“Didn’t say that I was passing time, I said I was passing. I had business down on Lehman Street.”
“What kind off business?”
“The private kind.”
“And if I were to ask them, the port authority cops would confirm that?” Lehman Street was deep in the port district and the area heavily monitored by Tampa Port Authority officers.
“Knock yourself out,” I said, my face flat and concealing the lie. “If you want to waste time checking on my movements instead of concentrating on finding Candice’s murderer?”
“Maybe you’re one and the same. Oh, no, wait! You don’t do your vigilante thing to women and kids, do you? Just the bad guys that deserve it.”
“Allegedly.”
“Allegedly, my ass.” Holker shook his head, his mouth twisting in a lopsided smile. “I’m just ragging you, man. I know this isn’t your style.”
Eyeing the formless shape beneath the stained sheet, I said, “Any idea whose style it is?”
“Like I said, I just got here a few minutes ago. I haven’t come to any conclusions yet. And — even if I had — I wouldn’t be sharing them with you. No offense, but it doesn’t help my clean-up rate when my prime suspect turns up dead.”
I didn’t respond to his words. There wasn’t much point. Like a number of cops in Tampa, Florida, Ben Holker had made his mind up about me. But like those others, he’d realized that my worth as an ally in their fight against crime was more than the trouble of trying to put me away. Some had even gone as far as helping me out with information on certain criminals, particularly those that lawful process couldn’t touch. It was a mutual arrangement of sorts. Their badges wouldn’t allow the kind of proactive law enforcement I took to those villains’ doors.
“This isn’t Candice’s patch,” I pointed out.
“I’m aware of that, Hunter.” She was generally found working the street corners between East Seventh and East Palm Avenues in Ybor City. “Maybe she was picked up by a shy john who wanted to find somewhere more private for their dirty rendezvous.”
“Maybe,” I concurred. “How’d she die?”
Holker thought about divulging the information, but realized that soon enough it would be readily available via all the media channels. “Nine millimeter to the back of the head.” He made a gun out of his fingers and mimed shooting.
“Any sign of rape?”
“Hunter, you know what business Candice was in. How would I tell?”
“I’m talking scratches, bruises, as if she tried to fight off an attacker,” I said.
Holker shook his head. “That’s the damndest thing. Apart from the hole in her skull there are no other signs of injury. I know what you’re thinking: why’d a john bring her all the way here, then shoot her without having his wicked way first?”
“That’s what I’m thinking,” I agreed. “If sexual gratification wasn’t the motive, Candice was lured here and then shot for another reason.”
“Shit. Listen to you. You sure you don’t want me to get you a nice new detective badge to flash around?”
“Holker, you can like me, or you can hate me, but you have to admit I’m right.”
“Personally I don’t give a damn about you one way or another. Right now you’re stopping me from doing my job. Time you left, buddy.” Holker nodded at the big uniformed cop standing just out of earshot. The big man stirred. I held up a hand, indicated that I was going. But I didn’t, I turned back to Holker.
“She was murdered by her boss, and we both know who that is.”
“Sheridan Brown?” Holker snorted. “You think she’s the type to put a bullet in the skull of one of her favorite girls?”
“I’m not talking about her madam, or even Whalen, I’m talking about Sheridan’s top boss.”
“Man, you ain’t the only one that’s got a boner for Mick O’Neill. But it’s a bit of a stretch saying he’s the one responsible for shooting Candice.”
“Just saying,” I said.
Holker squinted at me.
“What?” I asked.
“Is that why you were down on Lehman Street? I just bet there’s a clear view from there across Hillsborough Bay to Davis Islands.”
“Depends which way you’re looking,” I said, but it did little to dissuade Holker. He knew as well as I did that you could stand on Lehman and get a good view over the water to Mick O’Neill’s penthouse apartment on Channel Drive.
Despite years of fooling terrorists as to my true intentions, Holker could see right through me. I guess I was a bit rusty, it had been nigh on six years since I was active with Arrowsake, the UN coalition counterterrorism group I was part of for fourteen years, and it hadn’t been necessary to fool the villains and crazy men I’d gone up against in retirement. They generally knew I was there with only one thing in mind.
Beyond Candice’s shrouded corpse two CSI techs were discussing something. Farther back, Holker’s partner was heading our way along the alley. Likely she’d been checking for possible witnesses to the crime in one of the adjacent warehouses. When she saw me her frown told me everything.
“Look at what the cat dragged in,” said Detective Bryony VanMeter.
“More like what the cat coughed up with its latest fur ball,” Holker added.
“Hi, Bryony,” I said.
“What are you doing here, Hunter?”
“Déjà vu,” I said to Holker.
“He’s sightseeing,” the detective told VanMeter.
“Nothing much to look at around here,” Bryony said, then with a nod toward Candice, “Nothing nice, any way.”
Bryony VanMeter was very nice to look at, but I wasn’t about to say so. Not while Holker was around to get the wrong impression. “I was just leaving.”
“Yeah,” Holker said, with another gesture toward Buck, the uniformed cop. “You were. And I suggest you go back to your office by another route than Davis Islands. Avoid Channel Drive… you get me?”
“I get you, Detective,” I said.
VanMeter hadn’t a clue what we were talking about, and it showed in the way her mouth hung open a slither. I watched her tongue dart over her teeth, and pulled my attention away before she caught me looking.
Big Buck was at my shoulder. I spared him a glance, then a last one for Candice. “I’ve no intention of going there.”
Sheridan Brown wasn’t her real name. It was a pseudonym more befitting the madam of a brothel. Then again the brothel also had a pseudonym, and proclaimed to be a massage parlor. Anyone with any brains knew what went on behind the smoked glass windows, and that the masseuses were happy to straighten out kinks not necessarily found in bunched shoulders and lower backs. The cops pretty much left Sheridan and her girls alone, preferring that they kept their trade off the sidewalks, but some of the older girls had began soliciting on the nearby street corners when they were no longer viable posing as masseuses. As cover for their illegal activities, they generally went out with a bunch of flyers, handing them out to likely takers and offering “extras.” Some cops had laughingly referred to Sheridan’s al fresco scheme of employing the older girls as her way of ensuring that she couldn’t be prosecuted for age discrimination in the workplace.
Even when I was with the British Armed Forces, and later with Arrowsake, I had never slept with a prostitute. The practice just didn’t appeal to me. But neither was I such a prude that I frowned on the oldest profession. To some women it was a lifestyle choice, and who was I to cast aspersions? It was only when women — or God forbid, children — were coerced, forced, and trapped into prostitution that I took umbrage. Not with the women themselves, but with their pimps and handlers. But I had nothing against Sheridan. She ran a clean shop, and also looked after her staff well, and only after they came to her seeking gainful employment. Higher up the ladder, though, that’s where the issue lay.