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25
I was backon Taavi’s shit list because I’d dropped him off at Beyond the Veil again—this time so I could go with Drew Shao to pick up that suspect who overlapped both the Oldham and Cornerstone lists. There was no fucking way in hell I was bringing Taavi along on an arrest—not only did that violate about a million federal regulations, but the idea of subjecting him to someone who might have been at the warehouse where he’d been kept…
Nope.
Raj had assembled a slightly bigger team of agents and commandeered several teams of uniforms and detectives from the RPD to execute all the warrants simultaneously. We gathered in the bullpen at Precinct One, with Raj giving us all the run-down, then sending us off to our assignments.
The meeting dismissed, Drew gestured for me to follow him to his car, silently handing me a manilla folder.
I opened it once I was settled in the passenger seat.
Our suspect, Clinton Armstrong III, was a man in his mid-fifties, white, with black hair just starting to go grey and small, dark eyes. According to the file, he was the third generation in his family to be involved in pharmaceuticals—his grandfather, the first of the name, had founded Brachiofortis Pharmaceuticals. The company specialized in cardiac medications and blood-thinners. Beta blockers fell square into the middle of that shit.
We were headed not to his house, but to his office, given that it was a weekday. Also, I think, because Raj enjoyed adding the public humiliation element to the arrest. I wasn’t generally a big fan of those kinds of psychological games, but when we were talking about a national radical anti-Arcanid hate group, I found that I was having a hard time feeling bad for Armstrong.
Assuming, of course, that he was guilty of what we thought he was.
Armstrong, the file informed me, was married to Amanda Armstrong nee Boyer, and they had two children, Clinton IV and Felicia, aged sixteen and fourteen, respectively. The file also noted that Clinton IV had been admitted a few months ago to St. Cyprian’s.
“Do we know what’s up with the kid?” I asked Drew. “Why he was in Cyprian’s?”
Drew shook his head, and I blew out a breath. Imagine, for a second, being a teenager who has just contracted Arcana and ended up in the hospital because you might—or because you did—turn into something you’d probably heard all your life was a monster. Talk about being fucked in the head.
My parents had no judgment about Arcs or Nids, and becoming an elf had done one hell of a psychological—and physiological—number on me. And nobody in my family had ever once told me that I didn’t deserve all the same shit that they had. No judgment. No derision.
This poor fucking kid probably thought he was utter shit.
Unless he was lucky enough to have already decided that his parents were complete assholes, which is entirely possible because he was sixteen. Lots of teenagers hate their parents. I kinda hoped he at least had that going for him.
Still.
It was a shitty situation either way.
Drew parked in front of the front doors of Brachiofortis Pharma, not bothering to actually put the car in an actual parking spot. The rest of our little team was waiting around the corner—I was supposed to call them once we had Armstrong in custody.
I followed Drew into the building, waving cheerfully at the receptionist who tried to stop us as Drew barreled past her, flashing his federal shield on the way.
The idea was to get up to Armstrong’s office as fast as we could so that nobody had a chance to warn him.
We bypassed the elevators in favor of the stairs. Much as I had no particular interest in running up the four flights of stairs to the executive offices, it was going to be faster and more efficient than waiting for an elevator.
At the top, Drew pushed through the doors and continued his silent charge past three more secretaries, one of whom I could hear calling for security. I guess heading them off was going to be part of my job.
And then we were through the wood-veneer door and into what was obviously an executive office, the voice of the final secretary—who looked to have been chosen for her physical attributes as much as or more than her actual secretarial skills—protesting behind us.
Drew turned and looked sharply at me.
“Mr. Armstrong,” I said, since Rajhadtold me I would be doing the talking. “I’m Detective Hart with the Richmond Police, and this is Special Agent Shao with the FBI. We have some questions.” I offered my badge at the same time that Drew held out his own.
Behind us, I heard the distinctive rattle of people in security gear—cuffs, walkie talkies, probably some sort of non-lethal weapon.
“The… FBI,” the man in front of us—Clinton Armstrong III—repeated, slowly standing. He was tall—probably six-two—pale, with dark brown wavy hair that would have looked better if he hadn’t slicked it back to his head. Beady non-descript eyes—that weird not-color that often got categorized as hazel—blinked at us. Interestingly, he wasn’t wearing a mask, even though pretty much every other employee we’d seen had been.
He was positioned behind a desk that looked like it wanted me to believe it was mahogany, although I wasn’t having it. Everything in this place looked expensive, but with just a hair of tarnish. The veneer on the door that said it wasn’t actually the material it pretended to be. The carpet that was a dark maroon, but thin, rather than plush. The scuffed corners of Armstrong’s office chair.
The file had shown that Brachiofortis was doing fine, financially speaking, but it wasn’t doing fine enough to be as high end as Armstrong clearly wanted to pretend.
“That’s right, Mr. Armstrong,” I replied, starting to enjoy putting him on the spot. “Would you care to have this conversation here or at the federal building?”
