“We need to get the fuck out of here,” Steve said.
Darin worked his way to his feet. “Yeah, I think your right. Do you think this is the gun that killed him?”
“Either way you should leave it here.”
Darin thought about it but decided he still wanted to keep it.
They closed the garage and got in the car.
“What do we do now?” Steve asked as Darin drove toward the gate. “We just ripped off some dudes that kill people and shit. That can’t be good.”
“Stick with the plan and do our best to forget we ever saw anything. Nobody will ever know we were here.”
“So we go to the shot house?”
“I don’t see why not.”
Steve nodded: the plan was still good. The dead body in the storage unit didn’t change that. They drove out without either one ever noticing the security cameras mounted on the gate and every building.
Chapter 1
“You don’t look like a detective. I thought there was a dress code.”
The man rubbed his goatee with one hand while he twisted one of his earrings with the other as he said, “What do you mean?”
Margot looked him over again. Besides the facial hair and the jewelry, his hair was longer than the average homicide detective and his short-sleeve shirt revealed a sleeve of tattoos. The badge hanging on a lanyard around his neck, however, looked completely legitimate.
Margot smiled. The long-haired detective smiled back before he told her, “Up until a couple of days ago, I was working undercover in narcotics. I kind of liked the look so until someone tells me to shave and cut my hair, I figured I’d go with it.”
Margot nodded; she had to admit it worked for him.
“What do you got, Harris?” a voice said from behind the tattooed detective.
Margot looked around the tattooed detective to see Shaw coming up the sidewalk. Unlike the man in front of her, he was dressed like a homicide detective, wearing a suit nice enough to look professional but cheap enough he wouldn’t get upset if, in the course of an arrest, it got some blood on it.
“I thought you retired,” Margot said to him as he got closer. He didn’t bother showing her a badge. Everyone knew Shaw.
“One more week,” he told her. “It’d be nice if you guys could let me relax.”
“Sorry, I could go in and ask the victim if someone could shoot him next week,” Margot quipped as she stepped aside to let the two detectives inside the little bungalow.
Before they went in, Shaw looked at a door someone had clearly kicked in and asked, “Is there going to be warrant problems with this one?”
“Unlikely,” Flynn replied. “This is a known hangout for drug users. It might as well have been a neon sign out front saying ‘probable cause’.”
“He’s not wrong, kids call it the ‘shot house’. Even if they didn’t, the door was like this when I got here, which I would say constitutes probable cause, especially after I called out and identified myself. I’m not sure who would complain, all things considered. Pretty sure the bank owns this one anyway.”
“Makes sense,” Shaw said, “How’d you come to find yourself at the door?”
“I was looking for a kid. His older brother crashed here sometimes so I thought I’d see if the little brother was hanging out.”
“Is one of them our victim?”
“Not the kid, he’s only ten. The victim is too old.”
“The older brother?”
“Maybe.”
“Maybe?”
“You’ll see. He’s not exactly easy to identify right now. Even if he was, I was looking for the kid, so I didn’t get much of a description of his brother.”
“Could he be the shooter?” Shaw asked.
“I want to say no, but...”
“What did little brother do to get you looking for him?” Flynn asked.
“As far as I know, he just ran away from home.”
“Is that a crime now?”
“Just trying to do some of that community policing thing they’re always talking about. I met mom on a domestic disturbance call and gave her my number. She called when the kid went missing.”
“And you didn’t have anything better to do?”
“Depends on what you mean by better. I’d told her to call if she ever needed anything and she called. It didn’t seem right to tell her I was busy.”
Shaw smiled; Margot has a reputation for getting involved personally in certain types of cases. “You didn’t figure she’d be calling you about a runaway, did you?”
“Honestly, I didn’t figure she’d be calling at all. I figured the next time I saw her, it’d be a crime scene.”
“You make it a habit to give out your number like that?” Flynn asked.
“In certain situations.”
Before Flynn could ask a follow-up Shaw said to Margot, “You know, I know a lady who runs a place women in trouble can go. It’s free to stay; the lady who runs it is something of an activist when it comes to that kind of thing.”
“Sounds like my kind of gal. If you have her number, I’d be glad to take it.”
Shaw handed her one of his cards. “Call me. She doesn’t know you and she doesn’t deal with people she doesn’t know, but I can arrange things if need be.”
“Awesome, thanks.”
“Can you write down all the information on this kid and his brother for me?” Shaw asked. “I think I might want to talk to them too.”
“Can I text it to you?”
“I’d rather you’d write it down.”
“My partner is kind of old school,” Flynn said, “text it to me.”
Margot did so.
“Got it,” Flynn told her.
“Okay,” Shaw said to Flynn, “now you write it down for me, on paper, with a pen.”
“I’ll do it when we get back to the station.”
Shaw seemed to find that satisfactory. He and the other homicide detective went into the bungalow style house. Margot followed.
“Detective Flynn,” Shaw said as he stepped inside and realized he hadn’t made any introductions, “this is Officer Harris. Rumor has it
