A Devil's Bargain Read online

  Silence.

  “See, this is where you actually have a job to do,” Krane said. “I don’t move unless you give it an unambiguous ‘go.’ So kill the nerves. This is happening. Tell me what I’m doing, because I can just get back to my workout and forget this shit if—”

  “Go. For fuck’s sake, yes. Go.”

  “Yeah? You sure? Maybe you want to call someone else for permission?” Krane grinned in the glow of the monitor.

  “You heard me. You are greenlit.”

  “Enjoy your video game,” Krane said.

  He killed the connection and slipped the phone into the pocket of his sweatpants. He marched out of the security closet, down to the first floor, and into his personal suite of rooms. In his bedroom closet, Krane keyed into the nine-foot gun safe the Chalmers estate had provided him at his time of hiring. First he selected a black metal flashlight and put it in the same pocket as his phone. When he’d made his selection of sidearm and slipped it into the other pocket of his sweatpants, Krane walked to the oak double doors of the estate’s main entrance.

  A security keypad was set into the wall beside the doors. Krane opened one of the doors before keying the lockdown sequence into the pad. A chilly early May breeze rushed over him. He slipped out into the darkness and pulled the door shut behind him. Paused a second to confirm the sound of a series of electronically triggered bolts sliding home inside the double doors. The entire mansion was in lockdown. Every door was sealed and bolted shut. The only person who could deactivate the lockdown was Krane. Reggie had no codes other than the one that allowed him sole access to his various ‘private zones’ down in the second-level basement.

  Krane padded down the steps and across the asphalt turnaround, heading straight for the utility access door set into the wall thirteen feet east of the main gate. As he prowled ahead, he imagined Reggie down there in his stinking subterranean den. The freak was trapped in whichever room he’d been occupying when Krane triggered the lock down. Maybe the tennis court. Maybe one of his other two suites. Krane hoped it was the tennis court. There was no bathroom in the tennis court, or kitchen, or entertainment besides shooting the AK-47 at the wall. Reggie was not a patient man. Very quickly, the ugly little heir of the Chalmers fortune would start freaking out at being restricted to one room. He would start to rant and scream and pound on the door.

  Krane smiled in the darkness. Who knew how long it would take before he could justifiably lift the lockdown? I was just being conscientious, he would say when he finally let the freak out. That’s my job, Reggie. I have to follow protocols. I don’t take any more joy from it than you do. Your dad set the rules, Reggie. Sure, go ahead and call him. Let me know how that goes.

  When he reached the utility door east of the main gate, Krane pushed Reggie’s delicious plight out of his mind. He brushed the tangle of ivy off the metal door’s keypad and entered the right sequence of numbers that would unlock only this access point. He had memorized exactly seventeen different security codes upon hiring in as Reggie’s babysitter three years ago. In that time, he had only ever had to use a third of them. Still, Krane was a man who took any job seriously. Operational readiness was his bible. He kept all the codes fresh in his mind. Every week he drilled them and made certain he knew them by heart.

  Krane pushed the utility door open a few inches and peered out at the smooth black ribbon of road. Across the street, there was only the seemingly endless sweep of perfectly tended green lawn that was the northern edge of the Bloomfield Hills Country Club.

  He peered left and saw the Chevy Impala parked at the side of the road. There was no other traffic, no sign of life or light or movement. So Krane slipped out of the utility door, leaving it yawning open behind him in case he needed to get back inside the perimeter of the estate in a hurry.

  Krane, hunched low, pulled a SIG Sauer 9mm pistol out of his pocket and slowly, methodically closed the distance between himself and the Impala. He kept himself at a wide angle, where he guessed he would be invisible to the rear and side mirrors of the car. Without the benefit of the surveillance camera’s night vision, he couldn’t see inside the vehicle’s glass. With his left hand, Krane pulled the black metal flashlight from his pocket. He held it like a dagger in his fist. The screw-on battery cap was cone-shaped at the end, finishing at a sharp point designed for shattering window glass. Originally marketed to law enforcement, the window-breaker flashlight had seemed an ideal tool to Krane once his work life had shifted from occupying foreign lands to guarding the Chalmers estate.

  In Kabul, there was only one way to deal with a suspicious vehicle appearing where it shouldn’t be: sink a .50 caliber round in the engine block and order everyone to focus fire until the vehicle, and anyone inside it, was pulped and shattered to hell.

  Here, you couldn’t do that. Here, you had to risk getting close and identifying who was screwing around with your operation. Get close. Breach the vehicle by shattering the glass. Overpower. Secure the target. Remove the target. Get him somewhere safe so you can put the hard questions to him. Clean the scene and hope no citizens saw or heard a thing.

  All of that was foremost in Krane’s mind when the driver’s door of the Impala swung open and the big, bald-headed occupant stepped out onto the asphalt. Not tall, but big. A wide-shouldered shadow turning to face him.

  Krane dropped down to a knee and let the flashlight fall away in one smooth motion. He brought the SIG Sauer up, steadying his grip with his left hand.

  “Hold on!” the driver shouted.

  Krane fired once and watched the driver drop in a flailing heap as the non-lethal rubber round slammed into his left thigh. Krane rushed forward. When he was directly over the driver, a huge and thick-fingered hand shot up at him, grasping for purchase. Krane drove the heel of his shoe into the man’s temple. A moan reached his ears. He kicked a second time and the driver went fully limp.

  Still, Krane did not hesitate.

  He touched the button at the base of the driver’s seat that unlocked the trunk. The unconscious driver was large, a mass of muscle and fat. But Krane was a towering figure, a naturally tall and strong man who religiously kept himself in peak condition. It took no more than two minutes to heave the driver into the trunk of the Impala. Another few seconds of searching him produced a .38 snub-nosed pistol. Krane pocketed the gun and shut the trunk.

  He jogged to the wrought-iron gate that blocked the estate’s driveway and tapped in the proper sequence to send it whispering open. Then he drove the Impala and its owner through the gate. It shut behind him and he put the car in Park.

  First, Krane re-secured the metal utility door. Then, for several minutes, he stood at the gate, peering out into the night. Nothing moved. No light or sound or sign of life. He had not been seen. The gunshot, if heard by some remote neighbor, had been ignored, disregarded.

  Satisfied, Krane popped the trunk and peered in. The driver was awake, but his eyes were two rudderless ships lost at sea. Krane studied the brutish face of the concussed driver. It was an interesting face, to be sure, primitive, with a heavy brow and a wide mouth prone to gluttony, if the man’s heavy frame was any indication.

  “Got a name?” Krane said.

  The man blubbered something incoherent.

  “Don’t worry about that. We’ll get you talking soon enough.”

  Krane shut the trunk again and drove the Impala into the depths of the Chalmers estate.

  Chapter One

  Issabella Bright was only halfway to sleep when she felt the emptiness beside her. She opened her eyes and patted the mattress where Darren Fletcher had lain the last time she’d been awake enough to know it.

  The bedside alarm clock told her it was just shy of midnight. She sat up and rubbed her eyes with her palms. She went downstairs. The kitchen light was on, but she was still alone. Through its window-wall the living room was softly agl
ow with the lights of downtown Detroit. Sam, the yellow Labrador Darren had rescued from the private island of a murdered client, was curled up on the sofa, asleep. Darren was not there.

  She found him out on the ivy-draped terrace of the penthouse apartment. The traffic along the Ambassador Bridge was light at this hour, moving unimpeded. Beyond it, she could see that one of Windsor’s casinos was aiming a spotlight machine up at the cloud cover. The three shafts of light it produced swam and danced in unison.

  “That’s kind of pretty,” she said.

  Darren was sitting in one of the wrought-iron chairs, wearing only a pair of cotton pajama bottoms. His long legs were stretched out straight in front of him and crossed at the ankles, his fingers knit together across the flat plane of his stomach. Beneath his head of dark, unkempt curls, his eyes were darker still and heavy with brooding. On the table beside him was an untouched Crown and Seven, his phone, and a letter-sized envelope.

  “I guess it kind of is,” he agreed.

  Issabella sat in the chair nearest him.

  “What’s in the letter?”

  Darren looked down at the envelope and frowned. He reached out and she thought he was going to pick it up, but instead he lifted the drink to his lips.

  “You can read it if you want,” he said and took a sip. “It came this afternoon. I was putting off reading it. I don’t know why. I already knew what it said, more or less.”

  She picked up the envelope and pulled out the single sheet of paper inside. When she unfolded it, the first thing she saw was the bold, formal font of the letterhead.

  The Fletcher Group.

  Issabella read the contents of the letter beneath it:

  Darren,

  A friend of mine who would know such things just informed me that the Justice Department will politely decline your repeated demands that they investigate our family’s firm. Apparently they, like every other agency you have petitioned, found that there are no grounds whatsoever to indulge your personal, slanderous vendetta. Expect a letter from them soon.

  I have no doubt you will be dismayed to learn that your quest to ruin everything our forefathers built has failed. Alas, I cannot share your disappointment. Some of us still believe that serving the interests of this nation is a worthwhile endeavor.

  This missive is not meant as an exercise in gloating. I write to you in the hope that you now fully accept that your quest is at an end. There is no investigation forthcoming. Not from any court, nor from any State or Federal agency. If you can manage it, please summon the maturity to move on. Swatting your efforts aside has grown tedious and I detest tedium almost as much as I detest your self-righteous indignation at the simple, albeit harsh, realities of the world.

  From here on out, I think we would be best served by an accord. Let us agree that we need not concern ourselves with the other in any future matter. I will continue the good work that bears our family’s name, as I have ever done. For your part, feel free to continue mucking about in that sewer you ran off to years ago.

  Your brother,

  Luther

  Issabella refolded the venomous note and slipped it back into its envelope before tossing it on the table. She sighed and watched the headlights running back and forth along the bridge for a while. That Luther Fletcher existed was a fairly new reality for her. In their first two years together as a couple, Darren had never uttered his older brother’s name. He hadn’t just kept it from her. As far as she could tell, there was nobody professionally or privately who’d ever heard him acknowledge that he had a sibling.

  She knew why. Darren was ashamed. He was ashamed of his family’s name and of his family’s business. Luther was the head of that business, The Fletcher Group.

  Beside her, Darren stared bitterly out into the darkness. It was a look he’d worn too often over the past months, ever since discovering that the violent deaths of two men—a retired Judge and the Judge’s groundskeeper—were directly traceable to The Fletcher Group and his brother.

  He’s been driving himself crazy trying to get the authorities to investigate, she thought. Her eyes strayed to the letter atop the table. And now he’s lost that fight, apparently.

  “You know, I think maybe he really did mean to gloat,” she said.

  “Just a bit,” Darren agreed.

  “He writes like a Victorian.”

  “You should hear him talk. When I told him I was going to be a public defender in Detroit instead of taking a desk with the Fletcher Group he used the words wastrel and scion.”

  “Did he pronounce them right?”

  “Hell if I know. It’s the only time I’ve ever heard them out loud.”

  “I bet that fancy talk gets him all the girls.”

  Darren finally grew a slight smile and he took her hand in his.

  “Actually, it turns out I was better at that.”

  “Much. You shouldn’t let him get to you like this. Brooding and resentful is exactly what he wants.”

  Darren took a second sip of his drink and set it back on the table.

  “It’s not the letter. Not really,” he said.

  “Then what?”

  “What it reminded me of. I saw it in the mail and it occurred to me that I haven’t gotten any green envelopes for almost a year now.”

  “That’s a good thing, though,” she said.

  “Is it?”

  “I think so. I think it probably means James Klodd is dead, Darren.”

  He fell silent, and Issabella was glad for it. There had been occasions over the couple of years they’d been together when she had woken as she had tonight, inexplicably alone in the bed.

  On those occasions, she had found him poring over the boxes of files and reports he kept on a shelf in the downstairs closet. They were everything he had on the disappearance of Shoshanna Green.

  Those were the nights where the little girl haunted him, where his guilt at setting James Klodd free grew so crippling that his only relief was to sift through the files. He would read every word, every detail, while night spun slowly into morning and then into day. When he was certain there was nothing he’d missed within the police reports or in his own case notes, only then did the guilt relent and allow him to carry on with living. The boxes would return to the closet shelf and the man she loved would appear at their law office late in the afternoon, tired and plagued with an abiding sadness, but present.

  “You know what?” she said. “I’m going to get a glass of wine.”

  “You don’t have to stay up with me, Izzy. I’ll come back up in a minute.”

  “It’s a nice night. I’ll be right back.”

  Darren’s phone chimed.

  She heard him mumble, “It’s Theresa,” as she walked back inside.

  In the kitchen she selected a bottle from the wooden wine rack suspended from the ceiling. She uncorked it and poured herself half a glass. From the refrigerator, she retrieved a wheel of smoked ricotta and a half-pound of pancetta wrapped in butcher’s paper. A sharp knife produced several thin slivers of the cheese and she arranged them on one side of a glass plate. On the other side, she fanned a dozen pieces of the pancetta. Finally, she laid a clump of green grapes in the center of the plate and took a sip of her wine while she admired the pretty arrangement.

  Issabella poured a splash more wine into her glass, took the plate in hand and walked back out to the terrace. She set the plate on the table between them, eased into her chair and looked at him. Darren was holding his phone in one hand and staring out at the bridge with a wide-eyed alertness that was at odds with the brooding doubt he’d displayed before she fetched her wine.

  “You look very awake all of a sudden,” she said and selected a thin slice of pancetta. “How’s Theresa? I made snacks.”

  Darren stood up without glancing at the plate.
r />   “Forget your brother, Darren. Have some cheese. It’s good. I swung by the Eastern Market yesterday and picked it up. Good cheese trumps rotten siblings. Or it should, anyway.”

  “We need to get moving, Izzy.”

  She glanced at her glass of wine and at her prettily arranged plate of snacks.

  “That’ll probably require an explanation,” she said.

  Darren looked confused and agitated.

  “Darren?”

  He rushed past her and she followed at a walk. As she crossed the living room, Sam stirred and hopped off the couch. When she reached the bedroom, Darren had already pulled on a pair of slacks and was taking a blue dress shirt down from a hanger in the closet. Sam trailed into the room after her, his tail thumping against her calves. She reached down and scratched the back of the dog’s neck.

  “Ready for an explanation,” she said. “Really ready.”

  Darren had one arm shrugged into a sleeve.

  “Theresa found a dead guy behind the bar. Stabbed in the neck. Let’s get moving, kid.”

  * * *

  Darren stopped scrutinizing the body when he noticed Issabella going wobbly beside him. He took her by the shoulder and gently guided her away from the rusted hulk of the old Packard Clipper and the murdered man who was stuffed inside it. Thirty steps away took them to the rear of Winkle’s Tavern, and there he massaged the back of her neck with one hand while she grimaced with embarrassment and got her breathing under control.

  At twenty minutes after midnight they were the only things in the decaying west side Detroit neighborhood that made a sound.

  “Sorry,” she said. “That was lame of me.”

  “Nah.”

  “I was planning on being hard-bitten about it.”

  Darren smiled down at her and took his hand away. She was steady again.

  “I don’t think I’d want you to be hard-bitten about dead people, Izzy. That’s not something to aspire to.”

  “You weren’t fazed at all.”

  “Well, I’ve seen a few. You haven’t had any murder defenses yet. I ran half a dozen before we met. Lots of photographic evidence to harden the bark, you know?”