Behind the Mask

by J. D. Cunegan

  Brian actually managed a chuckle as he shook his head. His phone buzzed against the desk; a quick glance told Brian this was a message he needed to respond to as soon as possible. "Wanna repeat that when the cops come to question me?"

  "The cops won't do a thing," Dustin pronounced, standing a little taller. "This town loves Bounty, and the police are already dealing with a PR nightmare. They go after your sister, they run the risk of losing whatever trust they have left."

  Dustin turned and left the office before Brian could respond. He shook his head and turned to glance out the window of his third-story office, taking a moment to study his all-too-familiar surroundings as a squad car raced by with its blue lights flashing and its siren warning passersby to move out of the way. Baltimore had always been a city of dichotomies, never more so than in recent months. He wanted to believe everything Dustin had said; in his heart of hearts, Brian wanted to believe that good would win out in the end. But he had seen too much, throughout his life and over the last few weeks, to think otherwise.

  Then again... what if Brian did want this? What harm was there in running? Sure, the attack ads were low-hanging fruit, and there was the all-too-real possibility that he wouldn't win. Chance were, he would lose the seat he had in the process. Hell, worst-case scenario, he would be arrested for not prosecuting his own sister the moment he discovered her secret. But for all the reasons Brian could come up with as to why running for Ramona's seat was a bad idea, he could never bring himself to completely dismiss the idea.

  Was his inner Dustin trying to tell him something? Brian remembered why he wanted this job in the first place; it wasn't this office's fault he had become so disillusioned of late. But what if he could fight back against that? What if, against all odds, he did in fact become DA and could affect positive change? Maybe he could learn something from Dustin.

  Or, as much as he hated to admit it, even Jill.

  His phone buzzed again, a call this time, the incessant vibration piercing the silence of Brian’s office. He jumped at the sound before chewing himself out with a sigh. But as Brian picked up the phone and saw the number on the screen, he held his breath. He’d been dreading this phone call for the past week, but he had no choice but to answer it.

  So with another sigh, he swiped the screen.

  “Andersen.”

  “It’s time.”

  CHAPTER 7

  IN SOME WAYS, THE STENCH of ammonia that masked the scent of death was worse than the harsh reality itself. Not that Juanita Gutierrez noticed either; she had been the city of Baltimore's top medical examiner for almost four years now, and before that, she had been one of the LAPD's most trusted forensic minds. Between her professional background and the sheer amount of schooling needed to get into the field, Juanita had nearly two decades' worth of hanging around dead bodies and the sterilization agents used to neutralize them. Her nostrils were practically immune to her surroundings, and part of the entertainment this job provided her came from the reactions of those who would visit.

  Even Detective Stevens, who spent as much time in Juanita's lab as anyone else from the Seventh Precinct, still scrunched his nose in disgust every time he pushed through the swinging double doors. He no longer showered immediately upon leaving the lab, but he clearly lacked the comfort level with the dead that Juanita had. Then again, his job was far different from hers. Where she brought order from the chaos of someone's untimely death, Stevens and his colleagues saw that chaos in its rawest, most violent form. No matter how bloodied and mangled a corpse was by the time it got to Juanita's slab, it was always worse at the scene of the crime.

  The same had been true of her latest victim, the heavy-set man dressed in black who had his throat slashed at the Port of Baltimore. The blood loss that came with a throat-slashing had left this man lying in a pool of his own vitae—which had dried by the time Juanita had gotten to it. It was still a gruesome scene, but far from the worst she had ever witnessed. If Juanita was being entirely truthful, the man's wide-eyed, frozen expression gave her chills far worse than the dark red that caused his clothes to stick to his room-temperature flesh.

  On the cold metal slab, much of that dried blood had been washed away, leaving just the thin red line along the junction of the man's neck and jaw. His skin was pale, even more so under the harsh light. The overhead lamps drowned out the gray pallor that had already set in, leaving the deceased a particularly bright shade of pasty. The CSU tech on-scene had already managed to collect a blood sample and sent it off for DNA analysis, which left Juanita to take care of the rest of the particulars.

  Even when cause of death was obvious—as in this case—Juanita still conducted a full autopsy. Not just because it was procedure, but because of her own curiosity. Sometimes, cause of death was not as cut-and-dry as everyone thought. Sometimes, a person's murder—tragic though it was—wound up being a small measure of mercy. A year ago, Juanita had cut open the victim of a gunshot wound to the head, only to find a large tumor on their liver. Had that man not been shot execution-style, he likely would have faced a lengthy cancer battle.

  So once her latex gloves were fastened with a snap around her wrists, Juanita lowered the face shield and used her left hand to stretch the dead man's skin taut just underneath his collarbone. Then, with the precision gained only from years of performing this procedure almost daily, she dug the scalpel into the man's skin and sliced all the way to his navel. She repeated the slicing to the left shoulder and then the right, forming a perfect Y on the dead man's chest before beginning the process of pulling the flesh and muscle aside. The sound of viscera being peeled away from tendon and bone filled the otherwise silent room, but Juanita paid the stomach-churning noise no mind. She paused to study what had just been revealed to her, noting how everything—upon first glance—appeared to be in order.

  Setting the bloody scalpel aside, on a metal table separate from the one containing all of her other implements, Juanita chewed on her lower lip. The bone saw was her least favorite part of this procedure—partly because the saw at her disposal was nearly six years older than models used at hospitals. The blade was dull and the cut wasn't always true... but no matter how often she pleaded for a new saw, downtown never relented. Something about budget cuts—yet other departments were constantly upgrading their equipment, and she was under pressure to start digitizing her office's vast records.

  So the city would cough up the money for cloud-based storage and all the fancy computers needed to maintain it, but a saw to let her cut through bone while performing autopsies?

  Apparently, that was a bridge too far.

  Peeling off her gloves and replacing them—a habit she had picked up during high school biology class—Juanita stared at the slit cut into the dead man's throat. It was one of the most precise and cleanest cuts she had ever seen. It looked as if it had been made with the same blade she had just used to start her autopsy. Whoever had killed this man was clearly a professional. Which made sense, given the running theory that the man on her slab had been up to no good.

  But before Juanita could ponder any further, Detective Stevens pushed his way into the lab with his shoulder, his hands busy shooting a text on his work-issued phone before he pocketed it. He gave Juanita a small smile when he looked up, but the smile immediately disappeared once he caught sight of the dead man lying prone with a gaping hole in his chest.

  "I was gonna ask if you wanted to join me for lunch," he said with a thick swallow, "but I'm suddenly not that hungry anymore."

  "Sorry." Juanita cringed and gave Stevens' arm a squeeze, glad she had just changed gloves. "I'm just getting started."

  "So I'm guessin' you haven't found anything yet?"

  "Not really." Juanita reached up to tighten the bun in her hair. "Just that the cut on his neck's awful clean."

  Stevens cocked his head to the side, his eyes narrowing. He kept almost ten feet between himself and the body, but the wound was clear as day to him from this angle. "Like our murderer knew wha
t they were doin'."

  “As precise as the cut is, I’d bet three months’ salary we’re dealing with someone professional.” Juanita stared at the body and shook her head. “Which makes sense, if this guy was into some shady stuff.”

  “Course he was,” Stevens quipped. “Why else would someone hang out at the docks at such an ungodly hour?”

  “Hopefully, ID will help with that,” she added. “I’ve already sent prints and a blood sample to the lab for DNA testing.”

  “Notifying next-of-kin should be fun,” Stevens muttered, hooking his thumbs through his suspenders. “’I’m sorry to inform you that your son-slash-brother-slash-husband was a shady fuck who liked to hang out at the docks at night. Oh, and he’d dead. Sorry for your loss, but... not really.’”

  Juanita giggled and gave Stevens’ arm a squeeze as her office phone rang. It was a shrill note, made even louder by the relative silence of the lab. She snatched the black receiver midway through the second ring, trapping it between her shoulder and ear. "Forensics, this is Dr. Gutierrez," she greeted, biting back another smile as she watched Stevens try to get a peek at the dead man's gaping chest without getting any closer to the body itself.

  But the smile fell from her face and color left her skin as the words on the other end of the line sank in.

  "Are... are you sure?"

  The question caught Steven's attention, and he joined Juanita with a frown. He cock his head to the side, straining to hear the voice on the other end, but Juanita kept the volume on her phone low specifically to keep others from hearing both ends of her conversations. She shook her head and swallowed the lump forming in her throat, squeezing her free hand into a fist to keep her fingers from shaking.

  "I," she paused and cleared her throat. "I see. Thank you."

  "What's up?" Stevens asked as Juanita hung up.

  "You need to call the Fifth," Juanita said, her voice wavering on the last word as her eyes bore down on the body on her slab. "Our victim's a cop."

  CHAPTER 8

  IN HIS HEART OF HEARTS, Daniel Richards hadn't expected to walk out of the Bishop with his badge still on his hip. And he still wasn't quite sure how he felt about that. Sure, he didn’t want to be fired—being arrested would have been even worse—but the headache that was the Baltimore Police Department and its forthcoming witch hunt against one of his former detectives was still something with which he had to contend. Days like this were why the captain kept a few bottles of various spirits on the shelf behind his desk.

  Though somehow, those didn't seem strong enough today; the beginnings of a stress headache tickled Richards' temples, and as he sunk himself into his leather chair with a sigh, he closed his eyes and buried his head in his hands.

  This was inevitable, he supposed. Jill wasn't going to be able to live her double life forever; he just hadn't anticipated her being the one to pull the cloth out from under the proverbial dining room table. She had laid out her reasons for resigning from the force, and Richards had done his best to accept—even if he didn't understand them. Among other things, Jill had always been rash... and when she set her mind to something, good luck talking her out of it.

  But revealing her secret on live television? Knowing the absolute shitstorm that would result? Try as he might to figure out why Jill would do something like that, Richards came up empty. And it wasn't like she was being that forthcoming.

  Too busy being on the run.

  Grabbing a glass from the shelf behind his desk, Richards popped the cork on one of the bottles and poured it until said glass was almost full. So what if this wasn't the proper way to drink the stuff? So what if it was barely 11:30 in the morning? So what if the captain had nothing in his stomach so far this day except for a granola bar Evelyn forced onto him as he sped out the door?

  His bosses were trying to run him out of his post. They were trying to hunt down his... well, the woman who used to be his best detective. The cops who were still on his Homicide unit were so busy walking on eggshells around each other that it was a wonder they were getting anything done. Sure, they were as professional as could be, but Richards understood better than most what personal turmoil among colleagues could do. If left on its own, the tension between his homicide cops would blow up in all of their faces.

  That would probably wind up being his fault, too. Especially since that tension actually was, in a way, his fault. He could see the way Watson and Blankenship were around each other of late, and he knew the stress Blankenship carried on her shoulders. As stoic and capable as she normally was, he knew even she had a breaking point. He just hoped she didn’t hit it any time soon.

  Downing half the glass in one gulp, actually relishing in how the liquid burned its way down his throat, Richards stared at the framed photograph of himself and his former partner. Questionable hairstyle and clothing choices aside, they were both far happier than they had any right to be. The things they had seen on the job, the fact that the photograph was taken not long after Richards discovered Evelyn couldn't have children... there were so many reasons for both he and Paul Andersen to curse the world around them. Yet Richards had maintained his idealized version of what a cop should be, and Paul had his family. Paul loved being a husband, and he loved being a father even more... especially when it came to Jill.

  To think how everything had come undone in the decades since that photograph had been taken... Richards just shook his head and gulped down the rest of his drink.

  As he reached for the bottle, eager for another glass to ease the pressure in his head, Richards heard the door to his office open. Being seen drinking at this hour would normally scare Richards into placing the bottle back in its place for the rest of the day, but as stressful as this day already was, he decided to let it slide... but as he swung his chair back around so he could see who came in, Richards frowned. He had no idea who the clean-shaven man in the three-piece suit standing before him was, but he didn't care for the way his shoulders squared and his chin lifted.

  "If it's bad news, come back tomorrow," the captain ordered with a wave of his glass before taking a sip.

  The main quirked a brow. "Captain Richards?"

  Setting the glass aside and removing his black-rim glasses, Richards scrubbed a hand over his face. "Yeah, that's me."

  Something resembling a black wallet materialized from the man's breast pocket, and Richards fought the urge to roll his eyes when he saw the insignia and the big yellow letters. "Richard McDermott, FBI. I have some questions about a former employee of yours."

  Richards leaned back in his chair after grabbing his glass again. He downed the rest with a hiss and a shake of his head, ignoring the phone vibrating in his pocket. "Shut the damn door."

  McDermott did as asked, watching how the blinds shuttered against the window separating the captain from the rest of his squad. Uniforms and detectives alike ignored the agent's presence, too busy with the minutia of the day to pay the newcomer any mind.

  Which was fine, because McDermott was already in the presence of the man he came here to see. He placed his badge back in its rightful place before adjusting the knot in his tie and stuffing his hands in his pockets. "That's gotta be a hell of a thing, losing your best detective like that."

  "With all due respect, Agent McDermott," Richards let his upper lip curl into a sneer as he sat up straighter. "I'm having a bad day, so what do you say we cut to the chase?"

  "Where is she, Daniel?"

  "I don't know."

  The ghost of a smile tugged on McDermott's lips. "I don't believe you."

  "Then shit, I don't know what to tell you, son." Richards shrugged and set the glass back onto his desk. "Awful sorry you wasted your time, though."

  "Don't let my youth fool you, Captain." McDermott approached the desk. "I’m smart enough to know when someone knows more than they're letting on."

  "So arrest me." Richards shot up out of his chair, ignoring the squeak of it as he rounded the desk, stood in front of the agent, and held out his h
ands together at the wrists, palms up. "Go on. Slap the cuffs on me, take me to Quantico, do whatever it is you feel like you have to do to get me to tell you what you want to know. It won't work. You won't get what you're looking for from me."

  McDermott locked eyes with Richards, and they stared at each other for what felt like hours. The throb in the captain's temples intensified when his jaw clenched, and he refused to blink or back down from the federal agent. The alcohol was coursing through Richards already, and the fogginess he so desperately sought in this moment was starting to seep into his head. Fortunately for him, McDermott relented first, taking one step backward and ducking his head.

  "My apologies, Captain," he said while offering his right hand. "I'm afraid we got off on the wrong foot."

  Richards stared at the hand, but refused to shake it. If this man was trying to arrest Jill, there would be no "right foot." It was one thing to try keeping his superiors from getting their corrupt hands on her, but if Richards had to contend with federal agencies as well... maybe it was time for the old man to finally cut his losses and realize when enough was enough.

  The one thing he was never any good at.

  "I still don't know where she is."

  "You want to protect her," McDermott guessed. "I get that. But I think you'll find we're on the same side here."

  Richards' eyes moved to look over McDermott's shoulder when the door to his office opened again; he saw Earl Stevens standing there, his face white as the dress shirt he wore and the bags under his eyes darker than usual. His empty, alcohol-addled stomach dropped. "We'll see about that," he managed to say in a relatively even tone. "Now, if you'll excuse me, my detective and I have business to attend to."

  McDermott left with a terse nod, stuffing his hands into his pockets and slipping past Stevens before shutting the door behind him. The detective stole a glance over his shoulder at the door, his mouth open to ask a question that never quite made it past his brain. Instead, Detective Stevens heaved a sigh and hitched up his black dress pants; he sorely needed to buy a new pair. He had lost enough weight in recent months that it was time to invest in a new wardrobe. "We got a problem, Cap."