Chapter 15

 

 

Wrap me in leather

Buckle me down in hard lace

Drape me in white

Slap a mask on my face

Tie me down to your cross

Thorn ribbons in my hair

Blood down on my face

Kill me if you dare

—Skywood

 

“WELL, SHIT,” Duarte drawled as he walked past Connor. “You find any more dead bodies, someone would think you owned a mystery bookstore in Pasadena.”

Kiki came up behind her brother, sniffling into a wad of tissue. She waved at Connor with her free hand, then gestured toward her partner. “Fucking asshole gave me his cold.”

Connor frowned, thinking back to how healthy Duarte seemed over the past week. “He didn’t have a cold.”

“Yeah, I know,” she snuffled. “He sidestepped the damned thing. It was his. I know it.”

“And if there was any wonder if Mum’s crazy got to one of us, it’s you, Keeks,” Con replied.

“Morgan! Get your asses over here,” Duarte shouted from the Amp’s open front door. “Both of you!”

Connor kept his stride shallow so his sister could keep up. Kiki shot him an evil look and hastened her step, forcing him to fall in beside her.

“Save me your chivalry, Lieutenant,” she muttered under her breath.

“If you save me from your macho bullshit, Inspector,” Connor shot back and stalled at the door, sweeping into a mocking bow. “After you, sis.”

“I don’t know why I look up to you,” Kiki grumbled but went in first.

“Because you’re really fucking short, Keeks.” He was stopped by Duarte clearing his throat.

“Children,” the man greeted them.

“You need me to walk through what happened, Henry?”

“In a bit,” Duarte said. “Come over here and tell me what you think about the asshole who did this. I want your thoughts. You’ve been knee-deep in this since the beginning.”

“So what, now he’s homicide?” Kiki teased lightly, jabbing at her brother’s ribs. “I thought we just paid his kind to bust heads for us. Now you want him to think? Might catch the building on fire if he sparks that thick skull of his.”

“At some point he’s going to be too old to be rolling through doors,” her partner replied. “Actually, I’m hoping we brainstorm this. Captain’s getting kind of pissed off about this case dragging.”

“Well, it’s connected to Marshall’s murder.” Kiki paced around the edges of the coffee shop. “I think we can safely assume that. The guy’s after Ackerman, but there’s no demands for anything. Does he just have bad luck and keeps missing, or is he just toying with the kid?”

“Forest’s not a kid,” Connor asserted. “Trust me on that one.”

A few feet away, Horan from the coroner’s office was making her initial inspection. The blonde woman spared the Morgans and Duarte a glance. Connor smiled a hello and felt her eyes drop down the length of his body.

“You okay there, Morgan?” She nodded at his thigh.

He looked down at the tear in his jeans, dried blood sticking the ends of torn fabric to his skin. “Nah, I’m okay. Thanks though, Doc.”

“Well, if you need to get stitched up—” She grinned back at him, winking. “—any time.”

Connor looked around, examining the shop’s remains. Amid the organized chaos of forensics and the occasional uniform, he took in the scene, then studied the graffiti painted over the wall. The letters were tall and thick, uneven at the edges and splotchy. The neon paint was a lurid slap of bright against the dull beige plywood, and Connor noticed a tech carefully handling, then bagging, a green-splattered spray can.

The message was ugly, a warning to Forest or maybe just to the world in general. One Down, More To Go definitely wasn’t a love letter, but it didn’t shed any light on who’d slaughtered the contractor.

“He’s tall. Probably a guy.” Connor stretched his hand up, measuring the length of his arm against the height of the letters. “Keeks, come over here so we can compare.”

“We have the lab for that, but sure,” Kiki agreed.

“Wouldn’t hurt to know who we’re looking at.” Duarte gauged the differences between the two siblings’ reaches. “Definitely shorter than Connor—”

“A fucking Balrog is shorter than Connor,” Kiki sniped. “From the looks of things, based on average arm length and all of that shit, this guy’s about six feet tall. About there.”

“Educated. Or at least schooled,” the older man commented, inspecting the letters closer. “Everything’s spelled right. We’ve eliminated Forest, by the way. His financials don’t show a cash layout for insurance, and motivation wasn’t there for the father’s death.”

“Really can’t be Forest. His handwriting’s not this neat.” Connor studied the wall intently. “Guy took his time, like it was really important.”

“Even. Too even.” Connor’s sister lowered her hand. “The lettering anyway. Nothing street about them. More like a font than actual handwriting.”

“But the guy didn’t know how to work a spray can. Look at the runs and splotches. A tagger would know better, even a newbie.” Connor shoved his hands in his pockets. “Chances are he got paint all over his hands. Or gloves. Left the cans behind. Maybe prints?”

“If we’re lucky,” Duarte murmured. “Wouldn’t that be great?”

The urge to step in and pick up evidence was overwhelming. He knew better. Hell, he’d walked past mountains of evidence on raids and never felt the urge to investigate further than he’d had to, leaving the sifting to the clean-up crew. He broke down scenes all the time, working with on-call detectives to close out a case, but this time it was different. This time it was Forest’s life on the line.

“So we’re looking for a tall guy with neon-green hands,” Kiki snorted. “That eliminates the huffers. They go for gold and silver mostly, right?”

“Yeah, those have more toluene,” Connor remarked absently. “So Henry, think we can get hardware stores to tell us who bought two green neon paint cans if we don’t get prints?”

“This ain’t no fucking TV show, Morgan.” Duarte gave him a sarcastic low laugh. “What the hell does this guy have to connect him to Ackerman and Marshall?”

“Think it’s got to be both of them?” Kiki took pictures of the wall with her phone. “Following the money isn’t taking us anywhere. Ackerman’s the sole beneficiary—”

“Yeah, but he doesn’t have a will,” Connor cut in. “His mother—the blonde you’ve got cooling her heels in lockup’s going to get anything Forest has if he dies suddenly. She’s got motive. And she was here.”

“Something doesn’t fit right. Didn’t see any paint on her. Not that we won’t look at her.” Duarte turned to look at the counter where Horan and her crew were delicately removing any evidence connected to the crime scene. “Marshall’s death was pretty clean, but the rest of it—it’s dirty.”

“He might have had time with Marshall. He’s scrambling around here. Marshall’s death wasn’t meant to be the main event,” Connor said softly. “If we shift the focus away from money and onto Forest, it makes more sense. Whoever’s pulling all this shit is doing it to terrorize—specifically Forest.”

“Then—what’s her name? Ackerman’s mother?” The senior inspector frowned and looked at his notes. “Ginger? That her legal name?”

“Yeah,” Kiki replied. “Looks like. They ran her prelim sheet. Ginger’s very well known for being in some pretty wrong places at the wrong times. And she dragged her little boy with her.”

Connor knew what Kiki was saying. From the tone in her voice, it was a subtle way—in true Kiki fashion—of calling out Forest’s own record. He smiled softly at her and said, “I know what’s on his record. We’ve talked about it.”

“And you’re okay with—”

“What I’m not okay with is the fact his mum was out hawking his ass to guys when he should have been doing homework or playing soccer. When’s the first time he got popped? Twelve? Thirteen?” Con rumbled. “And what kind of society is it when we’re arresting kids for hooking? Something—or someone—puts them out there. They’re fucking kids, love. Where the hell where you at twelve, Keeks? ’Cause I can tell you it sure as hell wasn’t out on the streets hoping you’d make enough money to get food.”

“Mum would have had my fucking ass,” she agreed. “Only hooker I knew about was playing Pygmalion with a rich guy who couldn’t drive a Lotus. God, she had great boots.”

“I worry about the education your parents gave you both,” Duarte muttered with a shake of his head. “So let’s do the money thing first, but yeah, this is something about Ackerman. Say his mom is driving the crazy train. She’d have to eliminate Marshall, then knock her own kid off.”

“She’d want to wait so he was declared Marshall’s sole beneficiary.” Kiki chewed on her pen. “But why’d she do all of this shit? She’s his mother. It wouldn’t be hard for her to get him alone. Would it, Con?”

“I don’t know,” Connor admitted. “I didn’t get the feeling they had a lot of contact other than a couple of phone calls. I don’t know if he’d come running if she crooked her finger. He might.”

There’d been a longing in Forest’s face when Con spotted Brigid embracing the drummer. And Brigid hugged Forest as often as she could. She’d taken a deep fondness to him—a quick, fierce affection rivaling even how she felt about her own children. Unlike Miki and Damie, Forest appeared to welcome the attention—warily, as if Brigid might change her mind—but that was something Connor would have expected from him. A kitten bitten by a snake would be afraid of a rope, Connor thought, or even a soft blanket used to keep him warm.

“Seems like we should start off with Ginger.” Duarte began to pick his way out of the coffee shop, carefully stepping around any debris. “I agree with you, Keira. The mother would be able to have gotten this done quicker, so to Con’s point, it’s got to be about rattling Ackerman up. Let’s head back in and see what Ms. Ackerman’s got to say.”

Connor held his hand out to Kiki to help her over a stack of plywood. She slapped his fingers away and stomped over the pile, pushing at him when she made it over. Rolling his eyes, he asked Duarte, “Mind if I sit in to listen?”

“Mind?” Duarte turned to raise a bushy eyebrow at Connor. “I didn’t think I even had a say in the matter.”

 

 

FOREST WAS fucking flying. Hell, they all were. There’d been no stumbling about or fighting to find the beat between them. Within a few seconds of playing, Damien and Miki stopped being rock stars in his head and turned into just another couple of musicians.

And at some point after that—he couldn’t tell when—he felt like he’d been playing with them for years and couldn’t imagine ever not sharing the thread of music with them.

It was a scary thing.

And at the same time, almost better than sex.

Almost, Forest thought. Because sex with Connor was pretty fucking incredible.

Miki acquitted himself well enough on the bass. While Damien was the better overall player, they’d all agreed Miki’s bass skills could hold up—strong enough to let Damie’s fingers fly through complicated lead pieces, leaving Miki to his singing.

And God, Forest had forgotten how damned good Miki St. John sounded. Stripped down to just the three of them, the man still shone, and Forest realized so much of Sinner’s Gin’s success had been just that—a stripped-down rock band with powerful vocals, ripping guitar, and lyrics torn out from the pair’s souls.

When they finally stopped, Forest found his arms were hurting, and he was in sorry need of a shower. Hair plastered down to his face and neck, he dripped and shook from overusing his muscles. He’d tossed his shirt to the floor at some point during the set. It’d gotten damp and stuck to his back as he played, itching in places where it dried against his skin.

Ears ringing but smiling broadly, he bent forward, clenching the drumsticks in his fists, and leaned on his knees.

“Fuck, you’re good,” Miki finally said, shaking his fingers.

If Forest thought he’d been flying before, those three words from Miki’s mouth sent him soaring up into the clouds.

“Thanks,” he replied softly. “And thanks for letting me play. It feels good.”

Damie studied him, a careful assessment of something Forest couldn’t name. The guitarist shook out his own hands, then sucked on one of his fingers. Talking around his hand, he laughed. “Been a long time since I’ve played to blood.”

“Dude,” Forest exhaled the word, catching his breath. “You okay?”

“Yeah, just—been a long time,” Damie replied softly. “And yeah, it feels good. Really fucking good.”

They’d played everything—old blues standards, Sinner’s Gin songs, and even a few things Miki’d written since the accident. A few times, Forest slid in an opinion, replacing a beat or quickening a spot. Miki listened, free of anything even remotely resembling an ego, and changed the music to reflect Forest’s suggestions. At one point, they’d agreed the change didn’t work, but Miki shook his head, insisting it worked—they’d just not found the place for it.

As if something Forest wrote would be used in something Miki hadn’t come up with yet.

“God, I reek.” Forest looked around for his shirt. He needed something to wipe the kit down with.

“Want to grab a shower?” Damie tossed him a shop rag from a bundle he’d opened to use on his guitar. “I can loan you some stuff to change into. We’re about the same size.”

“That’ll be great. Thanks. I—um—should probably call Brigid to see if she can come grab me.” There wasn’t a clock in the studio, and he’d left his phone back in the warehouse. “Do you know what time it is?”

“No fucking clue.” Damie nudged Miki’s shoulder. “And I’m hungry. You guys wanna order something in to eat?”

“Damie dials a mean Thai,” Miki said to Forest. “You like Thai?”

“Yeah.” He made a face. “Actually, I pretty much will eat anything that doesn’t move. I’m not picky.”

“How about if we all go grab showers, and I’ll call some food in.” Damie stretched his arms over his head, and Forest heard his spine crack. “You know what this band needs? Someone who can fucking cook.”

“You know what this band needs?” Miki tossed Forest his shirt from the floor. “A fucking name.”

 

 

“I DON’T know what you’re asking about,” Ginger Ackerman simpered when Senior Inspector Duarte set a cold soda down in front of her. “I went to go see my kid. He owns that place now.”

“What I’m asking you, Ginger,” Kiki replied softly, waiting for the woman to open her diet Sprite and take a sip before continuing. “Is whether or not you’d seen who killed Brian Collerton, the man we found in the coffee shop, and more importantly, what the hell were you doing there?”

“We did find boxes of the Amp’s supplies in your truck, as well as a couple of the higher-end appliances.” Duarte pulled out a chair, positioning it at an angle near the table before sitting down. “Did you come with someone? Did Collerton see you guys, and the person you were with jumped him?”

“I didn’t come with anyone. My kid asked me to help move some of his stuff out because it was expensive.” Ginger smacked her lips after she drank, nervously plucking at her lower lip. “He didn’t want anyone to steal it. I was moving it to a storage place for him.”

“That’s bullshit,” Connor said aloud from his spot behind the one-way glass of the interrogation room’s antechamber. “We even talked about moving it, but the place was locked up tight. The renovation crew was going to move it over to the studio space in a week. Why the hell would he pay for that stuff to be in storage?”

“That, my brother, is what we inspectors like to call a lie,” Kane informed him, crossing his arms over his chest as he listened in on the discussion. “Kind of like what Mum does when she says you’re pretty.”

Reflected in the glass, Connor was struck by how similar he and his younger brother looked. Only a couple of years separated them, but while they’d been growing up, those few years seemed like such a chasm. Now, he had to double take when he saw Kane—always a little bit surprised to find the scrawny, clumsy young boy’d become a wide-shouldered, tall man.

Glancing at Kane, Connor noted he was still taller—if only by a couple of inches.

Straightening up, Connor squared his shoulders. “I know what a lie is. I grew up hearing you do it.”

“I learned it from you, brother,” Kane shot back. “I learned it all by watching you.”

“You’d think you’d be better at it,” Con muttered, but his attention was on the woman Kiki was questioning.

It was odd to see a woman—an older, dried-out woman—having the same gestures as his lover. Forest played with his lower lip when thinking, and sometimes when he needed time to gather his words, his fingers tapped along the table, much like Ginger was doing at that moment. And while the brittleness in her son was evident in Ginger, there was also a cloying, manipulative air about her, as if she were waiting for the chance to gut the person next to her because she knew the going rate for a black-market kidney.

He couldn’t imagine having the reaching, grasping woman as a mother, and Connor made a mental note to send Brigid flowers or chocolates as soon as he could. Still, she was fascinating to watch, her behavior going from outraged to submissive, oftentimes within the space of a second. One thing was for certain, Ginger had a loose grasp on reality and an even looser grasp on the truth, because Kiki and Duarte kept having to circle around her and hammer at her story, breaking apart every supposed fact she trotted out.

They were taking a break in the actual questioning. Instead, Duarte was pulling out photo after photo of the crime scene, asking Ginger to take a good look at what was going on in the main room when she supposedly was helping her son move his shop’s equipment. Ginger looked at the pictures with an impassive stare, nothing registering on her face as photo after photo was placed on the table.

She asked to go to the bathroom, and the partners conversed a bit. It was an old trick used by people familiar with being dragged in by the cops. Still, Kiki motioned for Ginger to stand up, and there was a mild grumbling about being shackled up again, but the woman acquiesced. Duarte was left cooling his heels, and the brothers returned to their conversation.

“Your guy came out surprisingly well, considering he crawled out of that,” Kane said softly. “And that’s not something I thought I’d ever say in my lifetime. How’re you doing with that? The gay thing.”

“We’re going to do this here?” Con asked, sliding a look at his brother.

“Might as well. They’re sitting down for a game of let’s play shake the lying witness right now,” Kane remarked. “Really, just quick. Tell me how you’re doing, and I’ll leave it be for a bit.”

“I’m doing—okay,” he admitted slowly. “It’s kind of a punch to the teeth sometimes, but honestly, I fucking can’t imagine him not being there. He feels good—feels right, even. I love him. It isn’t even a question—between us, it just is. I don’t know if I can explain it.”

“You don’t have to. I know exactly what you mean.”

“Yeah,” Connor murmured, thinking of how Kane’s eyes lit up when Miki walked into the room. “You do.”

“People giving you shit at work?” Kane studied his brother. “You giving yourself shit too?”

“Little of both.” It was hard to admit, but Connor owned up to the qualms eating at the edges of his belly. “Some asshole put a pair of panties in my locker. Shoved them through the slats but wasn’t man enough to come confront me.”

“Asshole is right.”

“Gotta tell you, brother.” Connor turned and leaned his shoulder against the glass, crossing his arms over his chest. “It hurt a bit. I don’t know who did it. I told my team directly. They’re all fine with it, but someone on the squad’s got some shit. I don’t want to have to worry about who’s got my back when I’m going in under fire.”

“And you can’t say shit without looking like some whiny bitch,” Kane snorted, then grew serious. “How are you doing with it?”

“I talk a lot to God,” he admitted. “I make deals, mostly. Begging him to let me have patience. To help me convince Forest we’re good together. We’ve gotten to be good friends, me and God. It feels like it happened so fast, and Forest—God, he needs to be loved. I worry I’ve forced him into this, but when he looks at me, I can see he cares—shit, I make him smile. I don’t think he’s smiled a lot before. He’s under my skin, K, and I’m just going to run with it. Put my arms around him and never let go.”

“You’ve known him for months now. Not that quick, really. Gotta admit, you seemed to have gotten the easier one,” Kane teased. “Less wild than mine.”

“Miki’d chew your face off if you piss him off,” he grunted. “Forest’s more… mellow. He’s not a pushover, but more like he’d rather flow around things. Honestly, that woman in there didn’t do him any fucking favors, but he’s—strong. In his own way. He’s more like water—most of the time, like a gentle rain, but then when pushed, it’s like drinking from a fire hose. Tear your lips off if you get too close.”

“Mum adores him.” Kane laughed. “Said she was finally glad she got a son-in-law in her corner instead of Da’s. You’d think it was a competition or something.”

“Hard to live up to a man like Da,” Con replied gently. “Trust me. I know.”

Kiki returned with their prisoner and sat Ginger down. While they were gone, the senior inspector’d laid out all the photos he had of Collerton’s murder as well as the other victims. The table was washed in death and blood. Ginger visibly recoiled when seated in front of the collage. Duarte cleared his throat, and the Morgans’ attention snapped back to the room as Ginger’s agitation rose.

“I don’t know what happened to the guy!” Ginger growled out. “I was in the back. Okay? I just got there, and then I heard some screaming, so I hid.”

“It would have taken you at least half an hour to get this stuff into the truck,” he pointed out. Duarte tapped at a photo of a truck, its bed partially full with sloppily boxed supplies. “Now, either you had help and someone cut fifteen minutes of that, or you were there a hell of a lot longer than a few minutes. That tells me if you heard screaming, it had to have started while you were ripping your own son off. Let me tell you what I think happened, and I’m cutting you slack on this, Ginger, because I’m going to assume you are telling me the truth and were alone, got it?

“You knew Forest wasn’t going to be around. He’s been staying with a friend while he recovers, so you thought maybe now was a good time to help yourself to a few things in the shop. Maybe you thought he owed you—hell, Marshall probably owed you because you let him have the kid when he asked to adopt Forest. You had it coming to you,” Duarte said.

“Reasonable,” Kiki interjected. “But see, I’d say she heard Collerton come in and hid then, because she didn’t want him to catch her shaking the place down. Am I right? Did you hide when you heard him come in?”

“I thought someone was going to rip the place off—”

“Someone was already ripping the place off, Ginger. That was you,” Duarte pointed out. “But you came in the back door—probably because you got a key from someplace and you guessed the alarm would be off. No one turns on an alarm when the building’s been beat up. Stuff falling, plywood instead of windows—none of the glass connections were working anyway, so the alarm would have kept bumping up with alerts. You knew they’d be off.”

“Marshall gave me a key.” The woman shifted. “I—”

“Let’s say Marshall gave you a key. For whatever reason he’d give you a key,” Kiki said. “And even if Forest did say, hey, Mom, come help me move some stuff, why didn’t you call the police when you heard a man screaming in the front of the shop? You had your phone on you.”

“I didn’t think—” Ginger’s eyes shifted, bouncing between the detectives. “You’re confusing me.”

“Why didn’t you leave out the back? You’ve seen Collerton. He didn’t die easy. You were sitting there and listening to it. Unless you were helping. Maybe it was you who’d spotted Collerton and knew he’d IDed you.” Kiki leaned in. “Is that why you’re covering up for who helped you out? Because the guy who came with you killed for you; then he split? Is all of this on the walls just to cover it up? And then you hid when you heard the door opening again? Or maybe you were scared your friend was coming back for you?”

“I didn’t kill anyone! Fuck, the guy was already there when I showed up. The fucking back door key wasn’t working, and I went to the front. It was already open!” Her lips peeled back from her teeth, and Ginger snarled at Kiki from across the table. “He was already there.”

“So no screaming, then. No opening doors. No one else coming in. Just the cop who caught you red-handed.” Duarte stood up from the table, letting out an exasperated breath. “You walked past a dead man and thought what? Time to go rip my son off? Nothing else? No worries about the man’s life? His family?”

“He was already dead,” she sneered. “Who the fuck cares about that? Not like he was going to get any deader while I was in the back. I was going to call the cops when I was done.”

“See, that’s how I know you weren’t there to help your kid, Ginger.” Kiki’s snarl shoved Ginger back in her chair. “A decent person would have stopped worrying about storing equipment and called for help. A thief would just continue stealing. That’s why you’re being arrested, you piece of shit. For whatever we can pin on you.”

“I want my fucking lawyer,” Ginger screamed at Duarte. “I want my fucking lawyer, and I want someone to call my damned kid. He’ll bail me out. You’ll fucking see, and he won’t press any goddamned charges—”

“See, I don’t need your son to press charges, Ginger,” Duarte said, calmly flicking a bit of lint from his jacket. “You were caught breaking and entering by an SFPD officer, in addition to having already discovered a murder victim and doing nothing. If we can show there was a speck of life in Brian Collerton at any time you were in that shop, I’m going to nail you for accessory to murder. Because you did nothing.”

“You can’t—” Ginger sputtered. “Look, my kid—”

“Might as well start hoping he’ll even pick up the phone when you call, Ginger,” Kiki said as she gathered up the crime scene photos. “Because really, what kind of mother walks past a dying man just to fuck over her own son?”