The Darkness Inside Us (A Detective King Suspense Thriller) (A Detective King Novel Book 3) (14 page)

“Sure thing,” she answers and I’m immediately put on hold, listening to soft violins playing as I make my way back toward Parker High, hoping that it’s near there. “Hey, Steven, I’ve got that number here for you.” She tells me the number and I write it down on my wrist while trying to drive and talk on the cellphone successfully. I’m not the best example of an officer of the law, but sadly I’m probably better than most. I’m on to something big. This is my chance. This is my one chance to do what’s right, to stop this thing once and for all, to break the cycle. “Thanks for everything, Penny,” I say to her with an excited tone. “I’ll talk to you soon.”

“Good luck, Steven,” she says to me before ending the call.

Immediately, I dial the number to Goliath and wait until someone finally picks up the phone with a bored and annoyed sounding voice that makes me want to hang up after apologizing for waking them up from hibernation. “My name is Detective Steven King, I need to speak with the manager of your restaurant, it’s vitally important.”

“Is this some kind of prank?” the woman asks me. “You got the name just like the writer, Stephen King?”

“Manager, ma’am,” I remind her. “I need to talk to your manager right away.”

“Alright, hang on,” the woman says before putting me on hold where I’m left to listen to Elvis.

It’s a moment before a man answers the phone and states that his name is Art Derby and that he’s the manager of Goliath. “My name is Detective Steven King,” I inform him just like I informed the woman. “I would be interested in knowing if you’d be willing to help with an investigation to catch a murderer who has made reservations with your restaurant today.”

“Certainly,” the man says after a moment, a worried and terrified tone takes over his original, professional tone and I’m glad to hear it. People who are scared are more willing to do what’s right when dealing with the police. He won’t lock up and demand that a lawyer speak with him first. “We don’t take reservations, but I’ll happily help the police with anything they need.”

“This evening, a group will be dining in your restaurant,” I inform him. “They’ll be under the name Debra Connelly and they’ll be having somewhere around six people in their party. I need them to be seated in an isolated area and the rest of your guests need to be seated close to exits so that they can be evacuated at a moment’s notice. The suspect we’re hoping to capture will not be armed, but we don’t want to cause a scene that might damage your establishment’s reputation.”

“Certainly,” the man answers again. “We’ll gladly help.”

“Thank you for your cooperation,” I tell the manager. “There will be a representative from the police department contacting you with further information. We’ll speak again soon. Once more, my name is Detective Steven King if you need it.”

I hang up on the manager before he can say anything else and I toss my phone into the passenger seat, grinning like a wolf over a kill. I’m going to catch this bastard. I’m going to catch him and I’m going to end this once and for all.

XVI

I knock on his door and I can’t help but feel like I’m a student who is standing in front of the principal’s office, waiting to be told that he’s been kicked out for bad behavior. He looks up from his desk, his dark eyes looking at me with the perfect veneer to hide whatever it is that he’s thinking. I feel like I should have brought him a bottle of something to help smooth things over, but there was no time for that. The clock is ticking and we need to start mobilizing if I’m going to get anything done besides opening fire on a bunch of teachers at a restaurant.

“King,” Mendez says with a gruff tone in his voice. Clearly, he’s not surprised to see me, but he’s not happy about it either. It’s almost like he’s been sitting around, expecting me to rear my head eventually to talk about what’s transpired so far with this botched investigation. “Come on in, I was just thinking about you.”

“Thank you, Chief,” I say to him, dropping down on one of his hard, awkward leather chairs across from where he’s seated at his desk. His office has always been dark, something about the gloom makes him more productive. I look at him and know he’s going to be happy to see me go and today probably won’t change his opinion for the better.

“I was hoping you’d come in here of your own free will,” he says to me after clearing his throat and pushing his paperwork aside. “I didn’t want to have to call you in or drag you in here kicking and screaming. It’s good to see you’re not like some of these others out there. You’re old school and I respect that about you—always have.”

“I’m glad,” I tell him. “I know that I should have called you about the Parker High incident, but there wasn’t time, Chief. I needed to act and I needed to get to Alice Walker before anything could happen to her. Unfortunately, she spooked and ended up killing herself before I could restrain her.”

“You’re damn right you should have called me,” Mendez half-growls across the desk at me, clearly waiting to let that out for a while now. “Alice Walker’s parents are pushing to have charges placed against you for maliciously inciting a suicide. I don’t know what that means and the lawyers assure me that it’s bogus crap that won’t stick, but all together, a lawsuit is not something this department needs right now, not of the magnitude that this case is. But I want to know why the hell you didn’t think there was time to call me. I could have called the principal, the fucking school board, hell, I could have even gotten the mayor on board with this in the time it took for you to go Rambo on that school. I could have sent backup, instead I got a call from some uniform, telling me that I have a detective being held by the FBI as a suspect in all of this.”

“I know,” I tell him. “Honestly, I’m sorry. It wasn’t supposed to fall through like that.”

“But more importantly,” Mendez clears his throat. “The FBI are now watching you. They’re building a whole case around how Detective King is the wolf hiding in sheep’s clothing. Again, that shit isn’t going to stand up on its own, but if they’re looking at you, then that means they’re not looking elsewhere for this killer. Now, I’ve got our best out there, chasing leads, tossing up facts to the FBI to try and get them off of you, but they’re not buying it. They think that you’re some kind of ringleader or informant to the real killers, even though they have a whole school full of eyewitnesses that say otherwise. So now I have internal affairs breathing down my neck asking a whole bunch of questions about what I know about your activities and whereabouts. You know they had a crew in here last night going through your computer and desk? Thankfully you’re so damn scared of technology that they didn’t find a goddamn thing, but I don’t need any of this. You hear me? You were supposed to mop up paperwork and get out of here and into retirement without a single chirp.”

“Believe me,” I tell him, shaking my head, “I want nothing more than that, but right now, it’s not an option.”

“Clearly,” Mendez fires back. “So I want to know what it is you think that we should be doing right now, you and I. Should I kick your ass into suspension for the rest of your day, until we cut the cake and say happy retirement, or do we need to do something a little more proactive, because I’m willing to take it easy on you, on account that your daughter is a target for this fucker? It’s not much of a reason, let alone an excuse, but it’s enough for internal affairs to roll their eyes and shrug at. So what do you want me to do with you, King? What’s next from here?”

“I want you to give me SWAT, a strike team of my own choosing, and your blessing to raid a restaurant near Parker High School so that I can catch this bastard once and for all,” I tell him bluntly and mercilessly. He stares at me with a calm, detached look on his face that is clearly questioning everything that he just heard, but there it is. I need his help and that’s what I need from him right at this moment. That’s what I want to do from here.

“You got some kind of information that I don’t know about, King?” Mendez asks me with a baffled look on his face.

“I do,” I tell him honestly, but that’s all he’s getting out of me.

“So why haven’t you passed this along to the FBI?” Mendez presses.

“Because they’d believe it just about as much as any other lead right now,” I tell him. “I know that the killer is going to be at Goliath restaurant this evening with a group of teachers, because he tried luring my daughter out of hiding and to that little rendezvous earlier today. I know that he’s going to strike. I know that this is the best opportunity that we’ve got. I know I have to keep my daughter safe, and that she’s the bait. But I also know that I need help on this. If I wasn’t sure about it as much as I am, then I wouldn’t be coming to you, Chief. I would go rogue again and do this my way, but I need help. This is our one shot and I need to hit the bull’s eye. I need to do this for my daughter.”

Mendez looks at me, pondering the words I’ve just said. He’s an asshole, test-taking douche, but even he has a heart. He looks at me with eyes that are studying everything right now, from the electricity in the air to the weight of the words that I just threw down on his desk, and I’m not confident that he’s going to pick them up and take them home with him. I’m well out of the frying pan and definitely deep in the fire, but he can pull me out any second if he wants to. I know that he has it in him and I’m taking a play right out of my daughter’s playbook. I’m going to go out on a leap of faith right now. I’m going to hope for the best and I pray to whatever god is out there, that I don’t splatter all across the ground reaching for something that isn’t there.

“What exactly do you want?” Mendez asks me.

“I want a strike team composed of officers of my choosing,” I tell him. “I don’t have the names right now, but I can get them with one phone call. I want to use my team to seed the restaurant’s staff members and wait for the killer and his party to arrive. When they arrive, I want those under my command to engage them and escort them out into the parking lot where they will enter a prisoner transport van and return back here to the precinct. When they arrive, I want each of them placed into their own individual cells. From there, I’ll identify who the killer is.”

“That’s a tall order.” Mendez looks at me with a discerning expression. “The FBI are watching you like jackals watching an injured wildebeest. If you get my blessing, then you’ve got to do all of this without me or anyone else knowing. Can you do that? The less anyone knows the better. We can’t answer to what we don’t know.”

“I’ve got people I can trust,” I tell him.

“Then you better get your ass on it and quickly,” Mendez tells me and I can feel my heart starting to take wing. “I’ll call the restaurant and smooth over any concerns that the manager and owner might have. The paperwork will have to wait. You get your team gathered and get them into position as quickly as possible.” I rise from the chair and nod to him. I’ve got a lot of work to do, but I feel confident about all of this. “King,” Mendez calls me back as I make my way out the doorway. I look at him and he has a grave expression on his face. “This is your last play, your last shot, and your last chance. If this goes tits up, then there’s nothing I can do for you. You understand me?”

“I do,” I nod to him.

“Good luck,” he says for his farewell and I actually appreciate the gesture. Maybe he’s not as big of a douche as I’ve thought all this time.

Making my way through the bullpen, I look at all of the disgruntled faces, disappointed with me and annoyed that I’m still here. I don’t blame them. Their disliking of me is totally and completely justified and I’ve had it coming for a long time, but I’m not willing to go out on this note. I’m going to rise to the occasion and I’m going to put this asshole in the ground. Thankfully, I’m not alone in this. I’m going to have others there with me that are more than willing to help.

Dropping down into my desk, I notice that everything is askew and wrong, the internal affairs boys definitely didn’t do their cleanest work here and I’m pretty certain that a blind man would know that they’d been here. I pull out my phone and look up Owens’s number and hit the call button. He’s the first person that I need to talk to. If I’m going to get a group mobilized in the next four hours and briefed on what we’re going to do, then I’m going to need his extensive network of vigilantes. If anything, they’ll be waiting for the call already. If I know Owens, they’ve all been eagerly snapping at a piece of the action for a long time now and I’m about to give it to them.

“King, give me something good,” Owens answers his phone in his usual attitude. I wonder if this man ever has an off switch.

“I’ve got something in the works and I’m going to need bodies,” I tell him bluntly. “I don’t mean a few bodies, Owens. I’m going to need twenty bodies or maybe even more. Can you get me enough people? Half of them are going to need to be in their civvies and going under cover for this operation. Tell me if this sounds like something you’re capable of getting done.”

“How about I get you thirty?” Owens fires back with gusto. “Give me specifics here, King. What are we dealing with?”

“I talked to Kelly after I left the scene.” I try to spin everything that’s happened so far with the light that we’re still chasing a real, living killer now and not some spectral entity that no one is going to comprehend. “She said that one of the teachers at her school contacted her and asked if she could take her out to dinner as a sort of show of support for her mother’s death. Kelly told me that it sounded suspicious and that there’s nothing that would really make her want to go to that sort of thing. So when I asked her a bit more about it, Susan Larsen was listed as one of the people going to the gathering. So I think the killer’s next victim is going to be meeting Kelly there.”

“So you think the killer’s going to be in the group?” Owens tries to cut through the details to find the core of what interests him. “Or do you think the killer is going to show up?”

“Doesn’t matter,” I tell him. “We know that the next victim is going to be in that group of people. So if we can get the killer’s next victim, then the pattern’s broken. The killer won’t have anyone else to go after and we’ve won his sick little fucking game. If we’re lucky, we might even get him on the way.”

“So you just want to round up a bunch of teachers and hope that the killer launches an assault on the precinct? Is that what I’m getting here?” Owens asks me.

“You got a better idea?” I ask him, feeling frustrated that he’s not entirely behind this. What more does he have going on that he can’t help perform a little sting operation?

“No, it’s a fucking brilliant idea,” Owens laughs. “Me and the boys will be loitering around the lobby the rest of the week, hoping that this fucker shows up. But what if he doesn’t? What if he moves on to another victim?”

“I don’t think he will, Owens,” I tell him. “It’s not the pattern. It’s not the killer’s style. He’s never given up or changed targets. Once we break the cycle, I think that he’s going to be done. I’m hoping that the dumb son of a bitch turns himself in.”

“If that’s the case,” Owens clears his throat and I can hear him spitting on the other end, “then he’s going to meet a couple of assholes who owe me a few favors in prison.”

“I wouldn’t expect anything less from you,” I tell him. “Get me ten bodies in civilian clothes, and the rest need to be here at the precinct in two hours, ready to go. I want you with them, Owens. I’m not doing this without you.”

“I wouldn’t miss it for the world,” Owens laughs on the other end. “If that asshole is there, I’m sure he’s going to try to make a move.”

“That’s why I need multiple bodies,” I tell him. “Get your ass here pronto.”

“See you there, King,” Owens says for his farewell, and I listen as the phone goes silent.

I’m not done yet though. I’ve still got one more call to make and I look up Lola’s number and hit the call button. I know that we can get the van down in parking and that transport isn’t going to have a problem with it. There’s only one more aspect of all of this that’s going to need to be cleared up. I need Lola’s help for that. It’ll be easier if a pair of legs and tits goes down to finish the final segment of the plan.

“Steven, are you alright?” Lola answers the phone and I wonder what it is exactly she thinks that I do for a living. I’m pretty sure that she pictures me jumping out of airplanes and getting into firefights the majority of the time that I’m not there with her.

“I’m fine, Lola,” I tell her, trying to hide my frustration with the question. “What are you doing right now?”

“I’m clocking out,” she tells me. “I’ve got to get home and get some rest, unless you need my help with anything.”