Hush Hush by Erik Carter (best short novels of all time .TXT) 📗

involved. Does that make sense, sweetheart?”

He smiled at her through his big frog lips, his eyes twinkling beneath those flyaway white eyebrows.

Little Kara.

Sweetheart.

Blech!

Kara had had quite enough of his condescension. He didn’t deserve a response. Still, he was an adult, and Kara knew proper manners, so she forced a smile.

Then she hopped out of the chair and left the office.

Gavin turned to page seventy-three, the beginning of the next chapter, and found another one of Amber’s adult notes. A single word, featured prominently, written larger than the others and in caps.

REFINED

Below that was an address.

941 Falconer Street

An address…

His mind flashed to the sticky note Jonah Lund and the tall, brooding Brett had shown him. It had also born an address.

He ran his finger along Amber’s note.

Amber had been investigating C11, using The Secret of Summerford Point as her guide.

But why so many addresses? Was she visiting these places?

He knew the answer.

Amber was so artless. Yet tenacious. Yet naïve. Yet determined.

She’d been playing detective, and if she’d jotted down addresses, the chances were high that she’d gone knocking on doors.

Gavin made a quick decision.

He was going to Falconer Street.

Chapter Eighteen

Silence ran a hand along his jaw, pinching the skin at the end of his chin as he studied the data on the Macintosh’s monitor.

The Specialist had done well. Really well.

Footsteps behind him. He turned, half expecting to see the blond man again, Mr. Accord. His muscles flushed with adrenaline, an electric sizzle flashed over his skin, ready to pounce, even in the middle of the busy coffee shop.

But it was just Jonah.

When Silence had returned a few minutes earlier, he had found the computer station empty, just his coffee and Jonah’s latte sitting on either side of the keyboard.

“You left,” Silence said.

“TCB,” Jonah said and sat at the stool beside him.

It was a bit of deflecting humor, calling back to the “Takin’ Care of Business” poster they’d discussed earlier.

But why was he deflecting?

Silence continued to look at him, wanting further explanation.

“Come on, man,” Jonah said. “I had to go to the john.”

Jonah’s skin was sweaty, and for a half moment, Silence took him at his word, accepting the fact that the guy really had just returned from the bathroom after suffering a sweat-inducing shit.

Then he noticed bloodshot eyes. Puffy skin beneath them. Wet cheeks, wetter than the sweat-dappled rest of his face.

He’d been crying.

And he didn’t return Silence’s gaze.

Silence said nothing.

He turned back to the computer. Jonah leaned over his shoulder.

The screen showed another Defender newspaper article, this one from 1981. But unlike the result from the newspaper’s website, this was a scanned image, a digital photo of an actual newspaper, all its wrinkles and paper texture visible in a highly detailed file, a TIFF scan that had been downgraded to JPG for a smaller file size.

The headline read,

OPD Officer’s Claims Disputed

Beside him, Jonah leaned in closer, squinted, his lips parting. “How did you find this?”

Silence didn’t respond.

He read over the article.

    ORLANDO - In the latest claim against the city’s beleaguered C11 district, one officer has taken matters into his own hands.

Former Sergeant Raymond Beasley of C11 contacted the Defender with allegations that an internal affairs investigation he filed three months earlier was erroneously dismissed and that his insistence upon his claims led to his early termination.

Among the claims leveled by Beasley at the district are extortion, bribery, drug-trafficking, and police brutality going back at least to the late 1970s when Beasley first joined the department.

“This is just one in a long line of deceiving attacks against the officers of our district,” said Lieutenant Carlton Stokes, public relations liaison for District C11. “Any wrongdoings in this group were handled decades ago. Mr. Beasley was terminated due to improper conduct, and he’s either looking for revenge or a way to wipe some of the dirt off his name.”

Unnamed sources verified Stokes’ claims, specifying that the charges against Beasley included the use of illicit drugs.

Beasley declined to comment.

Silence leaned back, crossed his arms and stared through the image on the screen, through the monitor, through the olive-green wall, into his thoughts. The investigation’s connection to Ray Beasley was something much greater than one druggie, one pervert who liked to beat up on women.

This was something bigger. And it didn’t relate to Beasley. Not directly.

“Wait a minute…” Jonah said, trailing off for a moment. From the I–think-I-see-something tone in his voice, it was clear that he too was getting a sense of the bigger picture. “Beasley was trying to rat out C11. He might have been a violent drug addict, but he wasn’t a crooked cop.”

Silence nodded his agreement.

“So what does that mean?” Jonah said.

“Means he’s in trouble,” Silence said and bolted from his chair, heading for the door.

Chapter Nineteen

Ray Beasley’s house smelled like synthetic potpourri, the kind sprayed from a can or heated in an electric lamp, one of those little plastic units that jut right out of the outlet. Cinnamon and pine. A chemical Christmas, way out of season.

To Finley, it smelled also like desperation. Like a man spraying this saccharine shit to hide a truth, a never-ending attempt to purge away what had been. The fake, manufactured quality of the scent matched everything else in the house, which had an upscale, retro vibe to it, an attempt to capture 1950s charm with 1990s-level comfort. The place stank in more ways than one.

He was in the foyer, on a patch of dark tile that had striations of lighter gray throughout, tastefully arranged to accentuate the natural imperfections. A chandelier sparkled over his head, possibly genuine crystal. In his hands was the double-barrel shotgun he’d found beside the door when he barged in.

He broke it open. Empty. Both barrels.

He scoffed and looked at Beasley, who was plastered against the opposite wall, by the closet doors, getting as far away from Finley as he could.

“You know a gun works a lot better when it’s loaded,” Finley said. “What, you gonna club somebody with it?”

He swung the weapon like a club, cartoonishly, smiling.

Beasley