Page 42 of Two Kinds of Stranger

Logan kept hold of the shovel with his thumb, opened his fingers and the other tools fell from his grip. As he did so, he sprang forward in an explosive movement, his right arm arching up.

The shovel came whipping forward.

The guard began to swear, leaning backward, raising his hands instinctively to protect himself. But Logan had elevation and momentum, and there was no stopping him.

As Logan landed, he swept the shovel down, feeling the ripple of impact through the shaft as the iron edge bit into the guard’s face like a blade. The sound made by the shovel cleaving flesh, sinew and bone sent a wash of goosepimples over Logan’s skin.

The force of the blow brought the guard to the earth instantly, as if he’d been flattened by a ton weight.

This was now messy. This was not how things were supposed to play out.

The guard’s head had been caved in by the blow, but his limbs still twitched.

Logan lowered himself down into a crouch beside the body.

‘Whatarewe going to do with you, my friend,’ he whispered.

Instantly, Logan made calculations. What would the police think?

More importantly, what did Loganwantthe police to think?

He hid his gear behind a large tomb, sprinted to the family plot a quarter mile away from him and, still wearing his gloves, picked up a few of the discarded crushed beer cans. He returned to the body of the guard, tossed the cans around him, some of them spilling beer on his chest. The NYPD would assume an altercation with drunken teens had gotten out of hand. They would trace the boys from their fingerprints and DNA on the beer cans.

The remaining problem was that the fatal wound was inconsistent with the story Logan wanted to tell.

He stood beside the dead guard, raised his right leg off the ground, and stamped down on the man’s skull.

Again. And again. And again. Until his boot found solid ground.

The earth was hard from the cold temperature, but still he thought there might be some tracks.

The heavy rain would help cover them. There was nothing more he could do, but trust the NYPD to do what they always did–to use the data available to come to the easiest logical conclusion.

Standard procedure.

That’s what had brought him to the cemetery that night. That’s why he had dug up a corpse.

NYPD standard investigative procedure.

The best insurance policy in the world.

13

Bloch

As a private investigator Bloch should only have had access to a limited number of databases that provide information, including criminal convictions, on individuals within the state.

Bloch had a habit of rubbing certain cops up the wrong way. It was possible that they were intimidated by a female former officer who was stronger and smarter than them. Or, Bloch thought, it was more likely that they were just a-holes. But they were fewer in number than when Bloch was on the force.

The more intelligent police officers quickly recognized Bloch’s forensic thought processes and respected her. The rest, with the exception of the a-holes, knew her by reputation and valued their limbs being attached in all the right places. This brought a different but equally useful level of respect.

The result was that Bloch, with a few calls and encrypted text messages to former colleagues, could get a lot more information on an individual than the average PI. Not just a complete criminal record, but police reports, tax returns, social-worker reviews, every little document generated in a life that could hold some clue or insight. All this she had printed out and it now lay in a folder on Gabriel Lake’s lap.

He sat in the passenger seat of Bloch’s Jeep as they drove to the last known address for Arthur Cross, the man who had been harassing Eddie’s ex-wife, her new husband Kevin and Flynn’s daughter.

Lake flicked through the last pages of the dossier, closed it.

He sat quietly for a moment as Bloch weaved through the light evening traffic on Long Island. Bloch wasn’t great at reading people, but detected a change in Lake. It wasn’t that he had restless limbs – it was more a case of having a restless body. He was always tapping, or fidgeting, or clicking his tongue, or cracking his knuckles–something–always in perpetual motion, a physical manifestation of his mind, which was continuously dialed up to eleven.