Chapter 4 #2
“No, thanks for your time.” More like thanks for wasting his time. Tanner had gotten absolutely nothing useful out of this guy. He could only hope the next one who walked in would actually have something Tanner could use. “Have Nico send in the next member, please.”
Baby stood, and without giving Tanner a second glance, walked out of the room. When Tanner heard the exterior door slam shut, he let out a breath, not realizing he’d been holding so much tension this whole time.
The next man to enter the room had steel blue eyes, a mop of dark unruly hair, and wore a t-shirt with an old rock band logo on it under his cut. “I’m Fetish,” he said without making eye contact with Tanner.
Tanner almost laughed at the ridiculous names these guys had, but stifled it with a cough.
He proceeded to ask him the same questions he’d just asked Baby, and got similarly useless answers.
After Fetish left, a third man came in looking more like a homeless bum than a member of one of the most dangerous motorcycle clubs in Texas.
He didn’t say a word when he sat down, so Tanner initiated.
“Name?” He’d come to expect a weird nickname so when the man said, “Vance,” it surprised Tanner by how normal it sounded.
He wanted to ask if that was a nickname or his given name, but decided to let it go and continue with his questioning.
All his answers were not unlike the two members that came before him, until he asked if he knew anyone Arlo J had a beef with outside the club.
“Yeah, that damn healer he used.”
Skyla. Tanner’s stomach dropped as soon as Vance mentioned her. Arlo J and Skyla hadn’t parted on great terms, but she had healed Nico after a rogue FBI Agent shot up the club and put him in the hospital with two bullet holes in his body. “Why did he have a beef with her?”
Vance smirked. “Why does Arlo J have a beef with anyone? The man always asked for more than he could get, and got pissed when he didn’t get it. No one said ‘no’ to him. It was why he was legendary.”
“From what I understand,” Tanner said, “they’d made a deal. She healed Nico, and that would be the end of their partnership.”
Vance shrugged. “What can I say? Arlo J expected everyone to honor deals, except himself. He got a free pass on anything he wanted. It was the perk of being the boss.”
Tanner hated where this was going. If Vance said any more, Tanner would have no choice but to go to Blake and Skyla’s to question them about Arlo J’s death.
After the week they’d had, he would rather eat dirt than make them relive their experiences with Arlo J.
“Do you know if he was meeting anyone that morning?” Unless Vance confirmed that Arlo J was meeting Skyla that day, Tanner would have no reason to bring it up to her.
“No clue,” Vance said. “He wasn’t in the business of relaying his daily schedule to me, or anyone else.”
Tanner nodded, silently exhaling. He’d dodged a bullet - for now.
The pit in his stomach was growing though.
He had an awful feeling he wouldn’t be able to keep Skyla and Blake out of this investigation for long.
If what Vance said was true, and Arlo J was still in contact with Skyla, that meant both she and Blake had reason to want to be rid of him.
And Blake definitely knew how to kill using a knife.
“Send in Nico,” Tanner said when Vance stood to leave.
When Nico entered with a huge grin on his face, Tanner wanted to punch him in the mouth, but instead tightened the grip on his notepad that he hadn’t written more than a few useless words on. He flipped the pad face down and gestured for Nico to sit in the chair across from him.
“If I knew anything that I thought might help you find my father’s killer, believe me, Detective, I would’ve already told you about it.”
Skipping the introductions since Tanner already knew his legal name, he got right down to his list of questions. When Nico gave him more useless answers, he decided to bring up Skyla, since Nico had worked with her and knew her well. “When was the last time your father spoke to Skyla?”
Nico’s eyebrows shot up. “I’m assuming at the hospital, when I was in a coma.”
“And no communication since then?” Tanner asked.
“None that I’m aware of. Why? Does she have something to do with this?” Nico sat up in his chair, his curiosity clearly peaked.
“No,” Tanner said, hoping his tone conveyed his answer. “But he did work closely with her, so I had to ask.”
Nico nodded. “How’s she doing?”
Tanner swallowed, taken aback by the man’s almost friendly demeanor.
If he didn’t know better, he would’ve thought Nico actually cared.
“Fine,” Tanner said, keeping his voice even.
“Let’s wrap this up.” He asked a few more questions about Arlo J, and when Nico wasn’t able to give any more information than he already had, Tanner had had enough. He told Nico to send in the next guy.
After what felt like hours of mind-numbing conversation with over a dozen men that seemed to have the same level of ignorance about their boss as the first few men he talked to, Tanner was beat.
The sun had nearly set as he joined Sinclair back out in the parking lot, relieved to finally be leaving this place. “Did you get anything useful out of any of them?”
“Nope. They’re locked up tighter than a constipated asshole,” Sinclair said. “Though I did get the feeling they were holding something back.”
“Count on it. But that’s our job - to figure out what it is.” Tanner still had a couple hours of paperwork to do at the precinct, but at least they could stop and grab some food on the way.
“Burgers sound good for dinner?” Tanner asked.
“Always,” Sinclair said.
Tanner had worked with him on a few cases, and the man was easy going for the most part. But it was an old unsolved case that had originally brought them together.
When Sinclair first approached Tanner with his sister’s case, Tanner wasn’t sure there was anything he could do about a fifteen-year-old cold case.
Stephanie Sinclair had gone missing one day while walking home from school, and her body had been found over four years later, completely mutilated.
But the medical examiner had ruled the cause of death to be a brain hemorrhage.
No one could make much sense of it, and there were still no leads.
Much like in this case.
Tanner rolled his shoulders thinking about the mindless conversations he’d just had with the club members. Arlo J was definitely into something that either no one knew about, or no one dared to talk about. Tanner was betting on the latter.
As soon as he figured out what it was, he’d find the killer.