He reached the watch commander, a sturdily built, square-shouldered, full-faced woman with long, once black hair shot through with streaks of silver. She was in her fifties, no longer the fresh-faced youthful beauty she had once been, but something shined through the crow’s-feet and smile lines. She had a sharp eye as keen and hardened as any beat cop. She looked down on him with a matronly glower.
“Can I help you, sir?” she asked.
“I’m here to see Detectives Dean and Goh, Homicide East.”
She pursed her full lips, studying him for a moment, disapproval crossing her face. She cleared her throat. “Their desks are on the second floor, in the Homicide East squad room. They’re expecting you, Detective Cooper.”
“Thank you,” Bolan replied.
He followed the desk sergeant’s directions and was soon at the desk of an unlikely couple of lawmen sitting at face-to-face desks, paperwork and foam cups littering them, computer screens displaying crime scene reports.
Goh looked up at Bolan, dark eyes taking him in with a single glance as his raven hair fell in sheets off his collar.
Dean had short blond hair that stopped at her collar and piercing, pale blue eyes that almost mirrored his own. She studied him as well, her gaze penetrating, trying to cut through the layers of pretense he was hiding behind. While Goh was offering his hand in greeting, she was holding back, tense and withdrawn, in observer mode.
Bolan took Goh’s hand.
“Matt Cooper,” Bolan offered.
“Kevin Goh.” The detective’s flawless East End accent indicated he was London born and raised, or at least raised. His grip was strong and firm. “This is Melissa Dean.”
“Pleasure,” she said, but making no effort to act like it was.
“Likewise,” he answered. He was sincere about it, but wondered how far behind he was on his rapport with these two.
“So you’re interested in the latest run of Ripper killings?” Goh asked.
“Yeah. I was interested in the case. Meredith Jones-Jakes, about five months ago, was the last one I’d heard about,” Bolan explained. “Then this morning, there was supposedly another one?”
“You seem to have learned about it pretty quickly,” Dean spoke up in a stinging broadside. “Coincidence?”
He met her gaze unflinchingly. “There’s no such thing as coincidence.”
“So what are you doing so far from the colonies?” Dean pressed.
“You have the paperwork sitting on your desk.”
Dean pushed it aside. “Administrative leave from the Boston Police Department. That’s the reason. What’s the story?”
“I’m set to testify in three months,” Bolan told her. “And I’m under a gag order about anything else.”
Dean’s eyes narrowed. “A mobster?”
“Make of it what you will.”
“That’s why you’re traipsing through a Met station packing a hand cannon under your jacket? The Mafia doesn’t have roving hit squads around the world, Detective.”
Bolan was tempted, for half a heartbeat, to tell her that she was wrong. Early on in his career, he’d run into more than enough heavily armed gangsters in Soho, giving him his first experiences with the awesome Weatherby Mark V and the efficient Uzi 9 mm submachine gun. And only a few hours previously, he could have shocked her with the level of hardware at Sonny Westerbridge’s Rotherhithe warehouse.
Instead, Bolan remained diplomatic. “It’s not a cannon. And it’s cleared.”
Dean’s jaw set firmly. “I just don’t want to see it unless we come under fire from the entire Peruvian Third Naval Commando unit, all right?”
Bolan took a notebook and pen from the pocket of his gray windbreaker. “Is that only the Peruvian Third Naval Commando unit, or is that indicative of the level of opposition?”
Dean sighed heavily. “We’re going to check out the body at the morgue, smart-ass. Are you going to join us, or are you going to try and join the cast of Dead Ringers?”
“Melissa, as much as I’d love to see you get into a catfight, I think you’d have to have it with a woman,” Goh said. “I’m sorry, Detective Cooper. She’s not usually like this.”
Bolan looked Dean over. “I’m not offended. If a foreigner was going to step into one of my cases, I’d be uptight too.”
Dean stood, grabbing her brown leather jacket, flipping it around her slender shoulders. Hard eyes met his. “Uptight? Try suspicious.”
The Executioner watched her as she was leaving the squad room. She stopped halfway to the door and glared back at Goh and him. “Are you two coming?”
Bolan looked to Goh, who could only shrug. “We’re coming, Melissa.”
The two men followed the detective.
AS THE IRATE Vincent Black strode to his car, his two men fell into step behind him. He spent a moment checking the .50-caliber Desert Eagle he had in a shoulder holster, then waited for Sal to open his door while Tony stepped around to the driver’s side.
Black ducked his head and got into the back seat.
The old man was a pain in his ass, calling him out on jobs whenever he felt like it, but in a way, that pain helped Black along.
After all, Black was in the business of hurting people.
And he was good at it.
“Just watch whoever’s going into the Met today,” De Simmones told him. “We’re looking for a tall man, six-three. Black hair, blue eyes. Someone who looks hard and businesslike.”
Black settled in comfortably for the surveillance. Being caught with an unlicensed handgun right in front of the police station would land him in more trouble than he was willing to pay his lawyers to get him out of. He shrugged, flattened his coat lapel with the palm of one hand, and watched from across the street.
It wasn’t long before the man matching the description De Simmones had given him drove into a parking garage next to the police station, then headed inside. Black checked the guy out.
He was big, but he was lean and proportional, moving with the facile grace of a panther. He also had confidence, layered under an alertness not based on paranoia, but on the kind of awareness you only got when you walked into some hard places nobody expected you to walk out of.
Black could identify with the guy. He’d been in a lot of traps, and he bore the knife scars and more than a couple of circular bullet scars from close encounters with men who had tried to be as bad as he was.
Black still walked. They didn’t. Some of them didn’t even smell fresh air anymore.
I’d like to see this big bloke in action, he thought. And when it’s all over, I’ll put a single .50-caliber slug into the middle of the stranger’s face and blow out his brains.
THOUGH HE COULD HARDLY be considered squeamish, the Executioner rarely went to a morgue. He rarely needed to, and he had seen enough of the people he loved and respected laid out under cold white sheets on flat metal tables. Too many soldiers on the same side, too many beloved, too many family members, all cold and on a slab, never to move again. Posing as a detective, though, he had no choice.
Bolan looked at the familiar face, staring up. Her eyes were still open, and he was tempted to ask why they had been left that way, but he knew particulate matter sometimes showed up on the cornea, which would provide some clues as to who killed her or how she died. It was often the little details solved a mystery. Sometimes looking into the eyes of a dead woman could give a moment of insight into her murder.