Detective Damien Drake series Box Set 1 Read online

  Isn’t the body supposed to adapt? Get used to shitty thoughts, shittier accommodations?

  A gaggle of children, ranging in Drake’s estimation to be anywhere between five and fifteen years of age, flooded out of the side door of the school as if the building itself was regurgitating them. Their high-pitched squeals of glee, jubilant cries, and amorphous grunts filtered up to him through the crack in his window, and he instantly regretted opening it. And yet he made no move to close it.

  Instead, he watched their smooth faces, most lineless even in smile, his gaze following them across a paved area with basketball hoops that hadn’t seen an actual net for longer than most had been alive.

  The younger kids—Drake only identified them as such as they seemed to have not yet gained the insight of self-awareness, their eyes locking in on a play structure without first darting to their friends for approval—went mostly to the swings and slides, while the older kids moved toward the giant field at the back of the school. The field was bordered by chipped white soccer goalposts, but during all the days Drake had parked outside Hockley Middle and High School, he had never actually seen anyone playing soccer.

  Or basketball, for that matter.

  As the kids spread out and their incessant drone became more diffuse, Drake found himself staring at three boys with spiked hair and backpacks adorned with chrome spikes and patches from bands that he didn’t recognize. They shuffled instead of walked, their heavy boots barely rising off first the paved basketball area then the newly shorn grass field. The teenager on the left, who was two or three inches taller than the others and sported long blond hair that nearly reached his shoulders, leered at a much younger girl in a miniskirt.

  The boy said something, and while Drake was too far to pick out the exact words, and an experienced lip reader he was not, the toothy expression on the kid’s face said enough.

  The girl responded sharply, and her grimace allowed an exchange to play out in Drake’s mind.

  The boy stopped smiling and the trio tucked behind the school, their backs pressing up against the wall.

  What are they doing?

  But when the blond boy, eyes darting again, reached into his backpack, Drake felt a sudden pang in his chest.

  Columbine was a long time removed, and now most everyone in NYC expected the next attack to come from a dark-skinned man speaking Arabic, Drake still felt on edge.

  Without thinking, his hand snaked over to the door handle, and he gripped the warm metal tightly, ready to pounce.

  He let go when the boy pulled out a worn pack of Marlboro’s and furtively held it out to his friends.

  What the hell is wrong with you? Get a grip!

  Drake took a deep breath and looked away from the wannabe punk rockers smoking cigarettes, his eyes drifting back to the front of the school.

  And that’s when he saw her. At first, he tried not to overreact—it’s not her, just like the cigarettes weren’t miniature pipe bombs—but as he stared more intently, he realized that it could be her. Her back was to him, a pink backpack slung over one shoulder, her long, straight, brown hair descending halfway down her back. She was wearing tight dark jeans and a pair of worn converse sneakers. A white blouse clung to her thin shoulders.

  It’s her.

  Drake swallowed hard and grabbed the door handle again, although this time he wasn’t trying to strangle the metal. Instead, he pulled gently and the door opened. Warm air rushing against his face, which he only now realized was covered in a thin layer of sweat.

  As Drake stepped out of his Crown Vic, another car pulled up beside the girl and the window slowly lowered. She turned and must have recognized the person inside, as she walked over to the car and leaned on the half-open window.

  Now in profile, Drake knew it was her. He recognized that nose, straight but thin, and the long eyelashes, full lips.

  Drake closed his car door and started toward her, wondering who this person in the car was.

  The girl suddenly threw her head back and laughed, her long hair quivering like a cape.

  Squinting hard, knowing that he shouldn’t be here, that he was overreacting, he peered through the rearview window of the Mercedes.

  It was a man, he concluded. And judging by the way the shadow of his hair was thinning, it was an older man at that.

  No, this isn’t right.

  Drake realized that his hands were balled into fists, and he slowly forced them open.

  It’s nothing. A teacher, maybe. A friend’s father. Don’t overreact, Drake. Don’t lose it again.

  But when the girl reached for the door and started to open it, all rational thought fled him.

  She’s going to get in the car and never be seen again!

  He broke into a jog.

  “Suze!” he yelled. “Suze, don’t get in the car!”

  But either the shouts from the kids in the playground or the music that he could now hear coming from the car window were too loud and the girl didn’t hear him.

  He picked up his pace as she started to lower herself into the car seat.

  You’re never going to see her again. Never. Kidnapped. Raped. Murdered. And it will all be your fault.

  “Suze!” he yelled. “Suzan, don’t get in the car!”

  The girl turned, and when their eyes met, the smile slid off her pretty face.

  Hatred burned in those dark hazel eyes.

  Even before she raised her hand and flipped him the bird, he realized what was going to happen. She started to close the door, and he could see her lips moving.

  Go, let’s go, she was saying to the driver, who had turned his head around in response to his shouts.

  Drake could see what was happening, and there was only one way he figured he could stop it.

  If Suzan left in that car, she would be gone forever. For some reason, he was sure of this.

  Damien Drake reached into the holster under his left armpit and pulled out his pistol.

  “Get away from the car, Suze! Get the hell away!”

  Chapter 2

  “Now, Suze. Don’t even think about it,” Drake said. Even though he was speaking to the girl with the backpack, he wasn’t aiming the gun at her. Instead, the barrel was focused squarely on the shadow of the man’s head in the rearview window.

  “What the hell are you doing?” she snapped back, her thin eyebrows knitting together. Her face had turned a deep shade of scarlet. “Put the damn gun away!”

  Drake shook his head.

  “Not until you get away from the car,” he repeated.

  The driver side door suddenly flew open and a thin man hauled himself out of the Mercedes.

  “What is going—” he began, but stopped when his eyes fell on the gun in Drake’s hand. Unlike Suzan, any color that he might have had in his narrow face drained away.

  Without so much as uttering a word, he immediately tried to slide back into the driver seat.

  Drake didn’t let him.

  “Get out!” he shouted.

  The man’s eyes darted from Drake’s face to the gun, and back again giving the detective just enough time to think don’t do it, before the man leaped into his car.

  Drake swore and rushed at him, lowering the gun to his hip.

  Thankfully the window was open, and Drake grabbed the opening before the man could put the car into drive.

  “Get out of the car, now,” he hissed. For a split second, Drake thought that the man—who he now saw was in his mid-forties, sharply dressed in a maroon V-neck and a pale gray sport coat—was going to put the car into drive anyway.

  But when he raised the gun again, not quite putting it in the window, but just raising it high enough that the sun glinted off the silver barrel, the man withdrew his right hand from the gear shift and held it up with his left.

  Drake opened the door and then twisted his fingers into the collar of the man’s sport coat.

  “Get out,” he grumbled. This time he helped the man complete the request by yanking him from the
vehicle.

  “I don’t know who you are, but I’m gonna call the fucking cops,” the man said. In that moment, he must have realized that others were around them now, standing a respectable distance from Drake and his gun.

  Anywhere else, they might have run screaming or thrown themselves to the ground and covered the backs of their heads with trembling hands.

  But this was NYC; they didn’t run when they saw a gun. Instead, they watched.

  And their presence seemed to imbue the man with courage.

  “Call the police! Someone call the police on this psycho!”

  “Shut up,” Drake spat. His fingers still gripping the collar of a very expensive feeling sport coat, Drake spun the man around and shoved him gruffly up against the car. Then he leaned in close, smelling his own whiskey-tinged breath even before he spoke. “You think you can come here in broad daylight and kidnap a teenager? You think you can—”

  “Someone call the police!” the man yelled. Drake pulled back then shoved again. The man’s nose bounced off the hood of the car and he groaned. Yet despite his obvious pain, he never stopped yelling. “Call the police! Help! Help! Call the cops!”

  Drake grit his teeth.

  “You better—”

  “He is the police!” Suzan suddenly shouted. “He is the fucking police!”

  And with this, the man with the now bloodied nose clammed up.

  “Yeah, that’s right,” Drake said, tugging the gold shield off his belt and flashing it in front of the man’s face as he looked over his shoulder. “You think in broad daylight you can drive around in your fancy car, wearing your fancy suit and lure young girls into your car? In front of a cop? You cocky—”

  Someone grabbed his arm, and Drake roughly shrugged the hand off. When the voice that cried out was young and female, he turned.

  Suzan was standing a foot behind him, tears spilling down her cheeks as she massaged her palm.

  “He’s not a pervert,” she said quietly.

  Drake’s grip on the man’s jacket loosened.

  “Suze, sweetie, you don’t know that. He may seem nice, and I don’t know what he offered you to get into his car, but men like this… I know men like this. All they want is—”

  Drake bit his tongue.

  The girl was already terrified, and nothing could be gained by making inferences to other crimes that her father had gone to great lengths to protect her from.

  She was shaking her head, and as he watched her hands went to her face, cradling her soft features.

  In the distance, Drake thought he heard a police siren. And then he was outside of himself, watching the scene play out before him not as the orchestrator, but as one of the bold spectators.

  What the hell am I doing?

  Drake’s hands fell to his sides, and the man on the car managed to flip around, only he was no longer clean-shaven, with neatly, if thin, cropped hair and gold spectacles framing his narrow face.

  Instead, this man had a thick brown beard and dark eyes. Eyes that were welling with tears.

  It was Clay Cuthbert’s face, his partner’s face, moments before he died.

  “Wha—” Drake croaked as he stumbled backward. If it hadn’t been for Suzan standing behind him, he might have fallen on his ass.

  “He’s not a creep,” Suze said angrily. “He’s my fucking psychiatrist!”

  Drake shook his head and turned to look at her.

  “Your what?”

  “My psychiatrist!” she screamed. And then, completely unexpectedly, Suze slapped him across the chest with both hands.

  “Suze—”

  “Don’t fucking Suze me! Only my dad calls me that!” she slapped him again, and Drake moved away. “You fucking ruined everything! Everything! Why don’t you just leave me alone?”

  Drake was shocked to the point of silence.

  Psychiatrist? Why was a seventeen-year-old girl seeing a psychiatrist?

  But he already knew the answer; after Clay had been killed, the use of a psychiatrist had not only been offered to all members of NYPD Homicide, but had been encouraged.

  And this offer had been extended to their families, of course.

  Suzan’s face was a mess, the tears streaming down her face spreading what little makeup she wore in streams like melted crayons.

  “You ruined everything!”

  Drake swallowed hard and slipped the gun back into the holster under his armpit.

  “I’m sorry,” he said quietly, holding back tears of his own. Now it was his turn to look around. Children stared at him from between the bars of the fence, the black metal framing their faces as if they were being held in a pediatric prison. Teachers stood gape-mouthed, clipboards clutched to their chests so tightly that a small breeze might cause the particle board to snap.

  Parents were frozen half-in and half-out of cars that cost at least five times as much as his own.

  What the fuck are you doing, Drake? What are you doing?

  “I—I—I’m sorry,” he stammered. He pulled his detective shield out again, this time holding it up for everyone to see. “NYPD—this is all just… just a terrible misunderstanding. Please, there is no danger here. Go back to your… to your classes.”

  Drake was saying the words loud enough for every bystander to hear, but they were only meant for one person: the terrified girl standing with her hands at her sides, her long hair now draped in front of her face.

  “I’m sorry.”

  And then he turned and hurried back to his car.

  “You got blood on my shirt!” the psychiatrist called after him. “I’m sending you the dry-cleaning bill, asshole!”

  Drake’s own face was burning now and his ears felt as if they were on fire. He knew that everyone was staring at him, but Drake’s only focus was on his rusty Crown Vic.

  His hands were shaking, and when he was finally within the safe confines of his vehicle he reached into his pocket for another miniature. And he would have pulled it out too, right there with everyone watching, when time unexpectedly burped forward and the sound of kids resuming their games as if nothing had happened reminded him of where he was.

  Clutching the bottle inside his pocket, he used his other hand to slip the car into drive and sped off, trying his best not to look at anyone, Suzan Cuthbert included.

  Chapter 3

  Drake wiped the whiskey from his lips with the back of his hand and was about to reach for another when the radio on the passenger seat suddenly squawked.

  “Detective Drake?”

  It had been six months since his radio had come alive with all the clarity of an AM station in the Lincoln Tunnel. The first month, he had checked the batteries nearly every day, making sure that they were still good, hoping that he would hear his name being called.

  The second month, he had kept it close to his side.

  By the third month, he had begun to loathe the thing, and now, sixth months after his partner’s murder, it held all the appeal of a rotten banana.

  “Drake?” the staticky voice chirped again.

  Drake cleared his throat and grabbed the radio. No matter what had happened, he still had a job to do.

  “Drake here,” he said, surprised at how calm and even his voice sounded.

  “A body was found in an abandoned warehouse in Clinton Hill this morning.”

  What, no welcome back, Drake? No, we missed you, Damien?

  His brow furrowed and his brain immediately started to formulate a scenario based only on those four words: abandoned warehouse, Clinton Hill.

  “Where in the Hill?”

  “Luther Avenue.”

  And with that, his narrative was nearly complete.

  “Junkie? Tweeker?”

  There was a short pause.

  “No. Well-dressed man, expensive shoes.”

  The narrative dissolved.

  Expensive shoes?

  “Is it—”

  “Just get there, Drake.”

  The radio clicked, and Drake pushed
his lips together, surprised by the dispatcher’s curtness. He debated pushing the button and asking more questions, but the abrupt tone and end to the conversation changed his mind.

  Drake suddenly wished that he had more whiskey left, but the only bottle remaining in his car was Listerine. He filled his mouth, swished, spat, and then started his car.

  Twenty minutes later, he arrived at his first crime scene in six months.

  There were more squad cars than Drake expected, even if the victim had been wearing “expensive shoes”. Clinton Hill was no stranger to its share of homicides, but most were drug-related, usually involving local residents.

  The last time he had been in the neighborhood, he had been investigating a small-time meth pusher who had been murdered by repeated blows to his head with a towel rack of all things.

  Three staggered police cars blocked the entrance to a narrow alley, and Drake had already been forced to weave between two others to gain access to the adjoining street.

  Drake parked next to one of the squad cars, briefly smelled his breath and then stepped out into the sun.

  He had taken maybe three steps before a man in uniform approached. He opened his mouth to say something, but Drake held up his shield before he got a word out.

  “Detective Drake,” he said, lips pressed together tightly. “Homicide.”

  The uniform was a dark black man with a bristly mustache and strange, light-colored eyes, as if he were wearing colored contacts. As a policeman for a decade, and a homicide detective for four years, Drake thought he knew most, if not all, of the beat cops in NYC. Not everyone, surely, there were over thirty-thousand of New York’s Finest on the payroll, but someone like this, a man in his mid-to-late forties, in this neighborhood, he should have definitely come across in the past.

  But while he was a stranger to Drake, the way the uniform looked at him, as if Drake had uttered a blaspheme in church, suggested some recognition on his part.

  Drake made a face.

  “And? The body?”

  Dark lids slid over gray eyes in a slow blink.

  “Sorry, come with me please, Detective.”

  The lean black man, who hadn’t offered his name in return, briskly walked toward the alley. Several of the other officers that they passed stared at them, and it was all Drake could do not to stare back, to ask them what the hell they were looking at.