rhododendrons. Denko stood quietly while the officer opened the car door and put one hand on top of his head to guide him into the back seat.
Faye began to shake. We’ll be in touch.
Apprehension formed a knot in her stomach. She could hardly wait.
“What the hell did you think you were doing?” Police chief Jarek Denko’s voice was quiet and cold as a night in January. “This is my town. It’s not your personal sandbox that you can come make a mess in when you’re tired of stinking up Chicago.”
Aleksy Denko clamped his jaw. He knew he was out of line, damn it. But he didn’t allow anybody to talk to him that way. Not even his big brother.
“I was on a case,” he said.
Jarek narrowed his eyes. “A case you didn’t choose to explain to my patrol officer. A case you didn’t bother to run by me. Damn it, Alex, you know the rules of jurisdiction.”
“Yeah, well, I’m not exactly acting officially,” Aleksy muttered. “I thought it was better if you didn’t know.”
“Let me get this straight. You kept me in the dark to protect me?”
Jarek sounded as if he couldn’t believe it. Hell, Aleksy didn’t believe it himself. Before his brother gave up the streets to play Andy Griffith in Eden, Jarek Denko—the Ice Man—had been a legend among the homicide cops of Chicago’s Area 3.
“You want to tell me what this is all about?” Jarek invited quietly.
Aleksy sighed and dropped into the chair facing the chief’s desk. “You know about the shootout on the west side, five, six weeks ago?”
“I read about it in the paper. One officer down, I remember.”
Aleksy remembered, too. He choked off the fresh wave of anger and guilt that rose with the memory. “Yeah, well, what wasn’t in the paper was that it was a joint op. Some scum is running guns from Atlanta through Chicago to Canada. The Toronto police want him. The FBI wants him. The ATF wants him. And we got him. Set up a nice little sting to net the whole operation. Only everybody’s tangoing so hard that somebody missteps. The scum figures it’s a setup and gets away. We’re left with nothing but a couple of mopes who aren’t talking and one dead detective.”
“How do you come into it? Was it your operation?”
“I don’t like it when one of our own goes down. Maybe after the shooting, I pushed a little too hard on the investigation.”
“No ‘maybe’ about it,” Jarek murmured.
Aleksy grinned sharply. “Anyway, some fed got his toes stepped on and pushed back. Next thing I know, my boss is calling me into his office telling me I need an extended vacation.”
“Here in Eden?” Jarek raised an eyebrow. “Not exactly Cancún, little brother.”
“Could be I figured you needed some help planning your wedding.”
A month or so back, Jarek had gotten himself engaged to a local babe. A reporter, Tess DeLucca. Aleksy had had some doubts about the match, but his brother seemed happy, and the wedding was set for September.
Jarek shook his head. “Which still doesn’t explain what you were doing on Eileen Harper’s dock with binoculars and a gun.”
“The detective who was killed…” Aleksy hesitated and then shrugged. He had to give Jarek something, or he wouldn’t get his gun back. “I knew her. Karen Vasquez.”
Jarek straightened behind his big metal desk. “Your partner?”
“Former partner,” Aleksy corrected. “We stopped working together nine months ago. Before your move. Remember?”
“That’s right. She put in for a transfer.”
“Yeah.”
“For personal reasons.”
Aleksy tried not to squirm. “Yeah.”
“How personal, hotshot?”
“Look, we were close. We got closer. Her idea, my mistake. Okay?”
“Not okay, if she couldn’t work with you afterward,” Jarek stated.
“I told you, it was a mistake. Anyway, she got reassigned. Coming from Area 3 she got handed this big case. Gunrunning across the border. She was excited. Called me up to tell me about it.”
“She shouldn’t have done that.”
“She thought I might have an interest.”
“And what would that be? Aside from letting you know she was moving on to bigger and better things?”
“She said something about my brother finding himself in the middle of things. So when she—” Died. Hell. “Anyway, afterward, I figured that was a lead up here.”
“But why—” Jarek’s eyes narrowed as he answered his own question. “Richard Freer. Liberty Guns and Ammo. His place is opposite the Harper dock.”
Aleksy nodded. “I tried to rent the cottage but the owner had already promised it to her niece.”
The big-eyed pixie in the flowered skirt who had called the cops.
Jarek tapped a pencil against his desk. “Okay. I’ll give you that Dick Freer is a pompous son of a bitch. But as far as I know, he’s legit. And he’s got a lot of pull in this community. Hell, he was on the search committee that hired me.”
“Whoever our gunrunner is, he’s got good cover. Or the feds would have caught him by now.”
“And what makes you think you can succeed where they’ve failed?”
“I have to,” Aleksy said.
Jarek’s gaze sharpened. His voice softened. “It’s not your job. It’s not your case. You need to stay out of it.”
“I can’t.”
“Alex—”
But Aleksy cut him off. He appreciated his brother’s concern, but he didn’t need it. He didn’t want it. Some things were too painful to get into, and way too personal to share. “Are you going to stop me?”
His brother hesitated. “I can’t let my department get mixed up in your personal vendetta.”
“I know that. That’s why I didn’t spill the details to what’s his name. Larsen. I just need you to leave me alone.”
“That’s it?”
“Well…you could give me my gun back.”
Jarek opened a drawer in his desk and hefted Aleksy’s snub-nose Smith and Wesson .38. “You carrying the ‘chief’s special’ now?”
“You always did.”
