Blood & Roses (Vigilante Crime Series)

by Kristi Belcamino

  “I can’t lose him,” Rose finally said.

  “I know.”

  They sat until night fell and the sky became a velvet blue dotted with diamond stars.

  Rose stood first. “It’s time.”

  11

  Everyone met back at the restaurant.

  Paolo was there. “I filed a report, but they didn’t seem to take me very seriously,” he said.

  “We won’t rely on them,” Rose said. “We’ll find him on our own.”

  She sounded braver and more confident than she felt. Inside, she was scared to death and felt as if she were going to vomit or curl up in the fetal position any second.

  Paolo split the friends and family into four groups and sent everyone in a different direction.

  Rose insisted on starting near where her street ended. Nobody argued.

  Because it was night and the Ramblas was packed with people, Rose agreed to stick with Paolo as they questioned store owners and employees.

  At the first store, the owner recognized Timothy but then said it was from going into Mangia. He liked to eat lunch there on Saturdays, he’d said.

  She and Paolo next stopped at a smoke shop but had no luck.

  And then they walked into a convenience store. Rose approached the clerk.

  “Perdóneme. Did you happen to work last night?” she asked.

  The clerk, a young man, nodded and smiled. “Yes.”

  “I’m looking for this man,” Rose said and handed him her phone. She could tell immediately he recognized Timothy.

  “You know him?” Rose asked cautiously.

  “I saw him. This morning.”

  Rose’s heart beat double time. “Paolo!”

  Paolo was instantly at her side. “Tell us when you saw him.”

  “It was early, before sunrise. I live upstairs. I was just going to bed and came out on my balcony to have a cigarette and I heard something…”

  “What did you hear?” Paolo said, stepping forward so his face was close to the man’s.

  “It sounded like a fight. I looked over the rail, and there was this guy,” he gestured at Rose’s phone. “He was with a girl and two men.”

  Rose’s heart raced. “Could you see what the woman or men looked like?”

  The man shook his head. “The girl had blonde hair. That was it. It was dark.”

  “Then what?” Paolo asked.

  “They punched the guy. Your friend. Must’ve knocked him clean out because he fell on the ground. Then the blonde girl said something and walked off.”

  “She left? Did they say anything to her or try to stop her?”

  “No, she just walked away like it was nothing. And then the guys picked your friend up and went to a building over there,” he points. “They went inside and that’s all I could see.”

  Paolo and Rose took off running toward the building the man had pointed at. It was a dark gray apartment building with chipped paint. It had one door. Paolo got there first and began to pound on it.

  Rose started hitting all the buttons for all the doorbells.

  Her thoughts were racing. Had Timothy said something to a woman and her jealous boyfriends or family members mistakenly thought he was flirting and beat him up for it? It seemed so out of character for him. But she couldn’t think of any other reason for them to beat him up. He was a mild-mannered, polite guy.

  Finally, the door clicked open.

  The place had three floors and four apartments on each floor.

  “I’ll start at the top,” Paolo said, but Rose grabbed his arm and pointed. There was a circle of dried blood on the tile. Then another smaller drop on one of the steps.

  “Let’s go,” she said.

  They raced up the stairs, following the blood trail to the second floor. It led straight to an apartment facing the back of the building toward the alley.

  Paolo looked at Rose and then pounded on the door.

  There was no answer.

  “Open the fucking door now!” he shouted in a booming voice.

  When nobody answered, Paolo took a few steps back and then ran at the door, giving it a hard kick. It didn’t budge.

  After a few more minutes of shouting, another door across the hall opened.

  “What’s all the racket about?” It was an older woman dressed in a red robe with a cigarette between her lips. She had cat-eye reading glasses pushed up on her head and was holding a book in one hand.

  “Who lives here?” Rose asked.

  The older woman shrugged. “A bunch of transient thugs. They come all hours. Deal drugs or something I don’t know.”

  “We need to get into the apartment,” Rose said. “I think they beat up my boyfriend and brought him here this morning.”

  Paolo gave her a look. She realized she’d called Timothy her boyfriend. It had come out of her mouth so naturally.

  “The landlord is impossible to get ahold of,” the older woman said. “But Marcel, the poet next door, should be home soon. You can climb from his balcony to that apartment.”

  Rose and Paolo looked at one another, then nodded their heads.

  “We’ll wait for Marcel,” Rose said.

  Ten minutes later, a man carrying a paper bag full of groceries entered the hall from the stairs. He had long, scruffy hair, a droopy moustache, and hooded eyes. He wore pressed gray pants and a linen white button-down shirt. His shoes were polished to a high shine.

  Rose smiled at him. “The woman who lives here,” she pointed at the door, “said you might be able to help us. I need to get into your next-door neighbor’s apartment. My boyfriend is missing. Someone saw your neighbors beat him up and carry him into this building. But they won’t answer the door. We just want to use your balcony to get inside the apartment.”

  “Why should I let you in?” he asked, raising an eyebrow and fiddling with his keys.

  “Because I’m desperate,” Rose said in an annoyed voice. “We followed a blood trail to find this door. What if he’s inside, hurt or dying? It will be on your hands.”

  He glared at her, so she took a different tact.

  “Please?” her voice was pleading.

  The man searched her face and must have believed her because he nodded and pushed his door open and stood aside to let them in first.

  Rose and Paolo raced inside and headed straight to the balcony. Right before she swung one leg over his balcony to leap to the other, Rose hollered over her shoulder, “Thank you!”

  The sliding glass door to the other apartment was wide open.

  When Rose looked inside, she gasped. Paolo grabbed her and held her. A large sheet of plastic covered the living room floor. It was covered in blood.

  Rose felt her legs going out. Paolo caught her.

  “It doesn’t mean anything, Rose.”

  “Why? Who would do this? Why?” she said in a ragged voice.

  Gia’s words came back to her—that all of this might have something to do with Rose.

  “It doesn’t mean anything, Rose.” Paolo said, repeating his words.

  “What now?” Rose said. “What now? Where is he?”

  Her voice verged on hysterical.

  “We need to call the police,” Paolo said.

  “Yes.”

  “How do we explain being inside this apartment?”

  Rose strode toward the door, walking around the plastic without looking down.

  Rose took a deep, centering breath and when she spoke next her voice was shaky but certain.

  “We say the door was unlocked. We knocked. When we did, the door opened a little bit and we saw this.”

  Paolo looked at her in surprise. “Okay.”

  They stood in the hall with the door wide open.

  “You call,” Rose said. “You’re his cousin.”

  While Paolo spoke to the police, Rose called Gia. As she spoke, she walked to the end of the hall and explained what she’d found. While she did, she looked out the window that led to a fire escape and the street below.


  “I’m on my way,” Gia said in a clipped voice.

  In less than ten minutes, the police and Gia came up the stairs at the same time.

  The two uniformed officers looked bored.

  Gia stepped into the hall behind them.

  Paolo spoke to the officers. They looked into the apartment and then disappeared inside, telling everyone to wait in the hall.

  Gia came to stand at Rose’s side. Rose couldn’t look at her for more than a few seconds. There was such a look of concern in Gia’s eyes, Rose thought she would collapse if she looked any longer than that.

  Paolo paced the hall with his fists clenched. At one point, he stopped and punched the white plaster and then grimaced while holding his hand.

  Rose walked over to him and put her arm around him.

  “Let me see,” she said.

  He held out his hand. His knuckles were bloody. Rose took a scarf out of her bag and wound it around his hand. He just shook his head. It looked like he was holding back tears.

  “Do we call his father?” she asked.

  Paolo exhaled and nodded.

  “I think we need to,” he said and sniffed. “He would want to know.”

  Just then the door downstairs slammed shut.

  They all froze. Footsteps could be heard. Someone was coming up the stairs.

  A man stepped onto the landing and stopped, looking from one person to the other.

  Rose recognized him instantly. He was one of the men who had stopped and stared at Timothy and her in front of the restaurant the night before.

  He had short brown hair and a goatee. His nose was large and hooked, and his eyes were small and dark. He wore baggy black pants and a white tank top. He was carrying shopping bags.

  His eyes darted to the open door of the apartment. He dropped his packages and ran.

  Paolo gave a loud roar as the three of them charged toward the stairs.

  “No!” Rose shouted.

  Gia, who was fastest, yelled for him to stop. She leaned over the waist-high railing to the stairs and flung herself over it. Rose heard a thump as she landed on the floor below. By the time Rose got to the rail to look down, Gia had the man up against the wall, a gun under his chin.

  “Where is he?” Gia yelled, pushing the gun into the guy’s jaw.

  Rose was at the next landing in seconds. Paolo was right behind her.

  Gia backed up but kept the gun pointed at the man.

  He just looked at them and spit on the ground.

  The two police officers raced down the stairs, their own guns drawn.

  One of them had his gun pointed at Gia.

  “Drop it!”

  Gia looked at him for a second as if she were going to ignore his order but then crouched and set the gun on the ground.

  12

  The police took the man down to the station.

  Paolo went back to the restaurant to explain what was going on to the family. Gia and Rose sat in the lobby of the police station waiting to speak to detectives.

  Rose felt numb and restless at the same time. She’d never felt so helpless in her life.

  A small, dark part of her was convinced that Timothy was dead and there was nothing to do except find his body. But another tiny, hopeful spark inside her was desperate to find out what the man in custody was saying in case he would lead them to Timothy alive somewhere.

  Finally, after two hours, a detective came out. He was tall and fit with wire-rimmed glasses and sandy hair in a military crew cut. He had a square jaw and a no-nonsense manner.

  Rose sprang to her feet.

  “We are trying to confirm his alibi. He said he was working on a boat out at sea for the past twenty-four hours.”

  “What?” Rose sprang from her chair, her face contorted in anger. “That’s a lie. I saw him. Last night. He was on the Ramblas. I saw him in front of Mangia.”

  “Who else was in his apartment?” Gia asked.

  “He said he lives alone.”

  “Bullshit!” Gia said.

  “He said someone must have broken in. He said he knows nothing about it,” the detective said.

  “And you believe him?” Rose said.

  The detective backed up a little. The small moustache under his nose twitched.

  Trying to keep the hysteria out of her voice, Rose said, “We just want to know where my boyfriend is. He’s missing. It’s not like him to just disappear. The last person to see him witnessed him being taken into that apartment—the same apartment with a big, plastic, blood-soaked sheet inside. I need to know what you are doing about it. And I swear, I saw the man you’re questioning last night in front of the restaurant where my boyfriend works.”

  Nodding, the detective listened and then said, “We are investigating.”

  Rose stared. After everything she’d just told him, that was his response?

  “We need more than that.”

  “Are you family?” the detective asked with a look Rose didn’t like.

  Rose knew that was his trump card. He didn’t have to tell them anything because they weren’t related to Timothy. Girlfriends didn’t count.

  “Is there anything else?” he asked, without waiting for them to answer.

  “Yes,” Gia said. She turned toward Rose. “She turned eighteen yesterday and came into her trust.”

  The detective stared at Rose for a long moment and then said, “If it is a kidnapping for ransom, you should hear something within the next forty-eight hours. Please let us know immediately.”

  Gia reached for Rose’s arm. “Come on,” she said to Rose, ignoring him. “Let’s go.”

  “Yes, let’s go,” Rose said and glared at the detective. “We’re obviously wasting our time.”

  Once they were outside the police station, Rose turned to Gia.

  “I don’t know what to do. I’m sick about it. Do you think someone took him for a ransom?”

  Rose waited for Gia to answer. The dark-haired woman narrowed her eyes.

  “What?” Rose said impatiently.

  “I don’t think you want to hear what I think.”

  “I do.” Rose insisted. “Be straight with me, Gia. Do you think he was kidnapped for ransom?”

  “I honestly don’t know,” Gia said. “But at this point, I think that’s probably the best-case scenario.”

  “Do you want me to stay the night?” Gia asked after they’d returned to Rose’s apartment.

  It was after two in the morning.

  “No,” Rose said. “Go home and get some sleep. I’ll call you when I get up in the morning.”

  “You sure?” Gia asked.

  “I’m going to see if I can find out more about that blonde girl and then call it a night. I’m going to find her and see what she knows. I have to do something. The police don’t care,” Rose said angrily. “You were there. You heard them.”

  Rose wanted to be alone. She wanted to go through all Timothy’s social media accounts and see if she could spot that blonde girl.

  “Who do you think she is?” Gia asked.

  Rose felt the blood drain from her face. She refused to believe that Timothy left her house after they’d made love and then hooked up with another girl.

  Rose didn’t answer.

  Gia paused in the doorway. “He wasn’t like that.”

  Exhaling, Rose nodded. “I know. You’re right. But even so, I would rather he was sleeping with some woman somewhere and safe.”

  “That is true love.”

  There was a chance he’d just run into the woman on the street, but there was also a chance he knew her.

  The door closed and Rose sank onto the couch. Her laptop sat on the coffee table in front of her. Even though what she’d said was true—she was going to scour social media for the girl—right then all she wanted to do was not think. She curled her legs up under her and put her face in her hands. She felt hysteria building within her, rising to the surface. She just didn’t know how it would erupt. In a scream? In a destructive rage? In weepi
ng?

  But instead, an eerie calm descended upon her. She sat up and reached for the laptop.

  Unfortunately, she didn’t have any of Timothy’s passwords, so she wouldn’t have access to his Snapchat account, which was the platform he used the most. She’d have to settle with stalking his other accounts as an outsider.

  She started on Facebook, even though she knew he was seldom on there. One by one, she went through his friends, examining every profile picture. There were a few blonde girls. She wrote down their names. Then she went to Instagram. She came across a cute picture of her with Timothy beaming beside her from the night before. She remembered posing for it—his mother had taken it—but she didn’t know he’d already posted it. The caption brought tears to her eyes.

  It was a quote: "There may be many flowers in a man's life, but there is only one Rose. – Anonymous.”

  The picture before that was a silly one of him and Paolo fishing at the marina. She scrolled back through the pictures, but basically knew them all. There were no pictures of a blonde girl.

  It was time to dig deeper.

  Timothy was more active on Instagram than Facebook, and had more than 1,000 followers, which wasn’t very much compared to some people, but it was still a formidable amount to sift through. She decided to start with the people he’d followed.

  By the time she was finished, the sun was starting to rise.

  She told herself that she would just close her eyes for a second and rest and then figure out another way to find out who the girl was.

  She leaned back against the couch, closed her eyes, and was instantly asleep.

  13

  Knocking at the door woke her. She startled and looked at her clock. It was ten in the morning. She jumped up and raced to the door. Standing on tiptoe, she peered through the peephole. It was Gia.

  Even though Gia had a key, she was always respectful and knocked first. Rose opened the door.

  “I’m sorry. I fell asleep.”

  “I hope so. Wasn’t that the plan?” Gia said, handing her a coffee.

  “I guess. I was up looking through social media for that blonde girl,” Rose said and took a big sip of the coffee. “Thanks for this.”