The Vanity Case (Sondra Blake Book 1) Read online

  ‘But–’

  ‘No buts. Go. Not every woman wants a white knight to come riding up on his warhorse to save her from the dragon. Most princesses don’t live in fairy tales.’ She turned and unlocked the door, stepping inside before adding, ‘Goodbye, Grant.’ Then she let the door swing closed.

  20th February.

  There was one room in the Arcane Crime Unit’s building where, with a bit of squeezing, they could get all the detectives in for a briefing. Mostly, it was used as the core area for the Christmas party, but occasionally Dickerson would gather everyone together for some important announcement.

  Sondra got one of the chairs at the conference table which took up a chunk of the room. Clarke stood at her back, and Dickerson waited at the head of the table while everyone filed in. There was an air of disquiet; people had heard things and suspected they knew what was coming.

  Finally, Dickerson got to his feet and the muttered conversations, which had not been loud anyway, became silent. ‘At approximately three p.m. today, a patrol vehicle was attacked by a group of orcs on West One Twenty-Ninth Street.’ There were murmurs from various places around the room: the rumours had just been confirmed. ‘No one was seriously injured, but the gang had automatic weapons and there is reason to believe that more of the same is out there. No arrests were made. The gang scattered when fire was returned. As of now, the NYPD is on alert for more concerted action. Anyone with contacts among the orc shamanic community, we need to know whether the gangs have backing.’

  Sondra glanced around. She knew a couple of shamans in Orctown, but there were others who dealt more in happenings up there.

  ‘Currently,’ Dickerson went on, ‘there are no other plans to use Arcane resources. Patrols will be increased in Orctown, but so long as things quieten down, we won’t be needed beyond intelligence gathering. If things get ugly… Well, some of you were around in ninety-nine and you know what happened then. Only Detective Blake was here for the riot in eighty-eight.’

  He nodded to Sondra and she sighed before explaining. ‘A lot is going to depend on whether this is just the gangs, or the gangs backed up by one or more shamans. In eighty-eight, I had to go in and counter two shamans who had incited a sort of holy war. In ninety-nine, it was so bad we had most of the unit on the streets countering spells, easing things with the uninvolved shamans, and dropping wide-area spells to disable crowds. If anything sets them off, things could turn bad really quickly, and anything could set them off. Make sure all your protection charms are up to date and get as much sleep as you can tonight.’

  ‘Good advice,’ Dickerson said. ‘After the violence in ninety-nine, a lot of gangs were disbanded. We thought this kind of thing was done with. It’s been almost twenty years since the last time. Maybe that just means they’ve had longer to prepare. That’s everything. Any questions?’

  There were none, and Dickerson dismissed them. Sondra waited for the room to empty before she got to her feet and started out for her office. Clarke was quiet until they were opening the door. ‘Do you, uh, think it’ll end up with another riot?’

  ‘Yes.’

  The flat answer surprised him. ‘You seem sure.’

  ‘It feels like it did in ninety-nine.’

  ‘Oh. I was, uh, eight when that happened.’

  Sondra flopped into her chair and put her feet up on her desk. ‘Damn. Way to make a woman feel old. I was sixty-three.’

  ‘Yeah, but you still look twenty-five.’

  ‘Twenty-six, but I won’t quibble. Just do what I said. Make sure you’ve got protection charms on you. Get plenty of sleep. If things kick off, there’ll be precious little of the latter for anyone.’

  ~~~

  Grant Henderson felt a lot like he had been kicked in the stomach. In a way, he had been, but he suspected that the majority of the sensation was stemming from the copious amounts of alcohol he had drunk through the afternoon and well into the night. Since he was now unemployed and probably had limited job prospects, all that booze had probably been a bad fiscal move, but the emotional pain had needed dulling.

  It had started, he knew, when Sondra had laid into him for trying to protect her. Part of it had been jealousy; some small part of him was willing to admit that seeing her on the arm of that bastard Archer had triggered a burst of jealousy in Grant which had been hard to ignore. But Archer was a bastard and Sondra had needed to be warned about him. Or Grant had thought she did. Maybe she had really known what she was doing with… No, Grant had seen it before. He had lost someone to Archer before.

  Anger welled in Grant once again as he made his unsteady way back toward his hotel, a fairly modest one on the edge of the East Village. Yeah, Archer got the penthouse suite and everyone else had to make do with less. But the anger did not stem from the inequity. Archer was a parasite. He would take anything he wanted, anyone he wanted, and make it worthless just by touching it. He had touched Sondra, and before Sondra there had been Cathy. Cathy had fallen for Archer and his lifestyle, and she had ended up dead of an overdose, though Archer had been long gone by the time that had happened.

  Anger had welled when Grant had spotted Archer that morning. He had warned the actor off Sondra and Archer had just smiled. And that had been when Grant really lost it. The feeling of his knuckles crushing Archer’s nose had been almost worth getting fired for. The bastard had actually tried to stop Bergen from letting Grant go. He had been magnanimous. He had said the punch had done no real damage and that he admired Grant for standing up to him. The star’s pleas had stopped the police from being called, but Grant had been kicked out anyway. All Grant had really wanted was the chance to punch Archer in the face again.

  Stumbling onward and wishing he had not had that last shot, Grant walked past an alley on his left. There was a sound of a shoe turning on dirt, and then there was a shadow in Grant’s peripheral vision and a sharp pain in his side. He turned, swinging out at the shape, but the alcohol was dulling his reactions. He hit nothing and then, pain stabbing up through his right leg, he fell as his ankle snapped. He struggled to his hands and knees, but a sudden weakness stole the power from his muscles. His throat closed up and he choked, and then his face smashed into the sidewalk as his arms gave way. He felt so weak, so tired. All he wanted to do was sleep.

  The last thing he saw was a pair of shoes. His killer was standing beside him, waiting. Grant’s vision dimmed and the last thought he had was of Sondra; he really hoped she would nail the bastard who had killed him.

  21st February.

  Sondra stood in the rain, looking down at another withered body, but this time she knew who it was before the ID was verified. Grant had the aged, withered look of the other bodies, but there was little sign of the kind of disease and injury which had marred the other victims. Maybe the chest was running out of things to inflict upon its victims. The expected knife wound was in Grant’s left side, just under the ribs.

  ‘He was fired this morning.’ Sondra looked up at Walter Cooper, the security guard who had discovered the body.

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘He hit Mister Archer. Punched him right in the nose. Mister Archer said it was nothing and refused to allow them to call the cops, but he couldn’t stop them from firing him. I heard it was over a woman.’

  Guilt rose up and was pushed aside. ‘So, you think he came back to get even?’ She pointed vaguely at the pair of wire cutters lying beside the body. They had been used to cut a few of the wires in the fence.

  ‘And then this freak that’s been killing women and dumping them here got him. Yeah.’

  ‘Thanks, Mister Cooper. If we need anything else, we’ll be in touch.’ Sondra turned her head to look at Clarke. ‘Thoughts?’

  Clarke gave a grimace. ‘I’m not sure I buy it.’

  ‘Well, that was a thought.’

  ‘The wound’s in the wrong place. If you’re cutting wires, you aren’t blind. Someone comes at you from the left, and it would have to be right up against the fence, you’d notice. If h
e was attacked from behind, the wound should be in his back, or his right side. And there’s no blood. He was attacked somewhere else and dumped here.’

  Sondra smiled bleakly. ‘Those were good thoughts. I don’t see the motivation anyway. If the killer has been trying to disrupt the production, why kill someone trying to disrupt the production?’ She flicked a glance at Grant’s hands. ‘Make sure those cutters are dusted for prints. Grant’s not wearing gloves. His prints should be on them.’

  Clarke frowned. ‘Did you know this guy?’

  ‘I met him in Heady Brew, before this all started.’ She sighed. ‘I’m the woman he was arguing with Dillan about. He was at my place when I got back from dealing with your fairy problem. He warned me that Dillan just wanted me for the sex and that he would ruin my life. Uh, run a check. See if you can find a connection between Dillan Archer and Grant Henderson. Probably through a woman. Try searching for gossip entries on the internet.’

  ‘Okay. What did you say to Henderson?’

  ‘I told him I didn’t need someone to fight my battles for me. Apparently, he didn’t listen.’ Sondra frowned and then shook her head. ‘I’m not sure there’s a direct connection. Maybe the killer decided to hit Grant after he was fired. Maybe, but it doesn’t seem to make sense.’

  ‘What doesn’t make sense, Detective Blake?’ Clarke startled at the sound of Special Agent Issacs’ voice, but Sondra just looked around, seeing the pair of FBI agents, Hall holding an umbrella over his partner.

  ‘All of it,’ Sondra said in answer to the question. ‘The entire scene doesn’t make sense.’

  ‘Do you mind if we examine the scene?’

  Sondra started past them toward the gates of the lot. ‘Be my guest. There’s nothing there to tell you anything. It’s all staged. A setup.’

  ~~~

  ‘Henderson was involved in an altercation with Dillan Archer yesterday morning, and was fired from his job on the stunt team for the movie.’

  Sondra sat on her sofa, legs curled under her, and watched as Brightman made his report on the latest death. The little maggot was looking far too pleased with himself. The picture the news channel had managed to find of Grant hung over Brightman’s right shoulder and was suddenly joined by a publicity image of Archer.

  ‘While the studio has been tight-lipped regarding the cause of the argument, during which Henderson punched Archer in the face, my investigations suggest that Grant was unhappy with Archer’s date with Detective Sondra Blake of the Arcane Crimes Unit.’

  Sondra hissed as the two images were replaced with one. It was a shot taken outside the museum as Archer escorted Sondra back to his car.

  ‘Further, Detective Blake was seen with Henderson at an East Village bar earlier this month. Detective Blake was unavailable for comment this afternoon.’ Lying bastard had not tried to contact her. ‘However, it seems that she has a more intimate connection to the case she is currently investigating than it might first appear. Meanwhile, a killer continues to stalk our streets and it seems that the NYPD is unable to stop him. Now, over to Anita for the rest of the news.’

  The camera switched over to an attractive woman in a business-like cream blouse, her dark hair arranged in a semi-casual bun with a few stray wisps framing her face. ‘Thank you, Devon. Tensions continue to rise in Orctown tonight…’

  Yes, tensions continued to rise. There were patrols all over Orctown, and Sondra was not entirely convinced that that was the best of ideas. Of course, there was little else to be done about it: the public were demanding action and diplomacy would not cut it. The diplomacy was happening, but the latest reports suggested it was failing. There was no direct evidence of a mind behind what was going on, but there was some circumstantial evidence in the fact that the NYPD’s public relations specialists were getting nowhere in their efforts to calm things down. Someone was pushing back.

  Her thoughts drifted over her recent interactions with orcs. The last one of consequence had been downstairs in the market. Two gang members had been looking to move up in the ranks. Sondra frowned, re-examining her memory of the events.

  ‘KonTash doesn’t want a couple of konChakVa with him.’ That was what the bigger orc had said. A konChakVa was a weakling or a coward; the meaning varied depending on the exact context and the subject of the sentence. Sondra suspected that this time it had meant a coward. Someone called KonTash – definitely an orcish name – would not tolerate cowards on his team. But who was KonTash?

  ~~~

  Once upon a time, not that long ago really, Orctown had been known as Harlem. In fact, the renaming was sort of unofficial and there were plenty of people who still called it by its old name though the city had begun to use the new one around nineteen eighty-seven. By then, the immigration of orcs into the area, partially or wholly displacing its old residents, had been going on for almost a decade. It had mostly been the younger generation, seeking out the bright lights of the big city and ending up propping up an area which had been largely abandoned by anyone with the money to move out.

  The rename had brought with it federal funds to try to ‘normalise’ the orcs and drag them into the twentieth century. Some of the older immigrants had taken grants to start businesses in the area, and things had seemed to improve. Prejudice against the orcs had never been quite as bad on the east coast, a continent away from the area they had controlled during the Orc Wars, but it was still there. If you were human and you lived in Orctown, you were teetering on the edge of that last step before a cardboard box under an overpass. Human residents in Orctown tended to be picked upon, because everyone else practised the quiet discrimination they had perfected on the African American population for over a century and a half; the orcs felt oppressed, so they oppressed whoever they could in turn.

  In typical fashion, someone looking to cut budgets had declared the orcs fully integrated into society in nineteen ninety-eight, and the funds had been cut. New York City had continued to fund a few programmes through into the next century, but Orctown’s development had faltered and then failed. The place had become a ghetto, and the police now patrolling it considered assignment to one of the precincts serving the area as almost a punishment detail. Right now, they were patrolling in packs.

  Franklin Castillo was from the third generation of his family to have lived in America, but he still suffered from the visible and invisible discrimination of WASP culture. Rightly or wrongly, he considered it a factor in his slow promotions and in his being posted to the 28th Precinct on a ‘temporary’ basis. Right now, he was riding shotgun in the lead vehicle of a pair as they toured Orctown, looking for trouble. He also had a shotgun in his lap, because they were looking for trouble; Frank was hoping they would not find it, but things had been getting more and more dicey since the light had gone from the sky. Patrolling in convoys was, maybe, safer for the cops, but it did nothing to foster good feelings from the residents.

  ‘You see anything?’ Wilcock asked. He was sounding on edge, which was fair: everyone was on edge tonight. There was a definite feeling that things were going to happen – bad things – if someone so much as farted at the wrong time.

  ‘Not a damn thing,’ Frank replied. ‘There’s hardly anyone on the streets. They all know being out is asking for trouble.’

  ‘Huh. Orcs are smarter than us then.’

  ‘Got that right.’

  Anything else he might have said was lost as there was a sound like rain on a tin roof and the left-front tyre of their patrol car exploded with a loud thump. Suddenly, Wilcock was fighting to control the car as it slewed into the middle of the street.

  ‘Was that–’ Frank began.

  ‘Someone shot at us!’

  Grabbing the car’s radio, Frank thumbed the key. ‘Dispatch, this is Special Patrol thirteen.’ He had known getting that designation was a bad sign. ‘We are under attack. Repeat, we are under attack.’

  ‘Special Patrol thirteen,’ the dispatcher said over the car’s speaker, ‘state your location.’
>
  But Frank was already scrambling out of the door as Wilcock did the same on the other side. ‘Where are they?’ Frank yelled, just before another stream of bullets pinged into the car. He felt the kick of a bullet hitting his vest and a sharp, hot pain on the left side of his neck. His finger convulsed on the trigger of his Mossberg and there was the loud retort of the shotgun firing wildly.

  ‘Frank!’ Wilcock yelled as Frank slipped to the tarmac, one hand pressed hard against his neck.

  Then there was the noise of gunfire, the clamour of battle. Somewhere, sirens shrieked in the night, but Frank was slipping into unconsciousness, entirely unaware of the damage his one wild shot in the dark had done.

  ~~~

  Sondra watched the late news with the sound low and her ear to her cell phone. ‘Yeah, this’ll start it,’ she said.

  ‘Shit,’ Clarke said from the other end.

  ‘Yeah, I’d suggest making sure your building security is up to par. It probably won’t spill over into your area, but…’

  ‘Sure, right. This was just bad luck, wasn’t it?’

  It certainly seemed like it. From what the media was reporting, exactly one shot had hit anyone among the orcs who had fired on the cruiser. The boy was thirteen, but they had found a handgun beside his body. Someone else had been using a submachine gun and that had been what had put Patrol Officer Castillo in intensive care. Unfortunately, the unnamed boy had not been so lucky; his chest had been almost ripped open by the shotgun slug which had hit it. Both would have been dead if Castillo had not been wearing body armour.

  ‘From the reports, they didn’t really see the gang,’ Sondra said. ‘So, yes, it was bad luck that the kid was killed. They were firing at shadows. They panicked.’

  ‘I don’t think I blame them.’

  ‘It’s a human reaction to a life or death situation. It takes a lot of training or experience to act differently.’