Cold Dark Heart by Julie Kriss
Twenty-Eight
Damon
Sometime during thefourth hour of questioning, the door to the interview room I was sitting in opened and a very, very large man came in. He was well over six feet tall and probably weighed three hundred pounds. He was black and bald. He was wearing a suit and carrying a briefcase.
“My name is Aldous Peters, and this man is my client,” he said calmly to the two cops who were questioning me. He pointed to me. “Mr. Blake is no longer talking. In fact, I sincerely hope he hasn’t talked at all.”
I was confused, mostly because I was so tired. But only briefly. I hadn’t called a lawyer, but someone had. Only one person came to mind.
Andie,I thought, I owe you big.
There was bickering between the lawyer and the cops. I tuned it out. I would have opened a vein and dripped blood all over the table for a cigarette. I was also hungry, and I wanted to see Andie.
Aldous moved into the room and sat next to me. The cheap folding chair groaned alarmingly under his weight, but it held.
“Charge my client and read him his rights, or let him go,” Aldous said. “I’ll wait.” He pointed one large finger at me. “You be quiet.”
I shrugged and kept my mouth shut. Who was I to disobey?
Thirty minutes later, Aldous and I were walking out the front door of the Salt Springs police station, and I was free as a bird. I took out my phone and scrolled to Andie’s name to call her.
“She’s with the police right now,” Aldous said, seeing what I was doing. “They questioned her at her house, and they’re probably going to the bar to do a walk-through so she can identify if anything is missing.”
“Oh. Okay.” I texted her instead. Thank you for the lawyer. She didn’t reply.
“Mr. Blake,” Aldous said. “What did you tell the police during questioning?”
“After my name? Not a damn thing.” I put my phone back in my pocket. “I’ve been in dozens of interviews just like that one, only on the other side of the table. I know how they go. So I invoked my right to remain silent.”
“Well, you did something right, then.” Aldous looked me up and down critically. “You’re too skinny. Let’s go have breakfast.”
He took me to a diner, and we ordered bacon and eggs, which was the only item on the menu. The bacon was crispy and the eggs were buttery but not greasy. I was suddenly ravenous. It turns out a night of wild sex with the woman you’re crazy about, followed by robbery and questioning by police makes a man hungry.
“So,” Aldous said as he dug into his own plate in our vinyl booth. “Tell me what’s going on.”
I swigged much-needed coffee and put my thoughts in order. In my long stretch of sitting in silence, listening to the police and not answering their questions, I had finally put the pieces together. “I’ve been stupid,” I told him. “It’s been in front of my face the whole time.”
“Please explain.”
“The Wild is being used, at least partly, as a drug front. My former colleague in the DEA, Terry, is part of it. That slick asshole from Sheffer whiskey is a partner. Terry gets the stuff in, and it gets stored and disguised in Sheffer whiskey crates. There’s nothing strange about those crates going back and forth between the bar and the distillery. My guess is that somehow Sheffer is the guy who is moving the stuff to dealers. Money is laundered by both businesses. Everyone wins.”
“Hmm,” Aldous said. “Where does Ms. English fit into this scheme?”
I had to put my fork down because a wave of rage threatened to overtake me for a second. “She doesn’t. She’s innocent. Terry left her, left the state—it probably got hot for him here. He left her the bar, even signed it over to her so she’d be holding the bag. He left her sitting on top of a fucking drug ring without her knowing it. She could have been hurt. She could have been killed.”
Aldous let that sink in. He didn’t look pleased about it either. “That man always was a piece of shit.”
“How do you know Andie?”
“I don’t know her myself, but my colleague is her divorce lawyer. She called him looking for a referral, and he sent her to me. I know a good amount about that divorce. A man who abandons his wife and son is pretty damned worthless.”
“She deserves better,” I said. “Much better.”
He gave me a look that said I was as transparent as glass.
I shrugged. I wasn’t going to deny how I felt for Andie. Not to him, and not to anyone.
“Okay,” Aldous said. “Who robbed the place? A rival?”
I shook my head. “Not a rival. It’s too small a score.”
“Mr. Blake, there was approximately fifteen thousand dollars’ worth of heroin on the floor of that storeroom.”
“It was a risky robbery,” I said. “I already gave the cops access to all of the files from the security system, including the camera footage. No operation worth the name sends guys to do a smash-and-grab on camera for fifteen grand. What we saw last night was someone small-time. My guess is someone either Terry or Sheffer pissed off. Likely one of the Wild’s former employees. I was in the middle of profiling a few of them, and a lot of them were shady. They also either quit or were fired when Terry left.”
Aldous dabbed his mouth with a napkin. “Fascinating. Do you have any proof for any of it?”
“Proof isn’t my problem,” I said. “I’m not a cop anymore. I don’t have to have proof. I get to just know. If the Salt Springs PD want proof, they’ll have to gather it.”
“And where do you fit into this little puzzle, Mr. Blake?”
I shook my head. “I just walked into it somehow. I can’t figure it out. Terry offered me a job, and then he left town before I got there. I don’t know what role I was supposed to play.”
I didn’t care, either. Terry had put Andie and Miles in danger. He was going to go down, and if at all possible, it was going to be because of me.
Aldous’s expression was skeptical. “Be that as it may, right now the Salt Springs PD has you as their top suspect. They really do not like you.”
I took a bite of bacon. “I’m the new guy in town. I made some calls that overstepped my place as a civilian. And I’m a former Fed. Cops hate Feds.”
“This doesn’t seem to concern you,” Aldous observed. “Listen. Just don’t get arrested, and my job is easy. Understand?”