The Killing Lessons (2015) by Saul Black

Author:Saul Black [Black, Saul]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Thriller, Mystery, Suspense, Horror
ISBN: 9781409152972
Google: 3_8aBQAAQBAJ
Amazon: B00OYTQ3KY
Goodreads: 26633843
Publisher: Orion
Published: 2015-05-06T12:00:00+00:00

FORTY-NINE

Lousy timing. Captain Deerholt stepped out of his office into the corridor just as Valerie – with Laura Flynn and Ed Perez – was about to pass. The door was open. Inside, Carla York was standing by the window, arms folded.

‘In here, Val, please.’

‘Sir, we’ve got him,’ Valerie said. ‘We’re en route right now. There’s no time.’

‘What?’ Two seconds for Deerholt to process, recalibrate, know it wasn’t a ruse.

‘Agent York goes with you,’ was all he said. ‘And whatever the fuck’s going on between you, stow it. Warrant?’

‘Halloran’s gone for it. But we’ve got probable cause anyway. Cap, we have to go right now.’

‘OK, go. Agent York?’

It had taken another thirty-eight Claudia Grey minutes, but they had Leon’s current address. Right here in San Francisco. A fourth-floor walk-up in the Tenderloin. DMV had turned up no match for the picture, but Joy had reported back after following up on the foster parents. Lloyd Conway had sold CoolServ and retired early. But pancreatic cancer meant he got less than two years to enjoy his retirement. His death had shattered his wife, Teresa, who had been in and out of heavily medicated depression ever since. ‘She’s not exactly crazy,’ Joy had told Valerie, ‘but you wouldn’t want to put her on the stand for anything.’ It had taken Joy more than an hour on the phone with her to piece the narrative together. Leon hadn’t lived with the Conways since he was nineteen. They’d had three years of trying to make it work, but – this was Joy reading between the lines – the kid hadn’t settled. He’d worked with Lloyd at CoolServ, learnt a little of the business, but taken off as soon as he’d stashed some money. They didn’t hear from him for months, initially, then years. It had tormented the Conways. In desperation, they’d hired a private detective, who’d spent months tracking him down. There had been a failed reunion. But as far as Teresa Conway knew the address was still good. Valerie had been about to go back to the databases – then, with the common sense being a cop too often buried under hypothetical complexities, she’d checked the San Francisco White Pages. And there it was, the only Leon Ghast in the book: 218 Ellis Street, Apartment 4D. As far as Valerie could determine, he hadn’t been in registered employment for the last five years.

The detectives and Carla York went in Valerie’s Taurus. Four uniforms in two squad cars behind. Sirens until two blocks away from Ellis.

There was no rear exit from the building except via the fire escape. Three floors up, Ed Perez took one of the blues and got badge access to it through an apartment inhabited by a pair of sleepy Hispanic retirees. Leon’s apartment was on the fourth floor.

Outside the door, Valerie turned to the nearest patrol officer, Galbraith, whom she knew. ‘Stay here,’ she said. ‘No one gets in or out. Anyone shows up, give a shout. But keep them here.’

‘Got it.’

‘You too,’ she said to his partner, whose badge said Keely.

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