by Karen Rose
“Oh joy,” Mia said sarcastically. “It’s flu season. Let’s round up everybody with a sniffle.”
“It might be why he missed,” Abe mused. “He’s not feeling well.”
“Poor baby,” Kristen said unfeelingly. “My heart bleeds for him.”
“Regardless, he might screw up again.” Mia held up a plastic bag. “And now we’ve got a maker’s mark. Hot off the press.”
Spinnelli took the bag and held it up to the light. “It’s in good shape this time.”
“They recovered it from Carson’s right lung,” Abe offered. “The surgeon was able to get it out just a few hours ago.”
“I’m glad we were there,” Mia growled. “He almost threw it away.”
“But he felt so bad about it he asked Mia out to dinner to apologize,” Abe added with a grin and after another second of growling, Mia grinned, too.
“A doctor this time. I’m movin’ up in the world.” Spinnelli shook his head with an unwilling smile. “So what’s next, people?”
“Julia will autopsy Arthur Monroe today,” Mia offered. “It’s strange, you know? Conti’s death was so brutal and Monroe …” She lifted a shoulder. “Just a pop to the head and he’s done. Not what I would have expected him to do to a guy who molested a little girl.”
“Conti was an aberration,” Jack said. “He got so riled when Conti—what was it—‘publicly assassinated’ Kristen. That was… personal. Now he’s back to business.”
“Maybe he’s rattled,” Kristen said thoughtfully. “He lost control with Conti.”
“Which could be another reason he missed Carson last night,” Abe said. “I want to know how he lured Carson to the ambush. We know Skinner got a delivery the day he was murdered. Let’s find out if Carson did, too.”
Spinnelli frowned. “Ask him.”
Mia shook her head. “We waited around after the surgery, just to see if he’d come to, but he didn’t. The hospital’s supposed to call us when he regains consciousness.”
“What about Muñoz?” Spinnelli pressed. “How does he connect to Carson?”
Mia shrugged. “Carson told the guys at the scene he’d hired him as his bodyguard.”
“Apparently a lot of the defense attorneys are doing that,” Kristen said dryly. “One of them faxed me his bill just before I left the office yesterday afternoon.”
“Hell of a bodyguard,” Jack muttered. “Guy didn’t even have a gun.”
Mia frowned. “You didn’t find a gun? He had a holster. I remember seeing it when they zipped up the body bag.”
“We didn’t take it,” Jack said. “The only thing we got from Muñoz’s body was his phone.”
“Then somebody else took it,” Abe said. “Somebody saw the shooting go down and took the gun before the cops got there.”
“Maybe the killer took it,” Jack said.
Mia shook her head. “Then why didn’t he take Muñoz’s cell phone, too? That’s how we knew where to find them— the cell phone.”
“GPS again,” Jack said. “You’re right, Mia. If he’d had the presence of mind to take the gun, he should have seen the cell phone, too. It was clutched in Muñoz’s hand.”
“That means we have a witness,” Abe said.
“Who saw a van with a fictitious magnetic sign,” Kristen sighed. “So what?”
“One of these days we’re going to have a witness who actually sees something worthwhile,” Abe insisted. “Marc, can you get somebody to sweep the pawnshops? My bet is that Muñoz’s gun wasn’t cheap, and whoever stole it will hock it.”
Spinnelli wrote himself a note. “I’ll ask Murphy to do it. He just closed a big case.”
“Whoever took it probably has a couple guns of his own already,” Mia muttered.
“Everybody does but me,” Kristen grumbled.
Abe’s lips curved. “You can pick yours up tomorrow, but if you want to visit it first, you can come see Diana Givens with us. Since you’re on an ‘overdue vacation.’ ”
“What?” Jack asked openmouthed. “What happened?”
“I got put on administrative leave. The defense attorneys say I’m a menace.” She said it deadpan and Mia snickered.
Abe’s lips twitched. “We’re punchy, Marc. None of us got any sleep last night.”
Spinnelli looked over at Kristen. “You didn’t go to the scene, did you?”
Kristen shook her head. “No, I but I couldn’t sleep either. I did some research last night while you were at the hospital with Carson.” She tapped the stack of papers on the table in front of her. “With the exception of the Blade members and Angelo Conti, every one of the attacks has been related to a sexual assault. There doesn’t seem to be a pattern, though. There’s no chronology. He jumps a year forward, back, then forward. There’s no commonality in sentence except that not one did any physical time. Some got off entirely, a few were plead down. He’s got lawyers and defendants. I’d say he’s choosing his victims at random, but that the deck’s stacked with sex crimes.”
“Okay.” Spinnelli gestured to the papers in front of her. “So what’s in those?”
“All the sexual assaults I prosecuted over the last five years where the perp did no physical time. I don’t think there is a connection between the cases. But the killer has a connection to one of these cases, I’m sure of it. It may not be one of the victims he’s already avenged. Maybe it’s still to come. Maybe the others are …” She shrugged. “Public service.”
“Our humble servant.” Jack blew out a breath.
“Exactly. Anyway, chances are good that the next time he strikes, it will be someone on this list, either a perp or his lawyer.”
Spinnelli recoiled. “Please tell me you’re not suggesting we guard all those people.”
“No, Marc. But remember how Westphalen thought there had been a trauma recently? Well, you’ve investigated all the original victims so far and found no real trauma around the time of the first killing—Anthony Ramey. I thought I’d start calling the victims of these cases and finding out how they are. Find out if any of them have experienced significant trauma.”
“If it’s the killer, they won’t admit to any recent trauma,” Jack said.
Kristen lifted a brow. “I thought of that. This isn’t going to necessarily be a smoking gun. It may eliminate some of the names on this list. Do you have a better suggestion? You have DNA, one unconscious man, a partial fingerprint, and a bullet.”
“The man may regain consciousness and the bullet we can trace,” Abe said.
Kristen shrugged. “So trace it. My looking up old cases shouldn’t affect that.”
“It could help, Abe,” Mia said slowly. “Besides, Kristen’s on ‘vacation.’ If it were me, I’d be nuts without something to do.”
“There is that,” Kristen admitted. “Other than finishing my basement mantel, I’d just be twiddling my thumbs and that would drive me crazy. I’m not suspended from John’s office, I’m just not working any active cases. Nobody said anything about archived cases.”
Abe understood the need to keep busy. He’d thrown himself into the job when Debra was shot. Most days, it was the only thing that kept him going. “Do it from here,” he told her. “I don’t want anyone tracing calls to your house.”
“There are a lot of names here,” Spinnelli said. “This will take you hours. Days.”
Kristen looked at each one of them sharply. “Look, we’ve got nine bodies. Nine. I don’t plan to go to any of their funerals and cry, but they’re dead nonetheless. Skinner left behind a wife and kids. They deserve justice if nobody else. My life is on hold and my mother was threatened last night. Until we catch this guy, I have all the time in the world.”
Tuesday, February 24, 9:15 A.M.
Mia leaned against the glass countertop, staring at Diana Givens who stared at the bullet through a magnifying glass.
“Well?” she demanded. “Have you seen it or not?”
Diana glanced up, annoyed. “Keep your pants on.” She bent her head down, squinting. �
��Intertwined M’s or W’s. I haven’t seen anything like this, but one of my customers might.”
“So where can we find your customers?” Mia pressed.
“Well, I told you I was going to invite them over, but I didn’t think you’d be back with a good bullet so soon.” She passed the bullet back to Mia and grabbed a sheet of paper from under the counter. “Here. I’ll give you their names. You can talk to them if you want.”
Mia gave Diana a smile. “Thanks. We’ll owe you one.”
Tuesday, February 24, 11:30 A.M.
“I hate hospitals almost as much as morgues,” Abe grumbled.
Mia kept her eyes on the rising elevator display. “I know. You told me last night while we were waiting for Carson. Several times.” The bell dinged and the doors opened. “Don’t be such a baby. Come on, I want to talk to him before he goes unconscious again.”
A nurse frowned as they came into Carson’s room. “He’s in no shape to talk.”
“He’s alive,” Mia snapped. “That puts him in better shape than the nine bodies in the morgue.”
Carson lay against the pillows, his face ashen. “Muñoz?”
“He’s dead,” Abe said quietly.
“Hell of a bodyguard,” Carson mumbled. “I’ll have to remember not to pay his bill.”
Mia rolled her eyes, but her voice was professional when she stepped up to Carson’s bedside. “We just have a few questions, Mr. Carson, then we’ll leave you to rest. We need to know what brought you to that particular spot last night.”
Carson closed his eyes and took a shallow breath. “Information,” he said. “I got a call on my cell phone before dinner. Told me they had information about Melanie Rivers.”
“Who is Melanie Rivers?” Abe asked and Carson grimaced.
“Little white trash.” He breathed and they waited. “She filed a rape charge against my client, said he’d molested her at a party. She knows he’s got money.” He breathed some more. “She just wants a settlement. Her pound of flesh.”
Abe bit back his distaste. “Maybe she’s telling the truth.”
“So what if she is?” Carson opened his eyes, sharp and canny despite his physical state. “I know what you think about me and frankly I don’t care. I don’t expect you to do much of anything anyway.”
“And why is that?” Mia asked coldly.
Carson’s gray lips twisted. “He’s doing your dirty work for you, this killer. If the tables were turned, I’d look the other way, too.”
Mia opened her mouth to say something then pursed her lips firmly. Abe stepped in to continue. “Who had your cell phone number, Mr. Carson?”
“Not many people. That’s why I went to meet him. He said he’d gotten my number from a mutual friend and he wanted to help me out. For a fee.” He breathed heavily, then batted away the nurse’s hand when she tried to adjust the oxygen line in his nose. “Said he wanted two G’s. If we’d won the case, it would have been cheap.”
Abe was wondering what kind of friends a parasite like Carson would harbor when he had a sudden thought. “Would Trevor Skinner have known your cell phone number?” he asked. “Maybe had it in a phone book?”
“Probably.” Carson drew a labored breath. “Trev kept his life in his BlackBerry.”
“You mean his electronic organizer?” Mia asked.
Carson nodded. “Clever little thing. Trev could send e-mails from anywhere.” He lifted a brow. “His BlackBerry wasn’t on him when you found him, was it?”
“No.” Abe shook his head. “No, it wasn’t.”
“Then I’d say you have your work cut out for you, Detectives. Trev knew the private lives of every one of his clients and half the lawyers in town. Judges, too.”
Tuesday, February 24, 1:30 P.M.
Spinnelli frowned. “Judges, too? What did he mean by that?”
Mia squirted ketchup over her burger. “He just smiled and told us to figure it out. S.O.B.”
“He’s right, though.” Abe considered the implications yet again. “If the killer has Skinner’s organizer, he has enough ammunition to hold him for weeks.”
“Speaking of ammunition,” Spinnelli said, “what happened at the gun shop?”
“She gave us names of customers who make their own bullets,” Mia said. “We’d visited the first two on the list when we got the call from the hospital saying Carson was awake. Neither had seen the mark before, but we still have four more names.”
“Well, we got a reply on opening Aaron Jenkins’s juvenile record.” Spinnelli clenched his jaw. “No, no, and no.”
Abe sighed. “Then let’s visit the mother after we see the other old men.”
Mia peeked in the bag. “One more burger. We brought it for Kristen. Where is she?”
Abe’s eyes took yet another sweep of the office area. She’d been his first thought as he entered, occupying a corner of his mind even as they’d updated Spinnelli over lunch. But Mia had smirked at him smugly, so he’d held back his demand to know Kristen’s whereabouts.
Spinnelli shrugged. “She took a break about an hour ago. She went to lunch.”
Abe felt the hair on the back of his neck stand on end. “You let her go? Alone?”
“She’s a grown woman, Abe,” Spinnelli said mildly. “And not a stupid one. She told me where she was going and asked Murphy to take her there. Some place called Owen’s. It’s a diner, I take it.”
Abe relaxed a bit. “It is.”
“But you’ll still call her to make sure she’s all right,” Mia added slyly.
Abe concentrated on his burger, well aware of the knowing glance passing between Marc and Mia and not giving a damn. “I will.”
Tuesday, February 24, 1:30 P.M.
“You cleaned your plate,” Vincent said approvingly.
Kristen looked down at the crumbs. “I was hungry.” Which surprised her. After hours of accepting the pent-up anger of the victims she’d once represented, she’d thought her appetite gone. She’d come here to get away for a little while, agreeing to lunch only after Owen shook his finger in her face before disappearing to train his newest hire. Kristen winced at the crash of dishes and Owen’s shout. “I’m not sure who I feel sorrier for. Owen or the new guy.”
Vincent shook his shaggy head. “I think you should feel sorrier for me. I’ve got a mind to stop by Timothy’s to ask his mom when he’s coming home. How sick can one grandmother be? He needs to get back to work before I lose my temper.”
“How long did Timothy work here?” Kristen asked and Vincent scratched his head.
“Well, I’ve been here for fifteen years. Owen bought the place about three years ago and hired Timothy about a year later. Anyway, you want some pie? I made it this morning.”
“You twisted my arm, Vincent.”
Vincent grinned his slow grin. “With ice cream?”
“Of course.”
Vincent was heaping scoops of vanilla on her pie when the little bell on the glass door jangled. Kristen shivered at the blast of cold air at her back, then glanced over her shoulder when Vincent slowly lowered the ice-cream dipper and stared. Kristen stared, too, needing a minute to process the face above the calf-length fur coat that seemed out of place in a diner whose seats were cracked vinyl. Then realization clicked.
“Sara?” John’s wife. Oh, God, she thought, looking at Sara Alden’s stricken face and thinking the worst. “What’s wrong? What’s happened to John?”
Sara unbuttoned her coat with cool grace. “Can we talk privately, Kristen?”
“Of course.” She led her boss’s wife to a booth in the corner.
Sitting, Sara abruptly asked, “Why did you think something was wrong with John?”
“You went to a lot of trouble to find me here. I just assumed… How did you find me?”
“Lois said you might be here. She said you were out of the office indefinitely.”
Kristen felt the sting, deep inside. “Yes, that’s true.”
“John is responsible.” Sara’s eyes fla
shed with anger.
Bewildered, Kristen shook her head. “No, John’s boss made the call. John said he tried to keep him from putting me on leave, but Milt was determined.”
Sara’s lips curled. “Yeah, I’ll just bet John tried real hard.”
Kristen wasn’t sure how to respond to that. “Sara, what’s going on here?”
“Lieutenant Spinnelli’s office called this morning. A Detective Murphy said they were confirming alibis for everyone in John’s department for the nights those men were murdered. He asked about John.”
“That’s true, but it’s standard procedure. Lieutenant Spinnelli’s just making sure that they’ve looked at everyone who was involved in all those old cases. Is that what you’re worried about, Sara? I can tell you, nobody suspects John. He’s not involved in murder.”
“He lied,” Sara said flatly. “John told Spinnelli’s man that he was home in bed with me. But he lied. He was with another woman. He thinks I sleep, but I know when he’s gone.”
Kristen sat back and drew a deep breath. John was on Spinnelli’s list of sharpshooters. She knew that. She’d also dismissed it as soon as she’d seen his name on the list. Not once had she entertained the notion that John Alden could be involved in murder. John went to great lengths to follow procedure. To ensure all the statutes were followed, that every convicted man was convicted legally. He was a good prosecutor.
But apparently a bad husband.
“Oh, Sara.” To her dismay Sara’s eyes filled with tears. “I wish I knew what to say.”
Sara dug into her purse for a handkerchief. “He actually expected me to lie for him.”
“Did you?”
“No.” Sara glared through her tears. “Well, not exactly. I told Detective Murphy that John never came to bed that night, that I couldn’t say for sure where he was.”
“But you know where he was?” Kristen asked gently.
Sara pulled her fur collar high on her neck, gathering her composure. “He’s talked in his sleep for years, Kristen. He says all kinds of things. Sometimes things I shouldn’t hear, but I’ve been a good wife all these years and haven’t shared any of his confidences.”
Kristen’s eyes widened at the implications. “He talks about cases in his sleep?”
