scarlet city - chapter two - dead end
“She had Hunt killed, I know it.” Burke cracks open a peanut shell and pops the nut into his mouth. Seeing Robbins in the bar at Montgomery’s table had been concerning, but he makes a mental note to address that later. He has bigger problems than who may or may not be the coroner’s friends.
Cristina busies herself drying glasses. He really shouldn’t be here after hours - Judge Altman was very clear about that the last time she was in, surveying how her bar was doing - but there’s no dealing with him when he’s in this kind of mood. “Why are you telling me this?” She asks, holding a wine glass up to the light to inspect it. Finding a spot, she puts it on the left side of the counter with the others that need to go back for a second washing.
Burke takes a swig of his beer; he usually goes for scotch, but he’d started with beer at Oceanside earlier (which is not anywhere near the ocean, and he’s yet to understand the meaning behind the name) and prefers to stick with one alcohol per night. “But I can’t tie her to it.” His case notes on Owen Hunt are spread out in front of him across the bar, dirtied with small bits of peanut shells. He comes into the Emerald City to work sometimes; nobody bothers him and if Cristina’s working he gets a discount on drinks. But he’d come here after it closed tonight because he couldn’t face going home just yet, feeling there was something he needed to find out that’s lying just out of reach.
Cristina takes a break from cleaning to lean on the bar. She props her chin in her hand and takes a peanut from the nearly-empty bowl in front of him. “Why not?”
“No evidence,” Burke says. “Coroner’s report says that he was tied and beaten first, shot in the back of the head and then dumped in the Sound. There’s no crime scene.”
She looks at him like he’s being dense. “‘Course there’s a crime scene. Just ‘cause you haven’t found it yet doesn’t mean it’s not there.”
He eyes her, momentarily distracted by her cleavage. “And what do you suggest? That I convince Altman to get me a search warrant for every basement of every building Montgomery might own?”
Cristina scoffs and cracks another peanut. “Of course not. Montgomery didn’t use her own place, she probably wasn’t even there.” She takes a sip of Burke’s beer.
Burke cracks his neck and frowns. “It’s no use anyway. With O’Malley and Hunt dead, so is the case. The entire thing was hanging on Hunt’s testimony.”
“Alright,” Cristina says, recognizing the signs of Burke having had slightly too much beer and transforming from brilliant detective into brooding detective. She shuffles his papers into a pile and leans over the bar to drop them into his briefcase. Wiping down the bar - the peanut shells end up on the floor, which she’ll take care of in the morning - she drapes the wet cloth over the faucet of the sink behind her. “Let’s get you home.”
Pete Wilder loiters inconspicuously on the corner outside Emerald City. The awning of a family-owned grocery store, long closed for the evening, protects him from the ubiquitous rain and a dark trench coat lets him blend in from even the most astute passerby. He ducks his head and cups his hand around the unlit cigarette in his mouth and strikes a match, inhaling sharply to light the tobacco. It catches with a crackle and he exhales out into the rain. He can’t wait to leave this damn city, head south for some sun and a new start.
He’s always stayed on the fringes of Addison’s organization, making most of his living via a moderately successful private investigation basis, specializing in scorned lovers and the recently-widowed. But she’d come along, with perfect timing, as he’d hit a slump and offered him twice his usual rate to keep him on retainer. He’d never been asked to do more than his job and to keep no records other than what he turned over to her.
One more job to do, he reminds himself, and then he can leave this city. He’ll undoubtedly find a new boss in LA, but he doesn’t mind that. He does mind the constant rain.
The door opens and the bartender, Cristina Yang, stumbles out, Preston Burke’s arm looped around her shoulders for support. Pete scoffs quietly; the detective really ought to know better than to get this drunk now that he’s working Montgomery’s case, even if the bar is ostensibly neutral. Judge Altman owns the place and allowing it to become a stronghold of Montgomery would call into question her impartiality on the bench; allowing it to become a cop bar would frighten away almost three-fourths of her clientele.
He waits for the duo to get a block ahead of him before he follows behind them. Burke’s loud enough when he’s drunk that Pete catches snippets of the conversation. It’s nothing spectacular, just his frustration with the case (which Pete thinks is unfounded, since the man’s had it for barely a week) and desire to link Montgomery to Owen Hunt’s death.
Pete covers a snicker at that. Addison got her start in New York after helping Lucky Luciano’s wife give birth; Lucky’s friends, in gratitude, offered her a significant amount of money to leave the hospital and become the house doctor. She’d learned the basics from the likes of Bugsy Siegel and Meyer Lansky and then set up shop in a different borough, hooking up with the mob and Murder Inc. when it suited her and waving them off when it didn’t. Over drinks one night, she told him that the most important lesson she ever learned was in sending messages: “Make everyone and their uncle know that it was you who did it - but don’t let anyone actually trace you.” The entire town knows by now it was Addison’s order that had Owen sleeping with the fish that night and if the cops can’t make something that obvious a solid case, then they’re either incompetent or the coroner’s working both sides. He’s long suspected the latter, since the cops in this town aren’t quite that stupid.
He trails them successfully to Cristina’s apartment and waits on the stoop of the building across the street until a light turns on upstairs. He watches the silhouettes of her taking off his coat and draping him on the sofa. Satisfied that he’s not going to get anything else tonight, he drops his cigarette in a puddle and walks home.
“Look, Duquette. How many times are you gonna get yourself shot this year?” Derek takes a swig from the flask hidden inside his lab coat and frowns at the man sitting in front of him.
Denny sighs and peels off his now-ruined shirt. He tosses it with his uninjured arm into the trash can across from the cot. “I was thinking about going for a record.” Burke may have been the first one to meet Shepherd and use his services, but Denny practically pays the man’s utility bill.
Derek chuckles and snaps on a pair of gloves. “How’d it happen this time?” He starts with the iodine over the bullet hole. It’s embedded in Denny’s shoulder, but not deep and should heal up nicely on its own.
“You know those girls who keep ending up dead? Been trying to figure it out. Though I had a lead tonight, but ended up just being a drunk john. Got pissed that I interrupted his session, shot me as I was leaving.” He hisses as Shepherd starts with the forceps. He’d had a bad reaction to the anesthetic the one time Shepherd used it - to the tune of hallucinating a full carnival in the room, completely with Shepherd as the clown - and now just puts up with the pain if it means not suffering four hours of crazed delusions.
Derek rolls his eyes. He makes a face and pulls out the bullet, dropping it into the pan Denny’s holding with a clink. “Keep it for a souvenir.” He opens a sterilized needle and thread. “Did you at least collar the guy for attempted murder?”
“Nah. Seemed more important to get the bullet out.”
“You guys any closer to catching that monster?” Derek asks, starting to suture the bullet wound closed.
Denny sighs dejectedly. He’s not, at all. There’s too much difference in the victims: hair color, eye color, race, height, weight, part of town, cause of death. About the only thing in common is their profession, that they’re dead, most of them have had their throats slit, and as of yet none of them have been Montgomery’s girls. He knows in his gut it’s not Montgomery, though. Even if Burke hadn’t pointed out, over Chinese takeout and beer in the precinct when the murders first started, that it didn’t fit Montgomery’s MO, it’s not at all her style. But he doesn’t say any of this to Shepherd. “I think so,” he says, trying to inject as much hopefulness into his voice as possible.
“Well,” Derek says, finishing taping the bandage to Denny’s shoulder, “good luck to you. Keep an eye on that and…”
“If it starts oozing anything the color of your scrubs, come back in. I know the drill.”
Derek smiles. “Of course you do.” He hands Denny two unlabeled prescription bottles. “Antibiotics,” he holds up one, “painkillers,” he holds up the other. “I don’t want to see you back here for at least a week,” he warns.
Denny hops off the table and, wincing, shrugs on his coat. “I’ll do my best.” He drops a couple of bills on the bed and heads out. Sometimes he wishes that he’d gotten to Shepherd first and, like Burke, could trade medical favors for disappearing citations instead of actually paying, but other times he figures he’s in the hospital frequently enough that Shepherd would’ve asked for a little something extra anyway.
“Counselor,” Judge Altman looks up at the knock on her door. “Come in.”
Jackson Avery hovers at the door, unwilling to walk in any further and take a seat until he’s been invited.
Teddy frowns and gestures for him to come forward and have a seat. She leans back in her chair and steeples her fingers underneath her chin. It’s never a good sign when the ADA comes to her office before reasonable people have even had coffee. “What can I do for you?”
“I have a detective that wants to pin O’Malley’s death on Addison Montgomery.”
She feels her eyebrows rise involuntarily. “That’s a hell of an accusation to make. Does this detective of yours have any evidence?” She’s willing to help out Avery; he’s new to the bar and even newer to the city, she’s not even sure the shine on the nametag on his door has worn off yet. He’s still finding his footing with the law.
“He has a hunch and a couple of bystanders who are willing to put someone matching Montgomery’s description at the shootout.”
“I’ve been expecting you to show up here with something like this. But, honestly, I expected it to be about Hunt. He was the star witness in your case.” She doesn’t need to tell Avery that a hunch - no matter how healthy - and eyewitnesses who saw a tall woman with red hair aren’t nearly enough to hang a hat on, not to mention a murder conviction.
“Even less evidence there,” he admits, “though the entire city is convinced she did it.”
Teddy scoffs. “Of course she did it. Maybe not her, but one of her goons took care of it. He was going to nail her to the cross. New York City couldn’t even manage that.”
Jackson doesn’t point out that the only reason Montgomery isn’t currently cooling her heels in a prison cell some place in upstate New York is because the jury came back with a baffling not guilty verdict and at least half the jurors went on vacations after the case that they couldn’t afford before. He knows that Altman would’ve learned from New York’s mistakes and sequestered the jury with round-the-clock muscle of her own. “So it’s a no on O’Malley then.”
“You know better than that. Get some real evidence. Robbins pulled a bullet out of him, right? Find the gun, find her fingerprints. And Montgomery wouldn’t do it herself, she’d get Sloan or Karev to do it.” She smiles at Avery, who desperately looks like he wants to be taking notes. “Now get out of my office,” she grins.
Despite the mild headache reminding him of last night, Burke can’t help but laugh when Duquette joins him in the elevator. “Really,” he says, catching his breath, “how are you not dead?”
Denny simply shakes his head and readjusts his sling holding his shoulder steady. “If the city gave out hazard pay, you’d wish you were me.”
“Is this where I point out that it doesn’t and I don’t?” Burke steps forward and slides the grated doors open, knowing that Duquette probably can’t manage with just one arm, and moves aside to let the other man go first.
“Oh,” Erica says, catching sight of her colleagues, “you’ll intimidate them now, that’s for sure.”
“Go to hell, both of you,” Denny says with a grin.
After a few minutes of silent working, the door to Webber’s office slams open.
“I was assaulted by one of your detectives last night, Chief Webber. And if you’re not going to do anything about that, I certainly will have to take things into my own hands.”
“That is not a recommended course of action, Miss Grey.”
Burke’s ears perk up at the mention of the name. He frowns, realizing that it isn’t Shepherd’s girlfriend, Meredith. He’d heard something about a half-sister once, though Grey’s a fairly common enough name.
Grey turns to stalk out, but pauses and nearly trips on the missed half-step. “That’s him,” she points firmly at Duquette.
Denny blinks. “I got shot last night by your john, Lexie. I could’ve collared both of you right then.”
Burke looks over at Hahn, trying her best to turn a stifled laugh into a cough. She catches Burke watching her and mouths only him and Burke nods, agreeing. Duquette may be a good cop, but the man’s jacket is at least half an inch thick with unfounded complaints. One of these days, someone’s going to have a legitimate complaint the force ignores and actually take it into their own hands.
“Miss Grey,” Webber says politely, “perhaps you’d like to rethink your position.”
“Oh, of course! You take his side in the matter. I was just minding my own business, when he kicks down my door - which you will be paying for, by the way - and waves his gun at me and my boyfriend and suggest that we stop what we’re doing.”
The boyfriend line is clearly a lie. She’s dyed her hair and gained some weight since she was last here, but with the shouting everyone in the room recognizes her as Lexie Grey. Most of the room has had the displeasure of cuffing her for prostitution at one point or another.
Burke tunes out the rest of the argument. It’s going to end with Webber escorting Lexie out of the building with a stern warning to calm down and get her story straight before coming back. Besides, he has a lead to follow.
“Look,” Cooper says, standing firmly in the doorway to his apartment, blocking Burke’s entrance and most of his view, “I’m not going to tell you anything.” He’s leaving the city in three days and leaving Montgomery and that entire mess behind; she’s letting him go without so much as a dirty look or a promise that she’ll look him up if she’s ever in the area. He has no desire to say or do anything to jeopardize him getting out of town on her good side and out of her debt.
Burke peers over Freedman’s shoulder and sees moving boxes piled in corners. “Leaving town?”
“Yeah. Couple days. I’m starting a job with the LA Times.” He figures it’s in his best interests to be honest, even if it is to the detective who’s investigating his former boss.
Burke knows that Freedman’s small potatoes at best and has probably never done anything illegal in his life. Every transaction with Montgomery has been above-table and legitimate. But he’s also leaving town in a few days and, because he’s one of Montgomery’s few associates who hasn’t been wanted for one crime or another, he’s probably Burke’s best shot at getting some inside information. “Mr. Freedman…”
“Detective, I have to pack. If you’ll excuse me.” Cooper shuts the door and presses his ear to it, waiting to hear the detective leave and walk back down the stairs.
His phone rings. “Yeah?” He answers.
“You tell him anything?” Wilder’s voice comes through, slightly staticky.
Cooper pushes back the curtains to look outside, down at the street. He sees a man in a hat and dark overcoat huddled by the pay phone on the corner. “No. Nothing to tell - he just wanted to talk, didn’t say about what. Montgomery have you tail him?”
“Yeah. Look, depending on how long this takes, I’m gonna be a bit longer getting to LA.”
“You’ll owe me for rent.”
“That’s fine. Gotta go.”
Burke twirls his pen and stares at the table. He’s taken over one of the interrogation rooms and laid everything out on the table. Pictures connected with bits of string and scribbled notes; he’d prefer a bulletin board or taping things to the wall, but the Chief is dead against having case information in public view of anyone who walks into the precinct office. Burke supposes the man has a point, but it sure makes complicated messes like this one difficult.
He tilts his head and reaches for his coffee cup, only to discover that it’s empty.
There’s really nothing here. He can connect people with Montgomery, but people aren’t worth anything. Every crime O’Malley had listed her as a suspect for is just out of reach of her; two points away at least, if not more. The closest is an arson case from last year where the top suspect is Alex Karev himself, based on recorded telephone conversations O’Malley didn’t have a warrant for and as such Judge Wallace wouldn’t allow the evidence in court; he threw out the case a day later when he realized the ADA didn’t have anything else to present. Burke smiles wryly; after that, Naomi Bennett refused to work with O’Malley on anything, citing gross incompetence, and had handed everything to do with Addison Montgomery over to Jackson Avery. He’d enjoyed working with her on a few cases, though he’d always suspected her reluctance to work with O’Malley had less to do with him and more with prosecuting Montgomery than she let on.
He pauses in his musings and blinks. “Wait,” he says to himself. “Why would Bennett care about trying Montgomery?” He picks his way around the piles of paper on the floor until he finds the one he labeled NEW YORK. He lifts it onto a chair, squats, and flips through it until he finds what he’s looking for.
A picture of five people crowded into a booth, clearly a celebration of some sort. He easily picks out Montgomery, Shepherd, Sloan and Bennett, but doesn’t recognize the other man. He flips it over.
Addison, Derek, Mark, Sam and Naomi. Addison’s birthday, ’31.
He blinks again, wracking his brain for Sam. He studies the picture again. Sam has his arm around Naomi and if Burke squints, he can make out a ring on the appropriate fingers of both of them.
With energy he didn’t have five minutes ago, he bursts back into the main room. “Anyone know anything about a Sam Bennett?”
Erica looks up from the wiretap transcript she’d been reading. “Sounds familiar. Isn’t he the guy who got himself shot in Portland?”
“Rumor had it Montgomery put him in charge there after the original guy kicked it with a heart attack,” Denny clarifies as best he knows. He pops a painkiller, his shoulder beginning to throb.
“Why, you got something interesting?”
Burke shakes his head. A mental picture is beginning to form, but the details are still fuzzy. “Maybe. I have to go talk to some people.” He ducks back into the interrogation room and grabs a couple of pictures before locking the door, picking his hat and coat up from his desk, and leaving the precinct.
Addison cracks her neck and looks at her lunch companion. “How scared are they?”
Callie shrugs noncommittally. She’s had to calm more than one set of nerves over the past nights, but for the most part the girls seem to assume that they’re safe because of their employer. “They’re getting there. I mean, so far none of them have been ours, which is helping. But I think if one more turns up dead, we’re going to have to give them some muscle or they’re gonna stay inside at night.”
“Damn,” Addison curses. She swirls her martini, watching the patterns the light makes through the clear liquid onto the smooth, dark wood table. “If he even goes near one of our girls, it’s war. You know that.”
Callie’s eyebrows furrow and she brushes a finger against the condensation on her gin and tonic. “Do you know who it is?”
Addison shakes her head. She doesn’t even have a hunch, which is strange for her; Seattle is her town and every bit of crime that happens either happens at her bidding or she knows who’s responsible. Except for this. “Seven dead girls.” Even though none of them are hers - so far - she can’t help but be angry at the monster. “Son of a bitch.”
“Amen,” Callie says. “We could always go full-on escort.”
“This guy’s smart,” Addison says. She knows that the cops aren’t giving everything to the papers, but she also knows that if he even left a shred of evidence, Robbins would’ve found it. “If we take everyone off the street, he’ll just call up.”
They go silent for a moment while their waitress brings them their lunches.
“Thank you, Miranda,” Addison says, dismissing the short woman with a smile and a nod.
“We’d know who he is.”
Addison looks at Callie skeptically. “When was the last time you met a john who used his real name?”
Callie stifles a yawn; her own days of standing on a street corner are long over, but she still stays up until she’s certain all of them are safe and home again. It’s a habit Arizona would prefer she get rid of, but lately she’s been staying up with Callie. “Never.”
Burke spends the entire walk to the Archfield deep in thought. ADA Naomi Bennett is the only one in the picture from New York not somehow involved in Addison’s business. Except Shepherd, but Burke believed Shepherd the first time they spoke about Montgomery: he’d walked in on his wife and his best friend, Mark Sloan, in the midst of making love in Shepherd’s own bed and he’d just walked out, too betrayed to deal with either of them ever again. Burke doubts that Shepherd has any contact with Montgomery at all.
But Bennett. Granted, O’Malley had bungled the arson case which they’d planned to use later in a mounting pile of evidence against Montgomery and her entire organization. But that’s not reason enough to throw the entire case to a new guy, just three years out of Harvard Law; Avery may be a brilliant prosecutor, but Burke doubts there’s anyone in the city who believes Avery can take Montgomery down. He’d been close, once O’Malley had convinced Hunt to talk, but that had been less his work and more O’Malley’s. And now both O’Malley and Hunt are dead and Avery has no case. Bennett could probably take one look at the mess Burke has created in the interrogation room and make a neat little story out of it.
He wonders, yet again, what prompted her to hand off the case. She’d struck him as a reasonable woman, one who had been scorned in life and love like everyone else in town, but one who doesn’t give up easily. He’d always sensed that there was something about the Montgomery case that bothered her and today, finding the picture of them clearly as friends, slides that puzzle piece into place.
Now all he has to do is figure out if her reluctance was because of their previous friendship, or if Bennett’s really working both sides. He hopes it’s the former, because he can’t think of any reason for the latter.
Burke pushes open the door to the Archfield and smiles at the hostess, telling her it’ll be just him for lunch. He scans the room and sees only a few occupied tables. He thinks the corner booth in the back might be occupied, but it’s dim that far back and he can’t tell if it’s shadows, his eyes playing tricks on him, or two women quietly talking.
He’s led to a booth on the side and sits facing the door. He smiles politely while the hostess lists off the lunch specials and then is left on his own to study the menu. By the time his waitress comes by, he’s ready to order.
“Miranda,” Burke smiles politely; he’d hoped to be seated in her section.
“Burke,” she says, careful not to use his title. The Archfield has its own rules, different from Ambrose’s; first and foremost is to hide the identities of patrons as much as possible. “What can I get for you today?”
Burke’s eyes settle on the way she’s holding her pen, shaking a little, and writes it off to nervousness at meeting a customer from a different restaurant in this one. “I’ll have the soup. And a club sandwich. And when you come back, I have a few questions.”
Miranda smiles sweetly. “Of course. Iced tea to drink? Wedge of lemon, unsweetened?”
“Of course. Thank you.”
He waits patiently for her to return with his drink. She does, almost immediately, and he smiles. “Have you ever seen this woman in here?” He pushes a picture of Naomi Bennett, cut from the newspaper, toward her. It’s clipped to two twenty dollar bills.
Miranda pockets the money and picks up the picture. “Maybe,” she says hesitantly. Feeling the weight of Burke’s forty dollars in her apron pocket, she smiles at him. “Let me check in the kitchen with the others. They might have seen her.”
He smiles widely. “Thank you.”
It’s not two minutes before she pokes her head out of the kitchen and motions for him to come forward. He stands up, slightly unsure of the protocol. He’s bought information at the Archfield before, but his waiter or waitress has always had the information at their fingertips, or sent someone over who did. He’s never been asked somewhere private before. On guard, he walks across the room, careful to catalog the other patrons as he walks by. He notices that the corner booth he’d thought occupied earlier is now definitely empty. “Yes?”
Miranda pushes the door open with her hip. “Dell Parker,” she gestures further into the kitchen, “he’s the cook. Says she came in once and had some issues with the food, so he came out to talk to her. Go ahead, it’s okay.”
Burke takes one last look behind him and steps inside the kitchen. It’s hot and there’s far more activity than he thought possible for such an empty restaurant outside. Miranda ushers him to the back where a young blonde man in a chef’s hat is frowning at a sauce pot.
He opens his mouth to ask Parker about Bennett, but a hand firm on his shoulder silences him.
“Detective Burke,” a deep voice from behind greets him.
Burke turns around, suddenly aware that this may not have been his greatest plan. He hopes that Cristina remembers that they had plans to get together after work and that she’ll have the presence of mind to contact his colleagues when he doesn’t meet her at the bar. Whether his colleagues will put together where he went and what he asked about is another story entirely. “Miranda,” he says, disappointed.
She shrugs and crosses her arms. “You should know better.”
Burke looks up and finds himself face to face with Mark Sloan. He notices Alex Karev behind him and tries to swallow inconspicuously.
A click of heel on tile makes him close his eyes. Absolutely his worst plan ever.
“Detective Burke,” Addison Montgomery’s sultry voice sails smoothly over the sounds of kitchen chaos. “Let’s talk. Somewhere a little more private. Boys?”
The last thing Burke sees is Mark’s fist flying toward his face.
nav: forward to chapter three: angels with dirty faces // back to chapter one: king of the underworld // home