Cerulean Sins - Laurell K. Hamilton [204]
“She’s got them in lockup for what, following you around? We’ve got four murders, maybe more.” He looked at me. “You want a ride in a car with sirens and lights, so that we can fucking get there before she does something to wreck our case?”
I liked the ‘our case,’ and I liked that he asked me along. Dolph probably wouldn’t have, even if he hadn’t been mad at me.
I nodded. “I’d love to go riding in and wave jurisdictional flags in her face.”
He grinned. “Give me ten minutes to give everybody their marching orders, then meet me downstairs. We’ll borrow a marked car. People always get out of the way faster for a marked car.” He was out the door and down the stairs humming to himself.
Merlioni went after him, saying, “Who has to stay here with the tub o’ death cleanup?” I don’t think Merlioni wanted to be included in the cleanup, not even to supervise.
Bradley and I found ourselves alone. It was unheard of for a fed, two feds I guess, to be left alone at a murder scene like this. Most locals hated the feds, and the feds hated them right back.
I looked up at Bradley. “Now that I’ve made all the connections you wanted me to make, tell me why you really came down here.”
He closed the manila envelope and handed it to me. “To solve a crime.”
“Solving these crimes would add to your unit’s clout. Last time we spoke you needed that clout.”
He was looking at me carefully.
“Are you here officially, Bradley?”
“Yes.”
I stared into his bland face. “Are you here officially just as an FBI agent?”
“Don’t know what you mean.”
“You told me once that I’d come to the attention of some of the less savory branches of our government, the spooks, I think you called them. Is Van Anders a spook?”
“No government in their right mind would want an animal like this in their country.”
“Talk to me, Bradley, talk to me, or the next time we meet I’m not going to trust you like I do right this minute.”
He sighed and suddenly looked tired. He rubbed at his eyes with his thumb and forefinger. “These murders were brought to our attention. But I’d seen crimes like this before. In a different country, in a place where the government was more worried about staying in power than protecting helpless women.” There was a look in his eyes, something faraway, and pain-filled.
“You said you got out of that line of work.”
“I did.” He looked very steadily at me, no cop eyes now. “Men like Van Anders were one of the reasons I couldn’t keep doing it. But when certain people found out that Van Anders might actually have been let loose within the confines of the United States, they weren’t happy. I have a one time permission to help things along here.”
“What’s the price tag on this help?”
“Heinrick will be escorted out of the country. They’ll never put a name to the second man he was taken in with. It will all disappear.”
“Heinrick is a suspected terrorist. You think that they’ll just let him walk?”
“He’s wanted in five different countries that we have strong treaties with. Who do we give him to, Anita? Better to just let him go.”
“Don’t you want to know why he was in town? I know I want to know why he was following me.”
“I told you why these kind of people would want you.”
“So I can raise the dead for them. A political leader here, a few zombie bodyguards there,” I tried to make a joke of it, but Bradley wasn’t laughing.
“You know the man you found nailed to his living room wall?”
“Yeah.”
“He knew Heinrick and Van Anders, and he felt that they were too extreme. He left and he hid, but not well enough.”
“If it was an execution, why make it look like some sort of ritual murder?”
“So it wouldn’t look like an execution.”
“Why did they care?” I asked.
He shook his head. “It was a message, Anita. They wanted him dead, and they wanted him dead in such a way that it would be sensational enough to make headlines. They wanted his death out there for all the others like him, like me, that left.”
“You don’t know this for sure, Bradley.”
“Not all of it, but I know that everyone involved