Fortunately, an old contact of hers once affiliated with Project Fusion had created the skin graft for her. The flesh-like patch perfectly matched her skin tone, with the added benefit of making it look as if her left eye was as green and vibrant as her right. Sweat didn’t bother the graft -- great for those late July days when the air conditioning at the precinct was on the fritz -- and Jill could shower with it on and go swimming with it.
Whenever Jill put the graft on, she felt normal for a split second. But the sensation was fleeting, and she was glad for that. Jill wasn’t normal, whatever normal was, and she liked it that way. Wanting to be a cop wasn’t normal, and deciding to play superhero on top of that definitely wasn’t normal. Physically, she was the picture of health, and aside from the titanium on her bones and the chip in her brain, her insides were just like everyone else’s.
The graft in place, she took a few moments to remove the bandage on her leg before running a wet washcloth over the wound again and applying a new bandage. The process was far quicker this time, since her range of motion had improved, and by the time Jill had put the finishing touches on her outfit for the day, her phone buzzed again. Captain Richards was outside, waiting in his squad car.
Jill unlocked her armoire again before pulling out a small wooden box, grabbing her service piece and badge. Hoisting both onto her belt, Jill locked the armoire again and walked out of her apartment, deciding to take the two flights downstairs instead of the elevator. She needed to stretch out her leg, and the more she moved, the less noticeable her limp became. The pain was still there, and certain movements made her hiss, but it was far better than the night before.
She slipped into the passenger’s seat of a black Crown Vic and immediately grabbed for one of the cardboard cups in the console between them. Her shoulders relaxed after the first sip.
“Hazelnut,” she said with a smile. “Just what I needed.”
Daniel Richards, a black man sporting a thick black mustache with flicks of gray on the ends, stared at Jill with a quirked brow. “Rough night?”
Jill shrugged as she took a long swig. “Didn’t sleep til late. Busy studying case files.”
The police cruiser pulled into traffic. “Ruiz or your dad?”
Jill kept her eyes on the windshield, mindful of the talk they had several months ago when he had found her in the archive room, thumbing through Paul Andersen’s file. He had threatened her with demotion if she removed files from that room or didn’t let him in on new developments, but he hadn’t told her to stop. Daniel understood that telling Jill not to investigate her father’s case was a good way to guarantee she would do exactly that.
“Ruiz,” she answered around another sip. The coffee was as much habit as anything else. For one thing, it was light years better than the muck they brewed in the break room over at the Seventh. Why no one could manage a decent cup of coffee in a work environment where practically everyone needed the caffeine jolt at some point was beyond Jill. The soda machine in the corner saw more action than the coffee maker, even if it made a habit of taking everyone’s dollar.
How to steal from cops and get away with it: be a vending machine.
“What have I told you about bringing your work home?”
Jill glanced out the passenger’s side window. “That I’d be better off getting a dog.”
Richards pulled the Crown Vic into a space by the curb, fishing his badge from the pocket of his brown leather coat and pulling his door open. He adjusted his black-rim glasses before staring skyward. “I just don’t want you to get burnt out.”
Chugging the rest of her coffee, Jill stepped out of the Crown Vic and slammed the door behind her. It wasn’t until she tossed the empty cup into a nearby trash bin that Jill saw where they had stopped off at: a high-rise business complex on the corner of Cider Alley and Paca Street. Her heart leapt into her throat and Jill’s mind instantly went to the trail of blood she undoubtedly left on her way back home -- to say nothing of the carnage up on the twentieth floor.
“Another body?” Jill asked, hoping her nonchalance was convincing.
“Not quite.” Richards gave the uniform standing on the corner a nod before he pulled open a heavy door leading to a dimly-lit stairwell. Jill hesitated before following. It looked like the stairwell she had used the previous night to get away, but there was no sign that she had been there.
No blood stains on the sidewalk or the cement floor. No trace of anything. Jill hung behind Richards as they ascended the staircase, frowning in confusion.
“Just the thought of walking twenty flights of stairs makes me wanna throw up,” Richards said as they continued ascending. “But the elevators are broken down, so we don’t have a choice.”
Jill’s stomach churned and her leg started aching again. What would they find up there? Little more than an empty office space with a shattered window? Bodies littered everywhere? Blood stains in the carpet, maybe even a blood-soaked knife that would put Jill on the scene once the forensics team did their thing? She held back on her fear, though, because to give it voice was to arise suspicion and risk blowing her cover. There was no use admitting to something her captain didn’t know about yet.
Captain Richards had been Paul’s partner when they were both detectives. Not only had they been one of the city’s best crime-fighting duos, but they were practically brothers. Jill had lost count of how many times her family had gone to Daniel’s house for dinner, and she fondly remembered how Dan and his wife Evelyn considered Jill and Brian their own children. The Richards were never able to have kids of their own, and they doted on the Andersen children whenever possible.
That continued even after Paul’s arrest. Daniel had been the one to slap the cuffs on him, and ever since then, he had done everything he could to be there for Jill. She still had weekly dinners with Daniel and Evelyn, and even though Brian was never as close to the Richards as Jill, Daniel had always made it clear that were Jill and Brian to ever reconcile, he would be just as welcome.
She was glad to be assigned to his precinct. Not just because of how close they were, but because there was no telling how Jill would be treated at another precinct. For one thing, she was a woman working in a masculine field, and the fact that she was the daughter of a cop brought about its own baggage -- and that didn’t even get into the fact that her father was on Death Row.
At least this way, she knew someone had her back.
By the time they got to the twentieth floor, Daniel was struggling for breath. He was trying to play it off, act like he was fine, but those years of smoking had clearly taken their toll. Jill frowned when she took in her surroundings. Not only was there no blood on the floor, but there were no bodies anywhere. The window that had been broken the previous night -- no thanks to her face -- was covered with a white translucent tarp.
“Uh, Dan? There’s nothing here.”
“That’s because,” Richards paused, gulping down one more deep breath, “that’s because something was stolen.”
“Stolen.” Jill shook her head and took another long look at her surroundings. This wasn’t making any sense. “But… we’re Homicide, not Robbery.”
A stocky uniformed officer named Greg Sorenson approached the captain and Jill with a wooden clipboard. He adjusted his hat and nodded his greeting. “Security cam footage shows a man breaking in through the stairwell around midnight last night and approaching a metal file cabinet in the far corner.”
Jill’s eyes instantly went to the spot in question. There was nothing there.
“Greg? Hate to burst your bubble here…”
“But here’s the thing.” Sorenson set down his clipboard. “The footage stops right as the man got to it. Fade to black, cut to snow, all that shit. Cameras were still disabled when we got here.”
“How’d we know to come here?” Jill asked.
“Tip came from Robbery.” Richards shook his head. “Once they found out the building was leased in Duval’s name, they called me.”
“Couldn’t have been easy, luggin’ that cabinet outta here.” Sorenson pointed at the empty spot against the wall. “Thing was almost six feet tall. Probably heavy as fuck.”
Come to think of it, the file cabinet hadn’t been there last night, either. So whoever stole the file cabinet did so and left before Jill got there. Fortunate for her, because that meant her little exploit hadn’t been caught on camera.
Still… what happened to the men who had attacked her? Where was all the blood? Someone went to an awful lot of trouble to make it look like nothing happened the previous night, including a clean-up job that extended down twenty flights of stairs and out to the sidewalk.
Comforted as Jill was by the fact that she wouldn’t be outed like this, having someone tailing her and cleaning up her messes was an unnerving thought.
She turned back to Sorenson. “Please tell me we got a good look at the guy.”
Sorenson shook his head. “Just the back of his head.”
“What was in the file cabinet?” Jill asked.
“According to our tip,” Richards said, “everything that would implicate Madison Duval.”
Jill shook her head. “Why not go to the FBI with that? They’re the ones investigating him.”
“Not for the murder of Johnny Ruiz.”
Jill’s mind wandered back to the military types she had encountered the previous night, Riggins in particular. He had made it a point to tell Jill just how in over her head she was, how whoever was pulling the strings on all this was untouchable. Duval certainly fit the profile, and it made sense that he would get rid of files implicating himself. Get police investigating the “stolen” file cabinet and they won’t think twice about the murder he committed.
It was Super Successful Businessman Bad Guy 101.
Having slipped on a pair of gloves, Jill approached the door next to where the file cabinet had supposedly been. The door was completely nondescript, probably leading to a supply closet. Jill hadn’t noticed the door in the scrum the previous night, and it probably meant nothing. Another dead end, like so many other things about this case.
Only the dead ends in this case weren’t the result of police incompetence; more likely, it was intentional on Duval’s part. He was just smart enough to pull the strings, to keep the cops guessing until the trail ran cold and he could move on to the next shady dealing. But what kind of cop would Jill be if she didn’t exhaust every possibility, no matter how unlikely?
“Dan,” she called out over her shoulder. “Back me up here.”
There probably wasn’t anything on the other side of the door, but Jill wouldn’t be a good cop if she didn’t prepare herself. Her free hand went to the gun on her hip, fingers wrapping around cold metal. She kept her grip on the weapon loose as she turned the knob. Jill and Richards exchanged a nod before she stepped back and pulled the door open. She drew her weapon at the same time, only to watch as a body slumped over and fell to the floor.
The lower part of the man’s face was destroyed and there was a hole in the back of his head. His jaw was completely gone, as was the lower row of teeth and most of the man’s tongue. Dried blood stained his white dress shirt and dark gray suit. Eyes rolled back into his head. A handgun hung loosely in his left hand.
Jill glanced back at the open door, seeing a good amount a blood spatter on the back wall of a supply closet. A broom had been knocked over, as had a roll of paper towels. Several teeth and chunks of muscle were strewn about the floor.
While Jill was no medical examiner, her first guess was that the gun had been placed in his mouth and the trigger pulled. If that were the case, then they were looking at a suicide -- either that, or something that was supposed to look like a suicide. More importantly, the man resembled the first man she had encountered the previous night: the one with the red hair and scruff. Even with half his face blown off, Jill could tell who this was.
She stood with a sigh and shook her head, fishing out her smartphone and pulling up the camera before snapping a series of haphazard shots. Forensics would come by later and take better pictures, but for now, her grainy phone would have to serve as a baseline.
“Holy shit,” Richards said.
Jill glanced over her shoulder and frowned. “What?”
Daniel pointed to the bald spot on top of the man’s head. “I think that’s Duval.”
IV
DNA analysis and dental records had confirmed that it was, in fact, Madison Duval stuffed in the supply closet with a bullet in his head. While the preliminary analysis pointed toward suicide, the ME working the case had his doubts. Harrison Sloane had worked for the Baltimore Police Department for nearly twenty-five years, and if he said it wasn’t a suicide, everyone was inclined to believe him.
For one thing, they had found the murder weapon in his left hand. Not only was Duval right-handed, but there was no residue on either of his wrists. That meant someone else had shot him at point-blank range and stuffed the gun in his hand.
The FBI was quietly celebrating Duval’s death -- an agency liaison Jill had never met had told Captain Richards over the phone that Duval’s death freed up so many resources that the beancounters in D.C. were probably doing cartwheels. The truth was, though, that Jill now had two murders to solve. Duval’s death was a setback in the Johnny Ruiz investigation, and for the first time, she wished she had a partner.
The combination of department-wide layoffs and a hiring freeze, borne from a fragile economic recovery and politicians who insisted on cutting, cutting, cutting instead of finding new revenue streams, meant some officers and detectives worked solo. Most of the time, Jill enjoyed the relative freedom, but times like this she longed for a partner off whom to bounce ideas and theories.
Then again, she was fortunate to not be one of the city’s layoffs -- yet -- so she wasn’t about to make too much of a fuss. But she was mentally reeling over the knowledge that she had gone a few rounds with Duval himself the previous night; she was surprised both that he was that hands-on and that Riggins and his boys clearly had something to do with his death.
Jill’s theory had been that Riggins and his posse had been working for Riggins. But if she was right and the bullet that blew Duval’s jaw to hell came from Riggins, then they were working for someone else.
But who?
The pain in her left leg was almost completely gone by this point, and Jill found herself once again taking inventory of the abandoned office space on the twentieth floor. There was something here everyone else had missed. She was sure of it.
Earlier that day, Jill had spent her dinner break watching security footage and just as Sorenson had said, a bald-headed man approached the file cabinet before the feed quit working. It was nine at night by the time Richards had ordered her to go home. That happened far too often for the captain’s liking, and Jill couldn’t think of why he was so insistent that she go home every night. It wasn’t like she had a family to get home to.
So after changing her bandage once again, Jill had opened her armoire and slipped on the mesh armor. It had taken five minutes before she was fully decked out in black leather again, peeling the skin graft off her face and placing it in the box on the bathroom sink. She hoisted the sheath carrying her katana over her right shoulder, then turned around to take one more look at herself in the mirror.
Jill’s hair was still done up in a tight ponytail, which was no good. She flicked off the black headband and let her brown locks spill out over her shoulders. A shorter hairdo would probably be more convenient, but Jill had always liked having long hair. Besides, it now had the added benefit of concealing her face.
Not for the first time since they discovered Duval’s body, Jill’s mind went back to Riggins. He was definitely in on this, considering he had been here at the scene after Duval’s murder. According to Sloane’s autopsy report, Madison Duval had been killed almost two hours before Jill had first shown up to the office building.
She couldn’t link Riggins to the murder with actual proof, but Ji
ll was convinced Riggins had been the one to shoot Duval’s face off and shove him in a nondescript closet.
But who was pulling Riggins’ strings? He had boasted about things running much deeper than Jill realized, and at first she thought he had meant Duval. Someone as well-connected as him would’ve easily fit the bill. But considering his face had already been blown off by that point, she doubted it.
So the question remained: who was Riggins working for?
Jill hadn’t returned to the office building in hopes of finding a missing clue; she had been to this scene three times by now, and at no point did she find something she had previously missed. An infrared swipe of the supply closet turned up nothing unexpected: just a lot of blood and two teeth CSU had missed when collecting and cataloging evidence. Considering they already had an ID on the victim, the teeth held no significance.
No, Jill was back because some part of her hoped she would run into Riggins again. As expected, running the name through the BPD database had turned up nothing. If Jill were a betting woman, she would put down ten bucks on national and international databases faring no better. Her original theory that Riggins wasn’t his real name appeared to have weight to it, and Jill wanted him to come to her.
Ideally, he would be alone the next time they squared off. Jill had already had to fight off her share of lackeys once, and she tired of it. Lackeys were no better than suspects in the box whose sole purpose was to waste her time.
Jill wanted Riggins.
More importantly, she wanted whoever was above him, the one calling the shots. As far as Jill was concerned, Riggins was nothing more than a puppet. Maybe if she snapped off Pinocchio’s nose, Geppetto would come calling.
The thing about Riggins was, he didn’t see himself as a pawn. He thought he was the big dog. In a way, that made him dangerous, but that also made him vulnerable. People drugged up on their own self-importance were more prone to leave openings. Their vulnerabilities would be on display, giant neon arrows pointing at them.
Boundless: A Bounty Short Page 3
