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

tact, leaning toward her in his authoritative manner.

C.C. squirmed back in her chair, as far as possible, knitting her fingers on the table’s laminate surface.

“Miss Farone,” Tanner said. “If you really want to end the suffering your brother is causing, this is the only way.”

Tanner uncrossed and recrossed his arms. His shirtsleeves were rolled up, as was his custom, revealing thick forearms with striations. Once upon a time, Tanner had been a gym rat, like so many cops. These days he retained a lot of his former mass, though it was softer than it had been in the old ’70s photos Jake had seen. He’d also added mass to his midsection.

C.C. nodded, bit her lip, looked to the linoleum floor.

Jake didn’t want to push her much harder, especially after how bothered she was getting by Tanner’s insistence, but after a moment, he gave her a gentle prod.

“Babe?”

She looked at him, lips parted, eyes uncertain.

Tanner leaned in even closer. “Ma’am, with all due respect, what’s the issue here? You’re uncomfortable with the way your brother conducts his business—the torture, the gruesomeness. And you’ve already been assured that the legitimate part of the family fortune will be yours.”

C.C. shot him a look. “Money? That’s not what I’m worried about.” There was no quicker way to get a rise out of C.C. then to accuse her of being money-hungry. “I’m concerned about my father.”

Tanner finally leaned away from her. He dropped a knuckle to the table, clearly all he could do to keep from lashing out in frustration. “I already told you that—”

“Tell me again!”

A reluctant smile came to Tanner’s face. “The DA has assured me that given your father’s mental condition, the state won’t waste taxpayer money pressing charges.”

“And you can get him into protection with me and Jake? Transfer him to a different nursing home?”

“Of course.”

C.C. nodded. “Sylvester. My brother … If I do this, if I bring evidence against him, promise me you’ll treat him with as much leniency as you can.”

Tanner started to reply, but Jake thought it better if he replied here, something more reassuring than Tanner would give. He simply said, “We promise.”

Tanner scowled at Jake, and Jake gave him a look that said, Be cool.

C.C. placed her hand on Jake’s knee, turned to him. “We’ve been together a few months now. Not that long, I suppose. You said you love me. Did you mean it?”

“Of course.”

“Maybe I was just a part of this sting of yours. A tool. Something for you to—”

“Absolutely not.”

Tanner cleared his throat. “Ma’am, you and Jake can iron out the details of your relationship another time. What I need from you now is confirmation. Can we count on you?”

C.C. looked off to the blinds.

Tanner shot Jake a look, eyes widening, lips pinching tight.

Jake gave him another Be cool look and a short chop of a hand.

Tanner leaned in a bit closer to C.C. and forced another smile through his tightened lips. “What’s the hesitation, ma’am?”

“You’re asking me to send my brother to prison. He may be a monster. Twisted. Evil. But he’s still my brother.”

She paused.

“He’s still my brother.”

Jake woke with a jolt.

Darkness around him. Beeping medical equipment. Small, bright lights of different colors.

He was back in the tiny hospital room.

Not a true hospital room, though. The mustached man had told him that this was some sort of private facility.

How long had he been out this time?

He took a few deep breaths and relaxed his bandaged head back into the soft depths of the pillow.

His thoughts returned to the memory from which he’d just awoken. Tanner had been insistent that day with C.C., and it had frustrated Jake. But the old-timer had been doing so for admirable reasons. There wasn’t any bad in Tanner.

Sure, he was a grumpy old fart. A Luddite. A grouch. But he was a good cop and a good man. When Jake first joined the police department, he had gravitated toward Tanner immediately, someone to model, someone so different from his father, a man who had been passionless even before he became a drunk.

And now Tanner was surely hunting Jake down.

That’s how good cops act. Impartially. Tanner wouldn’t care that Jake had been a protege. To Tanner, Jake would now be nothing more than a suspect, a man who’d murdered four men.

Jake wondered if Tanner sympathized at all, knowing that Burton had killed C.C. Or maybe he hadn’t determined that Burton had killed her.

Maybe no one knew she was gone.

Maybe Tanner thought Jake had killed her.

He wondered what Tanner was thinking right now.

Chapter Forty-Seven

Tanner reclined in the old squeaky chair, his back turned to his desk, looking at the corkboard that had recently been redecorated. For months, it was plastered with information about the Farone crime syndicate and the emerging Burton gang. But in recent weeks, the dominating motif was Jake Rowe—charts and bulletins and lookalike reports from as far away as North Dakota.

Jake’s face stared back at Tanner from a half dozen spots among the materials.

Behind Tanner, leaning casually, putting his fed ass on the corner of his desk yet again, was Pace.

“It’s been over a month, and we haven’t heard squat,” Pace said. “Face it—either Burton or the Farones finished Jake Rowe off. He tangled with the mob, and they sent him sleeping with the fishes.”

He said the last part in a thick, Godfather-worthy Italian accent.

Tanner didn’t believe that Jake had been snuffed out. No. Not for a moment.

All Jake had was his training and a single year with a badge. No one would ever call him street-smart either. And with his strange thought process and tendency to over-analyze, Jake’s head spent more time floating among the clouds than it did rooted in the here and now.

But he was a survivor. Jake found a way. That’s why Tanner had invested so much in the guy, placed him on the fast-track to detective and jeopardized his own reputation by doing so.

Neither Burton nor the Farones had gotten the best of Jake Rowe. Tanner knew