Perilous (7 page)

I stepped out and answered the phone.

“Lieutenant Kane.”

“Hi, this is Jon Nickerson. I’m the owner of the airport branch of United Car Rental.”

“Hi, Jon.”

“Well, after getting bounced back and forth between a dozen or so people, I think I finally got who I need to talk to. I have some mileage information here regarding the car that the police are looking at.”

I was a bit confused at how he would know what we were looking into. “How did you know that we were interested in the mileage?”

“My manager called me to tell me that the police were looking into one of our cars. I got to the office here, and while the police had already left, my manager told me that they were looking at the odometer, and someone called regarding the mileage. I could put two and two together from there. I spoke with the local Atlanta PD at the airport here, and they got me to you.”

“Great. I’m listening.”

“We have eleven hundred and thirty-six miles since rental. The odometer was definitely disconnected.”

“How do you know the mileage for certain?”

“Well, while we don’t outfit our cars with GPS tracking, I do keep track of their mileage and fuel economy for my records. I have this little logging device that I plug into the car’s diagnostic port. It gives me a readout of the mileage and fuel consumption. I usually do it once a month.”

“And you are positive that the mileage can be attributed to the last person it was rented to?”

“Absolutely. I just did my monthly accounting of the mileage last week. No one has rented that car since.”

“Is this number going to work to call you back in a little bit? I’m going to have to get an official statement from you, but I’m right in the middle of something.”

“Yeah, this is my mobile number. You can reach me on it anytime.”

“Great. I’ll call you back within a couple hours.”

“Sounds good.”

I hung up and stuck my head through the observation room’s door. Captain Bostok stared through the glass, watching Hank and Riaola. He wore a set of headphones to hear the audio coming from inside. When he saw me, he slid them down, letting them rest around his neck.

“It’s him, Cap. I just got off the phone with the branch owner from the rental car company. The mileage on the car was a thousand more than what the odometer showed. He made the trip.”

“I know.”

“Excuse me?”

Bostok snapped his fingers and waved me in. I stood at the captain’s side and watched. Riaola had his head in his hands.

“You just missed the good part, where he cracked and confessed.”

“Son of a bitch!” I said.

“Yeah, sorry. Now he’s just going through the apologetic drivel.” The captain flipped on the audio from the room through the desk speaker.

Riaola sobbed and said he didn’t mean to. He wailed and said it was an accident. The man was actually calling driving a thousand miles round trip and filling his wife with a butcher block full of knives an accident. Hank looked back at us through the mirror.

“Go link him up. I can’t take any more of this nonsense. We have the confession recorded.” The captain knocked on the glass, signaling Hank.

I pulled my cuffs from my waistband and walked around. I opened the door.

“Charles Riaola, you’re under arrest for the murder of your wife, Susanne Riaola,” I said.

Hank stood and motioned for Riaola to get up. “Face the wall and link your hands behind your head,” I said.

He obeyed.

Hank held his arms while I linked him up. “You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be appointed to you. Do you understand these rights as I have read them to you?” I asked.

“Yeah, I understand. It was an accident.”

“I wish you luck with that defense,” I said.

Can you escort Mr. Riaola to booking, Hank?”

“I got him.”

Hank walked him from the room. I let out a breath of relief.

As long as no one murdered anyone else before the day was out, I could leave without anything actively open.

I poked my head into the observation room. The captain was working the video recorder, to burn a DVD of the confession.

He looked over at me. “I’m going to have someone go grab us some grub from Dotana’s. It’s on me. Do you know what you want?”

“Philly cheesesteak and fries. Hank probably wants the same. It’s all he’s been eating since Karen has been out of town. Speaking of Hank, what did he ask that got Riaola to confess?”

“Nothing. He just sat there in silence and read your notes. Riaola just all of a sudden started singing.”

“Good. I didn’t want to hear him gloat all day about how he broke him as soon as I left the room.”

The captain smiled.

“I’ll get whatever comes in on the case the rest of the day put together with the file and drop it on your desk before I take off tonight.”

“Sounds good, Kane.”

I headed back toward my office.

A bang came from the other side of the door.

“Hands in the slot.”

Viktor looked over, to see the guard’s face peering through the small safety-glass window. He pulled himself from the mattress and walked to the door. The key clicked in the small food slot, and the door flipped up. Viktor stuck his hands through. The guard clicked the handcuffs around his wrists.

“Get on the wall,” the guard said.

Viktor walked to the back of the room and faced the wall.

The door was unlocked and opened. The guard walked to him and clicked ankle cuffs around his legs. He linked another chain from the ankle cuffs to the handcuffs. “Time for the dog to go outside.”

Viktor smirked.

The guard shoved him through the door. He pulled Viktor by the elbow down the hallway of the SHU. Both gray walls had a single red stripe running horizontally. The red was the same color as the metal mesh ceiling. Viktor caught glimpses of the other inmates behind the small windows of their cell doors. The guard pushed Viktor’s shoulder to turn him left, toward the door leading outside. The guard pulled his keys from his waist and unlocked the first metal-grate door. They walked through. With a loud clang, the door slammed and relocked at their back. Twenty feet ahead was the door leading to the yard. The guard swiped his security badge through the slot and pulled the handle. The door opened, and a rush of air passed Viktor’s face. Viktor breathed in deeply. The dank smell of the prison faded as they stepped outside. Warm sunlight hit his face.

“Walk. You’re going in the first one,” the guard said. He shoved Viktor in the back. He had no intentions of letting Viktor stop to enjoy the day.

Viktor stumbled forward to the chain-link cage. The guard removed his ankle shackles and unlocked the gate for the fenced-in, twenty-by-forty-foot rectangle.

Viktor stepped inside. He turned and watched the guard close and lock the gate. Viktor placed his wrists through the small opening before him. The guard unlocked the cuffs around his wrists.

“Forty-eight minutes,” the guard said.

Forty-eight minutes was all Viktor had to enjoy the sunlight, to see the sky, and to breathe fresh air. A six-minute walk from his cell to his cage outside, and a six-minute walk from the cage back to his cell took twelve minutes of the one hour he got out of his cell in the SHU. However, that was better than constantly watching over his shoulder for a shiv.

Viktor took a spot at the back of the fence, leaning and staring at the sky. The sun inched closer to the concrete fence at the end of the yard. It would be down within the hour. Past the chain-link roof on his cage, a couple birds flew in the distance. He looked left to right across what he could see of the horizon beyond the various prison buildings. The sky was clear—not a cloud could be seen. Depending on the rotation, it would be at least two weeks before he would see sunshine again. Every day, his yard time came an hour later. The next day, it would happen between six and seven o’clock, dusk. He had two weeks before him of going out during the nighttime hours—that is, if they let him stay in the SHU. Viktor looked out at the other, four, empty cages. He wondered where the other three inmates were. He’d never been outside when the other cages were empty. He looked around the yard some more. The grounds were empty other than him and the two guards he could see in the tower in the distance.

While safety was his main concern, he hadn’t taken into consideration just how much solitary confinement would take its toll. Viktor had zero human interaction aside from the sentence or two a day of instructions from the guards since being placed in the SHU.

Viktor thought about trying to pay off a guard to get him a cell phone.

The sound of a door opening in the distance caught Viktor’s attention. He had no way of knowing how much time he had already spent outside, but it definitely wasn’t forty-eight minutes. He figured guards were coming out with other inmates. Viktor looked toward where the sound had come from. An uneasy feeling overtook him. Three men walked from the side of the building toward his cage. They weren’t guards or staff or grounds crew. The men were white, and tattoos covered their arms. They wore prison issued jumpsuits and were getting closer.

Viktor looked at the guard tower. No one was there. The largest of the three men approaching outweighed Viktor by at least fifty pounds. Something swung from his hand. The last bit of the day’s sunlight flashed off of what he held—keys. He approached the chain-link gate of Viktor’s cage.

He smiled at Viktor, showing brown-yellow teeth. Viktor recognized him as the man Waylon White had spoken with in the mess hall. The man slipped the key into the door’s lock and turned it. Two of the three men entered while the other, the smallest of the group, stayed outside. He closed and locked the door.

Viktor’s heart raced, his adrenaline pumping. Those men had paid off whoever they needed to in order to get to him. The empty yard and cages were orchestrated. No help would be coming. Viktor clenched his fists and stood away from the chain-link wall. The two men continued toward him.

“Relax,” the larger of the two said.

He stopped four feet from Viktor. “I don’t think we’ve been properly introduced. I’m Darryl Stills. This is my buddy, Kenny Winter.” The man outstretched his arm for a handshake. A large swastika tattoo covered the back of his hand. The word
hate
was written across his knuckles.

Viktor stared at him. He was Viktor’s size, plus fifty pounds. His head was shaved clean. The tattoos from his hands continued up his arms. A brown-and-white beard hung three inches down from his chin.

“You should shake his hand,” the other man said.

Viktor turned his attention to the man introduced as Kenny. He had shoulder-length blond hair and wore a white handkerchief headband. While taller than Viktor, he didn’t weigh as much. He also was covered in Aryan ink.

While Viktor didn’t doubt he could handle the smaller of the two, both of them combined would be a problem. Also, if he did somehow get the upper hand on the pair, the third coming in would quickly sway the odds.

Viktor reluctantly reached out and shook Darryl’s hand. “I’m Viktor Azarov.”

“We know exactly who you are. You see, when someone comes into our little world here and starts building a crew under our nose, we take notice. We had a couple of friends do a little looking into you.”

“If they did, you would know I make a better ally than enemy. I can’t say things always turn out well for people on my bad side.”

“Is that a threat?” Kenny asked.

“More like a life-altering decision for you… and anyone you care about.”

Kenny took a step toward Viktor.

Darryl blocked him with a large hand. “That’s not why we are here. This is a social visit.”

Kenny sneered and backed off.

“What do you want?” Viktor asked.

“We need retribution for Waylon. The man who did it, he’s dead. That’s non-negotiable. From you, we will need financial compensation.”

Viktor leaned back into the chain-link fence and scoffed. “Financial compensation, huh?”

“Is there something funny about that?” Darryl asked.

“Waylon tries to kill me but gets himself killed in the process, and you want me to pay you? Yeah, I find that funny.”

“One of your guys killed our chief. If you don’t want to be green lighted, you’ll pay,” Kenny said.

Viktor smiled. “If you keep running your mouth, I’ll have my people outside find your people outside.”

“You throw a lot of threats around for someone with not many friends here,” Kenny said.

Viktor said nothing.

“Look, you may have been some big-shot organized-crime figure outside these walls, but in here, you’re just another convict. We run the world inside these walls. Your little attempt at forming a crew is going to get squashed,” Darryl said.

“I don’t know if you have realized it or not, but outside these walls, you guys are nothing. All I have to do is say the word, and anyone you care about will be in pieces,” Viktor said.

Viktor stared at the two men. They stared back. No one said a word.

Darryl broke the silence. “Fifty thousand.”

“No,” Viktor said.

“The number isn’t negotiable”

“Everything is negotiable,” Viktor said.

“This is one of those times when it isn’t. Fifty thousand within two days. Someone will come and visit you. You can give them the contact information for who will get your money to us.”

“What happens in two days?”

“If you don’t have our money, you’re dead. Simple as that.”

“Two days gives me a lot of time to find those close to you on the outside.”

Darryl headed toward the gate in the fence. Kenny followed. Darryl looked back over his shoulder. “It would, except you won’t be making contact with anyone. Remember when I said we run things inside these walls? That includes the guards. You won’t be speaking with anyone except my friend who comes to visit.”

The man waiting on the other side of the fence unlocked the gate. Darryl and Kenny walked through. The door was relocked.