BLIND MICE BITE/ Elle Andrews Patt

Former NYPD Detective Matt Loose is fingered for murder by a student in his Criminal Justice class, kicking off a series of events that land Matt in the middle of a collision between a local drug trafficker, MS-13 enforcers, and a drug cartel intent on making Daytona their first foothold into Central Florida. Out of options and with no one who they seem be, Matt discovers he's been betrayed by the person he thought he knew best. Himself.


​PROLOGUE


“Your name’s Matt Loose,” the quiet voice said.
            Matt lay still on the cot they’d given him. He wondered what the woman looked like, if he knew her, why she smelled like after-shave rather than perfume.
            “Matt, can you confirm your name out loud?”
            Everyone here was forever asking his name, even after they checked his wristband.
            “Matt?”
            “Yeah,” he said, hearing the slow in his voice, tasting it on his tongue. “My name is Matt Loose.”
            “Are you married, Matt?”
            “Divorced.” Anna left him two years ago for an investment banker. That’s what he got for moving back to New York. This line of questioning seemed familiar to him, but he couldn’t remember anyone else asking about Anna since he’d been here.
            “Kids?”
            An image rose in his mind’s eye. Dakota spinning around to greet him, dark brown hair swinging over her shoulder, big brown eyes shining, a grin spreading across her freckled face that broke his heart with happiness. God, he wanted to wrap his arms around her and bury his nose in that hair, snuffle up her scent of baby shampoo and little kid sweat and crayons, and horse and her. “A daughter.”
            “Tell me about your daughter.”
            No words would come. How could he describe her? “She reminds me of my sister.”
            “And your sister is . . .?”
            “Lily.” Lily would be coming to get him soon. To take him to Daytona Beach, let him adjust.
            “Your nephew?”
            Did he say he had a nephew? “Ethan.”
            “How old is Ethan?”
            He had to think about it, but Ethan was born a year before Dakota, two years before the markets crashed. “Nine.”
            “When was the last time you saw him?”
            “When he was three.”
            “Has your daughter met him?”
            Dakota knew she had a cousin, but life wasn’t like it used to be. Lily couldn’t afford to fly up and Anna’s job was as busy as his own. Though that was different now, wasn’t it? It wasn’t like he had a job anymore. But he couldn’t watch Dakota either. “No. Maybe next summer.”
            “Does your daughter live with you?”
            He lifted his right hand, opening his fingers wide, only then aware that both his hands had been fisted on his stomach.
            “What?” the woman said, sounding honest-to-god curious about what he might be thinking.
            “No,” Matt said, letting his hand indicate his condition and his tone convey his irritation. “She lives with her mother.”
            “You could learn to care for her.”
            He let his hand drop back on his chest, but consciously left his hand open. “Maybe.”
            “When was the last time that you saw her?”
            “Her eighth birthday.” He’d brought chocolate cake for her party from a little bakery his partner recommended in Tribeca. Anna’sbanker had been away somewhere on business. After Dakota was in bed, he and Anna shared a piece of cake with a glass of bourbon, sipping from one glass like they used to before Anna left him. He’d gone back to his apartment after, Anna’s cherry-cola chap stick on his lips, but it had been a near thing. Leaving rent his heart once more, but his wariness regarding her willingness meant it hadn’t been torn right through again the next morning.
            “What’s your daughter’s name?”
            “Her mother named her. I was deployed.”
            “How old is Dakota now?”
            “Who?”
            “My mistake. What’s her name again?”
            “I wanted to name her Sophie, but she’d have hated that. She’s a tomboy, through and through.”
            “How old is she now?”
            “She likes horses, you know? She takes riding lessons in Central Park.”
            “When will you get to see her again?”
            “Soon, I hope. I have to get better first. And I’ll have to wait until a school break.”
            “Okay, Mark—”
            “Matt. My name’s Matt.”
            “Seguro que te llamas Matt?”
            What?
            “Matt?”
            “I, uh, Spanish isn’t my strongest language. Are you asking for my name? It’s Matt. Loose.”
            “Okay, Matt. I know you’re tired. You’re relaxed. Your eyelids are heavy. When I count to three, you’ll sleep until I wake you, okay?”
            “Yeah,” Matt said. His muscles were heavy, too. He let his eyes close. His head hurt in a vague way.
            “Three, two, one.”
            “Is he out that fast?” a man said, too loud, too deep.
            “Yes,” the woman said, still quiet, but the word distorted, pulled at the edges of him.
Matt tried to close his fingers in his shirt, hold on to himself. “Hold on.”
            Cool fingers closed on his, stilled his scrabbling hand, stilled his mind.
            “You’ve done,” the man said, each syllable stretching and stretching as Matt hung on to it, “a remarka—”
            Matt fell into the silent darkness where he’d been living for too long.
            Fell and fell and fell. 


 
ONE


Matt Loose lay in the dark, listening to the cicadas buzz in the meager landscaping outside the apartment. At nearly one a.m., he’d normally be nestled within the ordered intensity of the Daytona Beach Racing and Card Room, dealing out blackjack hands to the regulars who muttered their hits at him in smoke-grizzled voices. But Ed only let him work ten nights on, before he made him leave for two.
            He noticed the cars first, three in a row, coming in the complex entrance that lay beyond his second story window. Just after the cicadas picked up their rhythm again, two more rolled in. Matt waited for the slamming of doors, the alcohol fueled voices that would signal a party in the making, but neither came.
            He sat up, his foot hitting the laptop he’d left near the middle of the bed when he laid down. The slight odor of cheese pasta lingered in the humid air. He felt around in the blanket and found his cell phone. A thud echoed up from the other side of the single apartment-wide building, near the stairs. And then boots were coming up the stairs, several men, sounds familiar from Matt’s Marine Corp days.
            A raid maybe. There’d been a couple of drug arrests in the parking lot in the past couple of weeks. He set his cell phone on the shelf above his bed and lay back down, glad he’d not yet fallen asleep, prepared to hear what he could hear. It wasn’t just a couple of men, it was a team. The boots hit the top and passed his door, but stopped even with his bedroom wall, waiting out there on the other side of his closet as others continued pounding up the stairs. They must have been lining up along the walkway, waiting for the full team to make the second floor before they continued past. Why anyone thought they were safe behind wood framing and drywall was beyond him.
            There was a pause, a held breath, and then a resounding crash from his living room that catapulted Matt straight up again, heart thumping. A woman shouting, but he couldn’t tell what over the rush of blood in his ears. Were they really in his apartment? He scrambled over, his hand brushing over the holster attached to the side of his bed.
            “Police, police, police!” a man yelled in the hall outside Matt’s closed bedroom door.
            Cops. Matt drew his hand back.
Another voice, hollow, from his bathroom. “Clear!”
            Swinging his legs over the side of the bed, Matt stumbled up, the blanket catching his leg.
            “On your knees, on your knees, on your knees,” the first man yelled again as Matt’s door burst open, bouncing off the stop as men rushed into the room, filling it with the fury of their movement, rank sweat, leather, gun oil, shouting, “Down, down, down.”
            Matt fell to his knees, bringing his hands up behind his head, elbows out. Hands grabbed him, dragging him forward, pushing him face-down onto the musty carpet.
            “Stay down, stay down!” the first man said, although another had a knee planted in the small of his back. The man sitting on him yanked Matt’s right hand out and down, snapping the cuff against his wrist bone hard enough to bruise and then grabbed the other.
            Unable to breath, a chilling wave of familiarity crashed into Matts chest, and he tensed, resisting the pull on his wrist.
            The man above him growled, “Don’t. We’re cops. Police. Policia.”
            Matt closed his eyes tight, fighting the instinct to roll, lay this man flat out before he could stop Matt from doing it. He hitched in a stifled breath and then relaxed his shoulders, let the guy tug his arm down to his lower back.
                                                                                                     
                                                                                                        ~/~
            
            Detective Lucinda Troy strode forward, alert for trouble as more men disappeared into the bedroom. In the doorway, she fetched up against the SWAT team leader’s back. From inside the room, she heard a quiet grunt and the unmistakable sound of cuffs being closed.
            “Clear,” someone said.
            She peered over Latham’s shoulder. His acne-scarred skin caught the dull light through a window in the room before he hit the light switch to his right. He turned sideways, swinging his arm back to both invite her in and let her by.
            A blonde bulldog of a man in boxers and a black tee shirt lay on his belly on the thin beige carpet, his face turned away from her, his arms cuffed behind him. In a glance, she registered that the bedroom was as spare as the rest of the small apartment. Boxy headboard with built-in book case, bare except for a handful of stacked CDs, half a bottle of water, a cell phone. No lamp. Laptop sitting half-buried in the crumple of dark red sheets and beige comforter. Three drawer dresser. No mirror. A hat rack looking thing that held a button-down shirt, slacks, a dark jacket, a tie, and a single pair of black dress shoes. Guy was anal.
            SWAT team giving way, Cin crossed the small room to the foot of the bed and crouched down over her suspect. “Doug Moultrie?”
            “No.”
            “Excuse me?”
            “. . . loose.”
            “No, sir, I can’t do that. Are you Doug Moultrie?”
            “No.”
            Sighing, Cin looked up at Latham. “You ready to hand this over, let my team find out who he is?”
            Latham leaned back a little to look down the hall. “Already flipping the living room.”
            “I’m Matt Loose,” the bulldog said.
            “Excuse me?” she said again.
            “Is my tongue not working? My name is Matt Loose.”
            “You’re not Doug Moultrie?”
            He turned his forehead down and growled.
            “This guy for real?” she said to Latham.
            Latham shrugged.
            She sighed. Their witness, one of her CIs, a criminal informant, had sworn up and down the man they wanted lived here and after cursory internet checks, she’d convinced the judge on duty to sign out an arrest warrant for murder on Doug Moultrie and a no-knock premises warrant in search of Moultrie, weapons, and drugs. “Where’s your ID, Matt?”