixed up results.
 
Untangling that mess looked ugly, but it’d be someone’s job well below her pay grade once they had their hands on new prints.

What really gnawed at Carlisle was that she didn’t like coincidences.
 
In her experience, there was no such thing.
 
And it seemed an unlikely coincidence that an evidence error on a crime scene had tagged Everard — who turned up related to a case involving multiple homicides.

That case two, now that was equally interesting.
 
A bunch of low life scum killed in the middle of a street.
 
That they were killed didn’t really bother her at all — from what was left of them, they’d dragged up some prints and found a collection of crimes that meant the world as a whole wouldn’t weep for their loss.
 
All of them were destined to end up in a gang, or prison, or dead anyway — someone had just sped that process up some.
 
Finding out if Everard had been there wasn’t a question of prints or even DNA — she had a witness on the scene who placed him there.
 
Witnesses were unreliable, but Carlisle was riding free on a hunch that John Miles wasn’t the kind of guy to make stuff up.
 
No, the interesting bit was that there were no witnesses other than her one survivor, who’d been — conveniently — unconscious for the whole thing.
 
So — no witnesses.

Again.

How was it that someone killed whole groups of people without a single witness managing to stay alive?
 
It spoke of a thoroughness that was — in some warped way — as admirable as it was unusual.

The drunk guy on the street didn’t count.
 
A homeless vagrant at the scene of case two claimed to have seen everything, and had exuded half truths, lies, and fabrications on breath strong with old booze.
 
Carlisle wasn’t buying that some wild man had come busting out of an alley and tore people in half.
 
If the bum had wanted to be taken downtown for a statement and the free hot meal that implied, he might have put a bit more effort into a believable lie.
 
Carlisle had left him to deal with a grumpy Elliot as she’d walked the scene.

Truth be told, both of them were getting grumpy — a good night’s sleep would go a long way.
 
Why didn’t these assholes have the common decency to murder people in the light of day?
 
Back when she’d been younger, she’d had more fire in her belly and a willingness to get up before the dawn.
 
She’d thought they spoke for those who’d been robbed of their voices by the cold of the grave.

Carlisle sighed again.
 
The longer she did this job, the less clear cut it seemed whom the wicked were.
 
Not often did people get killed who didn’t deserve it.
 
Still — it was hard to chalk up a whole nightclub of people as villains.
 
Those people still needed justice.
 
Case two, not so much.

Her phone rang, derailing her train of thought.
 
She dragged the big car to the side of the road, nosing it half into a park and fumbling in her jacket for the phone.
 
She managed to get it on the fifth ring.

“I thought you didn’t love me anymore.”
 
Elliot’s voice seemed subdued, the wisecrack more habit than feeling.

“I hate your voicemails more than I hate talking to you.
 
It’s like you leave the whole message in some ten minute epistle I got to listen to, rather than just asking me to call you back.”

“I figure you love detail.”

“I admire detail.
 
I love brevity.
 
There’s a difference.”
 
Carlisle rummaged about in the glove box for her notebook and a pen.
 
“What’s up?”

“Yeah.
 
So I found a piece of CCTV footage.”

“An actual piece of video we can use?
 
What’s it got?”
 
The pause drew out.
 
Carlisle tried again.
 
“You still there?
 
Did you hear me?”

Elliot’s sigh came through, tinny over the cell.
 
“I heard you.
 
I just…
 
I just don’t know if you’re going to…
 
Shit.”

“Vince.
 
What’s going on?”

“You’d best have a look.”

“This isn’t funny, Vince.
 
Just tell me.”

“Nah, boss.
 
You won’t believe me.
 
I’m not sure if I believe it.
 
I don’t want you to think I’ve lost it.
 
Just…
 
You need to see this.
 
Get down here fast.”
 
Elliot rang off, leaving her staring at her phone.

Carlisle pocketed the phone then looked down at her notebook.
 
The page was blank, and she tossed the thing into the foot-well of the passenger seat.
 
It wasn’t going to be much use to her without words in it.
 
Rubbing her chin she considered Elliot’s words.
 
You need to see this — get down here fast.
 
The man was not usually prone to strange outbursts — if anything, Carlisle liked having him as a partner because he was so delightfully unimaginative.
 
Dependable, sure.
 
Loyal, absolutely.
 
Emotional or creative, shit no.
 
Whenever Elliot’s gut was telling him something, it was a sure sign that was exactly the opposite of what was going on — he had the intuition of a cinder block.

Best get downtown then to see what all this was about.
 
Carlisle tugged the big car into gear, then grinned.
 
Elliot had said fast.
 
Fast it would be.

She flicked on the lights and siren, the big car roaring back into the street.

☽ ◇ ☾

Carlisle found Elliot in the video evidence room.
 
He was surrounded by a collection of DVDs arranged in piles, some of the cases open, their contents scattered about.
 
Elliot had fortified his position with empty coffee cups.
 
An old chipped saucer sat on top of a monitor screen, an unhealthy pile of ash building up in there.

“When did you start smoking again?”

Elliot’s shoulders were slumped.
 
He looked tired, worn thin.
 
“This morning.”
 
He took a couple of gulps from the Styrofoam cup in his hand, grimacing.
 
“Crap. Cold.”

“Well, don’t let them catch you smoking in here.
 
It’s not worth the pain of the paperwork, and you know it.”
 
Carlisle looked at the ceiling.
 
“You pulled out the smoke alarm in here?
 
You must have needed that cigarette bad.”

Elliot fumbled through his jacket with his free hand, liberating a crumpled box of cheap cigarettes and a lighter.
 
“They can go fuck themselves.
 
If they watched this video they’d be smoking too.”
 
His hand was shaking as he mumbled a cigarette from the packet to his mouth, lighting it on the third strike from the lighter.
 
He took a deep drag, then blew smoke into the ceiling fan.

“What video?”

“I…
 
I thought about just throwing it out.
 
Losing the evidence.
 
It’s happened before.
 
It’d be easier.”

“What video?”

Elliot borrowed more strength from his cigarette.
 
“It wouldn’t be good police work, but it’d mean I could just forget about this.
 
Put the case on hold.”

“Vince.”
 
Carlisle put a hand on his arm.
 
“What video?”

“Yeah.
 
The video.”
 
Elliot flicked on one of the monitors, fiddling with some buttons on a remote control.
 
“This video.”

The scene before them was high up, probably on a lamppost.
 
The grainy black and white footage showed the street where Carlisle and Elliot had spent the early hours of this morning as they’d cleaned up bodies.
 
Front and centre was a bus shelter, lighting from its panels spilling out into the street.
 
She could see two men — Miles and Everard — crossing the road from off camera towards the bus shelter.
   
The video was time-lapsed, each frame a few seconds from the last, giving their walk across the street all the authenticity of an old stop motion movie.