Chapter Two
Not These Guys Again
The door to his bedroom flew open and Amber burst in like a furious whirlwind.
“August, I swear to God, if you don’t start bringing your phone into the bedroom with you when you go to sleep…” Amber trailed off and hurled his ringing phone at his head. Instinctively, his arm reached up and caught it before it could do any damage, even before he opened his eyes.
“You don’t believe in God,” August muttered sleepily, glancing at the still-chiming cell. He yawned and looked at the time before taking the call.
“Silas,” he mumbled, sitting up to rub his eyes. “Hope this means someone’s dead.”
Sergeant Walker snorted at his dry greeting. “Sorry. I know you’ve got an early day tomorrow but we need you at a club in Milwaukee. There’s been a shooting. One injury.”
“No deaths?” August yawned again.
“Silas…”
“Text me the address, Sarge.”
He disconnected the call and flopped back against the pillows, stretching against the coolness of the sheets leisurely.
For a minute, he felt his body sinking back into the comfort of his new mattress, but he stopped himself before falling asleep.
No rest for the wicked, he reminded himself, pulling himself out of the bed as his cell chimed again with the address he’d requested. It wasn’t like he was at his real house anyway. There was a reason he’d selected such a crappy apartment, after all. It was easier for him to drag himself out of bed.
“Oh, come on!” his sister yelled when August padded back out and flipped on all the lights in his wake. “You promised you were on days! What is this crap?”
“And you promised you would work things out with Sal and would get the hell off my couch, but here we are,” August replied easily, reaching for the coffee pot. “When are you going, by the way? Seriously, it’s been two weeks. I’m getting sick of seeing you every day. I had enough of that in childhood. And childhood was long… very long.”
The mere memory of sharing a room with Amber made him shudder.
Hell is teenaged girls, he decided many moons ago.
Amber groaned and pulled the pillow over her head to block him out.
“YOU PROMISED YOU WERE ON DAYS!” she shrieked through the muffle of the pillowcase. August grinned lazily and turned back to his coffee, enjoying the anguish he was causing his sister.
It was commonplace, after all. Amber would get into some ridiculous fight with her husband, “leave him” for a few days and inevitably go back. The couple thrived off drama, after all. At first, August had tried to be understanding but Amber was becoming a bigger pain in his ass than he wanted to admit.
And two weeks is overkill. I’m going to have to speak with Sal and get this resolved before I kill her.
“Want some coffee?” he yelled loudly, ensuring she didn’t fall back asleep. It didn’t seem fair that she should get comfortable when he was in pain.
The pillow fell off Amber’s face and she glared at him with defiant blue eyes, not unlike his.
“It’s one o’clock in the morning!” she griped. “Of course not!”
“Oh. Yeah,” August replied sweetly. “It is. Look at that.”
He continued to stomp about the kitchen, making more noise than necessary.
Detective August Silas had long since learned to roll with the punches of all-hours calls in the ever-bustling city of Chicago, so he wasn’t annoyed about being roused from sleep even though he really did have a daunting task at seven a.m.
I’d rather deal with a club shooting than what I have to do on tomorrow’s day shift.
Still, misery did love company, particularly when it was that of his siblings.
“I’m thinking about getting a dog,” August told her conversationally as if Amber was engaging with him. He watched her head pop up and her eyes grow huge with disgust.
“Like a Boxer or a Rotti. I love their little faces and I’ve been spending some time in the canine unit—”
“Okay, I get it!” she burst out as August glided back toward his bedroom to dress. “I’ll go home tomorrow!”
He paused and looked at her around the corner, blinking. “So soon?”
August knew the pillow was coming for his head before Amber knew to throw it.
He padded back into his room to dress in a pair of wrinkled pants and matching shirt as the linen hit the wall where he had been standing seconds before.
Laundry. I’ve got to do laundry, he reminded himself, yawning as he peered at himself in the mirror. Sometimes he wondered how he managed to do it all and still keep his sanity.
Through the bleak light of the table lamp, he studied his attractive reflection with half-interest, his mind already on the shooting at Portia, a speakeasy which had been the hotspot of activity in the past.
Damned club district. Who are these people who want to go out and spend hundreds of dollars in two hours to sweat with strangers?
Even in the wildest part of his youth, August couldn’t think of a worse way to spend a weekend than out clubbing.
But August Silas had never been like other men his age. The shadow in his cobalt-blue eyes still reflected the seriousness he had possessed in his youth and even though he had learned to take life with a grain of salt, there was still a weight in August he couldn’t escape.
And you never will.
He ran a hand through his short-cropped, black hair and located his badge, sliding it around his neck so that it hung against the buttons of his shirt. Even without checking the weather app on his phone, he knew the night was warm, despite the fact that it was late September.
We’re having an Indian summer. All the crazies are out with their guns and stupidity, drinking in clubs and waving their dicks around to show who’s tougher. Just another night in Chicago.
With a sigh, August turned to leave the apartment, noting that Amber had fallen back asleep on the couch.
He slammed the door loudly, the sound reverberating through the apartment.
After all, I may not get to torment her again this week, he thought, snickering.
~ ~ ~
Really? Don’t these kids have to work in the morning? It’s Sunday night, for Christ’s sake.
August shook his head and exited the driver’s side of the sedan to approach the police tape. He ducked under it and addressed the officer.
“Detective,” one of the officers guarding the scene said, nodding as he slipped by.
“Officer,” August replied, stifling a yawn. He definitely needed another coffee. He couldn’t stop yawning.
He made his way down the steps through the throng of panicked-looking party-goers almost indifferently. In his ten years on the force, he’d been to more of these shootings than he could count and the stricken looks meant little to him unless they belonged to those of the victims themselves.
That’ll learn you to go out and dance with strangers, he thought and instantly cringed.
And I sound like someone’s wartime grandpa. When did I become that guy?
“Ah. There you are.” His partner shook his greying head and grunted as he nodded toward the bloodstained floor near the forensics team.
“You have this under control,” August grunted. “What do you need me for?”
It was a joke but Harley wasn’t smiling.
“I hate this place,” the older detective muttered. “There’s always something going on around here.”
“Chicago or this particular club?” August chirped, trying to coax a smile from Harley’s stoic expression.
“Both. But I was talking about the club,” he barked back, still unable to crack a grin. August shrugged his shoulders.
“If it’s not this one, it’s another half dozen on this block,” August reminded him. “You’re better off just hating the entire city.”
That comment finally warranted a smirk from Harley’s pressed lips.
“What’ve we got?” August asked, craning his neck around to survey the scene.
“Nothing really. My guess is a drug deal gone south but no one saw anything and the cameras didn’t get a good angle of the shooter’s face.”
“No one?” August pursed his own lips together and looked about. They weren’t in a place where the party-goers would be scared silent and it certainly wasn’t known for gang violence. It seemed odd that nobody had seen anything.
Of course, if it was done at close range and everyone around was high and drunk…
“How badly hurt was the victim?” August wanted to know. He hadn’t seen a live ambulance outside, indicating that he had already been taken to the hospital.
“Meh. He’ll live but he’s not talking either. Dumb-ass kids.”
August laughed and nodded in agreement.
“Lemme take a look at those cameras. What do you want to bet we know our perp?” August looked up and Harley pointed toward the office where a familiar face stood speaking with a uniformed officer.
“In these parts? It’s probably a college kid who got in over his head. I’ll take your bet.”
“Fifty?”
“Done.”
“Which one is that one? Andy or Louie?” August asked, looking at the oily-looking man in a pinstripe suit.
And then we have these millennial club owners, thinking they’re gangsters from the 30s, wasting their daddy’s money.
August loathed the man on sight.
“Louis. Andrew’s in the office, probably hiding all his smack.”
August nodded and made his way over to the club owner, steeling himself for being talked in circles.
“Louis,” August said cordially. “How are you?”
He waved the uniform away and watched the greasy Wayland brother shrivel slightly at his replacement.
“Detective… uh, sorry, I’ve forgotten your name.”
“Silas. I was here when that underage girl got stabbed and again when you had those three overdoses in one night, remember?”
August gave him a bright smile which didn’t mask the malice glimmering in the cop’s eye.
Louis paled. “Yeah,” he muttered. “I remember, but you know none of those things were my fault, right? I mean—”
“I need to take a look at those tapes. Are they in there?” August interjected as if he couldn’t hear Louis speaking.
“The security footage? Yeah, but I gotta tell you, Detective, whoever did this isn’t a regular. I would have recognized him—”
“Spare me the BS, Lou. I just want to see the tapes. I’ll pass along your cooperative nature to the ADA.”
“The ADA? This is just an unfortunate event! There’s no reason to bring charges—”
“An unfortunate event?” August lost the pretense of niceness, his head whipping around to glower at him. “A shooting, a stabbing and overdoses does not add up to a series of unfortunate events, Louis. It shows that there’s something going on beneath the surface here, something that says you pride money over the safety of your patrons. Someone, somewhere is going to do something about this.”
Louis’ face was nearly opaque and he started to protest, but August wasn’t about to waste time listening to his words.
In his gut, he knew that the district attorney didn’t care about some lowly club owner, no matter what kind of shady crap was happening. They weren’t kingpins, they weren’t anyone even on the radar. Whatever had happened that night wasn’t big enough to set up red flags anywhere. The shooting, according to the higher ups, would undoubtedly be regarded as just another two mugs trying to eliminate each other in a city rife with violence.
But a little fear never hurt anyone, August reasoned, pushing his way into the office where a tech was already poring through the footage. And that’s where CPD comes in.
“Got anything interesting, Raffi?” he asked and the slight man raised his head to look at August, a wide smile breaking out over his face.
“Hey, Silas. I’m still looking but nothing yet.”
Andrew Wayland seemed to shrink into the wall as August looked at him, but to the older brother’s credit, he didn’t offer any platitudes as Louis had.
That’s right—Andrew was the smarter one. I remember now.
“Let’s go back to the time of the shooting,” August sighed, sensing that he wasn’t going to find much if Raffi hadn’t.
“We’ll bring this back to the lab and clean it up,” Raffi assured him.
“I know, but since I’m here, let me earn my paycheck,” August insisted. “If they dragged me out of bed for this, I may as well get a movie out of it.”
Raffi nodded and August watched as the tech moved forward to oblige his request.
August scowled at Andrew Wayland, who seemed to be observing with too much interest.
“Unless you have something to add, you can let us do our job,” August thundered. Andrew didn’t need to be told a second time and scurried out of the office, apparently grateful for the opportunity to escape.
I hope he doesn’t go too far. I wouldn’t mind grilling him for an hour or so, just for shits and giggles.
“See?” Raffi said, pointing at the screen, and August moved his eyes back toward the activity. “The image is blurry and even our vic isn’t clear, but you can see the blast of the gun and then everyone scrambling for safety.”
But August wasn’t looking at the duelling duo. Something else had caught his attention.
“Back it up to a minute before the shooting itself,” August said slowly, peering pensively at the screen.
“There! There, now play it,” August said excitedly. The tape rolled slowly and August clapped his hands with almost childish delight.
It’s like taking candy from a baby, he thought happily.
“What?” Raffi demanded, looking at him in confusion. “What do you see?”
August grinned and resisted the urge to ruffle his curly hair.
“Back it up again,” he instructed and Raffi did as he was told. “Look at those two women by the bar.”
Raffi’s eyes moved down to the left side of the screen and through his peripheral vision, August could see that the tan-skinned man saw what he had too.
“The blonde in the red dress,” Raffi said, a note of excitement in his voice. “She saw the gun and dove on her friend a split second before the gun went off.”
“Yes, she did, didn’t she?” August agreed, slightly impressed by the woman’s quick reaction. “And if she saw the gun, she saw the shooter. I’m going to see if she’s around here still.”
“Nice work, Detective.”
August smiled but he didn’t slow his gait as he made his way back out to where the witnesses remained. His eyes were on high alert for a blonde in a red dress and he couldn’t help but feel proud of himself for what he’d discovered.
Not bad for someone who needs coffee and hasn’t slept. But that’s why they pay me the big bucks, he thought, grunting. To be detective, not by playing TO to rookies, like I will be tomorrow morning.