The Suppressor by Erik Carter (best free novels .txt) 📗

voice-recorder/microcassette player he’d had since college.

In his bedroom, he gathered two black T-shirts, jeans, and his hiking boots. Stripped. Went to the adjoining bathroom and took a one-minute shower to wash off the blood, which turned the shower’s floor pink. His entire being was so numb that the warm water felt like nothing, like he’d been anesthetized—everywhere but his wounded calf, where it burned fire.

Back to the bedroom, where he tore a long strip of cloth from one of the T-shirts, tied it over his wound, dressed, and then slipped back through the house, flipping off the lights.

Into the garage, closing the door behind him, and into the idling Grand Prix. He shut the driver door, seatbelted himself, and hit the garage door opener button.

The ceiling-mounted door began to retract. With the dim light put out by the opener’s bulb, he looked down and regarded the body a couple feet from the car. When the garage door was completely open, he looked away.

And backed out.

Chapter Twenty-Six

“Holy shit,” the woman calling herself Christie Mosley said. “He killed him.”

She held a pair of compact binoculars with one hand and pressed her cellular phone to her ear with the other.

“How do you know?” Falcon said.

“Because I’m looking at the damn body right now.”

She’d parked her red Cutlass Supreme across the street and a block back from where Rowe had parked the bullet-riddled Taurus. She’d watched through the binoculars as he’d slipped into the side door of the garage. Several minutes later, the garage door was now open, and a black Pontiac Grand Prix was backing out, its tail lights glowing red, clouds of exhaust from the muffler tips.

And to the side, on the floor of the garage, was Cobb’s lifeless body.

The car’s hood cleared the garage, and the taillights went brighter as it braked, came to a stop. The garage door began to lower.

“He’s leaving now,” she said. “Backing out in a Grand Prix.”

The car moved again. When it reached the end of the drive, it reversed onto the street.

At the house, the garage door met the ground.

“He’s just leaving the body behind.”

“Interesting,” Falcon said. “Follow him.”

She waited for the other car to get to the end of the block then pulled out, not yet turning on her headlights. The other car slowed at the stop sign, and she took her foot off the gas, keeping a good distance between them.

Then the Grand Prix turned to the right, no turn signal.

She accelerated.

A sharp sound from behind her, in the distance. Sirens.

She checked the rearview mirror. At the edge of the tiny crest in the street behind her, there was a faint glow of red and blue police lights, growing brighter.

She rolled to the stop sign and turned right.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

“Ah, dammit,” Tanner said as he stepped past a uniformed officer and through the side door of the garage.

There was a body on the floor before him.

Which meant that Jake Rowe—the guy Tanner had thought so much of, the guy Tanner had put on a fast track to detective—was now a murderer.

The corpse’s name was Cobb. One of Burton’s underlings. He lay on his back. Arms splayed. Eyes shocked. A bicycle chain wrapped around his neck, embedded in the skin.

Tanner jolted slightly as Pace cleared his throat behind him, too loud. The fed stepped beside Tanner, shook his head, shoved his hands in his pockets, then jingled his keys. Tanner inched away from him.

Outside was a handful of uniformed cops. Tanner could hear their chatter through the garage door. But the only other person inside with him and Pace was the photographer, crouched beside Cobb’s body, yellow block lettering on a dark blue windbreaker.

A flash of the camera lit the garage, a typical middle-class place. This typicality was the reason the department had rented the house—it was the perfect abode for the unassuming car thief character they’d created.

Which now brought to Tanner a nightmare of red tape and diplomacy. How the hell was he going to explain to the leasing company that a murder had happened on their property?

And the bloodstain on the garage floor—that was gonna be there for a while.

If not forever.

Jake had been a fictitious criminal.

And now he was a real one.

Tanner had been in this line of work for decades and had seen this far too often—a good person dealt a horrible stroke of fate, turned into a violent criminal.

Well-to-do parents of murdered honor roll students. Boyfriends of raped girlfriends.

And now Jake Rowe. One of the most decent and resourceful guys to join his department.

Tanner felt sick. He needed an antacid.

“Self-defense,” Pace said. “Rowe comes back, tries to get his wheels; they got a guy waiting for him; Rowe takes care of business.”

Tanner shrugged. “Maybe. But where is Jake now? We still haven’t heard from him, have we?”

Pace shook his head.

Tanner pointed at the body. “And look at all this blood. It’s not from that neck wound. Rowe’s hurt. He’s bleeding bad. Watch the hospitals.”

Pace nodded.

Tanner stepped past Pace to the side door, pulled it open, and stepped into the muggy night. Thankfully, Pace didn’t follow. Tanner needed a breather from the guy, a moment alone.

Curious neighbors had congregated outside the crime scene tape, half a dozen or so. Blue and red lights flashed off oaks and palms. A news van pulled up, stopped.

Shit. The press. Just what Tanner needed.

His thoughts went to Jake, this man who was no youngster when Tanner met him a year ago but who was fresh-faced and wide-eyed in spirit, brimming with convictions and ambitions.

And smarts too.

He wasn’t all that book smart, despite having taught some college. Jake was the first to admit that. But he more than made up for any shortcomings with his incredible analytical skill. He could think through anything. That’s all he did: thinking. He’d think and think and think until an answer came to him.

His thought process was often convoluted—which was something Cecilia Farone was supposedly helping him sort out—but it always led him in the right directions. He