Daemon’s Mark by Caitlin Kittredge (web ebook reader .TXT) 📕

make sure Sergei the Russian Pimp wasn’t waiting for us with a shotgun. Just another girl, singing to herself in Ukrainian as she stirred a pot on the range.

Dmitri, my ex, would have been able to tell me what the song was, probably even from what town in Ukraine the girl was from.

But he wasn’t here, so I followed Lane up the stairs. She knocked on the second door. “Mika? Mika, it’s Detective Lane.”

Shuffling, and the door opened on another skinny girl with pale, bruised skin and deep half-moons under her eyes. Mika had a short, dark bob, one I was willing to bet a wig covered during work hours. She was pretty, in a wide-eyed Wednesday Addams way, but she had the slippery, slow glance of a junkie. There were bruises on the insides of her arms, handprints, and I pegged her as a pill-popper. Cheaper than heroin and doesn’t leave unsightly track marks.

“Yeah? What is it this time?” she sighed. Her English was good, her accent the clipped and rounded syllables of Moscow.

Lane looked at her reprovingly. “I told you to go to a hospital, have those bruises checked out.”

Mika snorted. “Nothing’s wrong with me except I lose money every night I don’t work because of these fucking marks and then I have to spend another day in this place working off my debt.”

I was starting to like Mika, chiefly because Lane turned pink and puffed up like an angry mama blowfish at her words. “Listen,” I said. “We’re here about Ivan Salazko. Is he the one who roughed you up?”

“Johnny?” She spat the name. “Yes. Him. Fucking pig almost tore me apart and then he beats me and takes back his money, and the house allows this because he sells them good fake papers. I told Detective Lane all of this already.”

I slid my gaze to Lane. “Then maybe she should file a report and bring Salazko in so I don’t go chasing my tail in a murder case?”

“I did all of that,” Lane sighed. “There’s no evidence besides the word of an illegal and someone like Salazko can just buy an alibi from one of his scumbag mob buddies.”

“Wow.” I shook my head. “You wouldn’t know it to look at you, but I think you have even less faith in humanity than I do, Natalie.”

“It’s not like I didn’t try,” Lane hissed at me. “The Russians can do whatever they want with the money they earn off the sweat of these girls’ backs, and we’re virtually powerless to stop them. The system in this country isn’t set up to deal with…”

“Spare the lecture and spoil the lieutenant, will you?” I said. “Mika, when did Johnny do this to you?”

“Two nights ago,” she said. “I’m tired. Can I go back to bed now?”

“How late was he here?” I said.

She shrugged. “I don’t know. Sunup?”

Hex it all, anyway. “Thank you,” I said. “Go back to sleep. And lay off the Oxy—that stuff will put holes in your brain.”

She curled her lip at me. “I take care of myself.”

“You’re what?” I said. “Seventeen, eighteen?”

She stuck out her bony hip and I saw more bruises, disappearing into the waistband of her pink workout shorts.

“Sixteen. So what?”

“And Salazko shipped you over when you were fourteen or fifteen?” I said. Mika sneered.

“Johnny Boy isn’t part of the outfit. He likes to think he is, but he’s just a geek with Photoshop and a laminator. Thinks he can act like a gangster because gangsters pay his bills.”

Lane held out her hand. “Come with us. We can get you into rehab and I’ll talk to INS. Maybe you can stay here.”

“Promises, promises,” Mika said, and slammed the door in our faces.

“If Salazko isn’t bringing the girls in, who the hell is?” I said. “And who had a reason to kill Lily Dubois?”

“You got me,” Lane sighed. “I don’t deal with the intricacies of the mob, I just deal with the fallout they leave behind.”

“Something funny about the Russians,” I mused as we left the brothel and climbed back into her car. “They’re not like the Italians and the cartels. They don’t send messages with their killings—no two in the back of the head, no you-know-what cut off and stuffed in your mouth.”

Lane crinkled her button nose. “Is there a point to your frequently inane rambling, Luna?”

“Oh, it’s Luna now, is it?” I pulled out my BlackBerry and scrolled through the address book to Bryson’s number. “I mean that if Lily got herself into something bad, a mob hit might look a lot like black magick.”

“Okay,” said Lane. “But Salazko has an alibi. Who could have done this to her?”

“Mika said that Salazko liked to play gangster,” I said. “Maybe he introduced her to some real ones.”

Bryson mumbled hello around a mouthful of food. “David, call Dellarocco for a lab report and get it over to Fraud. Tell them they want to pick up Ivan Salazko ASAP.”

“What about the FBI?” Bryson said. “And our surveillance setup? You don’t like Salazko for this homicide anymore?”

“The FBI can deal with Salazko on their own time,” I said. “And don’t worry about that, David—you’ll still get to peep through binoculars at hapless gangsters.”

“On it,” he said, sounding considerably more cheerful. “Where you want I should send the Fraud boys?”

I gave him Salazko’s address and turned to Lane. “Home, Jeeves. Let’s show some inter-task-force cooperation.”

Lane frowned. “Pardon?”

“Drive, woman!” I said. “I have something I need to say to Salazko before I cross him off my suspect list.”

“Fine,” Lane said. “But then you’re going to let me get back to work.”

“It’ll be worth it,” I said as we turned into Salazko’s neighborhood. “Trust me.”

CHAPTER 8

A plain motor-pool car was parked the other way across the street when we pulled up to Ivan’s building, and I went over and knocked on the window. “Hello, there. My good friend Detective Lane and I happened to be driving by and thought you could use the assist.” I showed my shield to the