Podmore, P.I. - Part 24 of 25
Chicago, 1926. The sun has gone down, but the day's not done yet. As another hot summer night settles on the city, the smell of dust and sweat and lake water fills a warehouse by the docks. This place is the battleground, the home of a last stand.
Preparing to make that stand is Sturgis Podmore, Private Investigator. When we last left our detective, he had just watched Meredith Watkins successfully drop her fiance. Now he's on his way in to find out what's happening to the rest of the players.
* * *
Inside, he could hear voices. They were too far off to make out from behind the walls of crates that made long, narrow aisles through the place, but someone was definitely there. Riddle and whatever goons he had with him, no doubt. The place was huge, dusty, with half the lights in it burned out. It obviously hadn't been in use for a while - ideal for a massive operation somebody wanted to keep quiet.
Silently, Podmore moved toward the voices. He kept low, only occasionally peering up over the top of the crates to see if he was about to run into somebody. The sounds got louder, clearer, and he was able to recognize some of them. Selwyn, Yaxley...and Riddle. He had heard others before, he was sure of it, but they weren't where he was moving to. But before he could analyze that much, Podmore heard the voices suddenly go silent.
Looking up, he realized why: Chloe Wilkes.
There she was, standing dead in front of the three of them in her plain schoolgirl clothes. She looked Tom Riddle in the eyes - Christ, nobody looked that bastard in the eyes. She didn't even look scared. She was just staring him down like an old poker player who was betting it all and either holding a royal flush or a pair of deuces.
"I know what you've done," she said. "I know everything." Her voice was quiet, but never once did it waver or weaken. Not once did her eyes lower from the cold ones that stared out of Tom Riddle's face. Podmore had been seeing that mug on the front page of the papers for years, smiling and waving on the courthouse steps, and even once or twice in the back of a bar, but he'd never seen this side of the man. The expression on his face couldn't really be called a smile; the corners of his mouth were turned up, but there was none of the warmth or happiness that one generally associated with the term. This was a look of satisfaction, of arrogant surety that he had risen too high to ever be brought down.
Somehow, the girl remained unrattled by him or by the two thugs who called themselves police standing behind him. Good - it might give the detective time to find a way around and get her out of this. There was still no sign of the cavalry coming (and just where the hell was Bones and his fancy car, anyway?) and he had to face the fact that he might just be left to get her out of this himself.
Should've brought another gun, preferably with another person holding it, but there was no sense worrying about that now. He crept silently along the line of crates, letting Chloe Wilkes distract them with her speech.
"I know what you did to my parents." Calm and soft, like warm bath water. "I know what you're doing to this city. I know what you did to Regulus, and what you were going to do to me. I know what you did to Mr. Fenwick, and to that poor singer. I know you think you're going to keep on getting away with it all, but I've come here to tell you that you won't."
Riddle looked amused by the schoolgirl who was facing him down. It wasn't often that anyone was brave enough to take him on at all; rather took the challenge out of things, really. This, though - this was funny. And that was why, for the first time in god only knew how long, he broke into laughter.
Podmore hadn't expected it. He figured that Riddle would go into taunting her, maybe, or give her a hit or two that would give him time to sneak around and surprise him, take out Yaxley and Selwyn. Gales of genuine laughter, though - that he had not expected. He wouldn't have even thought the ever-composed and calculated Mayor Riddle was even capable of it.
He laughed, and Chloe Wilkes raised a gun to his chest.
She fired three times, unflinching.
Where had the gun come from? She had to have been holding it already. How had he failed to see it? How had Riddle failed to see it, or the two sorry excuses for cops he had with him? In a sudden, out of place fancy, Podmore thought his expression and Riddle's must have been near exact mirrors of complete shock.
Being not the guy getting shot, though, Podmore could do a lot more about his surprise. He stood up straight from behind the crate that had been covering him and fired off a quick shot dead into Selwyn's shoulder. The man went down with a scream, clutching the wound as Yaxley took his attention from Chloe to point his gun at Podmore just as the shouts came from the main door into the warehouse.
"FREEZE! FBI!"
"'bout damn time you got here!" the detective shouted from his obediently frozen position.
Federal agents were already flooding in, cuffs being slapped on Selwyn and Yaxley. Bones was jogging to the middle of things, already rolling his eyes at Podmore's sass. "Yeah, sorry if I had to go rescue a boatload of Russian girls and clean up the trail of unconscious assholes you leave behind you," he complained.
"Well, while you were lollygagging, this girl had to shoot a crooked politician in self-defense."
Bones looked down at the mayor lying on the floor, dead as a bar on Tuesday afternoon. He looked to the other side, where Chloe had fallen to her knees with the gun in her hands, her shoulders shaking with silent sobs. "Self-defense, huh?"
"You callin' me a liar, Bones?"
"Me?" Bones thought back to that ship's hold full of girls, some of them no older than his Penny, and every one of them exhausted, dehydrated, and terrified. One of them had red hair just the color of Cally's.
He shook his head. "Nah. Looks like self-defense to me. I'll put it in the report." While Podmore holstered his gun, Bones went to carefully help Chloe to her feet. "C'mon, sweetheart. I'm gonna need you to come in and make a statement, and then--"
"Regulus?"
Bones nodded. "With the evidence we've been collecting, we'll have him out by tomorrow afternoon."
It was the best news Chloe had heard in a long time. She was still crying, the intensity of fear and relief all still turning her inside out, but now she was smiling through it. She had never expected to come out of this alive, and now she hardly knew what to do with herself.
Frankly, Podmore hadn't necessarily expected to get out of it alive either. He did have some idea what he was going to do with the time he was apparently going to have after all, but most of it would have to wait. "Guess I'm ridin' with you, yeah?" he asked Bones.
"Oughta just make you walk," Bones snorted. "Taking that file from Betty's gotta be the stupidest damn thing I ever heard of. You should've just--"
"C'mon, we'll argue about it in the car," Podmore replied with a grin. He clapped his hand on his old friend's shoulder and gave him a nudge toward the door. Chloe was tucked under the FBI agent's arm, letting him steer her quietly outside. She'd just killed a man, but she was pretty sure she was all right with that. Podmore had just shot Dylan Selwyn in the shoulder, and he was definitely all right with that. As for everything else...they'd find out tomorrow.