Ambush (Michael Bennett #11)(51)

“Good boy!” I said in the high-pitched voice he loved.

Nothing like a little dog therapy.

I stopped after a moment but stayed on my haunches while I smoked and thought. Clyde gave me his pitiful look.

“Later, buddy. I can’t think and scratch at the same time.”

He huffed and rested his head on his outstretched legs.

I’d learned a few things. Kane’s killer wasn’t homeless, whatever the Denver PD might think. And I’d be willing to bet he wasn’t Muslim, either. My guess was the tattoo was another distraction, on top of the homeless ploy.

What I couldn’t figure out was why the Alpha would go to such lengths to kill Kane in public when it required so much subterfuge. There would be a hundred ways to murder Kane quietly. Maybe even in a way that didn’t look like murder.

I wondered if the Alpha was sending someone a message. Or making a point.

I had two things to hope for. That Taft’s analyst would find some possible matches to the Pushman. And that whoever had caught Kane’s attention long enough to cause him to keep his back to his killer would give me a lead.

I ran over the names again in my mind. Laura Almasi. Sonia Lopez Martinez. Kenneth Riley Napierkowski. Leroy Parker. Thomas Wilson.

Nothing shook out. Maybe it would once we had more information about them.

I finished smoking and stubbed out the cigarette on the ground. I pocketed the butt and stood, stretching out the kinks in my back. Clyde watched me through one eye, waiting to see if we were really going anywhere.

Overhead, puffs of clouds wafted by. Traffic rumbled on the nearby road. The roots of the trees around us had broken through the concrete, creating a series of cracks in the asphalt.

“It’s like a ball of yarn,” I said to Clyde. “We’ll just keep pulling on threads, seeing where they take us. But why do I feel like there’s a bomb ticking at the center of this particular ball of yarn?”

Clyde yawned. Perspective.

“Yeah, I know. All in a day’s work for you. Let’s go, boy.”

We were thirteen hours in.





CHAPTER 13

Sometimes you have to define yourself outside the expectations of the system.

—Sydney Parnell. Personal journal.

“You want what?”

Detective Bill Gorman gaped at me across the restaurant table. He had a beer bottle halfway to his mouth, his hand paused in midair as if someone had shouted “Freeze!” during a game of statue.

I repeated myself, but spoke more slowly this time.

“I want to help with the investigation,” I said. “I know a lot of the homeless. If Kane’s killer is really living on the street, I have a shot at finding him. Just bring me up to speed so I’ve got some background.”

“Yeah?” Gorman’s hand finished its trajectory, and he took a swig. “I already talked to every ‘person without residence’ in a two-mile radius of Union Station. Half swear they know the guy, half swear he’s never been around. And all the bastards want money to talk.”

Act like a dick, it’s what you get back. “Can’t hurt for me to try, right?”

We were sitting at an upstairs table at the Irish. I’d called Gorman an hour ago, reminded him who I was, and offered to buy him a late lunch and a beer. He’d told me he was buried with the Kane case, but agreed he did have to eat.

The Irish was a police hangout, but right now we had the upper floor to ourselves. This time of day fell in that no-man’s-land between the end of the lunch rush and the start of happy hour. Seemed like Gorman was willing to sneak up on happy hour. I was happy to oblige.

The light was dim, and the only sounds were piped-in Celtic tunes and an occasional bang from the kitchen downstairs.

Could be that today it was extra quiet because the air conditioner was on the fritz. Bill Gorman’s face was shiny with sweat. He’d shed his suit coat and rolled up his sleeves. Under his arms, damp darkened his light-blue button-down.

Gorman was in his late fifties, but my guess was he’d started going to seed years back. The softening came from within, like an apple left too long in the bin. Still nice and shiny on the outside, but it gave under a gentle squeeze.

The flat expanse of his square face and heavy jaw was just this side of a caricature of a 1940s screen idol a few decades past his prime. Thick black hair swept back from his forehead in a flourish. His teeth were commercial-grade white. He even had a dimple in his chin. It was the eyes that ruined the effect—they were small and speculative.

He jerked his chin toward my face. “What happened?”

“Racquetball. So about Kane . . .”

“Shame to see a shiner on a pretty face.”

“The case,” I said.

He sighed. “Look, Cohen told me I should talk to you, but I don’t have much to share.”

“Start with what isn’t in the papers.”

“There’s nothing.”

I narrowed my eyes. “Nothing?”

He shrugged and spread his meaty fingers apart, as if to prove he wasn’t hiding anything. “Asshole’s a white rabbit who popped up out of nowhere, then disappeared down his rabbit hole. Nothing useful on the cameras. Knife was the kind sold by every damn sporting-goods store in the city. Witnesses got nothing to add to what the cameras caught. And I already told you how it went with the tramps.”