The Blue Ridge Project: A Dark Suspense Novel (The Project Book 1) (3 page)

Robert snorted and shook his head. “I can get behind that. I wouldn’t usually, but it sounds like you got the short end. I guess you could say I’m sympathetic.” Robert paused. “I recently got shafted out of a job myself.”

“O
h,
yeah?” Jimmy’s eyebrows went up in genuine interest. “What’s that, then?”

The lady called from the counter, cutting off Robert before he could answer. “Boys? Food’s ready.” She left the sandwiches on the counter and a bottle of orange juice beside Robert’s. Condensation dribbled down the side of the bottle.

“Grub’s up! Hold on to that story, Robert. I’ll hear it off you again. Here, if you’re short on work, I can always find a quick earner if someone is in need. I’ll give you my number.”

The cellphone Robert pulled from his pants’ pocket was dead, so he reached in his jacket pocket and handed Jimmy the pen he found there. Jimmy scribbled some digits on a napkin and handed it and the pen to Robert who put them away.

“Thank
s,
Jimmy, I appreciate that. I better head back with this stuff; my mother will think I’ve left halfway through the visit.”

“I’ll see you anon, Robert. If you’ll excuse me, I’m going to jump into this sandwich here and head back to my room. I’m feeling a bit tired all of a sudden. Nice talking to you.”

“Yo
u,
too. Take care. Thanks, ladies,” Robert said, and waved to the cafeteria girls. They waved back as he took his sandwich and juice up the stairs.

As he reached the stairway, he met the nurse from earlier on the way down. Her face almost matched the color of her white uniform, and she stopped short when he appeared in front of her at the top of the stairs.

“Mr. Duncan.
I-
I’m so sorry. Your mother—”

Robert frowned, then guessed what she was trying to say, what she said with her eyes. The food and orange juice fell from his hands, the juice splitting open and spreading over the floor. He fell to his knees, soaking himself in it.

“She's dead? I just left... I just got...”

The nurse held one hand to her mouth, then crouched and put that hand on his back. “I'm sorry,” she repeated.

He put his hands to his head and pulled at his hair. Tears dripped from his face and landed in the juice that crept out from the nearly empty bottle.

—The Present—
 

The apartment Andrea Nox rented was a decent drive from the station. From time to time she’d take her eyes off the road and glance in the rearview mirror at the boxes of files in the back seat of her car. As she thought over the amount of work ahead of her, a black car turned onto the street in front of her and she almost crashed into the back of it. She pushed down on the horn and yelled expletives out the window at the driver.

She breathed out heavily, and her heart-rate returned to normal. She knew she wasn’t really angry at the driver. It was the department, the whole city she was angry with. Her frustration was at a high after spending most of the last forty-eight hours trying to gather all the files for the Solas case. They had been squirreled away by an unholy union of zealous PR people with campaign funds at their disposal, and skeleton crews of cops with mounting debts and a willingness to put things on the back burner.

Fucking cutbacks,
she thought. Less money also meant more work for less people, with new classes coming out of the academy only every two years, meaning that the chaff was often left in with the wheat. Up until recently, Beacon had been part of the Regional Police Training Initiative, and that had worked pretty well for a while. Right up until it hadn’t.

Shaking her head to derail that train of thought, she pulled into her parking space, then got out and opened the back door to lift the boxes out of the back seat. She kicked the car door closed after, the sound low and heavy in the quiet of the poorly lit parking lot.

When she got to her place, she dumped the files on the living room table, threw her jacket over the back of the sofa and headed for the bathroom. A hot shower usually helped to put a divide on the day between work and home. She took five minutes more than normal, letting the water run over her, washing away the day’s frustrations. She tried to visualize her anger, which always seemed to be just under the surface of her skin these days, evaporating and drifting out with the steam, mixing with the scent of mint shampoo. After toweling off she got into her academy sweatpants and hoodie.

She grabbed the folders off the table and started laying the photographs and files out in a semicircle on the floor. Living alone with no pets, the only eyes they bothered were hers.

There had been two bodies. One was Steven Solas, son of mayoral hopeful Arthur Solas, stabbed and gutted. The father was the great white hope of Beacon, according to the unofficial fliers that she had seen around town. His son had been his campaign manager, and something of a minor local celebrity himself, with what had been a good political future ahead of him.

The photos showed the younger Solas on his back, with his insides trailing out of his abdomen and onto the ground beside him. His eyes were wide, and both the CSI guys and the coroner’s report indicated he had been alive for the evisceration.

The other body was allegedly one of the suspects. A word had been carved into his chest with what seemed like the same blade as the one used on Solas:
Guilt
y
.

Andrea rubbed her temple as she looked at the photo. The cuts on the unknown dead man’s wrists suggested that he had punched his own ticket, as the old guys used to say. Murder-suicide was her first thought, back at the station. The guilty conscience of an unstable killer driving him to it. Cap had shrugged, not saying either way, but Andrea guessed that he didn’t buy into such a simple explanation. Not with Solas being who he was, in that family. His father's campaign had been one of the first in recent memory to run on crime and corruption as its main policy. Weeding out the dirt, wherever it may be, whether that was on the street, in city hal
l,
or down at good old BCPD.

Andrea found it puzzling that the second body had yet to be identified. It wasn’t impossible that he just wasn’t on file anywhere, but she still wondered at how there had been no trace of him found yet.

Rumors had been circulating recently about Solas Junior’s sexual proclivities, which might point to a hate crime. She juggled that idea, imagining a scenario where the second body belonged to an unlucky passerby who the real killer framed postmortem. She shook her head. It was too elaborate for a ga
y-
basher who had promoted himself to murderer. It also didn’t mesh that someone who would take the time and effort to empty Solas’ insides all over the street would kill themselves afterward out of remorse, let alone carve
Guilty
in his own ches
t
.

She rubbed her eyes, feeling tiredness creep up on he
r.
Tea would help her focus a little better, and would give her a break from staring at multiple angles of bloodied corpses. As the water boiled, the telephone on the wall chirped.

“Hello?”

“Nox? It’s Clark.” Night dispatch. A fixture of the BCPD radio crew for years. “Sorry to bother you at home, but Cap said to call you.”

Andrea’s grip on the phone tightened a little and her knuckles whitened. She checked the clock on the wall. Just after eleve
n-
thirty. “What is it?”

“He said to tell you there’s been another, that you’d know what that meant.”

Andrea closed her eye
s.
“What’s the address?”

There was a pause and Andrea could faintly hear the rustling of paper.
No computer
, she thought, faintly puzzled.

“The Regent Hotel. It’s on—”

“I know where it is, thank
s,
Clark. Tell Cap I’m on my way.”

Andrea hung up, then picked up the phone and slammed it back in the cradle again three times, almost tearing it off the wall.

*****

The traffic was non-existent on the way to the Regent. Andrea didn’t think it strange, as it was the least favorite route out of town. The scenery wasn’t up to much, just office buildings and thrift stores giving way to close
d-
down businesses and worn-out low-cost housing. The possibility of a carjacking while stopped at one of the numerous red lights didn’t improve thing
s,
either.

Andrea arrived at the scene in front of the hotel and parked next to the police cruiser already there. She saw that it was fat and sloppy Michaels who sat on the hood, smoking and drinking from a bottle of beer with the label ripped off. He saw her approach, took a long final swig and tossed the empty bottle into a nearby dumpster. Andrea heard the faint smash as it hit the metal.

“Nox, as I live and fucking breathe.” It sounded to Andrea like an accusation. “I call this in, get chewed out for it, and then they send you. My lucky fucking night,” Michaels whistled and shook his head. “I guess the department must be in worse shape than I thought.”

“Worse than that. You still have a job.” Andrea stepped past him and over the body on the street to squat down on the other side. The lights from the cruiser were on, illuminating the scene. She mentally noted the position of the body, one arm across the chest and one above the head, seeming to point across the street to the hotel. The building towered over them, and she saw a single light on in a room on one of the top floors. She thought about the weirdness of a hotel functioning out here in the middle of this urban decay. Everything was feeling just a little too strange lately.

“This how you found him?” Andrea asked, looking at the space where the man’s face should have been.

Michaels hesitated for a second. “Well, about that...” He went around to the cruiser and took out a camera. He came over and showed her the photos on the display
.
“The rookie, he got a bit excited,” Michaels grinned sheepishly. “I already gave him a talking to.”

“What about forensics? When did you call it in?” Andrea reached in the inside pocket of her jacket and fished out a pen.

Michaels handed her a pair of latex gloves from his back pocket. “Not too long ago. We called the base, they put us through to Captain Slade, and lo and behold you appear to save the day.” He folded his arms, the grin gone now, replaced by a look that said he was decidedly pissed off with their superior’s choice.

Andrea thought he’d get over it after a few more drinks. Either that or he’d take it out on someone on the way home from the bar. “All right, so where’s this rookie? Did you send him home for bad behavior? I'm surprised they even let you have partners anymore.” She used her pen to lift the dead man’s hand empty hand.

He was grinning again. “O
h,
yeah. Something I forgot to show you. Here.” He held out a crumpled piece of paper.

Andrea stood up and read it. “What is this? Any idea what it means?”

“Johnson—that’s the rookie—he’s upstairs now in the hotel. You’re the detective, you figure it out. Oh wait, that's not right. Neither of us are detectives anymore, are we?” He sneered at her.

Andrea stepped toward him and in one quick movement kneed him in the testicles. He doubled over, retching. “What the fuck is going on here, Michaels? Stop dicking around. Why isn’t this place jumping with uniforms?”

“Christ!” he said after he got his breath back. “I should fucking brain you for that!”

Andrea stood, unmoved by his threats. He looked in her eyes, and some of the fight went out of him.

“They told me to keep quiet, alright? To wait for you.”

He collapsed into a sitting position on the front of the cruiser. He was panting, and his face was turning an unhealthy red. She looked back down at the body, then up again at the solitary light high up in the hotel.

“Anything else?” she asked.

Michaels straightened up, his breath slowing. “Yeah, yeah, okay. The guy upstairs? He checked in with a name that matches the note. Laurence Kale.”

“All right. Stay here, I’ll be back shortly.” She strode across the street and into the entrance of the hotel.

“Crazy bitch!” Michaels shouted after she had gone in.

The bathroom where Laurence Kale had taken his last bath was a mess.

Kale had been sitting up when he died, with his arms hung over the sides; the blood had poured out of him into pools on the floo
r,
as well as darkening the tastefully chosen bathmats. The wall had blood on it, spatters just a few inches up the wall, dripping down in between black and gray tiles to the lip of the bath. Andrea pushed aside a leg of what she presumed were the dead man’s trousers and revealed a detachable razor blade lying on the floor.

She looked up at Officer Johnson, who was in the doorway of the bathroom, looking uneasy. “Did you see this already?”

“No, Detective, I didn’t want to disturb the evidence.” Johnson licked his lips quickly, like a snake tasting the air.

Andrea leaned over the man in the bath, tucking a loose strand of black hair behind her ear. The man’s chest was cut deep, enough to leave a nasty scar if he had lived.
Guilty
, with the G capitalized. Andrea stood back up and put on some gloves and took two plastic evidence bags from her pocket. She dropped the razor blade in the first and wrapped it up, using both bags to make sure it wouldn’t slice open the plastic. She then fished around in the jeans but found nothing.

“You wait around for the coroner, he'll be looking for this stuff” she said as she stood up and put the bag on an empty shelf over the sink.

Johnson nodded, and turned out of the bathroom and went to stand outside the hotel room door. As he left the room, he passed a man on his way in who was dressed in a dark-red waistcoat, white shirt and black pants. The man was mi
d-
to lat
e-
fifties by Andrea's estimation, although he could have been a fit sixt
y-
yea
r-
old. It was difficult to say for sure. He seemed to be the type of man whose exterior aging pauses at a certain point after middle age.

“Detective? I’m Alain Burke. I’m the head porter here. I'm afraid management is not available tonight, he's away on other business. What can I do to help?” His voice was calm and even, easy to listen to. It was a practiced tone of someone who is in the business of helping strangers in need, whether they knew they were in need or not.

“I’d like to know what time Mr. Kale checked in and if there was anyone with him. How he was acting, anything out of the ordinary you can remember.”

Burke unbuttoned his porter’s waistcoat and sat down on the bed, inviting Andrea to sit on the one chair opposite.

“Well, he didn’t have a bag, but that in itself isn’t very strange. We’re used to last-minute reservations and guests with no bags.”

Andrea nodded, waiting for him to continue. She found the best approach with first statements was to say nothing and let the other person lead. They would always continue, the silence too uncomfortable to leave hanging in the air. Even if they were entirely blameless.

“He seemed a bit tired, and stared for a few seconds without speaking once or twice. He was here at te
n-
thirty sharp, and requested a top floor room with a view of the street. He went straight up here after checking in. Didn’t leave after that, as far as I saw.”

“Okay. The coroner will be here shortly, I don’t think there’s a need to get the crime scene unit up here for this one just yet. What’s foot traffic like outside?”

“Non-existent. It’s not the best neighborhood to be in after dark. We usually arrange for transport for our guests. To be quite honest, I don’t know how we stay in business, but people come here from out of town all the time, a lot of them reserving last minute. I guess it’s the low prices. We cut them—” Alain favored Andrea with a quick smile that fell away almost as fast as it had appeared.

From the way his eyes kept returning to the blood, she guessed he was thinking of the cleanup operation this was going to take.

“Are there any other guests who might have had contact with Mr. Kale?”

Burke put a finger to his chin for a couple of seconds, then slowly shook his head. “No, I don’t believe so. The rest of the floor is empty, as are the two beneath us, and our guests tend to keep to themselves.”

“Thanks for your help, Mr. Burke. You can make your official statement with Officer Johnson; it shouldn’t take too long.”

She stood as she spoke and held out her hand, forgetting that she still had a rubber glove on. She brought it back down to her side. Burke’s professional discretion wouldn’t allow him to take offense, she guessed.

He gave Andrea a polite nod instead. Then he handed her a business card from the hotel with the number on the back and instructions to ask for him if she needed any more information, and left the room to talk to Johnson.

Alone no
w,
apart from the late Laurence Kale in the bathroom, Andrea called Cap from her personal phone. “Cap?” she said in a quiet voice, “I’m at the Regent Hotel, and it looks like there’s been one of those incidents we talked about.”

There was a pause. “I have someone in the CSI unit; he should already be there or en route. You hand over any evidence you’ve been able to find to him.”

“Okay,” she said. She bit her lower lip, and a thought came to her. “Cap, who called it in? How did Michaels and his partner find the body?”

“Anonymous call, as far as I know. You wrap it up there and get home. There’s no need to check in at the station now, it’s late.”

She closed her eyes and nodded, the day’s tribulations, the fading adrenaline from her run-in with Michaels downstairs and the receding anger leaving her drained. She thought maybe it would be better to lay some fresh, rested eyes on what was happening instead of continuing on tonight, but asked anyway, “Are you sure, Cap? It’s pretty odd up here.”

“Go home and get some sleep, Nox. You’ll feel better about it in the morning.” Cap hung up.

Andrea shoved the phone back into her pocket and made her way to the elevator. The porter had stayed with Johnson outside the room, finishing his statement before going back downstairs to man the desk. She pressed the button for the ground floor and the gold-tinted doors slid shut, closing out the dark blue carpet. It was the same color as the band that ran through the middle of the walls. It made a strange optical effect as the gap in the doors disappeared as they closed.

*****

She walked across the lobby at a steady pace after the elevator let her out and came outside just in time to see a third car pull up next to hers and the police cruiser across the street. Andrea was still amazed at the quiet on the streets. It seemed like there hadn’t been one car or pedestrian the whole time she had been inside, and there weren’t any around now. The street looked strange and too big in its emptiness.

The man who stepped out of the third car was balding, and had round glasses. They would have suited his face, had they had been pushed up all the way on his nose. For a split second she thought of the investigator who couldn’t wait for her to be discharged before questioning. The one Hynes had reportedly punched in the face.

The car itself had the back converted into a rolling inspection kit, complete with space for a gurney. The newcomer went straight to Michaels, who had stood to meet him after pushing away from his perch on the front of the cruiser.

Andrea watched unseen from the lobby doorway. The man in glasses spoke quietly and quickly to Michaels, whose face turned an angry red before he turned away abruptly and paced a few steps with his hands on his hips. As Andrea started to make her way across the road, she could see Michaels had stopped pacing and was facing away from the man in glasses, nodding.
Getting an earful about drinking on the job
, Andrea thought.
Good for him
.

When she approached the
m,
the man with glasses turned and stuck out his hand, quick and confident. “Glynn Seye
r.
I’m from the crime scene crew. I’m on late call tonight. Don’t worry, Detective, we’ll have this tagged and ready to go. My guess is I can have some preliminary results by tomorrow.”

That’s odd
, she thought. Things usually took a hell of a lot longer than that. Maybe it was an attempt to be cocky in front of a female detective, poorly executed by a man who spends his nights alone with the dead.

She noticed a small cut on the bridge of his nose.

“Sure thing, Seyer. What about the one upstairs?” Andrea pointed with her chin at the building behind her and holding out the wrapped evidence bags from her coat.

Seyer turned to look at Michaels, but only with a slight movement. A suggestion of intent by a minute change in his angle, then he shifted his body imperceptibly back. Andrea, her senses already fired up from the night’s strangeness, caught it, and a faint whisper of doubt flitted across the projection booth of her mind. It felt as if someone was blowing cigarette smoke at the back of her head. She looked at Michaels, who was looking at the body with his back turned to them, hands in his pockets.

“Don’t worry about it, Detective,” Seyer said, grabbing the bags from her outstretched han
d.
“I can rig a harness up for both. You can go and file your report; Officer Michaels and I will manage from here. Pleasure to meet you.”

Seyer was already heading to the back of his converted car van hybrid and opening the doors, when she called out to him. “Hey, Seyer, what happened to your nose, if you don’t mind me asking?”

He turned and grinned, a smile Andrea didn’t care for. “I got into a disagreemen
t.
”

“With who?”

“A colleague. It's nothing serious,” he said, and chuckled a little as he walked back to Michaels and the body.

Nox stood and watched both of them, both standing turned away from her, and then got in her car. She sat with her hands on the wheel for another few seconds, a faint nagging at the back of her mind. It was like a small dog that nipped at your feet and then wasn’t there when you turned to look. She tried to reach for whatever it was, but couldn’t grasp anything. She shook her head and then pulled away from the hotel and its weird, empty neighborhood.