Gone to Darkness by Barbara Nickless

Gone to Darkness by Barbara Nickless

Author:Barbara Nickless
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Mystery, Suspense
ISBN: 9781542092869
Publisher: Thomas & Mercer
Published: 2020-06-01T22:00:00+00:00


CHAPTER 15

The thing about there being hell to pay is that you can always hope the devil doesn’t come to collect.

—Sydney Parnell. Personal journal.

The vice cop, Boz, leaned back in his chair and gave me a nod.

“Happy to do it,” he said.

“More than happy,” said his partner, Cooper. “We know about both these assholes.”

We were back at headquarters, in a conference room on the fourth floor. Bandoni, Clyde and me, and the undercover cops Boz and Cooper. Newly empty pizza boxes, paper plates, and two six-packs of soda were strewn across the table. Sleet slammed the windows and formed a silver-white veil between us and the city. Every now and again, the lights flickered.

Leopard’s Den, the gutter-punk hangout we were going to hit that night, was in Boz and Cooper’s territory.

“We’re not getting a warrant for these punks,” Bandoni said. “It’s strictly a friendly little chat. For the moment, they’re just persons of interest.”

“It’s the Chicken Man case, right?” Cooper asked. He looked the part of a junkie in his ripped jeans, filthy shirt, and piercings.

“Noah Asher,” Bandoni said. “Right.”

“We’ll go with however you want to play it,” Boz said. He wore dirty camos, a watch cap, and a full beard. “But my money’s on Damn Fox for doing your guy. I’ve just been waiting for that asshat to do something since he nudged into our territory a couple of months ago.”

Bandoni popped a soda. “Tell us what you know.”

Cooper tapped his laptop keyboard, and a picture of a white male appeared on the screen. “Meet Damn Fox, a.k.a. David Kelly. Twenty-eight-year-old dipshit and Colorado native.”

I studied Kelly’s photo. Cruel eyes. Cruel lips. Hell, even his ears looked like they were up to no good.

Cooper went on. “Classic sob-story childhood, at least according to Kelly. Not that he’s a credible source, but whatever. Says he was five years old when Daddy left. Mommy turned tricks to pay the rent and buy meth. Davey boy claims that sometimes the johns came after him, and around the tender age of ten, he started dipping into Mom’s drugs. Ran away from home when he was fifteen and hit the rails. Juvenile records are sealed, but he’s the king of misdemeanors now—trespassing, breaking and entering. Word on the street is that he’s dealing. We haven’t caught him selling on our turf, but our sources say the kid has tried or sold every drug you’ve heard of and half the ones you haven’t. His specialty, allegedly, is Molly, which he hawks at concerts.”

Bandoni and I exchanged a glance. Todd Asher had mentioned that Riley Lynch dealt in Molly.

Molly, a.k.a. ecstasy, first hit the streets in the eighties and still did a solid job hospitalizing kids hoping to find chemical nirvana. The euphoria provided by Molly sometimes came with heart attacks and seizures. Especially if the dealer cut something in with the powder.

“Does he cut it?” Bandoni asked. Reading my mind.

“Does a bear shit in the woods?” Boz answered. “Christ, they all do. Baking powder. Sugar. Whatever they got in the kitchen.



Download



Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.